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[Pg. 187]
[Pg. 188]
[Pg. 189]
[Pg. 190]
[Pg. 191]
[Pg. 192]
[Pg. 193]
[Pg. 191]
[Pg. 192]
[Pg. 193]
[Pg. 194]
[Pg. 195]
[Pg. 196]
[Pg. 197]
1818
SPRAGUE
In January of this year,
the leading merchants in town refused to accept any individual
script and a notice to that effect was printed in the first
issue of the first Cleveland newspaper.
The names signed to it are of interest, as it
established a date when each was a resident of the village.
J. I.
and Irad Kelley,
Daniel Kelley,
Thomas Rummage,
George Wallace,
Amasa Bailey,
George G. Hill,
|
Nathan Perry,
Phineas Shepard,
Henry Mowry,
S. Nechley,
Cullen Richmond,
Cyrus Prentice,
James Hyndman |
Luther
Chapin,
William Garford,
George Pease,
David James,
Leonard Case,
George Perkham, |
Population of Cleveland
village, 74.
Superior Street yet not much more than a lane.
Caleb Eddy of East Cleveland died this year aged
64 years.
His wife Nancy Blinn Eddy died in 1838 aged 77.
Eddy Road was named for this family.
---------------
1818
SPRAGUE
When Ara Sprague
entered the village of Cleveland on an April day in 1818, he
found its population had just been counted. Men, women,
and children, all told, numbered but 172 souls.
His first impression of the town, according to his
testimony given years afterward, was far from favorable.
He found every family in it poor and struggling to make a
living. Only a few acres of ground had been cleared of the
scrub oaks that had covered them, and the forest pressed closely
in upon these. Rail fences enclosed the few houses that
straggled along Superior street from Bank street to the river.
There was no St. Clair street then. Lake street possessed
but one house - a log one - and there were perhaps half a dozen
on Water street.
The nickels and pennies that in the present day are so
plentiful and convenient would have been hailed with delight in
that early one when small change was entirely lacking, and
shin-plasters, issued by the small corporation, the only means
of exchange.
Mr. Sprague tells us that passage from Buffalo
to Cleveland when taken on a vessel was $10, but to the traveler
who came by steamboat however, one very popular with the
impecunious, and those who traveled its weary length were often
conveyed by "Shank's Mare."
Ara Sprague was one of a family of four sons and
five daughters, all
[Pg. 198]
1818
SPRAGUE
Massachusetts born, some in Spencer, and others
in Worcester. The parents were Ara and Martha Wilson
Sprague. Ara was 28 years old when he came west.
Ten years previous, he was at Ogdensburg; a youthful corporal
shouldering his musket in the War of 1812. He belonged to
a company similar to our present "Ohio National Guards," and one
morning, the alarm-gun notified Ogdensburg that the British were
marching toward it on the ice of the St. Lawrence River.
The young militia was caught unaware. It was Sunday
morning, and most of them were making their toilets, some
bathing, others shaving, etc. Those who had just donned
clean shirts did not stop to tuck them in, and the barefooted
ones slipped on their shoes without stockings and rushed out in
the snow, guns in hand, to meet the invaders. Many were
bareheaded.
Whether the sight of this motley crew was over much for
British courage, or that the enemy had not any of the time
included Ogdensburg in its marching plans, is not stated.
But the redcoats landed on the opposite side - on Canadian
shores. But the militia had proven its valor.
Otis Sprague, a younger brother, was also an
Ohio pioneer. He settled in Erie County, where he died
after a long and honorable life. He was the father of
Gen. John W. Sprague, a Civil War veteran and railroad
president. He lived in Huron, Ohio, and Tacoma,
Washington.
Ara Sprague seems to have made himself useful to
Cleveland village from the start. He set out the elms that
grew to such stateliness in the Public Square, and which only in
late years succumbed to coal-smoke and disease. In 1819,
he married Almira Burgess, daughter of Almon Burgess,
the well-known pioneer, and sister of Leonard and Solon
Burgess the wholesale grocers. She was, like her
mother, a most estimable woman, devoted to her family. She
died comparatively young, leaving two children.
George Sprague,
m. Minerva Fauts. Martha Sprague, m. W.
W. Dingley.
For many years a
large commission and wholesale grocery store on Merwin street,
the river side, bore the sign "George Sprague." His
son William Sprague resides in the city with his family
of five children.
During the epidemic of typhoid fever that followed the
opening of the canal in 1827, Ara Sprague seems to have
been a ministering angel in the homes visited by sickness and
death. For two months he gave himself and his services to
those afflicted with the disease. Almost every one in town
was ill. Sometimes a whole household stricken with no one
to nurse them or give even a drink of water to the sufferers.
