consternation, and threatened for a time to break up the settlement. So
disastrous was the defeat that when in 1793 Mad Anthony Wayne camped on the
General's battlefield, his soldiers could not lie down to sleep for the
bones of the unfortunate army. Humiliated by his misfortune and its implied
disgrace, the Governor soon left his Marietta home. The colonists mourned
with his loss that of his daughter Louisa, so brave, so lovely, so
brilliant, that it seems no mere legend that the great Indian chief,
Brandt, was madly in love with her.
In the grim terror of the times, an amusing incident now and then comes
like a lilt of girlish laughter. Once the signal gun gave the alarm that
the Indians were besieging the town. The night was dark and the confusion
indescribable. Men rushed to their posts and the women and children
scuttled to the central blockhouse. Colonel Sproat led the way with a box
of valuable papers; next came a woman with her bed and children, and
tumbling after her, old Mr. Moulton, with his leathern apron full of
goldsmith's tools and tobacco. His daughter Anna carried the china tea-pot.
Lyddy brought the great Bible. When all were in the frightened cry was
raised that Mrs. Moulton was missing--that she had been scalped by the
Indians. "Oh, no," said Lyddy calmly, "she'll be here in a minute. She
stopped to put things a little to rights; she said she _would not_ leave
the house _looking so_." And in a few moments the old lady scuttled in,
bearing the looking-glass--a triumph of New England housewifery!
A certain regularity of living was maintained in spite of the continuous
fear. Every Sabbath morning church was held in a blockhouse where Psalms
were droned with Puritan unction, and the sermon by Mr. Story, the
scholarly Massachusetts divine, was tasted with much critical acumen by
the learned backwoodsmen, many of whom were graduates of Harvard and
Dartmouth. On the long Sabbath afternoons the children of the settlement
studied their catechisms in the simple log cabin of Mrs. Mary Lake, the
earnest woman who thus started what was perhaps the first Sunday-school in
the United States. On week days they were gathered together for lessons,
nor was the rod kept in less perpetual pickle because of the proximity of
the Indians.
[Illustration THE MILLS HOMESTEAD, MARIETTA.]
The war once over, a busy activity ensued. Mills were built, bridges made,
and more comfortable houses erected. It was not strange that the sons of
the old coast States, with the siren voice of the sea still in their ears,
should become notable builders of ships. The great trees of the forest were
masts ready for felling, and many a stately vessel slipped into the water
from this inland ship-yard, to glide down the Ohio into the Mississippi,
and from thence to the shining ocean beyond. The town became a centre of
industry and traffic, a position which she was not long to keep, for
gradually trade drifted from her, and by and by she fell asleep
commercially beside her pleasant waters, to nod and dream serenely through
years to come. But not only was the early Marietta noted for her
industrial prosperity; she was a centre of culture as well, and her place
in this regard she has never lost. As soon as a greater wealth and leisure
came to the pioneer colony, there bloomed abundantly the flowers of an
intellectual refinement, which was the birth-right of those heroic men and
women.
[Illustration HARMAN BLENNERHASSETT.]
It is with this gracious era, redolent of sweet old customs and stately
courtesies, that there is associated the romantic, old-time tragedy of the
Blennerhassetts. On the lovely island lying some twelve miles below
Marietta, Harman Blennerhassett, the dreamy Irish exile, built his idyllic
mansion, whose grandeur was the wonder of the West.
"A shrubbery that Shenstone might have envied," wrote Wirt,
"blooms around him. Music that might have charmed Calypso and
her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures
before him. A philosophical apparatus offers him all the
secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity, and
innocence shed their mingled delights about him. And to crown
the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely
even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that
can render it irresistible, has blessed him with her love."
[Illustration MRS. BLENNERHASSETT.]
Here he plotted a new empire with the bad and brilliant Aaron Burr, whose
hands were still red with the blood of the murdered Alexander Hamilton; and
from here he fled accused of treason to his country, disgraced and ruined.
