Chapter Thirteen:
Blood or Marriage
New Year's Day, January 1, 1800, the September 30, 1796, agreement between the mutinous surveyors and the shareholders of the Connecticut Land Company collapsed fully at last.
But not before former apprentice surveyor Amzi Atwater—all of 23 by New Year's Day 1800—either disposed or was dispossessed of the four Euclid Township lots he'd won in the surveyors' drafts of September 1796. But he acquired Gore Lots 22 and 23—number 22 being Dr. Shepherd's best draw containing a stretch of the lakeshore trail and possibly the site of at least some improvement work by Spafford and Sanford in the summer of 1797. The combination of these two very good lots—number 23 also contained a portion of the lakeshore trail—created a contiguous 369 acre section of the township's lake plain, well positioned on the main road in the vicinity of today's East 222nd Street. This area would become known for the next century and more as the Atwater Tract.
Amzi Atwater had already risen from apprentice in the 1796 Connecticut Land Company expedition to full surveyor in the one which returned to the Western Reserve the following year. In 1798 and 1799 he worked for Oliver Phelps surveying the Holland Purchase in western New York before coming west permanently in 1800. Atwater homesteaded a farm in Mantua Township—becoming a neighbor of the Honeys and Edwardses from the 1798 Kirtland/Law group—and took a leading role in the settlement and development of what is now Portage County. He was elected judge there and later a county commissioner and died in 1851 at the age of 75. He's buried today in the Pioneer Cemetery in Mantua.
In the wake of the collapse of the surveyors' agreement a new scheme of tracts was laid atop the grid of lots parceling up Euclid Township. Twenty-seven divisions were made—20 numbered tracts, with a few wild cards—from patches as small as 52 and 84 acres in the John Moss lots, to others over a thousand.
The sections already allotted to the Doans and the Dilles and Amzi Atwater were preserved, as well as the established Moss tracts; perhaps it was not yet clear that John Moss had definitively left the scene. Nearly half of the remaining tracts were allotted to shareholders of the Connecticut Land Company.
Oliver Phelps and Henry Champion were particularly invested, with nearly 2,000 acres between them in what are now Euclid and Cleveland Heights, and jointly owning Tract 6, another thousand acres which are now the entire northeast quarter of South Euclid. Still other parts of the township came into the hands of some interesting newcomers.
Tract 2—the southwest portion of today's South Euclid, where the Columbia Township settlers would soon stage their move to the west side of the Cuyahoga River—became the property of Josiah Barber, a land speculator from Hebron, Connecticut, who eventually emigrated to the Western Reserve and became one of the first settlers in Brooklyn Township, what is now much of the West Side of Cleveland. He was the first mayor of Ohio City, now a Near West Side Cleveland neighborhood after its gobbling in 1854. Tract 14, in the heart of Euclid Township, went to M. Kellogg, probably Martin Kellogg, Sr., whose son Martin, Jr. came west with Barber and also settled in Brooklyn.
Tract 8—at the north end of Cleveland Heights—and Tract 13—in Richmond Heights—were owned by Richard W. Hart and John Bolls, respectively. Both men were Connecticut land speculators who, in addition to their Euclid Township tracts, also bought lots in the central settlement, in what's now Downtown Cleveland. Tract 11—split between Richmond Heights and Euclid—was acquired by Hezekiah Clark, likely the father of the Hezekiah Clark who was an early settler of Geauga County, who also owned large parts of Auburn Township. Tract 19—the heart of Euclid's lakeshore—went to Birdseye Norton, the owner of Norton Township, for whom the Akron suburb now located there is named. Tract 20—the northeast section of Euclid—became the property of Connecticut lawyer Benjamin Tappan, who would come west in 1799, found the city of Ravenna, and eventually rise to be one of Ohio's United States Senators.
John Moss' long 84 acre lake lot also went to Henry Champion. This is the lot which may have contained Oliver Phelps' Canandaigua Company outpost, so perhaps the fact that Phelps and Champion co-owned Tract 6 in Euclid and Moss' lake lot went to Champion is not a coincidence.
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On February 19, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson signed the Act of Congress creating the State of Ohio, and it was admitted with its present boundaries as the seventeenth state of the American Union. Its first assembly met on March 1 in Ohio's original capital in Chillicothe. The new state had nine counties total initially, with the entirety of the former Connecticut Western Reserve becoming Trumbull County, named for Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut's Revolutionary War-time governor. Other of Ohio's first counties honored national figures of the Federal Period: George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, President Jefferson, and the northwest of the state its conqueror, Gen. Anthony Wayne.
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In the August heat of 1803 there arrived in the north of the brand new state "...five young men from Washington County, Pennsylvania, [who] came to Euclid to look for land..." These were William Coleman, John Shaw, Thomas Mcllrath, John Ruple and Garrett Thorp.
McIlrath and Shaw were brothers-in-law: Shaw was married to McIlrath's younger sister, Sarah. Coleman's and Ruple's wives were sisters as well: Jamima and Elizabeth Craft. Ruple's other brother, Samuel, was married to the Crafts' other sister, Elizabeth's twin, Rebecca. They would all come to Euclid, and many, many more McIlraths as well. Just four families in fact—McIlraths, Crafts, Ruples, and another, the Cozads—all neighbors in the frontier settlements of Washington County, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh, all intricately intertwined and intermarried, would form the first great wave of settlers in Euclid, starting in the spring of 1804.
"...four of them [the Washington County, Pennsylvania men] made Selections of land..."
However, "The fifth num., Garrett Thorp, did not then make a selection."
Thorp was not a part of any of these families, a fact which perhaps played a role in why he decided in 1803 not to settle in Euclid (although he would eventually come later, but ultimately not to stay). Thorp's ambiguity aside, the men from Washington County, Pennsylvania, who came to Euclid in the summer of 1803 were the vanguard of the families which would fill the township in the 19th century.
"The parties named returned to Pennsylvania, and did not begin work on their land till the next spring."
*
This period of Euclid's history has something of a prehistory. It took place on the western slope of the Appalachian Mountains between the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. It involved major struggles among leading world powers, and frequently no less a figure than George Washington himself.
The Pittsburgh region may not be the first place that comes to mind when one thinks of George Washington. However, it was one which occupied a good deal of his thoughts during his life. The site of Pittsburgh was once one of the most militarily and economically strategic points in North America, the place where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio, the major river flowing west to the heart of the continent. The French, the first Europeans to lay claim to the region, recognized its importance, and at the spot where the rivers met built a fort to control it, Fort Duquesne. As has been described in an earlier chapter, as a young lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia, George Washington participated in the British offensive under Gen. Edward Braddock to take the strategic position at the Forks of the Ohio from the French in 1755. The Braddock expedition failed, but the French were eventually compelled to abandon and destroy their fort, and to take command of the strategic Ohio the British built a new fort, Fort Pitt, on the site. Deep in the interior, Pitt became indefensible during the Revolution and it was abandoned to the rebellious Americans. It soon became the nucleus of the American town of Pittsburgh.
As a bounty for service to the British in the earlier war, awarded to him by the king and royal governors against whom he had later rebelled, George Washington held papers to over 50,000 acres of land in areas once claimed by the enormous and sprawling colony of Virginia, in the Kanawha River Valley in what is now West Virginia, where the state capital of Charleston now stands, and in the Monongahela Valley in Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh. William Crawford—the same William Crawford whose grisly death David Dille witnessed near Sandusky—was Washington's old friend and frequently served as his land agent in many of these dealings. Some historians have even proffered that a desire to realize returns on these Western lands after British law forbade settlement beyond the Appalachians served at least as a partial motivation for Washington's decision to rebel. And well aware of the connection to the dashing general, the founders of Washington County named both it and its seat for its prominent proprietor when the county was established in 1781. In considering the history of Euclid Township it is important to note that this is a separate and unique Washington County from the one in New York which contains the Granville of John Moss and Amariah Beard and the Bishops.
In 1784, after the war had been won but before he had been called to serve as the first President, George Washington travelled to the region to finally see the lands he had long claimed there for the first time. He found his tracts there not empty at all, but occupied by squatters, mostly Scottish immigrants who had arrived in the area in and after the 1770s, scratching out a living from the forest. Washington—among the richest men in America at this time, and certainly the most famous and revered—demanded more than a decade of back-rent of them, refused to sell or even to lease them the land on any terms which they could possibly afford, and pursued them relentlessly in court for the next two years until they finally accepted that they couldn't win. (The cases were heard in the town of Washington, the seat of Washington County; the odds must surely have seemed more than a little against them.) The squatters lost, and ultimately abandoned their homesteads, having conveniently made many valuable improvements to Washington's properties. His imperious disdain and contempt for the people of the region is evident throughout the journal he made during this journey, and the incident displays a facet of Washington's personality much at odds with the familiar heroic figure.
Just a few years later, in Washington's second presidential term, the very same region erupted in an armed secessionist tax revolt, what came to be known as the Whiskey Rebellion. Often depicted as an uncouth, ignorant and violent rabble, the distiller farmers of Washington and its neighboring counties rose to resist a law written by Alexander Hamilton specifically to target them in favor of large industrialized spirits producers in the East, in the name of establishing the good credit of the infant United States. Simultaneous with the Northwest Indian War against the forces of Blue Jacket and Little Turtle smoldering across the Ohio River, President Washington himself, with Secretary Hamilton at his side, personally led a massive contingent of federalized troops to western Pennsylvania to put down the insurrection in 1794, the only time a President of the United States has personally led troops into battle. But the rebels melted away in the face of overwhelming force, and no skirmish took place. (Did Washington's experiences with and attitudes toward the people of the Monongahela Valley a decade earlier influence the decision to employ such a massive response?)
These events would have been well known to, and perhaps in some cases even personally experienced by, some or all of the men from Washington County and their family members who came to Euclid after 1803.
The Dille family, which would play such an important part in the early settlement of Euclid Township, arrived in the Monongahela Valley area as early as 1776, leading families west from New Jersey to establish the settlement of Ten Mile Creek in Washington County, and would remain there at least 15 years. One expects they witnessed, perhaps even took some part in, many of the important events related above, in addition to playing a leading role in encouraging the families which eventually did to settle in Euclid.
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The founders of the largest single extended family of early Euclid and those about whom the most is known were Samuel and Isabella Aikman McIlrath of Mendham, New Jersey.
"Samuel McIlrath was a Scotchman," born in Aberdeen on Christmas Day, 1718. He was brought to America as an infant around 1719, sometime between his birth in Scotland and that of his younger brother in Somerset County, New Jersey, in 1720. Isabella was the daughter of Scottish immigrants as well. Her mother was from Scotland, though from exactly where is not known; her father was from Midlothian, just outside Edinburgh. Isabella's parents married in 1729 and emigrated to the New Jersey Colony in time for Isabella's birth there in 1730. Samuel McIlrath and Isabella Aikman both grew up in New Jersey, and were married in Mendham, about 30 miles west of New York, in 1755, a town which 20-some-years later geography would place near the center of some of the key events of the early years of the American Revolution. Their first child, a daughter, Mary, was born the following year. They would have eight more children together, and seven of them, plus mother Isabella, would all come to Euclid, with their second son, Thomas, and the husband of their youngest daughter, Sarah, being two of the "five young men" of August 1803.
Samuel appears to have been a rather rigid adherent of Scottish Presbyterianism, something which would have implications both for his family and in the early history of Euclid Township. The 1882 History of Morris County, New Jersey, contains a wealth of information about him, and labels him as a "Covenanter," a word which originally was used to describe 17th century Presbyterians in Scotland who became a persecuted minority in Britain after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, having backed the losing Parliamentarians in the English Civil War. In the New World the word was applied to the "Scots-Irish" squatters who occupied George Washington's lands south of Pittsburgh, and the label would also become associated with the Whiskey Rebels of the 1790s, in both cases to reflect their ethnic heritage and also to suggest something of their obstinacy. It's doubtful that Samuel McIlrath ever left New Jersey, and there is no explicit evidence to be found of any of the Euclid McIlraths being involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, but Whiskey Rebellion historian William Hogeland told a 2006 C-SPAN audience, "If your family were Scots-Irish settlers in Western Pennsylvania at that time, they were one way or another involved in the Whiskey Rebellion."
The History of Morris County relates an incident of Samuel McIlrath being so moved as to disrupt a monthslong dissertation being preached in his church. Exactly what was being asserted or on which side Samuel fell is not recorded, but he disagreed with what the minister was teaching so strongly as to call him out publicly:
"An anecdote of preacher and ruling elder in this quaint old meeting-house may round out the picture. It is related of Rev. Mr. Joline that he was fond of giving a course of sermons on some one doctrine, and it is said that he occupied nearly one whole winter with a course of sermons on the doctrine of Election. On a certain occasion, in the midst of his discourse, Elder Samuel McIlrath, a tall, thin, dignified Scotchman, wearing a white skull cap to cover his baldness, arose in his seat and exclaimed with great earnestness, 'Mr. Joline, that is false doctrine!'"
As stated above, Samuel McIlrath became an Elder of Mendham's Presbyterian church, and another darker, much sadder example of his fervor devolving to severity involves one of his daughters.
The History of Morris County:
"[A] daughter of Elder Samuel McIlrath, the old Scotch Covenanter, was cruelly betrayed in her youth, and left that most wretched being—a sensitive, conscientious mother, whose poor babe has no legal father."
Following their expulsion from New York and the battles in New Jersey at Trenton in December 1776 and Princeton in January 1777, Washington's army spent the winter of 1777 at Morristown, a mere five miles from the McIlraths' home in Mendham. For reasons which will ultimately be explained, it appears that this daughter who became pregnant without first being married was Samuel and Isabella's first child, Mary. She would have been about 20-years-old at the time, and the battles in New York the previous summer and in northern New Jersey earlier that winter surely would have been the most interesting and exciting things which ever happened in the neighborhood during her life. The American army was camped basically next door that winter, and it is intriguing to speculate that the dissolute father was a Continental Army soldier.
The History of Morris County continues the tale:
"What Elder Samuel McIlrath would do under such circumstances any one who has read Scotch domestic history of that day can well understand. The old man, who would have torn out his own heart or held his right hand in the flame rather than tolerate iniquity in himself, could not countenance sin in his daughter. When she was able to walk after her babe was born he told her to take it up. He led her to the road in front of his house, and told her never again to darken his door."
"She never did..."
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The same History of Morris County, plus several other sources, relate another episode involving Samuel McIlrath, implicating him in the capture of the Continental Army's third-in-command, Washington's great rival, Gen. Charles Lee, who was taken prisoner at White's Tavern in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, just eight miles from Mendham, in the course of the famous Christmas 1776 campaign against the Hessians at Trenton. While the various sources disagree on his motivation for doing so, none disagree that Samuel was the person who told the British of the general's whereabouts:
"The house is still pointed out... where General Charles Lee was taken prisoner by a party of British cavalry, December 13th 1776. The 'Mr. Mackelwraith' who has been accused of betraying General Lee to the British was Elder Samuel McIlrath, of Mendham."
While one source paints Samuel McIlrath as a "Tory busybody," the History of Morris County goes to some lengths to explain him:
"He [McIlrath] was himself surprised and taken prisoner while walking along the road. He did not reside in the neighborhood and was ignorant of General Lee's movements, and whatever he did to point out any house where officers were quartered, or in any way to act as a guide to the British, he did under compulsion and to save his own life, and not as a traitor. Elder McIlrath was as well known as any man in Mendham, and it was known and read of all men that he was not a Tory."
Samuel lived in Mendham for several decades after the war despite being well known to have been associated with the capture of Gen. Lee. He, McIlrath, might not have chosen (nor have been suffered) to remain in his New Jersey neighborhood after independence were he ultimately in fact a British sympathizer who had betrayed a leading American general. How his attitudes might have been affected if it is indeed true that his daughter was used and abandoned by a Continental soldier can only be speculated upon. (Lee, for his part, was paroled in a prisoner exchange in 1778 and commanded a young Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Monmouth. Lee's performance at Monmouth and later insubordination to Washington led to a court martial and ultimately a duel with Washington's aide-de-camp, John Laurens, with Alexander Hamilton serving as Laurens' second.)
Little is to be found about Samuel or Isabella's life in New Jersey following the war, but it doesn't look like either left Mendham for the western Pennsylvania frontier.
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Lawrence and Mary Lymes Craft came from Baltimore. Lawrence's father was from Wales, his mother from Ireland. They emigrated to America sometime between their marriage in England in 1700 and the birth of Lawrence's oldest brother, Barney, in Maryland in 1712. Nothing is to be found about Mary's parents. Lawrence was born in Baltimore in 1737, Mary, likewise, in 1745. They were married in Joppa, Maryland, just outside Baltimore, in the last days of December 1769, and shortly after went west to Washington County, Pennsylvania, where their first children, twin daughters Elizabeth and Rebecca, both to be among the first settlers of Euclid, were born on May 1, 1771.
A family history relates the following:
"John Craft and his brother Lawrence Craft were born in Maryland about 1730 to 1740. They removed thence to what was afterward known as Morris Township, Washington Co., Pa. where each took up four hundred acres of wild land and built a log fort, Indians being numerous and hostile. Their farms were located at the headwaters of what is known as Craft's Creek or Ten-mile Creek. They were both married before leaving Maryland, and took their families with them when they moved to Pennsylvania..."
There's a pause in the Crafts' child bearing coinciding with the Revolutionary War, when Lawrence's name appears on the militia rolls of Washington, Pa., with service from 1775 to 1783. He probably fought the British-allied Natives of the Ohio Valley much in the mode of David Dille. Perhaps he knew the Dilles during the war; it's very possible.
The Crafts had two more daughters in Washington County: Mary, Jr. (perhaps called Martha), born in 1783, and Jamima, born in 1785. Mary, Jr./Martha married a man named Abraham Elliot, and they remained in Washington County for the rest of their lives. Jamima came to Euclid. Indeed, except for Mary/Martha, the entire family—both parents and three sisters—all came to Euclid.
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The 1882 History of Washington County, Pennsylvania, records the following:
"Baltus Ruple came from the city of Philadelphia about the year 1792, and bought the tract of land that was surveyed under the name of Bear Wallow. He lived and died upon the farm, and left four sons—John, Samuel, James, and David. John and Samuel settled in Cuyahoga County, Ohio..."
Baltus, alternately called Balthazar, Ruple was born in Philadelphia in 1740. There in 1767 he married Rebecca James Smith and they started their family. Son John, one of the "five young men" of August 1803, was born in 1768. His brother Samuel, who would also come to Euclid in 1806, was born in 1771.
There are some confusions in the records available on them, but it looks as if Baltus and Rebecca moved their family west across Pennsylvania in stages, departing Philadelphia sometime between 1771 and 1774, with children born in Somerset County, in south central Pennsylvania, in the 1770s and 1780s. Sadly, Rebecca died, either in 1784 or 1786, perhaps giving birth to their daughter, Barbara, born in 1786 in Somerset County. Baltus remarried in 1787, to Ann (or Anne, or Anna, or Susan Ann) McCollum (or McCullum), who was born in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, just up the road from the McIlraths' home in Mendham. Second wife Ann was the mother of the James and David Ruple named with Euclid's John and Samuel listed in the above passage from the History of Washington County. That same book lists Baltus' arrival there in 1792, but he died, still in Washington County, just two years later, in 1794.
All in their early twenties, brothers John and Samuel Ruple married the twin Craft sisters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1793. All four went to Euclid.
Genealogy sources show Ann McCullum, wife of Baltus Ruple, dying in Euclid, Cuyahoga, Ohio in 1820. Her arrival is not recorded in the sources on early Euclid but she obviously joined her step-sons and their families there at some point.
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Of the parents of the early Euclid Township settlers the least is known about the Cozads. The 1918 History of Cleveland and its Environs records, "The Cozad ancestry was established in America in 1662 by Jacques Cozad, who was a French Huguenot and came to this country from Leyden, Holland, where he had found a temporary refuge." Huguenots were French Protestants persecuted in the majority and officially Catholic France. The Dilles were French Huguenots as well, but there were many French Huguenots and this does not in itself reveal anything, although when they met (as they surely must have eventually) they would have had that in common and thus perhaps some affinity. The History of Morris County says that, "On the mountain the Clarks, from Long Island, Pools, Styleses, Cozads, McIlraths and Bonnels were early settlers." (And more on the Bonnels, also called Bunnells, to come.)
Neither Samuel nor Anna Clark Cozad would ever leave New Jersey. They married in 1753 in Mendham, and thus probably knew (or, not being of their church, at least knew of) the McIlraths. But three of their children would go west to Washington County, Pennsylvania, and all marry McIlraths there, including Thomas McIlrath, one of the "five young men" of August 1803, and all of those would go to Euclid. Their grandson, Jacob, son of Samuel, Jr. and Jane McIlrath Cozad, would be among Euclid's first settlers too.