The scourge was not confined to the village. Doan's
Corners, Newburgh, and even as far as Euclid, were visited by
it, and many were the deaths that followed. Seventeen died
in Cleveland within the two months that the fever raged.
In some cases there were babes whose mothers were too
ill to nurse them, and these Mr. Sprague carried to and
fro from their homes to those of women who could furnish
sustenance to the little ones. Mr. Sprague's
untiring administration to the stricken town won the affection
and gratitude of that generation, and the administration and
appreciation of all succeeding ones.
[Pg. 199]
1818
JANES
Some
time after the death of his wife, he married secondly, Miss
Dinah Munger, a remarkable woman who lived to be 101
years of age. When she died in Chicago, Ill., June 6,
1910, the local papers gave much space in notices of the event
and detail of her long and eventful life. Her patriotic
line of ancestry included every struggle her country engaged in
from the French and Indian War until peace was declared at the
close of the Civil War, and a grandson served in Cuba.
She was an enthusiastic member of Forest City Post, G.
A. R. Relief Corps, and upon her removal to Chicago was tendered
a reception in her honor at the residence of the late Dr. H.
W. Kitchen, at which time her photograph was taken,
surrounded by floral offerings of affection and respect.
She had one daughter, the late Mrs. Almira Gill,
a lovely woman whose death was mourned by many friends.
---------------
1818
JANES
No family of the
East End, except perhaps the Doans and Strongs,
has been so long identified with that part of Cleveland as the
Janes family. The founder of this western
branch was Obidiah Janes, born 1759. His
parents were Deacon Ebenezer and Sarah
Field Janes of Northfield, Vt.
Obidiah Janes
came to Ohio in 1818, and purchased a farm on Euclid Road west
of Doan Street, now East 105th. He brought with him a
large family of children. He had been married twice.
His first wife was Polly Oliver, daughter of
John Oliver. His second wife was Harmony
Bingham. She accompanied him to Cleveland and died
five years later.
Mr. Janes was nearly 60 years old when he
left his old home in Vermont and settled in a wilderness at the
East End. The venture, doubtless, was for the future and
material welfare of his children, rather than for his own
possible benefit. He was a short, stocky man, of sturdy
physique. It is claimed that shortly after coming here he
walked every foot of the way back to his former home in Vermont,
and returned in the same manner.
The children of
Obidiah Janes and of his wives Polly Oliver and
Harmony Bingham Janes:
Polly
Janes, b. 1787; m. Joel Doolittle.
Jabez Janes, died 24 years of age.
Malinda Janes, m. Otis Munn; 2nd,
Samuel Chapin.
Oliver Janes, m. Hannah Clement.
Harmony Janes, m. Adolphus Harley. |
Naomi
Janes, m. William MItchell.
Laura Janes, died aged 34;
unmarried.
Lucretia Janes m. Solomon Dunton.
Alonzo Janes, m. Ann Disbro; 2nd, Harriet
Converse.
Sohia Janes, m. Asbury Sabine.
Harris Janes, m. Julia
King. |
[Pg. 200]
1818
TURNER
Oliver Janes was
in the nursery business for many years, and his sons continued
it after his death. His nurseries were situated near East
Madison Ave., now East 79th Street. HE had nine children,
but only three lived to maturity.
They were:
Lorenzo
Janes,
b. 1822; m. Abigail Nichols.
Mary Janes, m. Isaac C.
Warren. |
Harris
Janes, m. Celia De Wolf.
Harmony Janes, m.
Ira Bristol. |
---------------
1818
SHAFFER
Died, Betsey Shaffer,
wife of Abraham Williams, March 18, aged 18 years.
(Erie Street Cemetery.)
Elizabeth Wickham, wife of Abner or
Asher Wickham. (Stone near main entrance of Erie
Street Cemetery. Inscription nearly obliterated.)
---------------
1818
TURNER
Abraham Turner of
Hebron, N. Y., was 35 years old when he removed to Newburgh and
became one of its earliest settlers. His wife, whom he
married in 1808, was Susannah Gibbs, daughter of Hiram
Gibbs, a Continental soldier of 1776. Several of
Hiram Gibbs' brothers also served in the Revolutionary army.
Abraham Turner was a farmer of Newburgh and of
Independence Township, and well known throughout the county.
Besides his own family of children, he is said to have adopted
and tenderly cared for several orphans, which speaks well for
him and his good wife. But a list of his sons and
daughters cannot be secured from any of their descendants,
although several are said to live in the county.
