|
BIOGRAPHIES *
Source
1798
History of Ashtabula County, Ohio
with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches
of its
Pioneers and Most Prominent Men.
by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers -
1878
(Transcribed by Sharon Wick)
< CLICK
HERE TO RETURN TO 1878 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
>
< CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO LIST
OF BIOGRAPHICAL INDEXES >
|
|
HARVEY R.
GAYLORD - See MAJOR LEVI GAYLORD
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 118 |
H. R. Gaylord |
MAJOR LEVI GAYLORD.
Levi Gavlord. well known in the early
history of northern Ohio as “Major Gaylord.” was born Mar.
30, 1760, in New Cambridge (now Bristol), Hartford county,
Connecticut.
He was the oldest son of Captain Levi Gaylord and
Lois Barnes Gaylord, and grandson of Benjamin Gaylord and
Jerusba Frisbie Gaylord, for many years about 1720 to 1742
residents of Wallingford. Connecticut.
The Gaylords (written also Gaillard, from
the French mode, and sometimes Gaylard) now living in the
United States are chiefly descendants of French Protestants who. in
consequence of cruel and long-continued religious persecutions, left
their pleasant homes in Normandy, about the year 1551, and took
refuge in more tolerant England. From the period of the
Lutheran Reformation they have usually been sturdy Protestants,
doing their own thinking, both in religious and political matters.
The subject of our notice was a lineal descendant of
Deacon William Gaylord, who. with his family, came
to America from the city of Exeter, England, or its vicinity, at the
beginning of the year 1630, and who is also the ancestor of a
majority of the Gaylords in the United States.
He and the other immigrants of his company had one
chief object in view in coming to America, viz., “freedom to worship
God and before embarking at Plymouth, England, formed
themselves into a church, of which John Warham and
John Maverick were chosen pastors and William
Gaylord a deacon. They reached America in 1630, and
settled at Dorchester, near Boston. In the years 1635, 1636,
and 1638, Deacon William Gaylord was a
representative in the general court at Boston.
At the end of 1638 or beginning of 1639 he removed
westward through the wilderness, and settled upon the banks of
Connecticut river, where the Farmington river joins it. The
place was named Windsor.
Deacon William Gaylord was a
“deputy” or representative from Windsor in the first general court
of Connecticut, held at Hartford, in April, 1639.
It is recorded of him that he was elected to the same
office at forty-one semiannual elections.
Levi Gaylord. Sr., was a soldier in the old
French war of 1756-57, and at an early period of the Revolutionary
war June 10, 1776 was commissioned by congress as an "ensign in a
regiment in the army of the united colonies, raised for the defense
of American liberty.” At a later period he was made captain in
the army, a post of considerable honor at that period.
In all the relations of life he was a worthy man,
honored and respected by all who knew him. After the close of
the Revolutionary war he removed to Harpersfield, New York, where he
died Aug. 17, 1795, aged sixty-six years.
His son, Levi Gaylord (2d), whose name heads
this notice, at the age of fourteen years was apprenticed to the
trade of manufacturing leather and shoes. Two years later, May
14, 1776, with the consent of his master, he enlisted in the company
to which his father belonged, and marched to East Guilford,
Connecticut, whence he sailed to New York, and up the Hudson to Fort
Lee. Afterwards he returned to New York, and was with the
troops under the immediate command of General Washington.
At the battle of White Plains he participated in some sharp and
uncomfortably close fighting, which he never forgot in after-life.
However, he liked it much better than lying in trenches, or standing
in the ranks to be fired at by distant or concealed batteries,
without any chance to return the iron compliments.
At the end of the year he again enlisted, and was in
active service on Long Island sound and on the Hudson river.
He was on the opposite side of the Hudson, but near enough to see
the smoke of Esopus, when it was wantonly burned by the British, in
October. 1777. At the end of his second years service he
enlisted for three years in a corps of artificers, so called,
composed entirely of mechanics of every kind required in army
service. They were to receive extra wages. During that
period of service, being usually with the main army, except when in
winter-quarters, he often saw the great generals then in service,
viz., Washington, La Fayette, Lee, Knox, etc., and witnessed with
admiration the training of cavalry recruits by that skillful
general, Baron Steuben.
He assisted in making and placing across the Hudson
river the great chain by which it was hoped the British fleet would
be prevented from going up the river to attack Albany and form a
junction with General Burgoyne. But their hopes proved
delusive, as the heavy war-ships broke the chain, to the great
disgust of the young soldier and his comrades, who were anxiously
watching the event.
As an artificer, unless on detached service
occasionally, he was usually in the front, taking his place in the
ranks with his musket when any fighting was to be done, then quietly
returning to work for the army until called into battle. At
the end of five years of arduous service he was honorably
discharged, and returned to Connecticut, tired and somewhat broken
in health. The Continental money with which he was paid was
then nearly valueless. When returning home from New Jersey the
kind people usually charged nothing for food and a chance to rest,
but when otherwise, it required about one month’s wages to pay for a
frugal meal; and when after his return home he desired to resume
work, it cost over one month’s wages to purchase a dozen shoemaker’s
awls! But the years of service that he had cheerfully given to
his country had taught him that patience and perseverance would
generally secure success, and with a light heart, as well as purse,
he engaged in work for himself.
On Feb. 22, 1782, he was united in marriage to Miss
Lydia Smith, second daughter of David Smith and Mary Potter
Smith, of Southington, Connecticut, a young lady who possessed
lively manners, a most amiable disposition, energy of character, and
perfect health.
He settled at first in Waterbury, Connecticut, but two
years later (in 1784) removed to Harpersfield, Delaware county, New
York. Here in the wilderness he bought a farm, and
subsequently engaged in the business of tanning and shoemaking.
