Ohio History Journal

The Western Reserve.             259

 

 

 

THE WESTERN RESERVE.

 

HOW IT HAS PLAYED AN IMPORTANT PART IN THE HISTORY

OF OHIO AND OF THE NATION.

 

BY F. E. HUTCHINS, ESQ.

The Connecticut Western Reserve, or, as it is commonly

called, "The Western Reserve," has from the beginning played

an important part not only in the affairs of the State of Ohio,

but also in those of the United States. While there is a very

good general idea of what this "Reserve" now is, especially

among its own people and those of the State, but little is gen-

erally known of its origin, history, settlement, or the reason for

its name. The subject is much too extensive to be treated ex-

cept in the most general way, upon such an occasion as this.

It had its origin in that most prolific source of controversies

among men and nations - a dispute as to boundary - and was

the result of that which if adopted, as in this case, would pre-

vent much of war and litigation - a compromise.

From the first settlement of this country by the early Pil-

grims, the British Sovereigns, from "Good Queen Bess", down

to a time near our revolution, had made extensive grants of

land in this country to the different colonies and provinces here,

and to favorites of the Crown, and some in payment of debts

and obligations, notably, so far as this talk is concerned, to Mas-

sachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, and Virginia, and

to Lord Baltimore and William Penn.

Some of these grants extended clear across the continent,

from the Atlantic to the Pacific, while others had very indefinite

extents and boundaries, frequently conflicting with and over-

lapping upon each other, so that under these grants, different

provinces and different persons claimed the same land. And,

as none had any other title than that from the British Crown,

infinite confusion and disputes ensued. These disputes be-

came so fierce as to result in armed hostilities and in the shed-

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ding of blood. They were many times before the Colonial Con-

gress, and they delayed the acceptance of the Articles of Con-

federation, which were not finally accepted by the Thirteen Colo-

nies until 1777, Maryland being the last to come in.

Many of the most distinguished citizens and statesmen of

that time took part in the endeavor to adjust these disputes and

settle these conflicting claims, and their efforts were finally

crowned with success, resulting in the cession and surrender

of these disputed claims and lands to the general Government for

the benefit of all the States.

And here, as this entertainment is intended to be somewhat

educational in its character, I want to stop in my history of the

Western Reserve to tell you of something in which the people

of that section have felt most profound interest. You have all

heard of the famous "Mason and Dixon's Line," by which the

compromise measures of Congress endeavored to settle the ir-

reconcilable conflict between slavery and freedom in the United

States, to prevent two irreconcilable and antagonistic principles

from coming in conflict when placed side by side, by devoting

all of our territory and public domain, west of the Missouri and

north of that line to freedom, and all south of it to slavrey.

The general idea, and I have no doubt most of you shart

it, is that this line had its origin and name in these iniqui-

tous compromise measures fixing the boundary between freedom

and slavery, but this is a mistake. The line was run and had

its name nearly a century earlier, and it came about in this way:

King Charles I had made a large grant of land to Lord Balti-

more and Charles II had made large grants to his brother the

Duke of York, and one to William Penn in payment of a debt

due to Penn's father. These grants included what are now the

States of Pennsylvania,Maryland,and Delaware, and much more.

Penn purchased from the Duke of York much or all of his title.

The boundaries of these grants were so uncertain as to lead to

most serious disputes and controversies, chiefly as to what was

the southern boundary of William Penn's grant - the Province

of Pennsylvania - and the northern boundary of Maryland and

Virginia. These began between William Penn and Lord Balti-

more. Finally these two proprietors sent over from England

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The Western Reserve.              261

two eminent mathematicians, Jeremiah Mason and Charles

Dixon, to survey and settle this line, which they did in 1763-1767.

They surveyed and established a line commencing at a point

in the Delaware River and running due west, and marked it

with mile-stones for two hundred and forty-four miles, which

was the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and the northern

one of Maryland, and has so remained to this day. Its precise

location is 39 degrees 43 minutes 26 3-10 seconds north latitude.

