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Chapter Sixteen:

Farmers, Merchants, Artisans

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"...[D]uring the [W]ar [of 1812]," Crisfield Johnson remembers, "the work of planting and clearing [in Euclid Township] went on much as usual, though emigration nearly ceased."

          Who wants to homestead only to be dispossessed by the British? Or killed by Indians?

 

*

 

"Notwithstanding the war," Johnson later clarifies, "occasional emigrants came in."

 

"Benjamin Day bought three hundred acres just west of the site of Nottingham, landing with his family the day before Perry's victory... [D]ense forests... then covered that part of the township... [and t]here was only a path designated by marked trees... [N]early all the settlers were on the main road... or else down near the lake shore [sic]."

 

More on Nottingham in due time. Day came from Morris County, New Jersey, the McIlraths' Eastern home, suggesting some kind of connection to early Euclid's preeminent clan. His wife, Nancy Andrews, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, another McIlrath and Euclid connection. Blackmore's 1852 map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, shows them on 273 acres of the lake plain, on what is now St. Clair Avenue around East 170th Street in Cleveland. This is on the eastern end of the Collinwood Railyards. The forests described are gone.

          After referencing the year 1814 and "what is now Euclid Village," which at the time of his writing in 1874 meant the settlement at Euclid Creek at Euclid Avenue and Chardon Road, Crisfield Johnson wrote, "Shortly afterward, Paul P. Condit opened a tavern in a frame house on the main road, half a mile west of the locality last named. This was probably the first tavern kept in a framed house in the township."

          Paul Pierson Condit was the son of Zenas and Hannah Pierson Condit, from the McIlraths' Morris County, New Jersey, which also probably goes some way toward explaining how he found his way to Euclid. His life's story is mostly obscure, but it is recorded that he was a shoemaker, and a bachelor around age 30 when he came to Euclid, perhaps as early as 1814 or 1815. He was definitely in Cuyahoga County by January 1816 when he married Phoebe McIlrath, the 18-year-old daughter of Andrew and Abigail Cozad McIlrath, and niece of Thomas McIlrath of the "five young men" of August 1803. Johnson's description would put the Condit tavern somewhere around today's intersection of Euclid Avenue and Green Road, on the border between Euclid and Cleveland. The 1852 Blackmore map shows "P.P. Condit" there on 82 acres which had been the northeastern section of the plot David Dille established on the west bank of Euclid Creek in 1803. Paul Condit often served as a township trustee, beginning in 1818.

          He had a pal with him when he came, an "old friend and chum," 26-year-old Enoch Meeker. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham counted Enoch and his brothers among the early settlers of Cleaveland and so felt that they belonged in her 1914 volume The Pioneer Families of Cleveland.

 

"The Meeker brothers, Enoch, Smith, and Stephen, did not live within the limits of early Cleveland, but as their pioneer homes have long been a part of the present city and their children intermarried with old Cleveland families, the history and genealogy of the Meekers rightfully belongs in this work."

 

"Enoch Meeker was a shoemaker, and he came to Ohio about 1816 with Paul Condit, also a shoemaker, from Elizabeth, N.J. He purchased 15 acres of land on Euclid Road, now Euclid Avenue. Noble Road was laid out years afterward, to the west of his property, leaving the homestead on the south-east corner."

 

"He discovered later that he had paid the highest price asked for land in that locality, also that he had undertaken more than he could accomplish if he remained on the property. He could secure little work at his trade to help out in his payments, due each in following years, so he concluded not to work the land at present, but go where the country was more thickly settled, and where there was more demand for boots and shoes, then made stoutly and by hand."

 

"He chose Painesville and its vicinity for this field of endeavor, a lucky one he ever afterward considered it, for there he met Susanna Hulburt, who was then teaching school in Mentor. Previously she had taught in Painesville, and was a member of the household of Governor Huntington while doing so. She was born in Northampton, Mass..."

 

"Mr. and Mrs. Enoch Meeker were married by Judge Peter Hitchcock in 1816. They continued their residence in Painesville until after the birth of their first child [Nathan Cook Meeker, b. 1817] when Mr. Meeker concluded that he could pay the indebtedness upon his East Cleveland [then Euclid Township] property and returned to live upon it."

 

"His old friend and chum Paul Condit was keeping a tavern in order to help pay for his own land, and this influenced Enoch Meeker to try the same thing on a smaller scale. He built a large and substantial frame-house, still standing on the corner of Euclid Avenue and Noble Road..."

 

"Mrs. Meeker, although making no outward objection to the tavern scheme, felt certain that neither her husband nor herself was fitted for the work."

 

"It was the custom of the day to name a tavern and place it as a sign over the door. Mrs. Meeker laughingly suggested that they choose a horn for their emblem, and place the sign with the small end of the horn pointing toward the house."

 

"The retail sale of liquor in that day was considered perfectly legitimate. No stigma was attached to the man who dealt it out over the counter of his grocery store or his tavern bar. The latter was considered a necessary adjunct of every country tavern. After a long, cold drive a hot drink proved most grateful to the weary traveler accustomed to the use of stimulants, and no tavern would receive patronage that failed to have whiskey on tap. Travelers in some years were scarce, and many of the eastern families on their way to Ohio came fully equipped for camping out all the length of their journey, and taverns reaped no benefit from the emigration. Landlords became more and more dependent upon local patronage of their bar-rooms, until their taverns became, at last, little more than saloons."

 

"Mrs. Meeker was a very intelligent woman and anxious for the mental and spiritual development of her children. She did not wish her boys to be raised in a bar-room, and so the tavern project was abandoned. Mr. Meeker heeded to the advice of his good wife and remained a farmer and a shoemaker."

 

"Mrs. Meeker was also very ambitious for her sons. She wanted them to be school teachers, as well as farmers..."

 

"...[Mrs. Meeker] prevailed upon Clinton, [her] third [son], to apply for a school at the 'North Woods,' 4 miles away on the lake shore [sic], afterward known as 'Frizzelle's.' Mr. Frizzelle lived in a log-house and was a school director of the district. Clinton Meeker taught there three months, walking two miles each way to his boarding place..."

 

"Nathan Meeker, the oldest son of Enoch, was a very intelligent, ambitious man. He drifted to New York where he became an editorial writer on the New York Tribune. Horace Greeley, the famous editor of that newspaper, wished to found a western colony, and Nathan Meeker invested his all in the project, and was appointed one of a committee to choose the location for the proposed colony. A tract of land in Colorado was selected, and a town laid out to which the name of Greeley was given. Seventy families removed at once to the spot. Dissension arose with Evans, a town four miles distant, and in the heated controversy, Mr. Nathan Meeker was murdered. It made a great sensation all over the country, and every detail of the affair was dwelt upon by the press of that day. His photograph hangs in the old homestead on Euclid Avenue, and his two remaining brothers speak of him in terms of great admiration and affection."

 

"Enoch Meeker built or gave a home to each of his sons. That of Nathan's stands back of the homestead and on Noble Road, and is occupied by Rufus Clinton Meeker, or 'Clinton' as he is called. He never married, and now, 1911, is 87 years old. Samuel C. Meeker, 81 years of age, still youthful and active for his age, resides in the home his parents built 93 years ago. The aged brothers have become strong Spiritualists and firm in the belief of another life beyond this one. Both dwell much upon the anticipation of again meeting their mother, whose memory to them is most precious."

 

          Back east in New Jersey, Paul Condit's sister, Rhoda, married William Upson in 1818. They had three children through 1823, then Rhoda died in the spring of 1824, aged just 29. Her death surely must have factored into her widowed husband's decision to join his McIlrath relations out west in Ohio shortly afterward. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham says William Upson came to Euclid in 1825, but records show the marriage to second wife, Phoebe Carey, 30, in Morris County, New Jersey, in 1826. Either way it was about then that they arrived in Euclid, 1825 or 1826, Upson around age 31, give or take, and the 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "W. Upson" on 37 acres in the southeast corner of Tract 19, near the east end of what is now the City of Euclid, north of Euclid Avenue. A road along the border between Tracts 19 and 20 on the east line of the Upson property from the main road north to the lakeshore dates to at least the mid-1850s and this would come to be known as Upson Road. William's name is gone from the plot by 1858 when Hopkins shows it owned by "H. McIlrath," and it was some time in the mid-1850s that William Upson left Euclid for Michigan. There can be inferred some drama in the household, as Phoebe Carey did not go with William Upson in the 1850s to Michigan, nor did she die, not until 1867, and in Ohio. William Upson eventually died in Georgia, which is completely outside every other pattern for the early settlers of Euclid, so who knows what was going on with William?

          In 1906, when Euclid, Ohio, renamed their north-south-running roads to come into line with Cleveland's new street numbering system, Upson Road became East 260th Street.

 

*

 

"In 1814 Jonathan Pelton purchased Abraham Bishop's farm and sawmill [up in the eastern Heights] on [the east branch of] Euclid Creek... and made his residence there..."

 

          The Peltons, as has been noted, were Doans.

          Nathaniel and Timothy Doan's sister, Elizabeth, granddaughter of Seth, Sr. and Mercy Parker Doan, and her husband, Jonathan Pelton, had arrived in Euclid Township in 1812, and during the war they bought out the land and improvements made in southeast corner of the old Morse Tract from the Bishops. Ignorant of Tambora exploding on the other side of the world and what that would bring to northern Ohio the following year, the Doan-Pelton children began to arrive at the war's end, beginning with their oldest son.

          Parker Pelton came to Euclid in 1815, when his name appears on the list of the township voters roll as recorded by Crisfield Johnson. From Chatham, Connecticut, he would have been about 26 that year, and his wife, the former Laura Warner, about 20. They did not stay in Euclid, but moved on to Montville, now in Medina County, by 1820.

          Parker's brother, Joseph Pelton, also appears on the 1815 Euclid voters list, although Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham records, "Obedience D. Russell from Windsor, Conn., married Joseph Pelton and settled here [Euclid Township], 1818." They stayed. Daughter Beulah married Dennis Cooper in 1810 in Connecticut. They too had come west to Euclid by 1815.