That he was a worthy citizen is evident from the fact
that he was successively elected to the offices of lieutenant,
captain, and major in the New York troops, and also was several
times elected supervisor of the town, the chief civil office.
In the summer of 1804 he was induced to visit Ohio, for
the purpose, if the country pleased him, of making it his home, and
taking the agency for the survey and sale of the lands of Captain
Caleb Atwater, an extensive land-owner in the Western Reserve.
He took charge of the removal to Ohio of Mrs.
Hannah Skinner, a widow lady, and her blind son,
Joshua O’Donnell, well known to the early settlers in Ashtabula
and adjoining counties. They were near relatives of the
Harpers and Bartholomews of Harpersfield. Isaac
Bartholomew and family, with some others, removed to Ohio at
the same time, and the kind assistance rendered on the tedious
journey was often gratefully mentioned by them in later years.
Being pleased with the country, he resolved to make it
his home. On his return to New York he was requested by
Oliver Phelps, then a large holder of Western Reserve
lands, to settle on and take charge of the survey and sale of his
lands. Protracted sickness in his family prevented his removal
for nearly two years.
In the summer of 1806 he, with several of his
neighbors, removed through the wilderness to northeastern Ohio,
arriving at the Harper settlement, near the present
village of Unionville, late in July.
He concluded to settle on the Atwater tract in Geneva,
and selected a farm on the south ridge, in the east part of the
tract. He built a log house about one hundred rods west from
the east line of the township, and soon after had the whole tract
surveyed into lots. At a later period he had Denmark surveyed
into sections, and afterwards into quarter-sections.
After a time, there being an urgent demand for it, he
established a tannery, and also erected a shoe-shop, and for several
years carried on a moderate business in tanning and shoemaking.
His tannery was probably the first one in the county. But the
country was destitute of money, the people generally poor, so that
by means of poor pay and bad debts his small capital was hopelessly
sunk. Upon the organization of Ashtabula County he was, in
1812, elected one of the county commissioners, and made clerk of the
board. These offices he held by re-election until elected a
representative in the Ohio legislature, in October, 1817. His
election district included nearly or quite all the “lake” counties
from Pennsylvania to Sandusky.
The journey to Columbus could only be made on
horseback, and was scarcely a pleasant one late in November, as
nearly all the streams had to be forded.
The next year (1818) he was appointed county treasurer,
which office he held until October, 1820, when he was again elected
a representative in the Ohio legislature. At the next October
election (1821), the new office of county auditor having become
elective, although he did not desire it he was elected to that
office, while he also came near a re-election to the legislature.
However, he accepted the office thus forced upon him, and at the
beginning of the second year of service (February, 1828) removed
with his wife and a portion of his family to Jefferson, where he
resided until the autumn of 1827, when he relinquished the active
duties of his office to his son, who had long been his deputy, and
returned to his farm in Geneva, where the remainder of his life was
spent, except a summer trip, when upwards of eighty years old, to
his old home and friends in Delaware
county, New York. Until he attained the age of eighty-two
years his bodily and mental powers remained vigorous. Then old
age came upon him, and his vigor declined, until he suddenly passed
away on the 3d of June, 1846, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.
Probably no man ever lived in northern Ohio who was
more venerated and beloved. His undoubted integrity, active
benevolence, amiable temper, and gentle demeanor won the hearts of
all who knew him. He was an early and active friend of
emancipation and temperance, at a period when it cost much to be
thus known. He was eminently a peace-maker, and was often
appealed to for assistance in the settlement of disputed questions,
both in civil and religious matters, and his decisions were always
so just and wise as to give universal satisfaction, and leave the
parties ever after, as before, his firm friends.
Of his wife, Mrs. Lydia Smith
Gaylord, so well and favorably known in the early history of
Ashtabula County, some further mention may well be made.
Indeed, if space permitted, much might be written to illustrate and
record the shining virtues and noble deeds of that excellent woman.
Notwithstanding the lack, of educational advantages shared with
nearly all females of her time, she was a woman of varied knowledge
as well as of superior mind. She was one who daily made her
faith manifest by the practice of all good works. She visited
the sick, nursed, and cured them. In cases where they were
despondent, her cheerful counsels, active sympathy, and great
knowledge of remedies and all the requirements of good nursing
seemed like a charm to drive away disease. In the early
settlement of the county she spent much time by day and night,
undeterred by storms, darkness, or wild country roads, in visiting
the afflicted for miles around and ministering to their needs.
Sometimes she took the invalids to her home, that she might the
better care both for them and her own somewhat numerous family.
Especially did she do this where poverty was added to the other
sorrows of the poor invalids. And all for sweet charity’s
sake!
Some ten years before her death she became totally
blind, and subsequently received a fall with such severe injury that
she was never again able to walk, but her cheerfulness under these
complicated afflictions was unfailing. She neither repined at
her sad fate nor seemed to wish it otherwise, except as it deprived
her of the power of doing good to others.
She had in her earlier days laid up a good store of
religious reading, which now became a source of unbounded comfort to
her. Her memory was remarkably retentive of all Bible lore,
and she was able to give not only the exact language, but the book
and chapter where it might be found.
For more than sixty-four years this worthy pair had
peacefully trod together the path of conjugal life. But the
hour of her departure, for which she had cheerfully waited so long,
came at last, and on May 17, 1846, she peacefully yielded up her
life at the ripe age of eighty-two years.
At the time when Major Gaylord and his
wife died so nearly together (in May and June, 1846) there had been
no death in their immediate family for more than forty years.
Eight of their children were married and had families, and with
their husbands and wives were present at the funerals.
Of these persons (sixteen in number) only four now
survive, viz.: Mrs. Polly Bowers, Mrs.
