and among other things a cask of brandy which had not been entered at the custom house. The vessel was consequently seized and subsequently confiscated. Mr. Beatty's merchandise was put under lock and guard and the case reported to the department. The mails moved slowly in those days; time passed, and conscious of no fault on his part respecting the matter, Beatty grew impatient, and finally called his friends about him. drove his teams onto the wharf, put revenue officers and their employés aside, broke open the doors of the warehouse, and carried off his merchandise. All this was not difficult to do; the troublesome part of the affair came afterward, and resulted not from the cask of smuggled brandy, but from the violent and unwarrantable manner in which he had regained possession of his goods. The United States government was a big thing, even then, and no single citizen could afford to defy it, as Mr. Beatty discovered some years afterward when compelled to pay the costs and penalties growing out of this unfortunate transaction. The Candle Story.-While a resident of New London, Connecticut, a boy stole from Mr. Beatty a box of candles; the thief was promptly arrested and arraigned before at magistrate; a witness appeared who testified that the boy was guilty as charged, and Beatty being called to prove the value of the property, swore that "the candles were worth four dollars, every penny of it." Under the law respecting petty offence at that time in force in Connecticut, when the property stolen was worth from four dollars and upward, the penalty was whipping at the post! The magistrate was about to pass sentence, when Beatty realized for the first time the terrible nature of the punishment; his anger had by this time cooled, and a feeling of pity for the boy supplanting every other emotion, he took the witness stand again and said: "If it please your honor I desire to correct my testi mony. I swore that the candles were worth four dollars, but I omitted to add that that was the retail price; as the boy took a whole box I'll put them to him at three dollars and thirty-three cents. The boy was not whipped. Jay Cooke's Start.-Mr. Pitt Cooke once told me how his brother Jay happened to get into the banking business, and as nearly as I can recollect it was as follows: The Cookes were living in a house on Columbus avenue (Sandusky), near the present site of the Second National Bank. One day, when the family were seated at the dinner table, Eleutheros Cooke, the father, said in a spirit of pleasantry: "Well, boys, you must look out for yourselves. I have sold this house to Squire' Beatty, and we have no home now." Jay was the only one who took the matter seriously. He obtained a situation in a store that afternoon, subsequently accompanied his employer to Philadelphia, and this opened the way for him to the position of clerk in a banking house, and from this humble start in life he became the financial agent of the United States. The Rev. Alvan Coe, a very worthy and devout man, at an early day established a school for Indian boys, on the Fire-Lands in the vicinity of Milan, where he sought to instruct them in the mysteries of religion and teach them to read and write. The father of one of the Indian boys came over from the Sandusky river to visit his son, and while lingering in the vicinity wandered into a distillery. As was the custom in those days, the proprietor offered him a cup of whiskey. The Indian shook his head, and with much dignity said: "My boy tell me, Mr. Coe say, Ingin no drink, good man: go up much happy. Ingin drink, bad man: go down burn much." Then looking wistfully at the whiskey he picked it up, and raising it slowly to his lips said: "Maybe Mr. Coe tell d―n lie,” and drank it down. BERLIN HEIGHTS is a village on the line of the N. Y. St. L. & C. R. R., which has three churches and about 500 inhabitants. Census of 1880 was 424. School census 1886, 208; Hugh A. Myers, superintendent. It is the largest of the three villages of Berlin township, the other two being Ceylon and Berlinville. The township of Berlin from a small beginning has become noted for the perfection of its various fruits and the skill of its horticulturists. The proximity to the lake prevents damaging frosts, and the soil is well adapted to the apple, pear, peach, and grape. The pioneers at an early day were determined to have orchards, and began to plant trees before the ground was clear of the forests. Canada was the nearest place from whence fruit-trees could be obtained, and in 1812 John Hoak and Mr. Fleming, of Huron, crossed the lake, and returned with a boat-load of trees, apple and pear. Some of these old trees are now standing, vigorous, and of enormous size and productiveness. One of the pear trees is seventy feet in height, with a girth