CUYAHOGA COUNTY—Continued

 

 

 

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present noble structure immediately arose from its ashes.  The Methodist Conference, in 1830, established a station here, Rev. PLIMPTON holding the charge.  In 1833 the First Baptist Society was organized with twenty-seven members, and erected a church edifice of brick on the corner of Seneca and Champlain streets, which remains there yet, although long since abandoned for religious purposes for a more pleasant locality and a more elegant structure.  The pioneer Roman Catholic church came in 1835 and built a house of worship in the valley on Columbus street.  The same year the Bethel was built on Water street for the use of sailors; and in 1839 the Hebrew congregation established their first synagogue, and built soon after a fine brick edifice on Eagle street.  In less than fifty years all these religious societies, denominations, churches and synagogues have flourished and multiplied in numbers and increased in wealth and influence, and all have been blessed with the happiness resulting from the consciousness that each institution has been guided and instructed by its respective rector, minister, priest and rabbi, ever earnest and faithful in his clerical ministrations, and not a few of whom have been pre-eminent for scholarly attainments and elegance of discourse.

 

As early as 1786 there was a trading-post at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river to facilitate the transshipment of flour and bacon brought overland from Pittsburg, destined thence by water to the military post at Detroit, being the first lake traffic at this point.  The commercial marine of the lakes, now surpassing that of the Mediterranean, had its genesis in the “Griffin,” a vessel of sixty tons, built on the Niagara river above the Falls, by LA SALLE, for exploring service, and sailed on its mission of discovery August 7, 1678.  The first vessel launched at Cleveland was a sloop of thirty tons, built in 1808 by the famous pioneer, Lorenzo CARTER, and named the “Zepher.”  From the “Griffin” and the “Zepher” to the year 1887 the lake marine has developed into the enormous proportion of 3,502 vessels of all classes–steamers and sail-craft–with a total tonnage of 905,277.57 tons, according to the excellent authority of the editor of the Marine Record, of Cleveland.

 

For nearly twenty years ferocious wild beasts of the dense forests in and surrounding Cleveland annoyed and terrified the inhabitants.  Bears entered their gardens and dwellings even in the daytime, and at night invaded the barnyards and pigsties, killing and carrying off young porkers, calves, and sheep; and wolves beset the night traveller on streets and avenues now lined with costly residences and palatial mansions.

 

In 1820 a stage line was established between Cleveland and Columbus, and coaches were run to Norwalk; soon thereafter to Pittsburg and Buffalo.  For thirty years this system of passenger travel flourished in all gayety, splendor, and excitement along the several routes, enlivening villages and awakening lone hamlets.

 

Cleveland was during that period a noted centre of the stage lines between the East and the West and South, until that system of travel was superseded by the railway system, about 1850, when the blast from the bugle and the crack of the stage-driver’s whip was no more heard along the turnpike on the high and dry parallel ridges and ancient shores of Lake Erie.

 

The first railway charter was that of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, followed soon by the Cleveland and Pittsburg, Cleveland and Toledo, and the Cleveland and Ashtabula, or Lake Shore, connecting with the New York Central and New York and Erie.  Thus, as early as 1852, a complete line was in operation from the sea-coast to Chicago, and even to Rock Island, on the Mississippi river.  This last great modern system of travel and transport had the immediate effect of sweeping from the chain of lakes, as it had the stages from the land, the line of splendid side-wheel steamers and floating palaces that for many years had plied between Buffalo and Chicago, each crowded with hundreds of passengers.

 

The railroads changed the order of business at Cleveland, and for a brief season the lake commerce at this port presented a gloomy aspect, and total ruin of the

 

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marine industry was prophesied.  Fortunately, however, the Cleveland and Mahoning Valley railroad was soon completed, extending into the great coal-fields, and opening up a new territory to trade, and laying the foundation and stimulating manufacturing enterprises, resulting eventually in the creation here of an industrial and producing centre now pre-eminent among the cities of the lakes.  Two other railroads within the last decade have been added to the railway system: the Valley railroad, along a portion of the line of the Ohio canal, and the Connotton Valley railroad, both leading into the great southern and eastern coal belt.