Selina Prentice Gaylord, widow of Levi
Gaylord (3d), and Harvey B. Gaylord and his wife,
Mrs. Stella Atkins Gaylord.
Their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and
great-great-grandchildren are numerous, and reside in Ohio,
Michigan, Illinois. Wisconsin, Minnesota. Iowa, Kansas,
Colorado, and Texas.
HARVEY R. GAYLORD, for nearly
sixty years a resident of Ashtabula County, is the fourth son of
Major Levi Gaylord and Lydia Smith Gaylord, and was born in
Harpersfield, Delaware county, New York, July 25, 1805. In the
succeeding year, 1806, his father and family removed to Ohio,
settling on the south ridge in Geneva, then a part of Harpersfield.
That part of the county was then an unbroken
wilderness, heavily timbered, and for some years the huge
forest-trees remained at a short distance from the house, on the
north side of the road, the earlier “clearings" being on the south
and east. His earliest recollections are of the semi-annual
migrations of the Indians, with their squaws and papooses, ponies
and camp-kettles, between Sandusky and Cattaraugus (going east in
the fall to hunt, and. after making sugar in the spring, returning
west to plant corn), and of an intense childish desire to attend
school with the older children.
The school-house, the only one for several years within
the present limits of Geneva, was a log structure on the west bank
of Cowles' creek (then called Big brook), one and a half miles from
his home. When old enough he attended school there to a very
limited extent, at first in summer only, but when old enough to
gather up and burn the rubbish of a new farm in summer, then in
winter only, and seldom for more than six weeks in a year. One
reason for the little time devoted to school undoubtedly was that,
not being a strong, healthy child, he was often unable to endure the
fatigue of the long walks to and from school, especially in bad
weather. In those early schools the only branches taught in summer
were the alphabet, spelling, and reading; in winter, arithmetic (as
far as The Rule of Three”) was added; also writing for a short time
each day. Consequently his education was confined to the
simplest rudiments of English studies. He never attended a school
where geography or grammar, or any higher branches, were taught or
studied. His father had a small library, larger indeed than
most of his neighbors, but of rather too solid a character to
interest children. Luckily for him a widow lady came to reside
in the neighborhood when he was about eight years old, who had more
attractive books, such as “Bunyan s Pilgrim's Progress” and “Holy
War,” “Arabian Nights Entertainments,’ ‘ Robinson Crusoe,” and
others of like character, from which she related wonderful stories
to the little lad, and after his interest was aroused lent him the
books to take home and read, until at length he came to regard
everything except reading as irksome, and to be avoided when
convenient. After a time a public library was established in
Harpersfield and Geneva, and its books of history, biography, and
travels, were procured and read with avidity.
At the age of seventeen his father, believing that his
health was too uncertain for a farmer, employed him in his office at
Jefferson, and after a few months sent him to New York and
Connecticut, hoping that his health would thereby be benefited, and
that he would be able to attend a good school for a few months.
In the first he was to some extent successful, but failed to find
among his relatives in Connecticut, where he spent the winter, such
a school as he desired to attend. Being a green backwoods boy,
the journey no doubt helped him to a better knowledge of the outside
world than he could have obtained in home employments. At the
age of nineteen or twenty he was an acting, if not (for want of
proper age) a legal, deputy county auditor, and continued as such
deputy until March, 1829 (some four years), taking nearly the entire
charge of the business for the last year or more, and apparently
giving entire satisfaction to the public. In October, 1829, he
was elected recorder, and was re-elected in 1832, and again in 1835,
serving in all nine years. On the 5th of May, 1830, he was
united in marriage to Miss Stella M. Atkins, third daughter
of Honorable Quintus F. Atkins, of Jefferson, Rev. Giles
H. Cowles, D. D., officiating. He was assistant postmaster
in Jefferson for some three or four years, and while holding that
appointment (in 1835), by the construction of a map of Ashtabula and
Trumbull counties, showing the leading roads and post-offices for
the use of the post-office department at Washington, with suitable
recommendations, he obtained an entire change and great improvement
in the manner of carrying the mails, and especially of running
stages between Ashtabula and Warren, which before that time had not
passed through Jefferson.
In the autumn of 1836 he made a journey on horseback
through Ohio and Indiana, looking for a place for a home at the end
of his term of office, intending to visit the present State of Iowa,
then called the “Black Hawk purchase.” Late in November he
reached Vincennes, where a heavy rise in the Wabash river, with much
ice, stopped his farther progress westward. He therefore
turned south to the Ohio river at Evansville, and after some
explanation purchased lands for a large farm in one of the river
counties. But a protracted sickness in the spring of 1838
caused a change in his plans, and he sold his western lands and
purchased a farm in Geneva, to which he removed at the end of his
term of office, October, 1838.
In October, 1839, he, with many other Ashtabula County
men, attended a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery society at
Cleveland, Honorable Myron Holley, of New York, presiding,
and H. R. Gaylord, of Ashtabula, and F. D. Parish, of
Sandusky, secretaries. At that meeting Mr. Holley
brought forward his famous project for forming a distinct
anti-slavery political party; but the plan met with but little favor
among the anti-slavery men of Ashtabula County at that time, and
Judge Moffitt, of Monroe, was put forward as their
representative to oppose it, which he did in an able and eloquent
speech.
Mr. Gaylord was, from early manhood,
opposed to slavery in all its forms. At first the American
Colonization society seemed the only available mode of action, and
was fully indorsed by such men as Gerrit Smith and Arthur
Tappan. He therefore, for several years, sustained a
county society, of which Honorable Eliphalet Austin was
sometimes president, Samuel Hendry secretary, and
H. R. Gaylord treasurer, and freely spent his time and means in
attending its meetings and promoting its objects. But a better
acquaintance with the actual working of slavery and colonization,
and of the views of slave-holders regarding the institution itself,
caused a change in his views, and he became an ardent abolitionist
in the year 1835. When the tide of fugitives from the south
set northward through Ashtabula County, he never failed to assist
them on their way to the extent of his ability.
