CLEVELANKS GOLDEN i
STORY

Cy^\5 318

'Y^aLU'VlMIiyiil^SlIirY'
Gift of
JOHN HOWARD WEBSTER, Y *6&
1930

\o5U.wU?.

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

-^:i

1 I

V )

^\%'. ,

'y -,/

THE CLEVELAND OF TODAY AND TOMORROW
IS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE CLEVELAND
OF YESTERDAY

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

':lA Qhronicle of Hearts that Hoped,<i^inds
thatT'lanned and Hands that Toiled, to
<:JhCake a Qity "Cfreat and glorious"

WRITTEN BY JAMES WALLEN
AFTER DATA BY
PROFESSOR WILLIAM M GREGORY

PUBLISHED BY
WILLIAM TAYLOR SON & CO
TO COMMEMORATE ITS
GOLDEN JUBILEE
APRIL 1920

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY IS A
CLEVELAND-MADE BOOK
ITS TYPOGRAPHY WAS ARRANGED BY HORACE CARR
OF CLEVELAND
ITS PRINTING WAS EXECUTED BY
THE LEZIUS PRINTING CO
OF CLEVELAND

^\^\S,i\o

COPYRIGHTED igao BY
WM TAYLOR SON & CO
MOTION PICTURE AND ALL OTHER
RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS PAGE
CHAPTER I
The Kingdom of Gold  I
CHAPTER II
Lincoln-Hearted Men  ii
CHAPTER III
Taming the Wilderness  23
CHAPTER IV
Golden Eggs in Many Baskets • • • 33
CHAPTER V
Mastery of the Inland Seas .... 45
CHAPTER VI
The Lines on Ohio's Map • ¦ • • 55
CHAPTER VII
Cleveland the Cradle of Invention . . 67
CHAPTER VIII
Cleveland's Golden Facade .... 81
CHAPTER IX
For Other Books in Other Times . . 97

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY
CHAPTER I
THE KINGDOM OF GOLD

OLD is the symbol of adventure — the
unresting urge that stirs men's souls.
Francois de Orlenna, who crossed the
South American continent from ocean
to ocean in 1540, wrote: "Ha^dng eaten
our boots and saddles, boiled with a few wild
herbs, we set out to reach the Kingdom of
Gold." The name Orlenna should be set down
as a synonym for optimist. Our gratitude must
forever enshrine heroes who ignore hardship
and "set out to reach the Kingdom of Gold."
In 1679, Rene Robert Cavalier Sieur de La
Salle passed by a vast area of Great Lakes land.
He considered it French territory. He went
down the Mississippi, probably exploring part
of the Ohio river on his way.
The fertile land, afterward knpwn as the West
ern Reserve, which failed to halt La Salle,

2 Cleveland's golden story
became the goal of others as brave but less
erratic than the harsh French explorer, who met
death at the hands of his own embittered fol
lowers. La Salle never reigned in his Golden
Kingdom. The strip of land, now the site of Cleveland
and its environs, along the shore of Lake Erie
at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, was a
part of the section first held by the French, who
laid lead plates along the Ohio River to mark the
southern limits of their claim. It was secured
for England by British arms and diplomacy in
1763. The "merry monarch," Charles II, followed
the policy of granting tracts of land to companies
for development. Thus, Connecticut colony re
ceived a marvellously generous grant extending
westward to the Pacific. The royal ignorance of
geography, being as great as the country was
extensive, caused no end of controversy.
The Revolutionary War, winning America for
the colonists on the ideal of equality of men and
nations, brought the grants to an issue among
the states. Washington and Jefferson saw in
them a peril to the new nation dedicated to
liberty and justice.
The claims of Connecticut were presented
with such finesse and skill that the state obtained
a tract of land four times the size of Rhode
Island, consisting of three million acres. The

THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 3
enthusiasts were intent on forming a state and
calling it New Connecticut. However, the name
Western Reserve persisted.
This territory in which Cleveland is located
was secured by the colonial capitahsts of the
Connecticut Land Company for thirty cetits an
acre. The fact that when promoters surveyed
the land they found it two hundred thousand
acres short has a bit of poetic justice about it.
This shortage brought the price of the land
actually to forty cents an acre. The purchase
price of all the Western Reserve was less than
the cost of a single great hostelry and its loca
tion on Euclid Avenue today.
The Connecticut Land Company determined,
in accordance with its charter, to divide "the
Promised Land" into small lots. In May, 1796,
Moses Cleaveland, a Yale man, was selected as
their agent and general field superintendent.
And this appointment initiated a movement to
the Western Reserve, which is of deep interest
to us, intensified by the circumstance that it
became in truth the "land of our fathers."
A score of years prior to the advent of Moses
Cleaveland, one of those intrepid doers-of-good,
a Moravian missionary, John Heckewelder, saw
in the site of the city of Cleveland great com
mercial possibilities. Heckewelder, being a
good geographer, based his conclusions on the
happy meeting of river and lake.

4 Cleveland's golden story
Twenty years later, standing on the same
brown earth, Moses Cleaveland visualized ex
actly what John Heckewelder had dreamed —
that ships would point out of the Cuyahoga into
Erie, as surely as the fish go up the stream in the
glad springtime.
Moses Cleaveland, soldier, scholar, surveyor
and sage, left Connecticut with an entourage of
fifty men. There were in the party civil engi
neers, an astronomer, a mathematician, a com
missary and helpers — lads with joy bubbling
in their hearts and romance written on their
bronzed faces. They were a land crew who
believed in the ancient saying, "A passage peril
ous maketh a port pleasant."
And they did have a perilous journey, reach
ing Buffalo in June, two months after Cleave-
land's commission was given him. Here Red
Jacket and Joseph Brant demanded that they
halt and sitin council to considerlndian rights and
wrongs — principally the latter. Moses Cleave
land satisfied the rights and mollified the wrongs
with a gift of five hundred dollars, two beef
cattle, and a copious supply of whiskey. Of the
two principal parties to this transaction, one had a
city named for him and the other a tavern — the
Red Jacket Inn at Buffalo, long since demolished.
The Indians agreed at the council never under
any provocation to disturb the white settlers in
the Western Reserve. The pipe-of-peace proved

THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 5
mightier than the blunderbuss, for the agree
ment was never violated.
The surveying expedition celebrated Inde
pendence Day, July 4, 1796, at Conneaut,
Ohio. The future state of New Connecticut was
toasted in oratory such as wg-s heard under
Chaldean skies. Moses Cleaveland was gratified
at the soldierly discipline of his boys. He held
council with Chief Cato of the Massasauga In
dians and presents were exchanged.
Sailing westward from Conneaut, Cleaveland
touched at the mouth of a minor stream. It
goes on forever, reminding us of the surveyor's
disappointment, as Chagrin River.
Anxiously skirting the shore, fresh with sum
mer foliage, Cleaveland watched for the mouth
of the Cuyahoga. The boat slipped into the
river on the morning of July 22, 1796. A
landing was made under the east bluff of the
river — a short distance north of the present
Superior viaduct.
Cleaveland, worn by travel and wearied to de
pression, was not certain that this would be the
future capital site. He returned to Conneaut to
consult the men whom he had left behind. At Con
neaut he sat himself before a table with a quill,
plenty of ink and blotting sand, and unburdened
himself to the Connecticut Land Company. He
proclaimed the land excellent, the water clear, the
clay banks high, the top of the land level and

6 Cleveland's golden story
covered with chestnut, oak, walnut, ash and
sugar maple, and but few hemlocks. The shore
west of the Cuyahoga, he reported to be a
steep bank ten miles long.
The master surveyor then expressed himself
tersely regarding his woes. He wrote: "Those
who are meanly envying the compensation and
sitting at their ease, and see their prosperity
increasing at the loss of health, ease and comfort
of others, I wish might experience the hardships
for one month; if not then satisfied, their grumb
ling would give me no pain. It is impossible to
determine upon a place for the capital." He
demanded more time for examination of the land
and water-ways. He reported his men in good
health and spirits though without "sauce or
vegetables." Moses Cleaveland then went back to the
mouth of the Cuyahoga and re-considered his
judgment. He determined that, after all, he knew
no better site for the capital of the new state.
He made a town plan, a central square from
which streets extended. He put his official O. K.
on the map and the town was called Cleaveland.
Years later, a news-writer left out the "a" and
the revised spelling was accepted.
Moses Cleaveland was just three months on
the Western Reserve. He left under a fire of
criticism for expending fourteen thousand dol
lars without completing the work. The

THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 7
Company sent a preacher. Reverend Seth Hart,
to finish the survey. It is said that the dominie
buried a man and married a couple, but made
no changes in the plans of the founder of the
city of Cleveland.
Moses Cleaveland did not re-visit the city ot
his founding. He made for it a very modest pre
diction when he said, "The child is now born
that may live to see the place as large as Old
Windham." Old Windham, Connecticut, now
has a citizenry of fifteen thousand people. New
England breezes blow about the granite monu
ment reverently erected over Cleaveland's grave
in Canterbury, Connecticut, in 1906, one hun
dred years after his death, by the people of
Cleveland. Cleveland was deliberately planned and built.
It was not the growth of a chance acorn — the
miscellaneous collection of huts about a fort or
trading post, where settlers tarried, lacking the
courage to go on.
No other city in the New World stands as
laid out by its founder and bearing his name.
From this point, Cleveland's golden story is
a chronicle of hearts that hoped, minds that
planned and hands that toiled to make the city
of Moses Cleaveland's founding "great and
glorious."

CHAPTER II
LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

CHAPTER II
LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN

HEY came years before Lincoln. Meas
ured in terms of turmoil and suffering,
they preceded the Emancipator by
ages. And yet they were the type of
men and women of whom the minstrel
of democracy, Vachel Lindsay, sings:
"We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.
A city is not built in a day.
And they must do their work and come and
go
While countless generations pass away."
Lorenzo Carter, James Kingsbury, Nathaniel
Doan and Abram Hickox kept at bay the wilder
ness attempting to re-invade the city projected
by Moses Cleaveland. In recording their coura
geous frontier struggles, let us not forget the
women who contributed to "the winning of the
West." A New England woman once wrote

12 Cleveland's golden story
in a letter to a friend, "We speak of the hard
ships of the Puritan fathers. But, mark you, the
Puritan mothers had to endure the Puritan
fathers." Aside from such domestic problems,
the women of the Western Reserve met genuine
affliction with a smiling bravery.
The good wife of Lorenzo Carter started west
ward with her stalwart husband from Vermont.
Reaching Buffalo in the late fall, they decided
to spend the winter months in a more advanced
settlement on the Canadian side. But before
they crossed the rushing Niagara, Mrs. Carter
gave birth to a child. Her baby's attendant was
Chloe Inches, a young Canadian girl. Here was
this untaught maid in Kipling's lines:
"Who stands beside the Gates of Birth,
Herself a child — a child unborn."
Whether it be her name or the circumstance,
something makes Chloe a fascinating figure in
this story. Her name signifies in the Greek,
"verdant or blooming." Chloe, named for a
heroine of Greek romance, a shepherdess in
Sidney's "Arcadia," the wife in a homely Ben
Jonson comedy, the wanton shepherdess in
Fletcher's allegory; this girl coming of parents
who had a touch of Old World culture, witnessed
life in one of its most uncompromising aspects,
as did all of the frontier women.
The Carters went on to Cleveland in the
spring. A spot on West Second Street was the

LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I3
location of their first Cleveland home. There was
no going to market for provisions in those days —
not even a "cash and carry" system obtained.
Carter and his faithful dog made for the woods
and returned with venison and other game.
They came back with provender in plenty be
cause the mighty man had tiny and precious
mouths to fill. The meats were roasted on a spit
before an open fire. The way of living was ele
mental and Carter's children sorely missed the
little refinements of the home back east.
Misfortunes visited the family often and
severely. The children set fire to the new house.
Carter stoically set out to hew logs for a new and
larger one, which he made into a tavern to
entertain infrequent strangers and to form a
social centre for the village. Much to Mrs.
Carter's dismay, the Indians would come into
the tavern, group themselves about the fire and
sleep through the day, indifferent to household
routine. During all this period, Lorenzo Carter was
growing in strength and wisdom. He became,
by common consent, the administrator of the
unwritten law of the new country. It is recorded
that the first settlers of Cleveland were never
seriously discommoded by the Indians. There
were no massacres and no ambush warfare. The
Indians fought among themselves and called in
Lorenzo Carter as a mediator.

i4 Cleveland's golden story
Carter learned the Indian dialects and the
ways of the council-fire. In an historic personal
battle. Big Sun and Menompsy, a medicine man,
had carved each other with knives. Lorenzo
Carter was able to avert war between the Chip-
pewas and the Senecas over this incident. The
medicine man had attended the wife of Big Sun.
The claim was made that his medicine had
killed her. Carter held that the medicine man
acted in good faith and the Indians accepted his
judgment. Carter knew little law but based his decisions
on humanity and common sense. He realized
the value of sociability as a community lubri
cant. He considered baked pork and beans,
plum cake and doughnuts, as potent pacifiers
and means of inducing fellowship. The banquet
board then, no less than now, was the peace
table. Gilman Bryant charmingly described a social
affair at Carter's tavern. He tells of his own
fastidious preparation for the event; how he
dressed his hair with candle-grease and a coat
of flour in lieu of an aristocratic wig. In addition
to this, he employed a yard and a half of black
ribbon to tie the queue. Attired in a gingham
suit, a wool hat and heavy shoes, Bryant gal
lantly took to the ball Miss Nancy Doan, who
lived four miles east of town. There was the
lavender of romance about going to an old-time

LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I^
party, which eludes the more elaborate social
functions of today.
Gilman Bryant wrote: "I took the old horse
'Tib' for Miss Doan who mounted behind me
from a stump in front of the Doan cabin. She
spread her underpetticoat over the horse's back,
and held up her calico dress to keep it clean. It
was a long four-mile ride through the woods to
the Carter tavern, but the thought of Major
Jones fiddling 'Hie Betty Martin' and the
'Sailor's Hornpipe' kept us in good spirits."
This winsome girl will serve to introduce her
illustrious father, Nathaniel Doan, the first
blacksmith of the Western Reserve. The Con
necticut Land Company had decided that the
settlers might do their settling without the
services of a lawyer, be born and die without
succor from a doctor and without consolation
from a preacher, but a blacksmith was indis
pensable. So they sent Nathaniel Doan as the
official smith, presenting him with a city lot.
Doan had served with the surveying com
panies. His family joined him from Haddam,
traveling almost entirely by water via the Con
necticut River, Long Island Sound, the Hudson,
the Mohawk and its branches, completing the
journey along the shores of the Lakes Ontario
and Erie.
Doan, too, became a tavern keeper, establish
ing a noted place, "Doan's Tavern on the Euclid

1 6 Cleveland's golden story
Road." Doan seems to have possessed much of
the expansive commercial ability of the present-
day packer. He operated a saleratus or baking
soda factory to supply a substitute for the lye
then used in cooking. He operated a shop,
tavern, factory, a general store, and became a
road builder, the postmaster, justice of the peace
and religious mentor, conducting services in his
own home.
When Doan retired from blacksmithing, he
was succeeded by Abram Hickox who arrived in
1808, walking all the way to Cleveland from
Connecticut. His wife and five children rode in
a wagon drawn by oxen. Father Abram keeping
abreast the team. Hickox operated a shop near
the present site of the Rockefeller building. He
was a philosopher of the Eben Holden type, and
there is recorded a gracious picture of the fine
old "uncle to all the children" decorating the
village schoolhouse with evergreens and candles
in preparation of the Yuletide festivities.
The fourth of the quartette of Lincoln-hearted
men was James Kingsbury who founded New-
burg. Kingsbury and his three children came
from New Hampshire. Pathos played its fateful
part in their lives. Mr. Kingsbury found it
necessary to return to New Hampshire, leaving
his family on the frontier. On reaching his old
home in the east, he was taken ill. The family,
then at Conneaut, was in peril. Their cabin was

LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I7
about buried beneath the snow and the wolf
came sniffing at their door. The scant food
supply was daily diminishing. Kindly Indians
replenished the larder. But the storms became
too severe for even the Redskins.
The children cried from the cold. Another
baby came. Kingsbury, with the aid of a faithful
Indian guide, arrived home on Christmas day.
The tiny life of the new baby hovered a day or
so, as if awaiting the father, and was gone. Mrs.
Kingsbury became distressingly ill. The family
cow, which supplied the beneficent nourishment
of the children, was poisoned by eating oak
leaves and died. Finally Kingsbury was able to
make a trip to Erie and to return with food.
Sustenance gave a renewed bouyancy of spirits,
and the Kingsburys were victors in the battle
with the wilderness.
These pioneer men and women did what they
found necessary to do and without complaint.
Lorenzo Carter, for instance, though sorely tried
by the experience, conducted an execution with
out flinching from the ordeal. An Indian by
the comic opera name of O'Mic was found
guilty of murdering two trappers near Sandusky.
The Indians assenting, he paid the penalty ac
cording to the law of the white man.
A small group of men armed with flint-lock
guns formed a guard about O'Mic. He was
drawn to the place of execution seated on his

1 8 Cleveland's golden story
coffin, in a wagon which had been freshly painted
for the occasion. The gallows were erected on
the Public Square. O'Mic approached the gal
lows with great anxiety, affirming that he would
show white men how a brave Indian could die.
When the party reached the gallows, Maj or Carter
and the sheriff adjusted the rope about O'Mic's
neck. A black cap was drawn over his head. The
Indian lost his bravado and struggled to escape.
The Indians, congregated, showed signs of
emotion. Carter addressed O'Mic in the native
tongue. He appealed to him to display his Indian
courage. O'Mic agreed to die bravely if he were
given a pint of whiskey. Major Carter con
sidered this fair and right and, in the name of the
law, quickly procured a pint of the courage-
inducing liquid. O'Mic was satisfied. The rope
was again adjusted and the cap lowered.
This time O'Mic was more terrified than be
fore and pleaded for more whiskey. After another
parley in the dialect. Carter acquiesced. And
while the Indian was consuming this second
draft, the wagon was driven out from under him.
And the law had followed its course.
The attending Indians were well imbued with
a deep respect for the white man's law. An
eyewitness of this execution tells us that the
flint-lock guns in the hands ofthe guards were so
damp that the Indians might easily have res
cued O'Mic.

LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN 1 9
Dr. Long, Cleveland's first physician, utilized
the skeleton of O'Mic for clinical purposes. And
gossip affirmed that Captain Sholes, a patient
of Dr. Long's, became panic stricken at the
sight of O'Mic's frame in the doctor's pioneer
hospital. The fright of the captain was set
down by a wit as the last public appearance of
the terrible O'Mic.
And the bizarre tale of O'Mic is here set forth
not because of any distinction on his part but
because he represented but one of the factors
with which Lincoln-hearted men of the Western
Reserve contended, without compromise or
favor.

CHAPTER III
TAMING THE WILDERNESS

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY
CHAPTER III
TAMING THE WILDERNESS

NE memorable evening before the close
of the year 1813, the Paul Revere silver,
the Sheffield plate and the Irish napery
were brought out of the hampers and
linen chests and set glistening and white
under the soft light of the candelabra. For the
citizens of Cleveland were banqueting Commo
dore Oliver Hazard Perry and General William
Henry Harrison.
On September 10, 18 13, Cleveland folk had
heard the cannonading in the battle of Lake
Erie. And soon after came Perry's report, the
mere repetition of which thrills Americans to
day: "We have met the enemy and they are
ours." The village of Cleveland was an active partici
pant in the War of 1 812. The American forces
were compelled to surrender to the British at

24 Cleveland's golden story
Detroit. Captain Stanton Sholes, who was sent
to Cleveland, built of chestnut logs a star-
shaped stockade with a capacity of two hundred
armed men. This stockade. Fort Huntington,
was Cleveland's sole defense against the enemy.
Strategically located in a dense wood west of
Third Street and north of Lakeside Avenue, on a
bluff overlooking the lake, it was to be the
refuge and possibly the last stand of the patriots
of Cleveland, should the British make a formid
able attack. Its armament consisted of but one
small cannon mounted on a pair of wagon
wheels. Lorenzo Carter and James Kingsbury
helped to erect this fort.
The women and children of Cleveland tasted
of terror when they were hastily removed to
Doan's Corners one August day in 1812 because
of the reported movement of the British and
Indians near Lake Huron in preparation for an
attack on Cleveland by boat. It was afterward
discovered that the group observed by the scout
was a company of sadly wounded American
men paroled from Detroit.
The commanders of the British fleet on Erie
kept a wary eye on Cleveland, believing it to be
a source of American supplies. In June of 18 13,
the British "fleet"— the good ship "Queen Char
lotte" — appeared before Cleveland. A sudden
and terrific thunder-storm, coming as if directed
by Providence to save the ill-protected village,
drove the ship from the Cleveland shores.

TAMING THE WILDERNESS

25

The shipwrights of Cleveland had the honor
of constructing two noble ships of Perry's fleet.
The "Porcupine" and the "Portage" were built
on the Cuyahoga River and provisioned and
equipped with sails at Cleveland. Before Perry
advanced into Put-in-bay, his fleet presented a
never-to-be-forgotten spectacle, for a few hours,
off the Cuyahoga.
Well might the villagers toast Commodore
Oliver Hazard Perry, who gave American fight
ing men an immortal slogan — whose name is
to the youth of America all that Nelson signifies
to the boys of Britannia.
The war over, the Cleveland citizens turned
toward better organization. The Kelleys have
always had a leaning toward the law and politi
cal leadership. And a lad by the name of Kelley
was in the vanguard of the new movement.
Alfred Kelley made the first census of Cleveland,
counting one hundred and fifty-two heads. On
a map of the town, he indicated the locations of
all of the houses, numbering thirty-four. The
town limits then embraced a square west of old
Erie Street, now East Ninth Street, and north
of Huron Road.
Kelley wrested the village charter from the
state legislature in December of 18 14, just
eleven years after Ohio was admitted to the
Union. No election in Cleveland has ever been
attended with less friction than the first, which

26 Cleveland's golden story
was held in June, 1815. Out of the twelve voters
registering, nine were elected to office and of
course Kelley became president. Lorenzo Carter
was chosen treasurer.
In order to maintain his position properly,
Alfred Kelley brought a bride from New York to
be first lady of the village. He also purchased a
horse and carriage with which to convey his
consort to Cleveland. But later the Kelley crest
might have suffered humiliation when another
citizen bought a Victoria and a span of fine mules
to be driven by a colored man in livery.
The first village council consisted of mer
chants, a tanner and a physician, who made
regulations controlling the too promiscuous use
of fire-arms, fast driving in the village, and the
distribution of merchandise. An election was
equivalent to a draft, for failure to hold office
was punished by fine.
The fact that two men with Cleveland as their
destination passed through the town without
recognizing it, may be charged to frequent stops
at taverns along the lane, rather than to the
lack of a city plan. Had the unobserving stran
gers journeyed hither in 18 13, they surely would
have been made aware of their arrival by the
imposing courthouse, erected by Levi Johnson
on the Public Square at the cost of $500.
The first village postmaster was Elisha Norton,
who received mail fortnightly from Warren. His

