Chapter Nine:
Moss
It's uncertain what happened to the Canandaigua Company station on the point in Euclid Township. Perhaps the agreement between Cleaveland and the surveyors complicated the Canandaigua Company's position there beyond recovery. The U.S. experienced a severe economic downturn beginning in 1796 that hit with its full force and became a proper depression in 1797 and 1798. Perhaps that discouraged Wells and his mates sufficiently to abandon the project. Wells, alternately, may have hoped to acquire land in the Western Reserve for a cheaper price than Phelps was willing to offer. Or perhaps Phelps felt that his position in the Western Reserve vis a vis the Connecticut Land Company had overtaken his there vis a vis the Canandaigua Company. Whatever the case, the Canandaigua Company outpost in lakeshore Euclid did not endure.
A second Connecticut Land Company expedition trekked to the Western Reserve to continue the survey and mapping work in the spring of 1797. Seth Pease, Principal Surveyor that year, and Theodore Shepherd, the second expedition's physician, along with nine others of the 1796 crew were slated "to perform certain acts of settlement" in order to comply with the September 30 agreement and thus claim cheap land in Euclid Township. The contract with the surveyors laid out specific conditions, and became void if those conditions were not met.
From "Contract for the Sale of the township of Euclid; to the Surveyors," from the Perkins Family Papers in the Western Reserve Historical Society:
"If... Pease etc. [i.e. the 1796 surveyors] should fail to fulfill and perform the Conditions aforesaid in every particular, then the money, services, or duty which now is or shall be paid, done, or performed shall become forfeited to the benefit of said [Connecticut Land] Company, together with the land."
They were expected to lead eleven families west in 1797, build eleven houses in Euclid, and plant 22 acres of wheat there. The settlers they brought that year numbered exactly zero. The progress of the first year of the Euclid Township agreement did not bode well for the men who looked to it to provide them with land.
Nevertheless Pease and Shepherd hired two of the hands on the Reserve that season, Samuel Spafford and Lot Sanford, who had not participated in the previous year's survey and were not eligible to benefit from the agreement. They sent them into Euclid Township in August 1797 to make what turned out to be a half‑hearted and, for all its inadequacy, one of the only real attempts to fulfill the terms of the 1796 contract. Though supplied for nearly two weeks, Spafford and Sanford returned in half that time, and succeeded in felling only a few trees. Seth Pease jotted notes of the men's endeavors among the other more pressing events of the day in his 1797 journal:
"Thursd 10th Aug.—Sam' Spafford & Lot Sanford fitted out to do my settling duties & that of Doct Shepard —Their Stores for 11 or 12 days —21 lb Pork —15 lb Hard Bread —11 lb Flour —4 Oz Tea, 1 and a half lb Chocolate —2 and a half lb Sugar —Returned Thursday Aug. 17th about noon—"
"Tuesday [September] 12th—I paid Lot Sanford 4 Dollars for cutting over 2 Acres of Land in Euclid..."
It's not clear exactly where in the township this work took place. But Pease had drawn Lake Lot 39, at the northeast end of today's City of Euclid, Gore Lot 40, a good draw on the east line of the township containing the lakeshore trail, and two in the south part of what is today South Euclid. Shepherd drew Lake Lot 8, in today's Cleveland neighborhood of Nottingham, two more in today's Richmond Heights, and what was certainly his best, Gore Lot 22, which also included a stretch of the lakeshore trail.
Likewise unclear is whether Charles Whittlesey's reference to "not more than two" attempting to carry out the terms of the 1796 agreement with the surveyors refers to this effort by Pease and Shepherd via Spafford and Sanford. Indisputable, though, is Whittlesey's assessment: "Great expectations were formed of projected settlement in Euclid which, however, were not realized."
The work of the 1797 survey proceeded much as had the one the previous year: hacking sightlines, running chains, mapping townships. They returned east with the autumn and in their absence the second winter of the venture descended upon New Connecticut, one of the last in which the land of today's Northeast Ohio remained more or less wild. The first earnest attempt at settlement in Euclid Township would begin the following spring.
*
On the third day of June 1798, two groups of a single party of workers and settlers were reunited on the river landing inside the mouth of the Grand River, today's Fairport Harbor, just opposite the big beach at Mentor.
One group was from Cheshire, Connecticut, midway between New Haven and Hartford. It was led by William Law, 46. Law was kind of a big deal. Wealthy, an actual shareholder of the Connecticut Land Company, he was also a grandson of Jonathan Law, Royal Governor of the Connecticut Colony from 1741 to 1750.
The other group, out of Wallingford, Connecticut, adjacent to Cheshire, was headed by Turhand Kirtland, 42. The name will ring a bell with anyone familiar with the Western Reserve east of the Cuyahoga. Earlier that year back in Connecticut he had drawn 2,000 acres and the right to name what is now Kirtland Township, No. 9 in the 9th Range. In that and other drawings he, Law, and half a dozen other investors with whom they'd pooled their money had drawn big and small parcels in townships throughout the surveyed east end of the Reserve.
The Kirtland and Law parties had trekked across upstate New York all spring, through the Mohawk Valley from Albany on the Hudson to Lake Erie above Niagara Falls, then down the shore to the Grand. Their principal goal that summer was to settle Township No. 7 in the 7th Range. Among the Kirtland group landing at the Grand River was Titus Street, age 40, also a proper shareholder in the Connecticut Land Company. He was the largest investor in Township 7, beating William Law by ten dollars, and thus won the right to name it Burton, for his son. Street's majority share in Township No. 4 in the 9th Range would make that borough Streetsboro.
One of the settlers in the Turhand Kirtland group bound for Burton was a young man named Amariah Beard, also sometimes called Amaziah and/or Baird in the sources. He was 27, originally from western Massachusetts, but lately of the frontier town of Granville, New York, about 70 miles north of Albany on the border of Vermont. Waiting for him up the lake at what is now Buffalo was his wife, the former Eunice Moss, 28, with their baby son, Rufus, who was about a year and a half old that spring. Once Beard established their new homestead in Burton he would head back up the lake to fetch his family. Eunice was seven months pregnant.
There to help and to pick up some work for the summer was Beard's brother-in-law, Eunice's older brother, John Moss, also sometimes called Morse in the sources, age 42. He was also a relation of William Law, who was his and Eunice's half uncle, Law's father, Jahleel, having married the Mosses' grandmother, Anna Baldwin, after the disappearance at sea of their grandfather, Anna's first husband, Capt. Richard Hollingsworth, sometime around 1746.
In addition to the big project in Burton, another in Poland, and a smaller but still significant one in Kirtland, the groups had several side projects planned on the Reserve that summer as well, in townships which were still just numbers and ranges, but would soon come to be called Youngstown and Mantua. Plus No. 8 in the 11th Range, which already had a name: Euclid.
*
Between 1818 and 1836, Congress passed four acts providing pensions for veterans of the Revolutionary War, beginning with men who served in the Continental Army, with the later acts extending benefits to those who had fought in militia units, and later to their widows. Old veterans all across the young country presented themselves in their local county courthouses to swear affidavits describing their service, which then could be compared to official records for corroboration. These affidavits today are a priceless first-person window into the lives of thousands of ordinary Americans and of the country as it was being created.
