Ashtabula County, Ohio - Chapter 1: The Progress of Discovery, 1878

The year 1492 signalizes the achievement of Columbus, - the greatest maritime enterprise in the history of the world. Born of a holy faith, an inflexible purpose, and an unfailing greatness of soul, it was the triumph of reason over superstition ; of knowledge over the ignorance of cosmography, and, in less than fifteen years, Copernicus had made known to the world the true theory of our solar system. England, France, and Spain are aroused and eagerly set on foot plans for exploration and discovery. In 1497, John Cabot and his son, Sebastian, discovered the western continent among the dismal cliffs of Labrador. In 1498, a year famous in the annals of the sea, Columbus set foot upon the mainland of South America, and Sebastian Cabot explored the North American coast from Newfoundland to Albemarle Sound. In 1501, Gaspar Cortereal, with two caravels, furnished by his sovereign, Manuel, king of Portugal, ranges the coast of North America from the Delaware Bay to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As early as 1504 the fisheries of Newfoundland are known to the hardy mariners of Brittany and Normandy, who came thus early to our shores from the northwest of France, and, in remembrance of home, gave to the island of Cape Breton the name it still retains.

Thus early did England, Portugal, and France become competitors with Spain and with one another for the unknown world. The Spanish nation had given this impetus to efforts of discovery, and for some years maintained the first position among the contestants. Extraordinary success had kindled in her breast extraordinary enthusiasm. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon, a fellow-voyager of Columbus in his second expedition, a gallant soldier in the wars of Hispaniola, rewarded by Ovando with the government of the eastern province of that island, embarked at Porto Rico with a squadron of three ships, and on Easter Sunday, which the Spaniards call Pasc-ua Florida, discovered the southeastern peninsula of what now are the United States. He went on shore near St. Augustine, explored the coast from this point south to Cape Florida, and sailed among the group of islands, and named them Tortugas. In 1519, Francisco de Garay, likewise a companion of Columbus on his second voyage, and at the date mentioned the opulent governor of Jamaica, equipped four ships, and. placing them under the command of Alvarez Alonso de Pineda, explored the coast to the west of Florida for a distance of nine hundred miles, examining attentively the ports, rivers, inhabitants, and everything else that seemed worthy of remark, noticing particularly the volume of water poured into the gulf by one very large river. Thus early was the Father of Waters made known to the white man. In 1525, Stephen Gomez, under instructions from the emperor king to seek out the northern passage to India, sailed into Long Island sound, and discovered the Hudson river. In 1528, Pamphilio de Narvaez, under a contract from Charles V. to explore and reduce all the territory from the Atlantic to the river Palmas, with an expedition of more than three hundred men, whereof Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Yaca held the second place as treasurer, anchored in Tampa bay, and landing, took possession of Florida in the name of Spain. Allured by the prospect of gold, he struck into the interior, crossed the Withlochooche, visited Appalachee, and, coming into the harbor of St. Mark's, where he constructed five boats of the rudest sort, embarked upon the gulf in search of the river Palmas. The shallop, commanded by Cabeza, and another under the captaincy of Alonso de Castillo, were thrown upon the surf, on the sands of an island which Cabeza named the Isle of Misfortune, and most likely was the same as what now is known as Galveston. Here he became a captive of the Indians for five years, when he made his escape and began a pilgrimage, which lasted more than twenty months. He and his companions passed through Texas as far north as to the Canadian river, thence westward to the Rocky mountains in New Mexico. With a fortitude that was proof against hunger, cold, and weariness, amidst perils from beasts and perils from savages, the brave voyagers journeyed from one Indian town to another in New Mexico, and finally crossing the mountains, entered Arizona, and, on a day in May, 1536 ,drew near to the Pacific ocean, at the village of San Miguel, in Sonora.

In the city of Mexico the story was published which an Indian slave had told of the wonders of the seven cities of Cibola, the Land of Buffaloes, that lay at the north, and abounded in silver and gold. Francisco Vasquez Coronado, the governor of New Galacia, burning with a desire to subdue those vaunted provinces, resolved to head an expedition formed for this purpose. In 1540 the army of three hundred Spaniards, part of whom were mounted, having sworn on a missal containing the gospels to maintain implicit obedience and never abandon their chief, who, in taking command of the hazardous enterprise, had parted from a lovely young wife and vast possessions, began their march from Compostella with flying colors and boundless expectations. The result of this expedition was the discovery of the Colorado of the west, and its exploration for nearly a hundred miles north of the present southern boundary of the United States ; its discovery at a much higher point, where the river has hollowed out for its channel a gulf so deep that the party who first stood upon its bank and looked down the sides of the interminable cliff described the precipice as being loftier than the highest mountain ; the proof that Lower California is not an island ; the exploration of portions of the territory of New Mexico, Texas, the Indian Territory, Kansas, and Colorado ; and that the golden cities of Cibola were a few scattered and feeble villages of the rudest sort, inhabited by a small number of poor Indians, who sought friendship by presents of skins, cotton, and maize.

