Greenwich Township

Greenwich Township

Greenwich township received its name from Greenwich, Fairfield county, Connecticut, where most of the original owners of the land resided. It is known as township number one, range twenty-one.

Its surface is moderately undulating, without marshes of any great extent, and those that did exist were easily drained. The soil is mostly a clayey loam, mixed in places with gravel and sand along the streams.

Butternut, black walnut and sycamore are abundant along the streams. Black walnut is also found on the uplands. In general, the land of the township may be considered of the beech and maple grade - beech being predominant. White oaks are more abundant in the first and fourth sections than elsewhere. In the second and third sections there has been a new growth of timber since the tornado which passed over that part of the township in pioneer times and tore down all the original growth.

It is bounded upon the north by Fitchville; east by Ruggles, Ashland county ; south by Ashland and Richland counties; and west by Ripley. Its surface is low and quite level for the most part, though, in some places, it is slightly uneven. The principal streams are the east and west branches of the Vermillion river. The former flows through the northeast corner of the township ; the latter, formed by the union of the two streams, enters upon the south line, and thence flows north into Ripley. It again enters the township near the intersection of the east and west center and the Ripley town line road, and from thence flows northerly and diagonally across the third section, and, receiving the added volume of water from a number of small streams that drain a large portion of the township, becomes, by the time it reaches the north line, a water-course of considerable size.

The first school was taught by James Nixon, who, with his father, Robert Nixon, left Ireland at the time of the Irish revolution, and chose America as the country in which to begin life anew, and drifted, by: some chance, to this locality. The school was held in an abandoned log house, one mile south of the center, in the winter of 1820-21. About 1825, a school house was built at the center, and Tracey Case was the first teacher who occupied it. The second school house was built by James Mitchell's, near the center of section four. Willis R. Smith, assisted by his wife, gave instruction in writing to a number of young men (some of them married), in the winter of 1824-25. About a dozen men attended this school. It was held evenings, in Mr. Smith's house, which he fitted up for the purpose, with writing desks made of slabs, which were fastened to the wall as sloping shelves.

But little was done in road-making in this township until 1820. The north and south center road was the first laid out. The line was established in 1820 but only a small portion of it had been chopped and cleared half a dozen years later. The east and west center road was the second one laid out. It was surveyed and opened through the county. What is known as the "angling road" was ordered to be laid out in answer to the petition of Ephraim Baker and others in 1828 or 1829.

The first mail was carried through the township in 1829, and for three years thereafter, by Robert Inscho, of New Haven. He went once a week between New Haven village and Medina county, upon horseback. The first postoffice was established at the center, and Benjamin Kniffin was the first man who held the commission of postmaster.

Greenwich was attached, in 1815, to New Haven, or was within the jurisdiction of that township (for civil purposes). In 1819, Greenwich, Fitchville and Hartland were united, and an election was held in that year, at the house of Thomas B. White, for the purpose of choosing officers for the territory included within the three. Hartland was detached in 1820, and in 1823, Greenwich was separated from Fitchville and organized as a separate township, the first election being held at Thomas B. White's house, and the following officers elected: Jeremiah Rusco, Henry Washburne, trustees; David W. Briggs, clerk; Varney Pearce, justice of the peace; Ephraim F. Barker, constable.

Henry Carpenter, father of the first born, was the first person who died in the township. His death, caused by over exertion, occurred in November, 1818. He was buried in a constructed of hewed black walnut planks. Hannah Barker was the second person whose demise the little band of pioneers were called to mourn. The coffin, in which her remains were buried, was made from the boards of a wagon-box, which were rudely stained with logwood.

The first marriage in the township, was that of David W. Briggs and Alzina, daughter of E. F. and Hannah Barker. They were made one by Squire Rundel Palmer, of Fitchville, in August, 1819. Briggs died in 1861.

The first log cabin was built in 1817, near the northeast corner of the township. Henry Carpenter built the first permanent residence, a log house, a little later in the same year. The first frame house was built by Joseph Washburne, in 1827, on lot twenty-seven, section two, and the first brick house was erected at the center, by Cyrus G. Mead.

The first tavern was built at the center by Benjamin Kniffin, who also had a store there. The store opened by Ezra Smith, near Joseph Washburne's, in the northeast corner of the township, in the year 1824, was the first.

For a number of vears after the first settlers came into Greenwich, there was no regularly ordained minister living in the township, and when there was preaching, it was by some of the ministers from neighboring townships. Religious meetings were held frequently, and preachers of all denominations had assurance when they came here that they would be met by audiences of large size (for these times) and gladly listened to. The township had a large element of Quaker population, and many of its earliest pioneers were of this people. The first Quakers, or Friends, came to Greenwich in 1818, just eighteen years after the first Friends' settlement in Ohio.