On August 28, 1832, 76-year-old John Moss appeared before a Justice of the Peace in Granville, New York, and swore out pension application W25730. His veracity and character were attested to in it by Turhand Kirtland's brother, John, who himself had moved to Granville in 1795, and John Kirtland's son-in-law, John Bliss Shaw.
By his own account, John Moss was born in what at the time of his application was Cheshire, Connecticut, on April 19, 1756. Cheshire had incorporated out of Wallingford in 1780, and the Mosses were an old family there. John and Eunice's great great grandfather, an earlier John Moss, emigrated from England to Boston at its very founding in 1630, just a decade after the iconic Pilgrims arrived down the Massachusetts Bay in Plymouth. After 40 years there (at the age of 67!) this original John Moss left Boston to join the Connecticut Colony, where he helped found the settlement at Wallingford in 1670. He remained there the rest of his life, dying in 1707 (at the age of 103!).
John Moss of the Western Reserve and the spring of 1798 was the oldest of at least 11 children born to Barnabas and Anna Hollingsworth Moss, married September 1, 1755, in Wallingford. If one does the math on John's birth, it suggests a shotgun wedding. Some sources list his birthday in May, and this might go some way to explain why the date is sometimes pushed back (though not enough to satisfy a judgmental community, so it's still strange). Eunice was 14 years younger, born in Wallingford on April 4, 1770.
John and Eunice's uncle, Timothy Moss, served in the French and Indian War, and John came of age during the crises in Massachusetts in the early 1770s which sparked the Revolution. In an era of young marriages and large families, John was only three years younger than his father's youngest sibling, and in his life he would frequently take part in many of the projects undertaken by his father and his uncles. One uncle, Titus, joined the revolutionary cause in late 1775 and helped build the fortifications on Dorchester Heights which drove the British from Boston. Early in 1776, John, age 19, himself volunteered and was accepted for three months service as a private with the Connecticut forces. He was assigned to Captain Stephen R. Bradley's company, and a Lieutenant William Law. This is very likely the same William Law of the Connecticut Land Company and the 1798 expedition to the Western Reserve. In addition to being a few years older than John Moss (William Law was born on September 2, 1751), Law's social standing and education would have positioned him to be selected as an officer, yet, still in his twenties and without previous military experience, he would probably still have been thought fit only for a junior officer. The Connecticut troop marched down to Manhattan and set to work as part of the ultimately futile efforts to bastion New York against the massive British assault everyone knew was coming. John Moss returned home in the spring when his three months were up and missed the summer's dramatic events in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He re-upped for another three months in October 1776, and passed much of that tour in and around what is now Port Chester, New York, in an area just over the Connecticut border then called the Saw Pits.
Turhand Kirtland can be placed both in Connecticut forces serving in New York and at the Saw Pits during the Revolution as well. He was born in Wallingford in 1755, and he was not nobody there. His family had resided in Connecticut "for many generations" and "held a prominent and influential position." About 20-years-old at the beginning of the war, Kirtland served under Washington at the Battle of Long Island, working the boats which time and again saved the United States from being smothered in the cradle. He took ill "with the malignant camp distemper, typhoid dysentery" and was mustered out of service at the Saw Pits. He recovered, returned to Wallingford, and it is recorded that for a number of years before the creation of the Connecticut Land Company he made his living as a carriage maker and a farmer.
Perhaps the war was when and how Kirtland and Moss met, though as both men were from Wallingford they could very well have known each other before the war, or even met after. And the same could be said about Moss and William Law.
John Moss re-enlisted again, and in early 1777 he served in Captain Miles Johnson's Wallingford company, which for Moss' three months marched around Connecticut in pursuit of the British but never succeeded in engaging them. According to the pension application, this went on until "two or three weeks before the expiration of three months when he was dismissed on account of his being sick + unfit for duty. His father came and took him home."
But while John and Uncle Titus fought for independence, another Moss uncle saw things differently and went the other way. The western end of the Western Reserve south of Sandusky is known as the Firelands. The fires this name refers to were terror raids the British conducted along the Connecticut coast in the summer of 1779. In the fourth grinding year of the war British general William Tryon wanted to punish the rebels and also hoped to pull Washington's forces away from a strong and strategic position they occupied at West Point, New York. Looking to draw the Americans out, Tryon proposed to attack otherwise poorly defended coastal Connecticut from the sea from bases he commanded across the Sound on Long Island. He hoped this would compel the Americans to come out and defend their people and thus expose the rebel army to attack, perhaps even to a decisive battle in which they might be finally destroyed.
From July 3 to July 14, 1779, Tryon led a series of seaborne attacks against mostly civilian targets in the towns of New Haven, Fairfield and Norwalk, Connecticut. Three Firelands townships in Huron County, Ohio, today bear the names of those towns in commemoration. Washington didn't take the bait, and Tryon accomplished little with the raids beyond killing several dozen people, leaving hundreds homeless and outraging sensibilities on both sides. Before total war and the deliberate targeting of civilians became a horrific norm in warfare, most observers, including his own commanders, were appalled by the results of Tryon's raids and felt he went too far. He was sent home to London and never given another important command again. Wanting to use the asset of their Western lands to compensate Connecticut citizens who had lost property in the raids, the state government set a portion of their Western Reserve aside for them when it sold the tract to the Connecticut Land Company in 1795, hence "The Sufferers' Lands" or "The Fire Lands."
Among the men setting torches to New Haven, Fairfield and Norwalk was John Moss' uncle, Joseph Moss, himself a Connecticut native who had sided with the mother country against revolution. He joined Loyalist forces and took part in the July 1779 attacks on his home state and neighbors. Whether Joseph Moss fully knew what he was getting into when he chose his side cannot be said, but after the Tryon Raids he was never able to go back to Connecticut again and was forced into exile to seek a new home in British Canada.
*
After his several short tours young John Moss took a break from the war and, according to his pension application, "...in May 1779 he moved from Connecticut to Wells, Vermont." Wells was a new settlement, a frontier town deep in the New England interior near the west bank headwaters of the Connecticut River. (There does not seem to be a connection between this Wells and the Major Wells of the Canandaigua Company outpost in Euclid.) Founded by Connecticut men in 1768, it sits today on the border between New York and Vermont, though this had not been worked out yet. Wells would finally go to Vermont when that former republic was admitted to the Union in 1791. John Moss' uncle, Timothy, the veteran of the French and Indian War, appears to be the relation which first took the Moss family west. Did his service in the earlier colonial war first bring him to the frontier? Possible, but not known. The 1869 History of Wells, Vermont, makes mention of Timothy Moss' arrival there in 1772, along with his wife, the former Mary Churchell. Nephew John's Revolutionary War pension application, as noted above, tells of his own arrival in Wells in the spring of 1779, and John, his father Barnabas, and uncle Timothy, are all listed in the 1886 History of Rutland County, Vermont, among the 23 freemen of the town in 1780. Timothy and Barnabas Moss and their wives would make Wells their home for the remainder of their lives.
And here enters the story the name of another family which would leave a mark on Euclid Township. In 1780 John Champion Bishop acquired 2,000 acres on the west bank of the Mettawee River opposite Wells and there founded the town of Granville, previously mentioned, at a place since known there as Bishop's Corners. Granville, New York, today borders Wells, Vermont, where they reside on different sides of the state line, though, as mentioned, that would not be worked out until 1791.
