Ohio History Journal

LOIS SCHARF

 

"I Would Go Wherever Fortune

Would Direct": Hannah Huntington

and the Frontier of the Western

Reserve

 

"My mind is now in the situation you wish whenever you think a

removal will be for our mutual happiness," wrote Hannah Huntington

to her husband in October 1798.1 Samuel Huntington was a young

partner in the Connecticut Land Company formed in 1795 by forty-

nine prominent individuals to purchase, settle, and sell lands in the

Western Reserve of Connecticut. Unlike many of his associates, Hunt-

ington planned to settle in the region with his wife, children, and

household.

The flurry of recent studies of women on the trans-Mississippi fron-

tier masks the earlier nineteenth-century experience. Issues raised

concerning the degree to which women transported their cultural

baggage and recreated or transformed prescribed ideals and habitu-

al behavior in their new surroundings are no less pertinent for female

pioneers on earlier frontiers. But the ideology of domesticity that

flourished during the heyday of the western movement had not

reached its full statement when Hannah Huntington left her native

Connecticut. In the wilderness she could aspire to achieve, from ne-

cessity if not choice, status as a productive manager as well as a

supportive wife and nurturing mother. Feminine ideals were in transi-

tion.²

 

 

 

Lois Scharf is Adjunct Associate Professor of History at Case Western Reserve Uni-

versity.

 

1. Hannah Huntington to Samuel Huntington, 30 October, 1798. Hannah Hunting-

ton Letters, 1791-1811, Western Reserve Historical Society. (Hereafter letters designat-

ed, HH to SH.) Huntington's writing style ranged from straightforward description to

more florid exposition. Her spelling and grammar were, with few exceptions, perfect

but punctuation was totally absent. I have quoted her faithfully except for the addi-

tion of punctuation and the changing of the still-common "fs" to "ss." In some cases

she wrote "and" and in others "&," both of which have been retained.

2. For recent studies of mid-19th century migration, see Lillian Schissel, Women's

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6                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

The fluid boundries of the household were still prevalent; they

had not yet been replaced by the insular privacy of the home com-

plemented by the community-furnished social services firmly plant-

ed in public space. The good manager housed unwed mothers, and

their bastards, found chores for unemployed men, nursed the sick

and oversaw education for her children. In a generation, women like

Huntington and later female settlers would found societies and build

institutions to reform and care for the wayward. Notions of social wel-

fare and their implementation were still in their infancy, beyond her

conception. What does seem constant from the experience of women

along the social, geographic and chronological divide, however, is

the positive role they played in survival and success in hostile envi-

ronments.³

Hannah and Samuel were both descendants of the same

seventeenth-century settler-rather his widow, since the first male

Huntington died of smallpox on the Atlantic crossing. Hannah's fa-

ther, Andrew Huntington, was a prosperous merchant, paper manu-

facturer, and probate judge in Norwich, Connecticut. His first wife

died in 1776, when his daughter was six and her older brother was

eight. As in the case of most widowers with young children, he

quickly remarried. Hannah Phelps became wife and stepmother at

the age of seventeen, just ten years older than her new daughter and

namesake. Time and personal qualities overcame Phelps' youth. Ear-

 

 

Diaries of the Westward Journey (New York, 1982) which is a documentary history that

focuses on the overland journey experience; Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women: The

Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 (New York, 1979) which stresses the extent to which

women clung to the constraints of domestic ideology; Joanna L. Shatton, Pioneer

Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier, 1825-1915 (Albuquerque, 1984) which dem-

onstrates that the Huntington's different attitudes toward migration and the nature of

their new home (including Indians) matched differences in men's and women's per-

ceptions and attitudes for a century. Annette Koldony looks at gender differences in

imagery and reality in The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American

Frontiers 1630-1860 (Chapel Hill, 1984). Glenda Riley has reviewed much of the new

literature in "Women on the Great Plains: Recent Developments in Research," Great

Plains Quarterly, 5, (Spring, 1985).

3. Actual growth in the size of the community, the reality and perception of social

problems and needs as well as the rise of evangelical fervor and rush to form benevo-

lent and reform societies, are dramatized by comparing the frontier experience of Han-

nah Huntington with the arrival of Rebecca Rouse in Cleveland thirty years later. See

"Rebecca Cromwell Rouse" in Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, David D. Van Tassel

and John J. Grabowski, eds., (Bloomington, 1987), 845.

In Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England,

1650-1750, (New York, 1982), Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argues that the glorification of

motherhood and heightened religious sentiment among women can be found in the

pre-revolutionary ideology along with nineteenth century charitable and reform socie-

ties which have roots in colonial neighborhood networks.

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Hannah Huntington                                          7

 

ly in the nineteenth century, she caught the attention of writer Lydia

Sigourney who wrote, "she possessed an elegance of form and ad-

dress, which would have been conspicuous at any foreign court."

Two more children completed what was by eighteenth-century stan-

dards the moderately-sized family in which the younger Hannah

grew up.⁴

The year of Hannah's birth was marked by the Boston Massacre;

Samuel was born five years earlier during the Stamp Act Crisis. Ordi-

narily specific events associated with the American Revolution would

have impinged only slightly on family life, but Samuel was raised by

an uncle who was a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Con-

gress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and later state Su-

preme Court justice and governor of Connecticut. Local records list

him as Samuel III, as if he were the elder Samuel's son, but his true

father, Joseph, was a prominent-if controversial-minister who

lived until 1794. The younger Samuel was the first of many siblings,

and the reason for his upbringing in his uncle's home, "unfortunately

not blessed with children," is unclear. He was happily raised by his

aunt after whom his own daughter was named, and his education

was supervised by his uncle. He graduated from Yale College at the

age of twenty and practiced law.⁵

When Hannah and Samuel Huntington married in 1791, they

shared disruptive though not necessarily unaffectionate childhoods,

parental models of outstanding achievement, and five generations of

Huntington roots deeply sunk in New England soil. But the impecca-

ble social origins and political connections of the young couple did

not translate into economic security. After his uncle's death in 1796,

Samuel began to travel to Hartford and New Haven on business and

legal matters, spending considerable periods of time away from his

young wife and growing family. A hint of economic straits was implicit

in a warning from Hannah about dealings with those "who would

ruin any man if by it they could get a good bargain to themselves ...

the little we have we want for ourselves and our children." Circum-

scribed opportunities in Connecticut more than the lure of the fron-

tier enticed the family into relinquishing the familiarity of home. For

Hannah, the prospects of migration were wrenching. "I am ready to

go-to say I should not feel a regret in leaving the friends I enjoy in

Norwich would be ridiculous-but my husband and children are

 

 

 

4. "Memoir of Samuel Huntington," Daily Cleveland Herald, 4 April 1863; The

Huntington Family in America: A Geneological Memoir (Hartford, 1915), 477.