TAMING THE WILDERNESS 27
successor, John Walworth, held six offices. But
this is not to be counted against him. One year,
he received seventy-one cents and the privilege
of mailing his letters free as compensation for
three months' service as postmaster.
Walworth carried the mail in his pocket and
delivered it C. O. D. at his convenience. There
was a mail route between Cleveland and Pitts
burgh, four days being required for the trip.
The mail was so light that it could be buttoned
under the carrier's waistcoat, and so saddle
bags were not always needed.
Letters were mailed and paid for on a mileage
basis. A single sheet cost six and one-fourth
cents for any distance under thirty miles. Maga
zines were mailable at one cent a page. It took
several weeks to get news from New York to
Cleveland. As an emergency measure, a fast
post was established during the War of 1812
from Washington to Cleveland. Important dis
patches were carried in one week.
In the conduct of educational affairs, the
villagers exercised a rare wisdom. They believed
in a scientific distribution of burdens. They
compelled the unmarried men of the village to
pay the tuition of the poor children.
The first school was established in the front
room of Major Carter's cabin. At a later time
the post-rider, Ashael Adams, held school in a
small cabin on St. Clair street. He received ten

28 Cleveland's golden story
dollars a month in money and wheat. The first
school of major importance in Ohio was estab
lished in an old academy by Harvey Rice in
1 822, This famous educator laid down principles
which are today recognized as sound.
Those who complain about the accommoda
tion trains for Painesville as being few, far
between and sometimes late, should read the
Painesville stage announcement which appeared
in the "Cleveland Gazette" in 18 18. The stage
left Painesville every Thursday at four o'clock
in the afternoon and arrived in Cleveland at
ten o'clock the next morning.
Fare on some of the stage lines out of Cleve
land was collected according to the weight and
size of the passenger, which, considering the size
of the coaches and the condition of the roads,
was an equitable system. Anyway, why should
the slim debutante be compelled to pay as much
fare as a man of Johnsonian proportions ? Springs
had not been invented. Leather straps supported
the swaying body of the stage-coach. You trav
elled in rainy weather or sunny, according to
your preference for dust or mud.
The stages left daily in every direction from
the old Franklin house, which was near the
present Rockefeller building on West Superior.
Spangler's Tavern, west of the Square, was
the headquarters of the celebrated Conestoga
freight wagons, which for decades were the only

TAMING THE WILDERNESS

29

means of securing merchandise from Cincinnati
and Pittsburgh. These wagons deserve a chapter
in the history of transportation. They were the
forerunners of the modern motor trucks. They
carried from five to eight tons of goods.
The Conestoga freight wagons were drawn by
six or eight draft horses, with bear-skin covered
collars. The saddles were embellished with bells.
The horses were guided by a single rein from the
leader to the teamster, who was seated on the
last wheel horse. The great wagons negotiated
roads which today would be considered impass
able. When night found them out on the
prairies, the freight drivers camped till sunrise.
Produce dealers of the time opposed the
building of canals, so efficient in their estimation
was the freight wagon system. Let us not be too
scornful of their judgment, for did not Horace
Greeley, the famous editor of the New York
Tribune, write a wrathy editorial opposing the
use of illuminating gas on the theory that it
would burn up New York?
The early fathers of the industrial kingdom
of northern Ohio were men of initiative and
vision. Cleveland's Golden Story is a saga of the
fruits of their labors.

CHAPTER IV
GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

CHAPTER IV

GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS

HE fathers of Cleveland's arts, crafts and
trades, whether by design or chance, fol
lowed the philosophy of "Don Quixote"
in establishing the city's industries.
Cervantes wrote: "It is the part of a

wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow
and not to venture all his eggs in one basket."
The early industries were as varied in char
acter as they were numerous. And this condition
prevails today, to the marked benefit of Cleve
land. It will prove even more vital to the city's
welfare in the future, as the rivalry for place
and power between metropolitan centres be
comes more intense. Cleveland's eggs are
decidedly not all in one basket. They were not
laid that way in the beginning.
One of the most interesting of the kinder
garten industries was that of the water carrier.

34 Cleveland's golden story
Benhu Johnson, an ex-soldier with a wooden leg,
was town water purveyor. He pre-dated all
other private and municipal water plants.
Johnson sold water for laundry purposes ex
clusively — two barrels for twenty-five cents.
To complement Johnson's water wagon, the
first in Cleveland, Jabez Kelley supplied soft
soap at a shilling a gallon. The soap was a by
product of Kelley's candle factory at the end of
Superior Lane.
The first tanner in Cleveland, whose name,
records reveal, was Williamson, did a thriving
business for those days with the trappers. He
cured the raw furs of foxes, wolves, bears and
squirrels. He oak-tanned leather and dressed it
for the local boot and shoe makers.
Much of this leather was Iheavy, but many a
Cleveland Cinderella's boots were Williamson-
tanned. The family home was east of the Square,
which later became the site of the Williamson
building. There were weeks on the Western Reserve
when the residents went without bread for lack
of flour due from the East. The Connecticut
Land Company believed firmly in the truth of
the saying of English Matthew Henry, "Here
is bread which strengthens man's heart and is
therefore the staff of life."
Accordingly, in 1799, they equipped a mill at
Newburg Falls, now Broadway and Warner

GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS

35

Road, under the direction of Wheeler Williams,
whom they endowed with one hundred acres of
land. To the mill at Newburg Falls the settlers
brought their grain for grinding and their
cunning for dealing.
There was in Cleveland, in the formative days,
a hatter named Walworth, who made the broad
pioneer hat, the predecessor of the world-famed
Stetson. On occasion, Walworth indulged in
fancy and made tall felt hats for aspiring states
men. Doubtless some of his creations renewed
and gave pungency to Lewis Carroll's phrase,
"As mad as a hatter."
Among the ventures of 1801 was a still on the
river's edge. The spring water which bubbled
on the premises and the grain brought by the
farmers were utilized to produce the insignifi
cant volume of two quarts of liquor a day. At
this rate, we must give the settlers all advantage
of doubt and say that the beverage was made
for medicinal purposes.
Along in 1829 came one of the most fantastic
phases of American arts and crafts. The people
of Cleveland developed a collective mania which
expressed itself in a fad for the production of
silk and silk products. The women of Cleveland
exhibited at the County Fair, in old Glenville
near 105 th Street, articles in which they featured
silk yarn made in the home and spun from silk
cocoons grown in Cleveland and vicinity.

26 Cleveland's golden story
At this exhibit, James Houghton received
special recognition for the most lucrative half-
acre of mulberry trees. Mary Severance was
rewarded with a premium for specimens of
silk twist. Mrs. Brainard of Brooklyn deserved
special recognition for exhibiting silk in eight
tints, colored with domestic vegetable dye.
There were doubtless enthusiasts who be
lieved that in the valley of the Cuyahoga,
old China and its famed silk worms would find a
serious rival.
But Ohioans found that the silk worm is not
industrious in so rigorous a clime. The deserv
edly famous Ohio honey-bee proved a lucrative
successor to the silk worm.
A more sensible development was the four
woolen mills which employed eighteen men, and
were exceedingly busy in the '40s. There was a
Bohemian settlement on the West Side that
formed the nucleus of an extensive blanket
industry. It was in this period that the carding of wool,
the weaving of cloth, and the making of gar
ments shifted from the back parlor of the home
to the shop. The ancient relationship of women
and textiles was changing.
In 1845, Kaufman Koch started a Cleveland
tailoring establishment which, by a long line
of succession — three-quarters of a century
later — became the great establishment for the

golden eggs in many baskets 37
making of men's clothing — known as The Joseph
and Feiss Company,
In 1854, David Black came to Cleveland. He
had a farm at the corner of St. Clair and Perry
Street, now East 22nd Street. He left farming
to establish a notion store and in 1876 founded
the Black and Hoffman organization for the
making of women's clothing. He was succeeded
by Herman Black, who introduced the radical
idea of producing garments before they were
ordered, which had always seemed to the
old tailors a daring gamble.
The standardization of sizes on the basic
theory that nature is a sculptor with but few
models, molding just so many people according
to each type and pattern, was the thought
behind Mr. Black's plans. It had not occurred
to the makers of homespuns that production in
quantity was possible and that people could be
made to favor a limited number of styles.
Morris Black, one of Cleveland's leading citi
zens is now head of this organization, still known
as the H. Black Company.
The Printz-Biederman Company of Cleveland
— makers of the "Printzess" garments for
women — have done much to give ready-to-wear
garments the status once held exclusively by the
creations of the modiste. This house was founded
in 1893 by Moritz Printz and Joseph Biederman.
In 1903, this company was incorporated under
its present name. Originally they made only

38 Cleveland's golden story
coats and suits; in later years they produced
garments for misses and children. The Printz-
Biederman Company is widely known for its
method of dealing with employees, now number
ing about 1300. The workers have a direct voting
voice in all matters which affect their welfare.
In the youth of the Republic, men and women
were much more individual in dress than even
today. Benjamin Franklin, all of his life, kept
to one style of suit, which was made by his good
wife. He was received at Versailles and at the
Court of St. James in a suit tailored by the
loving fingers of his spouse.
Cleveland is the second city in volume of sales
in the women's wear trade today. It is the
capital of the fine ready-to-wear world. Cleve
land is a "selling market." It sends its salesmen
into most every city and village for orders. New
York is a "buying market" where merchants
go to select goods. Much of the cloth to make
this clothing is woven in the city.
Cleveland, leader among cities for diversified
industries, does not neglect the problem of related
trades. The great worsted mills began operation
in Cleveland in 1888. In 1920, three carloads
of wool shearings are transformed daily into
enough clothing to make ten thousand men's
suits. The tracing wheel and scissors have been
replaced by the electric knife which cuts two

golden eggs in many baskets

39

hundred garments in one swift operation. Sixty
buttons are automatically attached in a minute.
Ten thousand complete and modish garments
are finished every day. Eight to ten carloads of
women's coats and suits are daily expressed from
Cleveland to a thousand points on the continent.
More people are required to fashion clothing
in Cleveland than are needed in any other
industry except iron and steel. The census of
1 910 disclosed the fact that one girl in every five
or six Cleveland lassies enters the sewing trades.
The clothing industry, which gained its first
vital momentum in the years beginning 1880,
is here used to illustrate the magic swiftness of
Cleveland's commercial expansion, because it
is the one industry which grew out of the home.
Perhaps with a sigh of relief from its mistress,
it slipped through the fingers of the housewife.
The other industries had their beginning in the
blacksmith's forge, the lumber camp, the saw
mill and the open hearth. The most intensely
domestic of manufacturing now stands among
the most scientific.
Even the feminine fervor for silk-growing and
spinning has its present-day reminder in houses
which create out of blocks of spruce, synthetic
silk as lustrous and appealing as the silk in a
mandarin's coat.
But garment-making, being the mother in
dustry, the most feminine of all occupations, can

40 Cleveland's golden story
never entirely desert the fireside. Women are
not content to fold their hands while they may
exercise skill in fashioning clothes for wee ones.
Cleveland's contributions to the sewing
machine industry are of pertinent interest. In
1870, Thomas White and his sons were experi
menting in a small machine shop on Canal
Street. About this period, Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton made a railroad journey
through Ohio on their way to Illinois. There
being no sleeping accommodations on their
particular train, the two pioneer suffragists sat
through the night gazing into the darkness.
Mrs. Stanton had noted the number of homes in
which lights were shining. "Can it be," said she
to Miss Anthony, "that there is sickness in all
of those isolated homes ?"
Miss Anthony determined to know the reason
for the burning of the midnight oil. The con
ductor on the train was well acquainted with
the folk along the line of his route. He said,
"It is the early fall and the women are preparing
for winter. They have no leisure nor oppor
tunity to sew in the daytime. After the babies
are tucked in bed, they start to work — patiently
stitching every garment by hand."
Miss Anthony resolved that information
about sewing machines was just as valuable as
suffragist propaganda, so she induced manu-

golden eggs in many BASKETS 4I
facturers to print hand-bills with suffrage pub
licity on one side and sewing machine advertise
ments on the other. With Mrs. Stanton, Miss
Anthony induced the fathers of the Western
Reserve to part with some of their cash to
lessen woman's burden.
Thomas White, of Cleveland, was one of the
sewing machine makers who heartily approved
of the missionary work of Miss Anthony and
Mrs. Stanton. The other sewing machine in
ventors and manufacturers were in the East.
White perfected his machine and produced and
sold it in the territory which needed it the most.
Over eight million White sewing machines have
helped to bring more leisure to women.
And out of the sewing machine business came
other industries. The Whites were so successful
with the domestic machine that they began
building bicycles. Bicycles were the forerunner
of the automobile.
The White Company evolved first the steam
machine, then a gasoline car, and is now world-
famed for motor trucks.
So you see that the hearth-side crafts of the
Western Reserve trace a continuous relationship
to the refinements of today — from hnsey wool-
sey jackets to limousine motor coats.