 

THE PERRY STAUTE, MONUMENT PARK.

 

With these facilities and the simultaneous opening up of the vast iron and copper regions of Lake Superior, the wonderful and almost mysterious alliance of coal and iron and fire along the banks of the lake and river, within the limits of Cleveland, has resulted in vast iron furnaces, rolling mills, and many branches incident thereto, such as wire mills, nuts and bolts, screws, shovels, engines, and machinery, together with every conceivable branch of manufacturing industry, from the great tube and exquisitely adjustable mechanism of the Lick telescope to a shingle-nail.  Here coal and iron meet, and in their resulting industries.

 

The central lowlands and broad meadows on either side of the wide navigable river for a distance of several miles are the sites of hundreds of great manufacturing plants, whose lofty smokestacks give daily and often nightly evidence of perpetual industry, while the broad and elevated plateaus for five miles distant on both sides are densely covered with mercantile houses, public buildings, mansions of the millionaires, and the more modest but goodly homes of 300,000 people.

 

Cleveland’s municipal existence dates from 1836, with John W. WILLEY, an eminent lawyer, as its first mayor.  At that date the west side of the river constituted Ohio City, but, in 1854, it was united with Cleveland, and William B. CASTLE was the first mayor after the union, the population being at the following census (1860) 44,000.  The city had already been lighted with gas.

 

The first great public enterprise after the union was in supplying the city with water pumped from a great distance from the lake shore to a reservoir on the most elevated land, the height thereof being artificially increased about a hundred feet,

 

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and from thence distributed, and from time to time since extended until nearly every street, house, and building enjoys the blessing of pure lake water, bountifully supplied.

In the possession of parks and public grounds the city is pre-eminently fortunate.  In addition to the central park of ten acres laid out by the original survey, and since the erection of the statue of Commodore PERRY, in 1860, called Monumental Park, LAKE VIEW PARK has been created along the sloping bluff from Seneca street east to Erie street, and is adorned and embellished in the best style of the landscape-gardener’s art.  THE CIRCLE is a finely ornamented

GARFIELD’S MONUMENT, LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.

 

ground on Franklin avenue, west side, from which radiates several streets.  It has a central rock structure in primitive style; moss and vine, covered with water jets, rivulets, and drinking fountains–a delightful summer evening resort.  WADE PARK came to the city already laid out and adorned through the munificence of Mr. J. H. WADE, of electrical fame.  It has an area of some sixty-five acres of ravine and upland level, traversed by a bountiful and ever-living stream of pure water, fed by the not far distant hills; is shaded with abundant trees and profuse with native and cultivated shrubbery, and is almost limitless in its extent of walks and drives.

 

SOUTH SIDE PARK is a fine, level piece of land, covered with native trees, but recently purchased by the city, and not yet developed and beautified to its utmost

 

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possibilities.  It is, however, destined to delight the eye and grace the south side of the municipality.

 

One hundred years has sufficed to populate a dozen or more municipal cemeteries, such as Erie, Woodlawn, Monroe, and the consecrated grounds of the Catholic church, all well kept.

 

Modern culture and taste, accompanied by individual and associated wealth, has largely removed the native dread of death, inspired by the lonely and neglected “graveyard” of primitive times, in the establishment independent of municipal authority, and often remote from cities, of cheerful and ornate cemetery grounds.

 

LAKE VIEW and RIVERSIDE represent the results of the wealth, forethought, and taste of J. H. WADE and J. M. CURTISS and their associates in the two enterprises.  The first of these cities of the dead overlooks the lake and comprises a tract of upwards of three hundred acres of wooded hill and dale, of oak and other forest trees.  The second overlooks the broad meadows and the winding river. 

 

It has a little over one hundred acres, with many richly wooded ravines, brooks, and springs utilized in fountains and ponds.  It has romantic and shady drives through its numerous dells, aggregating more than five miles, and is one of the most attractive and beautiful resorts of the city’s rural suburbs.

