seems, had been for some time watching for their prey; one of them, named Seymour, was killed on the spot; the other was recognized by one of the Indians, made a captive and treated kindly. The Indian who captured him had been a frequent guest in the family where the young man had resided.

Some time previous two men, Buell and Gibbs, had been murdered by the Indians near Sandusky. Thirteen persons, women and children, had been captured near the present village of Castalia, some six miles to the westward of Sandusky. Of these, five, most of whom belonged to the family of D. P. Snow, were massacred. All the men belonging to the settlement were absent at the time of the massacre. These repeated butcheries, supposed at the time to be instigated by the British commander at Fort Malden, whither the scalps of all who were murdered were carried, kept the people of Milan in a constant state of alarm. In August Gen. Hull surrendered Detroit to the British, and from this time to the achievement of Perry's victory, in September of the following year, the inhabitants were in constant apprehension for their personal safety. The sighing of the breeze and the discharge of the hunter's rifle alike startled the wife and the mother, as she trembled for her absent husband or her still more defenceless "little one. During this interval, General Simon Perkins, of Warren, with a regiment of militia, had been stationed at "Fort Avery," a fortification hastily thrown up on the east bank of the Huron river, about a mile and a half north of the present town of Milan; but the inexperience of the militia, and the constant presence in the neighborhood of scouting parties of Indians, whom no vigilance could detect and no valor defeat, rendered the feeling of insecurity scarcely less than before. Some left the settlements, not to return till peace was restored. Those who remained were compelled, at frequent intervals, to collect in the fort for safety, or made sudden flights to the interior of the State, or to the more populous districts in the vicinity of Cleveland, where a few days of quiet would so far quell their fears as to lead them to return to their homes, to be driven off again by fresh alarms. With the return of peace, in 1815, prosperity was restored to the settlements, and the emigration was very considerable. The emigrants were almost exclusively of the New England stock, and the establishment of common schools and the organization of Christian churches were among the earliest fruits of their enterprising spirit. The town of Milan was "laid out in 1816 by Ebenezer Merry, who had two years previously removed to its township. Mr. Merry was a native of West Hartford, in Connecticut, and by his example contributed much, as the proprietor of the town, to promote good morals among the early inhabitants. He took measures immediately for the erection of a flouring-mill and saw-mill, which contributed materially to the improvement of the town, and were of great service to

the infant settlements in the vicinity. In the first settlement of the place, grain was carried more than fifty miles down the lake in open boats, to be ground; and sometimes from points more in the interior, on the shoulders of a father, whose power of endurance was greatly heightened by the anticipated smiles of a group of little ones, whose subsistence for weeks together had been venison and hominy.

Mr. Merry was a man of acute observation, practical benevolence and unbounded hospitality. He repeatedly represented the county in the legislature of the State, was twice elected to a seat on the bench of the common pleas, an honor in both instances declined. He died January 1, 1846, at the age of 73, greatly beloved.

David Abbott, as the first purchaser of land in the township, with a view to its occupancy as a permanent "settler," deserves some notice in this brief sketch. Mr. Abbott was a native of Brookfield, Mass. He was educated at Yale College. His health failed, and he was obliged to forego a diploma by leaving college in the earlier part of his senior year. He soon after entered upon the study of the law, and located himself at Rome, Oneida county, N. Y., whence he came to Ohio, in 1798, and spent a few years at Willoughby, whence he removed to Milan in 1809. He was sheriff of Trumbull county when the whole Western Reserve was cmbraced within its limits; was a member of the convention for the formation of th. Constitution of the State, previous to its admission to the Union, in 1802; was one of the electors of President and Vice President in 1812; clerk of the supreme court for the county, and repeatedly a member of both houses of the State legislature. He was a man of eccentric habits, and his life was filled up with the stirring incidents peculiar to a pioneer in the new settlements of the West. He several times traversed the entire length of Lake Erie, in an open boat, of which he was both helmsman and commander, and in one instance was driven before a tempest diagonally across the lake, a distance of more than a hundred miles, and thrown upon the Canada shore. There was but one person with him in the boat, and he was employed most of the time in bailing out the water with his hat, the only thing on board capable of being appropriated to such use. When the storm had subsided and the wind veered about, they retraced their course in the frail craft that had endured the tempest unscathed, and after a week's absence were hailed by their friends with great satisfaction, having been given up as lost. Mr. Abbott died in 1822 at the age of 57. Of the other citizens who have deceased, and whose names deserve honorable mention as having contributed in various ways to the prosperity of the town, are Ralph Lockwood, Dr. A. B. Harris and Hon. G. W. Choate.

The religious societies of the place are a Presbyterian, Methodist and Protestant Episcopal church, each of which enjoys the stated

preaching of the gospel, and is in a flourishing state. The two former have substantial and valuable church edifices. The latter society has one in process of erection.

In 1832 a substantial and commodious brick edifice was erected as an academy, furnishing, beside two public school-rooms and suitable apartments for a library and apparatus, ten rooms for the accommodation of students. The annual catalogue for the last ten years has exhibited an average number of about 150 pupils.

In 1833 a company of citizens, who had been previously incorporated for the purpose, entered vigorously upon the work of extending the navigation of Lake Erie to this place by improving the navigation of the river some five miles from its mouth and excavating a ship canal for the remaining distance of three miles. After much delay, occasioned by want of funds, and an outlay of about $75,000, the work was completed, and the first vessel, a schooner of 100 tons, floated in the basin July 4, 1839. The canal is capable of being navigated by vessels of from 200 to 250 tons burden. The chief exports of the place are wheat, flour, pork, staves, ashes, wool and grass seeds. The surrounding country is rapidly undergoing the improvements incident to the removal of the primitive forests, and with the increased productireness the business of the town has rapidly increased.

