a part of genealogytrails

Portage County, Ohio

In June, 1799, Benjamin Tappan, Jr., son of Benjamin Tappan, of Northampton , Mass. , one of the principal proprietors of the present territory known as Ravenna Township, set out from his home in the East to make a settlement on the land of his father. On his journey, Mr. Tappan fell in with David Hudson, at Gerondaquet Bay , N. T., whom he took in his boat and assisted on his way to what is now Summit County . In company they overtook Elias Harmon in a small boat with his wife, bound to Mantua . At Niagara they found the river full of ice, which compelled them to convey their boats to some distance around and above the falls, Proceeding on their dangerous way vast bodies of floating ice impeded their progress, and they had to get out upon the shore and drag their boats along with ropes till they were clear of the stronger current running to the Falls. When they arrived at the mouth of the lake they also found it full of floating ice, and had to remain there several days before proceeding. Off Ashtabula County their boats were driven ashore in a storm, and that of Mr. Harmon stove to pieces, the latter traveling thence by land to his destination. Tappan and his companions sailed along the shore­line till they arrived at Cleveland , which consisted at that time of one log-cabin. Entering the Cuyahoga River and following its sinuosities, but knowing nothing at all of its depth, they soon found that they would have to either abandon their boats or drag them over the frequent rapids in the river. After much difficulty, however, they passed safely onward, and, judging from the distance traveled, thought that they were in about the latitude of the township of which they were in search. They landed at a point where now is the town of Boston , in Summit County , where Tappan left all of his goods under a tent with a hired man, and taking Benjamin Bigsby with him commenced to cut out a road to Ravenna . They built a sled and with a yoke of oxen Mr. Tappan had bought in Ontario County , N. Y., conveyed a load of his farming utensils to his settlement in the southeast corner of the township, where, owing to delays, a cabin was not finished till the first of the following year, 1800. He snbsequently erected a house about one mile east of .Ravenna on the Marcus Heath farm. Returning for a second load, he found that his effects had been abandoned and partly plundered, and to make it still worse, one of his oxen became overheated and died. From a sketch of Hon. Benjamin Tappan, published in the Democratic Review for June, 1840, we extract the following: ■'The death of one of his oxen left him in a vast forest, distant from any habitation, without a team, and what was still worse, with but a single dollar in money. He was not depressed for an instant by these untoward circumstances. He sent one of his men through the woods, with a compass, to Erie , Penn. ,' a distance of about one hundred miles, requesting from Capt. Lyman,  the commandant at the fort,  a loan of  money. At the same time, he himself followed the township lines to Youngstown, where he became acquainted with Col. James Hillman, who did not hesitate to sell him an ox, on credit, at a fair price—an act of generosity which proved of great value, as the want of a team must have broken up his settlement. The unexpected delays upon the journey, and other hindrances, prevented them from raising a crop this season, and they had, after the provisions brought with them were exhausted, to depend for meat upon their skill in hunting and purchases from the Indians, and for meal upon the scanty supplies procured from westtern Pennsylvania . Having set out with the determination to spend the winter, he erected a log-cabin, into which himself and one Bigsby, whom he had agreed to give one hundred acres of land on condition of settlement, moved on the first day of January, 1800, before which they lived under a bark camp and tent." During the spring following the removal of Tappan into his first cabin, which stood on the Capt. J. D. King farm, several other settlers came into Ravenna, among whom were William Chard and Conrad Boosinger, the latter coming in August, and bringing his wife, sons George and John, and daughter Polly. Boosinger settled on 200 acres of land about one and one-half miles southeast of the present town of Ravenna , made a clearing and sowed it in wheat. Chard located on Lot 33. Boosinger being a tanner, constructed a couple of vats soon after he came, which was the first effort in that direction, and the first public enterprise in the way of manufactures in the county. The privations of these early settlers of the Western Reserve cannot now be described or realized, and why a young lawyer like Benjamin Tappan, Jr., surrounded with all of the comforts of an Eastern home, would venture out into an unknown wilderness, seems to us now something wonderful.