 

While hardly two decades have elapsed since Lake View and Riverside opened their portals, yet the vast number of elaborate monuments and tombs in every conceivable style of menumental art from the monoliths of the Pharaohs and the mausoleums of the Caesars to modern days, indicates the mighty annual increase of the silent inhabitants of these beautiful cities of the dead.

 

In pursuance of the terms of annexation several swing bridges were built over the river, and in 1878 the great arched VIADUCT of stone and iron was completed, spanning the wide valley from plateau to plateau, 3,211 feet in length, 68 feet high, and 64 feet wide, and costing $2,225,000.  It has double street railway tracks, carriage ways, and walks on both sides.

 

THE BURSH ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY’S WORKS.

 

There is not (1888) in process of construction by the government a harbor of refuge, to enable vessels to enter the port with safety.  The anchorage room within the enclosure of the extended breakwater is ample for the entire marine of the lakes, and the water is deep enough to float the largest lake vessels.  Estimated cost $2,000,000.

 

Among the number of manufacturing industries it should be remembered that here is the corporation and plant of the STANDARD OIL COMPANY, whose operations are world-wide, and whose dealings surpass in millions any other known institution in America or Europe.  Here also is the BRUSH ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY, with its vast manufacturing plant and machinery, and the home of the famous inventor.

 

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Of the dead, who by their life-deeds and testamentary provisions are canonized as noble benefactors, and as such held in reverent and honored memory, allusion must be here made to William and Leonard CASE, Joseph PERKINS, Henry CHISHOLM, and Amasa STONE.

 

Of the many persons of great wealth still living, of whose noble and generous deeds it would be pleasant to here record, it would seem invidious to discriminate where space is not adequate to mention all.  Suffice it to say, the millionaires of Cleveland are recognized as among its liberal public benefactors.

 

In addition to its excellent common school system and academical institutions, there may be now reckoned among the literary and scientific advantages of Cleveland, the ADELBERT COLLEGE; the CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE, at the head of which is Professor John N. STOCKWELL, well known to the savants of Europe as an Astronomical Mathematician; the WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM, organized in 1867, by Col. Charles WHITTLESEY, its president from the first until his death in October, 1886; and Judge Charles C. BALDWIN, its present president; the KIRTLAND SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE, named in honor of the late Professor Jared P. KIRTLAND, who in his lifetime was called the “Agassiz of the West;” the Case Library; the Cleveland Public Library, and three medical colleges.  An opera house and five theatres furnish adequate entertainment.

 

Eight street railroads furnish ample facilities for local passenger transport from the centre to any part of the city, and even into the rural regions beyond its corporate limits.

 

Hotel accommodations are among the advantages of the city.  There are probably more than twenty, all good, but of the famous old ones recently enlarged and refurnished may be noted the Weddell, American, and Forest City; while of the great modern structures, the Stillman and the Hollenden are unsurpassed.

 

The summer temperature of Cleveland is delightful.  The fresh cool air from the lake prevails throughout the heated term, and the evenings and nights are always pleasantly cool, making the city a delightful refuge from the sultry heat of the inland cities, and thousands from all parts of the country sojourn in the beautiful city during the summer.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

 

Cleveland has been strong from the beginning in its leading minds in every department of utility.  A few representative characters are here brought under notice.  First in order comes Gen. Moses CLEAVELAND, its founder.  The name is Saxon, and the family, before the Norman conquest, occupied an extensive landed estate in Yorkshire that was marked by open fissures, called by the Saxons as “clefts,” or “cleves,” hence the name, which has been variously spelled–Cleffland, Clifland, Cleiveland, Cleveland and Cleaveland, which is the way General Moses spelled it, and the place was so spelled until the Cleveland Advertiser was issued in 1830, when the editor, finding the type of his headline too large to extend across his page, dropped the first “a” and made it Cleveland.

 

All family names in the lapse of time, as is known to every genealogist, have undergone changes, and some so radical that many readers hereof would not know his own could he see it as written by his ancestors in the dim remote.  A bit of humor will do no harm just here, the mention of a hypothetical change of a name, that of General CORNWALLIS, made by a colored man in the long ago, who said, “In de American Rebolution, Gin’ral WASHINGTON he shell all de corn ob Gin’ral CORNWALLIS and make Gin’ral COBWALLIS.”