In politics he was an anti-slavery Whig (though
attending the Buffalo Free-Soil convention in 1848, and faithfully
sustaining by word and vote its nominees) but he gladly joined the
Republican party at its first organization in 1854, and has
sustained it to the best of his ability since. While recorder
in 1834, to obviate the great difficulty of tracing land-titles, he
took measures to secure the passage of a law to authorize the
transcribing of records from Trumbull and Geauga counties, and the
necessary transcripts were completed in three large volumes before
the end of his term of office. As the agent of the
commissioners, he examined the laud-titles and wrote the mortgages
given for loans of the surplus revenue funds deposited with the
county about the year 1838. In 1846 he was one of the district
assessors to make a new assessment of lands at their value,
including improvements. The previous assessment had been made
without regard to improvements, except to a limited extent. At
a later period he made a general index to the thirty-seven volumes
of records in the recorder’s office,—a work of great benefit to the
public, as many of the indexes were inaccurate, and all of them
defective in the extent of information required. This is
believed to have been the first index of its kind made in the
Western Reserve. From 1831 to 1864 he was engaged to a limited
extent in the sale of wild lands for settlement and cultivation in
the townships of Geneva, Denmark, and Richmond. His youngest
son, Henry T., having died from wounds received at the battle
of Shiloh Church, Tennessee, in April, 1862, and subsequent
exposure, and his older children having previously migrated
westward, he sold his farm in Geneva in 1864 and removed to Saginaw,
Michigan, where he is now engaged in active business at the age of
nearly seventy-three years. Recently he has sustained a
severe loss in the death of his oldest son, Augustine S., one of the
rising young lawyers of Michigan for some time, and, until sickness,
long continued, compelled his resignation, assistant
attorney-general of the United States for the interior department in
Washington. While serving in that office, in August, 1876, he
was appointed one of the commissioners and the law-adviser of the
board to visit the Indians of the western plains, under Red Cloud
and Spotted Tail, and endeavor to make treaties with them for the
purchase of the Black Hills country and their removal to
reservations, all previous attempts having failed. While fully
successful in the objects of the mission, sickness was induced by
the unwholesome water of the country, from which he died in June,
1877. His third and only living son, Edward W., resides
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has been, since quite a young man,
engaged in building and managing railroads. His present family
consists of his wife, Mrs. Stella Atkins Gaylord, an
excellent and able woman, with whom he has lived forty-eight years
in married life, two daughters, all that remain alive, two
grandsons, and a granddaughter. The widow of his son,
Augustine S., with two daughters and two sons, resides near him.
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 116 |
| |
Conneaut Twp.
-
THOMAS GIBSON was born in Windham county,
Connecticut, on the 6th day of September, 1800. He is the
sixth of a family of nine, the children of James and Elizabeth
Gibson, of the before-mentioned point, and who resided there until
their decease. Mr. Gibson was educated at the
district school in his native place, and for some nine years after
attaining his majority was employed in the cotton-mills in different
parts of Connecticut. At the age of thirty years (1830) he
removed to Ohio, and located in the same township which is now his
home. Soon after his arrival he became a partner in the
firm of Farnham & Gibson, and erected the grist-mill
yet known as the “ Farnham mill.” There was also a
saw-mill in connection. He continued in this business some
three years, when he disposed of his interest and purchased and
located upon the farm he now occupies,—lots 42 and 54,—consisting at
present of two hundred acres. The business of his life since
his occupancy of the farm has been that of stock-raising and
farming. He has served as trustee of Conneaut township for
some fourteen years; was first elected in 1842. Mr.
Gibson was united in marriage, on Dec. 23, 1822, to Lucretia,
daughter of Thomas and Abigail Farnham,
of Hampton, Windham county, Connecticut. From this union have
been born to them the following children, viz. : Charles C.,
born Apr. 11, 1824, married Loanda Moon (deceased);
Mary L., born Jan. 6, 1826, married Dr. D. W. Raymond,
and now resides in Conneaut village; Maria E., born Jan. 22,
1828, married James M. Fifield, also a resident of Conneaut;
Henry C., born May 2, 1832 (died young); Julia L.,
born Sept. 8, 1834, married George C. Brown, now living in
Jefferson county, Kansas; John M., born Jan. 25, 1838,
married Roxy R. Burington, is living on the old homestead;
Thomas F., born May 9, 1840, married Mary Clark,
resides in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Politically, Mr.
Gibson is heartily in sympathy with the Republican party, and
his religious views are in unison with the teachings of the
Universalist church.
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 167 |
Joshua R. Giddings.
Photo by M. A. Loomis, Jefferson, O. |
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.
*
Turn back the years to 1806, and imagine the state of the American
world of that period. Telegraphs, railroads, and steamboats, -
steam itself, were not. The west was an undreamed-of empire,
the east a possibility. The population of the United States
was but six millions. Ancient Boston dwindles to a town of
twenty-five thousand, and New York shrinks to sixty-five thousand.
If one should journey west, he would find less than six thousand in
the old town of Albany, Buffalo a straggling village of a thousand,
while the huts and cabins of Cleveland held less than a hundred
souls; Cincinnati would have twelve or fifteen hundred; and there
were the old towns of Marietta and Chillicothe, in the infant State
of Ohio, four years old.
Her whole population did not number fifty thousand,
scattered in rude cabins through her interminable forests, which
sheltered many fragments of Indian tribes, and hid the scenes of
savage ambuscades, battle forays and fields, destined to be renewed
within her borders. All animals known to her natural history,
save the buffalo, inhabited her woods in undiminished numbers.
