Cuyahoga County, Ohio - Chapter 47: From 1825 to the City Charter, 1870

Chapter 47: From 1825 to the City Charter

Less Attention to Individuals - First Appropriation for a Harbor - The First Pier - No Results - Another Appropriation - Major Maurice's Plan - The River Damned - An Angry '"'Serpent '' - A New Channel - Another Pier - Complete Success - Canal Opened - Disastrous Sickness - Brooklyn Village - The First Light-house - Slow Increase - Then very Rapid Progress - Old-fashioned Relics - The. Flush Times - The Buffalo Company in Brooklyn - The Two City Charters - The Dividing Line.

As, after 1825, the population of the thriving village of Cleveland mounted in twelve years to a population of some five thousand, and the place attained the dignity of a city, we cannot henceforth give that attention to individuals which we have previously ' given, but must confine ourselves in this continuons sketch to a condensed statement of the principal

If Cleveland was really to be a great commercial city, the first and most necessary object for it to attain was a harbor. We are indebted to Col. Whittlesey's 'Fugitive Essays" for an account of the early efforts in that direction. In the session of 1824-5 Congress granted $5,000 to construct a harbor at Cleveland. It was confided to Ashbel Walworth, then collector of the port, without instructions, and without any survey being made by the government officers. Mr. Walworth was full of zcal, but had no knowledge, theoretical or practical, about harborbuilding. As the northeast winds predominated, how. ever, driving the sand to the west to such an extent that by successive encroachments the mouth of the river had been gradually forced westward, and the water entered the lake in an oblique direction, Mr. Walworth and those whom he consulted, naturally thought that the proper thing to do was to build a pier into the lake east of the mouth, so as to stop the drift from the east; it being supposed that the force of the water would then keep the channel clear.

Accordingly, in the summer of 1825, the five thousand dollars was expended in building a pier six hundred feet into the lake, nearly at right angles with the shore, (north, thirty-two degrees west), beginning forty rods east of the east bank of the river at its mouth. Strange as it must have seemed to those who are always boasting of the infallibility of "common sense," the eminently common-sense method employed in building the pier produced no benefical results whatever. No increase in the depth of the channel could be observed, and when the sand was cut out, it filled up again with the same rapidity as before. At one time there was actually a bar of almost dry sand across the mouth of the. port of Cuyahoga. ; In the autumn of 1825 a meeting of the citizens was held, a hundred and fifty dollars was raised to pay expenses, and Mr. Walworth was sent to Washington to solicit another appropriation. As there were only thirty or forty yearly arrivals of 'vessels at the port of Cuyahoga, Congress was not favorable to the application. Hon. Elisha Whittlesey who so long and ably represented in Congress the Western Reserve district, of which Cuyahoga county was then a part, heartily seconded the efforts of Mr. Walworth, and after a long struggle Congress appropriated ten thousand dollars more for a harbor at Cleveland, though not in time to be used in the summer of 1826.

In the spring of 1827, Major T. W. Maurice, of the United States engineer corps, arrived at Cleveland, made a survey and reported a plan which was adopted by the government. It was determined that the river should be made to empty into the lake east of the Walworth pier, and that another pier should be constructed still east of that; the channel being compelled to flow out into the lake between the two struc- tures. Major Maurice accordingly ordered a dam to be built across the river opposite the south end of the Walworth pier. This occupied the season. In the fall the dam was closed.

These proceedings of course materially interfered with ordinary business, and many of the lake captains were very angry. They thought the plan an absurd one, and roundly abused the works and workmen. The schooner '' Lake Serpent " entered the river, and

The captain was obliged to hire men to dig a temporary channel through the bar in order to get out on the voyage for which he had arranged. He was furious with rage, and swore he only wanted a lease of life until that nonsensical plan succeeded.

When the fall rains came on, the river rapidly rose. Men were then employed with picks and spades, oxen and scrapers, to make a trench across the isthmus from the river to the lake. As soon as a small opening was made the river broke through, and by the time the flood subsided there was two feet of water in the new channel, which was constantly enlarging. When the "' Lake Serpent" came back from its trip it could easily enter the river by the new route. The old channel soon filled up; yet it remained the dividing line between the townships of Cleveland and Brooklyn, so that there were several acres of Cleveland on the west side of the river.