Born in 1746 in Lyme, Connecticut (or possibly Dutchess County, New York), John C. Bishop's family were Quakers. (The Bishop's Corners historical marker in Granville is found today at the corner of Mettawee and Quaker Streets.) He was as industrious as that sect's reputation asserts. He married Abigail Reynolds on December 30, 1765, in Dutchess County, and they had at least 13 children from 1766 to 1792, at least two of whom would come to Euclid. According to a history tracing a branch of the Bishop family to Wisconsin, "John C. Bishop served in the Revolutionary War..." but no other details on his service are to be found (he died in 1808, long before the first pension was offered to veterans, and therefore left no personal history in an application). In 1780 he crossed the Mettawee from Wells and founded Granville, where he himself became a big deal. John C. Bishop served in several early government posts there, and later established the Quaker Friends' Society of Granville. In addition to acquiring a sizable land holding and founding the town, John C. Bishop opened Granville's first store and the family became prominent and prosperous, as described in the 1894 History and Biography of Washington County and the Town of Queensbury, New York:
"Drawn by the beauty of the spot and impressed with its future importance as a business center, John Champion Bishop settled on the site of Granville in 1780, and built a house... Being a man of energy Mr. Bishop soon opened a store... A saw mill, grist mill and fulling mill were erected at an early day." "The Bishops had an ashery and afterward a foundry... and an early hemp mill..."
An anecdote concerning John C. Bishop is preserved in the 1869 History of Wells, Vermont:
"Among the early settlers [of Wells] was one Daniel Goodsell, who living near this swamp, thought he would try his skill in setting a trap. Having procured one he had the good luck to catch a small bear, which was very fat though not very black. With the idea of selling the skin, he carried it to John C. Bishop, who kept a store in Granville, N. Y. Mr. Bishop did not like to give him his price, because the skin was not large enough nor black enough. But Goodsell finally sold him the skin, and asked him how much he would give for the largest and the blackest one he ever saw. Bishop said he would give him four dollars, and Goodsell agreed to catch him such an one. About one month thereafter he caught one, the largest and the blackest that had ever been caught by any of the neighbors. He carried the skin over to Mr. Bishop according to agreement, unrolled it, and asked him if it was not the largest one he had ever seen. Bishop said it was. He then asked him if it was not the blackest one he ever saw. Bishop said it was, but that the fur was not good. Goodsell said to him, that if he had told him that he wanted the fur good he would have caught him such an one. Mr. Bishop, being an honest Quaker, saw that he was caught, paid him the four dollars, and Goodsell left him to his own reflections."
*
The American Revolution was a long war; people forget that. In his new home in the northern wilds of the Connecticut Valley, John Moss, still just in his early-20s, answered the militia call several times in the next few years, serving under Vermont's hero of the Revolution, Ethan Allen. Under Gen. Allen, John Moss once again pursued the British, this time through the forests around Ticonderoga. Later, his pension application states, "...he remembers an Insurrection took place on account of provisions which became pretty general, but he dissuaded numbers from joining it, and after a while it was quelled by the officers + settled... [A]t other times during the year after he removed to Vermont he was out on scouts and alarms for a short time, but [he said in 1832] he cannot remember particulars so as to state them..."
Fifty years had passed. He can be forgiven.
John Moss survived the war.
*
Crisfield Johnson's 1878 History of Washington Co., New York lists Amos Beard as Granville's "fence-viewer of 1787..." This was Amariah Beard's father.
The Beards' ancestor, Thomas Beard, just like the Mosses', came from England to Boston in its early days. His great grandson, Amos, was born in Mendon, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston, in 1746. At age 20 he married Hannah Needham, from Brimfield, Massachusetts, also 20, and soon after they began their journey into the West. By 1767 they can be located in Beckett, Massachusetts, also up the Connecticut River, in the Berkshire Mountains, near the Commonwealth's western border with New York, where their first child, a son, Jedediah, was born late that year. Their next child, born in Beckett on August 26, 1770, was Amariah, John Moss' future brother-in-law, come in 1798 to settle his young family in the Western Reserve.
According to a history tracing a branch of the Beard family to Illinois:
"In the Revolutionary war roster of sailors from Massachusetts appears the name of Amos Beard, who served for seven years in that severe struggle for freedom 'that tried men's souls...' Before he enlisted in the sanguinary struggle for liberty and independence, he had married Hannah Needham, descendant of another worthy New Englander, and of this union was born in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, on September 24, 1764, their first son, Jedidiah. Six other brothers and sisters came to gladden and fill up this new home before the fires of revolution were kindled, when the patriotism of the father, that burned like a hidden flame, broke forth to make him, with others, go forth, with trusty flintlock and a stout heart to
Strike till the last armed foe expires
Strike for their altars and their fires
Strike for the green graves of their sires,
God and their native land.
"This Jedidiah, from twelve to nineteen years of age, assisted the mother in the care of the home, while the father was fighting for his country's deliverance from the oppression of Great Britain... Near the close of the long military struggle the anxious and care-worn mother died and the patriot husband and father returned to his desolate home and to his motherless children.
"To better his condition he removed his family to Granville, Washington County, New York, where certain of the relatives were then living."
And from Crisfield Johnson, as noted above, by 1787 Amos Beard can be placed in Granville, just 90 miles north of Beckett, Massachusetts, and right next door to Wells, later of Vermont. Both Jedediah and Amariah can be located in Granville in the 1790s, so it's known that they either came along with their father as young men, or otherwise soon followed.
Jedediah Beard married Charlotte Nichols in Granville on December 1, 1793. Amariah would convince them of Burton.
The Illinois history:
"...Amaziah [sic] Beard had in 1798 removed from Granville to the 'Western Reserve' of Ohio. He sent back repeated and glowing reports of the prosperity and advantages of this new country, so that Jedediah soon felt the urging of the western wanderlust, and as soon as he could overcome his wife's reluctance, which was in 1800, they, with certain other neighbors, took up the trail and trekked to the wilds of Ohio and settled near the southern shores of Lake Erie."
Their father, Amos, would be convinced of Burton as well. He would die and be buried there in 1821.
*
Turhand Kirtland's brother, John, noted above, came to Granville circa 1795, noted above. Crisfield Johnson's History of Washington County, New York:
"John Kirtland was from Wallingford, Conn., and was in the army of the Revolution for a few months. He came to Granville about 1795, and settled... two miles north of West Granville. He established a forge there, and... opened a store..."
And so in Granville, New York, by 1795 the stage was set, with the Mosses there, and the Beards, at least one Kirtland, and the Bishops. That same year in Hartford, Connecticut, the 58 investors of the Connecticut Land Company purchased the Western Reserve from the state for $1.2 million. William Law, a relative of the Mosses, was a major investor. So was Turhand Kirtland. And many of the men were veterans of the Revolution. It's possible perhaps likely that many of them knew each other during the war. It's possible perhaps likely many of them already knew each other in Connecticut before.