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Jacob Coleman, Sr., the grandfather of William Coleman of the "five young men" of August 1803, was born in Prussia, a German region in central Europe now a part of Germany. He worked seven years indentured to a shoemaker to pay for his passage to Philadelphia some time in the 1740s. In 1749 he married Mary Karis, a Prussian immigrant like himself, in New Jersey, and by the birth of their first son, Leonard, William's father, in 1754, they were living in Morris County in the neighborhood of the McIlraths.
Jacob and Mary Karis Coleman had four sons: the aforementioned Leonard; William, Sr. born in 1756; Christopher born in 1758; and Jacob, Jr. born in 1764. All four fought in the Revolution.
Leonard enlisted with the New Jersey troops at a Liberty Pole erected to rally American separatists in Basking Ridge at the very outbreak of the war in the spring of 1775. He was on the periphery of the more famous battles in New York and New Jersey in late 1776 and early 1777, then in many more small actions in the East, then the big one at Monmouth with Generals Charles Lee and Anthony Wayne in June 1778.
Christopher served in the Pennsylvania artillery, and on the Sullivan Campaign to crush the British-allied Iroquois on the frontier of western New York in the summer of 1779.
Jacob, Jr., the youngest Coleman child, had to wait until he was old enough to sign up to join the fight, which at that time was age 16.
"[Jacob Coleman] was a soldier of the American Revolution, enlisting at Hackensack, N.J., September 15, 1780..."
British war strategy had shifted to the South by then, and this New Jersey boy found himself fighting in the Carolinas.
"[Jacob Coleman served] as a private in Captain George Handy's Company under Colonel Henry Lee (Light Horse Harry). The proud boast of this regiment was, 'Not an officer without dash; not a soldier without bravery.'"
Light Horse Harry, not to be confused with the aforementioned Gen. Charles Lee, was a fierce warrior in his own right, and also the father of Civil War general Robert E. Lee.
"[Jacob Coleman also] served in Virginia Continental Troops, and served several years in Colonel William A. Washington's celebrated regiment of horse."
This Colonel Washington, according to the Mount Vernon website, "was the youngest child of George Washington’s older half-brother, Augustine Washington II, and his wife, Anne (née Aylett)." Early in the war he led troops in the battles in New York and New Jersey, so perhaps this is how Jacob came to be attached to his unit in the South.
"Jacob Coleman was in the battle of Guilford Court House [North Carolina], at the taking of Fort Motte [South Carolina], a skirmish on Ashley River [South Carolina], taking of forts on the Congaree [South Carolina], the Siege of Augusta [Georgia], and in the latter part of the Siege of Ninety-Six [South Carolina] and the battle of Eutaw Springs [South Carolina], and was discharged September 15, 1783."
Brother William fared the worst. He was captured by the British and cast into the bowels of HMS Jersey, the same infamous prison hulk anchored in Wallabout Bay in New York where Seth Doan, Sr. and Seth Doan, Jr. had languished in 1776, which Seth, Jr. survived just long enough to crawl home and die. But William Coleman, Sr. didn't even get that far. He died aboard the Jersey in 1779, and his remains may be among the bones of the American heroes stacked beneath the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, New York. It may be that Euclid's William Coleman, Jr., born not long after William, Sr.'s death in 1781, was named to honor this fallen uncle.
There was a Coleman daughter as well, Peggy, born in 1761. Little can be discovered about her, but it was said that she married a captured Hessian soldier named Smith or Smidth; perhaps German Prussians and German Hessians did not fear and despise each other so much as other groups in America at the time. It was said they had three children together, but that Peggy died, probably in New Jersey, and probably sometime around 1790, and "...[Smith] ran off when [Peggy] died and the children were scattered."
After the war all three of the surviving Coleman brothers married, and all three went into the Pennsylvanian West, sometime around 1792.
Leonard married Eunice Pearson in Somerset, New Jersey, in 1780. They had nine children together, starting with Euclid's William, Jr. in 1781. The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript states that, "William Coleman, a native of New Jersey, born in 1781, came with his Father to Washington Co Pennsylvania in 1792..."
Christopher Coleman, who had served in the Pennsylvania forces in the Revolution, was discharged from the military in the Pittsburgh area. Perhaps it was his service in the region which brought him there first among the Coleman brothers. He married Ruth Simpson in New Jersey in 1789 and from the birth locations of their eight children they also seem to have made the move to western Pennsylvania around 1792.
Jacob, who would come to Euclid, married Deborah Herron around 1788 in New Jersey, and from the dates and locations of the births of their own eight children it appears they moved into western Pennsylvania around the same time as brother Christopher and his wife Ruth, in the early 1790s.
Not long after the Colemans' arrival in Washington County, the Dilles, who had already been in the Washington County area for many years, pioneered a new settlement across the Ohio River in the disputed Northwest. It was on the bottomlands of Belmont County, Ohio, what's now and still known as Dille's Bottom. The exact date is uncertain, but many sources point toward the early 1790s, likely some time around 1794.
Christopher and Ruth Simpson Coleman remained in Washington County, Pennsylvania, for the rest of their lives, Ruth dying there in 1819 and Christopher in 1827. Leonard and Jacob pushed further west and joined the Dilles' settlement in Belmont.
The 1880 History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio:
"The first settlement made in what is now Mead Township was by the Dilles, on the bottoms opposite Moundsville along in 1793–4. This land upon which they settled afterwards derived its name from them. A block house or fort had been erected by them at this point to protect themselves and other settlers from the unmerciful attacks of the Savages which then roamed the forests in deadly hostility towards the Whites. Martin Shewey and family, Major James Smith and family, and Leonard Coleman and family, settled in the same bottom about the same time."
And the 1908 Centennial History of Belmont County, Ohio:
"...the first settlement in Mead Township was made along the river front in 1793–95 by the Dillies, Hayeses, Colemans, Sheweys, Smiths, Rileys, Dunfees, Creamers, Lockwoods and McElherrens. A number of these early settlers, notably the Smiths, Colemans and Sheweys, located at Dillie's Bottom for the protection that the fort afforded. The depredations of the Indians were so hostile that the Dillies and their neighbors were obliged in self protection to erect a blockhouse."
It does not appear, however, that Euclid's William took part in the Dille's Bottom settlement. Rather it looks as though he remained in Washington County, Pennsylvania, until his move to Euclid. His father, Leonard, would make Mead Township in Belmont County his home for the remainder of his life, dying there in 1839. Reliable facts about William's mother Eunice's death and burial are hard to discover, but she appears to have still been living in Mead Township in 1840, perhaps dying and being laid to rest there with her husband shortly thereafter.
Jacob and Deborah Herron Coleman stayed in Belmont County about eleven years. There Jacob would serve brief public appointments as revenue collector, county surveyor, and even county sheriff until just prior to his and his wife's move to Euclid, from 1801 to 1804.
As one who himself would become one of Euclid's earliest settlers, it's worth relating what can be found of his time in Belmont County. Of Jacob Coleman's term as county surveyor, the 1908 Centennial History of Belmont County, Ohio relates the following:
"The roads of Belmont County at the opening of the 19th century could scarcely be dignified by that name. One of the first acts of the first court held in the county authorized the construction of two roads viz., one from Pultney [Bellaire] to Newellstown [St. Clairsville], under the supervision of Jacob Coleman, surveyor, and the other a license for the construction of a road over the Zane Trail, extending through the county from east to west, over territory that is practically the same as that occupied by the National Road. All other thoroughfares were simply trails and bridle paths that were blazed through the forest from one settlement to another. And many of these bloody trails were the scenes of hairbreadth escapes and thrilling adventures, the memory of which will linger in rural communities, to be told with ever increasing interest for generations to come."
The same source records a more interesting incident from Jacob Coleman's tenure as sheriff, where he meted out a grizzly punishment:
"...in April, 1804, the seat of justice was removed to St. Clairsville... The first Court of Quarter Sessions, with Judge Pease presiding, was held in the house of William Congleton, of St. Clairsville, on the 16th of April, 1804... Two months thereafter, the Supreme Court met at the new seat of justice... The first record of a murder tried in Belmont County appears in the proceedings of this court with Jonathan Meigs, Samuel Huntington, and William Spriggs on the bench. A grand jury... brought a true bill against Peter Sunderland, for the murder of John Holtz, who, being arraigned before the court, pleaded not guilty. The day following the prisoner was brought into court for trial, and [a] jury was impaneled... Jacob Nagle was appointed to prosecute, and the jury brought in the unique verdict, 'Not guilty of murder, only guilty of feloniously killing the said John Holtz.' Sunderland was sentenced to pay all the costs and be burned upon his left hand. Whereupon the prisoner was placed in charge of Sheriff Jacob Coleman, and the burning was inflicted upon the scene of the murder, on Main street, St. Clairsville, just west of the present Court House, and just opposite the residence and store of Ellis Wilson. "
It's worth remembering that the founders of Euclid were not of the 21st century, but of the 19th, and the 18th. Jacob would have already been preparing his family's move to Euclid by this time. Their friends the Dilles and his nephew William had already scouted the way.
*
"In August, 1803, John Shaw, John Ruple, Thomas Mcllrath, Garrett Thorp and William Coleman, all from Washington County, Pennsylvania, visited this part of Ohio together..."
That summer a traveler heading west on the main road toward Cleaveland could find Joseph and Chloe Canfield Burke's lonely "hotell" on the east line of Euclid Township, and, fully seven miles further on through the forest, the cabin of Timothy and Mary Cary Doan on the east branch of Dugway Brook on the west line. The Burkes had been there five years, the Doans already two. John Moss' improvements on the point and up on the east ridge stood abandoned. In the fall David Dille and his wife Mary Saylor arrived in Euclid and took up residence on their plot in the very center of the township, on the main road west of Euclid Creek, which the Dilles had purchased several years before.
Population roughly two dozen, thus passed Euclid's final mostly, but not quite, empty winter of 1803-04.
"The parties named returned to Pennsylvania, and did not begin work on their land till the next spring."
*
There is an ambiguity in the sources regarding when exactly Asa and Frances Saylor Dille arrived in Euclid Township. Both the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript and Andrew Cozad's "East Cleveland, Account of its history" manuscript make note of Asa's arrival. East Cleveland's says, "In the fall of 1804... Asa Dille with [his]... famil[y] became residents of this Township, coming from Pennsylvania, bringing with them several head of cattle, camping out much of the way." But the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript notes, "In March 1804 Asa Dillie, a brother to David Dillie, moved to Euclid, and put up his Cabin near the South West Corner of the Town..." Furthermore, the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript contains an intriguing note jotted in the margin: “Asa + David Dillie came together in 1803—”
What may be the case is that Asa Dille went ahead of his wife and children in March 1804 to make the first preparations of the homestead, as other early settlers in Euclid later would, only bringing Frances and their children along in the fall. The texts could also be read to say that Asa Dille came with his brother David in the fall of 1803 and stayed through the winter at David and Mary's cabin down on the main road before heading up into the Heights to begin work on his own homestead as the winter weather broke in early 1804. This may also offer an explanation of how Asa Dille was able to begin work on his homestead in March of that year when so many others would not arrive to begin work until April. What does not seem to be disputed is that by the fall Asa and Frances Saylor Dille had taken up residence in Euclid Township, and that they in March 1804 became the founders of Cleveland Heights.
And one month later the settlers started to come.
*
William Coleman was born January 18, 1781, in Mine Brook, New Jersey, just about 20 miles west of New York, and just about 10 miles from the McIlraths' Mendham. He moved with his family to Washington County, Pennsylvania, around age 11 in 1792. It does not appear that he followed his father Leonard and his uncle Jacob across the river into Ohio and Belmont County when they joined the Dilles' new settlement there when William was about 13. His uncle Christopher remained in Washington County and perhaps William stayed with him.
Jamima Craft's parents had already been in Washington County since around 1770, and Jamima, the baby of their family, was born there in 1785. Around 1799 William Coleman and Jamima Craft were married in Washington County, Pennsylvania, William around 18, Jamima about age 15. Their first child, daughter Rebecca, was born there in September 1800, and William, age 22, visited Euclid in the party of the "five young men" in the summer of 1803. Their second child, son John, was born in May 1804. They're recorded to have arrived in Euclid in April 1804, which means Jamima made the journey through the forest to Euclid about 19-years-old and eight months pregnant, and gave birth to John just after their arrival.
The Colemans settled near but not on the Dille lands at Euclid Creek. The earliest detailed map of Euclid Township made in the latter part of Coleman's life shows "W.C." on a 42 acre plot in Tract 14, east of the creek on the south side of what is now Euclid Avenue, just east of Chardon Road. That is adjacent to a larger 93 acre "W. Coleman" plot climbing the Chardon Road hill up into the Heights. Their nearest neighbor, on the west bank of the creek, was David Dille, who had taken up residence in Euclid only the previous autumn. Joseph Burke would have been the next nearest neighbor, on the east line of the township about three miles away.
"Coleman [settled] at Euclid Creek... on the great Road... in April 1804..." and immediately "...commenced work on [his]... location..."
Evidently the Colemans arrived in the classic covered wagon, as "The Waggon [sic] cover was converted into a tent."
"The 'Cabin' logs were hauled together, and his neighbor assisted to roll it up..."
This neighbor would have to have been David Dille.
"...with the help of his wife [Coleman] managed to put on the roof without other assistance."
"A hole was cut for a door, [illegible: when? then?] they moved immediately in, and got out of the rain. The cabin got chinked and muddied up [illegible] to the [illegible: joice? joise? misspelling of joist?] with a door made of Split Stuff and a chamber floor of the same and apart [sic] of an under floor hewed out of Split Stuff. The fire place [sic] occupied all one end of the Cabin. Without either back or Chimney, the Smoke found no difficulty getting out, but the wind be which way it would at all if the [same illegible as above: joist?] was left open."
By June 1804 "...Coleman got 2 1/2 acres cleared + planted..." in corn.
"In the fall of 1804, with a wife, and two children, a yoke of oxen, a cow, and 75 cts in money, [William Coleman] moved into Euclid."
William's uncle, the recent Sherriff of Belmont County, Ohio, Jacob Coleman, Jr., followed his nephew into Euclid, along with his wife, the former Deborah Herron, the following spring.
"Jacob Coleman, an uncle to Wm, a Soldier of the Revolution, who Served in Col. Washington's troop of Horse in the South during the war, moved into Euclid in 1805 [and] Settled on the Ridge East of the creek."
The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows the Coleman holdings atop the Chardon Road hill on the south side of the road. Today this is in the City of Euclid, in the vicinity of East 221st to East 233rd Streets.
And "...they [the Coleman family] made this [Euclid Township] their residence for a long time."
*
The first McIlrath to settle Euclid was the youngest, 27-year-old Sarah, born in Mendham, New Jersey, in 1777. This young woman would leave among the deepest and most lasting marks on Euclid Township of any of the early settlers. By the time of her death in 1851 in what had become East Cleveland, Sarah McIlrath was respected and praised to the point of effusion. "Physically strong, great-hearted, and big-brained, she was a notable nurse and a born leader... She was one of the noblest, bravest, most unselfish souls that ever lived."
Wow.
"Scourged by Sorrow in early youth," Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's 1896 Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve records, "she came to this new country mentally equipped for hardships."
This intriguing statement could be referring to a remarkable incident involving Sarah McIlrath found in the History of Morris County. Among other things it suggests that, in addition to being the first in Euclid, Sarah might have been the first McIlrath to move into Pennsylvania as well. But that is hardly the most interesting part:
"Sarah, one of [Samuel McIlrath's] daughters, married and went with her husband to Pennsylvania. It came to light after her marriage that her husband had murdered a peddler to get money to come and marry her. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hung. She traveled on foot and alone to the governor of the State to solicit his pardon. She failed, came back, remained with him to the last moment, and for three nights slept on his grave to prevent the doctors getting his body."
New Jersey marriage records show Sarah Muckleroth, or Mucklerath, or McIlrath, age 19, marrying 34-year-old Benjamin Baily, or Bayles, Aikman on February 14, 1797, in Mendham. (It is notable, of course, that his is the same as Sarah's mother's maiden name, but the genealogy records are incomplete so it's hard to know how precisely to connect them. Marriage among cousins was not unusual in this period, and even among distant cousins it's not unusual even today, so perhaps some version of this is the case.) Benjamin's death—though with no mention of a hanging for murder—is recorded as having taken place in 1797, also in Mendham, so the events related above look to have occurred in just a short period of time. It appears they married, went west to the frontier of Washington County, that Benjamin's crime came to light, and he was pursued and brought back east for trial and execution, all in a matter of months.
Cadavers being hard to acquire for religious and moral reasons, physicians of the day sometimes stole (or employed others to steal for them) fresh bodies for the study of anatomy and upon which to perform medical experiments, particularly those of executed convicts who were not expected to be much mourned or missed. Sarah obviously feared this, plus cared enough about Benjamin to beg for his life to be spared, to stay with him until his execution, and then to guard his grave until she was satisfied his body would no longer be desirable and thus safe.
Much of the character for which Sarah was later praised is revealed in, "She traveled... on foot... and alone... to the governor of the State..." Bear in mind this was 1797, the 18th century, and Sarah would have just turned 20-years-old. She was clearly quite headstrong and personally courageous. And this would not be the last time she would embark on such an errand.
"She afterward returned to Mendham, married a Mr. Shaw, an Englishman, went with him to Washington County, Pa., and from there to near Cleveland, O."
Euclid's John Shaw is not to be confused with Turhand Kirtland's brother John's son-in-law, Granville, New York's John Bliss Shaw. Little is to be found of this John Shaw's early life save some basic relevant facts recorded in the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript:
"Shaw was from Yorkshire, England, was raised in a Woolen factory, emigrated to New Jersey in 1797 or 8, married a sister of [Thomas] McIlrath, and moved to Pennsylvania, and from there to this place [Euclid] in 1804 with his wife."
It appears John and Sarah McIlrath Shaw lived in Washington County, Pennsylvania, for five or six years. At age 29 John Shaw travelled to Euclid Township in the summer of 1803 in the company of the other "young men" from Washington County. He acquired the southern half of First Draft Lot 3 from the Doans, 80 acres on the west line of the township, its southeast corner just touching the main road, just about where Shaw Avenue meets Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland today.
"In the Spring of 1804... John Shaw with [his]... famil[y] became residents... they came by land from Pennsylvania, Cutting their road through the forest and bringing with them Several head of cattle."
There, "...in April 1804 Shaw... commenced work on [his]... location..."
*
The next McIlrath in Euclid was Sarah's older brother, Samuel and Isabella's second son, Thomas. Nearly 40 in 1803, he was the oldest of the "five young men" of August of that year, and one can quibble as to whether at 40 he still qualified for the title, particularly at that time. Born in Mendham on Valentine's Day 1764, he was a little young for the Revolution and there is no record that he served. He married Elizabeth Cozad in 1785 in New Jersey when he was 21 and she 22. Little is to be found about Elizabeth, save that she was Jacob and Anna Clark Cozad's only daughter, born in Mendham on June 10, 1763. They had only two children, daughter Mary Ann, born in New Jersey around 1785, and son Thomas, Jr., born in Pennsylvania in 1792. The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript records that that was about when Thomas McIlrath went to the frontier: "He was a native of New Jersey, of Scotch descent, and not wealthy at that; he married early and soon after came to Washington Co Penn', which place was at that time (1792) the very far West and known by the name of Redstone. And there he learned to hunt."
Misidentified in the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript as his son-in-law, Benjamin Jones was Thomas McIlrath's nephew, the son of Thomas' older sister, Samuel and Isabella's second daughter, Nancy Agnes, from her first marriage to James Jones, who had died in 1788. "Benjamin Jones was a native of New Jersey, [and] was an industrious, prudent, good man." He was born around 1779 in Mendham, and married Nancy Horton in 1797 in Morris County, New Jersey. Nancy's parents were from Rehoboth, Massachusetts, where Nancy was born on October 15, 1780. Benjamin and Nancy Horton Jones were in Washington County, Pennsylvania, by 1800 when and where their their oldest child, son Joel, was born, and they would have six children together, even naming their youngest, born in 1815, for his uncle, Euclid's John Shaw. Benjamin Jones was 25 when he arrived in Euclid Township in 1804; Nancy was 24.
At age 19, Thomas and Elizabeth Cozad McIlrath's oldest daughter, Mary Ann, married 24-year-old Thomas Thomas in Wyoming, Pennsylvania. Thomas Thomas (yes, indeed) was born in 1780 in Washington County. Little is to be found about him either, but his parents, William and Ramona Ducharme Thomas, were from Virginia, which at the time still asserted a claim on the Washington County area. It's not otherwise recorded when they came, but both William and Ramona Ducharme Thomas are buried in Euclid Township. From the birth dates and locations of their four children it appears that Thomas and Mary Ann McIlrath Thomas were married just before emigrating to Euclid in 1804, and started their family immediately after their arrival, with Mary Ann possibly pregnant on the way.