The next spring the eastern pier was begun, but was not completed that year. Without attempting to follow all the details of the work, suffice it to say that Major Maurice's plan was completely successful, and a permanent and excellent harbor was the result. The work was not done for ten thousand dollars, however. Both the piers were carried back through the sandy shore to the river, and were also extended into the lake, by means of successive appropriations, much beyond their original length. In fact the work was not closed until 1840, by which time the sum of seventy-seven thousand dollars had been expended.

In 1827 the canal was opened for navigation from Cleveland to Akron, and the Clevelanders became more confident than ever of the great future before them; a confidence justified by the rapid increase of population. Unfortunately, however, the canal brought serious evils as well as benefits. The throwing up of so much malarious soil was the cause of a very disastrous period of sickness, extending through 1827 and 1828. Fever and ague and billious fever were the prevailing diseases. 'lhe former weakened the systems and shattered the constitutions of its victims; so that when the latter attacked them it proved fatal to an extraordinary degree, especially among the laborers residing on the bank of the canal. When the tow-path was raised, several years later, numerous where they died, beside the malarious ditch which had caused their death. The village of Brooklyn, which, it will be remembered, then lay directly across the river from Cleve- land, though as yet but a hamlet, still made considerable progress, and the establishment of a new store there by H. Pelton, ''a few doors north of J. Barber's,"" was one of the events of 1827.

In the spring of 1828, what is now one of the principal interests of the city, the iron business, was inaugurated by John Ballard & Co., who then put their new iron foundry in operation.

The same year witnessed the introduction of the agent by means of which alone could the iron business be carried on to any great extent, and which is also employed for a thousand other uses in our modern life. Inthe yearnamed, Henry Newberry, father of Professor Newberry, of Cleveland, shipped to that place a few tons of coal from his land near the canal. Part of it was put on a wagon and hawked about town; the attention of the leading citizens being called to its good qualities. But no one wanted it. Wood was plenty and cheap, and the neat housewives of Cleveland especially objected to the dismal appearance and dirt-creating qualities of the new fuel.

Once in a while a man would take a little as a gift, but, after the wagon had been driven around Cleyeland all day, not a single purchaser had been found. At length, near nightfall, Mr. Philo Scovill, who was then keeping the hotel known as the Franklin House, was persuaded to buy some, for which he found use by putting grates in his bar-room stove. Such was the beginning of the coal-business in Cleveland. The new fuel soon found favor, for the small manufacturing and mechanical industries of the period, and large shipments were ere long made on the canal, but it was long before the matrons of Cleveland would tolerate it in private residences.

In 1830 the United States built the first light-house at Cleveland, at a cost of eight thousand dollars. It was situated on the bluff, at the north end of Water street; the land being a hundred and thirty-five feet above the level of the lake.

From 1826 to 1830 the village did not increase very rapidly; the prevailing sickness neutralizing the benefits conferred by the canal. In the latter year Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton each had between a thousand and eleven hundred inhabitants.

But after 1830 the sickness abated. The canal was then complete throughout its whole length; business was brisk all over the country, and the population of Cleveland advanced at a very rapid rate. By 1833 it had reached two thousand five hundred. At this period, after 1830, the common council ordered the grading of some of the principal streets - Superior, Ontario and one or two others.

Down to 1830 the population had not extended eastward beyond Erie street, which was the eastern limit of the corporation, but it now began to overgrow that boundary and spread along Euclid and Superior streets.

Things still-had rather an old-fashioned, countrylike appearance. Mr. W. A. Wing, now of Strongsville, says that when he came to Cleveland, in 1834, there was a big guide-board at the junction of Ontario strect with the Public Square, which told the distanecs to Painesville, Erie and Buffalo on the east, to Portsmouth on the Ohio river on the south, and to Detroit on the west. Old fashioned swing-signs were also in use before at least a portion of the hotels.

But the days of smartness and cityhood were coming quite fast enough. The population increased with rapid strides, and in 1835, according to an informal census then taken, it was found that the residents of Cleveland numbered five thousand and eighty. It had more than doubled in two years. Business was brisk to an extraordinary degree, owing to the vast amount of paper money in circulation, nominally redeemable in cash, but practically irredeemable on account of the gencral worthlessness of the security. Every one was ready for any enterprise or speculation which offered. These were the celebrated ''flush times," of which considerable has been said in the general history of the county.