Amariah Beard married John Moss' little sister Eunice in Granville on November 12, 1795. Their first child, a son, whom they named Rufus, was born there on December 22 of the following year. By then the Connecticut Land Company had already completed their first survey of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga. A second expedition continued the work in 1797, but they brought no families with them to settle Euclid.
By early 1798 Kirtland and Law had gathered their group of investors. They included Law's brother, Reverend Andrew Law, and his fellow Connecticut Land Company shareholders Titus Street, who has been mentioned, and Daniel Holbrook. There was Seth Hart who led the second Connecticut Land Company expedition to the Western Reserve in 1797, the position held by Moses Cleaveland in the first expedition the year before. There was Levi Tomlinson, who was the brother-in-law of David Beard, who had worked on both the 1796 and 1797 expeditions and who would return as chief surveyor for Kirtland and Law in 1798. David does not appear to have been at least a close relative of Amariah and the other Granville Beards. The coincidence however is notable and difficult to ignore; perhaps they were more distant relations. Or perhaps it was just a common Yankee name in some Yankee times and places. Law also recruited three of his own brothers-in-law, Jason and Merriman Hotchkiss and Thomas Umberfield. His half nephew John Moss, John's father Barnabas and his brother Ichabod all bought in, as well as Moss' cousins Samuel and Benjamin Doolittle and Andrew Hull, and his brother-in-law, Amariah Beard.
An element of randomness was incorporated into the selection process for parcels in the Western Reserve to prevent early investors from snatching up the best tracts and thus leaving the least desirable ones unsellable, or from acquiring monolithic blocks which would distort land values across the Reserve. Lottery-type drawings were held, and the Kirtland/Law investors' drawings in the winter of 1798 yielded the largest blocks in the townships which are now Poland, Burton and Kirtland.
The document explaining the exact nature of John Moss' arrangements in Euclid and how they came to be has yet to surface. It would have been clear by the end of the 1797 season that the surveyors had brought no settlers to Euclid and therefore their September 30, 1796, agreement with the Company was already void. By the beginning of 1798 the shareholders probably would already have been looking for new ways to monetize the land they owned in Euclid. And they seem to have come to some sort of an agreement with John Moss.
Moss is associated with three tracts in Euclid Township, two of which were outside the established system of lots, which makes them a bit strange. Those two abutted the east line of the township, one a small piece of just 52 acres at the base of the escarpment on the main road, the other, by far his largest, 720 acres climbing up the escarpment into the Heights. That lot, shown on maps as the "Morse Tract" today comprises most of the north end of the City of Richmond Heights, Ohio.
The final 84 acre lot was on the point, and appears to have been one of the slender lakefront lots established in the apportionments for the surveyors in 1796. The lake lot actually was one of the most valuable parcels in the entire township. The point, still known today as "Moss Point," was the last headland before the crucial Cuyahoga for any lake craft approaching from the east. It probably also contained some of the only improvements existing in Euclid at that time, being whatever clearing and shelters remained there from the Canandaigua Company outpost established by the fall of 1796.
The small lot was on the road, and some more than others, but all pieces of Euclid sitting on the main road were desirable.
What would have made the large Morse Tract particularly valuable is open to speculation, but it appears to have had something to do with transportation and water power. Long an established path from the lake plain up into the heights, the route of what is now Chardon Road appears on the earliest maps of Euclid Township. Beginning where today old Chardon Road meets Euclid Avenue opposite East 200th Street in Euclid, it runs through the south end of the Morse Tract east along the crest of the ridge between the escarpment and the deep valley cut by the east branch of Euclid Creek, and then along the east branch out into what became Kirtland Township. Perhaps Turhand Kirtland was looking to establish some infrastructure leading out to his inland holdings and had come to some agreement with Moss to begin to effect it. The south end of the Morse Tract along the east branch of Euclid Creek would also be the location of the first mill constructed in the eastern part of the township, and perhaps that location had already been identified as a good one to stake a claim.
*
The party assembled in April 1798 in Albany, New York, on the Upper Hudson at the head of the Mohawk Valley, the highway from New England out to the Great Lakes. They were maybe two dozen workers and settlers, many individuals who were both.
Among them were several of the investors themselves, who, admirably, personally participated in much of the summer's hardship, labor, and even peril. These were the aforementioned Kirtland, Law, Street and Tomlinson. Kirtland and Law kept journals, individually the most valuable primary sources on these events of 1798.
There was David Beard, the surveyor and Western Reserve veteran. And there was a man named Bishop, who appears to have been associated with the handling of the lake boats used and thus is often referred to in the journals as "Captain." It's tempting, perhaps even logical, to conclude that this was one of the Granville Bishops, however no first name for Mr. Bishop or Capt. Bishop is ever given in either of the journals, nor are his origins or identity ever referenced therein, and in the absence of evidence of his identity from other sources it cannot be stated with certainty that this was one of the Granville Bishops, though that certainly would have made a lot of sense.
And there was a Col. Thomas Sheldon. There is not a lot to be found on Col. Sheldon (how he became a colonel, for instance, or of what, though something in the Revolution seems to be a safe guess). However, various sources on the early Western Reserve identify him as the man dispatched by the Connecticut Land Company to establish the first deliberately made roads on the Reserve. Volume 5 of the Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County published in 1904 has this to say:
"One such road was laid out in 1797 [sic] along the lake following the ridge two or three miles south of the lake shore [sic]. It ran from Conneaut to Cleveland and the road was laid out and the forest trees were girdled for the Connecticut Land Company by Colonel Thomas Sheldon of Suffield, Connecticut."
The 1797 is an error. Kirtland's primary source journal clearly notes Sheldon beginning the survey of the Conneaut to Cleveland road on May 31, 1798. Nonetheless, Col. Sheldon is therefore crucial to the story of Euclid Township as the father of modern Euclid Avenue. He appears to have ended his days as the superintendent of the prison at Newgate, Connecticut, during an inmate uprising. Happily, though still in a sad sort of way, he died of illness rather than violence. The occasion of his incapacitation may have emboldened the prisoners to act when they did. But that lay in the future. In the summer of 1798 there was a great deal of fuss all the way from Albany to Burton keeping track of Col. Sheldon's horse.
The workers included brothers-in-law John Moss and Amariah Beard, as have been mentioned, and also brothers Bennett and Jason Rice, and Eli and Isaac Fowler. Isaac Fowler would settle in Burton and his sons Hiram and Milo would establish the Fowlers' Mills on the Chagrin River in Munson in the 1830s. One of their mills survives to this day and the name Fowler's Mill persists as a golf course in Chesterland and a local boutique breakfast food items brand. There were also John Adkins, Nathaniel Glines, John McFarland, Tod Yale, and men known only by the names of Brooks, Byington, Matthews, Pond and Wolcott.
Also in the party were "families from New Hampshire by the name of Honey, with his wife, and Edwards, being three brothers with one woman and three children." The Honeys and Edwardses were in-laws as well.
Also bound for Burton were Thomas Umberfield and his wife, the former Lydia Hotchkiss from Wallingford, who was a niece of William Law. With them were their four daughters, all soon-to-be marriageable young women which would have been seen as a tremendous boon in nascent New Connecticut.
Also with the Umberfields was an enslaved child.
*
The boy's name was Harry. He was 12-years-old, and he didn't last a year in the Western Reserve.