Looking at the various texts together it appears that the husbands arrived in the spring to prepare the homesteads, and that the wives and children followed in the fall, the well proven strategy.
"[I]n April 1804... [Thomas] McIlrath... commenced work on [his]... location..." "[He] cleared some two or three acres, planted it, and got up a cabin..." and "...in the fall of 1804... [Thomas] McIlrath... brought on [his] famil[y]..."
"...Benjamin Jones, a Nephew of [Thomas] McIlrath, commenced in the same month [April 1804]..." "In the fall of 1804 Benjamin Jones... with [his]... famil[y] became residents... coming from Pennsylvania, bringing with them several head of cattle, camping out much of the way."
"In the Spring of 1804... Thomas Thomas with [his]... famil[y] became residents... they came by land from Pennsylvania, Cutting their road through the forest and bringing with them Several head of cattle." "...[I]n the fall of 1804... Thomas Thomas... brought on [his] famil[y]..."
From the Doans, Thomas McIlrath acquired the entirety of Second Draft Lot 44, a choice piece of Euclid Township on the main road in the western section nearest the established Doan's Corners and featuring the ford at Nine Mile Creek. Centered near the intersection of Euclid Avenue and Belvoir Road today, this natural transportation brake would give rise to the original village of Euclid, later becoming Collamer, later becoming East Cleveland.
Nephew Jones first opted for the Heights, "...on a lot near Asa Dillie in the South West Corner of the Town..." However he soon "changed his first beginning in Euclid for one on the Road." The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "B. Jones" in majority sections of Hundred Acre Lots 381 and 382, just past the original west line of Euclid Township in what was originally Cleaveland Township but which by then had become East Cleveland Township, today in the neighborhood of Hayden Avenue in East Cleveland.
Son-in-law Thomas Thomas' initial location was not recorded. Neither did he leave a record in the later maps of the township, for sad reasons which shall be elucidated.
"...in the fall of 1804, [Thomas] McIlrath and his Son in Laws [sic] Thomas Thomas [and] Benj' Jones... all brought on their families, making in all nine families to go through the winter of 1804 + 5."
*
For an otherwise "ordinary" person, a remarkable lot is recorded about William Coleman, most of it to be found in the priceless anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript, preserved in the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. (Indeed, Crisfield Johnson asserts that Coleman is the anonymous circa 1850 manuscript's author, or at least dictated it for a scribe.) Most of the information concerns his and his family's first year in Euclid Township, William Coleman's hard work and inventiveness, and how very close the family came in their first winter in Euclid to starving to death.
"The Stock of provisions for the [William Coleman] family + [their lives]tock consisted of about 15 bushels of corn, all that was grown on the 2 1/2 acres planted in June, and five back loads of corn stalks, with a Bshl of Salt, obtained by trading a Watch. All else had to be got as best it might. With this scanty supply this family went through the Winter of 1804 + 5.
"The latter part of Nov' and the first 3 weeks of Dec' [1804] [illegible: was right dry?], [with] winter weather between Christmas and new years [sic]. Then came a thaw of a few days, and then snug winter until the middle of Feb' [1805], during which time no grinding could be had, at either place [i.e. either of the closest existing grist mills], [not at the o]ne built and owned by David Abbott, in 1803, on the Chagrin River, [nor at] the other built by Wheeler W. Williams on the Falls of Mill Creek in Newburgh in 1800 and now owned by Rodolphus Edwards."
Here again on the periphery of the story of Euclid is Rodolphus Edwards, who had come to the Western Reserve with John Moss and Amariah Beard in the 1798 Kirtland/Law party. First moving up from the Flats to the plateau which now supports Public Square, he too had fled the malaria of Cleaveland Village for the more healthful Heights in Newburgh, where he bought out Wheeler Williams' mill. Mill Creek still feeds the Cuyahoga River, and its falls remain as one of the beauty spots of the Garfield Park Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. Like most of Newburgh Township, this area has been swallowed by the City of Cleveland and the mill in question was in what is now the Slavic Village neighborhood, near where Euclid's Joseph Burke's brother Sylvanus would settle in the coming year of 1805.
"During this six weeks [Dec. 1804 - Feb. 1805] no bread was eaten in that [Coleman] family, only what was made from corn pounded in a mortar."
Evidently William Coleman tried to supplement his family's rations with hunting what meat could be found in Euclid's forest. But his absence one day proved unlucky.
"In the latter part of February [1805] while [William Coleman] was gone a-cooning, she [wife Jamima] had the misfortune to scald her foot badly, and by that means [was] laid up for several weeks, during which time the corn became exhausted."
One wonders where David Dille was during this time. He had (presumably) helped Coleman earlier and would (definitely) again later, but during this period he is absent from the record. Perhaps he and his own family were short of food as well.
"It was known that Judge Huntington's at Newburgh Mill had corn to sell."
Judge Huntington was the richest guy in town. Samuel Huntington, Jr. is a fascinating character in the early history of Cleveland, indeed the State of Ohio. He was the same Judge Samuel Huntington who co-presided over the Jacob Nagle murder case in Belmont County in which William's uncle, Jacob Coleman, carried out the sentence of burning William Sunderland's hand while serving as sheriff. The nephew of a member of the Continental Congress who was later Governor of Connecticut, Huntington was a Yale graduate with a thriving law practice who decided to abandon the civilization of the East for the Northwest frontier in 1801 when his uncle died, probably to become, as he indeed did, a big fish in a much smaller pond. His outpost in Newburgh was a genteel one, and ultimately rather short-lived, as he would soon help write the 1803 Ohio Constitution, then be appointed as one of the original members of the Ohio Supreme Court, hence the title of Judge in 1805. By 1808 he'd be the third Governor of the State of Ohio. So there was food at the Huntingtons' in Newburgh, about ten miles away.
"[William Coleman] started out one morning without eating, as there was nothing of bread kind in the cabin but a small bit of Johnny Cake, which must be left for the Children, and went to Newburgh to see if he could obtain some corn."
"Mrs. [Hannah] Huntington had corn to Sell for fifty cts per Bush. [Coleman] made her acquainted with his situation and that he was destitute of money. She inquired of him, Cant [sic] you make Baskets? He answered yes! She then asked what would be the price? He answered the old 'Indians' [sic] price, the fill of the basket of shelled corn. She immediately made out a Bill of Numbers + Size she needed, and, closing the contract, [Coleman] started for home."
What was the road from Newburgh to Euclid is now roughly East 93rd Street/Woodhill Road and East 105th Street to Euclid Avenue, and Coleman's route home would have passed him right through Doan's Corners. Two miles northeast further up the main road from there was Timothy and Mary Cary Doan's homestead just inside the west line of Euclid Township, and that still another three miles or so from Coleman's own home at Euclid Creek. Without money Coleman must have resolved to push on for home past the food and rest there were to be had at Doan's Corners, but upon reaching the border of Euclid found himself unable to make it through the final stretch.
"On arriving at Capt. Doanes [sic] he asked Mrs. Doane for some breakfast. [note: the writer is suggesting he still had not yet eaten all that day.] She said the supper was most [sic] ready and invited him to Stay, which he did, and got breakfast at their supper hour."
Timothy Doan was 45-years-old in the winter of 1805, and may have named his own son, Seth, 19, for his brother, Seth's uncle, who died shortly after release from the infamous British prison ship Jersey. Here was William Coleman, just a couple years older than his own son, and probably himself named for his own uncle who'd also been killed by the Jersey. It's easy to imagine Timothy Doan possessing a paternal feeling toward William Coleman, and one of shared tragedy.
"Capt. Doane lent him 30 sacks of corn meal which he carried home to live on while he made the baskets."
"The next morning [Coleman] looked up some timber and commenced to learn the trade of Basket Making, having never made a basket nor seen one made. It took several days before one was made that would pass muster, but by diligent application the difficulty was at last Surmounted and a good looking Basket was made, and about three weeks from the time the compact was made the trade was learned + the contract filled." (March 1805)
"He then got a Boy to stay with his family [and] took his baskets and some eighty [empty] sacks and called on Mrs. Huntington."
That last is an interesting passage. Other readings are possible, but here could be the sadly familiar condescending racist term for an African American male to be found in this mid-19th century source, when neither the writer writing it nor the readers reading would have found it offensive or out of place. The only person of African descent in Euclid for miles in 1805 would have been "Um," and at this point in the story Coleman had just come from Timothy Doan's household to which "Um" was attached. In 1805, if educated guesses about his birthdate are correct, "Um" could have been around 15-years-old, and also literally a boy. If Jamima Coleman had hurt her foot in late February, in March with an infant and a little girl to care for, she surely could have used some help. So perhaps in early 1805 Coleman brought "Um" back with him to his homestead on Euclid Creek from Timothy Doan's on his journey back from Newburgh.
"...[Coleman] took his baskets... and [returned to Newburgh and] called on Mrs. Huntington. She was well pleased with them and they were all filled, and the amount was 10 1/2 Bush."
So Coleman had food for his family, but it still could not be eaten. It yet had to be ground into edible flour.
"[Coleman, still in Newburgh] then went to the Mill [then owned by Rodolphus Edwards] and found it locked up and the old dress altered in order to receive a better one. Deacon Burk from Hudson had been several days at work on them, he being an old Miller it was expected that the mill would do better than ever, which it [eventually] did, but [at that time] it was still but a poor excuse for a mill. Coleman told Edwards there was but one way to get along and that was for Edwards to board him + [his] oxen and he [illegible: turn?] in and help dress the mill, to which Edwards assented. Coleman had never struck a pick on mill stone [sic] in his life, but having the use of the tools he had confidence in himself and thought he could imitate the pattern set by the Deacon. In this he was successful. He soon satisfied the Deacon that he could cut a good furrow in a mill stone [sic]. Of course Edwards was satisfied. After some 2 or 3 days pecking it was put down all right. His [Coleman's] grist ground [it was] taken home, sifted, and put up in [illegible] [illegible] for use."
(A late-19th century printed version of this anecdote renders the miller's name as "Burke," but in the original manuscript there clearly is no letter E at the end. A Burk Brook flows through the Washington Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks near the mill site today, a further clue that the name speeled without the E is the correct version. There's no evidence to be found to link Deacon Burk the old miller from Hudson to Euclid Township's Burke. Joseph and Sylvanus' other brothers all died in New York and Nova Scotia. Nor is the Hudson Historical Society able to shed any further light on the identity of the old miller.)
"This brought [Coleman] into April [1805]. Time for every body [sic] to go to Rocky River to fish. The inhabitants of Hudson, Aurora and other Towns were in the habit of going every Spring for a number of years to supply themselves with fish. Coleman had dug out a large White wood tree and formed it into a boat for the purpose of fishing. He got another man to go with him [note: was this his neighbor David Dille?] and went to Rocky River and was gone about a week, [with the two men] returning with two Bshs of fish each. They [fish] were So Plenty [sic] on the rapids of that stream [the Rocky River] that an Expert man could easily Spear a Bshl a night. They got the boat into the mouth of the [Euclid] Creek and got up to the house about sundown."
If the reading of this passage is correct, it also indicates that Euclid Creek was navigable, at least in the spring and by a shallow boat, all the way up to what is now Euclid Avenue, some two miles inland from the lake.
A later note on this incident goes on to state: "[He] Saved his fish in Brine, being the first that was ever saved in that way... It was the general opinion that Lake Fish could not be saved in Brine at all, which [William Coleman] proved to be incorrect." One presumes the brine was made from either Lake Erie or Euclid Creek water mixed with the salt for which he had traded his watch.
Then comes one of the most memorable accounts from early Euclid. Just as Coleman arrived home from the Rocky River fishing expedition...
"His wife told him that the oxen came up [i.e. returned to near the cabin from grazing in the forest] about noon, and that the Bell on the cow had been in hearing nearly all day. He never sat down but went immediately in search of his cow. [He had been e]xpecting her to have a calf, which proved to be the case, however [when he found the cow and her newborn calf] the calf was dead and something had eaten out all of its innards, but [the scavenger had] not torn the [dead calf's] skin much. Thinking the skin might be worth something, and not having time to take it off in the woods, he took the calf on his back and started for home. The cow very reddily [sic] followed. The thought occurred to him [that] if the skin was stuffed and sightly prepared it might bring the cow up, [a task which would take but] a short time which would pay for the trouble of doing it. He accordingly stuffed the skin with leaves, [and] stuck sticks on for legs, and made quite a calf out of it, which was set out the next morning to [attract] the cow. She, believing it to be a real calf, would lick it, and make the same ado as though it had been alive, and it brought her up all Summer [1805], during which she gave 24 qts of Milk a day."
"[Coleman] made some sugar, [and] cut some Bee hives and [thus] had some honey."
"So he had a Plenty of Corn Bread, Milk, Butter, Sugar, Honey + Fish, so that they lived first rate for a new Country and [there was] no [further] danger of his family Starving that year."
*
The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript begins the story of the Shaws in Euclid:
"There is one little incident of these early times going to show the value of small articles, to new beginnings, in a new Country that aught [sic] not to be past [sic] unnoticed. During the Winter of 1804 + 5 Shaw broke his Axe. It was his only dependance [sic]. He had no meat but Coon, and his cow had no hay but Browse, and neither could be obtained without an Axe."
"About this time Judge Kingsbury of Newburgh had a Box of Axes left with him for sale..."
As noted in an earlier chapter, James Kingsbury was one of the very first American settlers of the entire Western Reserve. Working with Moses Cleaveland he established a toehold settlement for the Connecticut Land Company right on the eastern line of the Reserve at Conneaut in the summer of the first survey expedition in 1796. The next year he and his family relocated to the central settlement at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, but, like so many others, fled Cleaveland's malaria for the high ground to the south, thus founding the Township of Newburgh. For many of the first settlers of both Cleaveland and Euclid, Newburgh in the very first years of the Western Reserve was more or less the nearest civilization. Despite much initial hardship the Kingsburys prospered there, and in 1800 Arthur St. Clair—the same incompetent military commander humiliated by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket on the Wabash in 1791, still Governor of the Northwest Territory—appointed James Kingsbury a common pleas judge. Young Seth Doan had sought his help in 1798. Seven years later here was John Shaw.
"Shaw went to Kingsbury in order to purchase one and having neither money or skins Kingsbury refused to let him take one on a Short Credit untill [sic] he could catch the Skins, which he could not do without an Axe. In this dilemma Shaw shed tears. He turned for home not knowing what to do."
"However he soon [later] met Kingsbury [again, but this time] with a backload of Skins for barter for what he needed with him. Arrangements were made and the much needed Axe was obtained, which article at this time and under the circumstances he was placed was considered of more intrinsic value than a yoke of Oxen was in after times."
"...although not accustomed to the use of the axe, and a dense forest, he [Shaw] by diligence, perseverance, ultimately succeeded in clearing his land and getting into easy circumstances."
*
Jamima Craft Coleman's older sister, Elizabeth, arrived to join her in Euclid in 1805, along with her husband, John Ruple, the fourth of the "five young men" of August 1803, and the last who chose immediately to settle in Euclid. John Robinson Ruple was born on January 4, 1768, in Sussex County, New Jersey, adjacent north of Morris County and the McIlraths. The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript records that, "he was a native of N Jersey of German parentage, emigrated to Western Pennsylvania in 1794, where he married." At age 25 John Ruple married 22-year-old Elizabeth Craft, his brother's wife Rebecca's twin, born May 1, 1771, in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Very little is to be found about Elizabeth, or their life in Washington County, but arriving there in 1794 would have placed it near the climax of the Whiskey Rebellion. Perhaps they arrived in the middle of it; or perhaps they went after it ended. They stayed in Washington County about ten years. John was 35 when he became one of the "five young men" in 1803 (another relatively old "young man") and he and Elizabeth had already had five children together in western Pennsylvania before they decided to emigrate, the oldest nine, the youngest a newborn. In Euclid they would have at least six more, including a son they named for Cleaveland Village's boy savior then grown to manhood, Seth Doan.
"...[John] Ruple [selected a lot] a little East of Nine Mile Creek... on the great Road." The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows John Ruple (still alive!) on the entirety of First Draft Lot 10, an excellent section of 360 acres perfectly bisected by the main road, located directly between David and Mary Saylor Dille's and Thomas and Elizabeth Cozad McIlrath's homesteads, sprawling across the lake plain and up onto the escarpment. This is centered around the current location of London Road in Collinwood, and Ruple Road meets St. Clair Avenue in Collinwood in what would have been the northwest corner of his lot. John and Elizabeth Craft Ruple were the founders of Collinwood.
The Ruples also take credit for the naming of Nine Mile Creek. The family had come from the banks of Ten Mile Creek—at other times known as Craft's Creek, for Jamima, Elizabeth and Rebecca Craft's family—in Pennsylvania. That run will be found on a map today flowing through the south of Washington County down the Allegheny Plateau on its way to the Monongahela. Arriving in Euclid Township the Ruples, it is said, found the creek there just a little inferior to the one they'd left back in Pennsylvania, and knocked a mile off the name they gave it to reflect as much. It may also be that, via the main road that's now Euclid Avenue, one comes to the creek just about nine miles from Public Square.
John's younger brother, Samuel, and his wife, Elizabeth's twin, Rebecca, arrived in Euclid the next year. Very little is to be found about the couple. Samuel was born February 14, 1771, in Philadelphia. There is no record of precisely when he went west, nor of exactly when he married Rebecca Craft, born May 1, 1771, in Washington County. They had a son, William, in 1799—relatively late for the time to become first time parents, both around age 28—then another child, daughter Polly Sally, in 1805, just before coming to Euclid.
The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript relates, "In 1806 Samuel Ruple... moved into Euclid" and "Samuel Ruple settled on the Road at Nine Mile Creek..." Crisfield Johnson's 1879 History of Cuyahoga County notes, "Samuel Ruple settled at Nine Mile creek, in the eastern part of the present village of Collamer, in 1806..." He does not appear on the 1852 Blackmore map, but the description from Johnson could put them on the western part of his, Samuel's, brother's First Draft Lot 10, somewhere in the vicinity of where the East Cleveland Public Library stands today.
*
And yet more McIlraths came.
David Eddy was Thomas McIlrath's step-nephew, the son of his sister Nancy Agnes' husband, Caleb Eddy, from Caleb's first marriage.
For reasons which shall be seen, a good deal is to be found about the family in the 1879 History of Lorain County, Ohio.
"David Eddy, born in New Jersey, came to Ohio while yet a single man, in the year 1804 or 1805. He made a location in Euclid, Cuyahoga County, and erected a cabin there."
Yet the very same History of Lorain County also says:
"David Eddy came from Pennsylvania about 1806, and erected a log cabin... in Euclid township, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio."
So: 1804, 1805, or 1806, he arrived in Euclid. Call it around 1805.
David was born February 1, 1783, in Morristown, New Jersey. He was about 22-years-old when he arrived in Euclid Township.
His father, "...Caleb Eddy was born in the year 1754, in Morristown, Morris Co., N. J. He married a Miss Brown. Their children were Timothy, born March 4, 1781 ; David, born Feb. 1, 1783; [and] Elizabeth, born Dec. 9, 1784..."
Caleb married Esther Brown of Woodbridge, Connecticut, in Philadelphia on April 24, 1780, and they lived several years in the McIlraths' Morris County, New Jersey, where their three children were born. Sadly, Esther died in 1786, aged just 30.
Nancy Agnes was born to Samuel and Isabella McIlrath in Mendham in 1761. She married James Jones, perhaps around 1780 and probably in New Jersey, when and where their son, Benjamin Jones, the nephew Thomas McIlrath would bring with him to Euclid in 1804, was born in 1781, and a daughter, Eunice, who was born in 1785 in Morristown, Morris County. There is little other information to be found about James Jones, save that he died in 1788, when Nancy Agnes was 27, not long after the death of Caleb's wife Esther.
"Caleb Eddy married for his second wife a Widow Jones, and had by her four sons and two daughters: Esther, born Aug. 9, 1789; Caleb, Jr., born Sept. 25, 1791; Sarah, born Sept. 4, 1793; Phebe, born Dec. 12, 1797; Samuel, born Nov. 24, 1799... .; Isabel, born Sept. 21, 1804."
"About the year 1790, Caleb Eddy moved into Washington Co., Pa., where his last five children were born."
