ANSON SESSIONS,
1770 - 1827
This pioneer of the Western Reserve was born in
Windham, Conn., April 16, 1770, and died in Painesville,
Ohio, in August 1827. His father was a deacon of the
Presbyterian church and a school teacher. Anson
Sessions, in 1770, left his native place and went to
Cooperstown, N. Y. After the defeat of the army of St.
Clair he volunteered for military service under Gen.
Wayne, and was with him on the Maumee, Aug. 21, 1794,
when the indians suffered such an overwhelming defeat that
they never after made serious head against the whites in the
north-west. After the treaty of Greenville, Ohio, he
was ordered with the army to the Cherokee country.
Mason, the notorious leader of the banditti that
infested the Mississippi country, was killed by one of his
own followers for the reward offered. His head was
brought in while Sergeant Sessions was at Natchez.
While at the south, Butler, his colonel, died and by
request of that officer, made just before his death,
Sessions accompanied Mrs. Butler and the children
back to Pittsburg, then Fort Duquesne.
Being a soldier and a frontiersman, he was solicited by
Aaron Burr to join his expedition, but suspecting its
true character, he refused. Sessions was
honorably discharged from the army after three years'
service in the Indian wars, which on account of the part
taken in them by Great Britain, were stated by Gen.
Harrison in his speech at Fort Meigs, to be a
continuation of the War of the Revolution.
For his services in the army a warrant for 160 acres of
land was issued to his widow in 1851. It was obtained
chiefly on the testimony of a Mr. Stevens of
Montville, who was also in the army and one of the very few,
if not the last survivor. During all the years of his
service, Mr. Sessions used to like to say, he had
"not slept under a shingle."
After his discharge he returned to Copperstown, N. Y.,
where he lived three years; then started on horse-back, with
a few hundred dollars in coin, for Tennessee, to buy a farm.
He stayed over night at Buffalo, there being at that
place then two log cabins only, and following the lake
shore, arrived at Painesville in October 1800, the same year
of the arrival of Gen. Paine and Judge John
Walworth. He was hospitably entered by Walworth,
and was induced by him to buy 180 acres of land, for four
dollars an acre now known as the Fobes farm. He
immediately built a log cabin on the first hill near the
river, cleared up most of the bottom land and a portion of
the upland, and set out extensive fruit orchards.
Mr. William Fobes, who died in 1860, told of eating
peaches from this farm in 1806.
On the 16th of Dec., 1804, Anson Sessions
married Asenath A. Fobes, a daughter of Lemuel
Fobes, from Norwich, Mass.
A contract with the Conn. Land Company was made Nov.
20, 1806, and signed by Abraham Tappan and Anson
Sessions in pursuance of which all that portion of the
Western Reserve lying west of the Cuyahoga River, comprising
over 800,000 acres was conveyed. Mr. Sessions
was not a surveyor, but was then a man in the prime of life,
of great bravery and perseverance in any business he
undertook, making him a safe and trustworthy partner.
This statement was made by Judge Tappan in the
Cleveland Herald in 1831. He also says that "Mr.
Anson Sessions was large and well proportioned, and in
his younger days decidedly good looking. He was a man
of peculiar strength, and was known and esteemed among the
pioneers as very kind and benevolent."
Mrs. Sessions survived him, with four of their
six children, named Norman, Aurel, Mariner, and
Horace. He was buried on his own farm, where his
remains now rest.
His name is inscribed on a monument in Evergreen
Cemetery. |
PELEG SIMMONS,
1761 - 1854.
Peleg Simmons of Middletown, Hartford county,
Conn, was born June 3, 1761, married May 22, 1788, and died
Oct. 1, 1854, living to be ninety-three years of age.
He was buried on Willoughby Plains, Lake Co., Ohio.
During the Revolutionary War he served his country from
Connecticut as soldier on a war vessel, which was used to
protect the coast. |
 CAPT. ABRAHAM SKINNER,
1755 - 1826.
Capt. Abraham Skinner, descended, as family
tradition relates, from an old English family, was born in
Glastonbury, Conn., in the year 1775.
About the time of the accession of Charles the
Second to British throne, the family emigrated to
America, feeling, in consequence of their having espoused
the cause of Cromwell, and held office under him,
that a more congenial home might be found in this country.
In the possession of this branch of the family, at the
beginning of the past century, was a sword, which had been
used by an ancestor in his service as an officer under
Cromwell. This same sword again did valiant
service at the time of the Salem Witchcraft Craze, for the
descendants of this branch of the Skinners boast,
that it was one of their ancestors, who dared to lead a
squad of determined men to rescue from the gallows a poor
woman, condemned to death as a witch.
Capt. Abraham Skinner, son of Abram Skinner
and Phoebe Strong, was one of a family of ten
children. Two of his sisters marred pioneers of the
Western Reserve.