Subsequently the same kind of dispute arose between Penn-

sylvania and Virginia, which continued until after the close of

the Revolutionary War and was settled in 1785 by extending the

original Mason and Dixon's line due west five degrees of longi-

tude, to be computed from the Delaware River, as the southern

boundary of Pennsylvania and the northern one of Virginia, and

establishing a line running north from this point and extremity

as the western boundary of Pennsylvania, and so it has remained

to this day; this latter line became also the eastern line of the

Western Reserve.

This was the origin of the famous Mason and Dixon's line

- famous for the part it had in the irrepressible conflict between

freedom and slavery in the United States; and it will be seen

that in its origin, it had nothing whatever to do with this matter.

Its only subsequent connection with this subject was that by

the compromise measures of 1850, Congress adopted an exten-

sion of this line west of the State of Missouri as the boundary

line between the prospective free and slave States.

And it will be seen that from first to last the line was a

compromise - first, a rightful compromise, in favor of peace

and unity, of the disputed claims of contesting owners, and last,

a base compromise between freedom and slavery, by which the

representatives in the Congress of a great free Republic under-

took to devote a territory, large enough for an empire, forever

to human slavery and human bondage. And the ill fame of

Mason and Dixon's line, thus acquired by its subsequent adop-

tion in a bad cause, has so overshadowed the just fame of its

origin that the latter is little known and less remembered.

But, to return to our history of the Reserve. As I have

said, the States having claims to western territory surrendered

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the same to the general Government. Connecticut, in doing so

by her deed of cession of September 14, 1786, reserved a tract of

land bounded north by the international line, east by the western

line of Pennsylvania, south by the forty-first parallel of north

latitude, and west by a line parallel with and one hundred and

twenty miles west from the Pennsylvania line.

Practically the northern line is Lake Erie, so that this terri-

tory is bounded north by Lake Erie, east by Pennsylvania, south

by forty-one degrees north latitude, and west by a line parallel

with and one hundred and twenty miles west of the Pennsylvania

line. And this is the "Connecticut Western Reserve," and so

called because Connecticut, in surrendering her claims to western

lands, reserved to herself this territory and did not grant it by

her deed of cession.

By reference to your maps you will see that this forty-first

parallel of north latitude - the southern boundary of the Reserve,

-- passes through the southern parts of Mahoning and Summit

counties, and is the southern line of Portage, Medina, and Huron

counties. The Reserve now embraces Ashtabula and Trumbull

counties, two-thirds of Mahoning, Portage, Geauga, Lake, and

Cuyahoga, and the most of Summit, Medina, Lorain, Erie and

Huron counties.

During the Revolutionary War many people of Connecticut

had seriously suffered, chiefly from fire, from the incursions of

the British troops, and the State being poorly able to compen-

sate them in money decided to do so in land. Accordingly the

General Assembly of that State appointed a committee to deter-

mine the names and losses of these sufferers. The number was

thus determined to be 1,870, and the aggregate of losses £161,-

548 11s 6½d, and on May 11, 1792, the State quit-claimed for the

benefit of these sufferers its title to 500,000 acres of land lying

across the west end of the Western Reserve, embracing what are

now the counties of Erie and Huron. And this tract has ever

since been known as "The Fire Lands."