          Jonathan and Elizabeth Doan Pelton's next son, Seth Doane Pelton, and his wife, Mary Porter, came to Euclid in 1818 when he was 23 and she 18. Mary's older sister, Harriet, 19, and her husband, 27-year-old Ruel House of Glastonbury, Connecticut, also came in 1818. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "R. House" on and above Euclid Avenue just west of Babbitt Road. Lucy Pelton, 24—who was not a Doan-Pelton sibling but rather a cousin—also arrived in 1818. She was married to 22-year-old William Treat (sometimes recorded as Trist), also of Glastonbury. In September 1821 in Euclid Lucy gave birth to their second child, Sanford Strong Treat, and two weeks later Sanford's two-year-old brother, Clinton, died. Then Lucy herself died two weeks after that. Sanford survived, but would die at age 10 in 1831. Eight months after Lucy's death the following summer Treat married Lucy's cousin, Sarah "Sally" Pelton, daughter of Jonathan and Elizabeth Doan Pelton and the sister of Parker, Joseph and Seth Doane Pelton. They lived above the main road near what is now East 222nd Street in present-day Euclid.

          The oldest Doan-Pelton daughter joined her parents and siblings in Euclid Township in 1821. "Mrs. John Wilcox [Elizabeth Pelton] with her husband and two small children, from Haddam, Conn. ..." This was the same Wilcox who bought out John and Deborah Thorpe Adams' original homestead near Euclid Creek, around what is now East 200th and St. Clair, permitting the Adamses to relocate to the northwest corner of Euclid Township and give their name to the Adams Street which was later renamed East 140th. Youngest Doan-Pelton daughter, Mercy Parker Pelton, came to Euclid Township at some point as well, sometime before 1820, where she died that year on October 2, at age 18.

          Anna Pelton was another not a Doan-Pelton sibling, but probably a cousin, though not a sister of cousin Lucy Pelton either. At the age of 28 she came to Euclid with her husband, Robert Aiken, or Akins, 26. They too settled in the eastern Heights, on the Chardon Road above what is now the East 240s. They had two children, sons Asahel and John, and Anna was an excellent frontier woman and mother, as reported by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham:

 

"Robert Aiken and wife [Anna Pelton], from Chatham, Conn., settled on Euclid Ridge, 1824. They had only been married three years when the young husband was attacked with inflammatory rheumatism and was never able to do a day's work on his new, uncleared farm. His brave little wife took in sewing and weaving to pay men for clearing the farm. Once, when the sheep were shorn, four of the flock were missing, and later when they came in there was no one to shear them. This plucky woman took the shears and clipped the heavy fleeces. This wool she carded, spun, and knitted into mittens and socks, and sold them in Cleveland [sic], in exchange for groceries and other necessaries for those at home, whose lives were dearer than her own."

 

*

 

Elihu and Betsey Robbins Richmond came to Euclid Township from the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts in 1815. Ages 45 and 43 respectively, they belonged to no established clan of the township, and broke ground in a section as of yet, in the nearly 20 years since the first conception of Euclid, not previously developed. Breaking this new ground, and the fact that the new family was independent of those already constituting the vast, vast majority of the existing population of the township—the Connecticut Doans and the New Jersey/Pennsylvania McIlraths—the Richmond clan and the section they settled came to be thought of as a unique entity in Euclid, and so became uniquely associated with them.

          The Robbins-Richmonds—and their siblings, children, cousins and in-laws—settled south of the Doan-Peltons and off the Morse Tract, in the area of the eastern Heights around the four corners of First Draft Lots 33 and 34, and Second Draft Lots 74 and 75, where two of the ancient paths shown on the 1802 Case Family Papers prehistoric trails map crossed one another, what is now the intersection of Highland and Richmond Roads, in what is now the civic center of Richmond Heights. What exactly brought the family to Euclid is yet obscure, although as to the Heights, parcels down on the main road were well accounted for by then and that location with its promising crossroads likely seemed propitious.

          With Elihu and Betsey that same year came Elihu's little brother, William Wood Richmond (they were the sons of Rev. Edmond and Abigail Wood Richmond), 31, and his wife, Betsey Sampson, or Lawson, age 29. Appearing as "Richards" on the 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County, but corrected by Hopkins by 1858, one finds plots ascribed to Elihu and Betsey's sons Seth, Levi and Edmond, as well as to brothers Philander and James Ferguson Richmond, sons of Elihu and William's brother, Abner, and his wife, Rachel Ferguson. Other parcels in the south end of what is now Richmond Heights appear on the mid-19th century maps of the township in the names of Betsey Robbins Richmond's cousin, Samuel Robbins, and his sons, William, Alonzo and Sidney.

          Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, writing in 1896:

 

"Elihu Richmond and wife [Betsey Robbins] [came to Euclid] from Middlefield, Mass, 1815..."

 

"[They] lived with the family of Mr. Charles White while their own log house was being built..."

 

"Their fireplace was out of doors that summer, and when it rained coals were taken into the house in a kettle. A blanket at their door was their only protection for a time from the denizens of the forest, whose howling and growling ofttimes made night hideous. The building of their log house was the foundation of what is still known as the 'Richmond Settlement.'"

 

*

 

Twenty-year-old Rebecca Merchant came to Euclid toting her 13-year-old brother, Ira, sometime around 1816. About two years later they were joined by their older brother, Ahaz, then about 24, and his wife, the former Catherine Stewart, 22. The Merchants originally were from Connecticut, but Ahaz ended up making enough of a mark in Cuyahoga County to warrant an entry in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, which records that he "was raised near Morristown, N.J.," which, if that datum can be extended over the rest of the Merchant family, would connect them to the McIlrath clan and explain how they found their way to Euclid.

          The course of Ira Merchant's life is difficult to trace. He married, to a woman whom records can identify only as "Maria H.," and died in Cleveland only in his 50s, early even for his time.

          Rebecca married too, probably in Cuyahoga County and probably around 1819, to Robert Young, Jr., 29, himself originally from the McIlraths' Mendham, New Jersey. If they were engaged in the East before their emigration or met and chose to marry in Ohio can't be said. They had their first child in Euclid in 1820 and named him Napoleon Bonaparte. This was five years after the more famous Napoleon Bonaparte's decisive defeat at Waterloo, so perhaps the Merchant-Youngs were not convinced the good guys had won. Robert Young died young, in 1825, age just 35, leaving Rebecca a widow with two small children. The following year she married again, to John Welch, late of Cleveland but originally from Dutchess County, New York, in the Hudson Valley north of Manhattan. This marriage brought another noted name into the annals of early Euclid.

          Welch had an older brother, Benjamin, a veteran of the War of 1812, who with his young wife, Sophronia—or Sophorina, or Sophia—Wilson, had spent several years as an Indian agent in the post-war northern wilds around Mackinaw, Michigan. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's Pioneer Families of Cleveland records: "Mr. [Benjamin] Welch bought [a] farm on the corner of Euclid Avenue that now intersects with the east end of Superior Street. It ran back and up Euclid Heights. Here they remained until after two of their children were born. He then sold the farm and removed to Collinwood..." From Euclid Avenue Superior today runs up the Portage Escarpment through the boundary between Lake View Cemetery and Forest Hill Park in East Cleveland, right on the original west line of Euclid Township. The two children whose births marked their move to the area of Euclid Township which only years later became known as Collinwood were twins, born in 1833.

          Ahaz Merchant, as has been mentioned, arrived in Euclid sometime around 1818. With him, as has been mentioned,  was his wife, 22-year-old Catherine Stewart, of Morristown, New Jersey—another McIlrath neighbor—where they had married in the spring of 1816 before coming west. Crisfield Johnson lists Ahaz among the Euclid Township trustees for 1822. In 1828 Ahaz and Catherine Stewart Merchant were living in the northwest section of Euclid Township, also on St. Clair Avenue in what later became Collinwood.

          Ahaz arrived in Euclid trained—self-trained reputedly—in surveying and civil engineering. He, as has been mentioned, left a mark. That was with his said survey and engineering skills, first as Cuyahoga County Surveyor from 1833 to 1835, then Cleveland's first City Surveyor and Commissioner of Streets from 1834 to 1836, then County Surveyor again from 1845 to 1850. If these most practical public works positions don't at first sound terribly interesting reflect that Ahaz Merchant's tenure in them coincided with the moment of Cleveland's first period of sustained sometimes explosive growth.

          As Surveyor and Commissioner in the 1830s he conducted a thorough re-survey of Cleveland's 1796 frontier street plan and laid out the beds of many of the modern roads which exist in Downtown Cleveland today, a project which also included adding a brand new one, now called Prospect Avenue. In 1835 he opened a railroad with cars drawn by horses running on wooden rails from Public Square along Euclid Avenue out to Doan's Corners, then later extended it to the west end of Euclid Township. (This conveniently linked his personal holdings and those of his relations and in-laws to the commercial center of the region: public service has its perquisites.) He penned one of the first highly detailed maps of what is now Downtown Cleveland, "Map of Cleveland and its Environs, Surveyed and Published by Ahaz Merchant, October 1835," an expression both practical and beautiful, which today is treasured by historians and collectors alike. The energetic Merchant was also active in the Ohio State Militia, rising in it to the rank of general in the peacetime years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

          Euclid's Ahaz Merchant in his official roles was responsible for opening much of Ohio City and the Near West Side to commercial and residential development. The city honored its most significant single civil engineer by naming a road for him there which today runs along the eastern edge of Lincoln Park in Tremont.

          In 1906, when Cleveland renamed their north-south-running roads, Merchant Street became West 11th.

 

*

 

If anyone, very few settlers came to Euclid in 1816. Depending how one reads the sources, it's possible that no one, save the hapless Crosiers who surely did, came to Euclid that year. Farmers literally live and die by the weather. The weather went mad in 1816, and die the Crosiers nearly did.

          No qualified reading is needed to show that no one at all came in 1817.

          What was happening with the climate would certainly have been baffling. Not to say terrifying.

          After their year or more pause settlements resumed in Euclid in 1818. And the world had not yet run out of McIlraths.

          Benjamin Pitney Beers was from the McIlraths' Morris County, New Jersey. There in 1808 he married Nancy McIlrath, daughter of Alexander, eldest son of Samuel and Isabella Aikman who inherited the family estate and never left New Jersey. Ten years later, both age 30, they emigrated to join so many of their family already in Euclid Township, Ohio. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "B. Beers" on the west branch of Dugway Brook near the west line of the township. Beersford Avenue just at the East Cleveland City Hall today marks a ford over the brook there associated with him.

          James Hendershot was also McIlrath clan, the son of David Hendershot and Sarah Ann Thomas who came in to Euclid in 1805, a grandson of Thomas McIllrath of the "five young men" of August 1803. From Green County, Pennsylvania, originally part of the larger Washington County, from where so many of the earliest Euclid settlers hailed, James was 22 when he came to Euclid in 1818. His bride, Adria Holmes, originally from Massachusetts, was 18. Just like James' parents, it's hard to say where in the township they settled. One son they named for James Madison, and at some point in his tenure in Euclid, according to Crisfield Johnson, James was involved in a stone quarrying operation on Euclid Creek.