CHAPTER V
MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY
CHAPTER V
MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS

NDUSTRY without transportation is
simply routine by which day-by-day
needs are supplied. Then come a few
decorative objects to satisfy the urge for
self-expression in art, which is the soul of
the people. The Navajo Indians made their
blankets and pottery for their own pleasure
rather than for trade. But white men have
always been rovers. The early settlers of the
Western Reserve had more than domestic
ambitions. The inheritance of the English
and French traditions of commercial adventure
moved them to a conquest of the Great Lakes.
The first sail-boat to part the waters of Lake
Erie was the "Griffin," built near Buffalo by
La Salle. The voyager of Rouen directed the
practical construction of the "Griffin." Father
Louis Hennepin kept alive the faith and enthu-

46 Cleveland's golden story
siasm of their fellow explorers and the Indian
helpers. The "Griffin" was launched in the
Spring of 1679. ^^ ^^^ of forty-five ton bur
den and armed with five cannon.
The "Griffin" touched at Detroit, Mackinac
and at Green Bay, and loaded with a rich cargo
of furs, started on its return trip. La Salle and
his leaders had left the boat, continuing their
explorations. The famous "Griffin" and its rich
cargo never reached its haven.
For centuries, the Indians in their canoes had
carried on primitive barter along the edges of
the lakes. But no Indian had ever summoned
courage to go straight across. To the awe of the
Redskins, the white navigators in their sturdy
French bateaux propelled by a crew of paddlers,
went directly across the lakes.
In 1808, Major Carter launched a schooner
lightly dubbed the "Zephyr," which she cer
tainly was not. The "Zephyr" carried thirty
tons and made regular trips with furs, grind
stones, salt, merchandise and iron between Buf
falo, Cleveland and Detroit — the present route
of the floating hostelries of the Cleveland and
Buffalo and the Detroit and Cleveland Hnes.
Levi Johnson, the Sir Christopher Wren of
Cleveland's architects and builders, who con
structed the first courthouse, the first frame
house in the city and many of the early office
structures, built the "Pilot" in a yard at the

MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 47
site of the present Opera House. Johnson's
craft was hauled to the river with much urging
and straining by twenty-eight oxen.
In the libraries of men who have a passion for
the sea and a fervent love for the shapely ships
that won victories over great waters, there are
models of the clippers developed after the War
of 1812. These three-masted boats were trim
and speedy, with well-turned bows and broad
sterns. Some of the most famous carried five
masts and were of two thousand five hundred
tons. These glorious swift sailers were of white
oak, the deck-house and spars being of pine.
Michigan's straightest timber went into their
masts. And it is a token of the affection of their
masters for these sailing boats that many of
them were christened with feminine names.
Thomas Quayle was the most eminent boat
designer of the time.
With the depletion of the forests and the
introduction of steam, the romantic full-rigged
craft were banished from our water-ways. They
live in the memories of the old marine men and
in the admiration of youthful readers of adven
ture tales. The first steam-boat to put in at the
Cleveland harbor was the famous "Walk-in-the-
Water," named for a friendly Indian who was
an adviser of the pioneers of Buffalo.
On the first day of September, 1818, the
people of Cleveland gathered on the bluff over-

48 Cleveland's golden story
looking the lake to watch this curious craft
approach the town. The "Walk-in-the-Water"
made eight to ten miles an hour. Cord-wood,
piled high on the deck, supplied its fuel. Inspired
by this steam-propelled boat, Johnson con
structed the "Enterprise" in 1824. The "Enter
prise" was luxuriously fitted, so the Western
Reservists thought, with cabins for passengers.
By 1 830 there were five passenger boats plying
between Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit. Aside
from the fact that the side-wheelers had a fire
or an explosion occasionally, they were fairly
safe and moderately comfortable. Some folk
preferred to ride horse-back from Buffalo to
Cleveland rather than risk the trip on this
"devilish contraption." The fear was expressed
that a side-wheeler might lose one of its wheels
and the boat turn on its side.
The first boat bearing the proud name "City
of Cleveland" was built in 1837. The "City of
Cleveland" had a steam whistle and was
superior to the other craft on the lake in that
she could vent her emotions. The lordly "Em
pire" was another side-wheeler of great fame.
The cabins were furnished in the gaudy Ameri
can Empire style of decoration. The "Empire"
advertised a cuisine under the direction of a
chef, and also bands and entertainment. And
we call the cabaret a novelty! The "Empire"
destroys our illusions.

mastery of THE INLAND SEAS

49

We who live among the softer indulgences of
life are stirred by tales of hardship and endur
ance. We are thrilled by the stories of the early
side-wheelers whose decks and cabins were
battered by the cord wood, which shifted in the
relentless storms. The graceful side-wheels gave
way to hidden propellers. Many of the old boats
were newly equipped.
Then railroads came, and the passenger traffic
by boat lost favor. Iron, coal, copper and grain
became the chief cargoes of the lake boats.
From thev''70s on, the commerce of the "land
locked seas" grew in volume, until it can now be
said that Liverpool receives less tonnage in a
year than Cleveland.
The mighty achievement of the lake freighter
can best be pictured in contrasts. The brig
"Columbia" brought one hundred and thirty
tons of ore from Marquette in 1855. Today
"Le Land De Graff" brings fourteen thousand
tons of ore and returns to Superior with two
hundred cars of coal. This tremendous cargo
is put aboard the freighter in less than two
hours — in the time one spends at the matinee.
The magic coal-loading machines were made
and developed in Cleveland's shops. A freighter
arrives in Cleveland from Duluth in five days —
a distance of a thousand miles. Coal is ex
changed for iron ore or perhaps grain. Fourteen
thousand tons of ore are dumped into the boat in

50 Cleveland's golden story
less than two hours or four hundred and twenty-
two thousand bushels of wheat are loaded.
In the infancy of Cleveland's shipping, it took
four days to load three hundred tons. Stagings
were then built inside the holds of the old
freighters and ore shoveled by hand to the plat
form and then to the dock, A week was con
sumed in unloading three hundred tons.
Now, the huge claws of the mammoth unload-
ers of the lakes pile twelve thousand tons of ore
on the docks in three hours. The ore unloaders,
miracles of invention, were evolved by Hulett,
Brown and McMyler, Cleveland men. These
machines have made it possible for the Lake
Erie ports to handle a tonnage exceeding that
of all the ports of France.
Four out of five of the steel lake freighters are
Cleveland owned. The father of the iron carry
ing lines was the Cleveland Iron Company,
organized in 1849 ^y Samuel Mather, Senior,
and his friends. In 1 870, the Great Lakes boasted
three iron freighters. Today there is a fleet of
more than six hundred steel ships carrying the
world's largest cargo of iron and coal.
Let us here pay tribute to Captain Henry
Coffinberry and James Wallace who organized
the Globe Shipbuilding Company. These men
believed that a steel ship would float, contrary
to the ideas of the old shipbuilders, who af
firmed that only timber would keep above

MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 5 1
water. Coffinberry and Wallace organized the
Cleveland Shipbuilding Company, acquiring dry-
docks, ways and shops. The first steel freighter
was the steamer "Onoko," This boat earned
enough silver to fill its hold before the prophecy
of the old shipbuilders came to pass and the
waters closed over its decks.
Today the passenger ships have regained the
popularity of yore. The "See-and-Bee" and its
companions are floating town-houses with draw
ing rooms that rival the salons of Euclid Avenue.
Going from Cleveland to Buffalo is like walking
through the foyers and restaurants of a hotel or
club. Little resemblance is there to the water-
washed decks of the "Griffin."

CHAPTER VI
THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY
CHAPTER VI
THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP

HE living are judged by their personali
ties — the dead by the record of their
accomplishments. And many of the
achievements of the settlers of Cleve
land entitle them to an illuminated page
in American history. By 1834 they had cut a
canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth.
This canal is 309 miles long. One has but to
compare it with the longest canals in the world to
appreciate the labors of the Ohio canal builders.
The Erie canal extends like a silver ribbon across
the Empire State for ^^^ rniles. The Ganges
canal in India is a royal water-passage of 350
miles. The Grand canal in China, a thousand
years in building, goes 800 miles through the
Celestial Empire. Many famous canals are
less than one-half the length of the Ohio canal.
Alfred Kelley, first chief executive of Cleve
land, promoted its canals. He was appointed

56 Cleveland's golden story
state canal commissioner but provided with
insufficient funds. No one had faith enough in
the undertaking even to expect to see the system
completed. The state gave Kelley permission to
make the cut and the people extended their good
wishes, Kelley became a martyr to the cause of
canals. He divested himself of personal comfort.
With his family, he occupied a hut along the line
of the first canal to keep a determined eye on
the construction.
In 1820, Cleveland was a tiny lake port with
less than two hundred inhabitants, Sandusky
and Ashtabula were its serious rivals. Had des
tiny used Alfred Kelley, who lived, loved and
abored for Cleveland, in some other vineyard, the
city's present position might be less auspicious.
Kelley was inspired by the successful com
pletion of the Erie canal under the direction
of Governor De Witt Clinton of New York, He
foresaw that a canal from the interior of the
State to Cleveland would make this lake port
the shipping market of the Ohio basin. On July
4, 1824, there was a celebration of the begin
ning of work on the Ohio canal. The Governor
of New York, of the long line of great Clintons,
broke the ground. In 1834, a water route from
Cleveland to Portsmouth was realized and the
trip was made in eighty hours.
The passenger boats, known as "packets,"
were drawn by three horses, single file, with a

THE LINES ON OHIO S MAP

57

boy driver mounted on the rear steed. The
passengers dined, slept, conversed or wrote let
ters in a cabin-hall, each according to his incli
nation or power of concentration,
Seymour Dunbar is authority for the state
ment that on one occasion one hundred men were
crowded into a room designed for the accom
modation of forty-two. There was a separate
compartment for women and children. The
division was maintained even during the serving
of meals.
The maintenance of good nature in traveling
on a canal packet was the test of one's spirit of
democracy, A man who removed his shoes
before retiring in the packet berth was con
sidered a "fop" and unnecessarily fastidious.
The crew of a canal boat consisted of a com
manding captain, two hard-working steersmen,
two juvenile drivers and the cook. While the
other members of the crew had rest periods, it is
said that the cook worked "all of the time,"
Canal boat traveling had much to commend it
to those of a lackadaisical temperament. Canal
passsage was safe, Dunbar poetizes this mode of
travel :
"No more delightful experience of travel
could be experienced in all the country than that
encountered by a canal boat passenger while
moving through a region of wooded hills during
the hours of a moonlit summer night. Ahead

rg Cleveland's golden story
he could see the plodding horses and their
driver. The lights from the open windows
gleamed on the towpath and the rugged hill
sides, and each new turn of the waterway
brought into vision some new scene of shadowy
loveliness," The popularity of canal traffic was attested
by the fact that more than nineteen thousand
passengers arrived in Cleveland by canal in
1843. ^^d. so Alfred Kelley's vision was vindi
cated. Like Alfred of old, surnamed "the Great,"
he proved his case, "Going to Cleveland" was
early made the vogue through the agency of the
canal boat, despite considerable discomfort and
low bridge hazards. Thus was Cleveland's shop
ping district given initial impetus.
The canal boats brought wool, flour, wheat
and coal to Cleveland, One barge brought a
cargo of coal in 1828. There was a vain endeavor
to market it about the town. Wood was plenti
ful. Why should one soil his jacket and soot the
chimney of his house with this black stuff? At
last Philo Scovill, mine host of the Franklin
Tavern, was induced to burn it in his bar-room
grate. Men and dogs soon gathered about to
bask in the continuous and unvarying warmth.
And thus Old King Coal persuaded the people
to allow him to become the servant of all,
Alfred Kelley was the James J, Hill ofthe first
half-century of Cleveland's commercial develop-