After the cession of her western claims to the general gov-

ernment and the use of the Fire Lands portion of the Reserve

to pay her debt to some of her people, it became a serious ques-

tion with Connecticut what to do with the remainder of the

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The Western Reserve.                263

Western Reserve. It was not exactly like a "White Elephant"

on her lands, for it cost her nothing, but it was quite like one in

the respect.that she had no use for it and could not sell it. She

tried to sell it and failed. It was a long way off from Connecti-

cut, was a wilderness scarcely known, and was inhabited only by

savages, who claimed and had an older and better title than she

had. Besides, her own title was liable to serious objection and

was in great danger of being superseded by the better title of the

United States, derived either from the cessions from the other

States claiming the same territory, or, if they had no title, from

the treaty of peace with Great Britain, which ceded to the United

States all her claims to this territory. There was another reason,

to be mentioned later, why Connecticut found it difficult to sell

the Western Reserve, but finally in September, 1795, she sold

the whole remaining tract, without measurement, to thirty-five

persons for $1,200,000. This, the largest land sale ever made in

Ohio, was purely a matter of speculation.

The purchase was supposed to contain over 4,000,000 acres,

and at just 4,000,000 acres, the original price of all the land in

the Western Reserve, except the Fire Lands, was thirty cents an

acre. But, because Lake Erie, the north boundary, took toward

the west, a more southerly trend than was supposed or shown

by the old maps, the amount was in fact, a little less than three

million acres. The fact that a mistake of over a million acres

could be made in a single land sale will serve to call attention

to the then condition of this part of the country, and how little

was known of it.

This $1,200,000, with its accumulated interest, has for many

years constituted the entire common school fund of the State of

Connecticut. It could not well have been put to better use.

The purchase was made upon credit, the purchasers giving

their several bonds for several sums aggregating $1,200,000, and

afterwards generally securing their payment by mortgages.

While the purchase was nominally made by thirty-five persons,

there were fifty-eight interested in it.

These organized themselves into what is known as "The

Connecticut Land Co.," caused the purchase to be surveyed into

townships five miles square, and subsequently divided it among

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the owners in proportion to the sum paid by each of the

$1,200,000 purchase price.

There is much interesting history connected with this part

of the transaction, but the time or occasion does not serve

to state it here; but there are a few facts connected with it

that ought to be more generally known. Usually in tracing

title to land in this country, and whenever that title is in dispute,

it is necessary, in order to maintain it, to trace the title, in regu-

lar succession, either to a sovereign State or to the United States,

the only recognized sources of title to lands. But on the Western

Reserve, outside of the Fire Lands, it is necessary to trace it

back only to the Connecticut Land Company. This is because

by the act of its legislature all the title that Connecticut had to

this part of the Reserve passed to and vested in that company,

so that if the State had title this Company had, and any the

properly derived from it must be good and it is unnecessary to go

back any further. And, on the other hand, if Connecticut had no

title originally, because of the better title in one or more of the

States, yet these had conveyed their title to the general Govern-

ment, and if none of them had title then the United States ob-

tained an absolute title by the treaty of peace with Great Britain,

and when later, as will be mentioned, it accepted governmental

jurisdiction over the Reserve, it confirmed the title of Connecti-

cut and of the Land Company. So that there is no place where

there is better or more security for land titles than on the Re-

serve, as they merge the title of all the claimant States of the

United States, and of Great Britain. But even this, as in the

case of most original land grabbers, takes no account of the

better Indian title, of which I shall speak later.

Another matter of interest is the frequency with which the

names of persons occur in the names of townships on the Re-

serve. As I have said, the Connecticut Land Company appor-

tioned its land in proportion to the sums paid by the original

purchasers. In some cases, one paid for and took a whole town-

ship and called it after his name. Thus Cleveland was named

for General Moses Cleveland, Warren for Moses Warren, one

of the surveyors and proprietors, Youngstown for John Young,

and many others in the same way.

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The Western Reserve.               265

 

Another matter of interest and of more importance is the

way land is decribed on the Reserve, as to the township in

which it lies, on deeds of conveyance. Originally, and to a

great extent still, it is described as being in township number -

of Range - west, in the Connecticut Western Reserve, and this

is quite as accurate and certain without the name of the township

or even the county as with it. As I have said, the southeast cor-

ner of the Western Reserve is the intersection of the western line

of Pennsylvania with the forty-first parallel of north latitude.