5. The Huntington Family, 543-50, 580-82.

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8                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

the dearest objects I can ever know and with them I would go wher-

ever fortune would direct."⁶ Later female pioneers would pull up

roots with the same sense of loss.

Fortune directed the Huntingtons to virtual wilderness. When the

original American colonies which held royal charters to lands "from

sea to sea" relinquished those claims to new Confederation in 1786, a

tract of land in what became northeast Ohio was reserved for Con-

necticut to compensate for her small size. This was the area, part of

the Northwest Territory administered by territorial governor Arthur

St. Clair under the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, that the

Connecticut Land Company purchased sight unseen for $.40 an acre.

The Association appointed a board of directors which quickly se-

lected Moses Cleaveland, one of the partners, to survey the land,

pacify the Indians, and conduct all necessary and related business.

He and his party completed their commission successfully: Cleave-

land laid a town bearing his name on the banks of Lake Erie, well

drawn on surveyer Amos Spafford's map but otherwise an imaginary

vision. He then returned to Hartford where he remained until his

death.⁷

By the turn of the century a handful of settlers and their families

had battled forests, disease, deprivations, and all related hazards of

the frontier to the spot marked by Cleaveland. Most lost the struggle

and moved to other locations in the Reserve or returned to Connecti-

cut. What William Granson Rose generously calls "the trading-post

settlement" numbered seven inhabitants in 1800. This was its status

when Samuel Huntington set out from Norwich, Connecticut, in July

of that year to determine the feasibility of settling with his family.

Traveling on horseback across Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh and on to

Youngstown, he arrived in Cleveland in October. He found three

families, explored the land just east of the Cuyahoga River, and de-

cided to migrate.⁸

At home in Norwich, Hannah Huntington gave birth to the last of

her six children during her husband's absence. In a letter sent to

Pittsburgh in the hope of reaching him there on his way west, she

asked that he "send me a name for my little boy. His new mother is

anxious for a name. I shall not give him one until I hear from you."

Less than a month later she could report that she was up and about

 

 

 

6. HH to SH, 13 July 1797; 30 October 1798.

7. William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (Cleveland and New

York, 1950). 22-26.

8. Ibid., 43-44; "Memoir of Samuel Huntington."

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Hannah Huntington                                          9

 

after the birth, that the yield from the garden was good, the grain

was all harvested, and the corn looked well. News of business and

politics could wait until he returned. In the meantime, "I beg if you

find a situation that pleases you and you think you would make that

our future residence. I wish you would have a log house put up this

fall and have things in such a state that another journey will be un-

necessary."⁹

After winter and early spring of preparation, the family travelled via

Pennsylvania to Youngstown where they stayed for four months be-

fore continuing on to their new home. "I have heared [sic] by the

Mouth of the Prophets that you, your wife, Children have passed

the Jordan and beat down the Walls of Jericho and entered the

promised Land," Moses Cleaveland wrote to his young colleague in

August. With comparable imagery, Huntington replied: "I have

moved my patriarchal Caravan through the Wilderness to this Ca-

naan-I was nine days on the Journey, with two Waggons, ten oxen,

three horses, seven Cows, and eighteen persons in my retinue-We

slept seven nights in the open air, and pursued the same rout [sic]

that my former Waggons went, but found our road wanted cutting

again, on account of some fresh Windfalls; our Women and Children

supported the Journey with courage and spirits."¹⁰

It is difficult to account for all eighteen people in the party. Beside

the parents and six children, records indicate that a male servant

accompanied them as well as Margaret Cobb. Years later Julian Hunt-

ington described Miss Cobb as a teacher, but there is no indication

that she ever organized a school in the primitive settlement or even

tutored the children at home. She was apparently a close friend and

companion who, like many single women of the time, acted as a help-

mate to the family and soulmate to the adult female as an integral part

of the household. In addition, Hannah referred in early letters to

Patty, a young servant, who undoubtedly came with the family since

it seems unlikely that the Huntingtons would have found a female la-

bor supply upon their arrival in Cleveland. Who the remaining seven

travellers were is unknown.11

The length of the journey invites skepticism. When histories of ear-

ly pioneers were collected on the occasion of Cleveland's Centennial

 

 

 

9. HH to SH, 13 July 1800; 6 August 1800.

10. Western Reserve Historical Society, Tract No. 95, Part II, 1800-1812 (Cleveland:

Western Reserve Historical Society, 1915).

11. "Memoir of Samuel Huntington;" Manuscripts Relating to the Early History of

the Connecticut Western Reserve, 1795-ca. 1860, Box 10, folder 8, WRHS.

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10                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

celebration, records and reminiscences indicated that the usual

overland journey with oxen-pulled wagons over poor trails and

through wilderness without trails lasted six weeks and often more.

One woman accounted for the number of settlers who remained and

scratched out survival instead of returning east: "It is not that the

. . country is so good, but because the journey is so bad."¹² In

many cases wagons were full with personal belongings, and families

followed behind on foot. Wagons often broke down, further delaying

travel. It seems unlikely that two wagons could accommodate eight-

een people and that some members of the "patriarchal caravan" did

not walk to Ohio. Huntington was not only a settler but an agent for

the Land Company, so the length if not the hardships of the trip

may have been disguised for promotional purposes. More likely,

Huntington was just describing the last leg of migration-nine days

from Youngstown to Cleveland!

Unlike most early settlers to the Western Reserve, the Huntington

menage found a log cabin already built and waiting for them just as

Hannah had requested. Amos Spafford, who had accompanied

Cleaveland on the first surveying mission and who had remained,

built what was then the finest "blockhouse" in the area at what is

now West 6th and Superior Roads. More typical pioneers arrived ex-

hausted from their arduous journey and discovered their new home-

sites were extensions of the wilderness through which they had

traveled. Land had to be cleared immediately to cultivate and to

provide ground for a cabin. The latter took precedence, with cabins

being simple and bare affairs that could be erected quickly enough

to provide adequate shelter. Rooms, usually one, occasionally two,

were enclosed by sixteen to eighteen feet notched logs. Cracks were

stuffed with moss. Windows were usually omitted, but if openings

were made, they were covered in much the same way as narrow

doorways-with blankets. Planked doors were a luxury, window

glass even more so. If unprotected apertures were an invitation to a va-

riety of curious wild animals and Indians, floors that were nothing

more than packed earth exposed families to visiting snakes. Under

the circumstances, "puncheon" floors were laid as soon as possi-

ble.¹³

 

 

 

12. Quoted in George W. Knepper, "Early Migration to Western Reserve," Western

Reserve Magazine, 4 (November-December 1977), 39.

