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GEAUGA COUNTY, OHIO
HISTORY & GENEALOGY


 

Source:
1798
HISTORY
of
GEAUGA AND LAKE COUNTIES
OHIO
with
Illustrations and Biographical Sketches
of its
Pioneers and Most Prominent Men
Philadelphia
Williams Brothers
1878.

CHARDON TOWNSHIP
Pg. 112.

     CHARDON township is No. 9 of range 8 of the Western Reserve, came in 1808 to be distinguished as the shire town of the county of Geauga, as such must have the first place, although, as will be seen, several of her sister townships were settled some years in advance of her.

SITUATION, SURFACE, SOIL.

     Chardon is bounded north by the county line; Munson lies on the south, with Hambden on the east, and Kirtland on the west.  It popularly disputes with other points the honor of the greatest elevation.  The Little mountain is in the northwest corner.  It has the usual variety of surface of the country, which affords drainage, and the pleasing undulations, quite broken into hills at some points, so delightful to the eye.  Chardon hill, to south-southeast, furnishes one of the finest outlooks in northern Ohio.
     Her soil is that strong, persistent clay, modified along her streams by loam, with a sprinkling of sand, common to the region.  The whole once covered with a magnificent growth of forest-trees, of maple, beech, chestnut, oak, ash, elm, basswood, poplar, the most of which has long since disappeared.  Much of the surface has underlying sandstone, which crops out at many points, affording fine quarries of good building-stone.

STREAMS AND WATER-COURSES

     A considerable branch of Grand river, rising in the southwest angle of Hambden, makes a bend into and across the northeast part of Chardon, from which it receives small tributaries.  While the eastern branch of the Chagrin, rising in Newbury, Manson, and Chester, makes an abrupt entrance across the western line, gathers up the waters of three or four small branches, and as directly turns west into Kirtland, breaking the surface into a succession of considerable hills on its course.  High banks and hills also border all the branches of Grand river, caused by the general elevation of the surface; many fine springs break from the base of the hills, and the township may be said to be unusually well watered.

NAME

     Peter Chardon Brooks, a large owner of western lands and a proprietor of the township, early offered to the county commissioners of Geauga to donate the
land for the village plat to the county for a county-seat if the proposed town should receive his second name.  The proposition was accepted, and hence the name of the town, which for civil purposes was a part of Painesville, and became a part of Burton, by order of the county commissioners, in March, 1806.

SETTLEMENT.