of eight feet nine inches eighteen inches from the ground; an apple tree is over nine feet in girth. A quarter of a century ago Berlin Heights widely attracted attention from the organization therein of a Socialistic or Free Love society; only a single citizen of the township was identified with the movement, its supporters being drawn from various States. Three successive communities were established and each failed. The last was the Berlin Community, or Christian Republic; it commenced in 1865, and had twelve adult members and six children, and lived about one year. The Socialists started journals, which had in succession brief careers, but striking names, as Social Revolutionist, Age of Freedom, Good Time Coming, The New Republic, The Optimist and Kingdom of Heaven, etc. One of th papers, The Age of Freedom, issued in 1858, was so obnoxious that twenty Berlin women seized the mail-sack which Frank Barry, the editor, had brought on his shoulders to the post-office, loaded with copies, and made a bonfire of them in the street. The author of the historical sketch of Berlin Heights, from which the foregoing items are derived, says: "The drifting to this section of so many individuals who, to use their own phrase, were 'intensely individualized,' and who remained after the complete failure of their schemes, has had an influence on the character of the town. They engaged in fruit-growing, have multiplied the small farms, and added to the prosperity and intellectual life of the people. From the beginning their honesty was never questioned, however mistaken their ideas." This author, Hudson Tuttle, was born here in 1836, in a log-cabin, on the spot where he now has a productive fruit-farm of between 200 and 300 acres of orchards and vineyards. He is known to the outside world by his spiritualistic and other works, and his wife, Mrs. Emma Tuttle, by her two volumes of poems: "Blossoms of Our Spring" and songs which have been set to music, as "My Lost Darling," "The Unseen City," and "Beautiful Claribel." was a man of great kindness of heart-had a store of general merchandise and trusted all those who could not pay. It was said of him that he might have been very rich had he been disposed to grind the face of poverty, He preferred to live more unselfishly and merit the confidence and respect of his fellows. He not only encouraged the early settlers with material aid, but with cheerful looks and kind words. He represented this senatorial district in the State legislature in 1816-17-19, when the district consisted of the counties of Ashtabula, Geauga. Portage, Cuyahoga and Huron. He was associate judge for several years under the old constitution. His ability. his integrity, his knowledge of the country and the people eminently qualified him for the places he filled. He was an earnest worker in the Whig party, and a personal friend of Gen. Harrison. Mr. Tuttle, from whose township history the notice of Almon Ruggles is derived, draws a refreshing picture of virtue in his sketch of Rev. Phineas Barker Barber of Berlin. He was a Methodist preacher who died in 1877 at the age of eighty-four. His ministry commenced in Ohio in 1830, when he could stand in his own door and shoot deer and other game, which he frequently did. During the fifty-eight years of his ministy he never received a dollar for preaching, but supported his family by hard labor on his farm. His endurance was wonderful. He preached every Sunday and his appointments were from five to twenty miles apart; in the early times he went through the wilderness on foot. He also attended on an average three funerals a week, and invariably suffered with a sick headache after preaching. His long and useful life was filled with labor and adorned with love. HURON, on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Huron river, is nine miles east of Sandusky and fifty-six miles west of Cleveland, on the L. S. & M. S. and N. & H. Railroad. Newspaper: Erie County Reporter, Independent, D. H. Clock, publisher. Churches: 1 Presbyterian, 1 Methodist and 1 German Evangelical. Bank: Huron Banking Co., V. Fries, president; H. W. Rand, cashier. Manufactures and Industries.-One of the largest fishing industries on the lakes is located here, employing 150 men. About 500 tons are annually frozen during the winter months and 2,000 tons salted during the fall and spring. Its manufactures are tackle blocks, mast hoops and a patent shifting seat for top buggies. Population in 1880. 