---------------
1818
SHERWIN
On the morning of
a bitter winter day in February, 1818, a large sleigh drawn by
two farm horses moved briskly in a south-western direction from
Middlebury, Vermont, a town but a fw miles east of the New York
state line, and about half-way between lakes Champlain and
George.
[Pg. 201]
1818
SHERWIN
The seat of this sleigh
was occupied by Ahimaz Sherwin, Jr., 26 years of age, his
young wife Hannah Swan Sherwin, and their little daughter
Lucy but a few months old. The back of the sleigh was
piled high with household furniture, bedding, and clothing.
Te family had started in mid-winter on a ride of 500 miles, at
least half of which led through a trackless wilderness.
But, aside from the weather, traveling at this time of year was
far easier than through the summer months. A sleigh moved
over the snow more smoothly and with less jolting tan a wagon,
also over ice-bound lakes and rivers that otherwise would have
to be forded or avoided.
The sleighing was excellent all the way, but the
weather very severe; the thermometer for ten days of the trip
was below zero. Their food and shelter for the night was
ever uncertain, and a source of anxiety, for it depended upon
little country taverns, or upon the hospitality of isolated
farm-houses. It is ever a mystery to the woman of today
how a mother managed to care for a babe and keep it warm on such
a long, cold journey. The case of little Lucy Sherwin
was not exceptional. Hundreds of very young children
accompanied their parents to the wilds of Ohio when the journey
was undertaken in the winter or early spring with the frost yet
in the air, and snow still covering the ground.
Furthermore, instances have been given where the pioneer party
waited for an expected addition of a little stranger in a
family, and then started on a trip two weeks after its arrival.
The Sherwins made the distance between Buffalo
and Dunkirk on the frozen shores of Lake Erie, and, early in the
evening of one day, their sleigh broke through the ice,
thoroughly drenching its occupants. With their Clothes
frozen upon them, they had to continue their journey until a
place was reached in which they could spend the night.
The deep-seated cold that resulted from this mishap
eventually undermined the constitution of the intrepid wife and
mother, and although she lived several years after reaching
Cleveland she never was again well, and died leaving three young
children.
The journey ended March 1st - 18 days from the time it
was started. No accommodation for them and their horses
could be secured in the small village of Cleveland, and they had
to turn around again and go back as far as Job Doan's
tavern at Doan's Corners.
Luckily for Mr. Sherwin, Richard Blinn had begun
to build a new house on his farm south of Doan’s Corners,
and on the road to Newburgh. He hired Mr.
Sherwin to do the carpenter work on it, the Sherwins,
mean while, living with the Blinn family. By
the last of August, the house was finished, and the wages due
Mr. Sherwin enabled him to return to Vermont and
bring on his parents to share his pioneer home. They were
Ahimaaz Sherwin, Sr., who had served his
country in the War of the American Revolution, and Ruth
Day Sherwin, his wife. They had been married
38 years, had had a family of ten children, and were both nearly
60 years of age when they left their Vermont home to seek
another in the woods east of Fairmount Street. Ahimaaz
and Ruth Sherwin were married in 1780.
[Pg. 202]
Their children:
Asa
Sherwin,
b. 1781; married, had two children. He
died 1817.
Sarah Sherwin, b. 1783; m. Henry Sumner.
She died 1827.
Ruth Sherwin, b. 1785; m. Levi Billings.
She died 1830. He married 2nd, Sophia Cody.
Betsey Sherwin, b. 1787; m. 1st,
_____ Nutting; 2nd, _____.
Achsa Sherwin, b. 1789; m. John Gardner.
Ahimaaz Sherwin, Jr., b.
1792; m. |
1st, Hannah
Swan; 2nd, Sarah M. King.
Poplin Sherwin, b. 1794; m. Jesse Harris.
She died 1830.
Delphia Sherwin, b. 1796; m. William Hudson.
She died 1880.
Phila Sherwin, b. 1798; m. Andrew Logan,
editor of "Davenport, Iowa, News."
Benjamin Sherwin, b. 1801; died young.
|
It will be noticed, by
the above, that there were seven married daughters in the
family. Some of these were wives before coming to Ohio,
others were married in Cleveland, but all lived here, and three
of them died within 12 years of their arrival and were buried
here, Sarah in 1827, Ruth and Poplin in
1830. Achsa Sherwin, as the wife of John
Gardner, a well-known Cleveland merchant, spent the rest
of a long life in Cleveland. Ahimaaz Sherwin,
Jr., his parents, and two of his sisters made the trip
from Vermont to Cleveland in the early autumn of 1818, with two
horses and a wagon. When the party reached Buffalo, it
divided, the elderly couple continuing their journey by team,
and the son and daughters by the lake. They took passage
on the sloop Huntington, commanded by Capt. Day of Black
River. Storms made. it a long and perilous trip that
lasted a week, and they were very glad to climb down out of the
vessel into a lighter that came out from Cleveland to take them
into the river. It landed them at the foot of Superior Street
hill.