Meanwhile the village of Brooklyn, though far behind Cleveland in size, had during the last five or six years made almost as rapid progress as the latter place. An organization, commonly known as the Buffalo company, had in 1831 bought a large tract. of land on the west side of the river, had laid it out in strects and lots, and had pushed' forward improvements at a rapid pace. In the beginning of 1836, when Cleveland was estimated to have nearly six thousand inhabitants, the population of the village of Brooklyn was calculated at two thousand.

By this time the people of beth villages were fully persuaded that they could afford to indulge in the advantages and glories of a city government. The benefits to be derived from a union of the rival interests on the two sides of the river were also appreciated to some extent, and an effort was made to proeure a city charter covering both villages. But the rivalry was so great - the people on each side wanted so much, and were willing to accord so little - that the plan fell through.

The leading men on both sides then turned their efforts to obtain separate charters from the legislature. Either through superior adroitness or from mere chance, but certainly to the intense disgust and mortification of the more numerous Cleyvelanders, the Brooklyn people succeeded first, and on the third day of May, 1836, obtained a charter under the name of Ohio City, while it was not till the eighth of the same month that Cleveland became the possessor of city honors.

The dividing line between the two cities, unlike that between the townships, followed the new channel of the river, erected in 1827, so that the the tract of about seven acres, between the new and old channels, was in Ohio City, but in the township of Cleveland, and so remained until the township organization was abandoned.

An Outline Of Later Years

Climax of the Land Speculation - Improvements - Number of Arrivals of Vessels - A Break in the Tide - Great Disaster - No Progress until 1840 - First Important Iron Works - Paving - Prospe ity in 1840 - Overflowing Hotels - The Weddell - The Free High School - Spreading out - Love of Clevelanders for Room - Euclid Avenue - Population in 1850 - A Commercial City - Union of Cleveland and Ohio City - Cleveland in the War--It becomes a Manufacturing City - Annexation of East Oleveland - Of Newburg and other Tracts - Depression and Revival - Concluding Remarks.

Te year 1836 saw the climax of the great land speculation, which had been raging with such extraordinary violence for three or four years throughout the country, and especially along the great line of emiigration, extending from the East to the West, which passed along the southern shore of Lake Erie. City lots doubled, trebled, quadrupled 'in price in the course of a few months, and each successive advance seemed a new evidence of prosperity and a new reason for higher prices.

The authorities of the new-born city were quite willing to exercise their power, to improve and beautify the tract Committed to their charge. The grading of streets, etc., went on with great vigor. Mr. Wing, before mentioned, graded Pittsburg strect, (now Broadway,) in 1836, previously a mere country road. That year or the next he took a contract, which he sublet, to grade the public square, which

In Ohio City, too, all was excitement and progress. That year the city authorities built a canal, beginning in the Cuyahoga, opposite the termination of the Ohio canal, and running through the marsh into the old river bed. They did not succeed in making a new harbor, as they apparently hoped, but the basin thus reached was sometimes used for keeping vessels.

From March 15 to November 28, 1836, the number of sloops, schooners, brigs and ships arriving with cargoes at the port of Cuyahoga was nine hundred and eleven, while the number of arrivals of steamboats, with passengers, was nine hundred and ninety; an enormous aggregate, when we consider that it was only sixteen years since the first steamboat had appeared on the waters of Lake Erie, and only cleven years since the whole number of arrivals, of every description, was but from forty to fifty.

In the latter part of 1836 there was a break-in the tide of apparent prosperity which had been sweeping on so gaily for the previous five years. Banks began to break, private fortunes began to collapse, and the fair fabric of inflation trembled and tottered bencath the chilling blasts of reality. But the people could not believe that the immense fortunes which they tions, with no more real basis than worthless paper money, could all vanish when their value was tested, and they still clung with desperate tenacity to the high prices which speculation had placed upon all kinds of property. It was all in vain, however, and the next year (1837) saw the complete collapse of the inflation balloon, and the full inauguration of the ''Hard Times' par excellence, the most disastrous period, financially, ever passed through by the people of the United States.