The river whose name she bore ran in solitude along her southern
border, and the lake, a lonely waste of waters, was the boundary of
her unpeopled northern wilderness. With her nine outline
counties, she was herself but a giant outline, whose fortune was yet
to be fashioned. The Federal capital, six years old, was an
unseemly scattered village, unconscious that within the span of a
single life it was to be the scene of interminable war between the
darkness of old oppression and the light of new aspiration, the
chronic barbarity of centuries and the long-repressed throbbings of
freedom.
The element of slavery which had enmeshed itself in the
fibre of the organic law of the nation was an ever-active principle,
insidiously extending and pervading, corrupting the sources of
thought and springs of action, moulding the policy, and inspiring
the national law, till the unconscious republic awoke, to mark with
little concern the wide departure already taken from the principles
on which it had been founded. It awoke, bound and helpless,
seemingly without the will, almost without a wish to return to them.
The land was yet to be filled with many millions, new States were to
be born, great cities to spring up, ere this conflict should set its
armed hosts in battle array. The men of these armies were yet
to be born, and in that final struggle the thought, the intelligence
that should mould and marshal the minds and opinions of the free
States, and so conduct them to the inevitable contest, were yet to
have birth, take form, be worked out, diffused, accepted, and acted
upon. The men who were to do this great work were already in
childhood, and unconsciously receiving the tuition, taking the bent
that should fit them for their mission. Men of the old heroic
mould they must be. Men capable of sacrificing all, enduring all,
daring all. Clear to see, strong to feel, inflexible in
justice, relentless in hatred, changeless in love, narrow and
bigoted it may be for the right, never wearying, never despairing.
Men of power, of resources, masters of themselves, greatly
practical, who could wield themselves as hammers, as claymores, as
rapiers. A man fitted to this work must be one born and
practiced to partisan warfare, who could assault a fortification
single-handed, withstand a thousand in the field alone, or with his
single arm defend a pass against an army. One who on the
approach of success could see himself superseded by the soldiers of
his own training, see them wear and bear the crown and fruits of
victory. Such men must be of the people, knowing them, and
what will move them. From the levels of life, knowing all
around, above, and below them.
The woods of the infant Ohio, with the wild Indians and
beasts in them, its virgin soil, fresh life, and rude experiences,
were to be the nursery, the training ground, of one of the foremost
of these exceptional men.
The 16th of June, 1806, was noted for a total eclipse
of the sun. Darkness came down on an emigrant team of four
oxen slowly moving a wagon in which were a middle-aged woman, a
fresh young girl—a bride, whose young husband drove the cattle and
guided the movement, aided by a youth, and attended by a lad of ten.
Just across the Ohio and Pennsylvania line were they when the
darkness came down, and they were obliged to camp in the woods.
They journeyed, all the way from Canandaigua, for weeks on the road;
from Buffalo, much of the way on the lake-beach, beaten hard by the
waves. Six days more to the point of rest and toil. One
night's camp in the forest, caused by the breaking of the wagon, and
they were kept awake by the howling of the near wolves, the most
melancholy and plaintive sound of all the wilds. At night-fall
of the 21st they crossed a stream called by the natives Pymatuning;
on the thither bank they found a deserted wigwam, where they passed
the night, not far from the famous Omic’s town. The
next day they made their way across the woods to where the centre of
Wayne now is, in Ashtabula County, where they found a new rude
cabin, without hearth, chimney, or window, surrounded by a small
clearing, prepared by the father and eldest son, who went on the
preceding winter.
The man was Joshua Giddings, and these
were his wife, children, and son-in-law. The lad was Joshua
Reed Giddings, just arrived to finish his growth and
complete his education.
The Giddingses came over from England in 1635,
and settled in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The boy's
great-grandfather removed to Lynn, Connecticut, about 1725, and
there his father was born. In 1753 the family changed its residence
to Hartland, in the same State; thence, in 1773, his father, having
acquired a family, removed to Bradford county, Pennsylvania.
The mother was Elizabeth Pease, descended from John Pease,
who settled on Martha's Vineyard in 1635. Nomadic were the
Giddingses. as if gathering here and there material and elements
to furnish forth the remarkable man who was to crown their line. Joshua
R. was the youngest of his father’s family, and was born at
Tioga Point, Bradford county, Pennsylvania, Oct. 6, 1795, two years
after the birth of the first fugitive slave act. Six weeks
after his advent his parents removed to Canandaigua, a new but
fertile region. Here they remained till the migration to Ohio.
In the winter preceding, the elder Joshua, accompanied by his
oldest son, made his way into the woods, built a cabin, cleared a
space of ground, planted a garden and small corn-field, where they
were joined by the rest of the family, as stated. It was at
the beginning of the colonization of the Western Reserve by New
England. So much of Massachusetts and Connecticut transplanted
and translated into the freer expanse of the west. Vigor, hardihood,
courage, and enterprise were needed to carry the emigrants so far
into the wilderness. An exercise of the same qualities, with
endurance, industry, frugality, and hopefulness, were necessary to
their maintenance in their forest homes. Their lives were
elementary. They took everything at first hand. When
their small supply of food and clothing was exhausted they must go
to the earth, the forest, streams, and Indians, to the wild fruits
of the plum bottoms. They carried with them the frugality,
industry, religious faith, love of law and liberty, the hope and
wish of bettering their condition, with the habits of thought,
intelligence, and deep strong lines of character, of their dear
“down country” home, relieved of the constraints of the older
society and the oppressions of poverty. They planted
themselves and native institutions in a more fertile soil, a more
genial climate, a perfectly free atmosphere, with the glow and warm
life of young communities, under conditions that called into
constant exercise the warmest social elements, and permitted the
rapid development of individual traits, where men are strong and
women fruitful. The first years
were a struggle for existence; the first social condition that of
absolute democracy,— the best for the formation of character.