     The commissioners, under the act of the legislature to establish county-seats for the new counties of Geauga, Cuyahoga, Portage, and Ashtabula, governed by            the idea of geographical centre, which, by the erection of Ashtabula and Cuyahoga, left Painesville, or New Market, at one end of a long strip, selected Chardon hill, in the southeast part of the township.  This was approved by the court, to which under the law the report was made, at its June term, 1808.  A deed was made of the site to S. W. Phelps, as director, Sept. 16, 1811, and by him dedicated in December, 1812.
     At the time of this location and order, as at the day of purchase, not a tree had been cut in Chardon township, but at some time early a man of Painesville, by the name of Jordan, went on to the town plat, and built a house by the spring, northeast of the middle of the square, and moved his family into it, thus becoming the first settler.
     What became of Jordan I know not.  Mr. Canfield several times speaks of the house by the spring as the “Jordan house," but makes no mention of JordanOrigen Miner, who has written much and well of pioneer history, is my authority for this item
     I shall treat the village and its life with that of the township, of which it was at first the heart, brain, and hand.  As seen, Samuel W. Phelps was director of
the county-seat and village plat.  He, with the aid of Captain Edward Paine, secured the “chopping" of the square in 1811.
     Curtis Wilmot, of Burton, and others unknown, were the principal axemen in the work. In March, 1812, Norman Canfield, father of Rev. Sherman B. and Austin Canfield, an earlier resident of Hambden, who was the first justice of the peace in that region when all was Painesville, and captain of the militia company which made the short campaign to Cleveland, in August of the same year, came over and built a log house where now stands the hotel of Benton & Co., which was soon after occupied by his family.  The house was spacious for the day.  Had three ground rooms and a chamber, reached by a primitive ladder from the outside, and soon supplemented by the jail.  This structure gave place to a framed building erected by Mr. Canfield, in 1818, included in the larger building of D. W. Stocking, and widely known as the Chardon House, of Benton & Co. “Mr. Canfield was the first settler of the township."§
     I am inclined to follow Mr. Miner, and regard Jordan as the first in point of time.
     In the spring of the same year a log house, near the present residence of Judge D. W. Canfield, was put up, for a court-house.  Into this Captain Paine moved with his family, and occupied it during the summer.  This was a house of one room, and all its appointments. of the pioneer order of axe architecture.  Mr. E. V. Canfield sketches with a free hand, and graphically, the fixtures and furniture which it contained when devoted to the purpose of its erection.  In the mean time, Captain P. built and moved into a new house of his own, a few yards distant, which my historian calls princely.
     The population, which had thus doubled—omitting Jordan—in a month or two, occupied its energies, interrupted by the war, with the more fatal struggle with the giant trees.  These were regarded as the standing enemy, to be pursued with a too successful war, which the political economist deplores and the man of sentiment is melancholy over.
     In July of the same year Samuel King, of Long Meadow, Massachusetts, with his family and effects, drawn by four oxen and a horse, reached Chardon, after a journey of forty days.  He moved into the courthouse, built an addition, and used the seat prepared for the judges-the judicial bench - as a doorstep.  The surrender of Hull, in August, sent a shiver of fear to all dwellers in the woods, under the influence of which Mr. King packed up and returned East, as did many others, and Captain Canfield and Edward Paine made such hasty provision for the safety of their families as they could, and marched towards the enemy.
     It is said that Captain Paine, clerk of the county, securely packed up the archives, judicial and municipal, of Geauga, consisting of one small volume and several papers, and solemnly deposited them in the safe of the Rocky Cellar, a structure northeast of the village, ere he departed for the wars, and that the vandal red man failed to find them in his absence.
     Leaving his family in New York, Samuel King returned in the spring of 1813, cleared the courthouse-lot, and built a more commodious court-house in the rear

--------------------
NOTE:
* From E. V. Canfield's Sketches and other sources.
† To the resident of Geauga this gentleman is but part of a name.  One, and that the middle third of his, is borne by their county-seat.  It may be well to realize the man to the curious by a brief note of his life.  He is of sufficient importance to have writers differ as to his-birthplace.  "Appletons' Cyclopaedia" says he was born at Medford, Massachusetts, while the later "Johnson" assigns North Yarmouth, Maine, as his place of nativity, Jan. 6, 1767.  He died in Boston, Jan. 1, 1849.  His boyhood and youth were passed on a farm, and he was of age the year the constitution went into effect.  Under the influence of the Napoleonic wars, which sent American vessels abroad, Mr. Brooks had the sagacity to select marine insurance as a business.  He became secretary in a Boston office, and succeeded the principal in the management of its affairs.  He labored with all his powers, and studied the law of marine insurance till he became one of its then few masters.  His diligence and activity in business, the promptitude with which he paid losses, insured early and great success.  The vast fortune he amassed was no part of it due to speculation; but, with rare good judgment, he availed himself of the opportunities which his business opened to him.  Among these the chances of sending abroad articles of trade as “adventures" to the foreign markets, of which he was well advised, brought the most satisfactory returns.  In this trade he embarked quite all his means.  Such was his success that he retired in 1803, one of the richest men of “ solid Boston." His notion of wealth was the personal independence it secured.  The good attained was never hazarded in quest of extravagant gains.  He was connected with many benevolent associations, to which he was most liberal.  Passed his summers on the estate of his ancestors, at Medford, where he was a thoroughly practical farmer.  Was a member of the first municipal council of Boston, of the executive council, and often of the Senate and House of Representatives of Massachusetts.  He exerted himself to suppress the universal resort to lotteries, then prevalent, for the most meritorious purposes, and enjoyed the largest public and private respect, confidence, and love.  Of his daughters, one became the wife of Edward Everett, one the wife of R. L. Frothingham, D.D., and third, Mrs. Charles Francis Adams.  A good biography of Mr. Brooks appeared in Hunt's “American Merchants,” by Edward Everett.- M. A. R. K.
Geauga Democrat, Aug. 19, 1868
§ Sketch by Mr. E. V. Canfield
--------------------
 


RESIDENCE OF E. N. OSBORN, CHARDON TP., GEAUGA CO., O.