Cleveland, however, presented one exception to the general rule in Western cities. The Bank of Lake Erie did not break down under the stress of disaster. A host of its customers did, however. Jt was compelled to take land in payment of the debts due it, and became the largest landholder in the city. In 1842 its charter expired and it wound up its business.

There was no increase of population from 1836 to 1840. The number, according to the census of the latter year, in the tewnship of Cleveland, was seven thousand and thirty-seven; of which about a thousand was outside the city. After that year the disheartened people began to take new courage, and engage again in business enterprises. William A. Otis established iron works, the first of any considerable consequence in the city. Several thousand tons of coal were by this time received every year, and Cleveland soon began to make considerable progress as a manufacturing place.

About 1842 the first attempts at paving were made, on Superior street, between the square and the river, and also on River street; that is if it could be called paving to place heavy planks crosswise of the street warped and loosened, and partly worn out, as they soon did, they were a most unmitigated nuisance. On River street the water sometimes rose and floated them off into the Cuyahoga. An effort was then made to pave the principal streets with limestone, but this crumbled too easily, and it was soon found that it would not answer. Medina sandstone was next tried, and as this was found to answer all the conditions of a good paving-stone it was permanently retained. By 1845 the city was again in the full tide of prosperity, accompanied by far more solidity than characterized it in the flush times ten years before. In that year, 1845, the population of Cleveland was nine thousand four hundred and seventy-three; that of Ohio City, two thousand four hundred and sixty-two.

"able part of the business down to the time of the construction of railroads; the hotels often overflowing with people waiting for steamers, or just landed from steamers, to an extent scarcely ever known at the present time. 'The Weddell House was built in 1845 and ?46 and at once took the position of the foremost hotel in the city.

The interests of religion were not suffered to languish, as will be seen by the sketches of the numerous churches which sprang up at this period; and as to education, Cleveland was probably abreast of any other place of its size in the country. The Cleveland Free High School, established in 1846, was the first

All this time the population of Ohio City was steadily spreading westward and northward, and tiat of Cleveland eastward and southward. By 1848 the extreme eastern limit had reached to Clinton street. The characteristics impressed on the city by its founders, when the tract was laid off in lots of two acres each, still showed themselves. The people having from the first acquired a taste for large and roomy locations, they almost all declined to be shut up in close brick blocks, but insisted on having separate houses, each with its own piece of land. The rich had fine mansions, with lawns and orchards about them; those of more moderate means had substantial houses with ample gardens; the poor had cottages with small yards; but nearly everybody had breathing room. Of course this involved a good deal of travel to and from places of business, and a large outlay for paving, street lighting, etc., but there is no doubt that these inconveniences and expenses were far more than made good by the increase of home comforts and the superior healthfulness of the place. It was at this period that the Euclid road, then become Euclid street, began to take on the characteristics which have - since made it celebrated throughout the country. The | land rose from the lake to within a short distance from the street, then fell as far as the line of the street and then rose gently to the southward. Somewhat singularly, both the ridge and the depression occupied by the street ran almost due east from the public square for two miles, and then with a small variation ran two miles farther to '' Doan's Corners.

The wealthy residents of the city early found that they could make extremely pleasant homes by taking ample ground on the ridge in question, and building their houses on its summit; leaving a space of from ten to twenty rods between them and the street. The fashion, once adopted by a few, was speedily followed by others, and a residence on Euclid street, with a front yard of from two to five acres, soon became one of the prominent objects of a Clevelander's ambition. Some fine residences were also built on the south side of the street, but not near as many as on the north side. :

The population of Cleveland had risen in 1850 to seventeen thousand and thirty-four; that of Ohio City to three thousand nine hundred and fifty.

All this time Cleveland was pre-eminently a commercial city; its chief business being to receive produce from northern Ohio and ship it to the Kast, to transmit Eastern goods to the agricultural regions, and to send on to the West the immense number of emigrants and others who sought that land of promise. The building of the railroads mentioned in the general history, which marked the era between 1850 and 1855, did not change the character of the business but greatly widened its operations.