          Myndert (or Myndret, or Mandrit, or Myndrat) Jacobuse Wemple was a 22-year-old bachelor in 1818 when he came to Euclid from Schenectady, New York, where his family had been among that town's founders. In 1820 he married 17-year-old Keziah Norris, daughter of Caroline McIlrath, a niece of Thomas McIlrath of the "five young men" of 1803, and her husband, Abraham L. Norris, who had come in 1807 as part of the McIlrath wave of early migration. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "M. Wemple" with two plots totaling 59 acres on the south side of St. Clair Avenue, on and west of Nine Mile Creek and what is now Ivanhoe Road, in the heart of Collinwood. He worked as a blacksmith, and kept a shop in the original Euclid Village, later called Collamer, even later and now East Cleveland.

          Unique among the early settlers of Euclid there exists for the Wemples a fascinating window into their lives, one which also provides a glimpse into the life and character of the late early period of the settlement of the township. It comes in the form of a memoir written by their former foster-daughter. In the late 1830s Myndert and Keziah Norris Wemple adopted a girl of about ten from a troubled and shattered family from Pickaway, Ohio, then living in Cleveland named Sarah Marie Parquet. Despite what appear to be sincere efforts on the Wemples' part, Sarah would grow into an often chaotic adulthood, culminating, according to the State of Ohio, in her graduation to a serial poisoner, and the murder of her brother just back from the Mexican War. After 19 years in the women's wing of the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, in 1887, one year before her death, she published her version of events, The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor for Sixty Years: Convicted of Murdering Her Brother, Sentenced to Be Hung, Had Sentence Commuted, Passed Nineteen Years in Prison, Yet Is Innocent.

          Relevant excerpts:

 

"Borne down by the complication of troubles, my [birth] mother fell sick and her life was thought to be of short duration. At that time a friend of hers advised her to let one of the lady's acquaintances, who lived in the country and had no children of her own, take one of us children. It was a girl that the lady wanted, as she had already taken a boy. My [birth] mother consented, as she had little hope of recovery, and the lady, Mrs. Wemple, was sent for. When she came she chose me, and it was agreed that I should go. The lady took me home with her and I lived in the family till I was between thirteen and fourteen years old, with the exception of a few months when I was at home [among my biological family members], as will be seen."

 

"I liked my new 'Pa' and 'Ma,' as I was taught to call Mr. and Mrs. Wemple, very much, and except a little loneliness at first, was well pleased with my new home. The little boy whom they had taken was, though, a source of much unhappiness to me at times. He was of a sulky, ungenerous disposition and had little regard for the truth. Many a whipping I had to take on his account. He would steal sugar and other sweets, which were looked upon in those days as great luxuries, and do many other things, and then tell our foster-mother that I was the guilty one. Mrs. Wemple was quick to punish wrong-doing, and although I know she meant to do right, I am sure I would have been saved many severe punishments and sorrowful hours had she taken pains to be sure who was in the wrong. But both Mr. and Mrs. Wemple were conscientious, well-meaning people, and tried to make me contented and happy."

 

"Soon after [members of my biological] family went to Warrensville, my eldest [biological] sister came to see me and insisted on my going back with her, as, she said, my [birth] mother wanted me to come. She described the home to which they had gone, in such an attractive way that at last she overcame my inclination to remain where I was, and I went home with her, in direct opposition to the advice of my foster-parents. Mr. Wemple took us [to our biological family's] home, however, and I did not run away, as some of the sensational newspaper accounts have represented. But I soon found that I had made a great mistake. When we arrived I found that my sister had much overdrawn the picture of the new home, and that my [birth] mother, while she would have been glad to have her children with her, knew it would have been much better for me to have remained at Mr. Wemple's."

 

"[Another time w]hen my [birth] mother sent for me, the people took me [to my birth family's] home, and I remained there until a lady wanted me to come and do chores about the house for her. But I had not been long enough there to get over the homesickness of a new place when, one day, who should come in but my foster-father, Mr. Wemple! I do not think I was ever so glad to see anyone in my life before as I was to see him, and my first question was, 'Where's Ma?' Mr. Wemple answered that 'Ma' was at home sick, and had told him not to come back without me. I was glad to go, for I really loved them both very much and should have been happy with them had it not have been for the little irritations that nearly always exist in cases where children are put out to live, and in which my own willfulness, doubtless, had its part."

 

The Wemples' church was, of course, the First Presbyterian Church of Euclid, which had been founded by Keziah's own family, and she perhaps had inherited some of her grandfather Samuel McIlrath's harsh interpretation of the duties of the sect.

 

"Mr. and Mrs. Wemple were members of the Presbyterian church and were very strict in fulfilling its teachings, which were much more rigid then than at the present time, and after the service and Sabbath-school were over, Sunday was always a long day to me, as it was to most country children at that time. But I loved the Sunday-school and took great interest in my lessons, and before I left Mr. Wemple's I joined a church. It was the Disciple church, however, that I [ultimately] united with, as in going to that church with other young people I became impressed by the idea of baptism by immersion, which seemed to me to be the right way. I did not think when I joined that church that it would make any difference to Mrs. Wemple, but I found that she was very much displeased, and I do not think she was ever the same to me afterwards. But I have much to thank my foster-mother for. She taught me to work, sent me to school and gave me the first definite ideas of a faith that, grown into fuller form, has been a solace when and where nothing else could comfort."

 

Though it's never explicitly named in the memoir, it's almost certain that the school Sarah Parquet attended was Euclid's Shaw school.

 

"Of my school days I have some very pleasant, and some quite as unpleasant, recollections. I loved to go to school, and learned readily, and I found great pleasure in all my studies, except arithmetic. Besides reading, writing and spelling, I studied, at different times, geography, grammar, history, botany and a little of arithmetic, but found the last so distasteful and hard to understand that I made little progress in it. Yet, while I never became proficient in any branch of study, owing to the short time I went to school, I have felt the need of a knowledge of arithmetic more than any other."

 

"But the causes of the unpleasantness of my school life came from sources that will be readily recognized by those who understand what it was in those days to be 'put out to live.' My feelings were constantly being hurt by remarks of other children, especially those of rich parents, about my being a poor 'taken' child, who had to wear woolen dresses and do what 'other folks' told me. Many times I would be so aggravated by such remarks that I would fly into a passion and do and say things that I would be very sorry for afterwards. At other times I would cry and dread the ordeal of going to school in the morning."

 

"Yet, with all my troubles, I knew some very happy days while going to school. I recall a couple of birthdays (the fifth of May) that were made a delight, and a source of much happy thought to me for days afterward, by the scholars gathering flowers and crowning me 'Queen of the May.' And then, on Saturdays, Mrs. Wemple would allow me to visit in the neighborhood and enjoy myself in various ways."

 

"I went, as usual, to see my own [birth] mother sometimes, but could not be persuaded to remain, and did not think of leaving Mr. Wemple's again until some changes seemed, to my mind, to make it necessary, as will be seen. My [birth] father had returned and remained at home, except during intervals of insanity, for some years, and other children, three in number, had been born, when, one day, my [birth] mother sent word for me to come and see her, and Mr. Wemple took me [to my birth family's] home."

 

"[Following the death of my birth mother] I remember how all the people pitied me, and how useless and comfortless all their kindness seemed. At first I thought I never could feel reconciled to such a sorrow as had come to me, and the first sense of comfort I felt was in gratefulness to Mrs. Wemple for dressing me in mourning for my mother's sake. I felt that it would be doing all that could be done for my mother, and I shall never forget how thankful I was to Mrs. Wemple for her kindness."

 

"[I] was always trying to think of some way in which I could help my [biological] brothers and sisters. Finally I read a book, which I got at Sabbath-school, about a young girl that had kept house for her father and taken care of her younger brothers and sisters, making their clothes, sending them to school, etc., and then my thoughts began to take form in the idea that I would learn to make dresses. I could sew and knit and do many other kinds of work, and I thought that if I knew how to make dresses, I would find my [birth] father and gather the younger children [of our biological family] into a home. I knew that I was too young at that time to learn the dressmakers' trade, but I could not give up the idea."

 

"Some years passed, and, one day, I spoke to Mrs. Wemple about my wish to know how to make dresses, and asked her to let me go and learn the trade, but she looked upon the matter with so much disfavor that I did not dare to tell her why I wished to learn, for fear she would think I wanted to leave her, and would be displeased about it. So I waited and waited, and when she saw that I did not give up the idea, she told me she would see a dressmaker, and find a place where I could work for my board, and let me try."

 

"Not long after that talk, Mrs. Wemple went to see a Miss Slade, who was a dressmaker in Cleveland, and who agreed to give me a trial. Arrangements were then made with a Mrs. Stedman, who lived next door to Miss Slade, for me to work nights and mornings and half a day on wash-day, for my board, and in that way I began my apprenticeship. Mrs. Stedman and her family were very pleasant and good to me, and, although I had to work very hard, and early and late, I was much pleased with the arrangement, for my long-cherished wish was about to be realized. There was a millinery shop through which I had to pass to go to Miss Slade's rooms, and I watched the work of the milliners so closely that I soon could make a bonnet myself."

 

"When Mrs. Wemple allowed me to leave her I think she thought I would soon tire of the work and be glad to return, but when Miss Slade made favorable report of my progress and said I would be a perfect dressmaker in less than the time for which she had taken me, my foster-parents seemed to lose all interest in me, and from that time left me entirely to my own resources."

 

"The apparent desertion on the part of my only protectors caused me a great deal of sorrow and anxiety. Many times I cried myself to sleep in homesickness and discouragement. Besides my loneliness, I soon found that what little clothing I had was wearing out, and as I was earning no money, I did not know what to do. I could not go to church when Sunday came, because my clothes, while doing very well for the shop and housework, were not suitable for any public meeting, and so the Sabbath was always a long and unhappy day to me."

 

As noted in an earlier chapter, Sarah once encountered "Um," Euclid's first Black resident, the handicapped Cuban man attached to the Doan household.