[Page 113]
of the old academy, for seven hundred and fifty dollars, where a term - the first of the court in Chardon - was holden that fall.  The structure was of squared unframed timbers, a court-room above and jail below, which may be remembered as “old Judge Hoyt’s barn.” Mr, King's family - a wife, Hannah, and children, Hannah, Warren, John, and Jabez, the two latter so long and well known in Chardon-returned to Chardon in June, 1813.  He, Canfield, and Paine logged and cleared the square, and took their pay in “farm produce,” raised by them selves, on the same ground, which they were to use for two years.  What a rugged perspective of blackened stumps, roots, and cradle knolls that old-time clearing must have presented!  Samuel King died of fever in 1817.
     The 4th of July, 1814, was celebrated by a ball, a grand affair, at the Canfield tavern Simeon Root, one of the Claridon pioneers, furnished the music.  The names of the assembled beauty and fashion, the places whence they came from, the styles of dresses they wore, the bill of fare, and wine list of the host, have not reached us; all, with the throbbing hearts, like the bubbles of mirth, and gladness of that hour, have perished from earth.
     Mr. Canfield says that in the fall of 1813 a man, Antony Carter, whom he calls “ black Antony,” came to Chardon with his wife, - the fourth family in town he calls them, - and for a time occupied a small log structure on the site of William Munsel’s shop, - the county commissioners office.  He afterwards built a neat cabin north of the square, on the Painesville road.
     The fifth was the family of Jabez King.  He was a brother of Samuel.  He finally took up his residence-in a house built by one Jordan by the spring at the northeast corner of Cyrus Canfield’s lower orchard.  This must have been in 1813.  Here Mrs. King gave birth to the first pioneer child. The important event made much noise in the woods.  Mrs. Paine, Mrs. Canfield, Mrs. Samuel King, and Mrs. Antony Carter were the only ladies in the settlement.  The latter was not requested to be present, while Mrs. Bond and Mrs. Brown, of Bondstown, were.  This was the first color line drawn in the county.  Mrs. Carter endured it with fortitude. Her irate husband took it hardly, and he returned with her to Trumbull county to await the fifteenth amendment.

MORE TO COME UPON REQUEST

 

ORGANIZATION.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PORTRAIT OF RESIDENCE OF THOMAS METCALF, CHARDON, GEAUGA CO., O
 


RESIDENCE OF MRS. E. REXFORD & FORMER RES. OF L. J. RANDALL, DECEASED, CHARDON CO., O.

BEGINNINGS.

 

CHURCHES.

 

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH ORGANIZATION.

 

THE BAPTIST CHURCH IN CHARDON. *

[Page 116]
above resolution, they ceased to be a Baptist church, and, very properly, fellowship was withdrawn from the church, as I understand, by the association to which it belonged, and for more than two years there was no Baptist church in Chardon.
     On the 18th of June, 1831, nine persons whose names are recorded, and who did not approve the resolution above, met, in their own languae, "to establish a Baptist church, " and proceeded to draft new articles and a new covenant.  On Oct. 5, 1831, the council of delegates, called for the purpose, met at the academy, in Chardon, and recognized the following members as "The First Baptist church in Chardon": Isaiah Rider, Sarah Rider (2d), Benjamin Rider, Sarah Rider (1st), Amasa C. Manley, Esther Manley, Rebecca Manley, Lucy Rider, Anson Dwight, Eliza Dwight, Rebecca Cook, Ann Cook, Simon Gager, Wm. Ober, Fanny Ober, and Betsy Vaughn.
     These met from time to time to renew covenant, and to attend to the ordinances, wherever they could, - in the academy, in the Methodist Episcopal church, - or in private houses, enjoying the ministrations of Elders Rider, Stephenson, Carrand others, occasionally, and increasing in numbers and strength.
     On Sept. 3, 1836, Sherman Manley, Benjamin Cook, Jesse Vaughn, and Philo Stoddard were appointed a committee to build a meeting-house.  That committee seemed to have labored somewhat diligently, for there are reports form time to time; but so great were the difficulties in the way that it was July 11, 1840, when, in the language of the record, "the church met for the first time within the walls of her new chapel."
     The light of that society has never gone out, though at times it may have burned dim.  It has quietly kept to its work, always embracing some of the most influential citizen of the town, and to-day, though small in numbers, - only forty-two members, - it is one of the fountains of religious strength in Chardon.