 

GENERAL MOSES CLEAVELAND was born in Canterbury, Conn., in 1754, graduated at Yale College in 1777, studied and practiced law in his native town.  In 1779 he was appointed by Congress captain of a company of sappers and miners in the army of the United States.  He was subsequently a member of the Connecticut Legislature and appointed a

 

 

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brigadier-general in the State militia–a position in that day deemed as one of distinguished honor.  He was also Grand Master of the Masonic Fraternity of the State.  He married Esther CHAMPION in 1794, by whom he had four children.

 

It is said that when he founded the city he predicted the time would come when it would have as many people as Old Windham, in Connecticut, which was then about 1,500.  After laying out the city he returned to Canterbury, where he died in 1806 aged fifty-three years.  He was a large, dignified man, of swarthy complexion, of sedate aspect, and

 

GENERAL MOSES CLEAVELAND.

 

often taken for a clergyman.  He was very kindly in his nature and of excellent judgment.

 

On the 23d of July, 1888, being the anniversary of the arrival of Gen. CLEAVELAND, a fine bronze statue to his memory was unveiled on the public square.  It had been erected through the efforts of Mr. Harvey RICE, the venerable president of the Early Settlers’ Association, who has done so much for educational and patriotic purposes in a life now prolonged to eighty-nine years.

 

The work is a circular pedestal of polished granite 7 ½ feet high, surmounted by a life-like statue of the general, 7 3/4 feet high, weighing 1,450 pounds, U. S. standard bronze, cut in one piece, representing him in the character of a surveyor in the field, with a Jacob’s staff in his right hand and an old time compass clasped in the elbow of his left arm.  On its base is the inscription, “General Moses CLEAVELAND, Founder of the City, 1796.”

 

JARED POTTER KIRTLAND was born in Wallingford, Conn., in 1793, and died in Cleveland in 1877, aged eighty-four years.  He graduated at the Yale Medical School, and at the age of thirty emigrated to Poland, Ohio, where he practiced his profession and, as before, devoted his leisure to natural science.  When a mere youth at school he had become an expert in the cultivation of fruits and flowers, made his first attempt of new varieties of fruit, and managed a large plantation of white mulberry trees for the rearing of sild worms.

 

After coming to Ohio he served three terms in the State Legislature, from 1837 to 1842 was medical professor at Willoughby, in 1837 was assistant on the first goelogical survey of Ohio and made a report on its zoology.  About 1840 he removed to Rockport, just west of and near Cleveland, and became one of the founders of the Cleveland Medical College.  In the civil war he was examining surgeon for recruits and devoted his pay to the Soldiers’ Aid Society.  He made many investigations in many departments of natural

 

 

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history which were published in scientific journals.

 

In 1845 he was one of the founders of the Cleveland Academy of Natural Science, which in 1865 became the Kirtland Society of Natural History, and to which he gave his rich collection of specimens.  He was a man of great learning and personal magnetism and more than any one of his day was his influence in improving agriculture and horticulture and diffusing a love of natural history throughout the entire Northwest.

 

DR. KIRTLAND.

 

Writes Col. Chas. WHITTLESEY: “As a naturalist he was self-educated.  Nature had formed him mentally and physically for that mission.  In 1829, while studying the unios or fresh water mussels, he discovered that authors and teachers of conchology had made nearly double the number of species which are warrantable.  Names had been given to species to what is only a difference of form, due to males and females of the same species.  This conclusion was announced in “Silliman’s Journal of Science.”

 

“The fraternity of naturalists in the United States and Europe were astonished because of the value of the discovery and the source from whence it came.  There were hundreds and probably thousands of professors who had observed the unios and enjoyed the pleasure of inventing new names for the varieties.  A practicing physician in the backwoods of Ohio had shattered the entire nomenclature of the naides.  At the Cincinnati meeting of the American Association in 1852, Professor KIRTLAND produced specimens of unios of both sexes, from their conception through all stages to the perfect animal and its shell.  Agassiz was present and sustained his views and said they were likewise sustained by the most eminent naturalists of Europe.  It is difficult in a brief paper like this to do justice to the life and character of a man who lived so long laboring incessantly regardless of personal comfort, and did so much to extend the dominion of absolute

 

 

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knowledge.  Like CUVIER, AGASSIZ and TYNDALL, his work has shown that theory and discussion do not

settle anything worthy of a place in science, that it is only those who base their conclusions on observed nature whose reputations become permanent.”