13. Edmund H. Chapman, Cleveland: Village to Metropolis (Cleveland, 1964), 12;

Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve, Mrs. Gertrude Van Renssalaer,

editor (Cleveland, 1896) consists of records and recollections of the roles and activities

• 6
 

Hannah Huntington                                                11

 

There is every reason to believe that the Huntington's log cabin

had both a finished floor and a door. The former because the cabin

was built in advance of arrival, double the size of the usual dwelling

and known as the finest in the settlement; the latter because one son

recalled a drunken Indian once came to the cabin, could not gain en-

try from Hannah, and tried unsuccessfully to batter down the

door. 14

For male settlers, Indians were a political and territorial problem

best solved with negotiation, the posture of authority, and whiskey.

On his surveying trip in 1796, Moses Cleaveland met with the Mo-

hawk and Seneca representatives of the Iroquois nations that roamed

Northeast Ohio, successfully trading New York currency, two beef

cattle, and one hundred gallons of whiskey for Indian claims to all

lands east of the Cuyahoga River. Soon after settling, Huntington

wrote Cleaveland that there were two hundred Indians traveling up

the river, casting "a wishful eye on their ancient possessions, a little

whiskey however quiets them." The Indians had been assured they

could continue to wander and hunt on the land, but they were afraid

that Huntington meant to drive them away. He tried to convince

them of his honorable intentions, but not "without informing them

that I can do it in case they misbehave . . ."15

The trust the men placed in threats and whiskey to Indians to

solve problems of land claims often complicated more mundane mat-

ters for women. Harmless and even friendly when sober, Indians

would often appear at cabin openings or make themselves comforta-

ble inside when families were absent. Pioneer women reported reac-

tions ranging from surprise to terror at finding an Indian seated in

their cabins when they returned with berries, buckets of water, or

firewood. In any case, the uninvited visitor was curious and harm-

less. But drunken Indians were another matter, as the Huntingtons

discovered with the pounding at their door. And neighbor Rebecca

Carter had a closer call when she was chased around a wood pile by

an intoxicated Indian with a hatchet in his raised, waving hand. Af-

 

 

 

 

of women in 216 early Western Reserve communities. There is a sameness, almost a li-

turgical quality, about this compilation that reinforces the sense of reliability on the

one hand as it raises doubts on the other. However, many of the descriptions of early

hardships in the wilderness both contrast with and substantiate the experiences of

Hannah Huntington.

14. Memorial to the Pioneer Women, 813; Manuscripts of the Connecticut Western

Reserve, Box 10, folder 8.

15. Rose, Cleveland, 22, 25; Samuel Huntington to Moses Cleaveland, 15 November

1801, WRHS Tract No. 95.

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12                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

ter rescuing his wife, Lorenzo Carter, Cleveland's first settler, was

faced with the choice of selling liquor to Indians which enhanced

his tavern receipts on the one hand, or stopping the practice which

endangered his family on the other. Still the women seemed to un-

derstand the situation from both the standpoint of the Indians and

themselves. "I am apt to think they are quite as afraid of us as we are

of them," Hannah wrote her husband after one series of Indian

alarms subsided.¹⁶ Periodic encounters with Indians were occasion-

ally welcomed by the more isolated pioneer women for whom social

privation was the most difficult feature of acclimation. Men did not

have to be rising politicians and land realtors like Samuel Huntington

to enjoy greater mobility and occasions for socializing than women in

frontier communities. Men often rode horseback to mills to have

grain ground, to trading posts for supplies, to taverns for respite along

the way. Their wives seldom made comparable journeys. Early fe-

male settlers who remembered they had no social companionship

other than family for three, four, even six months at a time were com-

mon. Hannah complained of only one visit from neighbors in three

weeks "and we really enjoyed it-for we live as much by ourselves al-

most as we should six miles the other side of the river."17

Isolation was especially difficult for those women who had en-

joyed warm, close relationships with female family and friends be-

fore their migrations. Loving, supportive friendships among women

were an essential part of the life course of eighteen-century women

whose lives were clearly bounded by husband, children, and

household. Affection between mothers and daughters served as

models for female relationships throughout women's lives, particular-

ly among upper and middle-class women. The intensity of these fe-

male networks later served as a counterpoint to women's relationships

to their husbands and patriarchal social patterns generally as gender

specific values and expectations changed.¹⁸

Hannah Huntington enjoyed the unique experience of Margaret

Cobb's companionship on the frontier, although Margaret had not

planned to remain indefinitely. Two years after their arrival, she was

 

 

 

16. Memorial to the Pioneer Women, 812; HH to SH, 9 September 1807.

17. HH to SH, 1 October 1803.

18. On female friendships in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century,

see Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American

Women 1750-1800 (Boston, 1980), 102-09 and Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood:

"Woman's Sphere" in New England 1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977), 172-73. The classic

study of female relationships in the nineteenth century is Carroll Smith-Rosenberg,

"The Female World of Love and Ritual," Signs, 1 (1975), 1-30.

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Hannah Huntington                                    13

contemplating returning east, but "she found there were so many ob- stacles in the way that like a good girl she would not add to my trouble by leaving this fall but trust to chance for some other oppor- tunity." It was not until four years later that the opportunity became a mandate. Margaret's sister died and her family wanted her home in Connecticut. Hannah wrote to her husband as though disaster had struck. "With her for my friend I have borne your repeated absence with fortitude, in sickness and health I have lean'd upon her." With her departure, "I shall have no one attach'd to me but from motives of interest."19 A comfortable home by Cleveland standards and a close friend to mitigate homesickness for Norwich and loneliness for her constantly- traveling husband set Hannah apart from other pioneer women on the Western Reserve. But these amenities could not overcome her difficulty in adjusting to her new situation. Deprivation is relative and subjective, and nothing in her background prepared her for the so- cial disruption, material discomfort, and physical illness. Frequent requests to her absent husband to purchase tea, ink powder, sul-       19. HH to SH, 30 August 1803; 10 August 1807.