Memories of the "Blennerhassett days" are many, for the great man was for
several years a partner of Dudley Woodbridge, the first merchant of
Marietta, and both he and his accomplished wife were familiar figures in
Marietta homes. Fancy, inspired by local annals, has a charming glimpse of
the loving mistress of the hospitable mansion, dashing through the woods on
her spirited horse, like some brilliant tropical bird, in her habit of
scarlet cloth, and white hat with the long drooping plume. A pretty story
is told of her wit and beauty at the famous "Burr ball" which the fashion
of Marietta once gave in honor of the crafty statesman and his daughter
Theodosia. To-day, the site of the regal dwelling is marked only by an old
well and some magnificent trees. "Blennerhassett's Island" is a point of
attraction for pleasure-seekers, who give little enough thought to its sad
story; but sometimes there journeys to it a lover of past years who looks
with blurred eyes at the spot where once was enacted one of the most
pathetic little tragedies in all American history.
But Marietta is not altogether a tale of yesterdays; she has as well her
to-day, with its rich promise for the morrow. To-day, a stranger in the
town has pointed out to him "New" and "Old" Marietta. In New Marietta,
brought into existence by the discovery of vast surrounding oil-fields,
there are thriving factories, modern business blocks, new hotels, improved
school-buildings, electric cars; there are evidences of wealth and business
prosperity, and signs of an increasing population. This commercial
progress, from a civic standpoint, is undeniably a benefit, yet it must be
admitted, for the time being, it gives Marietta a little the appearance of
a kindly, old-style grandmother, startled from a long afternoon nap in the
chimney-corner, to find her cap gone, her scanty petticoats replaced by
strangely ample frills, and the caraway seeds in her limp black bag
supplanted by indigestible bon-bons. In Old Marietta the scene shifts. Here
is the drowsy peace of a New England village; here are wide streets shaded
by avenues of splendid trees, and ancient houses, generous-portalled,
serene. Here is the burring of bees in old-fashioned gardens. And is not
this lingering fragrance the smell of the lotos-flower?
[Illustration MARIETTA COLLEGE BUILDINGS.]
The glory of the old dispensation is the venerable college, whose buildings
cluster picturesquely on the green lift of College Hill. Founded in the
fear of God by the first scholars of Ohio, it has behind it a proud
history. At its head have stood men of rich culture and ability, among
whose names shines pre-eminently that of Israel Ward Andrews. In the list
of its instructors have been scholars who have led it upward to all that is
noblest and best. From its classes have gone out students who have taken a
fitting and often distinguished place in the professions and in politics.
When the call of 1861 came, the student sons of Marietta responded with a
gallant patriotism and a devoted service, some among them winning the
highest recognition. To-day, with its able faculty, its fine library, its
well equipped class-rooms, it holds no mean place in the roll of American
colleges. It pays to its past the precious thanks of a worthy present. And
with happy confidence it looks forward to its future, under the guidance of
its sixth and latest President, Alfred Tyler Perry, but recently called to
its leadership from Hartford Theological Seminary.
[Illustration MOUND CEMETERY, MARIETTA.]
In the old Mound Cemetery sleep an honored dead. In its center is the
prehistoric mound, as well preserved to-day as when it was discovered by
the pioneer fathers, a vast monument to the unknown fittingly encircled by
the quiet dignity of this ancient Acre of God. General Putnam's grave is
marked by a plain granite monument, bearing the simple inscription more
touching than the loftiest eulogy:
GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM
A Revolutionary Officer
And the leader of the
Colony which made the
First settlement in the
Territory of the North-West.
Born April 9, 1738,
Died May 4, 1824.
[Illustration OHIO COMPANY'S LAND OFFICE.]
Not far from him are the majority of the Revolutionary heroes who came with
him from New England. It is claimed that there are buried here more
officers of the Revolution than in any other burying-ground in the United
States. About them lie thirteen soldiers of the War of 1812, and a number
of the brave men who fought in the Mexican War. Here too, are the
resting-places of many early citizens of Marietta, who are as a "Choir
Invisible"
"Of those immortal dead, who live again
In minds made better by their presence."
The gates are seldom open now to the silent caravans, for the graves in the
cloistral grass lie close.