 

In person Dr. KIRTLAND was a large man, with a great heart and lungs and an untiring worker, to whom time was more precious than gold.  One who knew him well said of him he possessed more good and useful traits of character than any person he ever knew–so unselfish, social, kind to all–beloved by both old and young he seemed to be happiest when making others happy.  He cultivated the taste for the beautiful by distributing freely, at times almost robbing himself of rare fruit or costly plants to distribute to his neighbors.  He was a hearty and sincere believer in the Christian religion, but adopting no particular religious creed.  When near death he wrote: “My family all attention.  Every day growing weaker.  The great change must soon occur.  On the mercies of a kind Providence who created me, who has sustained and helped me through a long life, I rely with a firm faith and hope.  We know not what is beyond the grave.  Vast multitudes have gone there before us.  Love to all.  Farewell.”

 

REUBEN WOOD, Governor of Ohio from 1851 to 1853, was born at Royalton, Vermont, in 1793, and died in 1864, at his farm

 

 

Governor Reuben Wood.in Rockport.  When the war of 1812 broke out he was temporarily living with an uncle in Canada, where he was studying the classics and reading law.  He was subjected to military service against his own country.  To this he would not submit, and, though placed under guard, succeeded at the hazard of his life in effecting an escape in a small boat across the entire width of Lake Ontario to Sackett’s Harbor.  He then worked on the home farm to aid his widowed mother and studied law.  In 1818 he emigrated to Cleveland and engaged in the practice of his profession.  He was three times elected to the State Senate; in 1830 was elected President-Judge of the Third Judicial District; in 1833 became Judge of the Supreme Court by the unanimous vote of the Legislature; in 1841 he was re-elected by the same vote, and for three years was the Chief-Justice.  He was elected Governor by the Democratic party in 1850 by a majority of 11,000, and re-elected under the new Constitution in 1851 by a majority of 26,000.  He resigned to accept the position of consul at Valparaiso, Chili, and later became minister.

 

The climate proved too delicious; it seldom or never rained, little else than a continuous calm and sunshine, while humanity there in its stagnation of indolence and ignorance offered nothing to interest him.  In his quick disgust he was stricken with nostalgia as bad as any of our poor soldier boys in the war time, resigned, and came home that he might once again be a sharer in the activities of a wonderfully progressive intellectual people, and again enjoy the sight of a wild, howling storm on Lake Erie.  Thus it was that he, whom in the political parlance of the day was called all through Ohio from his great height and residence “the tall chief of the Cuyahogas,” returned home to pass the remainder of his days on his noble farm, “Evergreen Place,” on the margin of the beautiful lake he loved so well.

 

Harvey RICE, from whose article in the “Magazine of Western History” we take some of the facts in this personal sketch and in the two next to follow, writes of him: “Governor WOOD was one of nature’s noblemen, large-hearted and generous to a fault.  Nature gave him a slim tall figure over six feet in height and replete with brains and mother wit.

 

He was quick in his perceptions, an excellent classical scholar, a man of the people and honored by the people.  He possessed tact and shrewdness; his statesmanship exhibited to a high degree wisdom and fore-cast, while on the bench his decisions showed a profound knowledge of law, and crowned his life-work as one of the ablest jurists of the State.”

 

And Judge THURMAN, on “Lawyers’ Day” Ohio Centennial, Columbus, Wednesday, September 19, 1888, after speaking of the greatness of Thomas EWING, thus expressed himself of Governor WOOD: “And that unsurpassed nisi prius Judge Reuben WOOD, who never left a jury when he charged it, but who was clear-headed and brainy, and always to the point.”