The value of exports for the year 1844 was $825,098; of this, more than three-fourths consisted of wheat and flour. The importation of merchandise, salt, plaster, etc., for the same period, was in value $634,711.

TRAVELLING NOTES.

The

Ohio is the native State of those two eminent electricians, Chas. Francis Brush, born in Euclid, near Cleveland, in 1849, and Thomas Alva Edison, born in Milan in 1847. At noon, July 20th, I left the train at Milan to visit the birthplace of the latter. station is down in the valley, and ascending the hill I gained the plain on which the village stands. In the centre is a neat square of an acre covered with maples and evergreens. On this stands a soldiers' monument surmounted by an eagle and inscribed with the names of Milan's dead heroes. No spot could be more quiet. Scarcely a soul was in sight; the spirit of repose seemed to rest there in undisturbed slumber.

Two old men, octogenarians, gazed upon me as I neared them, and pausing in their presence I made known my errand, whereupon one of them, Mr. Darling, took me to Edison's birthplace. It is on Choate avenue, and now the residence of Mrs. Sarah Talcott. It is a neat brick cottage on the edge of a hill which overlooks the valley of the Huron, with a fine view, sixty or eighty feet below, of river, bridge, canal, railroad and rich farming country beyond. My venerable conductor could give me but a single reminis cence of the inventor, and that was as a child in frocks, too young to read or spell, when he

copying on a board the letters of a store sign near by. It was a bright beginning; an ordinary child would not have done such a thing.

In the evening Mr. Ashley, an elderly gentleman, the village jeweler, gave me some items. The father of Mr. Edison was from Canada; the mother, originally a Miss Elliott, an American. He became a resident of Milan about 1842. He was a man of magnificent physique and so athletic that when at the war period, although about sixty years of age, not a single man in an entire Michigan regiment could equal him in length of running leap. His occupation in Milan was. the making of shingles by hand from wood imported from Canada. He had a number of men under him, and it was quite an industry. The wood was brought here in what are called bolts; a bolt was three feet long and made two shingles, 'was sawn in two by hand and then split and shaved. None but first-class timber could be used, and such shingles far outlasted those now made by machinery with their cross-grain cut. Mr. Ashley said he shingled his house in 1844, and now, after a lapse of forty-two years, it is in good condition.

The Edison family removed to Michigan, and they being in humble circumstances, young Edison at the age of twelve took the position of newsboy on the Grand Trunk line running into Detroit. The little schooling he received was from his mother, who had been a teacher, but he acquired the habit of reading, studied chemistry and made experiments when on the train.

Later he became interested in the operations of the telegraph, which he witnessed in the railroad stations, and improvised rude means of transmitting messages from his father's house in Port Huron to that of a neighbor. Finally a station master, whose child he had rescued in front of an incoming

that section as the "stone-house place." When the township of Perkins was organized Mr. Beatty was made its first clerk. Subsequently he was appointed postmaster, and for many years thereafter he served the pioneers as justice of the peace. About 1828 he removed to Sandusky, and in 1833 was elected mayor of that city. He died in 1845, and is still remembered as an upright, intelligent, warm-hearted, hospitable gentleman. The church edifice now standing on the public square of Sandusky, and occupied at this date by the Lutherans, was built at his cost and donated by him to the Wesleyan Methodist Society.

John Beatty was a local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and from 1815 to 1819 on almost every Sabbath met the pioneers in their log school-houses or at their homes and addressed them very acceptably on religious subjects. He was, however, a hot-tempered, impulsive, generous, obstinate Irishman, who never succeeded in reaching that degree of perfection which enabled him to love his enemies and offer the left cheek to an adversary who had smitten him on the right.

An Accommodating Postmaster.-In 1816, or thereabouts, a post-office was established and Beatty appointed postmaster. The era of cheap transportation and of cheap postage had not arrived. The settlers were poor; few of them could raise the shilling with which to pay the postage on a letter, but it was hard to have it withheld simply because they

were poor and had no money. The new postmaster proved equal to the occasion; he gave them their letters and never made returns to the department. When called upon to do so, he replied that he had received no money from the office, and therefore had none to return, and instead of being indebted to the government, the latter was in fact indebted to him. This sort of logic, however satisfactory to the settlers, was by no means pleasing to the Post-Office Department, and so the government in 1819 discontinued the office, and thus afforded Mr. Beatty greater leisure to look after the spiritual welfare of his neighbors.

He was the original proprietor of the land on which the town of Milan now stands; the site on the banks of the Huron river was naturally a very pretty one. Frederick Christian Deucke, a Moravian missionary, had, in 1804, established a mission there and called the place Petquoting-a very handsome name by the way and one which the people should never have abandoned. In 1814 Mr. Ebenezer Merry, having bought the place, laid out a village, and in honor of the first owner called it Beatty.

An Audacious Seizure.-Among the first, if not the first vessel built in what is now Erie county, was one built by Abijah Hewitt, Eleazer Bell and a man named Montgomery on the bay shore a few miles southeast of Sandusky. In one of its first voyages it brought to Sandusky a cargo comprising a stock of general merchandise for Mr. Beatty,