1,038. School census in 1886, 371; C. K. Smoyer, superintendent. Huron has one of the best harbors on the lake, with about fifteen feet of water in the channel and room enough for all the shipping on the lake. The French had a tradingpost at the mouth of the Huron river about the year 1749. The Moravian missionaries, consisting of a few white settlers and Indians, located on a part of the southeast corner of Huron and the northeast corner of Milan townships, which they abandoned previous to the Revolutionary war. In the latter part of the last century or beginning of this, John Baptiste Flemond or Fleming from Montreal opened a trading station and dealt with the Indians on the east bank of the Huron about two miles from its mouth. He at one time assisted the surveyors in surveying the Fire-Lands. It CASTALIA is a neat village on the line of the I. B. & W. and L. E. & W. Railroads at the head of Coal creek, five miles southwest of Sandusky City. borders on a beautiful prairie of about 3,000 acres; was laid out in 1836 by Marshall Burton and named from the Grecian fount. The phenomena presented by the Castalia Springs has excited considerable curiosity and interest. At Castalia a volume of water called Cold creek, which forms quite a river, flows up from several deep orifices in the limestone rock and supplies in its descent of fifty-seven feet to Sandusky bay, three miles distant, the motive power for several mills. Being fed by subterranean fountains it is not much affected by floods and drouths. In its natural channel this creek ran through a piece of prairie covering several hundred acres into a quagmire and muskrat garden. It now runs nearly its whole length through an artificial channel or mill-race. In 1810 a grist mill was built near the head of Cold creek which ground corn until the settlers were driven away by the news of Hull's surrender. This was probably the first grist mill on the Fire-Lands. Similar springs to the Castalia are found in all limestone countries. The water is so pure that the smallest particle can be seen at the bottom, and when the sun is at the meridian all the objects at the bottom, logs, stumps, etc., reflect the hues of the rainbow. forming a view of great beauty. The constituents of the water are lime, soda, magnesia and iron, and it petrifies all objects, as grass, stumps, moss, etc., which come in contact with it. The water wheels of the mills upon it are imperishable from decay in consequence of their being incrusted by petrifaction. The water is very cold but never freezes, and at its point of entrance to the lake prevents the formation there of ice; it maintains nearly the same temperature summer and winter. In 1870 Mr. John Hoyt procured a couple of thousand of eggs of the brook or speckled trout, made hatching troughs and was successful in raising trout on Cold creek. The stream is now well stocked with trout and is leased to two clubs of gentlemen for sporting purposes, "The Castalia Spring Club" and the Cold Creek Trout Club.' The village of VENICE is on Sandusky bay, near the mouth of Cold creek, and on the L. S. & M. S. R. R. In the summer of 1817 the village was founded and the mill-race was begun to bring Cold creek to the present site of the Venice mills. The flouring mills here have performed a very important part in the development of the country. The Venice flouring mills, completed in 1833, established the first permanent cash market for wheat in the "Fire-Lands." The first 100 barrels of flour in the merchant work was sent to New York. On its arrival hundreds of people went to see it, for it was the first shipment of extra flour from Ohio, and some even predicted that in time Ohio might furnish them with several thousand barrels of flour a year. Much of the flour made in Ohio before 1840 was sent West for market. In 1836 Oliver Newberry purchased 500 barrels of flour, at $8 per barrel, and took it to Chicago, then a struggling frontier village, and sold it for $20 a barrel, citizens holding a public meeting thanking him for not asking $50. It was all the flour the people of Chicago had for the winter. Board in Chicago was at that early day enormously high, owing to the scarcity of food, the country around being then an unproductive wilderness. Before the starting of the flouring-mills in the fire-lands, the earliest settlers in some cases took their wheat in boats over the lake to the French mills, near Detroit. A touching incident is told of a party of men who started with their year's wheat in a boat and landed near the close of the day on one of the islands and then went inland a short distance to select a place to camp over night. On their return to the shore, lo and behold their boat was nowhere to be seen. A sudden gust of wind had freed it from its mooring and it had floated off with its precious load upon the broad expanse of Lake Erie. What situation could be more deplorable! They were on a lone island and no way of escape. There Kelley's Island is a township of Erie county; lies in the lake, thirteen miles from Sandusky, and contains a little over four square miles. It was originally called