During the same month in which Benjamin Tappan and his party arrived in Ravenna, Ebenezer Sheldon, of Suffield, Conn., came into Aurora Township, and with the assistance of Elias Harmon and his wife, made a settlement on Lot 40. After the erection of a cabin and making a small clearing in the primitive forest, Harmon and wife moved to Mantua Township , where they ever afterward resided. Sheldon then returned to Connecticut , and in the following spring, 1800, came out to his new home, bringing his wife, four sons and two daughters. They rode the entire distance in a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen, and leading a pair of young horses. They came safely as far as Warren , which at that time consisted of a few log structures, but after leaving there a storm overtook them in the woods and they were very near perishing from falling trees. They managed to avoid all accidents, however, but were literally penned in and had to remain in the woods all night, only being released the next day by getting assistance and cutting a road out. One of the daughters of this sturdy old pioneer, the year following their arrival, married Amzi Atwater, of Mantua, one of the surveyors who accompanied Cleveland in the survey .of the Western Reserve, and who afterward became one of the Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, and a leading citizen of the county. Ebenezer Sheldon and his family were the only inhabitants of Aurora for three years after they arrived there, but in 1803 quite a number came in, among whom were Samuel Forward and his family, from Granby , Conn. The next year came James M. Henry, John Coahran, Jr., David Kennedy, Sr., Ebenezer Kennedy, Samuel Ferguson and several others. Within a year or two afterward came Moses Eggleston, father of Gen. Nelson Eggleston; also Joseph Eggleston, brother of Moses, together with Capt. Perkins, Col. Ebenezer Harmon, Isaac Blair and others from Massachusetts and Connecticut .

Early in April, 1799, two months before any settlers had arrived in Ravenna or Aurora Townships , and only six months after Honey had made his clearing in Mantua , six persons made their way into what is now Atwater Township . They came from Wallingford , Conn. , and were Capt. Caleb Atwater, Jonathan Merrick, Peter Bunnell, Asahel Biakesley and Asa Hall and his wife. This party, headed by Atwater , surveyed the township into lots, and in the fall all of them, with the exception of Hall and his wife, returned to their homes in the East. From the time of the arrival of this first settler till the spring of 1801—two years—Hall and his wife were the only persons in the township, his nearest neighbor being Lewis Ely, over in Deerfield Township, who had come out with others shortly after Hall's arrival. Although having a lonesome time during those two years in the wilderness, an incident happened within Hall's household that was calculated in a measure to relieve the tedium of, whilst it imposed additional cares upon, the life of this pioneer couple. The "incident" was a child born to them in the spring of 1800, which was promptly and appropriately named Atwater Hall, and had the honor of being the first while child born in Portage County. Hall was considerable of a hunter, and as may well be supposed, had ample opportunity and game to gratify all his taste in that direction, but he eventually got tired of his lonesome life and moved in 1801 to near the Deerfield Township line, where he could more easily reach the settlements in that township. About the time Hall moved from his first location, David Baldwin, Jr., came in from Wallingford , Conn. , and settled about two miles south of the Center of Atwater Township. These two families for the next three years were the only persons in the township, but after that period settlers came in rapidly, most of whom were from Connecticut and Massachusetts, but about 1807 quite a number of persons from South Carolina settled here, among whom were Enos Davis, whose son Isaac, then a boy of ten years is still living, nearly ninety years of age; also, from the same state,came William Marshall, John Hutton and John Campbell. Among the arrivals shortly before and about the year 1806-07 were Jeremiah Jones, Josiah Mix, John H. Whittlesey, Caleb Mattoon, Asahel Biakesley and Ira and Amos Morse. David Baldwin, Jr., was the agent of Capt. Atwater, who owned not only the entire township, but several others and portions of others on the Reserve, he being one of the original members of the Connecticut Land Company. Maj. Ransom Baldwin, now residing, at the advanced age of eighty-two years, on the original land located by his father, is the son of David Baldwin, he being born in 1802, the second male child born in the township of Atwater . The settlement of this portion of the county was very rapid, as the land was considered by most of the early comers to be better in the southern than in the northern portions of the county. The first settler in that division of the county known as Palmyra Township was David Daniels, who left his home in Grattan, Conn., in the spring of 1799, and arrived there in June, locating on Lot 21, about one and a half miles south of the Center. At the drawing of the Connecticut Land Company, Palmyra Township fell to the lot of eight persons, Elijah Boardman being the principal owner, and these gentlemen, as an inducement to its settlement, gave Daniels 100 acres of land to go there, make a clearing and build a cabin, which he accordingly did. He put in a small crop of wheat, which was duly harvested the following season, and after threshing his crop carried a bushel of the grain on his shoulders to Poland , about thirty miles away, had it ground and returned with it to his humble cabin. Daniels was a soldier in the Revolutionary Army and died in 1813, having been highly respected. He was the first Justice of the Peace of Palmyra Township after its organization.