Many relics of bygone days make Old Marietta interesting. The streets
running north and south bear yet the names given them by the early
settlers, of Washington and his generals. The "Sacra Via" and the breezy
"Capitolium" and "Tiber Way" bear witness to an old scholarship. "The
Point" recalls the picketed Point of the Indian wars. There still stands
the Ohio Company's Land Office, a wee, weather-beaten building, gray with
time, probably the oldest structure in Ohio. Opposite this is the old
homestead of Rufus Putnam, which stood within the Campus Martius. On the
park, fronting the river, is the quaint Two Horn Church of the
Congregationalists, erected in the wilderness in 1806 and now Ohio's oldest
church building. On the same street where it stands is the stately old
mansion of Governor Meigs, which was built two years earlier and which
still holds an honored place among Marietta's beautiful homes. In families
whose names mark their descent from the "forty-eight immortals" are
treasured numerous heirlooms,--ancestral portraits which look from their
tarnished frames pink-cheeked, confident and calm; old dresses, dim and
faintly odorous; and divers warming-pans, candlesticks and Blennerhassett
chairs, together with sundry bits of sprigged, delightful china.
[Illustration OLD TWO HORN CHURCH.]
"Age is a recommendation in four things," runs a Spanish proverb: "Old wood
to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, old books to read." To
these might well be added a fifth,--old towns to love. To those who know
her, Marietta is a hallowed spot. She is a tender-bosomed matron, this
mother of many sons. Around her is a fair line of hills, which, whether
green with the eternal promise of the spring, or wrapped in the blue smoke
from autumn's invisible battlefield, or hoary with winter's snows, are
changelessly beautiful. About her are broad fields, now quivering to their
resurrection, now white to the harvests. Before her are the lovely,
far-stretching rivers, calling to her all day long with their old, sweet
notes of running water. By the bonds of her historic beauty she holds her
children in a very tender thrall. In all times, and in all places, their
hearts yearn unto her in the far Horatian cry: "Septimius,--_that angle of
the earth laughs for me beyond all others_!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CLEVELAND
THE PLEASANT CITY
BY CHARLES F. THWING
The first thing to be said about Cleveland is what, with the change of a
pronoun, a Cambridge poet said about one of whom he wrote: "It is so
pleasant." Its streets are pleasant to live in and to look upon; its parks
are pleasant to stroll in or to ride in; its houses are, on the whole,
pleasant to the æsthetic sense; its libraries are pleasant for their
selectness though not for their bigness; its people are, above all,
pleasant for their dignity, graciousness, genuineness, simplicity and
appreciation. In the year 1838 the late Asa Gray spent a short time in
Cleveland, and wrote from Cleveland to a friend, saying that the city would
"ultimately be a very pleasant place"; he adds: "The people show some signs
of civilization; they eat ice cream, which is sold in many places."[1] I
wish I were able to assure my old friend and neighbor, as he now lives with
the immortelles and other fadeless flowers, that he has proved to be a true
prophet: Cleveland has become a "very pleasant place," and possibly I might
be allowed to assure him that signs of the ice-age of modern civilization
still linger.
In that relation in which men commonly use the word "pleasant," the
weather, Cleveland is not pleasant. It has as much cloudy weather as
almost any part of the world; and yet it has a pleasant climate. Its
summers are not hot, its winters not cold. To the worker of any sort this
pleasant climate of much unpleasant weather is very pleasing, for in it, as
in the climate of London, one can get much work out of himself.
[Illustration VIEW IN GORDON PARK.]