 

"During [a] conversation I related how I had had my fortune told some years before. A Mr. Doan, who lived at Collamer, near Cleveland, had an old colored man who was a deaf-mute, and people used to say that he had the gift of second sight. One day I was in Mr. Wemple's shop (my foster-father was a blacksmith), and old 'Um,' as he was called, came in. As soon as he saw me he began to motion with his hands. I could not understand him, but Mr. Wemple said: 'Um wants to tell your fortune.' The old man then threw out his hands, then reached high up with one, and went through a number of motions, which Mr. Wemple said meant that I would 'cross big water and marry a tall man.'"

 

She indeed crossed the big waters of the Great Lakes, and in Wisconsin met a tall man named Charles Smith, whom she married. Charles, sadly, became addicted to liquor and prostitutes. They would, at long last, divorce in 1855.

 

"On October 14, 1848, my second child was born, and as it was a son, everybody joined in my happiness. But he was a very delicate babe, and the doctor told me I must make up my mind to part with him. If a mother ever prayed for her child's life, I prayed that my baby might be spared. My health had been very poor for some time before his birth, and I had become so discouraged and despondent that I longed to go back to my old home and see if it would not benefit me. I wanted to take my babe with me, and I prayed that he might live till I could go and let 'Pa' and 'Ma' Wemple see him, thinking, in my weakness, that I could part with him more willingly after that... I took the stage for Mr. Wemple's, in Collamer. Mr. and Mrs. Wemple were very glad to see me, and took my baby into their hearts at once. He soon became such a pet with them that I was relieved of much of the care of him, and began to regain my health."

 

"My husband had relatives living in Mentor, Lake County, and after a few weeks, we went to visit them. While there a quilting party was held by one of the neighbors and we were invited. Soon after we arrived, one of the guests asked the lady of the house if her children had yet recovered from the chicken-pox. 'I think they have,' said the lady, 'but they might give it yet.' I was frightened at once, and the quilting party had no more pleasure for me. I thought of my children, both of whom I had with me, and more particularly of my baby, for I remembered what the physician had said. The ladies all thought there was little danger in chicken-pox, and so I remained, but my mind was not at ease a moment, and as soon as supper was over we went home. I told my husband, and to please me he cut our visit short, and we returned to Mr. Wemple's. 'Oh, the chicken-pox is nothing,' said Mrs. Wemple, and then told me that she was glad the children would have it while they were where she could care for them."

 

The doctor was right about the baby boy: he died of measles at age two in 1850. After divorcing her useless husband, Sarah Parquet Smith moved to Cleveland and, without remarrying, assumed the name of Victor, in yet another attempt to start over. For a short time she sent her own daughter to the Shaw School. "For a while after moving to Webster Street I sent my daughter to the academy at Collamer, and later to a select school in the city. I used every means in my power to give her a good education and promote her happiness."

 

A reader can access Sarah Victor's memoir and decide whether her explanations of the known facts of her case are convincing. What is indisputable is that she experienced more than anyone's fair share of pain in her life. Myndert and Keziah Norris Wemple today lie in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. A grave for a Sarah M. Victor, 1827-1888, bearing no mention of parents, husband or children, can be found in the Forest Cemetery in Circleville in Pickaway County, Ohio.

 

*

 

Garrett Thorpe was the last of the "five young men" of August 1803 to settle in Euclid. He and his siblings Deborah and Benjamin were the children of Ezekial Tharp [sic] and Neeltje Gerretse Voorhees of Bedminster, New Jersey. All these Thorpe children had settled in Euclid by 1808. In 1819 Garrett's 19-year-old daughter Eleanor married 31-year-old Abram Voorhees and they began having children in Euclid in 1820. From the records available it's hard to definitively establish their precise connection, but the Thorpe and Voorhees names are impossible to ignore, and while it does not appear the two were inappropriately close relations, it seems very probable that they were cousins. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "A. Voorhees" on a 63 acre plot just north of the main road and west of Paul Condit in the elbow of David Dille's original land on Euclid Avenue between Green and Belvoir Roads in Cleveland. Abram died in 1857 and is buried in the Euclid Township Cemetery. Eleanor went to Cass County, Michigan, probably to live with their son Cornelius until her death in 1877.

          It's tempting to try to lump early Euclid's other Dutch family together with the Voorheeses, but as the Voorheeses and Thorps were tied to New Jersey and Pennsylvania and the Hussongs came from Vermont, they don't appear to be connected. Isaac Hussong came to Cuyahoga County from Washington County, Pennsylvania, sometime between 1805 and 1810 and was living in Euclid by 1819.

 

*

 

Elizabeth Talbot's first husband, Elihu Moses, died in the war. He commanded his own company, though from which county is listed merely as "unknown" by the Roster of Ohio Soldiers of the War of 1812 published by the Adjutant General of the State of Ohio in 1916. He appears to have been very unlucky, as his regiment is recorded to have been formed then disbanded after less than two weeks, existing only in the immediate aftermath of the collapse at Detroit in August 1812. However, "Part served from September 19, 1814, until February 23, 1815," and evidently this included Elihu, as he died, on December 22, 1814. Where and how are not recorded, except that it was somewhere in Ohio, unless one ascribes any veracity to this anecdote preserved by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham:

 

"Mrs. Elihu Moses [Elizabeth Talbot], from Burlington, Conn., 1819, was a very remarkable woman. Her husband was a captain in the War of 1812, and when the messenger came to tell her of his death she said: 'I know what you have come to tell me. It is that Elihu is dead, for I saw him lying in a pool of blood.'"

 

"She afterward married Wm. Chinmark, and her wedding dress was orange and blue silk."

 

The William noted by the otherwise excellent Van Rensselaer Wickham is a mistake. In early 1817 Elizabeth Talbot Moses remarried, to Nicholas Chinmark. There is very little to be found about him, save that it is possible that he was a recent immigrant from Sweden. Likewise, his birth and death dates are not to be found, but Elizabeth was 39 when they located in Euclid in 1819.

          She was Euclid's first drug dealer, and hard drugs at that, though certainly unwittingly.

          This, once again, remembered by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham:

 

"'Grandmother Chinmark' [Elizabeth Talbot Moses] was thoroughly conversant with herbs and their uses. She had a still of home manufacture with which she distilled peppermint oil. The process by which she procured opium was rather novel, and in this day of hustle [1896!] would be tedious, to say the least. She grew large beds of poppies, and as soon as the petals fell she punctured the seed pods with a fine needle, and, after the milk dried, gathered them."

 

Is it presumptuous to read between the following lines an underlying cause for both her popularity and the eagerness of her customers?

 

"She found a ready market in Cleveland for her peppermint oil, opium and dried fruit, which she personally delivered to her patrons. Her services were always in great demand among her neighbors. Her knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs, coupled with good judgment and kindness of heart, always made her a welcome guest."

 

*

 

Sargeant Currier came to Ohio some time between 1813 and 1818, and he first appears on the Euclid tax lists in 1820. He was already 63 by then, and would spend the rest of his life in Euclid Township, and that not too much longer.

          He was born in Essex, Massachusetts, north of Boston near the New Hampshire border, in 1757. At age 19 he "went into Boston at the time the British evacuated it," March 1776, and spent the next four years as a private fighting for independence, mostly with New Hampshire troops. Ultimately he "...was at two battles at Bemus Heights near Saratoga in the State of New York at the capture of Burgoyne's army" in October 1777. Little can be found of his life following the war, save that he moved to Grafton County in north central New Hampshire, and at age 29 in May 1786, married 18-year-old Desire Miner, originally of North Stonington, Connecticut, right on the Rhode Island line. They'd have at least seven children together until about 1807.

          The 1810 census still shows them in Grafton County, New Hampshire, and in a few years, at an advanced age for the time, they emigrated to Ohio, one suspects closer to 1818, as the years immediately previous to that in northern Ohio featured an initially disastrous theater of war and several volcanic winters. Currier's 1820 Revolutionary War pension application describes his Euclid homestead as neighboring Abraham Mattox and David Bunnell, putting him in the west end of town. The pension application also provides a snapshot of his life in Euclid Township that year.

 

"I have a deed of five acres of land with a log cabin, but the same is mortgaged to the person who paid for the land, and which I owe eighty dollars on the same—I am possessed of a horse of the value of fifteen dollars—One cow—I am in possession of one other cow and a waggon [sic] but I have not been able to pay anything for them and am still in debts for the same—Also three shoats—I have no other real or personal property and I am indebted about sixty dollars to sundry persons now—My occupation is farming. I am not able to labor but a small part of any time by reason of age and infirmity—I have a wife who is fifty-two years of age of a weakly constitution, and I have two sons living and depending on me in part for support. One of the age of 18 years and one of 13 years—The elder is able to support himself."

 

The elder son was Sargeant Currier, Jr., born in 1802. The younger son, by this account born around 1807, is hard to identify.

          Currier's character and the veracity of his account of his war service were attested to by, among others, Euclid neighbors John Ruple, John Shaw and Timothy Doan, plus Timothy's son Seth Doan, the boy who saved Cleaveland, later soldier of the War of 1812, later still Sherrif of Cuyahoga County, as well as Elias Lee, a McIlrath grandson, and two sons of David Dille. The Cuyahoga County Clerk sent Currier's pension application in to the War Department in the same bundle with that of John Crosier.

          Sargeant Currier got his pension, eight dollars a month, retroactive to the passage of the Pension Act in 1818, the initial lump enough to clear his outstanding debts.

 

*

 

Aaron Sage and Harriet Akins Bliss of Chatham, Connecticut, arrived in Euclid around 1819, both around age 22. Aaron was the grandson of an Esther Eddy—this one born 1737 in Middlesex County, Connecticut, and not to be confused with the widow Esther Brown of a later generation who married Caleb Eddy in 1780—possibly making Aaron Bliss a relation of the Eddys who came to Euclid Township beginning around 1805, which would have connected him to the McIlrath clan. But the Blisses came from Chatham, Connecticut, and Harriet was an Akins, and Chatham was the Eastern home of the Akinses of the Doan-Pelton clan who would come to Euclid and settle in the eastern Heights. The spottiness of the records make establishing definite connections difficult, though the circumstantial evidence is compelling.

          The Akins-Blisses didn't leave an overabundance of information on their time in Euclid. Crisfield Johnson notes "A.S. Bliss" as a township trustee in 1833. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "A. L. Bliss" on 87 acres in the northeast corner of Tract 14, and on 53 more in the southwest corner of Tract 18, in the modern City of Euclid. This is probably a typo, as Blackmore was known to make the occasional small mistake (see Richards for Richmond), A.S. was still alive in 1852, and none of Aaron and Harriet's descendants bore those initials. Notwithstanding, the Bliss holdings constituted a nice plot on the main road on the east side of the developing Village of Euclid.