Phoebe was the wife of Benjamin Blish,
who settled in Mentor, and Jemima married Benaiah
Jones, from whom the Goldsmith family are
descendants. From another sister is descended the well
known authoress, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Of the early life of Abraham Skinner, we
know but little. In the War of the Revolution, his
military record shows that he served from the town of East
Windsor, among the men who marched from the Connecticut
towns, for the relief of Boston in the Lexington Alarm of
April 1775, in Capt. Amasa Loomis' Company.
Again, enlisted April 24, 1778, in Capt. Harrison's
company, served eight months and was Commissary of
Prisoners, in the Fourth Regiment, Connecticut Line, Col.
John Durke, commanding.
In 1788 he was married to Mary Ayers, resided
for a time in Mulberry, Conn., and then moved to East
Windsor. In 1796, as the agent of an association, he
made a trip to England and returning brought with him three
blooded horses, by the name "Creeper," "King William"
and "All Fours." From these have come some of the
finest horses of Virginia and New England.
In 1798, Capt. Skinner in company with Gen.
Edward Paine, came to the Western Reserve and made large
purchases of land in Painesville and elsewhere on the
Reserve.
In Painesville in conjunction with Col. Eleazer
Paine he bought the entire tract No. 4, embracing about
2,240 acres.
Capt. Skinner returned to Conn., remaining in
East Hartford until 1803, when he again visited his Ohio
lands in company with the family of Col. Paine.
They brought with them horses and cattle, farming implements
and young fruit trees They contracted for the clearing
of lands, and built log cabins to shelter the Paine
family, and one to be ready for the Skinner family
when they should come.
Col. Paine and Capt. Skinner at this
time, together platted out a town, embracing the site of
their improvements, and located on the west side of Grand
river about two and a half miles form its mouth. Much
on the order of a New England town, this plot included a
park or public square, and at the river landing a log
warehouse was erected. This town was called "New
Market" from the old Indian name "Nemaw Wetaw."
Capt. Skinner again
returned to Connecticut and in March 1805 started with his
family, consisting of his wife, two daughters, three sons
and two hired men, for their new home in the wilderness.
Their journey took them over the accustomed route, through
the state of New York and as far as Buffalo. Thence by
sleighs they came over the ice of the frozen lake. On
the last day, between Ashtabula and Madison a team driven by
one of the hired men broke through the ice, soon the horse
ridden by the younger daughter, Paulina, (afterward
wife of Nathan Perry, and mother of Mrs. H. B.
Payne of Cleveland) broke through and was extricated
with some difficulty.
They spent the night at Madison, and by the next day,
the ice which had borne them up so well was unsafe, and they
journeyed on by land to their new home, reaching it that
same day.
Capt. Skinner was active in the interest of the
new place, and other settlers shortly came in, among them
the families of Joseph Pepoon, Benj. Blish and
Benaiah Jones.
He made strong efforts to have the county seat
located at "New Market," and the first trial was held
in Skinner's barn. Soon a two story court house
built of black walnut logs was completed by Capt. Skinner,
where for several years, law and justice were meted out.
At that time the whole of Cuyahoga, Lake and Ashtabula
counties were included in the limits of Geauga county.
The first frame house of the new town was now built for
the family of Capt. Skinner. Here lawyers,
judges, members of Congress, and the early governors, met
with the free hospitality of these old pioneer days.
This house is still in repair and occupied by a
great-grandson of its original owner.
In 1810 Geauga county was diminished by two-thirds of
its former territory, and in 1812 the county seat was
removed to Chardon.
That same year Capt. Skinner laid out the
village of Fairport, and was one of the most efficient men
in getting appropriations for its harbor.
It is said of him, that being a man of large means and
his farm always well stocked, he was thus enabled to be a
source of some help to the poorer settlers, that "polite to
every body and generous to the needy and suffering
everywhere, Capt. Skinner occupied a prominent place
among the people of is day."
A notice of his death on Jan. 14, 1826 at the age of
seventy-one may be found printed in an early copy of the
Painesville Telegraph of Jan. 21, 1826.
He was buried with Masonic honors.
In Capt. Skinner's direct line, the name has not
been perpetuated, only the descendants of his daughters,
Mrs. Mary S. Hine, and Mrs. Paulina Perry being
now alive. Of his children's children but one is now
living, Mr. Augustus Hine, formerly of this place,
now residing in Los Angeles, California. |
SAMUEL SMEAD,
1748 - 1842
Samuel Smead of Deerfield, Mass., was born Jan.
18, 1748, and died in Madison, Ohio, Oct. 26, 1842, aged
nearly ninety-four years.
He is buried in the cemetery at Madison Village.
He enlisted from Deerfield in Apr. 1775, to serve in
the Revolutionary War, as private under Capt. Joseph Lock.
Another enlistment in Dec. 1775 under Capt. Leonard
and Col. Woodbridge.
Again in Aug. 1776, for three months with Capt.
Samuel Taylor.
In August, 1777, he was sergeant under Capt.
Sheldon.
He received a pension. |
JOHN SMITH,
1752 - 1836 (?)