The 1880 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County:
"...Mrs. [Lydia Hotchkiss] Umberfield was of a Cuban family on the father's side. This Cuban had come to Connecticut for his health. He saw, loved, and was wedded to one of the fair daughters of that then Slave State. Returning to Cuba, he sold his plantation and Slaves, reserving only the family servants, which he brought to Connecticut. The last of these was a colored boy, given to Mrs. Umberfield by her mother. She brought him to Ohio, where he soon died."
"The story may be founded on fact, as early settlers corroborated it, in the recollections of a colored boy with the family."
It is corroborated by Kirtland and Law. One overt mention of Harry is made by Turhand Kirtland in his journal, and two instances in Law's where he refers to "Umberfield's man."
On July 3 Law wrote:
"I this day went with Baird [David Beard the surveyor] almost to the south west corner of No. 10 in the 8th Range [Concord]. They proceeded on for No. 7 [Burton] to look for Messrs. Rice and Yale who were to meet us there. I found them at the brook about a mile from where I left them. They were encamping. I saw I should do them very little good and myself a great injury for to spend another night as I had did the last. I thought I could not. It was agreed that I should return to the river and continue there till they got through and that Mr. Umberfield or his man should come on with the other team and bring on some rum, brandy, etc. of which they were short."
Kirtland on July 5 noted the errand: "Sent two men to Grand River after stores with Harry and two teams and sled."
Then on July 12 Law wrote: "It is rainy and thunder again this morning. Nothing of Mr. Umberfield's man or boat. This is a life I should be soon tired of." Later that same day Law notes, with no mention of Harry, "The weather is now good. About sunset the boat arrived is now arrived [sic], and Mr. Rice and Yale."
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's 1896 Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve offers a glib and tasteless joke about humans owning fellow humans and the death of a child:
"She [Mrs. Thomas Umberfield] brought, also, a bag of sand for Scouring purposes, and a colored boy, presumably for scouring purposes also; this last a relict of old Connecticut Negro slavery. The 'chattel,' however, died within a year, and the sand lost much of its value in its owner's estimation, when the great drifts of lake sand broke upon her startled vision."
The Western Reserve in 1798 was still the Northwest Territory and was governed under the terms of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance which decreed, "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory..." But the Old Northwest comprised what would become more than five future U.S. states, an enormous region to police with little to no provision for law enforcement. Connecticut would be the last Northern state to fully outlaw slavery—not until 1848—and there was perhaps little inclination on the part of White settlers to intervene in their neighbors' households' arrangements so far as they concerned enslaved Black people.
As the sources above said, Harry would die within a year. Cause of death is not noted, nor is there any trace to be found of where he is buried.
Turhand Kirtland had also been an enslaver, of a man named Isaac. But his ultimate reputation fares better than Mrs. Umberfield's. According to the 1906 Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut, and Men Who Have Made It:
"The feeling against the traffic in slaves had become so strong that at the October session of the General Assembly 1774 it was enacted that whoever 'shall import or bring any Indian, negro or mulatto slave or slaves into this Colony to be disposed of shall forfeit and pay to the Treasurer of this Colony the sum of one hundred pounds,' and the State Assembly at the October session 1777 enacted, 'That if any owner of any slave shall apply to the selectmen of the town to which he belongs for liberty to emancipate such slave it shall be the duty of such selectmen to enquire into the age, abilities, etc. of such slave, and if they are of the opinion that it is likely to be consistent with the real advantage of such slave, and that it is probable that the slave will be able to support his or her own person, etc., such selectmen shall give to the owner of such slave a certificate, and that the owner of such slave hath liberty to emancipate such slave.' This was a decided step towards the gradual emancipation of all slaves. And the result was that the town books now began to bear records of slave transactions for the first time; but instead of being transfers of the negro as a chattel, they were the blessed harbingers of the complete freedom of the negro race in Connecticut...."
"...The Wallingford books contain many entries of the emancipation of negro slaves under the new law..."
"...Jan. 20, 1795, Turhand Kirtland emancipated his negro Isaac."
A family history of the Kirtlands and their descendants in Poland Township, Ohio, contains a note that "...Turhand... brought from New England a black man whom he freed and gave him land from his grant." Though, again, his fate nor burial place are not to be found.
Slavery and the early Western Reserve is a grossly understudied and underreported topic. And this is not the last time it will appear, nor so far away as Poland or Burton, in the story of Euclid Township.
*
The Kirtland and Law parties travelled about six or eight weeks across upstate New York; neither journal lists a departure date from either Connecticut or Albany. With differing allotments of adults and children and babies, household goods, livestock, carpentry and survey and agricultural equipment, Col. Sheldon's horse, and being much at the mercy of the weather, they travelled at different rates and were frequently separated. They made legs of five or ten, even 20 miles a day, and reached Lake Erie near what Kirtland called "the indescribable Falls of Niagara" around mid-May. Once at the lake they were able to effect some of their transport with near-shore boats and made longer legs of maybe 30 miles a day. Both parties passed through the site where Buffalo would later be established, where Eunice Moss Beard stopped to await her husband preparing their homestead, then Presque Isle, present-day Erie, Pennsylvania. The Law party crossed into the Northwest Territory and reached the outpost just inside the border at Conneaut Creek on May 24. Kirtland's people arrived there four days later. They both reached the Grand River on the same day, June 3, and there found large wild strawberries which so impressed them that both men noticed them independently in their journals.
From the Grand River, three members of the united party "...took the boat that belonged to the company... and went on for Cleveland [sic] with Mr. Moss and the families of Edwards and Honey..."
Mrs. Umberfield and their children—plus the enslaved boy Harry—were deposited at the Grand while Mr. Umberfield, Kirtland, Law, Rufus Edwards and some of the hired men proceeded inland, cutting the first rudimentary road to Burton. They reached the northern boundary of the township on June 15 and began their work there immediately while Umberfield headed back up the new road to bring down his family.
He arrived with them in Burton a week later. A bounty of free land had been offered to White women settling in the township. The first to arrive would receive 160 acres, the second 60. Lydia Umberfield claimed the large first prize. Eunice Moss Beard would get the second. But she had a long trip ahead of her before she could claim it.
The Honey and Edwards group for Cleaveland with John Moss evidently included Amariah Beard, and while Kirtland led his group down to Burton, Beard and Moss had been to Euclid, at least briefly, as Kirtland's June 22 journal entry relates, "Messrs. Moss and Beard arrived at camp this day from Euclid..."
From June 22 Moss and beard participated in the work in Burton, assisting Kirtland and the other men with surveying and clearing. On the 4th of July, "Mr. John Moss went with dispatches to Esq. Law" who had gone on some business to John Young's Town, Township No. 2 in the 2nd Range, at the end of June, and they along with another man of the party returned to Burton on July 9. The next day, July 10, 1798, Kirtland noted, "Mr. A. Beard and Moss went to Euclid."
*
The earliest history of Euclid Township, an anonymous handwritten manuscript circa 1850 preserved in the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland entitled simply "History of Euclid," notes John Moss, whom it calls "Morse," as the first American to attempt significant improvements there. It makes mention of other "beginnings," possibly referring to some of the efforts of Spafford and Sanford on behalf of Pease and Shepherd the previous season, possibly settlements not recorded in other sources, or possibly simply in error, and apparently unaware of the Canandaigua Company outpost on the headland which preceded Moses Cleaveland.