          The west line of the Bliss property ran along the border between Tracts 13 and 14, and a road developed there heading north from the main road, Euclid Avenue, into the lake plain and toward the lakeshore. The 1858 Hopkins map shows it meeting with Babbitt Road at what is now Lakeshore Boulevard. The 1874 Lake atlas shows it running along the west side of the property then owned by "Anna Bliss," and in the 1898 Flynn atlas it's clearly labeled Bliss Road.

          In 1906, when Euclid, Ohio, renamed their north-south-running roads to come into line with Cleveland's new street numbering system, Bliss Road became East 222nd Street.

 

*

 

Jacob Marsilliot had come to Euclid by 1820, perhaps even a year or two before. His wife, the late Charlotte née Brann, died in 1817, in Delaware, which is where Jacob was born, probably in or near the town of New Castle, south of Wilmington; records on the Marsilliots are somewhat fragmented. He was in his mid-40s around 1820 or so. It's possible that Charlotte's death led Jacob to want to start again, or at least try something new.

          Almost surely arriving with him at that time was his son, Leonard, somewhere around ten-years-old, depending on when one dates their advent in Euclid. A decade or so later, at age 17, Leonard married 22-year-old Lydia Fordyce Palmer, born in Washington County, Pennsylvania. An obituary published online records, "Mrs. Lydia Marsilliot... mov[ed] to Euclid, Ohio, at the age of seven years, riding behind her mother on horseback nearly the whole distance, enjoying the novelty with childish glee. She had lived at Euclid until 1827, when she was married to Leonard Marsilliot..."

          In Euclid the Marsilliots, father and son, acquired a business, remembered by Crisfield Johnson:

 

"About 1820, or a little before, William Gray, who had been settled ten or twelve years at the mouth of Euclid Creek, built works there for making stoneware, such as jugs, jars, etc. In 1823 he sold the works to J. & L. Marsilliott... They, or at least one of them—Leonard Marsilliott—kept up the works about fifteen years, doing a large business for that era. He brought his clay from Springfield, Ohio, and burned seven or eight kilns every year, keeping five or six hands employed all the time."

 

The Marsilliots became well-known for their stoneware, grey-white salt-glazed storage jars and jugs, sometimes embellished with simple flowers in blue cobalt. Specimens of Marsilliot Euclid stoneware are valued as rustic folk art objects and sold at auction sites online today.

          Father and son both look to have retired from the pottery business in the late 1830s. "...Leonard Marsilliot... planted a pottery at the mouth of Euclid Creek, and resided there until 1839, [before] removing to a farm one-half mile distant from Lake Erie..." and the 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "L. Marcelliot" on a modest plot of 50 acres in the neighborhood of present-day East 193rd Street north of the freeway in Cleveland near the Euclid border.

 

*

 

Around 1880, when she was about 90 years old, Phoebe McIlrath Condit—the aforementioned wife of Paul P., daughter of Andrew and Abigail, niece of Thomas of the "five young men"—was penning (or possibly dictating) her description of the founding and initial years of her church, the Presbyterian church, when she was a young woman living in early Euclid, when she paused to offer an aside:

 

"Mr. Barr was our pastor eight or ten years, when they employed Mr. Stone as supply. He [Stone] was here eight months, and during that time there was a powerful revival..."

 

          That was 1820, and Phoebe Condit's memory coincided perfectly with the appearance of a widespread movement in the United States now known to history as the Second Great Awakening. A reaction against what some perceived as the cold rationality of the Enlightenment which fueled the American Revolution, and concentrated particularly in the eastern Great Lakes, the Second Great Awakening was an ecstatic Protestant evangelical movement which saw the birth of numerous new religious sects, societies and institutions in the United States, including the North Union Shaker colony in Warrensville Township, now Shaker Heights, and the Mormons in Upstate New York.

          Mrs. Condit resumed:

 

"...during that time there was a powerful revival; about fifty were added to our [Presbyterian] church, and the Baptist church of Euclid was formed out of the result of the long and precious awakening."

 

          According to Crisfield Johnson, "...there had for several years been Baptist preaching in Euclid by Elder Goodell and others, but no church organization...." Johnson here was probably referring to Ichabod Warner Goodell, 1786-1826, originally from Woodstock, Connecticut, who is today buried in the Mentor Municipal Cemetery in Mentor. An item in the papers of C.C. Bronson preserved through the Akron Public Library makes reference to an "...Elder Goodell, a Baptist preacher of Mentor..." and another genealogy source connects the Mentor grave to a "Rev. Ichabod Warner Goodell." The "Elder Goodell" referenced by Johnson laid the groundwork for the founding of a new church in Euclid, which finally arrived in 1820 on the wave of the Second Great Awakening and in the person of an itinerant preacher named Azariah Hanks.

          Originally from Connecticut, Hanks spent much of his life traveling the West spreading the Baptist brand of Christianity. In early 1820, Hanks, and his wife, the former Keziah Knowlton, moved in to Euclid from Chardon where Hanks had been elder of the Baptist church there for the previous three years.

          In a letter dated January 25, 1821, to the Western New York Baptist Magazine, Hanks himself described the Baptist revival in Euclid and the methods by which he achieved his conversions:

 

"... I commenced preaching with the people in this place, and on the second Sabbath there was a visible appearance of the work of grace on the hearts of many in the congregation. On the 27th [of April, 1820,] I baptized two persons and... gave fellowship to a church consisting of eleven members..."

 

          On April 27, 1820, baptizing in Euclid Creek, Azariah Hanks founded The First Regular Baptist Church of Jesus Christ in Euclid, the first church of that denomination in Cuyahoga County. Its inaugural converts included Seth Doan Pelton, William Treat, John Wilcox, and David Dille's twin sons Calvin and Luther, named for those two fathers of the Reformation. (The Dille brothers being twins offered no clue as to their courses in the Euclid Baptist church. Luther was an early leader but was later expelled for veering to the Campbellite Baptist sect, which the Euclid church eschewed, while Calvin continued in the favor of the congregation and died in it at the age of 90, still known as "Father Dille.")

          Crisfield Johnson's version of the event:

 

"On the 27th day of April, 1820, six brethren and five sisters were recognized by a council, duly called, as the Regular Baptist Church of Euclid. Luther Dille was the first deacon. Elder Azariah Hanks, whose wife was one of the constituent members... became its pastor... His labors during the first year were singularly successful, no less than forty-three persons, besides the eleven constituent members, uniting by baptism, and eight by letter, during the remaining eight months of 1820. Ten united on the 3d of June following the organization..."

 

And Elder Hanks again:

 

"The work spread out into different parts of the town, and persons of almost every age were made partakers of its saving benefits... My time was chiefly taken up in conversing praying and visiting from house to house: the employment was truly interesting... For four months I preached from four to six sermons a week, and on Saturdays attended church meetings to hear the experiences of candidates... Here the aged Christian and the young convert prayed, conversed and sang praises to God, with great freedom. Such foretastes of heavenly joy are beyond description glorious..."

 

The church thrived. A Baptist church still stands on its original location on the east side of Chardon Road just north of Euclid Avenue today.

          More from Johnson:

 

"In September of that year [1820], Elder Hanks, Deacon Dille and Mr. Libbey were sent as delegates to request the admission of the church into the Grand River Association, and to represent it when admitted. It was so admitted... The jurisdiction of the church seems to have extended over a goodly portion of the Western Reserve, meetings being held at East Euclid, at Newburg [sic], frequently at Chagrin River, and sometimes at S. D. Pelton's residence on the ridge... But the principal headquarters of the church were at Euclid Creek... [T]here, in January, 1821, the members voted to build a framed house of worship on land given by John Wilcox, thirty feet square, with posts fifteen feet long, a gallery in front of the desk ten feet wide, two doors opposite the desk, two aisles and thirty-six pews on the lower floor... John Wilcox, Wm. Treat, and S. D. Pelton were the building committee, and the structure is believed to have been erected during the ensuing year [1821]. In 1822 the church employed Elder Hanks as pastor two thirds of the time for two hundred bushels of wheat. The next year, becoming more wealthy, they voted to pay him three hundred bushels per year, apparently for the whole of his time... No subsequent year has been so fruitful in conversions as the first one of Elder Hanks pastorate."

 

In addition to land for the church itself—just north of the main road just east of Chardon Road—the Wilcox gift included 25 acres on which the minister, initially Rev. Hanks, could make his home. The Mr. Libbey mentioned is almost certainly Ichabod Libbey. A genealogy source which notices his brief time in Euclid also notes, "He was always a farmer. He and his wife were members of the Baptist Church." With his wife, the former Mary Keay, he came to Euclid from Maine in 1819 and stayed only three years before moving on to Newburgh. Seth Doan Pelton also became a deacon in the new Euclid Baptist church. So committed to it did he become that he mortgaged his farm for $2,000 and contributed the proceeds to the founding of the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, which eventually became the home congregation of another dedicated Baptist of Euclid Township, John D. Rockefeller. More on him later.

          Along with their new church the new Baptists of Euclid also established a burial ground for it across the road from the church on the bank of Euclid Creek. It was the first sanctioned burial ground in the northeast section of the township, and thus was the first resting place for many of the earliest settlers of that area of Euclid. The location of the cemetery can clearly be seen on the 1858 Hopkins map of Cuyahoga County, north of Euclid Avenue, on the west bank of Euclid Creek, between the creek and the road that is today Dille Road, a mark labeled "Bapt. Ch."

          Historian Wilma Stine, writing in her 1937 An Early History of Euclid Township, Ohio, made this description of it:

 

"The Baptist's [sic] cemetery was located on the west side of Chardon Road, several hundred yards north of the present church building... Many of the earliest settlers were buried there, or in the Presbyterian churchyard—if they were members of that congregation."

 

          "In 1864," Stine goes on to say, "a new cemetery was established on the hillside near the corner of Euclid Avenue and Highland Road." This is the six-acre Euclid Township Cemetery, at 20239 Concordia Street in Euclid, which will still be found there today. "Burials in the Baptist grave-yard," Stine says, "were soon prohibited."

          In 1881, the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, colloquially known as the Nickel Plate, was run across the lake plain of Euclid Township. The Euclid Baptist Church graveyard was right in its way. Wilma Stine noted, "When the Nickle Plate Yards were being laid out, the railroad bought a part of the old cemetery." City of Euclid resident Joe Page, whose family moved to Euclid Village in 1910, and who left an account of his recollections at age 70 in 1966, now preserved in the "Euclid Pioneers" file at the Euclid Historical Society, also remembered the Baptist burial ground. "The church sold the cemetery to pay some debt," he said.