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14                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

phur, salt, leather shoes, broadcloth for a new coat (eventually there

was a "tailoress" to make the garment)-even opium to relieve

headaches-indicated the paucity of goods in their immediate sur-

roundings. But privation is psychological as well as material. As Han-

nah's circle of activity narrowed in an inhospitable and unfamiliar lo-

cation, her husband reaped the rewards of an educated, amicable,

well-connected young man in an ever-widening, public orbit. His po-

litical fortunes and functions necessitated journeys that lasted for

months at a time to the territorial and later state capital and to various

sites around Ohio in his capacity as circuit judge.

Communicating by letter during these periods of separation was

difficult. Mail delivery to and from the east was regular, although

Cleveland did not have a postmaster until the beginning of 1806. Mail

service throughout the state, however, was haphazard at best and

often depended upon personal delivery. Hannah's letters to Samuel

sometimes looked like diary entries since she wrote daily notes until

someone passed through the town who could take the letter. Lack of

communication and sporadic correspondence reinforced her feelings

of physical and emotional isolation. After one extended period dur-

ing which she had not heard from him, she felt "as though I was

quite out of reach of any communication of a public nature." On an-

other occasion she continued her letter for two weeks before finding

an opportunity to send it. "Indeed it appears that we are almost be-

yond the limits of human society."²⁰

The divergent paths taken so quickly by husband and wife elic-

ited opposite responses to their surroundings. After describing his

westward journey to Moses Cleaveland, Samuel Huntington went on

to relate that "I found the city flourishing; and since I arrived, sever-

al people have engaged to move in with their families . . . we have

fine warm dry weather, the Crops have been good, and but little

Ague this past season."²¹ This may have been the report of the land

promoter and the newly appointed lieutenant colonel in the Trumbull

County Militia, but it certainly did not correspond to Hannah's as-

sessment. In May 1801, her husband was already away in Warren,

capital of Trumbull County (of which all of the Western Reserve was

then part). She had obviously complained at length about their new

home, but he had discounted her dissatisfaction, perhaps with

words bordering on reprimand. She found it necessary to defend

 

 

 

 

20. Rose, Cleveland, 53; HH to SH, 30 April 1803; 30 August 1803.

21. WRHS, Tract No. 95.

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Hannah Huntington                                               15

 

her position, which she did on the basis of her loneliness as well as

on the state of her surroundings:

Your wishes that I would be contented short of a great town give me some

uneasiness because it implies an idea that company and dissipation are my

object. Very far from it I assure you. I could be as happy in this country as

anywhere if I can have your company but the prospect of your absence, ill

health of our family and the state of society in this place are my objections to

it.

And to reinforce at least one point, she noted that Patty the servant

and two of the children had had the ague most of the time since he

left.²²

The reports of illness were a constant refrain during their early

years in Cleveland. The settlement, such as it was, was already gain-

ing a reputation for its unhealthy location. Huntington was more can-

did in early 1802 when he wrote Moses Cleaveland that a number of

difficulties deterred people from settling. The need for a harbor and

river navigation was great, and the poor and inadequate mills which

forced people to travel great distances over poor roads enhanced

prospects of rival towns that provided these needed services. Still he

did not discuss one factor a friend wrote about openly: "Cleveland

has a thousand Charms but I am deterred from pitching on that

place by the Sickness. . ."23

The sickness often meant malaria. From the time of the first sea-

board settlements through the nineteenth and into the twentieth

century, malaria raged in various parts of the colonies, later states.

Statistical data are virtually nonexistent, and on the constantly-

shifting frontier the disease was so prevalent that it often escaped

mention. "A little ague," or "chills," was assumed to be part of the

settlement and acclimation process, often overlooked as pathology.

Malaria in small children seemed to go particularly unnoticed and

unrecorded because of the widely-shared belief that the disease

only attacked adults.²⁴

Hannah Huntington can hardly be included among those who ig-

nored the disease. In all probability she had grown up unfamiliar

with its epidemic potential. Malaria did not affect New Englanders

 

 

22. HH to SH, 10 May 1801.

23. WRHS, Tract No. 95.

24. Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Malaria in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1760-1900, Sup-

plements to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Baltimore, 1945), 4-6. Ackerknecht

wrote during World War II when malaria was the principle health problem among

American troops in the Pacific theatre and the disease still averaged four million cases

annually in the United States.

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16                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

until the 1670s, and one century later increasing numbers of locales

reported its disappearance. In the 1805 edition of American Universal

Geography, J. Morse wrote that "the intermittant fever, or ague, is

seldom seen within 30 or 40 miles of the sea coast, and scarcely ever,

any where in New England, excepting where they have dammed up

the water."²⁵

In the first half of the nineteenth century, New Englanders were of-

ten identified by their lack of knowledge of the disease when they

traveled to other parts of the country. The Huntingtons could well

have been early examples of this species, although Samuel's remark

about "little ague" to Cleaveland indicated the need to dispel bad

news that had already reached Connecticut and implied some famili-

arity with the incidence of malaria, if not first-hand experience by

family members upon their arrival.

When their introduction to malaria was complete, the effect would

be emotionally as well as physically disruptive. Still Hannah Hunting-

ton's description of her family's encounters must be read with care. If

some settlers ignored malaria, others overstated its occurrence. Ex-

pressions like "chills" or "fever and ague" were specific disease

terms that often referred to "most everything from yellow fever and

cholera to influenza and disentery."²⁶ Allowing for the confusion be-

tween malaria and other fevers, especially typhoid, in the writings of

doctors and laymen alike, Hannah's early letters may have exaggera-

ted the incidence of malaria in her household. She did not, howev-

er, fail to convey the sense of unremitting illness that wrecked the

newly-transplanted family.

Early settlers had few weapons with which to combat sickness

generally or malaria in particular. In 1800 the entire Western Reserve

had one physician, who devoted most of his time to dairy farming

and cheese-making. Besides, medical knowledge of the etiology,

course, and treatment of malaria was not much better than that of

laymen. Until 1896 and the discovery of the relationship between the

disease and the anopheles mosquito, the principal causal theory at-

tributed malaria to "bad air" (Mal'aria), a miasma or poison exhaled

by decaying matter especially prevalent in swamps or stagnant water.

A few good observers questioned the existence of marshes without

malaria as well as the reverse, but "marsh miasma" explanations pre-

vailed. Still, mosquitos did thrive in swampy areas, and thus settlers

drew their own cause and effect conclusions and often moved to

 

 

25. Quoted in Ibid., 55-56.

26. Ibid., 6.

• 12
 

Hannah Huntington                                          17

 

higher and drier land. The Huntingtons were no exception. In 1805,

they moved from their "aristocratic" log house and took up resi-

dence at the Newburgh mill, six miles away.²⁷ In the meantime, in

Samuel's absence, the female adults nursed each other, the servants,

and the children as well as they could.