Read that to mean that Esther was born in New Jersey, with the rest born in Washington County, Pennsylvania. It's moving to note that the first child born of their marriage Caleb and Nancy Agnes McIlrath Jones Eddy named for Caleb's late wife, Esther, and that Nancy Agnes' last two children they named for her parents. It looks as though they were in Washington County about 15 years, and through the heart of the Whiskey Rebellion.
The Dilles were moving into Ohio by 1794 and buying land in Euclid perhaps as early as 1797. Nancy Agnes' brother, Thomas, and her sister Sarah's husband, John Shaw, checked out land there in August 1803. Around 1805, 22-year old David Eddy arrived in Euclid and built a cabin.
All sources, text and map, are silent on exactly where the Eddy cabin was made, but the location of Eddy Road at Euclid Avenue in the East 130s near the present site of St. Philomena Church in East Cleveland is likely a clue. And the extension of Eddy Road is, of course, one of the principal roads of Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood with its own prominent exit on Interstate 90.
"The following year his [David Eddy's] father and mother, with a son named Timothy, came on, and took up their abode in the primitive habitation already prepared by David."
Nancy Agnes would have been about 44 and Caleb age 51 when they arrived in Euclid Township. With them came Timothy Eddy, 24, Caleb's son from his first marriage to Esther Brown. Timothy arrived in Euclid a bachelor and in 1806, shortly after arriving, he there married 21-year-old Eunice Jones, Nancy Agnes' daughter from her first marriage to James Jones, and Euclid's Benjamin Jones' younger sister (who at some point otherwise unrecorded thus evidently immigrated to Euclid as well). Technically this made Timothy Eddy and Eunice Jones step-siblings, but each had two unique parents and so they were in no way blood relations.
Two versions of the same story about Eunice Jones Eddy are recorded in two of the best sources on early Euclid Township.
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve preserves this tale:
"The story is told of Mrs. Timothy Eddy that she started to drive home the cows one evening. The way led deep into the forest, and when she found them by the tinkle of their bells, they refused to move, in spite of coaxing and switching. As the shadows deepened, she realized that it was too late to find her way back alone. So she laid down upon the fragrant moss and slept. Meanwhile her husband and friends in alarm were searching for her, and the conch shell which Timothy Doane kept for just such occasions... was sounded again and again. It could be heard for miles, but it did not waken Mrs. Eddy. Not till morning did she return bringing the cows behind her."
An earlier version comes from Crisfield Johnson's History of Cuyahoga County:
"Late one afternoon in autumn Mrs. Timothy Eddy went to look for her husband's cows. They had strayed a long distance, but at length she heard a bell, and, guided by that, made her way to where they were. But when she undertook to drive them home, she found she did not know the way. After various efforts night came on, and she was still as much at a loss as ever. The quadrupeds discovered none of the intelligence in path-finding which is sometimes attributed to them, but when their mistress stopped driving them, quietly lay down for a night's rest. Satisfied that she could not find her way home, Mrs. Eddy lay down in a warm place, between two of the animals, and in this living boudoir she remained until morning. Meanwhile, her husband had returned from his labors at night fall, and, finding his wife absent, had roused the neighbors to search for her. All night long the few settlers in that part of the township went shouting to and fro through the woods, their lighted torches of bark flinging fantastic shadows among the trees, but they did not approach her sleeping place. In the morning she made her way home to her frightened friends."
Finally, of Caleb we are told:
"Caleb Eddy followed his trade, that of a blacksmith, most of his life, giving little attention to farming."
And that, "Caleb Eddy, the father, spent the remainder of his days there [in Euclid]..."
Caleb and Nancy McIlrath Eddy's daughter, Phoebe, would marry John More in Euclid in 1814 at age 17, the ceremony performed by Justice of the Peace Samuel Dodge. More arrived in 1808.
And another daughter of James Jones and Nancy Agnes McIlrath, Agnes Jones, and her husband, Peter McVay, also came to Euclid in 1808. Neither left much of a record by which to know them. Peter was born around 1775 in New Jersey, and the Cozad manuscript history of East Cleveland states, " In 1808 Peter McVay with his family became a resident of this township was from Pennsylvania," which would have made him around 33-years-old when he arrived and placed him within the established settlement pattern of the McIlrath clan from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to Euclid Township. Agnes was the little sister of Benjamin Jones, born in 1782, which would have made her around 26 at her arrival. She and husband Peter had several children together in Euclid, including two who died young. It's recorded that Peter died around 1829 in Euclid, though his resting place is not to be found. Agnes outlived him 30 years. The year after his death she is found living in Cleveland, and in 1834 she remarried, to a Thaddeus Wright, and together they went to Hillsdale, in south central Michigan where she died in 1859.
*
Thomas Thomas' sister, Sarah Ann, 27, and her husband, David Hendershot, 31, came to Euclid in 1805. Sarah Ann was born in 1778 in Green Township, Forest County, Pennsylvania, in the northwest part of the state. David was born in Hampton, New Jersey, just about 25 miles west of the McIlraths' Mendham, to Jacob and Emily "Effie" Paugh Hendershot of Morris County, in 1774. David went west while still rather young and he and Sarah Ann married in 1793 when he was 19 and she 15. They lived in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh, just about 10 miles south of the Dilles' and the Ruples' Ten Mile, and about 30 from Thomas McIlrath's Redstone, for twelve years. They had six children together in Pennsylvania before emigrating to Ohio. According to Andrew Cozad's "East Cleveland, Account of its history" manuscript, "In 1805 David Hendershot became a resident of this Township; he with his family came from Pennsylvania." In Euclid they had at least seven more children, ending with twin boys born just weeks after the Battle of Lake Erie whom they named for the American naval commanders on the Great Lakes, Chauncey and Oliver Hazard. (More on both the battle and the sailing men shortly.) Where precisely in Euclid David and Sarah Ann Thomas Hendershot settled is not recorded, but as they appear in Andrew Cozad's "East Cleveland, Account of its history" manuscript but not the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript, coupled with the fact that the majority of the earliest settlers of Euclid Township settled in the west end, it may be reasonable to conclude that the Hendershots settled toward the west end of the township as well.
*
Thomas McIlrath's nephew, Jacob Cozad, age 19, and Jacob's wife, Rosanna Brownlee, also 19, arrived in Euclid Township around 1805. Jacob was born in Mendham, New Jersey, Rosanna in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Thomas Hamilton Brownlee, was a Scottish immigrant to New Jersey just like Samuel McIlrath and Isabella's parents. They had at least 12 children together, beginning with daughter Elizabeth, born in 1807, but from the dates and places of their remaining children's births it appears they left Euclid and returned to Washington County, Pennsylvania, coincident with the onset of the War of 1812. Jacob would ultimately push further west, and he may have abandoned Rosanna. He married a second time, to Emeline Swank in Warren, Indiana, in 1840 before dying in West Lebanon, Indiana, in 1850. Rosanna, however, remained in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and did not die until 1865.
Jacob's parents, Samuel and Jane McIlrath Cozad, followed their son into Euclid in 1807, "bringing several head of cattle and sheep." Samuel was 51, Jane was 41. Two of Samuel's sisters, Abigail and Elizabeth, were married to Jane's brothers: Elizabeth Cozad to Thomas McIlrath of the "five young men" of August 1803, and Abigail Cozad to Thomas' older brother, Andrew.
Andrew and Abigail Cozad McIlrath arrived in Euclid that same year, 1807. Andrew was Samuel and Isabella McIlrath's second child and their oldest son. He was born September 29, 1758, in Mendham. In October 1775, at age 17, he signed up for Revolutionary War service, and for the next three years served as a private in several smaller battles in northern New Jersey, as well as the big one at Monmouth. He married Abigail Cozad in Mendham on January 9, 1781, when he was 23 and she three days past her twentieth birthday. Abigail was one of the youngest of Samuel and Anna Clark Cozad's children, born in Mendham on January 6, 1761. She and Andrew would have nine children together, and from their birth dates and locations it appears that the family never left New Jersey until they made the big move to Euclid when Abigail was 46 and Andrew nearly 50.
With them to Euclid came three of their daughters—Martha Anne, Lydia, and Caroline Abigail—along with each of their husbands, as the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript, slighting the women, records: "In 1807 Andrew McIlrath (a Brother to Thomas) and his three Sons in Law [sic] Abraham Mattox, David Bunnell, Abraham L. Norris Came in. "
Martha Anne McIlrath Bunnell was 30 when she and her husband, David Edwin Bunnell, or Bonnell, age 28, came west to Euclid in 1807. She was born October 17, 1777, in Morristown, New Jersey, and he in Springfield, New Jersey, in 1779. As was earlier noted, the Bunnells, along with the McIlraths and Cozads, were among the original settlers of Morris County, New Jersey. Martha Anne and David married there in 1799 and would have twelve children together. Available records are spotty, but it also looks as if they too never left New Jersey before making the big move to Euclid.
Lydia McIlrath was born in 1784, very likely in Mendham. There is very little to be found about her or her husband, Abraham Mattox. They married on March 12, 1801, in Morris County, New Jersey, when she was 17 and Abraham, born in New Jersey sometime between 1775 and 1780, in his late twenties. Lydia was 23 when they came to Euclid in 1807, and Abraham would have been around 30. They would have at least six children together.
Likewise very little either is to be found on Caroline Abigail McIlrath or Abraham Ludlow Norris. He was born May 8, 1778 somewhere in Morris County, and she on October 12, 1785 in Mendham. They were married in Morris County, probably sometime around 1802. Caroline Abigail would have been 22 when she arrived in Euclid in 1807, Abraham Ludlow 29. They would have seven children together.
Crisfield Johnson records, "Andrew McIlrath settled near his brother," and also, "Andrew McIlrath and his three sons-in-law—Abraham Mattox, David Burnett [sic] and Abraham L. Norris—settled in 1807 near the line between the present [1879] townships of Euclid and East Cleveland." As has been noted, Thomas McIlrath had acquired all of Second Draft Lot 44 from the Doans, today the heart of the City of East Cleveland. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that all four of these families settled in spots on Lot 44. In addition to noting that Andrew settled near his brother, Johnson also adds, "Norris and his wife Abigail McIlrath Norris settled on the ridge above where the main road crossed Nine Mile Creek," as well as that, "Bunnell opened a tavern on the main road just southwest of Nine Mile Creek." All of these descriptions most likely refer to spots on Lot 44. The site on the ridge where the Norrises settled would be the approximate location today of NELA Park.
*
Euclid's patriarch, Samuel McIlrath, died at the age of 85 on August 9, 1804, in the family's hometown of Mendham, New Jersey. He is buried there today in the Hilltop Presbyterian Cemetery on Hilltop Road in Mendham.
He left what land he possessed to oldest son Andrew and third son Alexander. He may have skipped over second son Thomas as Thomas had already left New Jersey for the West earlier that year. Alexander never left New Jersey and perhaps when Andrew went to Euclid a few years later an arrangement was made to turn the remainder of the family estate over to him. Isabella received the household goods. Most of the other children received sums of money, some larger and some smaller.
Samuel's will:
"Wife Isabella, moveable estate. Son Andrew, 168 acres off south-easterly part of my plantation. Son Alexander, remainder of home plantation (148 acres) next to James Johnston's land. Son Thomas, £250... Daughter Agnes (wife of Caleb Edy) [sic] £5. Daughter Jane (wife of Samuel Cozad, Jr.) hath received her portion. Daughters Elizabeth, Isabella [Woodruff] and Sarah [Shaw] each £30. Executors—sons, Andrew and Alexander. Witnesses—Lebbens Dod, David Thompson and Thomas Horman. Proved August 13, 1804."
A McIlrath family website records the following:
"Samuel McIlrath was born in Aberdeen Scotland in 1718. He moved to America at the age of 24 and settled in Mendham, Morris County, New Jersey. He married Isabella Aikman in 1755. They had 9 children. When all children were grown, most married around 1804-06, they all moved west to Ohio, settling on the east side of Cleveland, OH. Samuel had to return to New Jersey on business, and while there he passed away and was buried in Mendham, NJ [around 1808]. His wife remained in Ohio."
This version of events does not accord with other known facts, nor does it ring true. Besides being inconsistent with his immigration to America as an infant, as well as the date of his death, there is no mention of Samuel's arrival in any of the Euclid sources. Then consider that Samuel would have been about 86-years-old to travel to Euclid in 1804, then almost 90 to pop back to Jersey on a business errand. It strains credulity. It's much more likely that he never left New Jersey.
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham offers this much:
"The sisters, daughters, and wives of the McIlrath brothers were prominent among the early families [of Euclid Township]... and special mention should be made of the aged mother, who came in 1806, at the age of eighty."
It seems most likely that following Samuel's death Isabella and her children near and far spent the next year putting the family's affairs in order, then Isabella went west to be cared for by the preponderance of her children who had already emigrated to Euclid in the recent previous years.
The arrival of the woman who would assume the mantle of the township's oldest settler, that woman being the matriarch of the early township's pre-eminent clan, the mother and grandmother of most of its first inhabitants, must have been a significant event, and she must have occupied an honored place. Isabella Aikman McIlrath would spend the final few years of her life among her progeny in Euclid.
*
The settlers who began arriving in Euclid Township in the spring of 1804 found not exactly a virgin wilderness. There had already been the Canandaigua Company's outpost on the point by 1796, Samuel Spafford and Lot Sanford's "settling duties" in 1797, the work of Moss and Beard in 1798, plus Burke's "hotell" on the east line begun that same year, Timothy Doan on the west line in 1801, and David and Asa Dille in the middle and on the western Heights in 1803. Nevertheless, in 1804 Euclid remained a place still mostly covered by an ancient forest.
"Two miles South of the Lake is a Ridge, in some places 180 feet above the level of the Lake, which has the appearance of once being the Bank of the same... about 2 miles South of that is a second Ridge, of much less elevation... With the Exception of the two Ridges, the face of the country is table land, and in 1800 [it] was covered with the tallest, straightest, largest, the most majestic growth of all the varieties of timber known in northern Ohio. This immense forest [was] the growth of at least five hundred years..."
"...the forest of gigantic trees of which the old settlers speak with great admiration was well supplied with such game as deer and bears, while an occasional panther gave an additional flavor of danger to the sports of the chase. Coon-hunting occupied a good deal of time, as it not only provided food when larger game was not attainable, but because coon-skins could be traded at some price to the primitive merchants of Cleveland and Newburg [sic] for articles of indispensable necessity."
"Homes were miles apart. Roads were at best but forest paths or Indian trails. Wolves and wild cats, deer, and bears were neighbors, and rattlesnakes made themselves at home on the clearing or at the door of the settler."
Indeed Crisfield Johnson noted that "...the particular pet of Euclid seems to have been the rattlesnake." Amzi Atwater described the snakes that he and his companions found in the initial survey of the Western Reserve in 1796:
"Rattlesnakes are the most frequent [animal found in the Western Reserve] of the reptile kind. They are of two kinds, one are [sic] much larger than the other. The largest kind are generally of a yellow colour [sic]. The smaller kind are not often more than 2 ft in length. They are very thick about 1/3 of the way from the head toward the tail, but they gradually [narrow] towards the head and tail. The neck and tail are very slim. Where we found one we were always certain of finding another if we took pains to look it [sic], but sometimes we did not care to stay very long to look for them. One of these snakes are [sic] commonly black, and the other a dark brown, checked with grey. The black one is commonly the largest. They never seem to have any inclination to bite, unless they were first provoked."
Crisfield Johnson again: "All the old settlers [commented] on the great numbers of these reptiles to be found in early times in the ravines of the main ridge and among the rocks farther back."
One oft-repeated story from the early township tells of John Ruple killing 38 rattlesnakes. Another speaks of David Dille's adult son Luther—who probably came to Euclid with his father and young step-mother in 1803 or shortly after—killing 43. Even without scoring a bite on their attackers the snakes spit venom, which created a poisonous mist around their dens so thick that it sickened the men.
Another tale of early Euclid, again from Crisfield Johnson:
"Mr. [Abraham] Norris' family were two miles from their nearest neighbor, David Hendershot. Like most of the pioneers, they had only a 'puncheon' (or split-log) floor for their cabin, and during the first summer a coverlid [sic] did duty instead of a door. The next year Mr. Norris had a good sized clearing chopped over, and, according to pioneer custom, invited his neighbors (some of whom lived five or six miles away) to a 'logging-bee.' After a while they got several log-heaps ready for firing, and Mrs. [Abigail McIlrath] Norris, who was out watching the operations, ran into the house to get a shovelful of coals. The fire was nearly out, and on the warm hearth lay a griddle which had been used for baking cakes. The first thing Mrs. Norris saw, on entering the house, was an enormous yellow rattlesnake comfortably curled up on the griddle. She screamed and fainted. Her husband [Abraham Norris] ran in, and, having no weapon with which to dispatch the enemy, called for his father-in-law, Mr. [Andrew] Mcllrath, who came with his ox-goad, and soon slew it. The reptile had no less than twenty-four rattles. These pests were extremely common in both East Cleveland and Euclid, finding ample shelter among the rocks which abounded in the numerous ravines that intersected the ridge. Every man when he went out took a stick, as a matter of course, to kill rattlesnakes."
Among the other animals most vexatious to the early settlers was a species of large, black panther. In the 17th century the French had dubbed the Native Erie La Nation du Chat, in English the Cat Nation, "because of the prodigious number of Wildcats in their country... two or three times as large as... domestic Cats, but of a handsome and valuable fur." A highly embellished account featuring John Ruple (derived from just a single line in the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript: "He killed the first Panther ever killed in the Town by a White man, and a large one; he measured 9 feet from the end of his nose to the tip of his Tail") is found in Harvey Rice's 1883 Pioneers of the Western Reserve:
"In 1805 John Ruple of Euclid shot the first panther killed in the township. The animal was large and ferocious, and had beset Ruple's path and was watching his approach, and evidently anticipating a feast. Ruple happened to espy the brute just in time to give him the contents of his rifle, when the enraged recipient sprang at Ruple, and, in attempting to seize him, was seized by his dog, and, after a brief struggle, fell dead from the effect of the wound he had received. Whether the dog or his master killed the panther was a question which seemed to puzzle the dog. Both assumed an air of triumph, while the panther maintained a 'dead silence.' But it was Ruple who laid out the brute and took his funeral measure, and found that he measured nine feet from tip to tip."
The Panthers are the apt mascot of the Euclid City Schools today.
Other dangerous predators now extinct also lived in Euclid when the first Americans arrived. One early settler remembered, "One night on my way home from looking for clay I was attacked by wolves. When they came near the horse I would strike at them with [a] clay auger."
There were also black bears, a danger both to the humans and their livestock:
"Mr. [Abraham] Norris was obliged to go to Newburg [sic] to work, leaving his wife [Abigail McIlrath Norris] alone in the cabin. There was a half grown shote [baby pig] in a rail pen covered with bark near the house. One night Mrs. Norris was awakened by the crackling of bark and the squealing of the pig. Running to the door she saw a bear trying to get out of the pen with the shote clutched by the neck, somewhat as a cat carries a kitten. There was a large bed of coals, and filling the big fire-shovel full of these she ran out and threw them on the dry bark, which in a moment was in a brilliant blaze. The bear meantime had got his prey out of the pen, but being frightened at the sudden light, dropped the pig (badly scared but not seriously hurt) and made his way into the forest."
The same early settler attacked by wolves also later recalled how her own father acquired a particularly rustic childhood toy: "[Grandfather h]eard the calf bawling in [its] pen. [He] took gun + went out + found a bear at [the] calf's pew, which he shot + ate. My Pa said he had the feet to play with."
So numerous were the animal encounters that the officials who commissioned the first history of East Cleveland Township—much of the history of which is shared with Euclid—had to admonish its authors, Andrew Cozad and John Doane, who capped off their 1858 history with the reminder: "Your committee could relate many Bear + Panther Stories, but deem them uninteresting."
*
There are mentions to be found of a lingering Native American presence in and near Euclid in its first years of settlement.
Crisfield Johnson wrote of them, unselfconsciously using the racist language of his time:
"Indians, squaws and papooses were frequently seen passing to and fro. They had a camping-place just back of where the academy now stands. The fierce appearance of the warriors frequently frightened the children, but there is no account of their doing the slightest harm."
More will be said of this academy very soon. The spot cited is above Euclid Avenue on the Heights at the approximate location of the abandoned Warner and Swasey Observatory on Taylor Road in East Cleveland.
As was noted in an earlier chapter, Crisfield Johnson said that Timothy Doan enjoyed very good relations with the Native Americans yet found in Euclid Township and its vicinity. "Doane found the Indians to be peaceable and good neighbors. They were always received at his house as friends, and on many a night, Indian-like, they would wrap themselves in their blankets and sleep around [his] cheerful fire."