          Another source, unidentified, but also located in the "Euclid Pioneers" file, notes, "When the Nickel Plate R.R. was built in 1881 the cemetery was in its path. Many of the bodies were moved to the present cemetery." Stine's version of the event is more unsettling: "Many of the markers were destroyed," she wrote, "and the remains disinterred in order to put the road bed in."

          Writing in the late 1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression, Wilma Stine offered a haunting image of what had become of the site by then:

 

"Today the portion that remains is overgrown with bushes; its markers are likewise defaced. It has now become the haunt of the hobo, and is occasionally visited by the schoolboy taking a shortcut to the school [Euclid Central]. Many people are unaware of its existence even in its present guise."

 

          One of those Euclid schoolboys was the above mentioned Joe Page. In the 1960s he recorded a memory of the lost cemetery from his childhood:

 

"Out at stop 14 [of the Cleveland, Painesville and Eastern Interurban Railway, which operated along the Nickle Plate tracks from 1895 to 1926] was a cemetery, deserted, and the house at stop 14 was a church. We used to turn over the stones and read the inscriptions..."

 

And later in his manuscript:

 

"There was a cemetery at the railroad N.K.P. [Nickel Plate]. I read some of the tombstones and got two sticks and persuaded Mrs. Meeker and Julia Tracy to carry one between them and take it home."

 

The location of the Baptist cemetery is some distance from the homes of the 19th century Euclid Township Meekers, but it is by no means impossible that this Mrs. Meeker of the early 20th century was one of them. Julia Tracy appears to have been a schoolmate of Mr. Page. Whose stone they carried away, or what became of it, cannot be said.

          The school referenced, the Euclid Central Middle School, was closed at the end of the spring 2021 term and the following summer demolished. The property has been turned over to the Cleveland Metroparks which are developing it as part of an effort to join the course of the creek into an unbroken greenspace from the Euclid Creek Reservation to Wildwood Park on Lake Erie. The site of the lost Baptist Church cemetery has been an industrial site for well more than a century, but perhaps the new status will facilitate both wider awareness and better understanding of one of the most intriguing sites from early Euclid.

          Azariah Hanks gave up leadership of the Euclid Baptist church in 1825, and sold his lot back to John and Elizabeth Wilcox. He continued to travel Ohio, founding Baptist churches, before dying at the age of 58 in Madison, where he is buried in the South Ridge Cemetery there beside wife Keziah and a 15 month-old son.

          Along with bequests for Keziah, several Baptist churches he'd been associated with, and various relatives, his will of August, 1832, written in Madison, left, "to my Black Man [sic], Thomas More, my gun, and fifty acres of land, on the west side of my lot."

          Whether More was with Hanks during his time in Euclid is not clear, though perhaps it is likely. What is clear is that African Americans—from "Um" of the Timothy Doan household in Euclid, to 12-year-old Harry enslaved by Lydia Umberfield in Burton, to the man Isaac who came with Turhand Kirtland to Poland, to the Black settlement at Upper Sandusky proselytized by Joseph Badger, to the victorious men of Perry's fleet—African Americans have been part of the story of Euclid Township from the very beginning.

 

*

 

There is a John Gardner who appears on the Euclid tax lists in 1825. He also appears on the voter lists of 1828 and as a Euclid Township District 2 school trustee that year as well. Crisfield Johnson remembers, "In 1818 Benjamin P. Beers and Myndert Wemple settled in the township. Mr. Wemple, who still survives, says that Enoch Murray was then keeping store at Euclid (now Collamer). He sold to Thomas McIlrath about 1830, and he in a short time to John Gardner." He's buried in the East Cleveland Township Cemetery.

          There is a Warren Gardner in the Euclid Township Cemetery. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham says, "[Elizabeth Talbot Moses'] daughter, Ardolisa Moses, married Austin H. Avery, of Euclid, and [one of Ardolisa's] daughters [is] Harriet (Mrs. Warren Gardner), also of Euclid..."

          John's tombstone in East Cleveland lists the year of his birth as 1797. If he came to Euclid by 1825 that would have made him about 28. Warren's stone in Euclid indicates he was born around 1808 or 1809. He could have been about 17. It's possible the men were brothers, or maybe cousins, but from the records available it's hard to connect them definitively.

          Warren was born in West Burlington, New York, in Otsego County, about halfway between Albany and Syracuse. Maybe that's where John was born too. John married a woman named Achsa, whose maiden name is not to be found, and if they had children those records are lost as well. Warren married Caroline Perry before 1835 and they had four sons. Caroline died in March 1846 and just six months later in September Warren remarried, in the Euclid Baptist Church, to Harriet Avery, granddaughter of Grandmother Chinmark. They had three more sons.

          The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "W. Gardner" near the lakeshore north of Euclid Creek on two adjoining lots between Tracts 15 and 17. Hopkins in 1858 already shows a road running north along the east line of the Gardner property down to Lake Erie. Flynn in 1898 has this labeled as Gardner Road.

          In 1906, when Euclid, Ohio, renamed their north-south-running roads to come into line with Cleveland's new street numbering system, Gardner Road became East 185th Street.

 

*

 

The first erratic stagecoach service passing through Euclid via the lakeshore trail at the base of the escarpment began in 1808, connecting Cleaveland and Painesville. It was not for ten more years however that a regularly scheduled weekly route between the two Lake Erie villages was established, and that still took 18 hours to cover the 30 mile distance. In 1826 a daily service to Erie, Pennsylvania, started, carrying any passengers willing to accompany the mail for a fare of three dollars. This would soon be extended all the way up the lake. Map "Euclid_11'R, 8'T," a highly simplified depiction of the township dating from the late 1820s and preserved in the "Western Reserve Surveys - Euclid" collection at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, shows what is now Euclid Avenue as a mendaciously straight line bearing the legend " - Ridge Road fr. Cleaveland to Buffalo - on which travels a daily stage each way - "

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On January 6, 1831, publishers Henry Bolles and Madison Kelley dropped the first issue of their new newspaper advocating the views and policies of the American Whig Party, the Cleveland Advertiser. Among the many short notices contained in its inner pages on its first day was one from the publishers themselves: "The reader will perceive that we have omitted the letter 'a' in the first syllable of our village name. This is agreeable to the wishes of many of our oldest and most intelligent citizens, who are of the opinion that it is the correct mode of spelling the name, and that the 'a' is entirely superfluous." By the end of that year both the Cleaveland Herald and the Cleaveland Gazette had also taken to spelling Cleveland without the initial "a."

 

*

 

Asa Cady first appears on the Euclid tax lists in 1831, when he was 38, and his wife, the former Teresa Hathaway, 34. They had, like the Richmonds, come from the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, though nothing else seems to connect the two families. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "A. Cady" on several neighboring parcels totaling about 150 acres on the north side of what is now Mayfield Road between Green and Taylor in what are now Cleveland Heights and South Euclid.

          Crisfield Johnson remembers this episode which took place in the years leading up to the Civil War:

 

"For several years before 1851 there had been a strong feeling among some of the members of the Presbyterian church at Euclid, or Collamer, that the Presbyterian denomination should bear stronger testimony against slavery than it had previously done."

 

"On the 27th of December, 1851, fourteen members presented a memorial declaring that they could not continue in connection with the church while it maintained fellowship with slaveholders. This memorial was signed by John Ruple, Asa Weston, R. Dutton, Asa Cady, Teresa Cady, Alma Ruple, H. A. C. Adams, Ezekiel Adams, Orpha Adams, L. C. Ruple, Mina Ruple, H. L. Ruple, Hannah Ruple, John Perkins."

 

"The Presbyterian congregation voted to dismiss them, with letters to any church they might desire to join. They then proceeded to organize themselves into the Free Congregational Church of Collamer. For three or four years they worshiped in the schoolhouse, at the end of which time, their numbers having materially increased, they proceeded to build [a] brick church at Collamer..."

 

The Congregationalist version of the story says the abolitionists were dismissed. The Presbyterian version says they withdrew. Other examples of the rigid Presbyterianism of Elder Samuel McIlrath of Mendham, New Jersey, practiced in the Euclid church founded by his children can be found in this and previous chapters of this essay, so the reader may ponder which verb might be the correct one.

 

The Presbyterians: "...in December, 1851, fourteen members withdrew to form the Free Congregational Church."

 

After the Civil War had settled the original question separating them, the two quarreling Euclid churches more or less reunited.

 

The Congregationalists: "They maintained a separate existence with varying fortunes until June, 1877, when they formed a union for working purposes with the Presbyterian church..."

 

The Presbyterians: "[In June 1877] a union was effected with the Free Congregational Church of Collamer, by which each society was to keep its own organization, but they were to unite in all work, in religious service and the employment of a pastor. People are admitted by the joint action of the two churches, but are dismissed by the separate action of one. They meet in the Presbyterian church."

 

          The Cadys built a farmhouse around 1841 atop the escarpment in nearly the dead center of the township, in the vicinity of Noble and Monticello Roads in what is now the north end of Cleveland Heights. Asa was the vice president of the Cuyahoga Anti-Slavery Society and since that time it was rumored that his and Teresa's home was a safe house for enslaved Americans seeking freedom, a stop on the famed Underground Railroad. The house was physically moved around the beginning of the 20th century about half a mile to 3921 Bluestone Road in Cleveland Heights. It stands there today.