In 1802, Samuel Huntington was one of two delegates from Trum-

bull County to the convention at Chillicothe that drew up Ohio's

constitution. Statehood brought new status to Ohio and new political

rewards to him. First elected senator from Trumbull county, then the

first president of the Ohio Legislature, he was subsequently ap-

pointed Judge of the new Supreme Court. While he was away at his

new duties, Hannah informed him that Margaret and Frank have

"some touches of ague but more fever." In addition, "the 3 little

ones have the whooping cough." A week later she wrote that she

had had "agues and fever" since her last letter and that "many of

the inhabitants remain sick and we have hardly a day since you went

away without thunder and rain."²⁸ By the beginning of October,

Hannah admitted she did not know "how much to tell or how much

to omit." She herself felt as well as she had in a year, but then she

engaged in one long infirmary roll call beginning with her friend,

continuing with the servant, describing the children in order of age

and concluding with another servant.

The ague hangs upon Margaret pretty severe. She has had it more than half

the time since you left us. Patty had the 3d day ague-Frank has been quite

sick with a fever but is now able to work-Martha was taken last week with a

fever which lasted but 3 days steady but ever since that she makes great

complaint of pain in her back side and stomach. She sits up very little-

Julian has been very well ever since you went away. Colbert has had a few

fits-Sammy has been sick a few days but is now very well-Robert has had

a touch of the ague. George had the ague two weeks.²⁹

In addition, the hired man had been complaining of illness and had

announced that "he should never be well in Cleveland and actually

left us."³⁰

At the end of April, Huntington had still not returned and his wife

was so overburdened by the loneliness and illness of a long winter,

she was obligated to write. Disease had finally done more than cause

morbidity.

 

 

 

27. Ibid., 10, 12-15; Rose, Cleveland, 12, 52-53.

28. HH to SH, 13 August 1803; 18 August 1803.

29. HH to SH, 1 October 1803.

30. Ibid.

• 13
 

18                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

I kept the fever and ague till I was put to bed. Our child was supposed to be

the victim of it-for 4 hours there was every exertion to preserve it without

effect-it was buried the 27th of March. I was as comfortable as I have been

here before except 3 of the hardest fits that I ever had. After that I gained

strength as fast as might be expected till the ague returned upon me. I have

had my 3d fit today-Margaret had it badly. Martha not so bad but still she

is sick. I am unable as yet to attend to much out doors but as much as could

be accomplished by Margaret has been done.³¹

The cursory manner in which the death of their child is mentioned,

the month-long lapse between his death and the letter, and the ref-

erence to the four-year old boy as "it" are all surprising. At first,

Hannah seems to represent the epitome of pre-modern, non-

affectionate motherhood, and her reaction raises questions about

the quality of family life among the Huntingtons.

In spite of the unfeeling nature of the brief allusion to their son's

death, Hannah and Samuel Huntington were models of late

eighteenth-century partners and parents. The "intensified affective

bonding at the nuclear core at the expense of neighbors and kin" de-

scribed upper- and middle-class New England as well as English so-

ciety by 1750. But men and women brought distinctive needs, com-

mitments, and expectations to family life which resulted in different

degrees of emotional attachment. Because of social and legal con-

straints, an economically secure and emotionally satisfying marital re-

lationship was especially important to women. For men, family consti-

tuted one dimension of life that extended beyond the home.

Women's lives were clearly bounded by roles of wife, mother, and

household manager alone. Without alternatives, their stake in marital

relationships was complete. The routine-drudgery to some-of sat-

isfying husbands, bearing and rearing children, and tending to a

multiplicity of domestic chores could be alleviated by love and trust-

ing companionship. These qualities were more often ideals than reali-

ties, but they were desired goals of which young women were aware

and which they sought.32

Hannah Huntington believed she was counted among the fortu-

nate. Her marriage was especially gratifying and assessed as one of

the rare instances of true marital contentment. "This matrimony of

which we have heard and seen so much-of the misery of the vic-

 

 

31. HH to SH, 25 April 1804.

32. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, (New

York, 1977), 7-8 contrasts and summarizes the changes in familial patterns over three

centuries. Norton, Liberty's Daughters, chapter 2, describes the significance of mar-

riage for women in the eighteenth century.

• 14
 

Hannah Huntington                                         19

 

tims and the many unhappiness they endure-yes I rejoice in the

truth of my own assertion that I am married and I am happy." In spite

of so many separations, she concluded, "you and I are one of the (I

am afraid) few couples who delight in each other and are happy in

each other's company."³³ On one occasion she passed the time

pleasurably by rereading letters he had written when they were

courting, and at another time she expressed her gratitude that he

loved her and chose her to marry because "I have enough just to

perform the duties of a family and that is all. I am not well read. I

have not a knowledge of many subjects that many other females

have."³⁴ If she burdened him with accounts of the family's health

and of her own desire for his company, it was simply because of the

narrow, but no less valued, limits of her existence. "I am a woman

and your wife. I must write and my feelings and the situation of our

domestic matters are the only subjects I have to write upon.³⁵

Few letters ended without a final warm and loving note. "Adieu, I

long to see you, to hold you fast from leaving me," she closed a letter

in 1797. Eleven years later she still wanted him to know "that your

sleep may be sweet and your dreams happy in the wish of her who is

most affectionately thy wife.^"36

Emotional attachment to her husband extended to the children.

Like most eighteenth-century American women, Hannah Huntington

became pregnant soon after her marriage and bore six children until

her departure for Cleveland. Francis was born in January 1793; Mar-

tha, two years later; Julian, Colbert, Samuel, and Robert at less than

eighteen-month intervals. All were "the dearest objects I can ever

know," and letters carried news of them, usually named individually.