In a section labeled "Pioneer Legal Matters," Elroy McKendree Avery in his 1918 History of Cleveland and its Environs notes in the November 1810 term of the circuit court Thomas McIlrath "prosecuted for selling liquor to the Indians... trading one quart of whisky for three raccoon skins..."
There is also an intriguing story involving Rebecca Craft Ruple preserved by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham:
"Indians were frequent visitors in pioneer homes, and their papooses played with the children. Of Mrs. Samuel Ruple it is said that she one day harbored a poor Squaw, who told her she was flying from her people, who had condemned her to be burned as a witch. She was fed and sent off in the early morning. Not long after a party of Indians arrived who proved to be the pursuers. Mrs. Ruple silently fed them and treated them kindly, trying to make time for the poor fugitive to escape. But alas! the next day they returned with their capture, whose fate she never knew."
*
The township initially was of course devoid of infrastructure, most importantly grist mills, which were needed to grind the indigestible grain the settlers grew into edible flour. "There were two or three gristmills [sic] within ten miles, but they were very poor concerns, and were frequently out of repair." Caleb Eddy would build the first grist mill in Euclid Township in 1809 on First Draft Lot 7 up on the Heights on the west branch of Dugway Brook. This would be on or near Mayfield Road atop the hill above Little Italy, probably on the present-day grounds of Lake View Cemetery. "The [Eddy] Mill was very imperfect but still a valuable acquisition to the inhabitants." And for the first settlers of Euclid still several years away.
Crisfield Johnson preserves one story of the difficulties this imposed on the first settlers involving the Shaws:
"On one occasion when, through defective machinery or lack of water, no grinding could be done in this part of the country. John Shaw took an ox-cart loaded with a grist for every man in the township and went eighty miles, to Erie, Pennsylvania, to get it ground. He was to be back in two weeks, and on the day fixed for his return Mrs. Shaw invited all the people in the township to her house to cook and eat of the expected supply. The people came, but Mr. Shaw had been detained by the badness of the roads and did not arrive, and his hospitable wife could only furnish her guests with a feast of venison and baked pumpkins."
In the meantime they relied on hunting.
"Small as the number [of settlers in Euclid through the winter of 1804-1805] was, but one family [that of Timothy Doan, who had already been there several years] had raised bread sufficient to carry them through the winter, and until more could be raised, and only two out of the number had any other meat than what could be obtained by hunting—Several hundred Coon Shed their Skins during the Winter which enabled them to eke out a Scanty Subsistence."
Though it's not entirely clear, the two referred to may be John Ruple and Thomas McIlrath.
"...necessity made [John Ruple] something of a hunter, the same as it did many others..."
"[Thomas] McIlrath from early habits was fond of hunting, so that he had quite an advantage over the rest..."
*
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve::
"It is needless to say that luxuries were exceedingly scarce. Once Mrs. Norris sent clear to Pennsylvania, by a couple of young men who were going thither, for a pound of tea and two yards of calico to make the baby a dress."
"Mrs. Asa Dille [Frances Saylor], who came into the township in 1802 [sic], used to tell of the weary walks she had taken, three miles through the woods, to her nearest neighbor, Mr. Doane, to get a pan of coals, when she had had the misfortune to let her own fire go out. Starting back through the woods, she had to stop many times to coax the coals back to glowing, by feeding them with pieces of hickory bark and blowing them with her breath."
"Over this same fire on the hearth the cooking was done, usually with but three utensils—a kettle, hanging from a crane, used for soups, boiling meats, etc.; a frying pan, for frying dough nuts; and a long-handled bake kettle, in which a loaf of johnny cake could be baked if someone would attend to its being surrounded on all sides and covered on top with living embers."
"The brick oven built into the vast chimney was used once a week. That oven wood of right length and quality should be prepared was demanded by the thrifty housekeeper. The fire was built in the oven, and when the wood had been consumed to ashes it was swept out carefully with an oven broom and the week's baking was put in. It was an evolution from the Indian method of cooking on hot ashes."
"Underneath the oven was a compartment where were kept the kindling wood and the dye pot, for not only spinning wool or flax, but coloring them was a part of woman's work. Some wove their own cloth as well, but the wool was often taken to a neighbor, who, besides her home duties, followed the profession of weaver. The big and little wheel stood in the living room, and many times a cobbler's bench ready for the semi-annual visit of the shoemaker."
"Once a year it was the duty of the father to buy a cow skin for boots, a calf skin for shoes, and a piece of sole leather. With this the Son of Crispin shod the family. Each household had a kit of tools with which repairing was done. Rubbers were unheard of, but father's old woolen stockings, slipped on over the shoes, kept children's feet warm and dry."
"Dishes were few, heavy, and homely. A set of trenchers of different size hewn from logs served many purposes... [B]lue ware was brought from Pittsburg [sic], and much affected by those who could afford it."
*
On March 1, 1806, the third anniversary of the founding of Ohio as a state, the original single county created from the entirety of the Connecticut Western Reserve, Trumbull, was divided in two, with the eastern half, containing Euclid, becoming Geauga County, the name derived from an Algonquin word meaning "racoon."
*
When the Connecticut Land Company began their operations in the Northwest Territory in 1796, Gen. Wayne's conquest and the subsequent Treaty of Greenville had only extinguished the Native American claims to the part of the Western Reserve lying east of the Cuyahoga River. A new treaty, negotiated at Fort Industry near modern Toledo, would open the remainder of the Reserve to settlement, beginning in 1805.
The History of Lorain County:
"Prior to the apportionment by draft of that part of the Reserve lying west of the Cuyahoga River, Levi Bronson, Azor Bronson, Harmon Bronson, Calvin Hoadley, Jared Pritchard, and some fifteen others, formed an association called the Waterbury Land Company."
"This company, together with William Law, Benjamin Doolittle, Jr., and Samuel Doolittle, drew at the fourth draft, April 4, 1807... township... number five, range fifteen..."
"Pending the negotiation for the extinguishment of the Indian claim to the lands west of the Cuyahoga, the company bought of William Edwards a thousand acres of land in tract two, town eight, range eleven, Euclid... and a number settled there the summer previous to the draft."
Township No. 5 in the 15th Range was very shortly thereafter named Columbia, and there one will find it today, a spur jutting out of the eastern flank of Lorain County.
The thousand acres of Tract 2, up in the wooded Heights on the dirt path that's now Mayfield Road, today forms a big chunk of the City of South Euclid, Ohio, and in the summer of 1806 a number of what might be called temporary settlers came from Waterbury, Connecticut, to that part of Euclid Township to bide their time before moving on to Columbia beyond the Cuyahoga River.
It must be inferred, but from the evidence it can be done confidently, that at least some of those temporary Euclid settlers from Waterbury on their way to Columbia included Levi Bronson, age 41, his wife, Sarah Prindle, 43, plus their 15-year-old daughter Anna, and Levi's bachelor little brother, Daniel, age 20. Another Waterbury Land Company member, Jared Pritchard, 48, came to stop in Euclid with his wife, Ruth Anna Beard, 47, and their 17-year-old daughter Mary, known as Polly. Two more bachelors, 21-year-old Benoni Adams, and 26-year-old Elias Frost, were with them as well, and possibly also Frost's 44-year-old father, Isaac, his mother, Anna Carrington, also 44, and their young son, Elias' 12-year-old brother, Lyman.
(Benoni Adams does not appear to have been related, at least closely, to the John Adams who would settle in Euclid in 1808, nor to Sarah Adams Doan, the wife of Nathaniel. Nor does Jared Pritchard's wife Ruth Anna Beard appear to have been related, at least closely, to the Beards who came to Euclid with John Moss and Turhand Kirtland in 1798.)
The History of Lorain County:
"In the summer of 1807 [Columbia T]ownship was surveyed. A surveyor by the name of Lacey was first employed, but his chain was found to be of an incorrect length and he was discharged. In August of the same year Robert Worden, a surveyor from Columbiana county [sic], was engaged, who, with Levi Bronson, Daniel Bronson, Benoni Adams, and Elias Frost of Euclid, as ax [sic] and chain men, set out from Cleveland, taking a southwest course until the northeast corner of [Columbia Township] was reached. From this point they proceeded west two and a half miles, thence south a like distance to the center of the township. The party made their encampment there, on the west bank of the Rocky River. A daughter of Levi Bronson, afterwards Mrs. Oliver Terrell, [Anna Bronson, then age 16,] accompanied the party to do their cooking, to whom must be accorded the honor of being the first white [sic] woman that ever set foot on the soil of Columbia."
"In September, 1807, a company numbering thirty-three persons, left Waterbury, Connecticut, for [Columbia T]ownship. They were Bela Bronson, his wife and one child; Calvin Hoadley, wife and five children; John Williams, wife and five children; Lemuel Hoadley, wife and three children, his father and his wife's mother; Lathrop Seymour and wife; Mrs. Parker and four children; Silas Hoadley and Chauncey Warner."
This was late in the year to set out. The journey was hard and they suffered many delays and setbacks along the way. However, happily, they all made it to Cleveland more or less in one piece in late November.
"Arriving at Cleveland, the company made a location there, with the exception of Bela Bronson and family, who, with ox-team and sled, pushed on towards Columbia. They were accompanied by Levi Bronson, Jared Pritchard, John Williams, Silas Hoadley, Calvin Hoadley, and five or six others who went ahead and cut a road for them."
"Early in the spring of 1808, the following additions were made to the [Columbia Township] settlement: Lemuel Hoadley, Sr., and Lemuel Hoadley, Jr., on lot forty-seven; James Geer, on lot thirty-five, south part; Lathrop Seymour, on lot eleven; Jared Pritchard, on lot thirty-one; Silas Hoadley, on lot twenty-nine; Isaac Frost and his two sons, Elias and Lyman, on lot twenty-eight; Nathaniel Doan, on the north part of lot thirty-five; and Benoni Adams, on lot fifty."
Euclid's Frosts, Benoni Adams and Jared Pritchard and family left Euclid and joined the Columbia settlement in 1808. This passage also contains the name Nathaniel Doan. It's not possible that this was the Doan's Corners Doan, Moses Cleaveland's blacksmith. It is, however, possible that this was his son, Nathaniel Doan, Jr., age 17 in 1808. But there is very little to be found about this person. Of the Nathaniel Doan who settled in Columbia Township, the History of Lorain County records that: "Nathaniel Doan was a man of more than average ability, and was a leading man in the settlement. He was the first Justice of the Peace of the township. He subsequently removed to Cleveland." But if he was 17 in 1808, it would be quite extraordinary for him to become "a leading man in the settlement," plus Justice of the Peace, when genealogy records state that Nathaniel Doan, Jr. died in or before 1815, when he would have been only 24. He appears on the Columbia Township tax records in 1810, and the History of Lorain County says he moved to Cleveland, but no burial information is to be found. Little can be said with certainty regarding the Nathaniel Doan who went to Columbia.
"In 1809, Roswell Scovil, Horace Gunn, Timothy Doan, Daniel Bunnell, Zephaniah Potter, Wm. Hoadley, Noah Warner, Marcus Terrell, and Joseph Burke joined the [Columbia Township] settlement."
After eleven years keeping his "hotell" on the eastern line of Euclid, Joseph Burke abandoned his homestead and joined the colony at Columbia in 1809, relinquishing his distinction as Euclid's longest settler to Capt. Timothy Doan.
On January 1, 1809, Justice of the Peace Nathaniel Doan, Sr. married his nephew, 21-year-old Timothy Doan, Jr., to 19-year-old Polly Pritchard, and when the winter ended they joined the Columbia colony to build their own homestead west of the river. "Timothy Doan[, Jr.] located on lot twenty-nine [in Columbia], buying out Silas Hoadley, who returned to Connecticut." Timothy and Polly Pritchard Doan would have at least seven children together, beginning with Jared Pritchard Doan in 1813. In death they would both return to Euclid Township to be buried in Doan plots in East Cleveland.
On March 1, 1809, Elias Frost would marry Phebe McIlrath, daughter of Thomas of the "five young men" and Elizabeth Cozad.
Daniel Bronson would marry Timothy and Mary Cary Doan's daughter Mary, also called Polly.
Curiously enough, Columbia's Daniel Bunnell does not appear to have been related to Euclid's David Bunnell, or at least not closely. Columbia's Daniel was born in Connecticut, the son of Enos Bunnell of Wallingford. Euclid's David was from Morris County, New Jersey. At any rate, Columbia's Bunnell did not stay in Columbia anyway. "Bunnell drew, by draft, lot one, which he exchanged with Samuel Pardee for land in Olmsted."
The Euclid Eddys were also involved in the Columbia project too: "Timothy Eddy cleared a piece of land on lot seventeen, sowed it to wheat, and then returned to Euclid to live..." "David [Eddy]... joined the infant colony in Columbia. He 'stuck his stakes' on lot forty, and built his log house on the bank of Rocky River."
*
The population of Euclid had grown from maybe a dozen (the Burkes) in 1800, to maybe a score or more (add the Doans and the Dilles) in 1803. By 1806 it was well over a hundred, the majority of those being babies, small children and adolescents, with more babies being added steadily by the month and year. Even before they had a working grist mill so they could predictably eat the adults of Euclid Township wanted a school.
Sources on the Shaws often point out that the couple had no children of their own, and many attribute this as at least part of their motivation for founding the first school in Euclid, the first important institution established in the township.
"[John] Shaw taught the first School ever taught in the Town, and in the first house ever erected for that purpose..." It had been noted that John Shaw was "not accustomed to the use of the axe," suggesting perhaps that before coming west he had been more a man of learning than of labor. "He was a man of good intelligence and fair education..." "[B]y diligence [and] perseverance [he] ultimately succeeded in... getting into easy circumstances." Sources say John and Sarah Shaw "became wealthy" and "prospered." Perhaps having through physical labor earned their material security the Shaws then preferred to proceed to pursue more intellectual goals.
"The first School House Erected [in Euclid Township]... was built in the Fall of 1806 on the NW side of Euclid Str... on Lot 44." This description would place it near Ivanhoe Road and the intersection of Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland. And it clearly thrived as they soon found need for additional staff. "Seventy-five cents a week was the salary of novices, one dollar for experienced teachers..." but experienced teachers would not come until some time later.
The first female teacher in Euclid was Polly Pritchard, biding her time productively until she married and moved on to Columbia. She was 17 in 1806, though she may not have taught that first season if John Shaw had not yet discovered a need for help; it is probably safe to assume she taught through 1807.
Polly Pritchard was succeeded by Elizabeth "Betsey" Crocker, also of the Doan clan, as her brother, Jedediah, was married to Timothy and Mary Cary Doan's daughter, Deborah. Assuming Betsey took over when Polly left for Columbia in 1808, Betsey would have been about 16-years-old. She too would marry and eventually leave Euclid once the west bank of the Cuyahoga had been opened, but for Dover Township.
"Some... scholars came with such dirty hands and faces that [the teacher] kept basin and towel for their use..." The curriculum consisted of "...a little reading, arithmetic, and spelling, setting copies, making quill pens, and instructing little girls in sewing..." Sadly though unsurprisingly for the time shame and violence were employed, as "...the dunce block, ferule, and split stick on the nose were often in use." And they may have sometimes wished they'd first done more about the early township's rampant serpents:
"A big fire place in the school house was filled with green boughs in summer time. One hot afternoon a little boy heard a rustling in the hearth behind him, and, glancing down, he saw the head of a big rattlesnake peering between his bare feet. He called out in terror, and there would have been a panic if Miss Crocker, with great presence of mind, had not quieted the children, and kept them in their places until a man could be summoned to dispatch the snake."
*
On June 7, 1807, with settlers quickly filling the young state, the townships clustered around the mouth of the region's principal river—Euclid among them, the easternmost—were separated from Geauga and allotted to another new county, called Cuyahoga, this an Iroquoian word meaning "crooked," which described the river's course.
*
Next in Euclid they wanted a church.
"The people of Euclid brought with them their olden reverence for religion..." one source knowledgeable of the faith situation in the early township observed, though "...several of them were infidels or universalists..."
"At this period there was no church in the township." "People went to 'Doan's Corners' on Sunday, where Squire Nathaniel Doan read a sermon." "The first communion was held in the house of Nathaniel Doan... [where the worshippers]... all sat around a common square table, with common ware."
Around a dozen couples and individuals formed the nucleus of the movement to establish a church in Euclid. These included Nathaniel and Sarah Adams Doan, Andrew and Abigail Cozad Mcllrath, Thomas and Elizabeth Cozad Mcllrath, Abraham and Abigail McIlrath Norris, and Caleb and Nancy McIlrath Eddy. Eunice Jones Eddy, Anna McIlrath Bunnell and Sarah McIlrath Shaw also helped form the church, though not their husbands, interestingly enough, and no explanation is to be found as to why not, although perhaps the men were among the aforementioned "infidels or universalists." Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham does note of Sarah Shaw that, "Her husband favored the school and she the church." John Ruple (though not his wife Elizabeth Craft) was also among the founders, becoming the church's first deacon, and he would come to be known in the township simply as "Deacon Ruple" and be referred to as such in much of the information to be found on him for the rest of his life. Another, perhaps the most, prominent founder was the township's matriarch, Isabella Aikman Mcllrath.
In 1801 the American Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches, both Calvinist in origin and therefore sharing many doctrines, formed an alliance of sorts to support each other in their common goal of spreading their Calvinist brand of Protestant Christianity across the growing American nation. The Connecticut Missionary Society was particularly active in bringing organized religion to the Western Reserve.
William Wick was the son of a Revolutionary War veteran from the McIlraths' own Morris County, New Jersey, who as a young adult in 1790 also went west to Washington County, Pennsylvania. In Washington County Wick married, then studied for the Protestant ministry just at the time the Western Reserve was being opened. It's possible perhaps even likely that he knew many of the Euclid settlers before Euclid.
Wick was ordained in 1799. He immediately joined the Connecticut Missionary Society and moved across the Ohio River to Youngstown, the Society's first minister on the Western Reserve. There he and his half-dozen colleagues commenced establishing Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches in Youngstown, Poland, Warren, Grand River (Fairport Harbor), and many other places in Northeast Ohio. One of those colleagues was Joseph Badger, the missionary who visited the Burkes in 1801 and 1802 and left a description of their lonely outpost on the eastern line of Euclid Township in his memoirs. Whether the settlers applied to Wick or he solicited them is unclear, but he eventually found his way to Euclid.
On August 27, 1807, a church "was organized in the front room of the log house of... Andrew McIlrath, by Rev. William Wick..." "It took the name of 'The Church of Christ in Euclid,' that being the township in which it was then situated." This was the only formal church in the new Cuyahoga County for nearly a decade, preceding the Trinity Episcopal Church—which endures as the Trinity Cathedral, near the Cleveland State University Campus—by nine years, and the Old Stone Church on Public Square in Cleveland by fully 20.
The Church of Christ in Euclid had no fixed building. "The first meetings were in the houses of the settlers..." "[They] met in private houses and under the trees for two years."
Having found Euclid infested with infidels and Universalists, and bereft of spiritual guidance save that forthcoming from Moses Cleaveland's blacksmith, one of Rev. Wick's first tasks was to establish decency and discipline.
Two days after the Euclid church's founding, "A. L. and Abigail Norris confessed to dancing 'not long before' [evidently before joining the church] and professed contrition."
Ann Louise Wagner, a professor at St. Olaf College in Minnesota explored the Presbyterians' historical objections to dancing in her 1997 book Adversaries of Dance. In it she wrote that, "among the orthodox denominations with a well-educated clergy, Presbyterians proved to be early and active opponents to dancing." The early 19th century was a time of particular anxiety for them on this subject, demonstrated by the number of tracts regarding dancing published by Presbyterian clergy at the time.
Professor Wagner went on:
"Because the sole purpose of dancing is pleasure, it represents only the lowest of human faculties—animal sensuality. Dancing, thus, becomes criminal, an animal pleasure elevated to the chief object of human desire. Because dancing is a carnal activity and because carnal activities are proscribed by the Bible under Paul's exhortation to avoid all 'works of the flesh,' including 'revellings and such like' (Gal. 5:16-25), dancing is therefore prohibited by the Bible. Such views are reiterated in books by later clergy."
And so they were reiterated in 1807 in Euclid by Rev. William Wick.
Illustrative, a separate but similar incident to the one immediately following the founding of the Church of Christ in Euclid is recorded by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, who wrote of...
"...a large ball... given [in Euclid] at Seth Doane's tavern, [where] people came from far and near to trip the light fantastic, toe 'Up the middle and down again, Swing your partners, and all hands round.' All was gayety under the tallow dip and spruce boughs. Maple sugar, short cake, and home-made whisky lightened the feet of the dancers and made nimble the fingers of the old fiddler, as he rent the air with the strains of 'Money Musk' and 'Jump, Jim Crow' mingling with the shouts of laughter."