It is said that they took the “Foot & Walker” line to
reach Doan’s Corners, their objective point, over four
miles distant. But it was an interesting walk that led
through woods ablaze with autumnal tints, and the air filled
with the sound of dropping nuts. They reached Doan’s
Corners just as their parents drove in from the east.
Ahimaaz Sherwin, Jr., purchased 15
acres of Judge John H. Strong on the corner of Euclid
Ave. and East 96th Street, the site of the present
Congregational Church, where he built a house in which his
parents lived until their death. He also built a home for
himself on the Blinn farm, and afterward one on
Fairmount street. He was a skilled carpenter, and in the
course of his long and useful life in the city, finished the
interiors of many fine houses and hotels, within the former
boundaries of Cleveland.
The year 1827 was one of great sorrow to the Sherwin
family. A malignant fever raged in Cleveland and
the surrounding countryside. Whole families were ill in
bed unattended, and there was great mortality in consequence.
Mrs. Sherwin, Jr., Sarah Sherwin
Sumner, and Jesse Harris, husband of
Poplin Sherwin, died within a few days of each other.
Ahimaaz Sherwin, Sr., in writing to Vermont
relatives soon afterward, said —
[Pg. 203]
1818
SAXTON
[Pg. 204]
[Pg. 205]
---------------
1818
STOCKWELL
William Stockwell
was in Cleveland as early as 1818, for in July of that
year he was married to Lydia Hall by Horace Perry.
His bride was a widow with a little nine-year-old daughter,
Sarah or "Sally" Hall.
Much research has failed to secure the antecedents
of either husband or wife, or where he came from to Cleveland.
Mr. Stockwell left no descendants so far as can be
learned, and those of Sarah Hall do not know who was her
father nor the maiden name of her mother.
Probably Wm. Stockwell came originally from a
New England state, as the name is a familiar one in that part of
the country, although thus far no genealogy of the family has
been compiled. No advertisement of his business appears in the
early issues of the Cleveland Herald, and it cannot be
ascertained.
The family lived on Superior Street adjoining the
residence of Deacon Moses White, and east of it.
Madam Severance remembered them well, though but a
child at the time, as very nice, refined people.
Mr. Stockwell died in the cholera season of 1834, and
was buried in Erie Street Cemetery. Mrs. Lydia Hall
Stockwell died three years later in Massillon, Ohio, where
she had been living during her widowhood with her daughter who,
at the age of 16, in 1825, had married
Joseph G.
[Pg. 206]
Hogan. They resided in Massillon some years, but in
1840 returned to Cleveland, bringing with them the remains of
Mrs. Stockwell who was placed beside her husband in Erie
street cemetery.
Two years later, Joseph H. Hogan died. His
widow survived him over 30 years, passing away at the age of 64
years. The family lived near the corner of St. Clair and Ontario
streets.
The Stockwell-Hogan monument stands to
the right of the main drive of the cemetery and near its
entrance.
The children of
Joseph G. and Sarah Hall Hogan:
Romelia
Hogan,
m. Daniel Folsom. He was drowned in Lake
Erie in passage from Buffalo to Cleveland.
William H. Hogan,
married late in life a Chicago lady. He died in
1892, and was buried in the family lot. |
|
Maria
Hogan,
m. William Johnson of Wooster, D. S. P.
Mary Long Hogan,
m. John Taylor Strong, brother of C. H.
Strong, Sr.
John Hogan.
Charles Hogan, Died at Harpers Ferry during the
Civil War. |
Mary L. Hogan, a
namesake of Madame Severance, was considered an unusually
pretty girl. Her life was spent in Cleveland. At her
death in 1904, aged 66 years, she left two daughters, Mrs.
William Van Tine of Pittsburgh, and Mrs. Nelly T. Gay
of Manchester, Mass.
---------------
1818
BARBER
In the fall of 1818, a
number of Hebron, Conn., families started for the West and
traveled in company all the way to Cleveland. Three of
these were the Watkins, Branch, and Barber
families.
They made quite a cavalcade, as there were horses,
carriages, wagons, ox-teams, ox-carts loaded with
furniture, and in the rear of the procession, patient but
puzzled cows walked all the way to become pioneers of their kind
in Ohio.
It must have been a wonderful experience for the
children of the party, those weeks of journeying and camp-life,
and doubtless, it furnished topic for reminiscence long after
the snows of old age had whitened their locks, and railroad
trains were covering the same route and the same distance in 36
hours.