The parents were as deeply bound to their children as they were to

each other. During his first journey after they settled in Cleveland,

Samuel had presumedly written that his absence from the children

increased his love for them in ways that his wife could not under-

stand. Hannah did not disparage his increased appreciation for the

children but failed to equate that positive result of distance with the

misery the same separation caused her. "You think I cannot know

how much I love the children because I am not at a distance from

them-but surely I have an opportunity to know how lonely my days

are without you-it is paying for happiness at a dear rate to live with-

out you half the time."³⁷

 

 

33. HH to SH, 15 April 1797; 30 October 1798.

34. HH to SH, 8 September 1800; 21 October 1798.

35. HH to SH, 11 August 1798.

36. HH to SH, 15 April, 1797; 28 December 1808.

37. HH to SH, 9 October 1801.

• 15
 

20                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

In the same letter in which she referred to their son's death so

tersely, she elaborated on the themes of familial affection and the

price exacted by physical disruption. Although this was her first

communication since the previous August, the assumption that news

must have been conveyed earlier is a reasonable one. Even a dis-

traught wife could not have been so oblivious to her husband's feel-

ings that she referred to "our child" and "it" without assurance he

would know which child had died. Referring to infants in gender-

neutral terms was common practice; but parents rarely depersonal-

ized their children beyond the first few months of life.³⁸ Hannah's

failure to specify this four-year-old son might have stemmed from the

fact that the young boy was named for his father. Writing his name

could have compounded the loss of the child with the loneliness for

and apprehension over the health of the father for the grief-stricken

woman.

These parents were not detached from their children and certainly

not immune to the grief that accompanied their loss, common as in-

fant and child mortality remained during the eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries. What Hannah failed to express in direct relation to

the death itself was subsumed in an anguished outcry of the misery

and bitterness at the conclusion of the same letter. After a long, dis-

mal, unhealthy winter climaxed by the child's death, she weighed

the psychological costs against the material possibilities of their sepa-

rate, separated lives:

I would not my Dear husband spend another such winter as this for-what I

know not. Is honour a compensation for your absence-and the many troub-

les and vexations that I have experienced in the two journeys that you have

been. I love my children. I love my family-but what is that? Children, fami-

ly and the whole world without you is barren and joyless-they may say I

am weak, foolish, even a worshipper of flesh and blood. What care I, it is my

glory and happiness that I feel as I do-let your station in life be ever so exalt-

ed, little will it gratify me if it must be purchased at so high a price as our sep-

aration.

Then desire for his physical and emotional presence was qualified.

She did want him to prosper, undeterred by a wife who refused to

support his efforts or to sacrifice for the accomplishments that she

too wished-if only to get her out of Cleveland. "I do not wish to

have you sink into oblivion and be tied to my apron strings. Far, very

far from it-I want the emoluments of your offices to be such as to en-

able us to live in a different state of society.³⁹

 

 

38. Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 85.

39. HH to SH, 25 April 1804.

• 16
 

Hannah Huntington                                         21

 

Her outburst reflected more than grief over the loss of a child. De-

spair led her thoughts outward to the disparity between her lonely

isolation and her husband's public achievements, between her per-

ceived personal sacrifices and their shared expectations of material

reward. The apparent imbalance turned her reactions inward, add-

ing confusion and even anger to sorrow. The modern family may em-

brace new conceptions of individual autonomy and the personal pur-

suit of success, but like the sex-differentiated emotional commitments

brought to marriage, success and happiness were defined and expe-

rienced differently by men and women. Even without the elaborate

nineteenth-century ideological framework and romantic rhetoric that

delimited and rationalized separate gender-based spheres of activity

and behavior, male and female members of families occupied and

operated within distinct space. Hannah never indicated lack of satis-

faction with the boundries of domesticity as long as she had a modi-

cum of physical comfort and the company of her husband. Both

were missing when her child died, exacerbating the conflict among

her feminine ideals, familial aspirations, and frontier realities.

In time, the period of "seasoning" passed. Two years later the fam-

ily had moved six miles east, their second son Julian was in Norwich

with her father, the next two children were busy at sporadic

schools, and she could report that "Cleaveland has been as healthy

this fall as it ever has been" Under these more pleasant circum-

stances she enjoyed the luxury of a detailed description of a different

sort of misfortune.

I am sorry to trouble you with bad news but I must inform you that the Black

Cow is dead. She had a calf the 18 of this month and appear'd well . . . The

second day she was missing at night and George went out and found her

down-we had every thing done for her that was thought of but she never

was able to get up and died the second day.⁴⁰

With more comfort and stability, she and Margaret Cobb settled into

a welcome routine of "work and scold and scold and work."⁴¹

Matters like the children's education assumed importance and re-

ceived more attention. In 1802, the first recorded school in the settle-

ment was conducted by Amos Spafford's daughter Anna, who held

class for a handful of youngsters in one room of Lorenzo Carter's log

cabin-tavern. The Huntington children may have attended, but the

school, like so many at this time, was a short-lived affair. By 1806,

 

 

 

 

40. HH to SH, 29 August 1806.

41. HH to SH.

• 17
 

22                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

Samuel Huntington was one of the several "patrons" who hired a

young man from Connecticut to organize a private school. The parents

guaranteed "benches, firewood, and ten dollars per month to be

paid in money or wheat at the market price, whenever such time may

be that the school doth end." In November, class finally began and

Hannah proudly informed her husband that the children were the

"best scholars in the school." One year later she reported that the

school broke up for lack of a suitable place to meet.⁴²

More than family and domestic chores filled her time. The house-

hold was not limited to children and close friends. For the Hunting-

tons, private and public boundaries expanded and contracted easily

with constant servants and periodic boarders even as neighbors and

kin were kept at a distance. For many families boarders were econom-

ic necessity. For Hannah, a boarder was a matter of convenience and

company, not conceived as an intrusion upon privacy. When she in-

formed Samuel that she had "taken in" Doctor Mathews, she

added that he had insisted on paying. From her perspective, he "is

in great help in the way of sociability." Another potential boarder

was refused for intriguingly ill-defined reasons. "Though I might

find him an agreeable housemate, he must certainly be a clog in my

domestic matters." The reasons may have been related to the wel-

come return of Martha from school, for records indicated that, in

1813, Dr. John Henry Matthews and Martha Devotion Huntington

were married.⁴³

Servants could be a mixed blessing. The young George appears to

have always performed what was expected of him satisfactorily. If

not, he undoubtedly knew what to expect. "George has been a very

good boy since you went away," Hannah informed her husband. "I

have never had occasion to strike him." Patty was another matter,

the central character in a "little domestic affair of our little circle." In

oblique terms Hannah described what was obviously Patty's illegiti-

mate pregnancy in 1806, and one year later, according to a letter, the

household had grown in numbers: "I have Patty and her boy. She

behaves very well and seems quite happy." But within another

year's time Hannah became suspicious that Patty was pregnant again

and that the same Irwin who fathered her son was the culprit. She

finally confronted her servant who "confirmed her situation but that

 

 

 

42. Rose, Cleveland, 47, 54; HH to SH, 9 November 1806, 17 November 1806, 4 No-

vember 1807.