 

SHERLOCK JAMES ANDREWS, the son of a physician, was born in Wallingford, Conn., in 1801, graduated at Union College, for a time was assistant of Prof. SILLIMAN at Yale, came to Cleveland in 1825, and was one of the long noted law firm of ANDREWS, FOOT & HOYT.  In 1840 he was elected to Congress, in 1848 was elected Judge of the

 

 

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Superior Court of Cleveland; was a member of the State Constitutional Convention, and died in 1880.  He was one of the leaders of the Ohio bar–a man of pure principles and noble aspirations.  Learned in the law and of persuasive and somewhat impassioned eloquence he was noted for good sense and an electric wit that would convulse alike the court and audience.  A brother, also eminent in his profession, John W. ANDREWS, settled in Columbus, where he yet resides, and in his advanced age is an honored member of the “State Board of Charities.”

 

RUFUS P. RANNEY is of Scotch descent.  He was born in Blanford, Mass., in 1813, and when a lad of eleven years came with his parents to Freedom, Portage county.  He chopped wood at twenty-five cents a cord, and so earned money with which to enter Western Reserve College.  Without graduating he traveled on foot to Jefferson, Ashtabula county, carrying all his worldly goods on his back with a single exception–an extra shirt that went into his hat.  He then entered the law office of GIDDINGS & WADE.  When Mr. GIDDINGS was elected to Congress, he formed a partnership with Mr. WADE.  At the age of thirty-two he opened a law office at Warren.  He was twice put in nomination by the Democratic party for Congress.  In 1851 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention, and, although a young man, was regarded as its Hercules.  He has been twice a Judge of the Supreme Bench, and was once the Democratic candidate for Governor against Mr. Dennison just before the war, and when that ensued made speeches to secure enlistments.

 

As a lawyer he stands with scarcely an equal in the State.  Harvey RICE wrote of him: “Judge RANNEY is not only born a logician, but has so improved nature’s gifts as to become a most learned if not matchless reasoner.  His mental powers are gigantic.  In a great case, knarled and knotted as it may be, he always proves himself equal to its clear exposition and logical solution.  And yet he is modest even to timidity.  His presence is dignified, and he is a man who has ripened into a noble manhood.”

 

HENRY CHISHOLM, who was the founder and President of the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company, the largest establishment of the kind in the world, was born in Lochgelly, Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1822.  He was by trade a carpenter, and when twenty years old landed at Montreal an almost penniless youth.  He became a master-builder, worked for a time on the Cleveland breakwater, and in 1857 founded, at Newburg, the iron manufacturing firm of CHISHOLM, JONES & Co., from which beginning arose “the great establishment, the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company, which is the pride of Cleveland and one of the marvels of modern times;” employing in all 8,000 workmen.  His brother, three years younger, WILLIAM CHISHOLM, the inventor, joined him in 1857, and later engaged in the manufacture of spikes, bolts, and horse-shoes, and after demonstrating by experiments the practicability of the manufacture of screws from Bessemer steel, in 1871 organized the Union Steel Company of Cleveland.  He afterwards devised new methods and machinery for Charles F. Brush, Electrician.manufacturing steel-shovels, spades and scoops, and established a factory for the new industry.  In 1882 he began to make steam-engines of a new model, adapted for hoisting and pumping, and transmitters for carrying coal and ore between vessels and railroad cars.

 

CHARLES FRANCIS BRUSH, electric inventor, was born in Euclid, Cuyahoga county, in 1840, the son of a farmer, and was educated at the University of Michigan.  When a mere youth of fifteen he constructed microscopes and telescopes for himself and companions, and devised a plan for turning on gas in street-lamps and lighting and then extinguishing it.  After returning from college he fitted up a laboratory and obtained a fine reputation as an analytical chemist.