Josiah Barber was the most important member of
the party. With his brother-in-law Richard Lord
he had purchased a large tract of land on
the west side, extending from the river to Pearl street, now
West 25th, and, with two or three exceptions, from Franklin
Street to the lake. It must be borne in mind that there
were no roads then, simply wide paths cut through the dense
woods.
[Page 207]
Josiah Barber
evidently had an eye for the beautiful in nature; perhaps it was
his wife who possessed it. At any rate, no more beautiful
or
convenient spot could have been selected for their first,
pioneer home. It was on the edge of the bank overlooking
the wide Cuyahoga Valley, with the high, steep banks of
Cleveland, Newburgh, and Brooklyn, all clothed in brilliant
autumn foliage and hemming it in.
The log-house was built to face this wonderful scenery,
and so was the brick residence that supereseded it in
after years.
The writer as a child often wondered why the home
turned its back on Pearl Street, and then little thought that
she would be explaining why over a half century later. It
still stands on the east side of the street but a few steps
south of Detroit Ave.
Josiah Barber was born in 1771, and
therefore was 47 years old when he came west. He brought
with him his wife and four children. His oldest one, a
daughter, was married, and did not accompany her parents to
their pioneer home. His youngest child was about eight
years old.
All the Barber family were devoted
churchmen and when, in 1820, poor Trinity, only three years old
that year, had no home nor rector on the
east side of the river, Josiah Barber opened wide
his door and for six years church services were held off and on
in his home.
He became financially interested in several mercantile
and manufacturing enterprises of an early day. One of
these was the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Co. As one of the
firm of “Lord and Barber” he constantly dealt in real-estate.
In 1836, he was mayor of Ohio City—the West Side.
Josiah Barber married 1st, Abigail
Gilbert. She died leaving a little daughter,
Abigail Gilbert Barber, who married Robert
Russell. He died, and eventually with her three
young daughters she joined her father in this city. Two of
the daughters subsequently became the wives of very prominent
Cleveland citizens. These children of Robert and
Abigail Russell were:
Sophia
Lord Russell,
m. Daniel P. Rhodes
Livania Russell |
|
Charlotte
Augusta Russell,
m.
Uriah C. Hatch. |
Josiah Barber
married 2nd, Sophia Lord, daughter of Samuel
Philips and Rachel White Lord.
Their children were:
Epiphras
Barber,
b. 1802;
m. Jerusha Tracey Sargeant.
Harriet Barber, b. 1804;
m. Horatio N. Ward |
|
Sophia
Lord Barber, b. 1806, died
unmarried
Jerusha Barber b. 1808; died 1823. |
Mrs. Sophia Lord
Barber, Sr., had a brother and two sisters, who resided in
Cleveland at an early day. They were Richard Lord,
Hope Lord, wife of Seldin Chapman, and Abigail
Lord Randall.
As the only son of Josiah Barber, Sr.,
Epaphras Barber was associ-
[Page 208]
ated in business with his father, and at the former’s death in
1842, it all devolved upon him.
His wife was the daughter of Levi and Rosamond
Harris Sargeant, Cleveland pioneers. She had inherited
many lovely traits of character from her mother, and been raised
in a family of high ideals, and unselfish devotion to principle.
Consequently, her own children, the third generation of the
Barber family, were a credit to their grandparents on
both sides of the house. But one of this generation
remains, Mrs. Sophia Barber McCrosky.
She spends her summers in Cleveland and her winters in
California.*
There is no descendant of the family now living
anywhere in the vicinity of the pioneer home.
The children of
Epaphras and Jerusha Barber:
Richard
Lord Barber,
b. 1827; died 1884 in Kansas;
married 1st, Mary E. Hodgeman of Parma, O.;
2nd, Ella Hale of Collinwood.
Josiah Barber, 2nd, b. 1825; died 1882;
m. Caroline Cook, dau. of Chauncy Cook.
epaphras Barber, b. 1830;
m. Sophia Watkins; died 1898, in Wauseon, O. |
|
Sophia
Lord Barber,
b. 1833;
m. James McCrosky.
Tootie Barber, b. 1843;
m. 1st, A. M. McGregor;
2nd, Dr. M. O. Terry of Utica, N. Y. |
Mrs. Terry had
one son who died in his teens. After the death of Mr.
McGregor, she founded the McGregor Home for
the Aged, on Lee Road, East Cleveland.
She was a very bright, attractive woman, and was of
much use to the world. Her death took place in a southern
state in 1912.
---------------
*Since deceased.
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