 

*

 

It's hard to say exactly how it came to pass, but Barney Anderson served with Andrew Jackson in the Creek War in Tennessee. He was born in 1790, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, the origin of so many of the early settlers of Euclid, which would explain how he eventually made his way to the township, and he was probably around as a little kid for all the excitements of the Whiskey Rebellion. There is nothing to be found about him until the War of 1812, when a pension application submitted by his widow decades later indicates dates of service from October 1813 to January 1814 in Tennessee, and this was the time and place of the Tennessee Campaign of the Creek War. That fall and early winter Gen. Andrew Jackson pushed through Tennessee into what is now Alabama on his way to the Gulf of Mexico as part of the campaign which would ultimately result in the conquest from the Native tribes of the region of what is now the Southeast United States. Anderson's veteran's gravestone indicates he was part of the New York militia, and other records show him growing up in western Pennsylvania, so how he came to serve under Jackson in the South is hard to understand, but the evidence that he did is clear and compelling. After the war and back in Washington County, Pennsylvania, at age 26 in 1816 he married 17-year-old Elizabeth Heston. They leave no records again until 1829, when Barney appears on the Cleaveland tax lists. He first appears on the Euclid lists in 1835. They had at least five children together. The first two were daughters. One married into the Dilles and the other into the McIlraths. Their fourth married a Ruple. Their third child was their first son and he would inherit the family property. In 1858 in Hopkins "B. Anderson" appears on a 53 acre plot on the north side of a track running west through First Draft Lot 36 from Richmond Road out toward the main branch of Euclid Creek, in the very north end of present-day Lyndhurst. By 1874 and Lake, one year before Barney's death, the property is under the name "A. J. Anderson," which is to say Andrew Jackson Anderson, their eldest son. A.J. married Harriet Ann Carter. Barney died in 1875, at age 84; Elizabeth in 1892, at 93. Andrew Jackson Anderson died in Mayfield in 1911, age 85, almost exactly the same age as his father at his death, and Harriet Ann died at 81 in 1925 in what had by then become South Euclid. And Anderson Road is still right on the border between Lyndhurst and Richmond Heights off Richmond Road today.

 

*

 

In 1879 Crisfield Johnson wrote, "During the decade from 1830 to 1840 there was a large emigration [to Euclid Township], checked during the last three years by what was known preeminently as the 'hard times.'"

          The Panic of 1837 was caused nearly singlehandedly by Barney Anderson's hero, Andrew Jackson. Jackson thought paper money was a scam, and in the final months of his presidency signed an executive order directing federal officials to accept only gold and silver in payment for public lands. The effect of this order was to say to the world that the government of the United States did not trust the value of its own currency. The worst financial panic the country had seen to that date ensued, with bank runs and failures and massive unemployment. Then the worst depression the country had seen to that date followed, and lingered well into the 1840s.

          Isaac Brush had owned a factory in Orange County, New York. He was ruined in the depression that followed the Panic of 1837. Nearly 40, already with a large family, he went west, probably in 1846, but perhaps as early as 1841, to start all over. It's hard to say exactly how it came to pass, but by then more prosperous relatives of his wife, the former Delia Phillips, had come into possession of what had been Abram Bishop's old plot at the north end of the Morse Tract, 250 acres of ancient walnut forest climbing the escarpment above the main road that's now Euclid Avenue, and offered their cousin's husband a chance to work it. Through its heart today still runs Brush Road, and there in 1849 Delia gave birth to the last of their nine children, a son. He was the biggest thing ever to come out of Euclid Township.

 

*

 

"About 1840, or a little before, Ruel House, Charles Moses [the son of 'Grandmother Chinmark,' Elizabeth Talbot, and her first husband, Elihu Moses] and Captain Wm. Trist opened a shipyard at the mouth of Euclid Creek, which was maintained some ten years. They first devoted their energies to building canalboats, the yard being on the [east] side of the creek. Ten or twelve were built in the course of four or five years. Then the yard was moved to the west side and the work of building schooners was engaged in. Six or seven were put afloat in the course of the next five years; the last and largest having a measurement of about three hundred tons."

 

          Immigration records and their family lore have Augustus and Franzisca Neff arriving in the United States in 1837, from the area near Stuttgart in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. Franzisca's maiden name is unknown. Their first three children were sons, and they named them for the Biblical Three Kings: Baltasar born in 1822, Casper in 1824, and Melchior in 1825, all in Baden-Württemberg. It's hard to say exactly when they came to Euclid, or specifically why, but by Blackmore in 1852 "A. Neff" held 39 acres in the northeast corner of Second Draft Lot 45, prime real estate just off the main road and climbing up the escarpment right behind what was then still Euclid Village, but later East Cleveland. After Daddy Jack, James Jackson, they were likely the first Catholics to live in Euclid. Franzisca died in 1872 and Augustus in 1875, and both lie today in the Saint John's Catholic Cemetery at 7000 Woodland Avenue in Cleveland.

          The 1874 Lake Atlas of Cuyahoga County shows Casper Neff holding even more prime Euclid real estate: 26 acres on the lakeshore at the east bank mouth of Euclid Creek, looking like at some point he bought out William Treat's shipyard. A road developed along the north line of the Neff lot and followed the east bank of Euclid Creek up from the lake. By the 1898 Flynn Atlas of the Suburbs of Cleveland it's clearly labeled as Neff Road. And Neff Road still runs along the east bank of Euclid Creek from St. Clair Avenue down to Wildwood Park on the lake.

          Many more German immigrants would come to Euclid. "In 1845, and the following years," Crisfield Johnson relates, "a few German families settled in the southern part of Euclid and the southeastern part of East Cleveland Townships." According to the listing for one of those children on the findagrave.com website: "In October 1845, Herman Heinrich Melcher... and his living children immigrated to Ohio from Rabber, Wittlage, Hanover, Prussia, Germany. The family settled in what is now South Euclid, Ohio..."

          Herman Heinrich Melcher was already 59, and his wife, the former Maria Charlotte Louisa Kahmeyer, 55 that year. Their children ranged in ages from oldest Gerhard, who was 34, to Jobst, who was only 18. They were all sons, save daughter Clara Elsebein, 26, who came with her 28-year-old husband, Heinrich Friedrich Wischmeier, whom she'd only just married in the spring of the year before. The remaining Melcher brothers were Johann Adolph, 28, Friedrich Gerhard, 23, and Ernst Friedrich, 21. The family members located south of what is now Mayfield Road on both sides of Richmond, in what today is the southwest quarter of Lyndhurst.

          Another Hanoverian family led by Clamor Adolph Rolf and his wife, the former Catharina Maria Gerdruth Detering, both in their 40s, soon followed, as did their in-laws, the Brueggemeiers and the Prasses. Later, Rudolph and Margaret Graef Berg came to Euclid Township from Bavaria and settled a bit north in the Richmond Settlement, as did Friedrich and Regina Koelle Keierleber, or Keyerleber, from Wurttemberg.

          Crisfield Johnson continues their tale:

 

"In 1852 these [German] people, then comprising about twelve families, though as yet unorganized, bought an acre of land... on the State road [sic] [Mayfield], on which they erected a small framed building for a meetinghouse and schoolhouse. In 1853 they formed themselves into a church... The next year they bought ten and a half acres more of land adjoining their former purchase, and in 1854 they built a residence for the pastor upon it."

 

This church, the St. John Lutheran Church, with its school and cemetery, still stands today at 4386 Mayfield Road in South Euclid.

          Later, a colony of Bohemian families and farms developed in the east central Heights of Euclid Township west of the Richmond Settlement. Jan and Marie Karynek Šebánek, František and Barbara Kopachky Vrbsky, and Vencel and Marie Kopickova Šrebycky were all in their early 40s when they and their children came to the United States from the countryside west of Prague in what is now the Czech Republic in the early 1860s. By the 1870 census they were all living next to one another in Euclid Township, having modified their names for the ease of their American neighbors to John and Mary Shebanek, Frank and Barbara Verbsky, and Vincent and Mary Trebisky. The Verbskys assembled a huge farm of 350 contiguous acres at the top of Highland Road. The Shebaneks' and Trebiskys' were much more modest, 75 and 63 acres respectively. Nevertheless it's the road which ran along the east line of the Trebisky farm from Highland to Anderson which remains.

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*

 

John Mercer Stevenson was a recent immigrant from England, where he grew up not far from the site of the Battle of Hastings. He arrived in the United States in the spring of 1838 at age 23, and his name appears on the tax lists of Euclid Township in 1842. In late summer 1846 at age 31 he married in Cuyahoga County Mary Slade, 23, also an immigrant, from Bristol, in the west of England. By Blackmore and 1852 they held 77 acres in the south half of Second Draft Lot 75 in the Richmond Settlement up in the eastern heights. A residential street and a tributary run of the east branch of Euclid Creek bear their name today.

          Henry and Polly Wilder Taylor came to Euclid from Buckland, Massachusetts, in Franklin County, on the Connecticut River, in the west of the commonwealth. They had married there in 1834 and sometime between then and the birth in Cleveland in 1837 of their first child, son Charles Wilder, had come west. Between 1852 and Blackmore where they do not appear and 1858 and Hopkins where they do they acquired 100 acres in the west half of First Draft Lot 13 in Euclid Township, through which ran a path up the escarpment from just west of the original Euclid Village, now East Cleveland, to what's now Mayfield Road right where it bends from heading northeast to straight east, and what was that path is still called Taylor Road today.

          Other families left marks in Euclid Township, if shorter paper trails by which to know them. Peter and Mary Cowell Rush came from Green County, Pennsylvania, in 1823 and bought land running up the escarpment along Nine Mile Creek, gorges which would become luxuriant vineyards in decades to come. William and Naomi Reniff Minor, or Miner, came to the south central township from Monroe County, New York, in 1831 and acquired 500 acres between what are now Mayfield and Cedar Road. The family were major land owners in what is now Cleveland Heights. And others still: Frederick and Mandana Abell Silsby; Hugh and Elizabeth Kelly Quilliams; Morris and Mary Ann Howlett Oviatt. Luke Devoe married John Crosier's granddaughter, Susan. Henry Priday married Dr. Farnsworth's daughter, Minerva. Parymandus Plumb died a bachelor in 1831 at age 38. Truman and Carrie Hamilton Swetland came from Otsego, New York, in 1909 and founded a large farm on the west side of Richmond Road just south of Chardon Road.

 

*

 

It took Cleaveland a generation and more to even start to take off. Deep in the interior of the continent, inaccessible to the wider world by water above Niagara Falls, riddled with malaria, and subject to attack by both Native and European enemies, 30 years after Moses Cleaveland the settlement which bore his name was still a tiny frontier village in the forest. Nevertheless, figures like Col. Crawford and Gen. Washington himself, and British officers before them, and French officers before them, mulling their rudimentary maps back in the East, knew well of the Cuyahoga, and for a hundred years and more that its mouth, upon one of the world's great inland seas, would—someday—be the site of a major city.

          As the hardy first settlers came to New Connecticut they began to dredge the sandbars blocking the mouths of the creeks, and harvested the beaver and busted up their dams, draining the Flats and the Lake Plain, and the mosquitoes, with far less breeding ground, at last relented. Perry's total victory over the British fleet, followed by Harrison's conquest and Cass' occupation of Upper Canada, the end of Indian resistance which accompanied Tecumseh's death, then the demilitarization of the Great Lakes after the war, finally settled the political situation on the south shore of Lake Erie after more than 60 years of contention. Nonetheless, by 1820, Cleaveland's population was still barely 600.