Cleveland is a singular creation of contraries. It is an inland town, but
it builds more vessels and owns more vessels than almost any other in the
United States. About a quarter of all the steel vessels, rated in tonnage,
built in the United States in the last fiscal year of the Government were
constructed in Cleveland, the order of precedence being Cleveland, Newport
News, Chicago, and Detroit; and almost three quarters of the modern steel
ships in service on the Great Lakes are owned or operated by Cleveland
vesselmen. It is a city of four hundred thousand people, but it impresses
both the visitor and the resident as a big village or a series of big
villages. From it can be reached in a long or short night's ride, New York
and Chicago, Buffalo and St. Louis, Detroit and Cincinnati; within seven
hundred miles of Cleveland dwell more than half the entire population of
the country, and yet Cleveland has been called provincial. Its homes are
among the most palatial of the world, but the owners of not a few are more
at home in New York and Paris than on Euclid Avenue. It is distinguished
for its iron, steel and coal interests, but it has scholars and teachers
who are known where its steel rails have never been carried. It is a city
of the East, and it is also a city of the West--of the East it is the
newest, of the West it is the oldest. It is often called conservative, but
it is also distinguished by its sense of power and of progress. It
represents in its citizens a pure New England type; but it has also
gathered up folks from all over the world,--"Parthians, and Medes, and
Elamites, ... strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians,"
who read their newspapers in a dozen different languages. But, be it said,
the New England, the Connecticut and Massachusetts type still dominates.
The names of the families which are most representative of the things of
the spirit include a large number of New England names.
[Illustration CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CLEVELAND.]
This city of contraries and of contrasts is yet made a great city by only
one or two simple elements. One may say that Lake Erie makes Cleveland.
Were there no Lake Erie there would be no Cleveland. But Lake Erie is the
occasion and not the cause. One may say that the age of steel makes
Cleveland. But that this age is the age of steel is only the condition, not
the cause. The cause that makes Cleveland Cleveland is that at or near
Cleveland the various elements that are necessary in the manufacture of
iron and steel can be most economically and efficiently assembled. The
iron ores from the Lake Superior region, the coal from the Massillon,
Mohoning and Pennsylvania region, the limestone from the Lake Erie islands
and southern shores, can here be most profitably brought together.
Cleveland is, too, by rail and by boat a good point for the distribution of
the finished product as well as a good point for the bringing together of
the crude material. Here ore, coal and lime meet and mingle as naturally as
the heat of the sun and the life of the seed unite in the springtime.
Nothing can prevent their meeting, and little can subsidies or other
artificial stimulus do to promote it. From this union spring forth
factories making nuts and bolts and sewing-machines and engines and the
thousand products and by-products of this age and place of steel. Therefore
Cleveland is Cleveland.
[Illustration SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT, CLEVELAND.]
It may not only be said that Cleveland is herself; it should also be added
that Cleveland has done some things first which are worth doing anyway, and
which are especially worth doing first. As among the colleges Williams and
Harvard have done not a few first things, so among the cities Cleveland
may claim a certain priority. The city was, if not the first, among the
first to adopt the federal system of municipal government, a system which,
after ten years of usefulness, has proved to be like every other form of
democratic government, good if good men are in control, and bad if bad men
are in control. Cleveland was the first to adopt the proper method for the
government and administration of its public schools, namely the separation
of the business side of the administration from the educational, a system,
too, which, like the more general plan of government, finds its efficiency
in the character of the men who administer it. In Cleveland, too, was
organized the great Epworth League of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Here,
too, one of the first women in America to enter the medical profession was
trained in the old Medical College, now a part of the Western Reserve
University. Here the recondite experiments were made by Morley for
determining the atomic weight of oxygen, and practical experiments by Brush
for giving the best light, as well as the important experiments also made
by Brush which resulted in adding "etherion" to the elements. Here, also,
important facilities in the use of the public library and in the making of
finest machinery, such as is used in astronomical apparatus, were first
applied. One, too, should not in a commercial age be suffered to forget
that in Cleveland the Standard Oil Company was born and grew to be a lusty
youth.
This city of first things had as its first man and founder, one whose name
it bears, Moses Cleveland. A Connecticut man, born in Canterbury, Windham
County, in 1754, graduated at Yale in 1777, admitted to the bar,
interrupting his professional practice by service in the Revolutionary
army, serving in the Connecticut Legislature and also in the State militia,
Moses Cleveland was made agent for the Connecticut Land Company in 1796,
and came into the historic territory of New Connecticut, or the Western
Reserve.[2] He seems to have had those elements which usually are found in
founders of states and builders of cities. Reserved in speech, vigorous in
action, friendly with all, grave, shrewd, he was born to command. His
career was brief: he died in the town of his birth in 1806; but he lived
long enough to entertain a rational hope of the future greatness of the
city he founded and named. It is said that he once remarked: "While I was
in New Connecticut I laid out a town, on the bank of Lake Erie, which was
called by my name, and I believe the child is now born that may live to see
it grow as large as old Windham."