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

 

THE DISCIPLES' CHURCH

 

THE UNIVERSALISTS.

 

 


RESIDENCE OF J. O. CONVERSE, CHARDON, GEAUGA CO., O.

[Page 117]
ture rather than of propagation.  Later came S. P. Carlton, a man of ability, and others.  Old Father Doloff probably preached there, of limited education, a man long-headed, gentle, and often sweet, with brains enough to fit a theological seminary and furnish forth a score of revival preachers.  The society never can be said to have flourished, nor is it of consequence when it ceased.

EDUCATIONAL.

 

SOCIETIES AND ORDERS.

 

 

 

 

[Page 118]

 

 

 

MANUFACTURERS

 

BANKING

 

GENERAL BUSINESS

 

THE FIRE.

     A note must be made of the destruction and rebuilding of the business part of the village.  So intimately is the village interwoven with the general history of the township, or rather so fully has it absorbed and swallowed up the Chardon of the pioneers, that I treat them as one.
     Whoever recalls the old town will have a memory of a score of irregularly-built, ill-arranged, slovenly-kept, incommodious wooden buildings, with two or three brick structures, standing in a straggling rank, fronting the square on the west side, reach


L. J. RANDALL

     LEANDER JASON RANDALL was the son of Jason and Martha Randall, who were born in Bridgewater, New York.  Jason Randall and wife and five children moved from Genesee county, New York, to Kirtland, now Lake County, Ohio, in February, 1819, and in the spring of 1830 they moved from Kirtland to Munson, and afterwards to Chardon, Ohio, and died there, - Jason R., Feb. 1, 1852; Martha, Nov. 24, 1856.  L. J. Randall was born in the town of Sweden, Genesee county, New York, Feb. 15, 1818.  He was the fifth of a family of ten children.
     In young manhood he taught common school winters, went grafting in the spring, and worked by the month as a farm hand till August, 1843, when he formed a copartnership with Benjamin Cook, the father of Alpheus and Pardon O. Cook, at Munson, Geauga County, for the transaction of a general mercantile and produce business.  This copartnership continued about one year, and in September, 1845, he formed a copartnership with Pardon O. Cook and Bradley C. Randall, a brother, under the firm-name of Randall, Cook & Co., at Chardon, Ohio, for the transaction of a general mercantile and produce business.  In 1847 they added to their business the slaughtering of sheep, buying sheep pelts, pulling the wool off them, tanning the skins, and manufacturing them into morocco, and the tallow from the slaughtered sheep into candles.  Some years as many as ten thousand sheep were slaughtered, and from ten to twenty thousand sheep pelts purchased and pulled.  This copartnership continued until Oct. 10, 1853, when it was dissolved by mutual consent, the senior member of the firm wanting to increase their business, and his more conservative associates not wishing to venture more extensively.  After the dissolution, L. J. Randall continued the same business until the fall of 1854, when he added the slaughtering of cattle and packing of beef to the other business.  This he continued for two seasons at Chardon, and for five or six years after in Cleveland, Ohio.  This was a large business.  Some seasons he killed and packed upwards of four thousand head of cattle.
     In the spring of 1857 he sold his store in Chardon and commenced the banking business, as senior partner of the firm of Randall & Burtens.  This business continued until the fall of 1861.  In 1859 he opened a produce commission business in New York, as senior partner of the firm of Randall, Hamilton & Co. This business continued some three or four years.  In 1860 he engaged in the business of buying cheese, then made by the farmers instead of factories, as now.  The year’s purchase amounted to upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, and this business he continued until the time of his death.  In 1861 he again engaged in the mercantile business, and in the fall of that year he purchased the cheese made by the first factory operated in the county.  In 1862 he embarked in the manufacture of cheese by the factory system, starting the second factory in the county. This business he added to, year after year, until 1869, when he owned six factories, and rented one, which he worked that year.  In 1864 be commenced operating in railroad stocks and gold, in Wall street, New York, which he continued up to the time of his decease.  