Revellings. And such like.
"...the minister [Rev. Wick] sternly reproved such of his flock as had been participants in the forbidden pastime. Setting forth their folly, he insisted that they should come forward and publicly profess repentance, or be suspended from church membership."
"A hush rested on the congregation..."
"Slowly, one at a time, then by twos and threes, they arose, confessed, expressed repentance, and took their seats..."
But then: Sarah McIlrath Shaw.
The woman who at the age of 19 "traveled on foot and alone to the governor of the State to solicit his pardon" for her first husband who was awaiting hanging for the murder he had committed which she had only just learned of, and when she failed to secure it "came back, remained with him to the last moment, and for three nights slept on his grave to prevent the doctors getting his body."
That woman.
In Euclid, in 1807, "Sarah Shaw admitted the fact of dancing, but would not make a public acknowledgement..." "When arraigned by the minister, she acknowledged she had danced, but as for being repentant, not she, for [she declared] 'she would do the same thing again.'"
That woman.
As one might expect, "The church was scandalized..."
"...and then Mrs. Shaw was suspended."
"For a year she endured what to a woman of her friendly, warm-hearted nature no longer was possible, the ostracism of the church she loved."
The longer one reflects on this circumstance the harder, and even crueler, it appears. There were as yet few neighbors in the neighborhood, and not all but most were members of this church. Reflect as well that they were not merely Sarah's neighbors but her relatives, her own brothers and sisters, not to mention nieces, nephews and in-laws and cousins, nor to mention her aged, widowed Scottish mother who'd just arrived in Euclid the year before. What if she should pass while they were estranged? It doesn't appear Sarah's husband John Shaw was deeply involved with the church, which perhaps left her his society at least. But how did this edict affect both of them through enrollment at the school? If the denizens of Euclid were solid in their shunning it would have left very little for Sarah, and the psychological pressure must have been intense. For all her spine and grit in the end it was more than she could bear.
After holding out a year, "At last she came back and publicly confessed sorrow for her misconduct..." "At this time Mrs. Shaw publicly professed repentance for her dancing of long ago..." Crisfield Johnson records that she "...was duly reinstated in the church," and from the absence of any further comment on the incident in the sources on early Euclid it appears that this was so.
So Sarah Shaw lost that one. But not without a fight. And she wasn't done with her righteous obstinacy. By no means.
*
Second only to dancing at The Church of Christ in Euclid was the offense of mere heresy.
In August 1808, still without a building, "a meeting of the church [was] held at the house of Nathaniel Doan. [There] Caleb and Nancy Eddy admitted joining the 'Halcyon Church,' supposing them to be Christians. They expressed their sorrow for having done so."
Crisfield Johnson wrote, "The members [of the Halcyon Church] claimed to be Christian, but their right to the name seems to have been seriously disputed." Perhaps the Eddys were the infidels earlier referred to.
Halcyon began in the summer of 1802 in the Kanawha River Valley in what is now West Virginia, the same area around Charleston where George Washington held thousands of his Western acres. It was almost entirely the work of one man, a former Universalist preacher named Abel Sarjent, who traveled the Ohio Valley preaching his message and leaving religious literature in his wake. A millennial sect, the Halcyons believed Christ's return to be imminent and urged followers to prepare themselves through "purity of heart" and suppression of the "animal passions." They lived in constant fear of a very real devil reigning over a very real hell. Sarjent and his Halcyon followers were also passionate abolitionists, as well as egalitarians, allowing women to preach as well as men. Sarjent encouraged a healthful diet of vegetables and milk, coupled with temperance, through which, he taught, adherents might live once again "to the age of the patriarchs." Some followers believed they could achieve immortality through refusing to eat altogether. As might be expected, those who stuck to this belief died, and those who witnessed the experiments soon cooled in their enthusiasm for that path to eternal life. It never boasted many members, and the number of its adherents probably never exceeded a few thousands.
Abel Sarjent and his Halcyon Church had a bad reputation among non-adherents. "He pretended to hold intercourse with angels, heal the sick and procure immediate answers from heaven to his prayers," one chronicler wrote of Sarjent. "He would swoon away, fall, and lay a long time" wrote another, "and when he would come to, he would tell what mighty things he had seen and heard." Other, more conventional Protestant leaders, like Wick, were suspicious.
Another, a Methodist preacher named Peter Cartwright, came across Abel Sarjent near Marietta, Ohio, in the course of his own traveling ministry around the year 1806. He attributed the popularity of Sarjent's message among the settlers of southern Ohio to nothing more than what he saw as their provincial ignorance. In his 1856 autobiography Cartwright remembered:
"There was here in Marietta a preacher by the name of A. Sargent [sic]; he had been a Universalist preacher, but finding such a motley gang... he thought (and thought correctly too) that they were proper subjects for his imposture. Accordingly, he assumed the name of Halcyon Church, and proclaimed himself to be the millennial messenger. He professed to see visions, fall into trances, and to converse with angels. His followers were numerous in the town and country. The Presbyterian and Congregationalist ministers were afraid of him."
(By omission, the Methodist Cartwright lets his readers know that the Methodist ministers were not.) Cartwright described an incident where Sarjent was knocked unconscious by a mighty flash of light and told of a vision of God's angel upon his return to sensibility. In his tale Cartwright exposed Sarjent as a charlatan by revealing the flash of God's light to have been produced by a hidden charge of gunpowder, touched off by a lighted cigar. Seizing on the smell of sulfur produced by the powder, Cartwright posited that if Sarjent had spoken with an angel it was from "the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone!" Genuine or fraud, such exciting happenings were certainly the best show in town in the frontier settlements at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Eddys were of the McIlrath clan from Washington County, Pennsylvania, where Abel Sarjent and his Halcyon Church were active and popular. The Halcyons listed one church under a Reverend John Supler in Washington County, and another under Reverend Edward Piper in Dille's Bottom, Ohio, though no Euclid Township Dilles are known to have been involved with the Halcyons. It's possible that Caleb and Nancy Eddy had been exposed to the Halcyon Church prior to migrating to Euclid, and may have brought their enthusiasm for it with them, perhaps even attempting to start their own congregation in Euclid Township. "This 'Halcyon' church... started up suddenly in Euclid, flourished for a brief period and disappeared," Crisfield Johnson wrote. The Halcyon church reached its zenith from about 1807 to about 1810, then faded almost as quickly as it appeared. By 1820 it was completely dead. "From the extravagances of some of the leaders professing to work miracles and raise the dead, the sect, in the course of six or eight years, greatly declined and finally became extinct..." The Eddys were called out, admitted to joining, and "expressed their sorrow for having done so."
But Halcyon would not be the last heterodox institution to start up suddenly in Euclid. Nor the most successful. Not hardly.
*
After two years of meeting alfresco, the members of The Church of Christ in Euclid determined to establish a permanent (or at least a semi-permanent) structure for their worship, on a plot donated by Thomas McIlrath on Second Draft Lot 44, "...at the point then commonly designated as Nine Mile Creek, but afterwards known as Euclid Village."
Andrew and Abigail Cozad McIlrath's daughter, Phoebe, was a teenager in 1809. In 1881, when she was 90, she recorded her memories of the early years of the Euclid church:
"The First Presbyterian Church of Euclid, as it was then called, was organized in the front room of the log house of my father, Mr. Andrew McIlrath, by Rev. William Wick, of Marietta, August, 1807. I think there were twelve members the first day. Three more were soon added.
"The first communion was held in the house of Nathaniel Doan. We all sat around a common square table, with common ware.
"We met in private houses and under the trees for two years, until it was thought best to build a log meeting‑house on the spot of ground that was given for church purposes by my uncle, Mr. Thos. McIlrath.
"The men searched for trees that were thirty feet long, and hewed them.
"The log church had a pulpit with two steps going up to it, and a window back of it. There was one window on each side, a door in front, and a broad aisle with a row of seats on each side. The floor was made tight and warm with puncheon logs.
"When the log church was built, my father said, 'How can we spread a table for the Lord in the wilderness?' So the ladies took counsel together. My mother spun a fine linen thread and had it woven in her house and bleached, which covered the long table in the aisle and a small table at the head to set the elements on. My grandmother, Isabella McIlrath, had a fine Britannia tankard with a lid and platters to match which had been brought from Scotland. We thought these would do. Very soon a few ladies contributed money for four cups, and sent to Pittsburgh for them by the mail carrier, who went on horse back, by marked trees, and brought them in his mail bag and great was our joy and curiosity when they arrived.
"We had candles over the pulpit in tin candle sticks to light the church. We carded and spun the wicking from the raw cotton, as there was no wicking brought here. We ran the candles in moulds [sic], or dipped them, and would make some candles larger for church or singing school. All older people brought their candles and candle sticks every Sabbath, and the brightness of the candle stick was always noted by each lady’s neighbor.
"The communicants came from their seats to the [long table in the] aisle and sat down, with the minister at the head of the table, and the elders served.
"The seat for the elders was under the pulpit. Nathaniel Doan was entitled to a seat in the elders' seat, but insisted on sitting back, but he was always there and always prayed.
"We never had any fire in the house. Each family brought a foot stove, and at Sabbath noon would go over to the neighbors and replenish the coals."
Speaking of the seats in back and the foot stoves, remember the recollections of the great granddaughter of Mary Cary Doan recorded by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham. Recall as well that "Jim" was Van Rensselaer Wickham's typographical or transcription error of "Um," the name, such as it was, by which Euclid's first Black resident, "a deaf and dumb Negro brought [to Euclid] from the West Indies by Captain [Timothy] Doane," was known.
"Homely and democratic as was life in the woods, there were distinctions and class lines. 'I remember,' says a descendant, 'my great grandmother [Mary Cary] Doane, a very old lady, when I was a little girl. She used to come into church leaning on the arm of her daughter Nancy [Doan Dodge], my grandmother Dodge, Old Jim following with the foot stove. After she was seated, he placed it at her feet, and returned to the rear of the church and the servants' pew."
By the time the log church was built William Wick was already in the final years of his life. He couldn't have known that of course but before his death in the winter of 1815 he would be "in extremely feeble health." He would have been wanting a successor to carry on the work in Euclid. At the time Wick and Badger shared a struggling student from Derry in Westmoreland County Pennsylvania just east of Washington County named Thomas Barr. Barr came to the ministry late and had at the time yet to overcome all of the obstacles holding him back.
Barr's father was a colonel in the Revolution. He survived the war, but set out on an expedition down the Ohio River in 1785 and was never seen again. Ten-year-old Thomas learned the news of his father's death from an Indian selling his scalp. Col. Barr's wish and Thomas' hope had been for the boy to attend college, but following his father's death his new guardian overruled those plans and apprenticed him to a carpenter. Career disappointment, childhood trauma and the boisterous drinking culture he found in his trade all contributed to Thomas Barr developing what by his own description was a quite serious alcohol problem. But it was that which also ultimately led him into the ministry and from there to Euclid.
He married 23-year-old Susannah Welch, or Welsh, in 1797, and ultimately he credited her along with a merciful god for facilitating his recovery. Still struggling with drink, his faith, poverty, the responsibilities of a growing family (he was supporting one of Susannah's unmarried sisters as well), in 1800 the family moved into the Western Reserve to Youngstown where Wick, Badger and the Connecticut Missionary Society recruited him. (Badger noticed him and Susannah in his memoirs in November 1804: "Thursday, rode to Youngstown. Friday and Saturday, wrote journal and visited families. Conversed and prayed with two young people. Conversed with Thomas Barr, a pious man, determined, if possible, to get an education in reference to the work of the ministry; has a pious excellent wife and five children.") Several long years of grind and struggle both for Barr and the women in his life lay ahead, but around 1805 he finally succeeded in putting 20 years of drinking behind him. Barr completed studies for the ministry and in September 1809 was licensed by the Hartford Presbytery.
A detailed description of Barr's tenure in Euclid is found in the 1856 history of the Connecticut Missionary Society in the Western Reserve, The Plan of Union:
"Mr. Barr had made up his mind to go to the Scioto and Miami valleys, where he heard that there were a number of vacancies. But this purpose was defeated, and an urgent call given him to settle in Euclid, which he at length accepted."
"The engagement at Euclid covered only half the time. The rest was to be employed in missionary labors under the patronage of the Connecticut Missionary Society. Mr. Barr speaks in high terms of the efforts of this Society, ascribing it to their fostering aid, that the Reserve so early became far better supplied with ministers and churches, than any other part of the State.
"At the time of Mr. Barr's settlement in Euclid, the township contained about thirty families. Most of these were favorable to religious society, though several of them were infidels or universalists. The members of the church... were, all of them, originally Presbyterians, but when first organized there were two families originally Congregationalists among them, so they adopted the mixed plan entered into between Presbyterians and Congregationalists in 1801. These two families had now moved to other places. This left the way clear for the adoption of pure Presbyterianism, which was afterwards done through Mr. Barr's influence. We shall see that he is to be regarded as the principal father and defender of Presbyterianism on the Reserve. The man who works his way into the ministry as Mr. Barr did may be expected to hold his opinions firmly, and to be a leader who will leave his mark where he goes. Such at least was Mr. Barr.
"Through the assistance of the people at Euclid, a cabin was erected for Mr. Barr's family, upon a piece of land which he bought, near the spot where it was designed, sometime, to erect a church. They moved to this place in June, 1810, and Mr. Barr was ordained and installed in August of the same year.
"His family at this time consisted of nine persons, five sons, one daughter (a second daughter had been buried at the age of four years), and the sister of Mrs. Barr, who still remained with them, sharing through life the toils and trials of the missionary brother and sister. The salary upon which this family of nine persons were settled was, from the Church in Euclid, $180, from the Missionary Society, $200. It will be supposed, writes Mr. Barr, that our means of sustenance were small. Our oldest child, a son, was twelve years old, our youngest four. We had three cows, and one horse; we sat down in the woods, not even a garden spot was cleared off when we entered our cabin, without any floor but the earth.
"During the few years that intervened before, the little boys, aided by their father, when occasionally he could be at home and help them, could clear off a few acres of land on which to raise their bread. Says Mr. Barr, I never got a bushel of wheat under two dollars, corn generally seventy-five cents, and fresh pork from eight to ten dollars per cwt. [cwt = hundredweight, i.e. one hundred pounds], other things in proportion.
"In such circumstances I labored in the ministry at-home and abroad, in all parts of the Reserve, for seven years in succession, then for about two years and a half I missionated [sic] but little, being one year half my time in Newburgh, one year half the time at Cleveland [sic], and for six months half my time near Painesville. In my missionary excursions, I usually averaged five or six sermons a week, besides family and school visits, for I endeavored, wherever there were schools, to visit them, address the children, and pray with them.
"I was sometimes oppressed with calls to preach funeral sermons at a distance even of thirty miles from home. Persons who would never think of calling for the minister to visit, converse and pray with their sick while living, now that they were dead, could not endure the thought of burying them without a funeral sermon. For a number of years after I was settled, there was no minister on the Lake Shore nearer than forty or fifty miles, nor for two or three years any on the south nearer than forty miles. Hence I was often called upon for this [funeral] service. At times, when the minister had just returned from a long tedious tour, weary and worn, and was about to make some provision for the comfort of his destitute family, an urgent call would come for a funeral sermon ten miles off, and no apology or excuse could avail, he must go.
"Speaking of this laborious period of his ministry, Mr. Barr says: The Lord in his providence previously disciplined me for my laborious service, and carried me with an uninjured constitution through the whole. I believe, too, the Lord owned and blessed my labors in many places, and to many individuals. The day will declare it, my work is with my God.
"The little church in Euclid grew, and, although several deaths of members occurred, increased from twelve to between forty and fifty members in the course of about three years, the youth and children were instructed in the catechism, public worship was well attended on the Sabbath, schools were in a good condition, and the state of morals and order in the society conspicuously superior to any other in all the region.
"Old acquaintances speak of Mr. Barr as a good and effective speaker, a very decided and somewhat headstrong man, and a rather ultra-Presbyterian, but all testify to his piety and zeal for God."
*
Garrett Thorpe, the final holdout of the "five young men" of August 1803, finally came back to Euclid in 1808, bringing with him his older brother, Benjamin, and their younger sister, Deborah, along with her husband, named John Adams, but no not the former president, nor a close relative of any of the other aforementioned Euclid-connected Adamses. The siblings were the three oldest children of Ezekial Tharp [sic] and Neeltje "Nellie" Gerretse Voorhees of Bedminster, New Jersey, just about 12 miles from Mendham. The family history is obscure and fragmented, but they seem to have had a connection to New York City and its Anglo-Dutch origins before moving into the New Jersey hinterlands by 1750. Ezekial served in the Connecticut forces during the Revolution, and neither parent left New Jersey. Benjamin can be placed in Washington County, Pennsylvania, by 1796, where and when he married Aurianche Powelson. Garrett was apparently in Washington County by 1803, when he travelled from there to Euclid as one of the "five young men." But he did not choose a parcel then, nor settle with the wave which began the following spring. Instead, Garrett married Helen Bonds in Bergen, New Jersey, on October 3, 1804. Next to nothing is to be found about her. Perhaps the west end of town along the road was finally growing too crowded, as the Thorpes settled at some hitherto under-settled parts of the township. The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript notes: "Garrett and Benjamin Thorp moved in about 1808. Garrett settled on Euclid creek + Benjamin on Nine Mile creek." Of the Thorpe brothers it notes: "They were from N. Jersey by the way of Pennsylvania, and made this their home during life. They both had large familys [sic]." Crisfield Johnson disagrees somewhat about the Thorpes, even with himself, recording: "Garrett and Benjamin Thorp settled respectively in 1810 and 1811, near the mouth of Euclid creek, though Benjamin soon moved to the western part of the township..." "Benjamin Thorp, who had first settled at the mouth of Euclid creek, came in 1813, and settled on the 'Coit tract,' near the lakeshore." This is in present-day Bratenahl.
Deborah Thorpe and husband John Adams also first settled toward the more eastern end of the township before opting to join the more settled west. "...in 1808 John Adams and family moved in and Settled on the road East of the creek... he Staid [sic] there some ten years and sold... and bought him a farm on the St Clair Road East of the Nine Mile Creek where he resided until his death." This is just inside the west border of Euclid Township west of the Five Points area in the west end of Collinwood, and the road that developed on their property along the west line of Euclid came to be known for a century as Adams Street. In 1906 Cleveland adopted a numbered system for its north-south running roads and Adams became East 140th.
The Crafts' father, Lawrence, and presumably their mother, Mary Elizabeth Osborn Lymes Craft, too, arrived in Euclid some time around that year as well. A family history notes, "Lawrence Craft lived in Morris Township, Washington Co., Pa. until about the year 1808, when he removed to East Cleveland, O."
William Gray also arrived in Euclid Township in 1808. His father, John Gray, came from George Washington's neighborhood of Mount Vernon, Virginia, and had served in the Revolution before moving west, first to Morgantown (then still Virginia, now West Virginia) on the Monongahela, just a few miles from the Ruples and the Dilles at Ten Mile and Redstone, then north into Washington County, Pennsylvania. "At fourteen William had run away from home, been a sailor on the lakes, married + settled in Euclid," his great granddaughter Clara Gray Kuekes wrote in a letter to the Euclid Historical Society in 1963. "We think this is because of his mother's death + father's remarriage." The young William Gray, just age 20, arrived in Euclid Township and set up a stoneware works at the mouth of Euclid Creek, manufacturing storage vessels for his fellow settlers. At 28 he married 16-year-old Clarissa Porter and together they had a good sized frontier family of five sons and three daughters. He didn't leave much more of a mark on Euclid except that he seems to have given his name to the hill up which Chardon Road ascends. The 1942 Euclid City Directory contains a picture bearing the following caption: "'Gray's Hill' was likely Chardon Road hill. We know a Gray family of early settlers lived on Euclid Avenue, and since tracts throughout the area were a hundred acres each, it is reasonable to assume that since the homestead was quite near this point, it was the particular hill so designated." The Grays eventually moved on to Berea where they died and are buried in the Alger Cemetery at Kamm's Corners on the West Side.
"In 1808 Gad Cranney and family moved in and settled on an old beginning on the Lake Shore," perhaps taking over some of the improvements originally made by John Moss and before him the agents of the Canandaigua Company. The 23-year-old Cranney and his wife, 22-year-old Edith Sady Blanchard, both of Brattleboro, Vermont, left little to mark their passing through Euclid. They "lived there for 15 years, when [they] moved to Indiana." The Moss family connection to Vermont is hard to ignore here, although Brattleboro isn't particularly close to the Moss bases of Wells or Granville, and there is nothing in the sources otherwise linking Gad Cranney to the Mosses.
