Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1865-10-23
Notes of the Excursion to the
Oil Regions.
The Settlement and Growth Of
MeadVille.
Its Colleges and Princely Liberality
of Mr.. Culver.
HuydekOper Hill and Stern
wheel Steamboats,.
The Road to Cory and the Town,
From Cory to TltusViIIe.

The Road to Cory and the Town.
From Cory to TitusVllle.
TITUsvILLE, October Is, 1868.
Meadville is the broad guage gateway
to the world-famed oil regions of Western
Pennsylvania. The rich old town is
pleasantly located at the mouth of n tribu-
tary of French Creek; nestled costly in a
beautiful valley, and spread out upon
gently swelling and well cultivated hills
on all sides. An air of good taste and
comfort everywhere prevails, the early
settlers having selected eligible sites for
the homes and institutions of the burgh.
From all the hills the landscape is far
stretching and lovely, and especially so
now that Earth wears her royal garments
of emerald, gold, scarlet, purple and
brown.
David Mead was the pioneer of Mead
vile, having built the first log cabin of
the present town over four score years
ago. 1t was first incorporated as a town
in 1900, and had a slow, steady growth up
to 1860, when the population numbered
four thousand. In 1862 the locomotives
of the Atlantic and Great Western Rail
way walked up the Rip Van Wrinkles of
Sleepy Hollow, and Meadville began giant
strides in prosperity and growth. Already
the population has doubled, the business
quadrupled, and the coming year will in
augurate a city government upon the
ground visited by George Washington
while on his mission from Governor Din
widdie, of Virginia, to the French com
mander of the Forts at Venango and LIE
Beuf, both established on French Creek.
Meadville is distinguished for health as
well as beauty of locality, and as an edu-
cational centre. The shire town of Craw-
ford county, a weekly newspaper was
early established, and the number gradu-
ally grew to three wellconducted journals.
The Daily Republican is now published by
r. Lyle White-a handsome, good sized
sheet, with advertising columns that be-
speak a truly enterprising, thriving people.
Allegheny College dates back to 1915,
and for many years struggled along
as a Presbyterian institution. 1t finally
passed into the hands of the Method
lists, and that great Church organizati on
by Jealous efforts and liberal scholarships
put new life and energy into old Ale
| gheny. Professor LOOMS, the present
head of the institution, is a man of massive
frame and intellect, and an u%ntiTing work
er. He has the best interests of the Col
lege at heart, and, most generously aided
| from the purse of the Hon. CIV. Culyer-a
banker quite as important to the success of
Petrolia as spouting wells-President
LOOMS is fast putting Allegheny in the
front rank with Yale and Harvard. Mr..
Culver has enabled him to transfer the
famous Alger Collection of Shells and
Minerals from Boston to Meadville, the
originalcost of the collection being $40, 900,
though now purchased for a much less
sum. To accommodate the rapidly in
creasing classes a new Dormitory has been
built this season for one hundred students,
at a cost of $4,000, also the gift of Mr..
Culver; and he has also donated means
for the purchase in Paris and London of
such additional apparatus as might be
needed to place the College first in the
land as a scientific institution. The orders
have been filed, and the new apparatus is
now on its way to the West. Mr.. Culver
is an eminently practical as well as liberal
gentleman, and to make his educational
benefactions the more useful, he has
adopted a plan of supporting deserving
young men who lack means of their own,
during their college course. He loans such
the necessary money, to be repaid to the
fund whenever successful in professional or
business life. Quite q number of Culver
StTIdnnfs ara nnU- ina 1-rrhnnu oOd cTpnTTar
institutions, and we learn it is his intention
to increase his college boys to at least one
hundred. Although a citizen Of Franklin,
twenty-seven miles away, Mr.. Culver has
made the Methodists of Meadville the gift
of a beautiful site on the Public Diamond
for the elegant church they are about to
erect, the cash cost of the two lots being
$4,000. A native of Logan, Ohio-iust
in the prime of manhood, his age 36-what
Buckeye is not proud of brother Culver?
The Unitarian Theological Seminary
has also a commanding view of Meadville,
and bears marks of venerable age for a
Western institution. In reply to the
question addressed to q student by an ex-
cursionist-"What Theology is taught ~
the answer was-"Not any in particu-
lar"
The Atlantic and Great Western Rail
way has made Meadville a pleasant neigh
Dor to Cleveland. Many remember with
satisfaction the Meadville Booth at the
Sanitary Fair, and the liberal contribu-
tons to the Soldiers Aid Society of North
ern Ohio from the Huydekoper ladies and
their patriotic associates. The old Huy-
dekoper homesteads are inviting features
of Meadville, the large estates spreading
over Huydekoper Hill in richly variega-
ted lawns, fields, and woodlands. Among
the early settlers of the town met with at
the McHenry House, was Mr.. David Dick, |
whose father came up the Allegheny
River in a, keel boat seventy years ago.
Mr. Dick was full of pioneer "reminiscences,
having been the first to navigate the Allie
ghany by steam, in 1886. He introduced
the first stern wheel steamboat, which
was ridiculed by raftsmen and steamboat
men as the "D@d Yankee Sledr' Be-
fore stern-wheelers came into vogue the
rapids on the Allegheny were assembled by
warping the boats over, and great was the
surprise when Mr.. Dicks little stern
wheel craft steamed up them without a
warp line. Stern-wheelers have since
crowded side wheel steamers from the
upper Western Rivers as generally as
Propellers have from the Lakes.
From Meadville a broad gauge branch
railroad has been built by the Atlantic
and Great Western Company to Franklin,
twenty-seven miles, and thence to Oil
City, seven miles further. Between
Meadville and Franklin this route follows
the eastern bank of French Creek; and
from Franklin to Oil City, the southwest
ern bank of the Allegheny River. This
will be the return route of the excursion
party. Leaving Meadville for CORY, for
ty-one miles by the A. d q. w. Railway,
we pass for a considerable distance up the
fertile valley of French Creek, which