The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1948-03-11
A Quaint Ohio
Hamlet

two-year-old hamlet on the south
shore of Lake Erie, $50 years ago
one of the kind where residents for
got the month and every member of
every family intimately knew all of
the others.
Actually, the city directory read
something like this: Job V. Stiles
and family; Edward Paine and
family; Ezekiel Hawley and family;
Lorenzo Carter and family; Rodol-
phus Edwards and family and Ma
thaniel Doane and his family of
nine.
There were eight houses in the
village-all log cabins and two of
them empty. Elijah Gum and James
Kingsbury, from Conneaut, had built
them the year before but soon had
moved out and started a town of
their own-Newburg, five miles
away. 1t was we'll they had left
| Conneaut. The families which win
tered there that year suffered much
from cold and want Of food.
Hunger and Ague
In the lakeshore village of eight
houses and six families there was
no church, no school, no store, no
road and little food. Just the two
dozen citizens, the hunger and the
ague-that was all. Everybody had
the chills and fever and there was
no medicine and no doctor.
That was Cleveland, now metro
polls of Ohio, back in 1898.
But for David, the 12-year-old
son, the Doane family would have
barely pulled through. All had the
ague and the chills and fever struck
each member every day. For more
than two months David, after having
his daily chill walked the five miles
to Newburg and got a peck of meal
from Kingsbury, ground it in an old
coffee grinder then waited until his
second attack of ague was over and
started home with it. Once when he
was too i'll to make the trip, the
lDoanes lived solely on turnips.
Pioneer Remedies
Carter also had the fever and ague
but managed to keep the little
venison through his prowess as a
hunter. Better versed in woodcraft
than the Others, he doctored them
with butternut bark instead of
calomel and used dogwood bark for
quinine.
In November, that year, four of
the men who had so far recovered
as to have ague attacks every two
or three days, started in the only
boat for Walnut creek, Pennsylvania,
to obtain flour for the colony. But
just below Euclid creek a storm
drove them ashore, broke their boat
into pieces and put an end to their
hopes for food. 1t was with The
greatest difficulty they saved their
lives and got back to Cleveland.
During the entire winter and fol-
lowing summer the settlement had
no flour other than that ground in
hand or coffee mills. Unable to
separate the bran, the bread turned
out like that of Graham's"
That summer the first road on the
Reserve was opened. 1t began about
10 miles from the lake on the
Pennsylvania line and extended to
Cleveland.
One Family in Cleveland
In January, 1899, Doane moved t.
Doane's Corners and other of the
families to Newburg and back to
Conneaut and the Carriers were the
only family left in Cleveland.
That year Wheeler W. Williams
from Norwich, Connecticut, opened &
small grist and saw mill at the
falls at Newburg-the first and only
mill on the Reserve. The following
year, 1900, both Newburg and Cleve'
land began to build up.
Among those who settled in
Cleveland we're the families of David
Clark and Amos Spafford. Their
came John and Benjamin Wood, R
H. Blinn and Samuel Jones.
Jones was a pretty good back
woods fiddler and his coming was
ali the little village needed TO SET
it off in a mad social whirl. The
first ball ever held in Cleveland was
at Carter's cabin on the Fourth OF
July, 1907. About 30 persons OF
both sexes were *here and Jones
battered backwoods fiddle provided
the music. Refreshments consisted
of whisky and maple sugar, then
maple sugar and whisky and finally,
Just whisky They danced The
scamper-down, double shuttle, west
ern swing we'll into the morning
hours
Indian Camps Nearby
Across on the west bank of the
Cuyahoga River We're two Indian
camps where several hundred Chip
pewas and Ottawas lived. These,
when they returned from successful
hunts, made good customers for
Carter, who had the first ''make-