The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript:
"Number Eight in the Eleventh range of Townships on the Connecticut Western Reserve was chosen by the Surveyors of those lands (They having the privilege of Selecting any Township on the Reserve at a minimum price per acre) and by them named after the old Mathematician 'Euclid'. In 1798 Several of this Company made beginnings in various parts and as the Company had in dividing the Township into Lots, ran a diagonal line a certain distance from the Lake Bank, and then cut the land between that line and Lake into Small Lots in order that each member of the company should have the privilege of owning a Lake Lot. Several of those beginnings were on their Lots on the lakeshore, among others was one made by a man by the name of John Morse..."
On the lake lot "...he cleared off Some three or four acres, and sowed it to Wheat, Timothy and Red Top Grass Seed, the Wheat was cut and Secured in a Small Barn covered with Black Ash Bark..."
"…Morse also made a beginning on the East line of the Township on the Ridge, where he erected a good sized log house, hewed and covered the same with short shingles, and girdled some 20 acres of Timber adjoining…"
No sources provide any further detail on the exact location of these John Moss improvements on the ridge, but additional details can be found regarding the people who came after him, and from those some information regarding John Moss can be inferred. The family who followed "…moved in and settled on the lot formerly improved by John Morse [sic], on the ridge" in 1809, "…and the next year put up a saw mill on the east branch of Euclid Creek..." Later maps, beginning at least as early as the 1858 Hopkins map of Cuyahoga County, show this saw mill located in the southwest corner of the Morse Tract, near the present-day location of the complicated intersection of Richmond, Chardon and White Roads, in the north end of Richmond Heights. It was on the south side of Chardon, west of Richmond, and on the north bank of the east branch of Euclid Creek.
Amariah Beard is given short shrift in this account. Indeed none at all. But according to Kirtland he was there. And that's a lot of work for one man.
It appears they were visited in the midst of this work on July 18 by Kirtland, Law, and David Beard, who were on an errand to Cleveland via the lake but were delayed by rough seas and only, "Went as far as Mosses at Euclid," before continuing on the next day. This would clearly be the lakeshore lot. No mention however whether anyone was home at the time.
*
Sometime in late July Amariah Beard left the work in the Reserve and headed back up the Lake Erie shore to fetch his family. Eunice was heavily pregnant at this time, and toting son Rufus. "The family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Beard and a little son, came in an open boat from Buffalo, their goods being taken by land with an ox team; the family going ashore and camping with the land party at night."
In the absence of roads through the ancient forest the first settlers coming into the Western Reserve, depending on how far west they intended to go, usually proceeded in this fashion down the lakeshore in stages, hopping outposts at landmarks, usually the mouths of the major rivers and large creeks: Conneaut, Ashtabula, Grand (Fairport), Chagrin (Eastlake), the Euclid headland, Cuyahoga (Cleveland). The Beards, heading for Burton, certainly intended to land at the Grand River and to proceed inland to their homestead along the new road cut earlier in the season, just as the Umberfields had.
So far so good.
But:
"Passing the Pennsylvania line, they were driven, by adverse winds, into the lake three days. The wife suffered untold anxiety during the storm. There seemed little hope for any of these forlorn voyagers, buffeted by winds and waves, in an open boat, three dread days of wild tossing on that tempestuous sea."
"[U]ntold anxiety" indeed, as anyone who's ever experienced a severe late summer thunderstorm in Northeast Ohio, or, worse, been caught in one boating on Lake Erie, even with modern equipment and the Coast Guard to call on, might imagine. There was none of that for the Beards, of course, and the sources say they struggled alone on the lake for three days, Eunice near-term pregnant and they with a toddler child. This must have been terrifying. The trauma of the experience would be implicated later in Eunice's fate and eventual tragic death.
They "landed at Chagrin river [sic] August 4th." If Fairport was their destination they had overshot it and ended up at Eastlake. If they wished to get back perhaps the winds which had blown them west remained against them. They may have anticipated an arduous trek back up the coast only to face another overland on a very rough road.
The sources indicate that Eunice would have been in bad shape, her proximity to delivering the baby inside her surely a deep concern. Perhaps the stress of the event had sent her into an early labor. Who knows what state Rufus, or Amariah for that matter, was in? They may have decided that continuing with the westerly wind to the Euclid headland just a few miles down the shore was, at least for the moment, a better bet. Perhaps there was shelter there, the remnants of the Canandaigua Company outpost, or at least John Moss' black ash bark barn. But John was not there to help. Law mentions in his journal sharing some food with him in Burton on August 9.
The Beards pressed on to Euclid.
The 1880 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County records, "August 10th Clarinda [sic] Beard was born, almost a castaway on the shores of this great wilderness." It can be said with certainty that this was in Euclid as the Williams Brothers' 1878 History of Geauga and Lake Counties states: "[Amariah] Beard... spent part of the summer [of 1798] in Euclid, where he had a daughter born."
Clorinda Beard, daughter of Eunice and Amariah, first American child born in Euclid Township, August 10, 1798.
*
They were still there a week later when they were visited by Law on his way from Burton to Cleveland via the Grand River and the lakeshore. Law's journal for August 18 records, "To-day proceeded [north from Burton then] down the [Grand R]iver to the mouth in our boat. Found the wind so high against us that we were obliged to go on foot. Went on to Euclid, and slept at Mr. Baird's."
Late summer, or fall, depending on the source, Eunice and Amariah Beard and family arrived at their homestead in Burton. Eunice won 60 acres of free bounty land for being the second White woman to settle in the township.
The parties continued their work across the Reserve through the summer. Moss had worked so hard he wore out his shoes. On September 10 Kirtland noted, "Brooks and Pond and Jason Rice staid [sic] until Thursday to see lands and trade with Esq. Law and make a pair shoes for John Moss."
They departed the Western Reserve at the end of September via the southeast corner and Kirtland's holdings in Poland Township. They proceeded on to Pittsburgh. Kirtland's last entry for 1798: "Thursday, Oct. 11— I set out for home."
During the summer Lavinia Edwards Honey and her family had established themselves in Mantua. It's said she was afraid of Indians—small bands of itinerant Natives still lingered around the Western Reserve in 1798—and so came to stay for the winter with the Beards in Burton. Probably also a consideration that fall was the approaching completion of Lavinia's own pregnancy and the aid in delivery one of the few other women in the region could provide. In Burton Lavinia gave birth to a son, Riley Honey, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1798, before the family returned and took up their permanent residence in Mantua in the spring.
*
William Law returned to Burton from the East for the 1799 season. He was expecting John Moss to be there, but did not find him. Back in Connecticut in July he reported what news there was from the West in a letter to his brother and fellow Burton investor, Andrew Law, preserved in the William Law Papers at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland.
It appears that John Moss was experiencing financial difficulties.
"Rev'd Andrew Law
Cheshire, July 6, 1799
Dear Brother—
I found Mr. John Moss had not gone onto the Reserve when I got there. But he and Mr. Waitstill Carrington were determined to go last week. Mr. [Jedediah] Baird is going as soon as he has got his harvest. Some of them give encouragement of making some money next Fall, but Mr. John Moss will not have in his power to pay any soon, if ever. His farm is mortgaged for more than £800 New York currency which is as much as he can get for the farm."