Moses Cleveland was a prophet at once true and false. Cleveland became as
large as old Windham and even larger, in the lifetime of children born in
the last decade of the eighteenth century. The method by which Cleveland
has attained the first place in its State, and the seventh place in the
United States, is a process, a growth, and not a manufacture. In the year
1830, thirty-four years after the coming of Moses Cleveland, it had only a
thousand people; but the one thousand had increased to six thousand by
1840, and in the next ten years the six thousand increased threefold. In
the next ten years the number more than doubled, becoming forty-three
thousand in 1860, and yet again doubled in the following decade. By 1870,
it had become ninety-two thousand. The doubling process could not long
continue, but it came so near it that in 1880 there were one hundred and
sixty thousand inhabitants, in 1890 two hundred and sixty thousand and
more, and in 1900 almost four hundred thousand.
[Illustration ARMORY OF THE CLEVELAND GRAYS.]
A growth more normal and steady, a growth which has also carried along
with itself elements far more precious than mere size, it would be hard to
find. For these folks do not deserve the epithet which Carlyle applied to
London's millions. They are a people of vigor, initiative, progressiveness,
carefulness, wealth, work, comfortableness, and good-heartedness.
Cleveland may be conservative; but it is the conservatism of the English
nation which Emerson describes in saying: "The slow, deep English mass
smoulders with fire, which at last sets all its borders in flame."
Cleveland's fires are the fires of anthracite and not of straw.
A city of comfort, Cleveland has no London's East End. I do not believe
that in any other population of the world of its size can be found so few
hungry stomachs or homeless bodies. Work abounds. All men work. Its rich
men are workers, and, what is far more exceptional, the sons of its rich
men are workers. Its wealth is of the solid sort. It represents investments
which pay dividends every six months, and which represent the advancement
of every commercial and manufacturing interest. But Cleveland is obliged to
acknowledge that not a few of its rich men are legal citizens of New York
City, ostracized from its pleasant borders by what they and others regard
as the unjust tax laws of the State.
The city has not yet reached the condition in which it is understood that
in case a will is probated representing a large estate which fails to give
at least a considerable sum to charity or to education, the court shall set
it aside on the ground that the testator was of unsound mind. Of course
money is given away both by gift and by bequest, but more, on the whole, by
gift than by bequest, and in large amounts, but not in amounts so large as
prevail in communities of an age of two hundred and seventy-five years
rather than of one hundred. The rate of increase which money may make for
itself is so great, that the holder and the maker hesitate to part with
such a remunerative agent. Yet the beneficence viewed in the light of
decades is great. A noble school of science, a noble college and
university, including professional schools, a noble foundation for an art
school, are easily found among the more obvious tokens. Hospitals and
orphanages, private schools, endowed churches, Young Men's Christian
Association buildings, parks and college settlements, are ready proof of
private beneficence for public ends. Testimony should also be borne to the
wisdom as well as the generosity which characterize the giving of this
people. My pen refuses to write names, but it is free to say that to find
beneficence which is, it shall not be said so little harmful, but which is
so gloriously efficient, as the beneficence of some of Cleveland's noblest
women and men would be difficult. With the gift, before the gift, and after
the gift goes the wisdom as well as the graciousness of the giver. One,
too, should not neglect to say that in not a few of the great manufacturing
concerns of Cleveland prevails a spirit that the employer owes to the
employee something more than wages. The dividend to labor consists, in the
more obvious relations, in providing rest and recreation rooms, facilities
for eating the midday luncheon, and in doing what can be done in creating
associations and conditions which make for the enrichment of life and the
betterment of character.
[Illustration LAKE IN WADE PARK, SHOWING ADELBERT COLLEGE IN THE DISTANCE.]