From what young Joshua grew to be we may fancy what he
was at ten,—a tall, raw, rather shapeless boy, with a pleasant face,
frolicsome gray eyes, and abundant light, curly hair, that grew
dark, fairish till the sun tanned him. He had mastered the
English alphabet in Canandaigua. He has a plenty of growing
and filling out to do, and the rudiments of a great many things to
master. He had doubtless acquired some elements of pioneer
life, and rapidly gained the knowledge and habits of wood-craft.
The faithful, patient oxen were unyoked and turned into the woods
with a bell on the neck of “ Bright,” and it was his duty to bring
them up at night-fall, and he soon became familiar with all the
forest haunts, and could conduct his mother and sister to the
nearest neighbors, two miles and a half away, and made the
acquaintance of most of the wild animals of the forest, including
Omic and his Massasauga red folk, at their town on Indian
Pymatuning.
When the corn ripened a cavity was hollowed in the top
of a large hard wood stump with fire, and a heavy pestle attached to
a spring-pole hung over it, and in this “samp mortar” he did the
family grinding. He was soon furnished with an axe, and,
broad-shouldered and long-armed, he became an expert axeman, one of
the most thoughtful of all employments. Next came the shot-gun
and rifle, old flint-locks. That first autumn we know that the
pioneers sowed wheat on the corn-land, and were busy felling the
trees during the winter; that they constructed a chimney of sticks
and clay mortar, and a stone hearth, and lit up the one-roomed cabin
with bright wood-fires and hickory-bark torches; that the boys
climbed up a ladder and slept in the loft, and put their clothes
under the bed to keep them from being covered with snow. We
know that they heard the wolves howl every night, and that many deer
came about their small clearing, and that the young men became
hunters; that they had a supply of venison, many wild turkeys, and
occasionally a bit of delicious bear-meat from their own guns or
from Omic’s hunters; that in the spring they made sap-troughs
with their axes, tapped the maples, and made sugar; that they
cleared a good deal of land that season and raised potatoes and
flax; that somebody became a benefactor and set up a saw-mill not
far away; that a cow was purchased that summer, a log barn built
with a thrashing-floor, and hand-flails were made, and a hand-fan to
winnow the new wheat, which it took three days to carry to a mill;
that new settlers came, new cabins were built, and more woods cut
away. Roads were opened and bridges built, more cows were
driven in, and sheep made their appearance, hand-cards for wool and
hatchels for flax, wheels and looms, and finally somebody set up a
fulling-mill. We know that the elder Giddings was a
God-fearing Presbyterian, and the first Sabbath-worship was held at
his cabin during the first summer; that a school was established the
second winter, and that the new community in the woods began to
assume the forms and practice the usages of civil and social life.
Young Giddings grew up, passing through
all the vicissitudes of frontier life. Seeing the sun rise and
set amid the trees till his own hands had helped to clear them away.
Eating venison and bear-meat, wearing a tow frock and pants in the
summer, and butternut-colored flannel, faced and seated with
deerskin, in the winter, with his feet in Indian moccasins.
Chopping, logging, and clearing land, gathering ashes and boiling
black salts, making maple-sugar, going to mill, hunting stray cattle
on the bottom lands, breaking steers, turning grindstone, and
saying the New England Catechism. Became a hunter expert with
the rifle. Spent days and nights in the woods. A fisherman,
and knew all the streams, with excursions to the lake. Went to
meeting and Sunday-school. Docile, and of a joyous temperament, an
athlete, trained in pioneer life, where muscle and agility are at a
premium, the swiftest footman, and the masterful wrestler of all the
strapping youths of the range, he grew broad in the shoulders, deep
in the chest, straight of limb, strong of loin, erect, carrying his
massive head with the pose of a man, his motions and manners
fashioned in the free, bold atmosphere of the west; dreaming his boy
dreams and thinking his boy thoughts. Hearing stories of
adventure in forest, of hunting and Indian warfare. Legends of
down east life and catching echoes of the great world beyond the
woods.
Came the War of 1812. Suddenly to the dwellers in
the woods; a frightened whisper borne on the wind; and later the
terrible names of Proctor and Tecumthá
on the Maumee, and marching eastward. Hull
surrendered Detroit and the whole of Michigan in August, and there
was a call for soldiers. Though but sixteen, young Giddings
took his place in the ranks of Colonel Hayes’
regiment, which was hurried on to the Huron, encamping near the
present town of Milan. From this point, Major
Frasier, with one hundred and thirty men, was pushed forward to
a little stockade, afterwards known as Fort Stephenson, and famous
for its defense by Croghan. Of this band was our young
soldier, which was soon weakened by sickness. On the 28th of
September came word that Indians were plundering the abandoned farms
on the “Peninsula,” and sixty-four men, under Captain
Cotton, volunteered at night-fall to meet them. Young
Giddings, on coming off guard, found them marching at
drum-beat up and down for recruits; and took his place with them.
They made the advance by water that night, fought two sharp battles
the next day, lost twelve men and their boats. The Indians
were more numerous and might have cut them off, but were too roughly
handled. Their hardships were very great on the return.
Their old friend Omic, to whom they had always been kind,
must have led the enemy, as his scalping-knife was found in the body
of one of their slain, advertising his presence and prowess.