The surveyors laid off the Reserve into townships five miles

square, beginning five miles west of this southeast corner, and

running north to the north boundary, Lake Erie. Other parallel

lines, five miles apart, were run until the western boundary was

reached. The spaces between these lines were called ranges.

Thus, the first, or the one next the Pennsylvania line, was called

range one, the next, range two, and so on. Then lines were

run transversely, or east and west, five miles apart, beginning

five miles north of the south boundary line. The spaces be-

tween these lines were called townships, and were numbered

consecutively from the southern lines, so that a township was

accurately described by stating in what range it was west and the

number of township north. Thus Youngstown is township two

of range two, for it is the second township north of the southern

boundary and in the second range of townships west of the Penn-

sylvania line. Warren is township four because it is the fourth

one north, and range four because it is the fourth range of town-

ships west of the Pennsylvania line. So that any township is

accurately described by its number and range.

Having thus spoken very generally of the survey and distri-

bution of these lands, we now go back to the time when this

survey was begun. These bold prospectors of a new country

had bought a large tract of land for an enormous sum in those

days, and the serious question for them with reference to this

purchase, was "What shall the harvest be?" Many of them were

anxious to try their fortunes in the West, but it was a very far-off

West. Not only was their purchase an absolutely unbroken wil-

derness, but it was separated from them by many leagues of wil-

derness, forest, lake, river, swamp, and mountain, inhabited by

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the most savage and warlike Indian tribes, with no roads but

such as they cut through the woods, and no food or supplies but

what they took with them. Canandaigua, N. Y., and Pittsburg

were the western outposts of civilization, the Reserve being ab-

solutely uninhabited save by Indians, and save the ponies and

dogs of the Indians, not a domestic animal was in the entire ter-

ritory, nor was there any white settlement or road.

Under these circumstances the purchasers of the Reserve

undertook to find out "What shall the harvest be." In the

spring of 1796 they sent out a party of surveyors, fifty persons all

told, with General Moses Cleveland at the head. Some of them

took their families with them, intending to settle there. The

party assembled at Schenectady and finally reached Buffalo

Creek, where the city of Buffalo now stands, and there they pur-

chased from the Indians the remainder of their title to the

land.

And here, to their credit, and much to our gratification

also, be it said, the Whole Indian title for this land was bought

from them and paid for. Not a foot of it was obtained by con-

quest or force, - a happy exception to the way that Indian titles

lave generally been disposed of.

True, as is usual, the Indians were cheated because of

their ignorance of the value of what they sold and of what

they got; nevertheless it was a bargain to which both agreed,

and it was not, as was generally the case, the taking by the strong

hand what the weaker one could not hold. The price paid

for the remainder of this title was £500 New York currency,

paid in trade, two beef cattle, and one hundred gallons of whisky.

It would seem, if this party of fifty reserved any considerable

quantity for themselves, they must have started out with a pretty

good supply of whisky, and while that beverage has played

many of the settlers of the Reserve many a scurvy trick, it stood

these men in good stead, for whisky was so essential an element

in every Indian trade that probably without it the bargain could

not have been consummated.

The party proceeded westward to the present site of Con-

neaut, which they reached July 4th, and proceeded to celebrate

the twentieth anniversary of independence, which they did, say

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The Western Reserve.                267

 

the old chroniclers, with much enthusiasm and "several pails of

grog."  This place they made their base, and the settlement of

the Reserve properly dates from this celebration.

From here General Cleveland and some of his companions

moved west to the mouth of the Cuyahoga, where Cleveland now

stands. But there was no Cleveland there then - nothing but

the lake, the mouth of the river, and the wilderness, but ever

since then there have been white settlers at that place.

The survey lasted some years, but was finally completed and

the land divided, as I have said. Meanwhile settlements pro-

ceeded but slowly. Besides its remoteness from civilization, the

leagues of wilderness that lay between, and its own wilderness

character, the title of Connecticut and therefore of the Land

Company was always more or less questioned. In addition to

this was the most unique fact in the history of any country.