 

In 1875 he turned his attention to electric lighting.  “The probability of producing a dynamo machine that could produce the proper amount and kind of electrical current for operating several lamps was submitted to him, and in less than two months a machine was built so perfect and complete that for ten years it has continued in regular use without change.  A lamp that then could work successfully on a circuit with a large number of other lamps, so that all would burn uniformly, was then necessary, and this he produced in a few weeks.  These two inventions were successfully introduced in the United States during 1876.  Since then he has produced more than fifty patents, two-thirds of which are sources of revenue.  They relate principally to details of his two leading inventions–the dynamo and the lamp–and to methods of their production.  All of his patents, present and future, are

 

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the property of the Electric Brush Company of Cleveland, and his foreign patents are owned by the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light of London.  Pecuniary rewards and honors have been awarded him; the French government decorated him “Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.”  Mr. BRUSH is of commanding presence, uncommonly fine physique, and his residence is one of the palatial mansions for which Euclid Avenue is famed.  He is yet a hard worker, his mind absorbed in invention and discovery.  Such men are benefactors beyond the power of expression.

 

JOHN HENRY DEVEREUX, who died in Cleveland in 1886, at the age of fifty-four years, was one of the most efficient railroad managers and foremost railroad men in the country.  He was born in Boston, and when sixteen years of age came to Northern Ohio, and eventually served as construction engineer on several railroads.  When the civil war arose he was in Tennessee occupying a very prominent position in his profession, when he offered his services to the government and became Superintendent of the Military Railroads in Virginia.  Here the executive capacity he displayed in bringing order out of confusion, overcoming apparently insurmountable obstacles to move the armies and supply transportation, was the wonder and admiration of the highest officers of the government.  In 1864 he returned to Cleveland, and in succession became President of the C. C. C. & I., the A. & G. W. and the I. & St. L.  By his personal courage in 1877 he prevented 800 of his men from joining in the railroad riots.

 

The name LEONARD CASE, father and son, each thus named alike, will long recall pleasant associations with Cleveland people.  The elder, who died here in 1864, at the age of eighty, was a native of Pennsylvania.  He came to Cleveland from Warren, Trumbull county, in 1816, and followed the business of lawyer, banker, and land agent.  He took a warm interest in the progress of Cleveland; is said to have begun the work of planting the trees whose luxuriant foliage now so pleasantly adorns the “Forest City.”  He was the president of the village, the first county auditor, a great friend of the canals, and one of the projectors of the first railroad–the C. C. & C.  With the great growth of his fortunes he enlarged his benefactions.  His son, lately also deceased, inheriting his father’s disposition and fortune, made a crowning gift of the Case Building, valued at $300,000, to the Cleveland Library Association, a gift seldom equaled in the annals of private munificence.

 

EDWIN COWLES, one of the veteran editors and printers of Ohio, is of Puritan stock, born of Connecticut parents, in 1825, in Austinburg, Ashtabula county.  He learned the printing business in the office of the Cleveland Herald, now the Leader, of which he is the editor.  In the winter of 1854-55 he was one of those who, in the editorial room of his paper, took the initiatory steps for the formation of the Edwin Cowles.Republican party of Ohio, which was a consolidation of the Free Soil, Know-Nothing, and Whig parties, into one great party.

 

In 1861 he first suggested in his paper the nomination by the Republican party of David TOD, a war-Democrat, to unite all the loyal elements in the cause of the Union; and in 1863, in like manner suggested that of John BROUGH, both of which were acted upon, and with most excellent results.  Immediately after the Union defeat at Bull Run he wrote an editorial headed, “Now is the Time to Abolish Slavery!”  Strong in his feelings, fearless, outspoken, and an untiring worker, he has been a living, aggressive force in Cleveland.

 

In 1870, perceiving the great peril to life from the various railroad crossings in the valley of the Cuyahoga, between the heights of the east and west sides of Cleveland, he conceived the idea of a high bridge, or viaduct as it is generally called, to span the valley and Cuyahoga river, connecting the two hill-tops, thus avoiding going up and down hill and crossing the “valley of death.”  He wrote an elaborate editorial favoring the city’s building the viaduct.  His suggestion met with fierce opposition from the other city papers, it being considered by them utopian and unnecessary; but it was submitted to the popular vote, and carried by an immense majority.  This great work, costing nearly $3,000,000, is one of the wonders of Cleveland.