THE LINES ON OHIO S MAP 59
ment. Mr. Hill once said, "I have written my
name in lines of steel across the face of the
continent and no man can erase it." Alfred
Kelley wrote his signature on the map of Ohio.
After the completion of the Ohio canal he
turned his intense energy to railroad building.
Kelley was first, last and all ofthe time for Cleve
land, He knew that if the canals benefitted
Cleveland, the railroads were certain to do a
thousandfold more.
The Ohio Railroad of 1836, not of Kelley's
promotion, was built on piles driven into the
ground — the "railroad on stilts," But this
enterprise proved a bubble and brought nothing
¦to the investors. For many years a portion of
the track stood on Lorain Avenue,
Kelley organized the Cleveland, Columbus and
Cincinnati Railroad on an entirely different
basis than that of the unstable Ohio Railroad.
Kelley knew one lesson by heart. He knew that
to build and operate a railroad, one must have
ample capital. A meeting was held in the old
Empire Hall. Kelley made a speech. The citi
zens saw the light, but lacked warmth over the
enterprise. Then Kelley dramatically locked the
doors and changed his appeal to a demand.
The session lasted till the "wee sma' hours" and
the funds were raised in a generous amount.
Construction had, some time before, been
started on the Scranton flats of the Cuyahoga

6o Cleveland's golden story
River, Kelley himself filled the first wheelbarrow
with earth — every shovelful a symbol of prog
ress. Other men followed his example. After the
Empire Hall subscription meeting, the Cuyahoga
Steam Furnace Company built the first engine.
It was a wood-burning iron horse which wheezed
and coughed itself nearly to pieces. But it drew
a string of flat cars on the construction work
with speed and regularity.
The newspapers of rival towns had directed
shafts of satire at Cleveland's "wheelbarrow
railroad." The "Cleveland Herald," however,
on February 20, 1851, silenced them all with
this barrage: "There is no use attempting an
editorial today. The eloquent, sublime and fine
all have vanished from our caput and their
places are filled with one extremely large, splut
tering, whizzing locomotive,"
An advertisement in the Cleveland papers
announced, "The regular through trains of the
Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad
will commence running on Tuesday next," A
minister of the time used as his text, "The
chariots rage in the street, they jostle one an
other in the broadways; the appearance of them
is like torches, they run like lightning."
Rails for Cleveland's first steam road were
brought from abroad. Today Cleveland is send
ing steel railway supplies to the Old World.
Railroad regulation is one of the leading topics
before the Nation for 1920.

THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP 6 1
Cleveland's first going railroad was regulated
with a drastic indifference to the company's
plans. The Council passed an ordinance which
limited the speed of trains in the city limits to
five miles an hour. Trains were not permitted
to run at night. Trains were stopped to collect
fares. Those who unofficially objected to the
railroads placed obstructions on the tracks.
The first railroad eastward from Cleveland
was the Cleveland-Painesville-Ashtabula, which
started operation in November, 1851, This road
was financed with difficulty. Investors believed
that it could not compete successfully with the
lake steamers. Provision was made for a double-
trackway and a good road-bed. Today this bit
of railroad is a most important fraction of one of
America's greatest railway systems.
The journey to Buffalo from Cleveland was
interrupted by a change at Erie to another short
line. The various short lines were of different
gauge, and through transportation was impos
sible. Cleveland men planned a consolidation of
the many small lines, which resulted in the Lake
Shore Railroad. Eventually the Lake Shore
became a through line from Chicago to Buffalo,
One trunk line after another made Cleveland
a central point,
Alfred Kelley, crowned by his associates as
"the railroad king," was one of the Empire
builders to whose memory time has been unkind.

62 Cleveland's golden story
Nor was he an idol of his own day generation.
He was of the Cromwellian type. He did his
work and made no bid for applause. But to him
belongs the credit for the canal and railroad
development of Ohio.
Cleveland became a bridge builder to avoid
being "a house divided against itself," The
narrow valley of the Cuyahoga is a deep slash
made by nature, which runs through the heart
of the city. And were it not for the twenty-one
bridges to "make us one" there would be twin
cities watching each other across the divide,
Moses Cleaveland located his dream city on
the eastern bank of the Cuyahoga. Later the
settlement on the west side became known as
"Ohio City." Lorenzo Carter established a
ferry for travelers who crossed the river near
his tavern. A neighbor, Elijah Gunn, operated
a ferry at the foot of Superior Street,
No bridge was possible at this point but near
the present Central viaduct a bridge of logs,
bound together by chains, was floated. This
portable bridge had to be drawn aside to accom
modate passing sail-boats. In 1821, a public
meeting was held to raise money by subscription
to build a substantial bridge. Thirteen persons
agreed to pay in work and money the cost of
this public utility.
The first wooden bridge across the Cuyahoga,
with a draw of forty-nine feet as a passage

THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP 63
way for vessels, caused a miniature war — "the
battle of the bridge." The Ohio City merchants
objected to their trade going to Cleveland. Its
city council declared the bridge "a public
nuisance." An official organized a raid and
blasted one abutment of the bridge,
William Case of Cleveland, backed by a com
pany of militia armed with muskets and an
ancient cannon, waited on the bridge to meet
the attacking party. The Ohio City stalwarts
advancing with axes and crowbars, ripped up the
floor of the bridge and Case was driven back with
clubs and stones. A number were injured before
the sheriff of the county exercised his authority.
But the bridge spanning the Cuyahoga cre
ated mutual interests. And many wooden
bridges were erected. In 1857, a wooden bridge
at West Third Street collapsed under the weight
of a drove of cattle.
Zenas King, a youthful farmer and bridge
builder, recognized the weakness of the wooden
bridges. King built a number of bridges of iron
girders. He was the inventor of the iron bridge
adopted in railroad construction. King had the
co-operation of Amasa Stone, railroad engineer
and contractor. Bridges made on the King plan
have been shipped and re-assembled iri every
part of the world.
To demonstrate its supremacy as a bridge
builder, Cleveland has erected one of the largest

64 Cleveland's golden story
concrete spans in the world. The high level bridge
is five hundred and forty feet long. It is the mas
terpiece of the King Bridge Company. Four
million dollars were here expended on the high
level structure to save the laborious and un
necessary travel down to the flats and across the
small bridges over the river and up the hills. As
graceful as the arch of a rainbow, it typifies for
all time the unity, co-operation and strength
of Cleveland and of the old community of the
Western Reserve.

CHAPTER VII
CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

CHAPTER VII
CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION

T is a world-old belief that artists are
not practical. But when the aesthetic
mind is wedded to the scientific, it ac
complishes great things. Leonardo Da
Vinci could do more things well than
any other man of the Renaissance. F. Hop
kinson Smith of our own age was a water-color-
ist, novelist and lighthouse builder.
The destinies of Cleveland were influenced by
a man of the Da Vinci type. Jeptha H. Wade
was a successful portrait painter who lived in
Adrian, Michigan, His scientific bent led him
to experiment with the camera. He made the
first daguerreotype taken in the Middle West.
On a chance visit to Baltimore, Wade wit
nessed S amuel F. B . Morse sendamess age over the
first telegraph line. This proved the turning point
of his life. He said farewell to the brush and pal-

68 Cleveland's golden story
ette. The insulator of the Morse instrument
was imperfect. The young artist invented the
Wade insulator, adding to the facility with
which messages could be sent and received.
In 1847, Wade studied the construction and
equipment of telegraph lines in the field. He
strung the first line between Detroit and Jack
son. He then ran lines from Detroit to Cleve
land and Buffalo, The Wade line from Cleveland
to St, Louis was completed in 1849,
A telegraph office had been opened in the old
Weddell House on West Sixth Street. As the
eager citizens gathered around the instrument
installed on September 15, 1847, they were
startled when it began to act apparently of its
own accord. A witness wrote: "The machine all
at once began to rattle like the bones of a skele
ton under a galvanic battery and the line was
reported in order,"
Mr, Wade consolidated the existing inde
pendent lines running out of Cleveland. This
consolidation formed the kernel of the Western
Union Telegraph Company. With the imagi
nation of the artist. Wade proposed in 1861 a
transcontinental telegraph line. His plans were
considered nebular, altogether visionary and full
of folly. Wade, undaunted, personally super
vised the construction of a line to the Pacific.
In August, 1 86 1, he sent a jubilant message
over the newly constructed line to San Fran-

CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 69
cisco. The route of the first transcontinental
railroad followed the Wade wires. The Pacific
Telegraph Company was consolidated with the
Western Union under Mr. Wade's directorship,
Mr, Wade, who made New York's news San
Francisco's breakfast topic, was rewarded with
great wealth. He enriched Cleveland with many
generous gifts — Wade Park being his most
notable memorial.
The motto of Victor Hugo was "More Light."
Charles Brush accepted this motto as his very
own. Brush, a sturdy lad, was living on a farm
at Euclid, east of Cleveland, in i860. He at
tended school in Cleveland studying chemistry,
physics and mathematics at the old Central
High. He made curious experiments, to the
amazement of his instructors.
At thirteen, he had discovered the relation
ships between magnets, and constructed a tel
escope, grinding the lenses and fitting them into
the instrument. In 1867, Charles Brush dis
played an intense interest in the discussions
of an electric light which had been created
in Paris, by current from a battery.
The young man went to the University of
Michigan. He applied himself to two problems:
first, how to construct a dynamo to give the
amount and kind of current to operate the
lamps in a circuit; second, to find how to work a
lamp without its flickering.

70 Cleveland's golden story
In 1876, he gave the world the Brush dynamo,
a horse tread-mill on a farm east of Cleveland
supplying the power. His first arc lamps con
sisted of two carbon lamps slightly separated.
The current jumped from carbon to carbon,
giving off "a dazzling white light." Twelve arc
lamps were installed in Monumental Park, now
the Public Square.
On the evening of April 29, 1879, the new
lights sent rays over the assembled citizens.
Many of them looked at the lights through
smoked glasses to protect their eyes. The most
emphatic protest against the arc lamp was
voiced by women who affirmed that it lighted
their complexions to disadvantage. David Be-
lasco now lights his stages to complement the
types of coloring of his women stars.
The Brush arc lamp has given a sense of
security to the people of nearly every city in the
world. It has lighted the dark corners from
which crept the menace of crime and vice. The
Brush dynamo is the grandparent of the tre
mendous modern generators, the lesser suns of
the world, furnishing light, heat and power.
The Brush Company has for many years
supplied the world with the materials for this
method of lighting. Eventually Brush, Thomp
son and Edison merged the production of their
inventions to form the General Electric Com
pany.

CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 7 1
Cleveland manufactures three-fourths of the
carbon materials used in the United States.
At Nela Park is the first establishment for the
exclusive study of the distriburion of light.
Equipped like a great educational institution,
the Nela Park laboratory has achieved many
wonderful decorative and practical effects with
illumination. Daylight is re-created at night
through Nela inventive genius.
Charles Caleb Colton said: 'There are two
metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabi
net, and the other in the camp — gold and iron.
He that knows how to apply them both may
indeed attain the highest station," Cleveland
men have applied their knowledge of iron with
intelligence and colossal energy.
The city's mammoth iron and steel industries
began in Nathaniel Doan's blacksmith shop in
1798. A small foundry was opened in 1828 by
John Ballard and Company. In 1834 the iron
interests became "big business" and the Cuya
hoga Steam Furnace Company was incorpo
rated. A blast furnace was erected that was
"blown" by steam instead of horse-power.
The canal built by Alfred Kelley was utilized
in bringing iron ore from central Ohio. The first
locomotive that pulled a train in the Middle
West was constructed by the Cuyahoga Steam
Furnace Company and shipped to Michigan.
In 1 841, this company molded the first cannon

72 Cleveland's golden story
made in Cleveland. The great swamps which
furnished bog iron ore in those years are now
devoted to the cultivation of onions. But it was
not local ore that made Cleveland powerful.
The discovery of iron ore in the Lake Superior
region inaugurated Cleveland's romantic rise in
the world of metals. Dr. J,L, Cassells, a Cleveland
chemist, made a journey in 1846 to the Lake
Superior region. He went to seek silver but
found iron ore deposits vast enough to enrich
the nation. Iron ore was shipped from Lake
Superior to Cleveland in 1852. The first cargo
consisted of six barrels — not considered worth
the freight.
One of Cleveland's iron masters in the '60s
was Henry Chisholm. Iron became gold at his
touch. Mr. Chisholm's first activities in Cleve
land were in the building of docks and piers. He
then turned to iron making, concentrating on
nails, bolts, screws, spikes and tools.
In 1857, Mr. Chisholm established a rolling
mill and blast furnace in Newburg. He did not
fear innovations, and used the Bessemer con
verter, which was then considered an experi
ment. The early railroads took all of the rails
that could be turned out. Mr. Chisholm died
in 1880, leaving behind him an industry whose
employees constituted a city of themselves.
There are more than two hundred foundries
and about two hundred machine shops and

CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 73
metal mills in Cleveland. The city has earned
the ritle of "The Sheffield of America."
The flesh of the motor car is steel, Gasohne is
its food. So it is natural that Cleveland should
send over the highways of the world thousands
of motor cars of its own make, and into the air,
motor-driven planes.
The Columbus of the automobile industry in
Cleveland was Alexander Winton, another man
from the heather-flecked land. At nineteen, this
Scotch lad came to New York with his mother's
blessing and a love of work.
He followed the family's historic occupation
of marine engineer and sailed for two years. In
1884, Alexander Winton was employed in a
Cleveland machine shop. He was interested in
the improvement of the bicycle. And in the
bicycle shop Mr. Winton, then a member of the
company, began motor car experiments.
His first trial machine stalled in front of the
Brush home on Euclid Avenue. And there is an
amusing story of Mr. Brush's arriving on the
scene to assist and asking Mr. Winton, "Alex,
can't you make it go?" The automobile wizard
called from under the machine, "Would I be
here if I could?"
It was in 1896 that Mr. Winton completed his
first car — a car built in his backyard. He
worked on this car mostly at night and on holi
days. The neighbors reckoned the period of his

74 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY
labors by sleepless nights. And when the
machine finally snorted its way out of the yard
into Bolton Place, the folk next door were as
grateful and happy as the inventor — but for an
entirely different reason. The uncalcuiating
Tom Sawyers solicited a ride, but older people
who prized life and limb declined Mr. Winton's
invitation. And in 1898, the car was put on the market —
the first automobile sold in America. This
machine, a phaeton, was sold to a mechanical
engineer, Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pa.
The price was $1,000. It had one cylinder, car
ried two passengers and made a speed of ten
miles an hour. The engine was cooled with ice,
and infinite patience was required to start it.
The erratic motion of one cylinder was un
musical to the ears of its builder, who gradually
increased the number of cylinders to six.
The Winton Company stands in a proud
relationship to the city of its nativity. It is
manufacturing the same car, in the same city,
under the same name, and by the same owners
as in its beginning.
Cleveland's annual production of automobiles
is now placed at eighty-five thousand cars. The
industry is shared by ten active companies with
a capital of over fifty million dollars. The
annual output is valued at forty million dol
lars, double the value of all the goods manufac
tured here in 1870.

CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 75
Forty years ago, Worcester R. Warner and
Ambrose Swasey began producing machine
tools. Since they joined their forces, these two
honored Cleveland citizens have made the name
of Warner and Swasey the symbol of highest
achievement in the making of scientific equip
ment and instruments.
As early as 1 886 they set a world's record in the
building of the thirty-six-inch refractor of Lick
Observatory. Three of the most famous astronomical instru
ments in the world have been since erected by
Warner and Swasey. The universe is viewed
through Cleveland lenses at the Yerkes Observa
tory, the Naval Observatory in Washington, the
National Observatory at Argentina, and the
Canadian Government Observatory at Victoria.
No great material reward has come to them
through the making of scientific instruments.
Mammoth machines and tools bring profits
with which Warner and Swasey make their
contributions to science. "From telescopes to
turret lathes" suggests the range of Warner and
Swasey achievement.
Oil has the habit of making men rich. It
lavishly rewards its diggers and refiners. The
plain native name of petroleum is given in text
books as "rock oil." John D. Rockefeller beyond
all other men has guided and influenced the pro
duction of "rock oil."

76 Cleveland's golden story
Mr. Rockefeller left high school at fourteen
to work in a Cleveland commission house. A
commen tor says: "He went in as an errand boy
and clerk. He became a partner and manager."
In 1862, when he was twenty-three years of age,
Mr. Rockefeller went to work for Samuel
Andrews, a chemist and refiner of crude oil.
From that time onward, he progressed with a
consistency that made him the marvel of the
commercial world.
In this period the organization of the oil in
dustry commenced. The oil company with which
Mr. Rockefeller was connected shared part of
the second story of the Cushing block. Public
Square and Euclid Avenue. The ground-floor
was occupied by the dry-goods store of what is
now the William Taylor Son and Company.
Mr. Rockefeller, with his genius for leader
ship, attracted men of might. Harkness, Flag
ler, Andrews, and Huntington came to him.
These men solved the difficult problems of the
refining and distribution of oil. They eliminated
chance to a large degree.
They stimulated regularity in production and
reduced waste. They utilized the by-products,
and like conjurers created absolutely new lubri
cants and chemicals. Eight thousand miles of
tank cars, two hundred and fifty oil steamships
and more than fifteen thousand tank stations
in America and Europe were established by the
Rockefeller interests.

CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 77
King Kerosene, Cleveland's gift to the world,
has largely abdicated his throne in favor of
Prince Gasoline. Today there is an annual pro
duction of a billion gallons. The automobile,
motor boat, aeroplane and other vehicles of
swift movement demand gasoline in ever- in
creasing quantities. And the industry which had
its inception in Cleveland seems equal to the
call. Cleveland, being a lake port, has long been a
well-painted town. Sailors have ever been known
as active painters. A well-painted ship is their
pride and when on land, sailors paint from force
of habit. You have but to go to Salem and other
old sailing towns to see the almost overly
painted houses gleaming white in the sunlight.
Of course in the forefather days of the Western
Reserve there were many shabby, weather-worn
buildings, Lorenzo Carter, however, painted his
tavern red, the color being produced by mixing
red clay and oil.
In the early '60s, an enterprising clerk in a
dry-goods store became mentally saturated
with paints and oils. Henry Sherwin opened a
shop and experimented with paint grinding.
He formed a partnership with E, P. Williams in
1870. The company had the munificent capital
of two thousand dollars. From the first mixings
of colors on a stone slab, came the paint grinding
mill, resembling the old-fashioned flour mill.

78 Cleveland's golden story
Soon grinders were perfected. The quality
improved and the quantity increased through
the years. The slogan of Sherwin-Williams
paint expresses the magnitude of the business —
"It covers the earth."
Today there are thirty-three paint plants in
Cleveland, getting their supplies from India,
Argentina and China, Many porcelain - like
enamels and varnishes have been originated in
Cleveland, the cradle of invention.

CHAPTER VIII
Cleveland's golden facade

... ,v ,¦¦
'it ' J'; .1 '. ¦¦''

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

CHAPTER VIII
Cleveland's golden facade

UCLID Avenue is Cleveland's golden
facade. It is one of a trio of notable retail
promenades — Fifth Avenue, State Street
and Euclid Avenue. This proud thor
oughfare was once a long Indian trail.
Moccasined feet trod the narrow path, now
widened to the motor-way, where passes the
flower of civilization. The old trails followed
west to east on the crest of the ancient beach
lines. Sandy and well-drained, they formed
comfortable highways for the Redskin.
The original plan of the city did not provide
for Euclid Avenue. The village added the road
as a convenient way to the east, surveying it in
1816. Its scholastic name was derived from
Euclid township, through which it passed. The
township was named by its founder, a surveyor,
after Euclid, the nestor of mathematicians.

82 Cleveland's golden story
The first broad way provided for the Western
Reserve by the Connecticut Land Company was
based on the Indian trail which became Euclid.
It was the route of stage coaches and freight
wagons for Buffalo and therefore often called
the "Buffalo Road." A man destined to become
Governor of Ohio, Samuel Huntington, in 1 802,
had an encounter with wolves on the Euclid
road at what is now East 55th Street. Mounted
on his horse, he battled the pack with an um
brella — his only armament. They followed him
to the edge of the little settlement west of the
Public Square.
A panther known and feared was killed on
Euclid in 18 10. Thus ended the destructive
beast who dared to make war on man. Oxen
drew stone-boats through the mud, taking
children to school and families to the Meeting
House on Sunday. In 1840, EucHd was planked
and the destiny of the street determined.
The acre of land on which the William Taylor
Son and Company's store now stands was pur
chased by the Connecticut Land Company for
forty cents. The next sale recorded of this land
was at seven thousand dollars. The estimated
value placed on it now is two million dollars.
Euclid was graded and trees were planted in
i860. Euclid Avenue then came into a distinc
tion accorded to but few streets in the world.
To give Euclid as one's address was a credential

CLEVELAND S GOLDEN FACADE 83
recognized in every centre of culture in the
world. Brush, Chisholm, Wade, Rockefeller,
King, Wellman, Johnson, Pack, Brown and
Mather were some of the men whose residences
made Euclid a hall of fame.
Commerce slowly, but like an irresistible tide,
invaded the street. The street railroad came in
i860. The street became an avenue in 1870.
Once the street was a haven of quiet and repose.
More people pass East Ninth Street and Euclid
in a quarter of an hour today than lived in the
city in 1835.
The decline of Euclid as a residence street and
its dedication to business has its compensations.
The city is doing something unique for its new
beautification. Had Euclid retained its old
status, the business district would have shifted
to a less formal lay-out. The municipal group
plan, which contemplates the transformation of
that part of the city which forms its foyer, will,
as Julian Street says, "Give Cleveland a certain
right to call herself, first city,"
On Euclid Avenue there are many estab
lishments which historically, artistically and
commercially rank with the noblest institu
tions of their kind in the world. Many of these
houses trace a direct ancestry to Cleveland's
oldest stores.
Cleveland's first merchant was Nathan Perry,
who sold drygoods in 1809. From Perry's

84 Cleveland's golden story
Corners, now West Ninth Street, a trade district
extended eastward along Superior Street to the
Square. In Nathan Perry's day, competition
was exceedingly keen and frank. One merchant
would call attention to another's deficiencies.
Nathan Perry published an advertisement in
which he affirmed that though his list of goods
was not as long as some of his neighbors' on
paper, they were to be found on his shelves! He
directly stated that the small White Store, a
later competitor of his, made pretensions which
were largely puffs for cheap merchandise. But
Sir Advertisement has become a gentleman since
Perry's day.
George Worthington, the adventurous son of
a hatter, came to Cleveland in 1829. He readily
saw a chance of supplying canal diggers with
good tools. He doubled his money in his trans
actions and invested it in a stock of hardware.
The hatter's son founded the present George
Worthington Company, Cleveland's oldest busi
ness house.
The early '30s were natal years for Cleveland's
stores. John Vincent opened a cabinet shop in a
cooperage on Mandrake Lane near the present
high level bridge. The boom of 1836 brought
many people from the east. Travel was so beset
with difficulties that furniture could not be
transported. Accordingly, the Vincent store
prospered. The Vincent - Barstow Store on