When Connecticut sold to the Land Company, she parted so far

as she could, with all her right, jurisdictional as well as to the

soil, but whether a State could transfer its jurisdiction over

half its territory to a party of private land speculators and confer

upon them governmental jurisdiction, was a serious question.

Certainly the purchasers never attempted to exercise any

such governmental jurisdiction nor to enact any laws. They

made frequent applications to Connecticut to extend her juris-

diction and laws over the territory, and to the United States to

accept jurisdiction, but all were refused. The purchasers and

settlers repudiated the ordinance of 1787 as extending to this

territory, because to accept it would be to admit a superior title

in the United States, which would be fatal to that of Connecti-

cut and therefore fatal to that of the Land Company and the

settlers.

Subsequently, in 1800, acts of Congress and of the Connecti-

cut legislature confirmed the title of Connecticut to the soil of

the Reserve on the one hand, and released to the United States

all jurisdiction over it on the other. And then, for the first time

in its history, the Western Reserve came within any civil juris-

diction and its people were protected and governed by law. But,

from the time of the sale by Connecticut to the Connecticut Land

Company in 1795 to this acceptance of jurisdiction in 1800, the

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Western Reserve was absolutely without laws or government of

any kind. There were no courts, no laws, no records, no magis-

trates or police and no modes of enforcing or protecting land

titles, contracts, or personal rights. It was a veritable "No man's

Land", so far as government and law were concerned. This

was a poor place for lawyers, as it always is where people will

behave themselves without them. It was not even a pure

Democracy, for there the people meet to enact laws and enforce

rights. Here they did not and could not. Some seventy miles

of unbroken wilderness of forests, lakes, rivers, and swamps sep-

arated the two settlements at Cleveland and Youngstown. And

yet, so trained to civil government and obedience to law were

the settlers that they felt no need of either.

Lands were bought and sold, personal contracts made, mar-

riages solemnized, and personal rights respected as in the best-

governed societies, and all without government and without law.

This speaks well for these Yankee pioneers, who brought with

them into the wilderness much of the training and spirit of the

Pilgrim Fathers, and of the manners, customs, and habits of New

England, which have made our people so like those of that sec-

tion and so many of our towns and villages like their proto-

types of New England. In many of our villages I can almost

see my native town, New Milford, Connecticut, with its white

churches, shoolhouse, stores, shops and tavern fronting on the

village green. But I miss, and gladly, the whipping post and

stocks that used to stand on the green almost in front of the

church. These were among the institutions that those pioneers

thought they could get along without and left behind, as they did

also their very bad habit of burning and drowning witches, and

I have never heard that our people have suffered from the dis-

continuance of these punishments. Possibly we might not suffer

from some more leniency in the punishments we now inflict.

Besides the abandonment of the hanging and drowning of sus-

pected witches and of the stocks and whipping post there are

other reforms in our penal code that we might adopt with credit

to our humanity.

In the same year (1800) that the Reserve came within civil

jurisdiction, the whole was organized into one county, Trumbull,

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The Western Reserve.                269

 

with the county seat at Warren. This has been subdivided into

the twelve counties comprising the present Western Reserve.

We have thus very generally traced the history of the Con-

necticut Western Reserve from the causes that led to it down

to the time of the survey and the distribution of its land and its

organization under civil government. Looking back over a

period of more than a hundred years, we have seen the first rude

settlements at Conneaut and at Cleveland, and contrasting its

present with its then condition, we may form some idea of what

lay before those bold New England pioneers in this substantially

unknown wilderness, which afforded them not even the means

of subsistence.