Colonel Hayes’ regiment was not needed
for long service, and after five months the young soldier returned
home. It is curious that, although several men were killed in
this affair on the Peninsula, no account of it is to be found in any
history of the war. Though his term of service was short, it
was very useful in many ways to young Giddings. His strength,
vigor, and endurance on the march, good conduct in camp, his courage
and coolness in battle, were themes of praise through the regiment,
and laid the foundation for the love and confidence of the people
within his personal influence. The restraints and discipline
of even five months’ service were a useful lesson to him.
Though the young soldier returned, the war-cloud
darkened the woods that sheltered his home. In the early
autumn General Harrison assumed command of the
northwestern army, yet to be created. In the latter part of
January, 1813, Winchester was surprised, captured, and his
army massacred at the river Raisin. In February, Perry
was constructing his fleet at Erie, and Harrison compelled
Proctor and Tecumthá
to raise the siege of Fort Meigs early in the following May.
They made another invasion of the Ohio the following summer, and
were beaten off at Fort Stephenson in August . Then came the famous
sea fight of Perry, followed by the flight, pursuit, and
capture of Proctor’s army and the death of Tecumthá.
Though the tide of war rolled backward and forward across the border
below Lake Erie, flight and terror were forever banished from the
homes and dreams of maids and matrons in the cabins of the Western
Reserve.
The elder Joshua had invested his all in lands,
the title to which failed; the party of whom he purchased was
insolvent, and he was reduced to poverty, from which he never
recovered. He changed his place of habitation and began anew,
and the youngest son was remitted to his old tussle with the trees
and beasts of the forest. A writer in the New York Tribune
said of him that he suffered and accomplished more between his tenth
and twentieth years than any other young man on the frontier.
There were no schools, no time or opportunity for education.
Few books, no newspapers, or magazines. It is said that all
the days spent by him in school in any place of public instruction
were but a few weeks. Nevertheless, among his sagacious neighbors,
he acquired the reputation of a scholar. He early manifested
that avidity and eagerness for knowledge, that longing for books,
which amounts to bibliomania. Every book that he could hear
of, within long distances of his father’s cabin,—and his information
was extensive in this respect,—that he could borrow, and none were
refused him, every pamphlet, newspaper, or scrap of print that his
hands could reach, he made his own. History, travels, biography, the
Bible, poetry, tales,—all, he made their life-blood his. Every
crevice of time, every moment snatched from toil or needed sleep, by
the hickory torch, the sugar-camp fire, at his hunter’s camp, was
devoted to reading and study. No volume was too soiled or
worn, no author was so dull that he did not find them of interest.
Stupidity, which is said to be too much for the gods, yielded to his
assaults when in print. It was before the improvements in
schoolbooks with new methods. He came into possession of a
Lindley Murray, and mastered English. Rev.
Harvey Coe helped him into mathematics, and he helped
himself forward. At nineteen he was solicited to teach school.
He undertook it. His was a mind to profit more than those of
his scholars by his efforts to instruct them, even when most
successful in that. This season of teaching was his own best
time of pupilage.
This self-communing mind and soul, nursed in forest
solitude, reared in familiar intercourse with nature, fertile in
expedients, trained by intercourse with people who showed him all
their native qualities without restraint and thus helped to mature,
early became familiar with the whisperings of young ambition, and
dreamed of position and influence among his fellows. Such
success attended his efforts that he was enabled to undertake the
study of law at twenty-three, which he did in the office of the late
Elisha Whittlesey, at Canfield, Ohio, from which so
many distinguished lawyers graduated, and who was himself worthy of
a memoir. One would like to know what books he read at that
day. Plowden, Fearne, Bacon's
Abridgement, Bowel's works, Buffer’s Nisi Prim were doubtless
among them. Whatever they were, one knows he mastered them.
He was eminently fitted by nature for the study of the common law.
and at the end of the two years’ reading he was an inchoate lawyer.
He was admitted to the bar in 1821, and commenced practice at the
small town of Jefferson, the shire town of Ashtabula County.
Less numerous in proportion to the whole number of
people, the lawyers of that time occupied a higher position in
popular estimation than at the present, not so much by reason of any
individual superiority or greater learning. In this last
respect they were probably not the equals of the same class of
to-day. Nor is this the place to discuss the causes of the
difference in the consideration accorded to the lawyers of the two
periods. It is doubtless due to the causes which have wrought
general changes in the tone and spirit of social life in this
country in the past fifty years. No calling among a free
people so well fits a man for leadership of his fellows as the bar,
to which is mainly due the preponderance of the men of that
profession in public life; and usually there is nothing so fatal to
continuous success at the bar as any considerable withdrawal from it
for political employment or a position on the bench. With us,
eminence as a lawyer is not attainable without fair ability as an
advocate. Fortunately, most men, American born, can acquire
reasonable fluency in speech. No people, ancient or modern,
surpass us in this respect. Among the endowments essential to
the qualification of an advocate is the capacity to see and feel
intensely one and his side of a case,—the reverse of the judicial.
It is probable that a country practice, on the whole, presents a
better school for the formation of that many-sidedness so necessary
to a popular leader than that of a large city. He deals with a
wider range of cases, sees and mingles with a greater variety of
men. In cities there occurs among lawyers that usual division
of labor which tends to specialties, so fatal to the production of
fitness for leadership. A residence in a small town has its
disadvantages, hardly in existence at the time of which I write, in
the west. While a man can much easier acquire a reputation in
a village, he soon reaches the limit of what it can do for him in
this respect. It is only a great city that can make his name widely
renowned.