His transactions in this branch of business were enormous, frequently almost controlling the market of one or two of the leading stocks, the purchases and sales amounting to millions of dollars daily.  In 1866 he invented and patented a process for pressing a series of cheeses with a single screw. These were a small cheese weighing six pounds, of a very fine quality, intended for family use, and readily brought from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton more than ordinary cheese.  In 1868 he built the Randall Block, at Chardon, Ohio, one hundred and forty-one feet by sixty-six, at a cost of about forty thousand dollars.   In 1869 he took the contract to build the court-house at Chardon.  He died before there was a brick laid.
     L. J. Randall was married to Elisa Smith, Mar. 9, 1847.  Her parents were Samuel and Sibbyll Smith, of Chardon, Ohio.  Of this marriage were born Sibbyll M., February, 1848, Lucinda A., September, 1849; Juliet V., June 12, 1852, Florence E., Mar. 31, 1855.
     Juliet V. married Ira W. Canfield, May 22, 1872, now living at Chardon, Ohio; Sibbyll M. died Apr. 7, 1848; Lucinda A. died Mar. 12, 1856; Florence E. died Oct. 1, 1856.
     He was not always successful in business enterprises, often met with losses, and frequently large amounts.  In 1847 the wool-house, used for drying the wool pulled from sheep pelts, was burned, and again in 1849.  In 1868 he suffered largely by the fire that destroyed almost the entire business portion of the town of Chardon, losing three entire buildings, and from two to three thousand dollars’ worth of wool and goods.  He frequently said during his life that it was as necessary for him to meet with these reverses as it was to be successful; that if he was always successful, that the excitement would so affect his nervous system that he would soon be a fit subject for an insane assylum.
     As seen, the life of Mr. Randall was one of constant and intense activity.  He was, in many respects, a most remarkable man; to his great activity be added the capacity for large enterprises, a grasp and ability to successfully manage large undertakings, and several of them at the same time.  While he could originate and set on foot a new and extensive business, such was his sagacity and power over details that each in turn was made to succeed, and no one even partially failed.  Without capital at the commencement, he was obliged to use it, and such was his credit, and the confidence men had in his integrity, sagacity, and skill, that he could usually command what he required.  The energy, dash, and force with which be pressed an enterprise was equal to the skill with which he perfected and managed it.
     Of vigorous, compact form, capable of great endurance, pleasant, frank, manly face, and prompt address, he had no time for external polish of manners, nor did he ever become interested in books or papers beyond the price current.  His life was one of action, on the double-quick; his perceptions, in his lines of thought, quick as a flash, and very certain; a bold and skillful operator, his end at mid career cut off a man who had not made his mark, and was only really preparing to do that.  In his early days at Chardon, while that was yet his field, no man was ever so useful to it.  He did more business, of a kind to employ men and give activity and life to a town, than all his predecessors, who had dosed out their lives before he came to wake them up.  He was attached to Chardon; there was his home and early life associations.
     His business transactions involved him in many expensive and sharply-contested law-suits, and the uniformity of his success in them marked the care and skill with which he mastered and never lost sight of details.  He was a kind-hearted man, steady in his friendships, true in all his engagements.  He leaves only a daughter, and when men cease to speak of him, his name will be forgotten in Chardon.

[Page 119]
    

ADDITIONAL FIRE ITEMS.

 

THE LITTLE MOUNTAIN.

 

THE VILLAGE ACT OF INCORPORATION.

 

THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.

 

[PORTRAIT OF EDWARD PAINE]

POPULATION.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

EDWARD PAINE
E. N. OSBORN
THOMAS METCALF
AUSTIN CANFIELD
DAVID T. BRUCE AND THE BRUCES.
THE HOYTS
SAMUEL MAGONIGLE
DR. D. A. HAMILTON
DR. POMEROY.
THE CONVERSES OF CHARDON
SAMUEL SQUIRE
CHARLES H. FOOTE
JOHN FRENCH
JAMES HATHAWAY (with portrait)
 


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