43. HH to SH, 16 November 1809; 16 January 1810; 9 December 1811; the Hunting-

ton Family in American, 583.

• 18
 

Hannah Huntington                                         23

 

James Tully was the author of the present misfortune." Although Pat-

ty hoped that the prospective father would marry her and Hannah

actually wrote to him to come forward and legitimize the child, there

was a singular lack of moralizing. The sexual promiscuity of the ser-

vant caused much less consternation than the interruption in service.

Hannah figured she could survive the winter without help, but was

apprehensive about the following spring. "I hardly feel competent for

all that ought to be done."⁴⁴

By the time of Patty's second pregnancy, the Huntington's had

moved again. Samuel Huntington exchanged 300 acres of property in

Cleveland for a large tract of land in Painesville belonging to John

Walworth. The Walworth family moved to Cleveland and the Hunt-

ingtons settled on the Grand River in the summer of 1808. Their son

was still in Connecticut and Martha was sent away to school where

"she says she is contented and promises fair to be a good girl." Han-

nah missed her daughter and wrote her often. Her husband had to

be reminded to do his parental duty. "Write to Martha. She says

she hasn't heard from you." He also was requested for advice on son

Frank's schooling. Should he be sent to Warren after the fall work

was done? Later displaying a growing sense of self-sufficiency, she

announced that "I have concluded that Frank will stay at home this

Winter. There is to be a school open'd by Mr. Thirston soon to be

kept by a man from-by the name of Gaylord," and they could save

the cost of boarding. And then the woman, who had once dispar-

aged her own lack of education, indicated that but for lack of time

she could help teach her children. "I have school'd myself some

but my time is filled with something all the day and night.^"45

With the family's moves first to Newburgh and then to Painesville,

Hannah Huntington's responsibilities and capacity to handle those

responsibilities expanded. A significant change took place in her

ability to cope with farm and family as well as her perceptions of

those abilities. Samuel left her money to take care of the family's

needs when he traveled, but occasionally unexpected expenses

arose. At one time she wrote to an acquaintance in Warren asking him

to pay a debt and bill her husband. Later she asked her husband

to pay his state taxes directly. The collector kept calling and she had

no funds to spare. "You must not think by that I am wasteful," she

 

 

 

44. HH to SH, 17 November 1806, 18 November 1806; 4 November 1807; 31 October

1808; 31 October 1808.

45. HH to SH, 28 August 1808; 31 October 1808; 26 September 1808; 19 November

1808.

• 19
 

24                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

added, "or spend my money foolishly but in spite of me I find myself

oblig'd in your absence to make use of some."⁴⁶

When bad storms felled trees and caused damage, she hired

someone to cut down one split tree and repair the fences. Storms in-

terrupted harvests two months later, and buckwheat had to be taken

in patches. The following year from Painesville, she was happy "to

inform you that the wheat is in and in very good order." September

was cold and wet, however, so corn was harvested later than

planned, but their neighbors had not done nearly as much. The

boys began to help too, which increased her ability to be self-

sufficient. Together, mother and sons husked for three days. "I feel

pretty independent. My boys are very good." When Samuel left no

instructions about "¹⁰⁰⁰ weight of pork" he supposedly ordered,

she accepted it and "this day have cut and salted it." She also

bought three lean hogs which she intended to fatten. And the ox

was thriving! December was salting time; exactly one year later she

apologized in strikingly contemporary terms: "I know you will excuse

my not writing more when you think that the pork is salted, the fami-

ly in bed and I am tired."⁴⁷

In addition to tending crops and storing food, decisions about

buildings and facilities on the new farm had to be made. The boys

worked with a hired man to erect the barn, saving money in the proc-

ess. The same wet September that delayed the corn harvest com-

bined with derelict workers to convince her to delay the digging of a

well. It was to take two weeks to complete and be finished by Octo-

ber 15th. But the "diggers" came late on the sixth and the ground

was so wet that she told them they had "fail'd in their contract and

I would not consent to have the well dug under those circum-

stances." Lumber for their planned home, which should have been

cut in early fall to begin seasoning, still was not cut by December.

Hannah had an alternative-and in light of frontier architecture,

grander plan. It was possible to get bricks made in Painesville at one

dollar per thousand, she wrote. That alone would cost five dollars

elsewhere and still have to be transported. Photographs of the Hunt-

ington's fine frame home overlooking the Grand River indicate that

the original plans were eventually carried out.⁴⁸

 

 

 

46. HH to Major Perkins, 2 September 1806; HH to SH, 18 November 1806.

47. HH to SH, 9 September 1807, 4 November 1807, 16 October 1808, 31 October

1808; 28 December 1808; 18 December 1809.

48. HH to SH, 28 March 1808; 16 October 1808; 28 December 1808; Harriet Taylor

Upton, History of the Western Reserve, Vol. 1, (New York, 1910), 273.

• 20
 

Hannah Huntington                                       25

 

During this busy fall and early winter of 1808, Samuel Huntington

reached the pinnacle of state wide office-he campaigned for Ohio

governor and was elected. Hannah had no official word of the elec-

tion results until she received a letter from him in December. There

were no congratulations in response, rather the stated realization that

he would be asked to move to the state capital, Chillicothe, and her

hope that he would not even consider the move. "I had much rather

live on a farm. We can live more independent . . ." To remind him

that her accomplishments were also worthy of recognition, she con-

cluded, "You must suppose I am not a little vain to be thought by my

neighbors an excellent manager." The sense of self was considerably

different from that of the younger wife and mother in Connecticut

who was "heart sick with this cutting silence" of five weeks without

word from him and who wondered, "Have I less fortitude that the

generality of my sex or what can be the reason that I am at times quite

a child"[?]⁴⁹

As in the case of remarks made before her migration concerning

her lack of education relative to other women, Hannah Huntington

displayed the low self-esteem that Mary Beth Norton found charac-

teristic of eighteenth-century women who defined and devalued

their lives as wife, mother, and household mistress. Unlike the wom-

en Norton studied, Huntington did not "habitually degrade [her]

sex in general." On the contrary, her early negative self-image had

been compounded by her inflated conception of other women's roles

and abilities. She may very well have felt inferior to her very accom-

plished stepmother. The alteration was never complete. Dependency

and doubts continued to commingle with apparent satisfaction and

proven competence. But on the frontier, she had gained status and

stature as a woman, had approached the post-Revolutionary ideal of

womanhood-an independent thinker and patriot, a virtuous wife,

competent household manager, and knowledgeable mother.⁵⁰ Time

and distance from her Connecticut family as well as from husband

brought significant change.