Daniel S. Tyler was a 20-year-old bachelor when he came to Euclid around 1808, also from Vermont. How he found his way to Euclid is not known. In 1809 he married David Dille's youngest daughter, Elizabeth. "Daniel was a drummer in the Ohio Militia during the War of 1812," presumably with the Cuyahoga County regiment, though his name is not to be found in the roster published by the Ohio Adjutant General. The Dille-Tylers did not remain in Euclid long. By 1820 they can be found living in Warrensville, though both rest today in the East Cleveland Township Cemetery.
*
With the overwhelming majority of settlers being McIlraths pouring—sensibly—into the west end of town in present East Cleveland along present Euclid Avenue, and with the sole and minor exception of Jacob and Deborah Herron Coleman ascending Gray's Hill in 1805, since John Moss' departure no one bothered with Euclid's eastern heights for nearly a decade, until, "[i]n 1809, Abram Bishop moved in and Settled on the lot formerly improved by John Morse [sic], on the ridge."
Abram Bishop—also called Abraham in many sources—was 43-years-old that year, and though it is not recorded in the sources—the women were consistently slighted—he presumably brought with him to Euclid his 26-year-old wife, Anna Truman Bond, and their three sons, John Champion, Jr., age three, Jacob, age one, and newborn Abram, Jr. "He was from the Town of Granville, State of New York, Washington County." The Bishops were a leading family there, and their Granville story has been told in some greater detail in the John Moss chapter of this essay.
Is there, in the appearance of the Bishops of Granville, New York, on the Morse Tract, where in the summer of 1798 John Moss "…made a beginning on the East line of the Township on the Ridge, where he erected a good sized log house, hewed and covered the same with short shingles, and girdled some 20 acres of Timber adjoining…" before abandoning all that effort, anything to be inferred of the yet murky story of John Moss in Euclid? Moss also came from Granville, where the Bishop family was prosperous and prominent. William Law wrote to his brother of John Moss' financial difficulties in the first years of the 1800s, and Turhand Kirtland noted in 1803, "John Moss has not come forward to take a contract for the eight hundred acres surveyed to him in Euclid. Unless he does something this season I shall sell the land of opportunity offer to any other purchaser that may present." Maps of Euclid Township from the mid-18-aughts show the large 720-acre "John Moss Lot" next in the hands of William Law. The next owners of the tract were the Bishops of Granville. Did Law, perhaps with Kirtland acting as his agent, when whatever arrangement they had with Moss fell through, sell off Moss' Euclid tracts to the Bishops, the richest family in town back in Granville? Is that what happened? Perhaps future scholarship will be able solidly either to confirm or to refute these speculations.
The Bishops were Quakers: "The Friends' society of Granville was organized in 1800 by John C. Bishop and others, with twenty-six members. The first meeting house was built in 1806." For numerous religious and social reasons Quaker merchants and entrepreneurs played an outsized role in the Industrial Revolution and the modern economic development first of England then the United States. What kept Abram, the eldest son, from following immediately in his father's footsteps, leaving that to his little brother, is unknown, but he looks to have focused a lot of the family ambition on his project out west in Euclid:
"He [Abram Bishop] brought with him [to Euclid] a large quantity of Plow Irons, Chains, +c +c +c [etc. etc. etc.], all of which were much needed by the inhabitants. He also brought a good Stock of Enterprise [sic underline], 4 or 5 hired hands, and the next year [1810] put up a Saw Mill on the East branch of Euclid Creek..."
The saw mill was the first mill in the east end of Euclid Township and an important piece of new infrastructure, a large step toward moving Euclid from the log cabin to the frame building phase of development. Later maps, beginning at least as early as the 1858 G.M. Hopkins map of Cuyahoga County, show it located near the southwest corner of Richmond and Chardon Roads in the north end of what is now Richmond Heights. The offhand note on the "hired hands" is intriguing, for here are "4 or 5" more early settlers of the township about whom nothing further is known. But, with their help, the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript notes, "Mr. Bishop opened quite a farm..."
The year after the saw mill was erected Abram's younger sister and her husband joined his colony in the eastern heights. The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript notes their arrival simply with: "Charles White and wife were from Granville, N. Y., 1811." Charles was 30 in 1811, Abigail Bishop 25. (John Champion and Abigail Reynolds Bishop had 15 children over 30 years; Abram was the oldest and Abigail one of the youngest.) Charles White was born in Connecticut, and along with his parents went to Granville as a young adult some time around 1800, where and when he presumably met Abigail, one of the younger daughters of the town's leading family. Intriguingly, Charles and Abigail Bishop White appear not to have been married when they arrived in Northeast Ohio, records showing their marriage (by Judge James Kingsbury) in Cuyahoga County on July 15, 1810. This datum would also indicate that they were in the county prior to joining Abram's settlement in Euclid in 1811. Neither of these delays are explained. Consistent with what can be found about the Bishops in Granville, Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham notes, "Mrs. [Abigail Bishop] White belonged to a family of wealth, and was a woman of more than ordinary educational attainments." Sunnily, Van Rensselaer Wickham goes on to record, "Their 'latch-string' was always out to the newcomers who settled in the southeastern part of the township."
But there appears to be more to the story of the White household which can only be inferred. They only had one child together, daughter Helen, and not for more than ten years after their marriage and immigration to Euclid, not until 1822. Van Rensselaer Wickham notes that, "Pioneer life soon told upon [Abigail's] health." Ultimately, and quite unusual for the time, Charles White divorced Abigail Bishop, some time around 1825. Three years later he re-married, to 26-year-old Sarah Wright, who bore him at least six children.
Charles White could still be found on the Euclid tax lists in 1845. He died in 1861, somewhere in Ohio, but when, and where he is buried, cannot be said for sure. Sarah was living in Mayfield in 1850, and she died, also somewhere in Ohio, at an unknown date later. How Abigail got by after the divorce is not recorded; perhaps her brother Abram supported her. She is recorded to have died in 1834 in Cuyahoga County, but where and in what circumstances are also unknown.
The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript records that Abram and Anna Bond Bishop "...raised a large family of children and made [Euclid] their home some 30 years..." This is a minor mistake in the history, as Abram died in 1830, after just about 20 years in Euclid. For whatever reason either he or his family did not choose for him to be buried in Euclid, but his body was sent back east, and "Abram Bishop was buried in the Bishop burying ground at Granville. N.Y. and a city has grown around what was once a secluded spot." This Euclid pioneer will be found today in the Mettowee Valley Cemetery in Granville, New York. Anna went to live with their son, who had gone on farther west to Wisconsin. "She had been afflicted with blindness for fifteen years prior to her death." "She died Jan. 11, 1870, in Somers township, on the farm of her son Jacob."
Today in the north end of Richmond Heights there's no trace of Abram Bishop's by all accounts impressive farm, nor his important saw mill, nor echoes to be heard of the drama and perhaps even tragedy which might have unfolded at the White homestead. But White Road still skirts the south bank of the east branch of Euclid Creek from Richmond Road out to SOM Center Road in Willoughby Hills, and it meets Bishop Road behind the airport about halfway between. There's a useless 4-way stop sign there, perennially clogged at rush hour, that really ought to be a light.
*
John and Tryphena Webb Murray, both in their 50s, arrived in Euclid Township in 1810, and settled in the west end of town, what's now East Cleveland, on or near Lot 44. There isn't a great deal to be found about their family, except that they were originally from central Massachusetts, that John served as a private with the Massachusetts troops during the Revolution, and that they settled in Caughnawaga, in Montgomery County, New York, northwest of Albany, sometime around 1785, staying there some 25 years before making their big, final move to Euclid. They were cousins through Tryphena with Samuel Huntington, the same Judge Huntington who presided over the murder case in Belmont County for which Jacob Coleman executed the sentence of burning the convicted man's hand, who owned the mill at Newburgh and with whose wife Jacob's nephew William had been able to trade ground corn for baskets, and who at that moment in the summer of 1810 was the sitting governor of the infant State of Ohio, though the Murrays don't appear to have been terribly influential or well-to-do themselves. Their first and second children, daughter Clarissa and son Enoch, along with their spouses, Clarissa's husband Luther Woodworth, and Enoch's wife Polly Broadway, were with them when they came to the west end of Euclid. Their next two children, sons Elias, 23, and Harvey, 22, came to Northeast Ohio that year as well, but didn't settle in Euclid, but rather on the bluff above the mouth of the Cuyahoga River in the nascent village of Cleaveland. Noting the Murray brothers' arrival in 1810, Crisfield Johnson comments ruefully, "This made a total of fifty-seven persons then resident in the village of Cleveland [sic], fourteen years after it was first laid out; certainly not a very hopeful indication." Johnson's gloominess aside, the Murray brothers got to work. "On the south side of Superior Street near the Public Square" Elias and Harvey Murray built another of the first frame buildings ever erected in Cleveland, possibly the first after the barn Doan son-in-law Samuel Dodge made for Judge Huntington in 1801. The Murray brothers ostensibly intended to operate it as a store, but it did poor business, and "There is no evidence that they ever stocked it with merchandise..." As unpromising as all this seems, history—specifically war—would have a more and surprisingly rather important role for the Murray brothers' store, and for Harvey Murray in particular.
*
Elias Lee is a minor enigma, but certainly bears noting as one of the major roads in the old Euclid Township today yet bears his name. He was born in 1757 in Plainfield, Connecticut, and served as a private in the Massachusetts militia during the Revolution. He survived the war and married Mary Bryan of Marlborough, Massachusetts, in 1782. They appear to have lived in Marlborough, having seven children together all before coming to Euclid, their last born in Massachusetts in 1804. What prompted them to move west or why at that time or to choose Euclid is not known. Elias had two siblings who came to Ohio as well, but both settled in Ashtabula. He arrived in Euclid in 1811 ahead of his family, presumably to prepare a homestead as many, and presumably along Euclid Avenue as most, of the first settlers did, and presumably near its intersection with Lee Boulevard in East Cleveland. This would have put him near the Doans on the township's western border. His wife, Mary, joined him in 1812, presumably with most of their children—the records on them are spotty and incomplete but some are shown as eventually dying in Ohio and even Euclid, though some were grown by the time their parents came. Elias Lee eventually became a common pleas judge of Cuyahoga County in 1814. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham took note of Mary, writing, "Mrs. Elias Lee—Mary Bryan—of Marlborough, Mass., who came with her husband, Judge Lee, in 1812, appears the ideal wife, being devotedly attached to her husband. They lived long and happily together."
*
Havilah Farnsworth was notable as Euclid's first doctor, but there is a fair amount of mystery and confusion surrounding him. The 43-year-old New Hampshire native came to Euclid sometime around 1812. His father was a printer, and Farnsworth moved around quite a bit before Euclid, and possibly after as well. In 1797 he and his brother, Oliver, began publication of a newspaper in Suffield, Connecticut, called The Impartial Herald. The next year the brothers both moved to Newport, Rhode Island, and Oliver at least then put out The Rhode Island Republican beginning in 1799. About 1801 Oliver went to Ohio, to Cincinnati, and began a newspaper there, but it's unclear whether Havilah was part of either the move or the project. It's also unclear exactly when and how he came to be regarded as a doctor. A family history notes, "He [Havilah Farnsworth] was 1st in the printing business at Newport, RI with his brother Oliver, Jr., but later became a doctor and removed to Euclid Twp. Cuyahoga Co., Ohio."
Crisfield Johnson says:
"...Dr. Havilah Farnsworth, who had previously practiced at Newport, Rhode Island, settled [in Euclid]... on the ridge, being the first physician in the... township. He had a large practice, both as physician and surgeon, for over twenty years, being frequently called on to go fifteen or twenty miles on horseback at night, with a guide, also on horseback, leading the way with a torch."
The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "H. Farnsworth" on 78 acres in the center of Lot 26 on the crest of the escarpment on what is now Highland Road in the east end of Richmond Heights. This is certainly his son, Havilah Farnsworth, Jr., who married Cynthia Dille, daughter of David Dille and Mary Saylor before moving on to Iowa in the 1850s, but the location of the parcel aligns with the written records and is surely the location on the ridge referred to by Johnson.
Dr. Havilah Farnsworth is recorded to have died in Euclid in 1834, but a record of his burial place cannot be found. How and why he came to choose Euclid is another mystery. His wife, the former Abigail Huntington of Tolland, Connecticut, may or may not have been with him when he came. They were married in Tolland in 1788 and that is about all that can be confidently said about her. Multiple sources say she died in Euclid in 1805, but that's very unlikely. That year was only the second of major settlement of the township and she does not appear to have had a connection to the Crafts, Ruples, Cozads or McIlraths who constituted nearly all of the first wave of settlers, nor to the early pioneers John Moss, Joseph Burke, Timothy Doan or David Dille. It's notable that she is a Huntington from Tolland, Connecticut, as the prominent Huntington family which would include an early Ohio governor are from there, but if they were relations they were not close ones. Their 23-year-old daughter Minerva joined her parents in Euclid in 1820. (Why the delay? And where was she in the meantime?) In 1827 she married Benjamin Hamilton in Cuyahoga County, possibly in Euclid itself. (Again, why the delay?) He died in 1844 and she in 1864, and she at least can be found in the Euclid Township Cemetery west of Highland Road along with a couple of their children and their families, but where Benjamin is buried also is hard to find. As the family lived further east in the township, and before the opening of the township cemetery in 1864, it's possible they were buried in a nearby cemetery which was later destroyed, which could explain the difficulty locating their graves, and the missing Farnsworths may be buried beneath the train tracks in the woods behind the old site of Euclid Central Middle School.
*
The Peltons were Doans. Elizabeth Doan Pelton's little brother was Nathaniel, Moses Cleaveland's blacksmith and the founder of Doan's Corners; her big brother Timothy was one of Euclid's first settlers, who homesteaded First Draft Lot 5 on the west line of the township in 1801. Elizabeth Doan and her husband, Jonathan Pelton, came to Euclid from Chatham, Connecticut, in 1812, when she was 51 and he 53.
By the time of their arrival the Bishops had divided the huge 720-acre Morse Tract into four sections. The north section was about 250 acres, which they kept; the center was about 150 acres, which they also kept; the southern section was about 400 acres, with the 75 acres at the western end of that set aside for their Bishop-White relations. The remaining 325 acres of the southeast corner of the old Morse Tract they sold to the Doan-Peltons.
Most if not all of Jonathan and Elizabeth Doan Pelton's children and their spouses followed them to Euclid in the next few years. They may have planned all to come at once, but larger forces—much larger, and soon to be described—got in the way.
*
The History of Morris County, New Jersey:
"About this time [1767] Demas Lindley, Jacob Cook and Luther Axtell—son of Henry the blacksmith—removed to Washington County, Pa. There were many other Mendham families who went then and subsequently to that part of Pennsylvania, and some of these afterward into Ohio. Two of the daughters of Elder Samuel McIlrath were of this emigration. Sarah married an Englishman by the name of Shaw, and Isabella married a Mr. Woodruff of Mendham."
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham notes Sarah McIlrath Shaw's older sister Isabella's arrival in Euclid at age 40, with her husband Nathaniel Woodruff, 37: "...Nathaniel and Harriet Isabelle Woodruff, of Morristown, New Jersey... came to the East End in 1814." They remained the rest of their lives, and are buried together today in East Cleveland.
Which leaves only one McIlrath child left to account for.
Sarah McIlrath Shaw lived almost half a century in Euclid. Among its very first settlers, among the founders of two of its most important and enduring institutions, she ultimately came to be known, both in affection and respect, as Aunt Shaw.
Early in the Revolution, as northern New Jersey became a battlefield awash with young soldiers, one of Sarah and Isabella's sisters became pregnant, and their severe Presbyterian church elder father banished his daughter and his grandchild from their home, telling her, "never again to darken his door." The daughter is never named.
However...
Samuel McIlrath's will, updated in 1797 before his death in 1804, contains this provision: "Daughter Mary, dec’d, (formerly wife of John Hamler), hath therefore received her portion." Samuel's estate, though not nothing, was not terribly substantial, nevertheless he left daughter Mary nothing. But Samuel's oldest child Mary was not deceased by 1797, nor by 1804. Genealogical records say that she would not die until 1825.
The History of Morris County continues its tale of the McIlrath daughter banished with her newborn baby from their family home:
"...she never did ['darken' Samuel's door again], but begging her way westward found a home among the hard working German farmers of Western Pennsylvania, who had no more religion about them than to pity her misfortunes, and by their kindness to heal her broken heart."
There is nothing to be found about contact between this daughter and her new family during the rest of the McIlraths' own extensive time in western Pennsylvania. But there are various mentions to be found in records of a Mary McIlrath, born 1756 in New Jersey, marrying a John Hamler, or Hamles, or Handler, or Hanler, or Hanles. There is nothing at all to be found about this man. But the History of Morris County says that in western Pennsylvania this McIlrath daughter "told her story, was trusted, believed, and loved by a young farmer, who married her and adopted her son." It goes on to say that, "They afterward also moved to Ohio..."
"...when [the banished McIlrath's daughter's] son was a grown man, Aunt Shaw and her sister Isabella Woodruff heard for the first time in twenty years of this sister who had been driven for her sin from their father's door."
"They immediately saddled their horses, rode through an almost unbroken wilderness a journey of nearly a hundred miles and found her."
*
The Plan of Union:
"...a fatal arrow visited the [Euclid] parsonage on the ninth of October, 1812, releasing the toil-worn wife and mother from her service, and leaving the rest in mourning. The account of this bereavement may be best given in Mr. Barr's own words:
"'The second of October my wife was delivered of a son, was well as usual until the third day, after which the puerperal fever commenced, and carried her off on the ninth of the month, her babe being only seven days old.'"
Rev. Barr concludes his testimony with tragic understatement: "'This was to me a sore calamity.'"
The baby survived; he'd live to be 71. By October 1812 the war had begun, and was going badly. His patriotic father named him for the president: James Madison Barr.
The first burial Thomas Barr made in his churchyard was his own wife, Susanna. She was 38. "For the next four years the bereaved father toiled on alone with his motherless children."
During this period of mourning the sparse Congregationalist members of the church all moved on from Euclid and Rev. Barr was able to continue the church solely in the Presbyterian mode, which he considered a victory. Thus the unified Church of Christ in Euclid became simply the First Presbyterian Church.
He initiated the replacement of the log church with a frame one beginning in 1816. That same year he married again, to Ann Emmett Baldwin, "who also proved to be one of the faithful and excellent of the earth." In 1820 Thomas Barr left Euclid to lead another church in Wooster, Ohio. He eventually moved further on to Rushville, Indiana, where he died in 1835.
Barr was replaced in Euclid by Reverend Steven Peet. The third pastor was named Blodgett. Under Blodgett in the 1840s William H. Beecher served the church as Stated Supply, which is a non-ordained clergyman who at times will "supply" the pulpit temporarily when its main minister is unavailable. Beecher served the Euclid church for six years. A year after he left his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, began her work on the best selling novel of the 19th century, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
East Cleveland Township was created in 1847, then expanded the following year, the expansion carrying with it the southwest third and western-most fringes of the original Euclid Township, including the parts containing the First Presbyterian Church of Euclid. Thus it became the First Presbyterian Church of East Cleveland, and it operated as such for 150 years.
A cornerstone for a new stone church was laid in 1893, which stands there still.
With the post-World War II construction of the interstates and the rise of the suburbs, social unrest, and the decline of Greater Cleveland's industry, East Cleveland underwent a dramatic economic and demographic change in the 1960s, and most of the First Presbyterian Church of East Cleveland's old sustaining families either passed or moved away. The church ceased operation in 2010. Its building was purchased by the Christian non-affiliated New Life Cathedral, which now operates from the site.
*
..."there were always young men in [the Shaws'] house whom [Sarah] and her husband were helping to fit for college."
"Three young Indians were once sent from Mackinac to be educated, and 'Aunt Shaw' gave them a home through the summer free of charge. They afterwards became missionaries to their own people."
One month before his passing John Shaw finalized his will. In it he placed the 80 acres he owned on First Draft Lot 3 in trust, to be sold upon his wife's death, with the proceeds used for the establishment of a school in Euclid Township, "that the character of the Institution should be purely literary and scientific, and governed upon principles of Christian morality," and to be called The Shaw Academy. Sarah would be a trustee for life. He died soon after, on July 15, 1835, age 61, and was interred in the Presbyterian churchyard, 3,600 miles from Yorkshire.
Sarah and the other trustees formed a corporation, advertised for students and sold subscriptions to raise funds. "For 30 years it was maintained as a private school," one of the preeminent college preparatory schools in Ohio.