The settlers at Conneaut and Cleveland had to obtain their

supplies from the nearest point in the State of New York where

they were obtainable, while for those in the southern portion

Pittsburg was the nearest point at which they could obtain the

means of subsistence, and in each case, through an unbroken

wilderness as wild and pathless as that they inhabited. Some

idea of prices under these circumstances may be formed when

we know that common coarse salt cost six dollars per bushel.

The next settlement was in 1797 at Youngstown. This

soon took precedence of all others and retained it for some years.

In 1798 there were but fifteen families on the Reserve. Ten of

these were at Youngstown, three at Cleveland, and two at Men-

tor. In 1799 Youngstown was the largest town on the Reserve,

and Warren, which was laid out in the spring of that year, was

the next, but soon became the first in size and importance. In

1800 there were 1,302 persons on the Reserve, and from this

period the number increased rapidly.

To describe the life of these early settlers would be to de-

scribe the life of the first settlers of every new forest country.

It was a life of hardship, toil, and privation, with few of the

comports and none of the luxuries of life. The trees had to be

cut away to make room for the houses and forests cleared for

fields; fences were of poles, and plows were guided be-

tween and around the stumps; houses were of rough logs,

and floors of puncheons or split logs laid with the flat side

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up, and rough benches and stools served as chairs and sofas.

Occasionally there was a house of hewed logs, but these were

the aristocratic mansions of the day and were not common. The

principal recreations for the men were hunting, fishing, and trap-

ping, while for the women - well, poor souls, they didn't have

any. Life on the Reserve to-day is one thing. It was differ-

ent then.

But these people had brought with them from their far-off

Eastern homes, the New England ideas of religion and of the

importance of education, and wherever they went in sufficient

numbers the church and the schoolhouse followed as soon as

a clearing could be made for them. Rude and primitive they

were, as were the homes of the settlers, but "The groves were

God's first temples" and perhaps the rude church of the pioneers

was the next. And who shall say that the religion inculcated

there in that solemn forest cathedral, where "the stars were the

chandeliers and the deep-toned thunder the organ," was not as

pure, undefiled, and acceptable as that in the "long-drawn aisle

and fretted vault" of any modern cathedral? And, judging from

the result, education, the twin sister of religion, has not suffered

from her early life in the log schoolhouse of the western pioneer.

Ideas of religion and education were as deeply rooted in the

minds and hearts of these people as was their love for liberty

and independence, and to this we owe the facts that nowhere

in a large and thickly settled country are the people generally

so moral and well behaved as on the Reserve, and no place where

education is so general among the people.

It is a singular circumstance that a people who had fled

from tyranny to obtain freedom and whose love of liberty was

so deeply rooted as it was in our ancestors, should themselves be

a people of slave holders, but such was the fact, and slavery pre-

vailed to a greater or less extent in every province and State.

But in the north it was felt to be incompatible with their idea of

personal liberty, hence was never extensively practiced and was

early abandoned. But that slavery was a sort of divine insti-

tution was one of the religious tenets of very religious Con-

necticut.

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The Western Reserve.               271

 

But that this was a matter of education and not of real

honest belief in shown by the fact that no sooner had they broken

out of the shell of New England conservatism and cast off the

swaddling clothes of New England superstition that had cramped

and deformed them and had migrated to where freedom lived

and kept open house out doors, than their real love of liberty

and hatred of slavery found scope for expression, and their

preachers and teachers preached and taught what they would

not have dared or felt inclined to preach or teach in liberty-lov-

ing Connecticut, and the Western Reserve soon became famous

for its opposition to slavery in the United States.

This feeling found ample expression in the National Con-

gress from such men as Whittlesey, Judge Newton, Giddings,

Wade, John Hutchins and Garfield from this district, and many

others, and would have found the same expression from our

later Representatives, E. B. Taylor and S. A. Northway, but that

since their official life began we have in the United States -

thank God and Abraham Lincoln - no slavery to oppose, and

the Western Reserve has had her full share in bringing about

that consummation.

 

THE PRESENT WESTERN RESERVE.