In 1821, the period of Mr. Giddings'
appearance in the courts, the region of his practice was stiff
sparsely populated, the courts sat in log structures, the cases few
and fees small. There was this compensation : nothing was then
so attractive to the people as a lawsuit, and no point could equal
in interest the county-seat during court week, and no men were so
famous as the ready, fluent lawyers. The court of common pleas
had a wide jurisdiction, composed of four members elected by the
legislature, a presiding judge, usually the most eminent lawyer of
the circuit, and three associates, laymen, of the county where it
sat. The circuit was composed of five or six counties, in
which this court was held three times each year. The supreme
court was composed of four judges, which was also a circuit court
with a jury, and sat in each county once each year. It early
began to reserve cases to be heard by the four judges in banc,—the
origin of the fixed sessions of that court.
In the early of his student days Mr. Giddings
was married to Laura Waters. All marriages of
the young were pure love-matches then. Imprudent for any other but
this, any man is safe with such a girl as Laura Waters.
A Yankee girl, who cared for herself since fourteen, who kept
school, and earned a flock of sheep, a sale of which purchased the
beginning of the young lawyer’s library, — “orthodox law sheep.”
Pretty, piquant, witty, devoted, full of resources, the happy mother
of several children, whose care mainly devolved on her in the
absence of the lawyer and congressman. What a delicious
picture of family home life, sketched by the hand of the youngest of
that favored band,* lies under my eye, tempting me to linger and
transcribe! What neighbors! what friends! so loved and
blessed the parents were. And when the husband passed suddenly away,
spite of the love of the surviving children, the wife pined,
drooped, and died within a few months.
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 72
* By Hon. A. G. Riddle |
Mr. & Mrs.
William Giddings |
WILLIAM GIDDINGS.
Elisha Giddings was born at Hartland, Connecticut,
1785, and was married to Philathella Fish, Sept. 11,
1803, who was born at Townsend, Vermont. He married from
Canandaigua, New York, in 1805, and settled in Green, Trumbull
county, now Wayne, Ashtabula County. They had eleven
children,—nine sons and two daughters.
William Giddings, who was the fourth son,
was born in Wayne, Jan. 11, 1810. In April, 1813, his parents
gave him to Jonathan Tuttle, of Williamsfield, his
mother carrying him through the woods on horseback. Mr.
Tuttle adopted him, and he lived with him until he was of
age. His schooling consisted of about three months,—summer and
winter,—until he was eight years old. After that time until of
age it was limited to about two months each winter. With this
meagre amount of schooling he obtained a fair education, and the
notes relating to his life furnished the writer are in a good hand,
although written when he was almost seventy.
When he arrived at his majority, his worldly wealth
might be represented with 000. He resolved to earn a farm of
one hundred acres, and then marry. He began work with this
intention. His wages varied from thirty-three to fifty-six
cents a day, yet when he was twenty-seven years old he had bought
his hundred acres in Williamsfield, for which he paid seven hundred
dollars.
Sept. 25, 1838, he married Maria Webber,
of Kinsman, and settled on his farm.
He and his wife have always been members of the
Congregational church, and interested in Sunday-school matters.
They had four children, two of whom died in infancy. Two sons
are now living: F. R. Giddings, born Feb. 5, 1840; married
May 11, 1869, to Senna Banning, of Kinsman. They
now live in Cleveland. W. Danvin Giddings, born June
29, 1850; is unmarried. He is employed in United States mail
service, on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern railway.
Mr. William Giddings is the only
Giddings in Williamsfield, where that family were once so
numerous. He has always been an anti-slavery man and a
straight out-and-out Republican, and in his younger days was almost
always a member of the county conventions. He has not missed
voting at a State election but once since 1831. In 1836 he was
in Genesee county, New York, and voted for Harrison.
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 242 |
David Douglass
Gist, M. D. |
DAVID DOUGLASS GIST, M. D.,
was born in Loudoun county, Virginia, on the 10th day of November,
1810, and is the second of a family of seven, the children of
Thomas and Elizabeth Gist, of that county, but who removed to
Ohio in 1822 and located in Guernsey county. The education of
Mr. Gist was acquired, as is the case with most American boys
living remote from cities or towns, in the district school,
finishing in the Wellington (Ohio) college. In the year 1836,
he commenced reading medicine with Drs. Hazlop Williams and
John C. Anderson of Jacobsport, Coshocton county, Ohio.
Continued alternately reading and teaching for two years. In
1838 he came to Ashtabula County, and locating in Harpersfield,
finished his professional reading with Dr. Jonathan Williams
of that township. In 1840 formed a partnership with him, and
practiced until the death of Dr. Williams in 1846, since
which time he has practiced his profession continuously until the
present. In the year 1870 the doctor attended his last course
of lectures, and graduated at the Eclectic medical college of
Cincinnati in that year. As early as 1848 he turned his
attention to the treating of cancers and scrofula in all its forms,
and the simple statement that he has since that date, successfully
removed one hundred and fifty cancers is sufficient evidence of the
faithfulness with which he has pursued his investigations in this
specialty. In October, 1865, owing to hsi large and increasing
practice in that portion of the county, he removed to Jefferson,
where he still resides. On Jan. 1, 1833, the doctor was united
in marriage to Susan, daughter of Samuel and Polly Newell,
of Liberty township, Guernsey county, Ohio. From this
marriages one child was born (Martha Jane, who married
Frederick Pangburn, of Harpersfield, and resides there at
present). ON June, 17, 1836, this lady died, and on Aug. 27,
1845, the daughter married his present wife. She was the
daughter of George and Eliza Pangburn, of Harpersfield.
The children of this marriage are Laura, the eldest, who died
in infancy; Mary Eliza, married E. J. Pinney, a member
of the legal profession at Jefferson; and Lunie, the
youngest, who yet remains at home. To give the reader an idea
of the doctor's extensive practice, we will state that since 1848 he
has ridden something over two hundred and fifty thousand mils, has
been ever ready to attend to the calls of the afflicted, and
thousands regard him almost in the light of a public benefactor.
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 148 |
NOTES:
|