A frame building replaced the log schoolhouse in 1839, "a two story, two room building of wood." In 1849 a new brick structure was begun, when Sarah was 72. "Mrs. Shaw was herself present at the laying of the corner-stone, being carried in a rocking-chair, and she herself placed in the corner-stone a tin box containing many articles which would be of interest to the present generation..." That box has been lost: "...it appears the box and contents could not be found when the building was torn down many years later." An intriguing artifact of early Euclid if it ever turns up.
The new brick academy building was completed in the following spring, an occasion, and a fundraiser.
"The exercises of dedication took place on May 1st, 1850, and were participated in by the entire population of the village. These services were followed by a strawberry festival and fair... All sorts of home-made articles, either for use or ornament, were on sale in the new building while the supper was served in the old house. A very large cake, containing a gold ring, was cut into many pieces and sold, netting about $25.00... This whole undertaking was planned and carried out by the citizens of the village..."
Sarah McIlrath Shaw died just a few months later, with the winter and the new year, on January 9, 1851. She was laid beside her husband and near her mother in the Presbyterian churchyard. On April 1, the Shaw farm went up for sale, eventually netting $5,000 for the school.
In the meantime East Cleveland Township had been created, carrying with it the parts of Euclid Township containing The Shaw Academy. By 1870 the new East Cleveland Township School Board had become entangled in the administration of the school. When East Cleveland incorporated as a village in 1895 the disagreements over its direction became more and more acute. The village sued for control of the school in 1902 and won, the state declaring, "The will of John Shaw will be fulfilled by the maintenance of a public high school of the first class to be known as Shaw High School." That was the end of Shaw Academy.
Another new building was authorized, and the first Shaw High opened in East Cleveland Village in 1906. Additions and improvements followed: a spacious auditorium in 1917, a technical building in 1921, a professional regulation football stadium in 1923, of such quality that it served as the home field for the NFL Cleveland Rams in the 1938 season.
Through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Post-War era, Shaw High was renovated and refurbished several times, with the newest, latest building completed in the early 2000s. With an enrollment of about 700 it stands today on the same lot of the old brick Shaw Academy at 15320 Euclid Avenue, up on the escarpment above the corner of Euclid and Shaw.
*
One figure from the earliest days of Euclid is an apparent outlier. Next to nothing is known about him, but some is, which is more than some others, and from what is known some more can be inferred. He warranted but a single line in Andrew Cozad's 1850s history of East Cleveland manuscript: "In 1803 James Jackson became a resident of the Township, his former residence unknown. He was usually known as Daddy Jack." That's it. But he's already got the best nickname of any of the other Euclid pioneers.
His former residence unknown to Cozad was Maryland. And before that Ireland, where he was born in 1743. It seems logical to infer that he immigrated from Ireland to the American colonies through Maryland. Most of Ireland, the southern part, is traditionally Catholic, and Maryland was founded by Baron Baltimore as a refuge for persecuted British Catholics. Being Irish and coming through Maryland it also seems logical to infer that James Jackson was Catholic, almost certainly Euclid's first. When exactly he came to America is not known, nor what he may have been seeking in the New World, or fleeing in the Old.
In 1777 he was about 34-years-old, not especially young in the late 18th century. In January of that year he signed up for three years' service to fight the British in the Second Maryland Regiment, commanded by Colonel Thomas Price. News of the American victories at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, in late December and early January—those following for the Americans the disastrous summer and fall of 1776 in and around New York—would have just reached them by then. Perhaps a Catholic immigrant from Ireland carried an animosity toward the English with him from Europe and decided after Washington crossed the Delaware that the Americans might actually have a chance.
The Second Maryland recruited from Anne Arundel County, which is still there, and contains the major port of Annapolis, but is also just south of the even more major port of Baltimore, so perhaps it was through Annapolis or Baltimore that Jackson arrived in America, and maybe it was in that area of Maryland that he lived. Or maybe not.
In July 1777 the British commanders who had driven the Americans from Brooklyn and Manhattan the previous year moved a significant portion of their land and sea forces out of New York in order to make an attack on the rebel capital of Philadelphia. In this Washington thought he saw an opportunity to seize a weakened Staten Island and thus command one half of the entrance to the Verrazano Narrows, and perhaps even challenge the British dominance of New York Harbor.
Colonel Price was ordered by his commander, General William Smallwood, Governor of Maryland after the war, to march the Second Maryland north into New Jersey. There Washington placed them under General John Sullivan, who would make the attack on Staten Island. Much of the staging took place in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the Dilles' Eastern home, but they had already gone west to the Pennsylvania frontier the previous year. Sullivan's men began crossing Arthur Kill onto Staten Island in the early hours of August 22, 1777, and they attacked the British positions at dawn. The battle started well for the Americans, but the British counterattacked and drove them back onto the mainland. About 200 Americans were captured; one of them was James Jackson.
He was held a prisoner for eleven months in New York. If it was on the notorious prison hulk HMS Jersey, Jackson didn't say. The next summer he was released in a prisoner exchange and he rejoined his unit, still stationed in northern New Jersey. (That he wasn't near death at his release and even fit enough to resume the vigorous life of military service may be evidence that he was not held aboard the Jersey.) The regiment spent a good deal of time in and around Morris County in the next few years and perhaps this is where and when Jackson first encountered the McIlraths. Or maybe not.
Eventually his commanders sent him back south. At Camden, South Carolina, on August 16, 1780, under General Horatio Gates, the Second Maryland took on Lord Cornwallis and a British regiment composed of Irish-American Loyalists known as the Volunteers of Ireland. Who can say what Jackson's opinion of this enemy unit was? Despite vastly superior numbers Camden was an infamous American rout. The next year however he would get his own back when he participated in the decisive siege which led to Cornwallis's surrender at what Jackson called Little York, more commonly known as Yorktown.
Jackson survived the war, and was discharged with the rank of sergeant. What he did for the next 20 years isn't known. Did he go back to Maryland? New Jersey? What he did isn't known. In 1803 he became one of the first settlers of Euclid Township in Ohio. He was about 59, very old to do such a thing. Most of what he did for the next 20 years in Euclid isn't known either.
James Jackson swore out two depositions of his service in the Revolution, one in 1818 and one in 1820.
"Township of Euclid, County of Cuyahoga, State of Ohio... personally appeared James Jackson, age seventy-five years, resident in the town county and state aforesaid... The same James Jackson enlisted in the state of Maryland in a company commanded by Capt. Eli Dorsey in the Second Maryland Regiment commanded by Col. Thomas Price and in the Maryland Line."
In Jackson's own (transcribed) words:
"I enlisted on the twenty-ninth day of January, seventeen hundred and seventy-seven, and continued to serve in the said corps until I was made a prisoner on Staten Island in the expedition of General Sullivan, and remained a prisoner eleven months. After, I was exchanged + joined my Reg't in New Jersey and continued with the Reg't until the Battle of Camden, when our company was so cut to pieces that I was afterwards transferred to a light infantry company commanded by Capt. Francis Nevile in Col. Stewart's regiment, and served in that corps until the return of peace..."
"I enlisted as a soldier under Ensign Wheeler in the year 1777 in Maryland for three years. I was in the action on Staten Island under the command of General Smallwood. I was a prisoner at New York for eleven months. After my three years service expired I again enlisted during the war under Capt. Benjamin Price. During the war I was at the Battle of Camden, and at the siege of Little York..."
He goes on to describe his situation by then in Euclid. It is quite modest, and seems something of a hard life.
"I have a deed of ten acres of land, seven under improvement, but the title is in dispute, and it is supposed I shall be obliged to give up the land. I paid twenty dollars for the land. I have one hog. I have notes that will amount to thirty dollars which I have procured by lending my pension money which I have drawn from the United States. I am not much in debt, the whole of which does not exceed five dollars. My occupation by trade is a butcher. I am unable to do any thing at it [by] reason of age and infirmity. I have no family nor never had any. —James Jackson"
Sargeant Jackson got his pension, eight dollars a month. But he didn't draw for long. He died in Euclid in 1822.
There would not be a Catholic institution in the township for another 40 years, so if Jackson wanted Catholic rites it's very doubtful he got them. With no family who his mourners may have been is hard to say, though there were several Revolutionary War veterans around who would have appreciated his service, and his pension application was attested by Elias Lee. Despite being mentioned in the East Cleveland township history it seems likely from his resting place that he lived in the central or eastern part of Euclid, and probably along the main road, as most of the earliest settlers did, and was first buried in the burial ground of the Baptist church on the east bank of Euclid Creek which began accepting burials in 1820. Many of the graves from that yard were later moved to the new township cemetery when it opened in 1864. There Daddy Jack, James Jackson, "Serg, MD, Continental Line, Rev War, 1743 1822," will be found today.
*
Some of the Euclid pioneers continued on further west, some after burying a spouse or one or more children in Euclid. Mattox, Bunnell and Norris all moved on. Timothy and Eunice Jones Eddy went to Michigan. After David Hendershot died in 1820 and was buried in Euclid, Sarah Ann Thomas Hendershot went to live with their son in Wingett Run, Ohio. Thomas McIlrath of the "five young men" tried. "He continued in Euclid some 15 years and sold out and moved to Maumee where he lost most all of his property, after which he returned and spent the remnant of his life in Euclid. His remains lay in the Presbyterian Cemetery, on that lot he first took up and began on."
Some of the old people who had come to be cared for by their children were buried there: the McIlrath matriarch, Isabella Aikman, in 1814; Lawrence Craft in 1820, his wife Elizabeth Mary Lymes in 1829.
After Joseph Burke left for Columbia, "William Coleman was made the first postmaster in the township, as early as 1815. In 1817 or '18 he built the first gristmill [sic] in the township on Euclid Creek, and afterwards a sawmill [sic]." To clarify this wording: Coleman's was the first mill built on Euclid Creek down on the lake plain, actually the third mill in the township. Recall that the first mill in Euclid Township was Caleb Eddy's grist mill in the western Heights on the west branch of Dugway Brook almost ten years earlier, and the second was Abram Bishop's saw mill in the eastern Heights on the east branch of Euclid Creek the year after Eddy's first. But a mill down on the lake plain would have been a very important new piece of infrastructure for the township. The millstone which today marks Euclid Heritage Park in the crook of the two branches of Chardon Road at Euclid Avenue in Euclid is purported to be a remnant of that Coleman mill.
William and Jamima Craft Coleman had another child late, a daughter, Pamelia, born in 1820. This was the beginning of an eventful and ultimately sad several years for the family as their aunt, Deborah, Jacob's wife, died in 1821, then their young daughter, Rebecca, who had come with them to Euclid as a child, died at the age of just 21 in 1822.
Coleman's neighbor and uncle Jacob passed in 1835, and news of his father's death down on the Ohio River in Belmont County came in 1839.
Jamima and her son John both died in 1853, which must have been a horrible year in the Coleman household. William himself died in 1861.
"...[the Colemans] made [Euclid] their residence for a long time. And the remains of the old people are deposited in the Cemetery of the Baptist Church; their Children some ten or twelve, are Scattered through the Western world."
Telling the end of the tale of the Colemans will require some jumping ahead a little in the story of Euclid Township, and more will be said about the Baptist church and its cemetery shortly. But for the sake of this narrative know that in 1820 The First Regular Baptist Church of Jesus Christ in Euclid was founded adjacent to the Coleman lands just north of the main road on the east bank of Euclid Creek, with an associated burial ground nearby. The graveyard sat unluckily in what later became the path of the New York, Chicago & Saint Louis Railroad, which cut through Euclid Township in 1881, and the burials there were moved to the nearby Township Cemetery, which had been established in 1864 on the south side of Euclid Avenue just west of Highland Road, where it remains today, 20239 Concordia Street in Euclid. There William Coleman, his wife Jamima Craft, their son John who came to Euclid as a baby, Coleman's uncle Jacob and his wife Deborah Herron, their daughters Pamelia and Rebecca who died young, and their husbands, can all be found today. David Dille is there too, Euclid's empresario, with many of his children and grandchildren.
East Cleveland Township, which took a chunk off of Euclid in 1848, got a cemetery in 1859, now at 1621 East 118th Street in Cleveland. Several of the Euclid pioneers are there: the Doans, their son Timothy, Jr. and his wife Polly Pritchard come back from Columbia, Asa Dille, Elias Lee, Samuel and Rebecca Craft Ruple, Benjamin and Nancy Horton Jones.
But the real gem is the old Presbyterian churchyard on the grounds of the New Life Cathedral, 16200 Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland, with so many McIlraths that it is sometimes referred to simply as the McIlrath Cemetery. Three of the "five young men" of August 1803 are there: John Shaw, Thomas Mcllrath, John Ruple, and their wives, and Euclid's matriarch Isabella. There are Lawrence and Mary Lymes Craft, plus the Eddys, Lydia Mattox, Andrew and Abigail Cozad McIlrath, Elizabeth Craft Ruple, the unlucky Thomas Thomas. There is Isabella McIlrath Woodruff and her husband Nathaniel, the stoic and patient Susannah Welch Barr, the formidable Sarah McIlrath Shaw.
*
In the early morning hours of December 16, 1811, the first of four—possibly five—magnitude 8-plus earthquakes rolled out across the North American continent from the prairies along the Mississippi River, near the Kentucky/Tennessee border close to the frontier town of New Madrid in what's now Missouri. A second large shock, and possibly a third, followed the first on the same day, then another on January 23, 1812. The final large and most devastating of the series occurred nearly two months later, on February 7, 1812, with aftershocks continuing for five years. These quakes were ten times larger than the 1906 earthquake which leveled San Francisco, and the geology of the eastern half of the continent spread their effects over a vastly larger area than the Pacific rim earthquakes more commonly thought of in the U.S. today. The 1811-1812 quakes were felt on the Gulf Coast and north into Quebec. They rang church bells in Boston and caused damage to masonry buildings as far away as Charleston, South Carolina. Huge waves swept down the Mississippi River, inundating boats and throwing others onto shore. River islands disappeared and the Mississippi changed course in places. Fertile farmlands turned to swamp, prompting Congress to pass the first disaster relief bill in U.S. history. The death toll, though unknown, was probably low, owing to the sparse numbers of people inhabiting the Mississippi Valley at the time, and the flexible ersatz construction of pioneer and traditional Native homes. In Cleaveland Village, Seth Doan wrote in his journal, "The shock of an earthquake was felt here in the winter of 1811-12, at the time of the great earthquake on the Mississippi." Nineteen major earthquakes have struck Northeast Ohio since 1836. Fault lines to the west and south have been discovered in the course of oil and gas exploration. Tens of millions of people live in the North American heartland today, and the probability of a quake approaching the severity of those of 1811-1812 occurring in the region by 2050 nears 100 percent. Euclid will feel the earth move again.
But the rumblings from distant New Madrid provided little more than an interesting tale for the denizens of Euclid in 1812. The township possessed many more proximate ways to kill them.
"[John Ruple's] oldest child, a daughter of 7 or 8 years, while playing with the other children in the chopping was instantly killed by a log rolling over her..." This was Sarah, age nine.
"Thomas Thomas lived some five or six years and he got drowned in the Mouth of the Cuyahoga by the upsetting of a boat, having a wife and four small children..."
"[Mrs. Elias Lee, Mary Bryan] was often heard to say that she hoped when the Lord took one home he would take the other, too. And her wish was realized, for she survived her husband but one day, both dying of typhoid pneumonia, and were buried in the same grave."
Along with illness and accident and the bearing of children, there yet lingered the specter of hunger, plus rattlesnakes, wolves, bears, panthers, wild boars.
And there still were undefeated Indians, like those whom David Dille had witnessed torture Col. Crawford for hours before finally burning him alive.
And the British, who'd let both Timothy Doan's and Jacob Coleman's brothers starve and rot and die in the bowels of the Jersey.
Those last lurked—loomed—just beyond the horizon.
The information in Chapter Thirteen is drawn from the following sources:
"Copy of Old Manuscript found in one of the Families of Phoebe McIlrath Condit's Family and Written when she was about 90 Years of Age." Found in "History of the Earliest Church on the Western Reserve, organized in 1807, First Presbyterian Church of East Cleveland, Articles by Mrs. Condit and Mary Doan Taylor." Call # Pam T 175, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"History of Euclid." MSS 1, Container 69, Folder 161, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Atwater, Amzi. "Journal of Amzi Atwater, April 13 to December 1, 1796." MS 735. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Badger, Joseph. A Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger, Containing an Autobiography and Selections from his Private Journal and Correspondence. Sawyer, Ingersoll and Co. 1851.
Clark, James S., regarding Cleveland's first settlers, Series V: writings Sub series b: Cleveland Roll 5, Folder 149. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Cozad, Andrew. "East Cleveland, Account of its history by Andrew Cozad, undated." Series V: Writings, Subseries C: Other Towns, Roll 5, Folder 160, Cabinet 54, Drawer 2. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Osborne, C. "The Ruple Family." WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Gray Kuekes, Clara. Letter, June 25, 1963. "Gray, William" file, Euclid Historical Society, Euclid, Ohio.
Avery, Elroy McKendree. A History of Cleveland and Its Environs: The Heart of New Connecticut. Lewis Publishing Company, 1918.
Caldwell, J.A. History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio. The Historical Publishing Company, 1880.
Cartwright, Peter. Autobiography of Peter Cartwright. Abingdon Press, 1956.
Crafts, James Monroe. Crafts Family: A Genealogical and Biographical History of the Descendants of Griffin and Alice Craft, of Roxbury, Mass. 1630-1890. Gazette Printing Co., 1893.
Cranmer, Gibson L., et al. History of the Upper Ohio Valley, with family history and biographical sketches. A statement of its resources, industrial growth and commercial advantages. Brant & Fuller, 1890.
Crumrine, Boyd, ed. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men. L. H. Everts & Co., 1882.
Eddy, Richard. Universalism in America, A History. Universalist Publishing House, 1886.
Halsey, Edmund Drake. History of Morris County, New Jersey : with illustrations and biographical sketches of prominent citizens and pioneers. W.W. Munsell & Co., 1882.
Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the frontier rebels who challenged America's newfound sovereignty. Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Johnson, Crisfield. History of Cuyahoga County Ohio. D. W. Ensign & Co., 1879.
Kennedy, William S. The Plan of Union: or, A History of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the Western Reserve; with Biographical Sketches of the Early Missionaries. Pentagon Steam Press, 1856.
Ludlow, Rev. and Mrs. Arthur Clyde. History of Cleveland Presbyterianism. W.M. Bayne Printing Co., 1896.
McKelvey, A.T. Centennial History of Belmont County, Ohio. Biographical Publishing Company, 1908.
Rice, Harvey. Pioneers of the Western Reserve. C. T. Dillingham, 1883.
Sarjent, A.M. The New Hymn Book for the Use of the Free Church. John C. Totten, 1811.
Smith, J.H. Shaw Academy and East Cleveland High School. Hiles & Coggshall, 1898.
Wagner, Ann Louise. Adversaries of Dance: From the Puritans to the Present. University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Washington, George. Washington and the West: Being George Washington's Diary of September, 1784, Kept During His Journey Into the Ohio Basin in the Interest of a Commercial Union Between the Great Lakes and the Potomac River. Edited by Archer Butler Hulbert. The Century Co., 1905.
Whittlesey, Charles. Early History of Cleveland, Ohio. Fairbanks, Benedict and Co., 1867.
Wickham, Gertrude Van Rensselaer. Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve. The Woman's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission, 1896.
Williams, W.W. History of Lorain County Ohio, with Illustrations & Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Williams Brothers, 1879.
Achenbach, Joel. "George Washington's Western Adventure." Washington Post online. June 6, 2004. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/2004/06/06/george-washingtons-western-adventure/16ad5da5-388c-481e-8cca-4ef6899a8b92
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. "George Washington, Covenanter squatters Historical Marker." Explore PA History website. https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-28F
Hansen, Michael. “January 1986 Northeaster Ohio Earthquake. (from Summer 1986 Ohio Geology)” Ohio Department of Natural Resources website. http://www.ohiodnr.com/geosurvey/gen/seismic/sum86.htm.January 1986 Northeastern Ohio Earthquake
Nuttli, Otto W. "The Mississippi Valley Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812." United States Geological Survey website. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/states/missouri/1811html
Maps:
Blackmore, Harris H. "Map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio: Collected from the most accurate surveys from the first settlement to the present period." Stoddart & Everett, 1852.
Hopkins, G.M. Map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. S.H. Matthews, 1858.
Expert Consultation:
Ray Swick, Historian, West Virginia State Parks, regarding Abel Sarjent and the Halcyon Church.
Revolutionary War pension applications accessed via the Fold3 Database:
Leonard Coleman, Belmont County, Ohio, application W9810
Jacob Coleman, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, application S42140
Andrew McIlrath, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, application W25686
James Jackson, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, application S41690
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History website:
case.edu/ech
Cleveland Historical website:
clevelandhistorical.org
Genealogy websites:
ancestry.com
findagrave.com