While these events were occurring, an expedition of six hundred men, led by Ferdinand de Soto, a brave soldier and a daring adventurer, but blinded by avarice and the love of power, had landed in Florida, and in quest of gold had explored the territory of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. These bold adventurers reached the Mississippi river not more than two hundred miles below the mouth of the Ohio, and crossed it at about the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude. In June of 1541 they ascend the mighty river as far north as to the present site of St. Louis ; they traverse from east to west nearly the whole of the State of Missouri ; they pass to the south and visit the Saline Springs of Arkansas, and, after long and wearisome marches, reach the gulf with no more than one-half of their original number. Thus did the Spanish nation, to which America is indebted for its discovery, in less than fifty years make known to history nearly one-half of the present territory of the United States.

In 1534, James Cartier, a bold mariner of St. Malo, discovered the great river of Canada, and in the succeeding year explored it as far to Montreal ; and, as the spring of 1536 approached, erected a cross bearing a shield with the lilies of France, and an inscription declaring Francis I. to be the rightful king of this newfound realm, to which he gave the name of New France. For the next fifty or sixty years the French nation accomplished but little toward extending its dominion in the New World. In 1603, however, Samuel Champlain, who came to be known as the father of the French settlements in Canada, and the able and patriotic De Monts began their wonderful exploits on the soil of the western continent. Acadia and Nova Scotia spring into being; the territory of New York is visited ; and the country far to the northwest is penetrated. Then follow the marvelous explorations of the Jesuits. The great west is traversed to the head-waters of the Mississippi ; that great river is explored to its very mouth. In a few years the claims of France to North American territory exceed those of any other European power. At the time of the accession of William, Prince of Orange, to the throne of England, in 1689, France's sovereignty in America embraced Newfoundland, Acadia, Nova Scotia, Hudson's Bay, all the Canadas, more than half of Maine, Vermont, and New York, the whole valley of the Mississippi, including its tributaries, the great chain of lakes at the north and Texas at the south, as far as to the Rio Bravo del Norte. The waters of every gushing fountain and bubbling spring and babbling brook west of the Alleghanies were claimed for the French nation.

England's dominions in America lay along the Atlantic seaboard. The thirteen original colonies skirting the Atlantic from Florida to the verge of Nova Scotia were the planting of the English people, and constituted that nation's possessions up to the time of the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. By virtue of this treaty England obtained large concessions of territory from France. The entire possessions of the Bay of Hudson and its borders ; of Newfoundland, subject to the rights of France in its fisheries ; and all of Nova Scotia, or Acadia, according to its ancient boundaries, passed from the dominion of France to that of England. And now the strife in America for the possession of colonial monopolies and territorial sovereignty was confined to these two great powers. France still maintained her claim to much the larger extent of territory, but her population, scattered over this immense area, numbered only eleven thousand two hundred and forty-nine persons in 1688, while that of the English colonies in the same year exceeded two hundred thousand. A contest of fifty years' duration between these two great powers for territorial acquisition in America followed, resulting in the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, by virtue of which France lost and England gained the whole country between the Allegheny mountains and the Father of Waters, except a small tract lying at the mouth of the great river. The valley of the Ohio, for whose special conquest a seven years' war had been begun, thus passed to the possession of Britain. Strangely enough, for the success of this undertaking, the English nation was mainly indebted to the very hero who, a few years later, as commander-in-chief of the American armies, was engaged in wresting it in common with the territory of the whole country from British rule, in order to transfer it to the free people who should make for humanity a new existence in America. In less than a decade the dominions which Ebgland took from France were in turn taken from her, and the United States of America obtained a place

Thus it was that the soil of Ohio, of which Ashtabula County forms a part, was in the first instance, waiving the rights of the red man, the property of the French, in the next instance that of England, then of the United States. This county constitutes a part of what is known as the Connecticut Western Reserve, a short account of which we will give in the succeeding chapter.