I have thus sketched a very general outline of the Western

Reserve as it was. What it is at present is a matter of general

knowledge. From the few scattered inhabitants of a century

ago the population has increased to nearly 1,OOO,000, about one

fifth the population of the entire State. Instead of interminable

forests we have cultivated farms and fields; where stood the

wigwam of the Indian and the log cabin of the settler, we have

large cities and towns, and comfortable, beautiful houses and

homes all over the land. The Indian, with his councils and pow-

wows, has disappeared, and the white man reigns in his stead,

the bear, wolf, panther, and deer have gone and in their stead are

horses, cattle, sheep, and other domestic animals useful to man.

The wild turkey can no more be hunted in our forests, but its

successors yet remain to grace our Thanksgiving and Christmas

boards. All that was primitive, savage, and wild has given way

before the irresistible march of civilization and progress. The

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rivers that used to wend their devious, silent way to the lake

or the great river, hearing no sound save that of Nature in

her various voices, now flow through verdant meadows, cul-

tivated fields, and prosperous towns, and are alive with the

hum and whirr of the wheels of busy industry. The canoe has

given way to the steamboat, and instead of the Indian trail and

the rough road cut through the woods and traversed by ox carts

we have the railroad and the locomotive that annihilate time and

space and carry us away across the continent in a week, while

we eat, sleep, chat, or smoke at the rate of forty miles an hour.

Instead of the Indian runner or the less fleet white messenger

we have captured and harnessed the lightning to carry our mes-

sages and to enable us to talk across a continent, as with a

friend face to face. The log schoolhouse, with its rough benches,

puncheon floors, and primitive teachers, has disappeared, but

the rudiments of education there acquired have found apt ex-

pression in the colleges, academies, and high schools, with their

splendid buildings, and the less pretentious schoolhouses that

dot the land and bring the means of education to our very doors

in every little school district, with a corps of teachers who for

learning, ability, and general fitness for their task rank high as

educators and make the Western Reserve famous for the general

education and enlightenment of its people. And the newspaper,

that great educator, molder of public opinion, and director of

events, without which no education is complete and thoroughly

useful, filled with the news of the entire globe and editorials and

contributed articles upon every known subject, and worthy of

the best statesmen, scholars, and writers - now sends its four

to forty-four pages of daily information and education to almost

every fireside on the day of or the day after its publication.

The primitive church - often the little log schoolhouse - with

its occasional itinerant preacher, has been succeeded by the mag-

nificent cathedral, the splendid temples, and the more modest vil-

lage and country church. But the same religion and religious

services that helped, comforted, and blessed the early pioneer in

his far-off forest home, yet remain and are taught and held by

a body of learned, cultivated, devoted, and zealous Christian

preachers and teachers, whose daily life, teaching, and example

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The Western Reserve.               273

 

are not only an education, but an incentive to a better life; and

of them, individually, it may be said, as it was of Goldsmith's

Village Preacher:

 

"And as a bird each fond endearment tries

"To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,

"He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,

"Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way."

 

Such is a very imperfect general outline of the Western

Reserve of to-day, and by noting the contrast between the pres-

ent conditions and those of a century ago we may form some idea

of what the harvest has been and what a century of civilization

and progress has brought. And here in this splendid temple, a

provision of the Western Reserve of to-day, devoted to the

amusement, entertainment and diversion of our people, looking

back over a period of a hundred years, and contrasting the

present Western Reserve with that of a century ago, those of

you who believe in Him, through faith, and those who believe

in His direct interposition in human affairs, and those who see

Him in His manifestations, His works, and in natural laws, may

all join in the grateful exclamation: "Behold what God hath

wrought!"

NOTE. -   The foregoing address was delivered by Mr.

Hutchins at Warren, Ohio, April 15, 1898, at a meeting under

the auspices of the "Women's Friendly Union." - E. O. R.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vol. VII.-- 18

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