Meanwhile it had become evident to a large majority of the people of both cities that the interests of Cleveland and Ohio City required a union under one corporation. Negotiations were set on foot and concluded, and a formal agreement was made, in accordance with the law, between commissioners appointed by the common councils of the two cities. "Those on the part of Cleveland were W. A. Otis, H. V. Willson and F. T. Backus; those on the part of Ohio City were W. B. Castle, N. M. Standart and C. S. Rhodes. It was agreed that the four wards of Ohio City, (or rather the city of Ohio as it was called in all legal proceedings) should constitute the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh wards of Cleveland; that the wards should never be changed so but that the west side should always have as large a proportion of the number of wards as it had of the population; that the property of each city should belong to the joint corporation, and that that corporation should be responsible for the debts of both.

The proposition to unite was submitted to the voters of the two cities on the first Monday of April, 1854. It received in Cleveland one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two yeas and four hundred nays; in Ohio City, six hundred and eighteen yeas and two hundred and fifty-eight nays. The formal ordinance' of union, in accordance with this vote, was passed by the council of Cleveland on the 5th of June, 1854, and by that of the ''City of Ohio" on the following day.

The prosperity of the united city was somewhat checked by another financial crisis in 1857, but the depression was slight indeed compared with that which followed the crash of 1837. The population of the two cities a little more than doubled during the decade; that of the two cities having been twenty thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four in 1850, and that of the united city being forty-three thousand, eight hundred and thirty-eight.

Of the part taken by Cleveland's gallant soldiers in the war for life, which burst upon the country in 1861, the story has been amply told in the chapters devoted to the general history of the county. The effect of the war on Cleveland was very greatly to develop its manufactures. 'The iron business and the oil business in particular sprang forward into immense proportions, and it has been said, with but little exaggeration, that the war found Cleveland a commercial city and left it a manufacturing city. Not that it ceased to do a great deal of commercial business, but the predominant interest had become the manufacturing ones. Accounts of some of the principal of these are given farther on.

Meanwhile a large and thriving village had grown up between Willson avenue, which formed the eastern limit of the city, and the locality called in the old accounts ' Doan's Corners," but which for twenty years had gone by the name of Hast Cleveland. This was the name of the township which had been formed from Cleveland and Euclid, and this was the appellation given to the village just mentioned. Cleveland was ready to absorb this extensive tract, and the tract was ready to be absorbed. The'commissioners on the part of the city were H. B. Payne, J. P. Robison and John Huntington; those on the part of the village John HE. Hurlbut, John W. Heisley and William A. Neff. They agreed that East Cleveland should become the sixteenth and seventeenth wards of Cleveland; and also that the high school of East Cleveland should be maintained according to the system in use, until changed by three-fourths of the common council of the city, with the consent of half of the members for the tract then annexed. The formal ordinance of union was passed by the council of Cleveland on the 24th of October, and by that of East Cleveland on the 29th of October, 1867.

Another large tract, comprising parts of the townships of Kast Cleveland and Brooklyn, and extending entirely around the city, was annexed in 1872; the necessary ordinance being passed on the 19th of November in that year, and the subsequent proceedings being taken by the county commissioners. On the 16th of September, 1873, still another absorbing ordinance, also confirmed by the county commissioners, was passed, by which the village of Newburg, once the rival of Cleveland, was summarily annexed to it, and became the eighteenth ward of its former competitor.

As there has been no census since that time it is impracticable to say how far Cleveland has mounted by reason of its internal growth and these external accessions. Enthusiastic citizens put its population considerably above a hundred and fifty thousand, but probably the census of next June will show that the number does not vary greatly from those figures. Of course, like all the rest of the country, it has suffered severely from the business depression of the five years succeeding 1873, but it is one of the very first cities in the country to cateh the returning breezes of prosperity, and its people may well look forward toa long career of commercial and manufacturing success.

We have thus sketched an outline history of Cleveland, from the laying out of its first streets in 1796, to the present time. We have dwelt at considerable length on the earlier history, regarding which this sketch forms the only record in our work, but have passed very cursorily over the later period, because many chapters immediately following these are devoted to the separate institutions - churches, societies, schools, ete., of that period. To those we now invite the attention of such of our readers as feel an interest in the details of local history.