In the spring of 1799 Lewis Day and Horatio Day, of Connecticut , came to their purchase of land in Deerfield Township . They came through in a wagon drawn by horses, selected their locations, made a clearing and put out a crop of wheat. The first actual settler, however, was Lewis Ely, who came in July, bringing his family and settling down to business at once, while the Days in the fall returned to their homes in the East. Ely located on Lot 19, just east of the old grave-yard. The following year, 1800, was marked by the arrival in Deerfield of seeral men who afterward became prominent in the history of the county. In February Alva Day, John Campbell and Joel Thrall started from their homes in Connecticut and walked the entire distance, arriving here in March, after an exceedingly rough time, as the mountains over which they had to pass were covered with five or six feet of snow, subjecting them to much suffering from the cold. Provisions were exceedingly scarce at this time, and Lewis Ely and Alva Day were compelled to make a trip to the Ohio River to procure some bacon and meal. They constructed a canoe from a log, floated it down to the Ohio River, and at a point opposite Steubenville , procured what they needed and brought it back with an ox team. James Laughlin also came this year from Pennsylvania . In July Lewis Day returned bringing out his wife and six children: Horatio, Munn, Seth, Lewis, Jr., Solomon and Seba Day. During the next three or four years following 1800 the township filled up very rapidly, many of the settlers coming from Pennsylvania , Maryland and Virginia . Ephraim B. Hubbard, of Connecticut , came about this time, and in 1803 Daniel Diver and his family. Noah Grant, the grandfather of Gen. U. S. Grant, is supposed to have settled in Deerfield about 1804-05, where he opened a tannery and followed shoemaking. Noah brought his wife and little son Jesse, aged about ten years, father of the now illustrious Gen. U. S. Grant, to whom the country owes so much, for to him is largely due the conception of the proper mode to crush out the modern python of armed secession. Rev. Shadrack Bostwick, son-in-law of Daniel Diver, came in 1803. This gentleman was one of the early circuit-riders of the Methodist Church , and was a physician as well. In the spring of 1800 there arrived in Nelson Township , from Becket, Mass. , Delaun, Asahel and Isaac Mills, sons of Deacon Ezekiel Mills. The first two were married and brought out their families; the latter was single. They came in covered wagons and several weeks were occupied in the trip, during which time their money had dwindled down to less than 25 cents. Falling in with Uriah Holmes, the principal proprietor of Nelson Township , the brothers engaged with him to serve as ax-men to the surveyors, who were under charge of Amzi Atwater,    After finishing their job, Delaun settled on a lot of 100 acres which had been donated to him by Holmes. It was on the north side of the road just west of the Center. Asahel settled on a 100 acre lot on the north and south road. Delaun, or Capt. Delaun Mills, as he was afterward known, was looked upon as the Daniel Boone of this section, and a full account of him will be found in the sketch of Nelson Township. For nearly three years the two brothers, Delaun and Asahel (Isaac having returned to the East) and their families were the only white inhabitants of Nelson Township; but in the spring of 1803 seven families came in, they being Stephen Baldwin, Benjamin Stow and two sons, John Bancroft and four sons, Daniel Owen, two Stiles brothers, William and Thomas Kennedy and Asa Truesdell. In July, 1804, Col. John Garrebt, who founded Garrettsville, or rather built a mill ,at that point, and for whom that enterprising little town is named, came into Nelson, and about the same time Abraham Dyson and a German named Johann Noah, all coming from the State of Delaware . In the following year, 1805, came John Tinier, Nathaniel Bancroft, Martin Manley and Daniel Wood.