The first settler in Greenwich was Henry Carpenter, who came from Ulster county, New York, in 1817, and located upon lot twenty-two, in section two. He died in the fall of the following year, from over exertion at a house raising, leaving a wife and four children.

The trials of those men and women who turned their backs upon the places of their nativity, and sought to hew them out homes in the wilderness, cannot be fully appreciated at the present day. Many of them had but little to begin with. Those who had much were scarcely better off, for the comforts and conveniences of life were not procurable. The early settlers, of whom we shall treat presently, after succeeding, through almost infinite trouble, in clearing a few acres of ground and raising a small crop of wheat or other grain, were far from being in a condition to defy want. They had still to procure articles which were equally necessary. If the weather had been dry for some time, they were obliged to go to Cold creek to have their grain ground, and the trip there and back, about seventy-five miles, occupied eight cr ten days. Two yoke of oxen were required. The price of carrying a bushel of wheat was fifty cents. Money, it was almost impossible to get in sums sufficient to pay taxes, or buy those few articles which are indispensable to the family or individual. Daniel Fancher relates that he worked three years, and did not receive, during that time, three shillings in money, but took grain, flour, meat, and other articles, which, in the early days of the settlement, were regarded almost as legal tender. Henry Washburne once took a large load of wheat to

Huron River View, Monroeville

Sandusky, consuming a week in making the round trip, and exchanged it for one barrel of salt, six milk pans, two pounds of tea, and the cloth for two shirts. With these few articles, which would seem but poorly to pay for the grain, and the time spent in getting to the market, he returned, feeling very well satisfied. He had done fully as well in his barter as others were able to do. Many of the settlers really suffered for the want of those things which a few shillings would have bought. Luxuries were unthought of. The unceasing and hard grind of daily labor was necessary to accomplish the task that lay before the pioneers - the maintenance of life and the development of the new country, which they so subdued as to make a rich inheritance for their children. And yet, with all their hard labor, with the severe simplicity of their lives, with hardships and privations unnumbered and unrecorded, the lives spent in the fulfillment of duty were made up more largely of pleasure than of pain, were fuller of joy than sorrow, and as they drew to a close, there was the profound satisfaction in every honest, toiling pioneer's heart, of having accomplished a great and tangible good.

Although the forest abounded in game, the Indians, it is supposed, did not come here with the intention of following the hunt, but the locality was a favorite one for maple sugar making, and they frequently pursued this calling, the nearest approach to anything like an active, industrial occupation that ever received their attention. The Indians had temporary camping places in various parts of what is now Greenwich, where they resorted in the spring and remained until the flow of sap, in the sugar maples, had ceased. They made troughs to receive the sap from the bark of beech trees, and evaporated it in small kettles, most of the labor being performed by the squaws. Farther east, in the Black river vicinity, were the favorite hunting grounds of the red-men who belonged to the great tribe, a portion of which made its headquarters around Upper Sandusky. They journeyed every year to these hunting grounds, and the paths they trod were visible only a few years since, in the northern part of this township. As they always followed the same trail, and invariably passed in single file, a depression of the earth was caused, which was very easily noticeable.

In the early settlement of the township all kinds of game was abundant. Deer were so numerous that they were frequently seen in droves of from a score to fifty. A good hunter like David W. Briggs would kill as many as eight or ten a day when lucky, and in the season would bring down three or four hundred. Briggs kept the settlers pretty well supplied with venison, and it was not an uncommon thing for him to have half a dozen or more frozen carcasses hanging outside of his house at once. He was hired by Mr. Beach, a pioneer of Ruggles, one time to do a day's shooting, Beach having a number of men at work for him and nothing in the house for them to eat. Briggs was to report for duty at Beach's house before breakfast, and to have two dollars for his day's hunting. He arrived there as he had agreed to, and told his employer that he had killed two deer on the way over, giving directions for finding the carcasses in the woods. Beach told him he might call it a day's work and quit, which he.did, thus earning two dollars before breakfast, by doing what any sportsman would travel a hundred miles to do now-a-days.

As late as 1853, when John M. Carl came into the township, deer were so numerous that he was able on some occasions, to kill two, or even three, in a day

Briggs at this time had given up hunting because, as he said, "game had grown so scarce." Beside deer, there were all the varieties of small game common to a new country Wolves were a great source of annoyance. They committed numerous depredations, some of them quite boldly.

Greenwich

Greenwich was incorporated as a village in 1879. It is fifty-five miles southwest of Cleveland. The village has never had a rapid growth because the land was held by a man who was adverse to the town. It has had almost its entire growth since 1874, and in that time has increased from a small cluster of houses to a village of importance and the leading place for the shipment of cattle in that part of the western reserve. It is a station of note on what is known as the Big Four railroad. The village is surrounded by a rich country and has within its limits the elements of enterprise, and will doubtless achieve in the future greater importance as a trading place and shipping point.