Cleveland's golden facade 85
Euclid traces to the Vincent shop of ninety
years ago.
In i860, Cleveland's retail centre was west of
the Square near West Sixth Street, It took some
courage on the part of Hower and Higbee to
open their store one door east of what was then
Seneca Street — now West Third Street. But
they prospered. The Higbee Company with its
establishment on Euclid is the result.
In 1845, ^- ^- Beckwith opened a store in
Cleveland for the sale of floor coverings. There
were no rugs in those days, nothing but carpets
in lengths. In 1849, Frederick A. Sterling be
came a factor in the Beckwith business. In
1886, George P. Welch entered the firm known
today as the Sterling and Welch Company.
In 1873, Cleveland's first carpet and interior
decoration house, under the direction of Mr,
Sterling, moved into a famous skating-rink be
tween the residence of Dr, Cushing and
Taylor Store.
One afternoon in 1 877, the carpets were packed
under the galleries and the store decorated for
the Charity Ball to be held in the evening.
When dressed for such an event, the only re
minder of the fact that the ball was held in a
store was the fact that the musician's platform
was composed of a huge pile of carpets.
The Sterling and Welch Company was
among the first houses to venture on upper

86 Cleveland's golden story
Euclid. Its present building constitutes one of
the three greatest commercial galleries of dec
orative art in America today.
A talented young man named Webb C. Ball
came along and opened a shop at the corner of
Superior Street and West Third Street to make
and repair watches. His inventions attracted
notice. He standardized the railroad time out of
Cleveland which is known today as Ball's time.
The store of Webb C. Ball on Euclid is part of
the great Ball time organization.
The first department store in Cleveland was
McGillin's on Superior Street opposite Ball's.
McGiUin's neighbor was Paddock and Son,
furriers and hatters. Halle Brothers in 1891
succeeded the Paddock Store, and the business,
as the Halle Brothers Company, was moved to
upper Euclid.
In April of 1870, WilUam Taylor with Thomas
Kilpatrick as junior partner, founded the firm of
Taylor, Kilpatrick and Company, to do a general
dry-goods business in the Cushing block at the
south-east corner of the Public Square. The
site was formerly the home of Dr. Erastus
Cushing whose name and fame live in the pro
fessional and commercial annals of Cleveland
Both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Kilpatrick had long
been "in dry-goods," as they say in Scotland.
They came from Hogg, Brown and Taylor's
store in Boston, then the largest dry-goods house

Cleveland's golden facade 87
in America, of which Mr. Taylor's elder brother
was a managing partner.
The high-class retail section of Cleveland was,
prior to 1870, confined to Superior Street. Dr.
Erastus Cushing, by means of much persuasion,
induced the proprietors of the projected Taylor-
Kilpatrick store to locate on Euclid and the
Public Square in opposition to the advice of
local commercial prophets. The Taylor-Kilpat-
rick store pioneered the commercial conquest of
Euclid Avenue.
The inaugural announcement of the Taylor-
Kilpatrick store in the "Cleveland Herald" is
worthy of reproduction for its statement of
principles, its graceful literary quality and its
prophetic setting-forth of principles now ac
cepted as the ethics of merchandising:
"We will open on Thursday, April 21st, with
an entirely new stock of dry-goods, suitable for
the season and complete in every department.
Our goods are bought in the present low market
and will be sold exclusively at the one-price
system at popular prices.
"The store is large, convenient and well
lighted and we think the locality will commend
it to public favor. We will adopt the one-price
system without variation, and will therefore
mark the article at the lowest living profit.
"Please, therefore, give us a trial and judge
for yourselves. You will find a new store, new

88 Cleveland's golden story
goods, popular prices, one price for all, good
light, fair dealing, and we trust prompt attenrion.
"Taylor, Kilpatrick & Co."
There were thirty-six salesmen in the new
store. On certain evenings of the week one
could shop until ten o'clock. The goods were
displayed under the light of "ten large chande
liers." The motto of the British merchant. Sir
Thomas Gresham, engraved on his portrait
made in 1544 and which now hangs in Mercer's
Hall, London, is "Love, Serve and Obey." The
motto of William Taylor and his partner was,
"Honesty in word and ware," — a phrase used
in one of their early announcements,
William Taylor fathered in the Middle West
a revolutionary principle in retailing. This prin
ciple is today followed by the leading merchants
as a moral principle, deviation from which is
considered no less than commercial crime,
Mr, Taylor insisted upon the observance of
the one-price system in his store without vari
ation. This meant the same price on a given
piece of goods to every customer.
Prior to this period, a great deal depended
upon the persistence of the customer or the
mood of the merchant as to the final price of an
article. The more subtle manner of selling was
to offer an item marked fifty dollars at, say,
forty "as a special favor to you."

Cleveland's golden facade 89
The Taylor business creed as first voiced by
its founders is observed to the final letter today.
The original standards of the founders of the
business are observed. They are the unseen
mentors of the store policy.
The first change in the personnel of the firm
came in 1885 when Mr. John Livingstone Taylor,
the only son of the senior partner, at the
age of twenty-four years, was admitted to part
nership. Mr, Kilpatrick withdrew from the firm
in 1886, removing to Chicago, The firm then
assumed the name of William Taylor Son and
Company, The passing of Mr, William Taylor
occurred in 1887, Mr, John Livingstone Taylor
died in 1892, At the demise of her husband,
John Livingstone Taylor, Sophia Strong Taylor
succeeded to the business and is now president
of the company and controlling owner.
The business established by the senior Taylor
and so ably developed by his son is sincerely
carried on in accordance with the principles and
policies outlined by them. The Taylor Store is
in spirit exactly the same institution that, with
high hopes and unusual ideals, made its first bid
for public approval in 1 870.
The Taylor Store then occupied the first floor
of the Cushing block. Their up-stairs neighbors
were the Standard Oil Company and the Water
Works Department of the city. Almost every
year has witnessed an enlargement of the

go Cleveland's golden story
floor space. In 1890, the enrire Cushing block
was occupied by the Taylor Store.
In 1907, the present five-story building was
erected at 630 Euclid Avenue. In 19 13, four
skyward stories were added. Since then the
Clarence Building, adjoining Taylor Store on
the west, has been acquired. The Clarence
Building will be torn down and on its site an
addition built in the same architectural style
as the present building.
With all its rapid progress the house never
compromised with its convictions. The founder
was a Presbyterian of the school that put duty
before gain. He insisted upon a strict observance
of the Sabbath. The store has never issued
Sunday advertising. The curtains of the show-
windows are drawn and all work is absolutely
suspended on Sunday.
William Taylor Son and Company celebrates
the Golden Jubilee of the house with the proud
knowledge that it has kept faith with its friends,
the pubhc. As one passes by the store with its
windows in the noble style of the Renaissance,
he contemplates the steady growth of this insti
tution from the little dry-goods house on the
Public Square — whose greatest asset was the
sturdy honesty of its founders.
Many institutions become mammoth by a
single financial stroke on the part of a genius of
organization. Taylor Store has grown with the

CLEVELAND S GOLDEN FACADE 9 1
sureness of a great tree. Year after year by the
natural process the tree casts its shade and
gives of its fruit. In turn it is supplied with
nourishment as a reward for its faithfulness. So
this house, which has sought to benefit the pub
lic, has been sustained.
It can be said with truth that never an hour
of the working day passes but craftsmen and
merchandisers in Orient and Occident are re
minded of Euclid Avenue. The buyers and rep
resentatives of its stores are searching the world
for desirable merchandise. However, emphasis
is put on American goods.
Euclid Avenue in three wars — the Civil War,
the Spanish-American War and the great World
War — became a street of banners in which the
Stars and Stripes eloquently proclaimed the
American spirit of Moses Cleaveland's city.
Going through the pages of your favorite
newspaper is like a passage through Euclid
Avenue. The advertisements of the Euclid
Avenue merchants are their show-windows on
paper. The first newspaper in Cleveland was edited,
printed and published by Andrew Logan, who
was of Indian descent. He brought his press
and type from Beaver, Pa., to issue a four-page
sheet. Editions were often delayed for want of
paper. The editor would make trips to the
east and return with several months' supply.

92 Cleveland's golden story
Logan's paper was "The Cleaveland Gazette
and Commercial Register." It made its inirial
bow on July 31, 1818.
And there has never been a time since, in the
intervening century, that Cleveland has been
without a current record of its happenings.
Though Logan suspended publication in March,
1820, the "Cleveland Herald" had made its
advent in 18 19 with three hundred subscribers.
For sixty-six years the "Cleveland Herald"
helped to make public opinion. In 1885 its
assets were divided between the two most power
ful rivals, "The Cleveland Plain Dealer" and
"The Cleveland Leader,"
The "Cleveland Plain Dealer" first appeared
in January, 1842, and was all that its name
implies. It was the descendant of the "Cleve
land Advertiser," established in 1831. For
seventy-eight years the "Plain Dealer" has put
in type the doings of Cleveland and its relation
to the world.
The first edition of the "Plain Dealer" con
sisted of two pages. The present "Plain Dealer"
utilizes one hundred and forty-five tons of paper
in one day, and has a daily circulation of over
one hundred and seventy-five thousand copies.
The "Cleveland Leader" appeared as the
"Ohio American" of Ohio City in 1844. Edwin
Cowles, a boy of eighteen, was its publisher in
1845. Re-named "The Leader" in 1854, it be-

CLEVELAND S GOLDEN FACADE 93
came an anti-slavery paper and was issued at
sunrise instead of sundown. Edwin Cowles was
of the Dana and Greeley type — an editor of
personality and power.
The daily and "Sunday Leader" were bought
by Dan R. Hanna, son of the late Mark Hanna.
The daily "Leader" was sold to the "Plain
Dealer" in the Fall of 1917, while the "Sunday
Leader" was still printed under its former own
ership. Charles A. Otis, in 1907, combined his paper,
the "Cleveland World," with the evening "Plain
Dealer" and the "Evening News" to form the
"Cleveland News," an evening newspaper.
The "Cleveland News" was later sold to Mr.
Hanna. The "Sunday News-Leader" is now the
Sunday edition of the "News." It is housed
in the Leader-News Building, one of Cleveland's
finest business structures.
The "Cleveland Press" was printed for the
first time as "The Penny Press." It was founded
by E. W. Scripps and John S. Sweeney. "The
Press" grew with a rapidity that resulted in a
chain of papers owned by Scripps-McRae.
In 187b, Cleveland had fourteen papers in
cluding the dailies and weeklies. Cleveland,
today, has fourteen dailies of which four are in a
foreign language. Over fifty-five weekly publi
cations are issued in Cleveland and sixteen of
these are in a foreign tongue.

94 Cleveland's golden story
The Cleveland newspapers, like Euclid Ave
nue, Cleveland's golden facade, have changed to
meet the temper of the times from the local to
the cosmopolitan spirit which makes a city big
and friendly.