 

“Mr. COWLES’ success in life has been attained under extraordinary disadvantages.  From his birth he was affected with a defect in hearing, which caused so peculiar an impediment of speech that no parallel case was to be found on record.  Until he was twenty-three years of age the peculiarity of this impediment was not discovered.  At that age

 

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Prof. KENNEDY, a distinguished elocutionist, became interested in his case, and, after a thorough examination, it was found that he never heard the hissing sound of the human voice, and consequently had never made that sound.  Many of the consonants sounded alike to him.  He never heard the notes of the seventh octave of the piano or organ, never heard the upper notes of a violin, the fife in martial music, never heard a bird sing, and has always supposed that the music of the birds was a poetical fiction.  This discovery of his physical defect enabled him to act accordingly.  After much time spent in practising under Prof. KENNEDY’s tuition, he was enabled to learn arbitrarily how to make the hissing sound, but he never hears the sound himself, although he could hear ordinary low-toned conversation.”

 

HENRY B. PAYNE, a Senator from Ohio in the National Congress, was born in 1810, in Hamilton, New York, of Connecticut stock; graduated at Hamilton college, and came to the then village of Cleveland in 1833, and soon entered upon the practice of the law.  In 1851 he was the first president of the Cleveland and Columbus railroad, its inception and construction having been mainly due to his efforts in conjunction with Alfred KELLY and Richard HILLIARD.  He was early interested in manufacturing enterprises, having been at one time director and stockholder in some eighteen different corporations.  In 1851 he was the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in opposition to Benjamin F. WADE, and defeated by only one majority.  In the war period he made speeches advocating enlistments.  In 1874 he was elected to Congress, and during the exciting contest in the winter of 1876-77 over the election of President, he was chairman of the committee chosen by the House to unite with one from the Senate in devising a method for settling the difficulty, which resulted in the celebrated Electoral Commission.  In 1875 he was prominently mentioned as the probable Democratic nominee for President.  “As a lawyer Mr. PAYNE is distinguished for fidelity, thoroughness, and forensic ability; and as a man, for public spirit, coolness of temper, suavity, and genial humor, combined with firmness and strength of will.”

 

JOSEPH PERKINS was born in Warren, Trumbull county, Ohio, July 5, 1819, and died at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., August 26, 1885.  He was a son of General Simon PERKINS, one of the earliest and most active pioneers of Ohio, who was extensively engaged in land transactions, and from who he inherited a large estate.

 

At the age of twenty Joseph Perkins graduated from Marietta College.  He then returned to Warren, and, after settling his father’s estate, removed to Cleveland in 1852, where the remainder of his life was spent.

 

He was largely interested in banking, and as a business man showed great financial and executive abilities.  The “Historical and Biographical Cyclopedia of Ohio,” from Joseph Perkinswhich we extract this sketch, says of him: “His personal honesty was such that he won the unquestioned trust of every one with who he came in contact, and in the course of a long life that covered many large transactions,

 

involved great sums of money, and touched on many personal interests, no one ever suspected him of a dishonest act or assigned to him a base motive.  His character shone through all his deeds as the pure crystal.”  It is not as a business man that Mr. PERKINS is best known, but through his great philanthropy and boundless generosity, his active interest and labor in public and private charities, which were not confined within the limits of his own city or State lines, but extended to many institutions in the South as well as the North.

 

Mr. PERKINS’ most prominent public work was through his connection with the Ohio Board of State Charities.  It is but to repeat the language of all cognizant with the facts to say that his was the master-hand that shaped the work of that Board from the beginning.  He was appointed by Governor COX, in 1867, on the formation of the Board, and, by successive reappointments, continued a member until his death.  On the occasion of the first meeting, he became impressed with the deplorable condition of many of the county jails.

 

He gave the matter not only time and thought, but at his own expense traveled all over the Eastern States, inspecting a large number of penal and reformatory institutions, and giving the matter a close and intelligent study.  He was an investigator and a philosopher as well, and, on seeing a defect, could not only discover its cause, but work intelligently toward a remedy.  He modeled a plan which was accepted by the Board and made its own, and that has become known and copied the country over as the “jail system” of the Board of State Charities of Ohio.  What he aimed to achieve was a

 

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