"In November, 1800, John Smith came to
Painesville with his family. They landed on the beach
at the mouth of Grand river, about the middle of the month.
With the winter of a new country already commenced, without
a home or provisions, they would have suffered had it not
been for those already accustomed to pioneer life.
They remained at the house of Judge Walworth, until
their log house was built on the hill leading to the Arch
Bridge east of Seth Marshall."
John Smith served in the Mass. Continentals,
receiving a pension in 1818, at the age of sixty-six.
His name appears on the poll books of Painesville township,
each year until 1836, when he would have been 84 years of
age, and it is supposed he died, though his burial place is
not known. In 1803 he purchased a farm of 150 acres on lake
shore, now owned by the Fairport Land Co. just west of
Shorelands, said to be the place of Gen. Paine built
his first house in Ohio. He held town offices. |
MARAUCHIE VAN ORDEN SPERRY,
1754 - 1845.
Marauchie Van Orden Sperry seems entitled to a
record among the brave ones of the Revolution.
She was born in Holland in 1754, daughter of Pieter Van Orden,
came to New York in childhood, was driven from the city by
Lord Howe's forces, married Lieut. Elizah Sperry
in April 1779, died in Kirtland, Ohio, May 13, 1845, and is
buried in the "Angel" burial ground.
Her father and two brothers were killed in the service,
her mother died from the poisoning of their well by the
British, who also burned their home and confiscated their
estate.
She was the proteǵe
of General and Mrs. Washington; was present at the
capture of Burgoyne, and "assisted the suffering Americans
on that memorable day."
The aid rendered to this publication by one of her
descendants is done in her memory.
Her husband, Elijah Sperry (b. Sept. 8, 1751, d.
Sept. 4, 1818), was Corporal, Sergeant, and finally
Lieutenant in Capt. Osborn's company of Artificers,
Col. Baldwin's Conn. Regiment. He was in the
battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, etc., and
helped to make the chain obstructions in the Hudson River at
West Point; he was a pensioner.
Contributed by her grand-son Harley Barnes. |
CALEB SWEET,
1764 - 1840.
According to the Massachusetts Records, "Joshua
Sweet of Deerfield received a bounty for enlisting into
the Continental army for a term of three years, in 1781, at
which time he was seventeen years of age, and is credited
with service in Capt. Smart's Co., Third regiment, in
July 1781."
He enlisted March 23, 1781, and served until Dec. 22,
1783, a part of the time under Captains Lee and
Thos. Hunt, with Lieut. Col. William Hull.
In an obituary notice of Joshua Sweet in
"The Telegraph" of May 7, 1840 is this:
"Thus has fallen a sturdy oak of the Revolution, amidst
the storms and tumults of war, he stood foremost in
the ranks, and in the defense of Liberty, a principle
which he could duly value and appreciate, knowing full well
its primitive cost."
In the village cemetery in Madison his grave is marked
as follows:
Memorial of Joshua Sweet, a Revolutionary
soldier, who died 2nd May 1840, aged 76 years. |
JOSHUA SWEET,
- ___ - 1828.
Caleb Sweet came from the state of New York to
Ohio in an early day, and was a resident of North Perry.
While in New York he served in the Fourth regiment, Albany
County Militia, in the Revolutionary War.
In 1817 he was an officer in Perry township, was
justice of the peace until his death, which came very
suddenly on March 3, 1828. He was buried on his farm
in Perry, now owned by James L. Parml y. |
ASA TURNEY,
1759 - 1833.
Asa Turney, of Madison, Ohio was a soldier in
the Revolutionary War, under Gen. Arnold; was in the
battle of Danbury, Conn., when that town was burned by the
British. He enlisted when eighteen years old, and
served throughout the war.
He was born in Fairfield, Conn., in 1759 and emigrated
to Ohio in the winter of 1806, being fifty-three days on the
journey, with an ox team, following a wild trail through the
woods, as there were no roads or bridges.
He purchased one hundred acres of land on the south
ridge in Madison, which still remains in the family.
He married Polly Downs, who died in 1835.
Asa Turney died Sept. 5,
1833 and lies in the Middle Ridge Cemetery in Madison. |
JACOB TYLER,
1762 - 1847
Jacob Tyler was born in Branford, Conn., enlisted in
the Revolutionary War from New Haven, Conn., in the spring
of 1779 for three months, under Capt. Mix and Col.
Sabin; again, in 1781, under Capt. Enoch Staples,
for six months; and again in 1782, for six months, under
same Captain; later was stationed on the coast as guard,
serving as sergeant in Capt. Aaron Foot's company, in
Col. Hooker's regiment of Connecticut militia.
He applied for a pension in 1834 while residing in
Broome, Schoharie County, N. Y. He married Abi
Wheeler, Sept. 11, 1789 at Catskill, N. Y. He
removed to Ohio about 1839, settling near Little Mountain.
He died Feb. 19, 1847, and is buried in Mentor
Cemetery. |
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