CHAPTER IX
FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES

CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY

CHAPTER IX
FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES
HE publishers of this little work enter
tain for it the hope that it will inspire
the writing of other books dealing with
the forces which are making Cleveland
a People's University. Cleveland is
teaching its citizens to live more abundantly.
In the ideal city that Cleveland tokens to be,
everyone is at once an instructor and a
student. And it seems to us that the text-book of this
mighty school is the Constitution of the United
States. Instead of simply harboring insritutions,
as the river's mouth receives its ships, Cleveland
is using them consciously and directly for the
benefit of its citizens.
The city's churches, from the old Stone
Church standing sentinel on the Square, to the
vaulted cathedrals, are enlisted in the effort to

FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES 99
educate and refine. Cleveland's eighty charity
societies are responsible to a controlling welfare
organization established in 1913. In Cleveland,
to give is to help a man to help himself.
In 1800, Cleveland built its first school near
Kingsbury's run. Another school for children
opened in 1802 in Major Carter's "front room."
From this humble but sincere beginning, the
educational forces of Cleveland have gathered
strength and influence until the public school
system ranks with the first ten in America.
Night schools and manual training courses
supplement the general work.
The name of the Western Reserve is perpetu
ated in the University — the finest tribute
which could possibly have been paid to the New
England men who developed Ohio. The Con
necticut men were school men, Moses Cleave
land was a son of Yale, Western Reserve
University is educating its own historians.
In instituting its Adelbert College, the Col
lege for Women, the Medical College, the
Graduate School, Franklin T. Backus Law
School, Dental School, School of Pharmacy, the
Library School, and the School of Social Sci
ences, Western Reserve University has made
rapid strides. Today, in co-operation with the
Adverrising Club, it has an extension school,
one of the most practical advertising schools
in the world.

loo Cleveland's golden story
The property of Western Reserve University
is valued at ten million dollars — perhaps the best
investment that any community could make.
And science has not been forgotten, for in
1 88 1 was founded the Case School of Applied
Science. In founding this school, Leonard Case
Jr. carried out the wishes of his father from
whom had come the gift for a school in which
Cleveland youth could thoroughly master the
sciences. Cleveland with its varied industries
offers splendid opportunity for the practical
application of scientific problems.
The talented engineers who have been gradu
ated from Case School stand as examples, telling
why this institution holds such a high rank
among American scientific schools.
It is now hoped and planned that a merger
of the Case School of Applied Science and
Western Reserve University will be effected.
The welding of these two useful schools is in
the line of good management. Combination
courses between the Case and Western Reserve
schools are now available.
Cleveland's public libraries are work-a-day
hives of knowledge — not mausoleums of liter
ature. In one year three million four hundred
thousand books were circulated by Cleveland's
libraries. It has always been considered that
leisure was required for reading. And yet sta
tistics show that Cleveland's busy folk are the

FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES IOI
most consistent readers in America. One out of
every four Clevelanders is a book-borrower — a
record not equalled in other cities.
The Cleveland library started with a selection
of books on the second and third floors of the old
Central High School. When this building was
destroyed, the library went to the City Hall.
It now occupies the fifth and sixth floors of the
Kinney and Levan Building, awaiting its per
manent home — a temple of the intellectual
graces to be erected as part of the group plan
on the mall.
The main library has more than three hun
dred thousand volumes, and with its branches,
625,000 books. The Cleveland system with its
fifty branches and 650 agencies is the third
largest library system in the country.
The Alta House, a combined library and
settlement house, is the gift of John D. Rocke
feller, Many of the branch libraries are evidences
of the generosity of Carnegie. The open shelf
idea originated in Cleveland — the Cleveland
library being the first large library to give free
access to its shelves.
The efforts of the Cleveland Art Museum in
bringing to the city rare specimens of the applied
and fine arts, ancient and modern, will do much
to make Cleveland an Athens-on-the-Lake.
Under the direction of Mr. Frederick Allen
Whiting, director of the Art Museum, there

I02 Cleveland's golden story
exists between the Art Museum, the city's
schools and the community a unique relation
ship. The new museum building, permanent be
cause built in undying style, was completed in
1 91 6. The museum building was made possible
by bequests of Horace Kelley and John Hunt
ington. A bequest from H. B. Hurlbut has
given a purchasing fund.
The Cleveland School of Art, founded by
Mrs. S. M. Kimball, now has a permanent home
on Juniper road and Magnolia Drive. Henry
Turner Bailey, dean of the Cleveland School of
Art, has done much to endear him to Cleveland
art lovers. He is closely allied with every
movement for the beautifying of the city. His
word as an art critic is highly regarded.
Cleveland is one of the half-dozen cities in
America giving popular support to a symphony
orchestra. The Cleveland Orchestra, although
recently formed, compares favorably with the
best orchestras of this country.
The Singers' Club of Cleveland, a company of
those who sing for the pleasure they may give,
has developed many notable artists. The club
has sent forth to the Metropolitan Opera House
members whose names symbol golden song.
The publicity voice of the city will function
directly through the new Convention Hall. The
great renaissance building, which is now on its

FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES I03
way to completion, will have a seating capacity
in the arena of twelve thousand people, the thea
tre or concert hall of two thousand seven hundred
and the ball room of one thousand six hundred.
There will be six halls accommodating from
one hundred to five hundred auditors each. The
stage is located between the arena and the
theatre to be used by both and thus viewed by
fifteen thousand people. Cleveland will bid for
the conventions which name Presidents and
make history.
Cleveland's clubs have contributed their
quota of culture to the city's Ufe. There is the
stately Union Club, the liberal City Club, the
progressive Athletic Club, the unique Hermit
Club, the bibliopegistic Rowfant, the University
Club, the Tavern Club and the Chagrin VaUey
Hunt Club, where the hounds are followed after
the romantic manner of the Virginia fathers.
Cleveland is justiy proud of its women's
clubs — organizations that are full of helpful
activities. Among other clubs of power for
women are the Woman's Club, the Women's
City Club and several progressive organizations
for business women.
Cleveland stands as a leader among the cities
ofthe nation in its women's suffrage activities —
not a small amount of the progress of this great
movement having been possible through the
able leadership of Clevelanders.

I04 Cleveland's golden story
When the New York Bureau of Municipal
Research took a vote in thirty leading cities as
to which commercial body had achieved the
most for its town, industrially and socially, the
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce won the bay
leaves. One of the most potent forces in the city
is the West Side Chamber of Industry.
Without her banks Cleveland could tell no
golden story. They have guarded the city's
accumulations and extended a helping hand
to struggling business with a wise paternal care.
Cleveland's first commercial bank was the
organization now known as the National City,
which was founded in 1845.
Today there are forty-one chartered banks in
the city, not including the hundreds of branches,
private banking and brokerage houses. The
Society for Savings, by encouraging sensible
economy, anticipated the Government's thrift
campaigns of the present day as far back as
1849. The head of the Society for Savings is Myron
T. Herrick, former Governor of Ohio and after
wards Ambassador to France. Cleveland's bank
ers have been entrusted with numbers of
important missions for the nation. Cleveland
has given to New York one ofits most discerning
banking executives in the person of former
Senator Theodore E. Burton. Cleveland be
came a Federal Reserve city in 1914 — the

FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES

105

capital of Federal Reserve District number
four. The city's hostelries, melknw in memories,
deserve a book of "Friendly Cleveland Taverns."
There was the old Amoi-ioaft House, where Abra
ham Lincoln addressed the people, and the
hospitable Stillman, which stood for a long
time where the Statler now reigns.
The lobby of the HoUenden calls forth recol
lections of the great and good men who have
been its guests. If an old-time visitor should
come out of a Rip Van Winkle sojourn in the
valley and arrive at the Public Square in search
of a tavern, he would not be disappointed. For
in place of the old Forest City House, there is
the Hotel Cleveland. The Hotel Winton honors
itself by bearing the name of the city's eminent
automobile designer.
It is said that Cleveland's population doubles
every twenty years. By one concerted movement
ofits suburbs, it could make a bid for place in the
population figures of American cities that would
be dramatic. The city's important suburbs.
East Cleveland, the Heights and Lakewood, are
municipalities of themselves and therefore can
not be included in Cleveland's census compi
lations. Cleveland has not forgotten that fresh air and
sunshine and a glimpse of growing things are as
necessary as office buildings and factories to a

io6 Cleveland's golden story
city's strength. It has forty-three miles of
boulevards and two thousand six hundred and
seventy-three acres of park and meadow.
Cleveland goes about the business of recon
struction as blithely as if the city's resources
of men and money had not been tapped by war.
The fact is that Cleveland gave not only men to
bear arms, but men to bear burdens.
Supplementing the fighting men, many^of
Cleveland's biggest executives abandoned, for
the time, their private interests and went into
the service of the nation. A former Mayor of
Cleveland, Newton D. Baker, is Secretary of
War. Cleveland pioneered the collective campaign
idea, and was one of the first American cities to
provide a war chest. Cleveland accepted and
over-subscribed in every Liberty Loan a quota
based not on her resources but on her enthusi
asm. Cleveland's factories became arsenals.
The Cleveland Advertising Club, by common
consent in advertising circles the most vigorous
publicity organization in the country, has set
sail on a marvellous expedition. With several
other organizations it is about to advertise
Cleveland not only to the world, but to its own
people. When the newspapers were first issued in
Cleveland, they were delivered on horseback as
far as Painesville and announced, in the case of

FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES

107

the "Herald," by the blowing of a horn. The
Cleveland Advertising Campaign Committee,
numbering some of Cleveland's most active
citizens, is about to blow Cleveland's horn loud
enough to be heard around the world. And we
imagine that the committee will use a golden
horn to tell Cleveland's golden story.
The advertising committee intends to advise
the world that through the deepening and
widening of the WeUand Canal to the St.
Lawrence River, Cleveland will become an
international sea-port. Then piers at East
Ninth Street perhaps will say bon voyage to
oceanic traffic. Tropical products used in tires
and other goods will be distributed from Cleve
land. The advertising campaign will encourage new
enterprises to come to the city, accelerate the
building of homes, attract labor to Cleveland
and publicize the city as a national leader in
"progress, prosperity, philanthrophy and public
spirit." We can well leave to the Advertising
Club the media and means of setting this infor
mation before the world.
What concerns us here is the spirit. And the
Cleveland spirit is that of a man who has found
his work. Cleveland is frankly desirous of
success. But more than this — the city covets
the world's friendship. Most of aU, Cleveland
wants the city's children to be happy.

io8 Cleveland's golden story
Cleveland looks to its future. Soon its interior
transportation might not only be a problem but
a puzzle. The city council has approved a
fifteen miUion dollar bond issue for a subway on
Euclid to East 22nd Street and west through
to the bridge.
Hall Caine recently told an American woman
who visited him on the Isle of Man, that he re
members the length and steepness of the hill
above the Lake Shore Station at Cleveland on a
storhiy night. If the illustrious Manxman again
visits Cleveland, and not too soon, he will arrive
at a Pantheon-like station on the Public Square,
ranking with the terminals of Manhattan, which
competent critics believe are its chiefest archi
tectural beauties.
Maurice Maeterlinck, on his recent visit to
Cleveland, in contemplating and visualizing in
his poet's mind the group plan and the mall,
said that Cleveland awakened an interest in him,
reminiscent of his beloved Paris. For the mall,
flanked by the institutions which represent law,
order, education and art, will typify the Cleve
land spirit. Here the courthouse, city hall,
auditorium and library are being arranged in a
plan avowedly the glory of American municipal
achievement. Cleveland's golden story is to be continued.
Other men in other times, standing aloof will
look with judicial eyes and estimate the worth

FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES I09
of Cleveland and her people. Who may now
presume to reconcile such divergent characters
as Mark Hanna, maker of national policies and
Tom L. Johnson, civic leader, both of whom
loved and labored for Cleveland?
Lord Beaconsfield said: "A great city whose
image dwells on the memory of man is the type
of some great idea. Rome represents conquest;
faith hovers over Jerusalem; and Athens em
bodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique
world-art." Cleveland typifies the Nazarene ideal that a
city is a home in which the health and happi
ness of the individual is a public concern. If
the writer of this narrative were asked to set
forth Cleveland's great idea, he would employ
but two words — Cleveland cares.
Cleveland will grow richer but not scornful,
more powerful but not ungentle, more illustrious
but not forgetful. And for this ideal, Cleve
land's image will ever dweU like a kindly light
on the hearts of men.

9526

«u

'^ Mf'-'ri't'-;-''