John Moss did eventually make it back to the Western Reserve in 1799, again to Burton, transporting mill equipment about 100 miles from the current site of Beaver, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh, late in the summer. The 1880 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County:
"1799 - June 8, Isaac Clark and his company arrived [in Burton] to build the mills. The dam was built this season, the settlers contributing labor upon it. In August, Seth Hayes bought the irons and gear at Pittsburgh, and John Moss brought them from Fort McIntosh, at the mouth of the Big Beaver, with an ox team. This was the gear for a saw-mill."
Another letter from Law to his brother a few months later talks of intentions to move to the Reserve by John Moss' brother Ichabod, another of the 1798 investors, as well as John Moss' own plans to help Amariah's brother Jedediah Beard and his family do the same.
Most interesting for Euclid contemplations, however, is its description of John Moss' finances in a state of collapse.
"Jan. 20th 1800
Dear Brother—
...People are much spirited about going on to the Reserve, from this and the Northward states. Mr. John Moss and another Mr. Baird [Jedediah], brother to the one who is on Burton #7 [Amariah], are going on. Mr. Moss has but little to get him on with for his estate is gone.
The [Jedediah] Baird family are going on with him this Winter. Mr. Ichabod Moss and wife are determined to go on next Winter. He has an idea that his land is not so favourable [sic] to settle on at present and does not know but that he should be glad to get a part of your lot #26 if you were willing. But if he can do other ways it would be best for they have begun improvements all around it..."
These intimations of financial difficulties contained in these letters from William Law to his brother may finally explain why John Moss ultimately could not follow through on his project in Euclid, one into which he initially put a great deal of effort, to the bafflement of Euclid Township historians for a long time.
Crisfield Johnson:
"Notwithstanding all this labor [in Euclid], Morse seems to have abandoned his land very suddenly, for the wheat was left to be destroyed by the weather (remaining untouched in the frail barn for several years)..."
Nevertheless, John Moss did help Jedediah Beard move out to Burton in the winter of 1800:
"1800. February 22—They started from Granville for Burton with three children—Thomas, Thalia, and Amey. All the household goods of this family were in a two-horse sleigh. From Buffalo they drove one day on the lake ice, at night camping at the mouth of Cattaraugus creek [sic] [Irving, New York]. Beds were made of hemlock brush. The snow melted, and in the night Mrs. [Charlotte Nichols] Beard was awakened by the uncomfortable feeling of water rising through the brush. Lake winds shifted the ice to Canada, and they built the next day shanties of their sleigh... John Moss was sent on to Burton for Amariah Beard, who got a batteaux boat at Fairport, and went to them. Paine had secured a boat, and they loaded goods and sleighs, and sailed out together, Amariah and another man bringing the cattle through the woods. Mrs. Beard, fearing the boats, walked all the way to Fairport, carrying in her arms a child one year old—Amey..."
Charlotte would probably have heard about Eunice's experience. She thus wisely feared the lake.
*
Eunice, as has been intimated, met an awful end.
Referring back to the summer 1798 storm which drove their boat into Lake Erie, and the three terrifying days spent trying to return to land, plus her bounty for being the second White woman to settle in Burton, the Pioneer and General History of Geauga County asserts that Eunice was traumatized psychologically by memories of her experience on the lake:
"Not gift of land, nor wild wood air, could lift the cloud and storm of that voyage. In the years long after, it came back, and in the wanderings of her mind, was repeated in all its fury... Mrs. Beard was insane for many years, and a house was built for her, in which she had to be confined."
These scant lines leave a host of tantalizing questions: When did this "insanity" begin, and how did it manifest? Eunice and Amariah had children together at least up until 1812, so when was she confined to her house, and how cut off from the family was she once she was?
The conclusion contained in Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve cannot be disputed, that, "...her death was the crowning agony of her life," because her house, the Pioneer and General History of Geauga County relates, "...took fire and she was burned in it."
Thus ended the hard life of Eunice Moss Beard, February 3, 1815. She rests, peacefully one hopes, in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Burton.
*
Euclid's first baby, Clorinda Beard, would join the celibate, pacifist, sexually egalitarian Shaker movement at their North Union colony in what is today Shaker Heights, Ohio. Clorinda joined them when she was 18, just about a year after Eunice's death, which may or may not be significant. The horrible event certainly would have marked a turning point in Clorinda's life. Perhaps she was traumatized by the manner of her mother's death. Perhaps she found her father's treatment of her mother cruel and didn't wish to stay in the home. The year after Eunice died, 1816, was the Year without a Summer, a global climate catastrophe that caused snow in July and destroyed crops across the Northern Hemisphere. The 18-teens in the United States was a decade of unprecedented natural disasters, plus war. On top of all the other blows in Clorinda's life it may indeed have felt like the end of the world approaching, and could easily have caused an early-19th century young woman to turn to religion. Clorinda left the Shakers at the age of 40; why is unknown. She died in 1873, and is buried with her parents in their plot in Pleasant Hill.
*
Amariah Beard is remembered today in Burton as one of its founders. Before her death he and Eunice had seven more children together, some who stayed in Northeast Ohio and some who scattered. After Eunice died he married again, to a woman named Hannah. People on the frontier, men and women, rarely stayed single if it could be helped. The Pioneer and General History of Geauga County relates that, "Mr. Beard was a life-long member of the Congregational church, and was kindly known as 'Uncle Ami.'" He lived to be 93-years-old, dying in 1864. He too is in Pleasant Hill.
*
William Law returned to Connecticut. Through his son, William Law, Jr., he was active in the affairs of his Western Reserve holdings and the Connecticut Land Company until its dissolution in 1809. He died in 1824 in Cheshire.
Turhand Kirtland led parties west every year from 1798 before permanently relocating his own family to the Western Reserve in 1803. He settled in Poland Township, in the very corner of the Reserve, No. 1 in the 1st Range. He became a county judge (he's found in many Northeast Ohio histories as "Judge Kirtland"). He was a Justice of the Peace and state senator later too, and continued to represent the interests of the Connecticut Land Company until its end. As a community leader he championed libraries and education, and his efforts contributed to the founding of Western Reserve College, which lives on today as Case-Western Reserve University. Successful and well respected in Poland Township, he donated the land for the Poland Village Cemetery in which he himself now rests. Turhand Kirtland died in 1844.
*
When exactly John Moss' Euclid plans completely unraveled is difficult to say. "J.M." and "J. Mofs" appear on the three lots attributed to him in the 1802 "Euclid, or Township No. 8 in the 11th Range of the C.W. Reserve" map in the Simon Perkins Papers at the Western Reserve Historical Society. But in July 1803 Turhand Kirtland wrote in his notes, "John Moss has not come forward to take a contract for the eight hundred acres surveyed to him in Euclid. Unless he does something this season I shall sell the land of opportunity offer to any other purchaser that may present."
An 1803 map of Euclid Township shows John Moss' big 720 acre lot on the ridge in possession of "Wm. Law." The same map shows the 84 acre "John Mofs lake lot" under the name of Connecticut Land Company shareholder Henry Champion. The small 54 acre parcel at the foot of the escarpment on the main road went to Joseph Burke, the subject of the next chapter.