        Things really began to change in the late 1820s. First, in 1825, when the Erie Canal through the Mohawk River Valley opened and connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River, and from that to New York Harbor, and from that to the Atlantic Ocean and the world. Then, beginning in 1827 and continuing in stages to 1832, the Ohio and Erie Canal connected the Cuyahoga to the Ohio River, and from that the vast heart of North America. (Many of its canal boats were manufactured in the House-Moses-Treat shipyard in the mouth of Euclid Creek.) Cleaveland's population nearly doubled in the 1820s, from about 600 to about 1,100, then almost sextupled in the 1830s, from 1,100 to 6,100!

          With the directors of the Connecticut Land Company anticipating that the central city of the region would, sooner or later, grow within it, Cleaveland Township had from the beginning been one of the most irregular in the Western Reserve. Small, triangular and hugging the shore, it stretched from the lake south to Kingsbury Run—roughly along today's Woodland Avenue—from the east bank of the Cuyahoga out to the west lines of Euclid and Warrensville Townships, just past today's University Circle, about to Coventry Road and the Lower Shaker Lake. And once Cleveland city finally started to grow the nature and needs of the urbanizing west end of the township which contained it began quickly to diverge from those of its still rural east.

          In their June 1847 meeting the Cuyahoga County Commissioners addressed the issue, and they did so with radical surgery. They split the city off at Willson Avenue, now East 55th Street, abolishing the old Cleaveland Township and making a new one, East Cleveland.

 

"Of Cleveland [Township, the new East Cleveland Township] embraced lots three hundred and thirty-eight to four hundred and six inclusive, [and] of Newburg [sic] [Township, it took] so much of lots four hundred and nine to four hundred and twenty-two inclusive as lay north of the road, now Ingersoll Street."

 

Ingersoll today is Buckeye Road. This initial act took the new East Cleveland Township out to the Euclid line.

          Then the next summer the County Commissioners came for Euclid.

 

"At the June session of the Commissioners in 1848 the west part of Euclid [Township] was annexed to [the new] East Cleveland [Township], embracing lots eight, forty-nine, sixteen, fifty-seven, twenty-four, fifty-six, fifteen, forty-eight, seven, six, forty-seven, fourteen, fifty-five, twenty-two, twenty-one, fifty-four, thirteen, forty-six, five, four, forty-five, twelve, fifty-three, twenty, fifty-two, forty-four, eleven, three, two, all of lot forty-three west of the road running through it [now Ivanhoe Road], and all of Tract sixteen north of lot one and west of the road running to the lake [now Waterloo Road and East 156th Street]."

 

          It was the western edge, plus roughly the entire southwestern quarter. These are mostly the parts of the original Euclid Township which today lie within East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, as well as all of what later would become the villages of Glenville and Collinwood.

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          The most traumatic amputation was Second Draft Lot 44. The original Doan parcel sat on the main road and contained a transportation brake, the ford over Nine Mile Creek. Now the corner of Euclid and Belvoir, the original village of Euclid naturally developed there. It contained the Shaw School and the Presbyterian church and had been the commercial and social center of the township.

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"After the new arrangement was consummated, it was found very inconvenient to call the village situated in East Cleveland by the name of Euclid, when there was a township of Euclid close beside it. The people therefore began to cast about for another appellation."

 

          Americans today take the Postal Service for granted, perhaps even deride it. But facilitating communication was considered of such vital importance by the Framers that the power to establish Post Offices by Congress was written into the very Constitution, right alongside taxing citizens, declaring war and printing real money. If a locale in the growing nation was not the site of a fort or federal arsenal, the establishment of a Post Office there could almost mark the first time a town could acknowledge itself to be officially part of the United States, sometimes literally putting it on the map.

          Jacob Collamer was a Whig Member of Congress from Vermont, and he served President Zachary Taylor as Postmaster General for less than a year. But those few months of his tenure coincided with the moment the original village of Euclid got its first Post Office, and also happened at that same moment to be looking for a new name. So the boys down at the new Post Office took it upon themselves to name America's newest town for their boss.

 

"By this time there was a small hamlet, called Euclid, situated where Collamer now is, which was the center of business (of which there was very little) for the township. Two miles northeast on the main road was a still smaller cluster of houses, known as Euclid Creek, which has now assumed the name formerly assigned to the other village."

 

"They adopted [the name] of Collamer, and in time the growing village was generally known by that name, though it was long before all the old settlers could get rid of the habit of calling it 'Euclid.'"

 

The smaller, younger village two miles down the road at Euclid Creek hadn't gone anywhere, and the newly modified boundaries still left it within Euclid Township. So "...the village once known as East Euclid, or Euclid Creek, [was] now more properly designated as Euclid..." And so to this day it has remained.

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*

 

"...immediately after the [W]ar [of 1812] Euclid began settling up with considerable rapidity, with so many clearings making their appearance, both on the flat land and on the ridge, that we cannot any longer attempt to designate the locations of the individual settlers..."

 

"...notwithstanding these indications of advancing settlement, the rattlesnakes still hissed viciously in their dens among the rocks, and deer often bounded past the clearings of the pioneers, especially in the southern part of the township..."

 

"...occasionally more noble game still fell before the hunter's bullet. Old settlers still mention that it was about 1820 that the 'big elk was killed,' an event long remembered and often discussed by the residents of the vicinity. The unlucky wanderer was chased down from the Chagrin River into East Cleveland and was there killed. He weighed five hundred pounds, and his horns were seven feet long..."

 

"...but by about 1825 or '30 the face of the country began to take on, more decidedly than before, the appearance of civilization. More than half of the log houses built by the pioneers had been exchanged for framed ones..."

 

"...in the southern section the settlements were much fewer, and the country still retained that pioneer look resultant from log houses, scattered clearings, and far spreading forests..."

 

"...but in all the north part of the township nearly every lot had a settler upon it, and about half the land had been cleared from timber..."

 

          Many of the "old settlers" today are in the Euclid or East Cleveland Township Cemeteries. Many of those in the Euclid Cemetery were originally in the Baptist burial ground and moved; others are likely still beneath the train tracks. Some rest in the Presbyterian churchyard in East Cleveland, Euclid Township's oldest. Some, who prospered, or whose descendants did, are in Lake View. The Neffs were Catholic; they lie in Saint John's Catholic. So were the Shebaneks; they lie in St. Joseph's. A lot of the Germans are in St. John's Lutheran in South Euclid. Ahaz Merchant is in Woodland. Parker Pelton is in Medina. Sarah Victor is down in Circleville. William Treat is out in Kansas.

          By 1850—by their, and their parents', and their children's, hands—Euclid Township had already been radically, irrevocably changed. Amazingly, though, even bigger changes still were coming. Financing had already been arranged. Surveys were already underway.

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The information in Chapter Sixteen is drawn from the following sources:

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Adjutant General of Ohio. Roster of Ohio Soldiers in the War of 1812. Press of the Edward T. Miller Co., 1916.

 

Condit, Phoebe McIlrath. Excerpts From: "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. (This was probably read in 1881.)" 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 T175. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.

 

"Euclid Pioneers" file, Euclid Historical Society archive, Euclid, Ohio.

 

Harris, Mary Emma and Ruth Mills Robinson. The Proud Heritage of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. H.Allen/Women's Civic Club of Cleveland Heights, 1966.

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Johnson, Crisfield. History of Cuyahoga County Ohio. D. W. Ensign & Co., 1879.

 

Keyerleber, Karl. Hometown: The Story of Lyndhurst. Lyndhurst Historical Committee, 1950.

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Kiwanis Club of Richmond Heights, Ohio. History of Richmond Heights. Kiwanis Club of Richmond Heights, 1967.

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Palermo, Anthony. Our Own Little Red Schoolhouse. South Euclid Historical Society, 1976.

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Price, Ellen Loughry. A History of East Cleveland. The Author, 1970.

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Scott, Roscoe E. "Azariah Hanks Apostle of the Cleveland Wilderness." The Chronicle: A Baptist Historical Quarterly, April 1951.

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Scott, Roscoe E. "How God Has Led Our Church Through 125 Stirring Years, 1820-1945." Published in Program 125th Anniversary Euclid-Emmanuel Baptist Church, 1945.

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South Euclid Golden Jubilee Book Committee. The Proud Heritage of South Euclid, Ohio. South Euclid Golden Jubilee Book Committee, 1967.

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Victor, Sarah M. The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor, For Sixty Years: Convicted of Murdering Her Brother, Sentenced to be Hung, Had Sentence Commuted, Passed Nineteen Years in Prison, Yet is Innocent, Told by Herself. Williams Publishing Co., 1887.

 

Westenhaver, Edythe M. Centennial History St. John Lutheran Church. St. John Lutheran Church, 1953.

 

Wickham, Gertrude Van Rensselaer. Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve. The Woman's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission, 1896.

 

Wickham, Gertrude Van Rensselaer. The Pioneer Families of Cleveland 1796-1840, Under the Auspices of the Woman's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission, 1896. Evangelical Publishing House, 1914.

 

Maps and Atlases:

 

Blackmore, Harris H. Map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Stoddard & Everett, 1852.

 

Cram, George F. Atlas of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, Ohio. George F. Cram & Co., 1892.

 

"Euclid_11"R, 8"T" Map MS5163_516_a. Western Reserve Surveys - Euclid collection. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.

 

Flynn, Thomas. Atlas of the Suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. A. H. Mueller & Co., 1898.

 

Hopkins, G.M. Map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. S.H. Matthews, 1858.

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Hopkins, G.M. Plat Book of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. G.M. Hopkins Company, 1914.

 

Lake, D. J. ed., Atlas of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Titus, Simmons & Titus, 1874.

 

Merchant, Ahaz. "Map of Cleveland and its Environs, Surveyed and Published by Ahaz Merchant, October 1835." New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9af1dac0-2089-0136-b506-7bbe7a178e40

 

"Prehistoric Trails" Map MS2871. Leonard Case Family Papers. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.

 

Stranahan, H.B. Maps of Cuyahoga County Outside of Cleveland, 1903. H.B. Stranahan & Co., 1903.

 

Revolutionary War pension application accessed via the Fold3 Database:

Sargeant Currier, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, application S42666

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Encyclopedia of Cleveland History website:

case.edu/ech

                     

Genealogy websites:

ancestry.com

billiongraves.com

findagrave.com

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