Hannah had discovered a degree of autonomy, but it was a posi-

tion clearly and happily bounded by household and family. Her

sense of individuality was predicated on life on the farm with her

husband at her side. "How glad I should be if you would never go

that Circuit again," she wrote when he was still judge. "I will try to

make a farmer a good wife-or a good Farmer's wife and I do not

 

 

49. HH to SH, 28 December 1808; 21 October 1798.

50. Norton, Liberty's Daughters, preface, 256.

• 21
 

26                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

doubt I could be either." Samuel's perceptions of success were dif-

ferent and simply did not involve retirement from public affairs. Han-

nah undoubtedly sensed his reluctance to relinquish political office.

As his term as governor drew to a close and her hopes of a last winter

of a separation rose, ambivalence marked her communication. With a

diminished confidence she insisted that she was "hardly competent

to the management of the business and the care of a family." But per-

haps sensing that her protestations of dependence were futile, she

added that "there is no fatigue I would not endure-no sacrifice I

would not make for your happiness and comfort."⁵¹ From competent

domesticity to voluntary self-effacement Hannah Huntington sub-

scribed gladly to cultural constructs.

Satisfaction with the circumscribed life of the farm may have had

a personal as well as social basis, for there is in Hannah Huntington's

letters more than a hint of behavior that may not have endeared her

to her neighbors. Her elevated status may have caused some hesi-

tant aloofness on the part of the community. When "the Major" was

"rather contrary about turning (?) cattle through his teritory [sic],"

she indicated she handled the situation, but probably not in a pleas-

ant manner. "You know I have a small faculty at scolding," she

wrote, "and I have taken the liberty to use it." "Scold" covered be-

havior ranging from fault finding to noisy quarreling in an early

nineteenth-century context. As a noun it was a description of re-

proach applied principally to women. Hannah did not shirk from its

use as a description of her own behavior. She described her routine

with Margaret Cobb as "work and scold," which good friends may

have found comfortable but neighbors could have found such con-

duct tested their patience. In addition, Hannah spurned opportuni-

ties to engage in helpful actions thereby ensuring a place of respect

and affection. When a Cleveland neighbor asked her to board two

hired hands temporarily, she refused outright. And when she and

her sons husked corn, she pointedly reported that they had done so

with no outside help, since others asked for help in return. Little

wonder that when she wrote the following year that she was not as

lonely as she had been the previous winter, she added, "no thanks

to my neighbors though.^"52 Her self-sufficiency within a domestic

framework seemed built on social remoteness as well as on societal

prescription.

 

 

 

51. HH to SH, 4 November 1807; 16 January 1810.

52. HH to SH, 1 October 1803; 31 October 1808; 18 December 1809.

• 22
 

Hannah Huntington                                           27

 

Perhaps her constant complaints of his absence with their implicit

wish that he foresake his career were perceived as "scolding" by

Samuel. At any rate, there was no indication he preferred life as a Ge-

auga County farmer. Only the vagaries of Ohio politics prevented

even greater separations. At the end of the governorship, he ran for a

seat in the United States senate, but lost to his down-state Jeffersoni-

an rival, Thomas Worthington. Incapable of resisting the lure of poli-

tics, he was elected again to the state legislature and in the winter of

1811-1812 was off to the new capital, Zanesville. With the outbreak of

hostilities against the British, he achieved national recognition

when, after a trip to Washington, he was designated District Paymas-

ter and promised funds to supply and arm western forces. With inge-

nuity, he converted government drafts from the War Department into

clothing and ammunition for General Harrison's troops.⁵³

By the time of the war, letters from wife to husband stopped.

Whether Hannah became resigned to the peripatetic activities of her

husband is conjecture. Except for Samuel's absence, war was distant

from the Huntington homestead. For other settlers on the Western

Reserve, the War of 1812 was a disruptive event that impinged upon

their personal well-being and their family's safety. The news that

General Hull had surrendered Detroit to the British spread through-

out the settlements, arousing fear that "the British and the Indians

are coming." Women and children of Liverpool in Medina County re-

mained in a quickly constructed blockhouse in Columbia until the

danger had passed. For seven weeks the men spent the days tending

their farms but returned to the blockhouse at night. In many cases,

women and children had to cope without husbands and fathers

who were called up for militia service. A few families around

Greenfield in Huron County packed up their belongings and jour-

neyed back to New Haven. At the conclusion of hostilities, they re-

turned and one pioneer wife found the cooking utensils that she had

thrown into a well untouched by British or native American hands.

Vermilion settlers evacuated as far as present-day Lorain where they

could see the smoke of battles on Lake Erie.⁵⁴

Perry's victory meant personal security and national pride to set-

tlers. For the Huntingtons, it finally brought an end to Samuel's annu-

 

 

 

53. Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio, Vol. 2: The Frontier State

1803-1825 by William T. Utter (Columbus, 1942), 43-46, 50, 55; "Memorial to Samuel

Huntington."

54. Lois Scharf, "Helpmates and Housewives: Women's Changing Roles in the

Western Reserve," Western Reserve Magazine, 5 (May-June, 1978), 34-35.

• 23
 

28                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

al departures. He remained occupied with the development of Fair-

port and its harbor, supervising the building of roads as well, but all

activities were close to home. How husband and wife lived and

worked together is unknown. Because of his absences Hannah Hunt-

ington discovered a measure of independence which she longed to

surrender if only he stayed by her side. When he finally did, and

correspondence was no longer necessary, she moved off the histori-

cal stage. In their own ways, however, they left thriving communities

where only wild frontiers existed two decades earlier. In 1817 Samuel

died, and a little over a year later, his widow followed. Three of their

surviving children married and had children of their own. Only two

had sons; both named their first sons Samuel. All three had daugh-

ters; none named them Hannah.⁵⁵ But for all her "scolding," Samuel

Huntington saved his wife's letters, although she did not keep his. If

her children chose not to perpetuate her memory in name, she

helped ensure their future just the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

55. Upton, History of the Western Reserve, 272; The Huntington Family in America,

582-83. For the significance of child naming, see Daniel Scott Smith, "Child-Naming

Patterns and Family Structure Change: Hingham, Massachusetts 1640-1880," Newber-

ry Paper in Family and Community History, January 1977.

• 24