The first big wave of settlers didn't break on Euclid Township until the spring of 1804. They would find the weathered remains of John Moss' efforts when they arrived.
"...John Morse... [had] cleared off some trees on four acres, and sowed it in Wheat, Timothy and Red Top Grass Seed. The wheat was cut and secured in a small barn covered with black ash bark.
"Some of the wheat in the sheaf was there six years after in a damaged state, and from this grass seed that grew there, the whole Township was stocked to those kinds of grasses."
Regarding John Moss' abandoned produce the anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript notes, "...as late as 1808 two or three tons of that variety of that kind of hay might have been cut to the acre on that place..."
*
Not being relevant to the task of establishing his military service or eligibility there is a 40 year gap in the biographical information John Moss' pension application contains. On June 10, 1822, at age 66, he married Mary Warren, age 44, in Pownal, Vermont, just up the road from Wells and Granville. This was a very late marriage for both of them, but there is nothing to be found about earlier spouses, nor anything regarding children from either of them. By 1832 the couple were located in Granville. That summer John Moss presented himself at the courthouse and swore out his pension application and described his service.
When they tallied him up the officials determined that John Moss had served the cause of independence for a total of 11 months and 7 days. The pension rate was determined for each soldier according to rank and the length of and type of his service. On January 22, 1833, a grateful nation awarded John Moss a pension in the amount of $37.42 annually.
He never got it.
Two months later John Moss died, in Granville, New York, on March 26, 1833, a few weeks shy of his seventy-seventh birthday. Where he is buried is not recorded. Granville, or somewhere else in Washington County, New York, is a good guess. Or perhaps with his parents over the border in Rutland County, Vermont.
Crisfield Johnson:
"In the spring of 1798 a party of eighteen came out to the Reserve... The same year Mr. John Morse and others made a settlement in Euclid."
"The first considerable improvement [in Euclid Township] of which there is any account was made in 1798 by John Morse... He built a good log house on the ridge, on the east line of the township, and girdled about twenty acres of timber around it. He also cleared off three or four acres on the flats near the lake shore [sic], and sowed it to wheat and grass seed. In due time the wheat was cut and secured in the sheaf in a small log barn, covered with black ash bark. Notwithstanding all this labor, Morse seems to have abandoned his land very suddenly, for the wheat was left to be destroyed by the weather (remaining untouched in the frail barn for several years) while the part sowed to grass for more than ten years furnished the whole township with 'timothy'' and 'red-top ' seed, the two kinds sowed by Morse."
John Moss, or Morse, of Wallingford, Connecticut, and Granville, New York, soldier of the Revolution, is the founder of Richmond Heights, Ohio, and one of the several founders of Burton, Kirtland, Mantua, Poland and Youngstown. Plus No. 8 in the 11th Range: Euclid.
Amariah Beard, late of Burton, deserves some credit too. Perhaps just as much.
The City of Euclid's Kenneth J. Sims Park sits upon Moss Point today. There's a small beach there, pebbly and artificial, but certainly near where the Beard family shipwrecked in August 1798. Somewhere in the park is the site of the Canandaigua Company's outpost, and John Moss' black ash barn filled with rotting wheat, and the hut where Clorinda Beard was born.
The whole fuss about the place was always that it was the last headland before the Cuyahoga. Today one can sit in the park and, down the lakeshore, with the summer sun setting, see the lights of the skyscrapers blink on Downtown.
The information in Chapter Nine is drawn from the following sources:
Manuscripts:
"Contract for the Sale of the township of Euclid; to the Surveyors" MS3107, Perkins Family Papers, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"History of Euclid." MSS 1, Container 69, Folder 161, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Records relating to William Law, Jr., consisting of a journal 1799" Turhand Kirtland Papers, MS3237, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Connecticut Land Company Contract Notes, Turhand Kirtland Agent, July 1803" MSS 1 Cab 54, Drawer 2, Roll 1, Container 2, Folder 34, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Anderson-Clark, Ruthanna. "Recollections of the Billius and Ruthanna Kirtland Family and Their Home. (1978)" Compiled by Ted Hine – February 2015.
Atwater, Amzi. "Field Notes, 1797." MS1693. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Pease, Seth. "The Journal of Seth Pease on the Reserve & at Cleaveland from June 6, 1797 – Oct. 25, 1797." WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
William Law Papers. MS0594, WRHS, Cleveland, Ohio.
Maps:
"A Map of Euclid, or No. 8 in the 11th Range" MS5163_402_437_1_a, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"A Map of the Connecticut Western Reserve from actual Survey by Seth Pease" John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
"A Plan of the Town of Euclid, being what is called No. 8 in the eleventh range in the Connecticut Reserve" MS3610_1_vol 1, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Euclid Township 1802" Euclid Township 1802_Bound Volume Map, Bound Volume Maps Collection, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Euclid, or Township No. 8 in the 11th Range of the C.W. Reserve" MS3122_79a_vol 1_82, Simon Perkins Papers, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Plan of the Town of Euclyd" MS495, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"twp 8 range 11 Euclid, Cuyahoga co." MS5163_277_311_16_a, Orrin Harmon Papers, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Untitled map of Euclid Township, MS2871_OV1_19, Leonard Case Family Papers, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Hopkins, G.M. Map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. S.H. Matthews, 1858.
Revolutionary War pension application accessed via the Fold3 Database:
John Moss, Washington County, New York, application W25730
Published sources:
Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, Volume 1. Mount & Carroll, 1880.
Beach, Joseph Perkins. History of Cheshire, Connecticut from 1694 to 1840. Lady Fenwick Chapter D.A.R., 1912.
Collins, Minerva. Beard Family History. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 22, No. 3. Oct. 1929.
Croll, P.C. "Thomas Beard, The Pioneer and Founder of Beardstown, Illinois." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. July 1, 1917.
Davidson, Jennie Melissa Patterson. The descendants of Rufus Edwards (1807-1867) and his wife Ruth Huestis Edwards (1816-1890) : a genealogical record. Melvin Gilbert Dodge, 1936.
Davis, Charles Henry Stanley. History of Wallingford, Conn. from its settlement in 1670 to the present time, including Meriden, which was one of its parishes until 1806, and Cheshire, which was incorporated in 1780. Published by the Author, 1870.
Gillespie, Charles Bancroft and George Munson Curtis. An historic record and pictorial description of the town of Meriden, Connecticut, and men who have made it, from earliest settlement to close of its first century of incorporation. Journal Publishing Co., 1906.
Gresham Publishing Company. History and biography of Washington County and the town of Queensbury, New York, with historical notes on the various towns. Gresham Publishing Co., 1894.
Hiland, Paul and Robert Parks. History of Wells, Vermont, for the first century after its settlement. Tuttle & Co., 1869.
Historical Society of Geauga County, Ohio. Pioneer and General History of Geauga County, with sketches of some of the pioneers and prominent men. Historical Society of Geauga County, 1880.
History of Geauga and Lake Counties with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men. Williams Brothers, 1878.
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Genealogy websites:
ancestry.com
findagrave.com
geni.com
myheritage.com
usgenweb.org