Cunningham's Island, from a Frenchman, who came here about 1803. He was an Indian trader, and built a cabin or trading shanty. In 1810 came two other Frenchmen, Poschile and Bebo; all three left the island in the war period, at which time Gen. Harrison, in command of the "Army of the Northwest," stationed a guard on the west point of the island to watch the movements of the British and Indians on the lake. In 1818 a man named Killam came with his family and one or two men. The steamboat " Walk-in-the-Water," the first built upon the lakes, came out this year, and Killam furnished her with fuel-all red cedar. In 1820 the "Walk-in-the-Water" was wrecked at Point Albino. In 1833 Datus Kelley, of Rockport, in connection with his brother, Irad Kelley, of Cleveland, bought the island, with a view of bringing into the market the red cedar with which much of the island was then covered. At this time there were only three or four families, and those squatters, on the island, and only six acres of cleared land. In 1836 Mr. Datus Kelley moved his family to his island home, and remained until his death, in 1866, in his seventy-eighth year. He was a man of great force of character, and careful not to sell land to any settlers except to people of thrift and general good habits; the result of this is apparent in the fine moral status of its present population. The census of 1840 gave it a population of 68; that of 1880, 888. The sales of wood, cedar, and stone soon repaid many times the entire purchase, and the tillable land, a strong limestone soil, proved to be of superior quality. The stone trade grew into great proportions. Large quantities of limestone were then quarried for building and other purposes. Some of the most elegant structures of our cities are built with the Kelley Island limestone. Another element came in to effect a revolution in the pursuits of the people. About the year 1842, Mr. Datus Kelley noticing that the wild grapes upon the island were remarkably thrifty, brought from his former residence at Rockport the Catawba and Isabella grape vines, and found the soil and climate surprisingly well adapted to the culture of the grape. Mr. Charles Carpenter, son-in-law of Mr. Kelley-born in Norwich, Conn., in 1810-planted the first acre of grapes as a field crop, and the demonstration was such that in a few years there were nearly 1,000 acres set to vines, about one-third of the entire area of the island. Large profits for a time resulted from the sale of the fruit packed for table use, and as a consequence the price of land advanced several hundred per cent. The excess of 1 supply over demand for table use, and also the quality of the crop for that purpose, led to the manufacture of wine, and there were in course of time erected on the island cellars which, including those of the Kelley Island Wine Company, had a capacity of storing half a million gallons of wine. The average crop of grapes by 1880 had grown to 700 tons, all of which was manufactured into wine. Mr. Carpenter, mentioned above, was not only prominent as a horticulturist, but he took a deep interest in the artificial propagation of fish; was active and prominent in inducing the State to experiment in the propagation of white-fish, and was put in charge of a branch of the State Fish Hatchery on Kelley's Island. Antiquities.-Kelley's Island was a favorite place of resort of the aborigines, which is shown by the remains of mounds, burial-places, and implements. Here is the famous "Inscription Rock," which archeologists have regarded as the work of the Eries, or Cat nation, which was annihilated in a wholesale slaughter by the Iroquois in 1655. The following brief description is from the pen of Mr. Addison Kelley: This Inscription Rock lies on the south shore of Kelley's Island, in Lake Erie, about 60 rods east of the steamboat landing. The rock is 32 feet greatest length, and 21 feet greatest breadth, and 11 feet high above the water in which it sets. It is a part of the same stratification as the island, from which it has been separated by lake action. The top presents a smooth and polished surface, like all the limestone of this section of country when the soil is removed, suggesting the idea of glacial action: upon this the inscriptions are cut; the figures and devices are deeply sunk in the rock. Schoolcraft's "Indian Antiquities" says of it: "It is by far the most extensive and well sculptured and best preserved inscription of the antiquarian period ever found in America. It is in the pictographic character of the natives; its leading symbols are readily interpreted. The human figures, the pipe, smoking groups, and other figures denote tribes, negotiations, crimes, and turmoils, which tell a story of thrilling interest. connected with the occupation of this section by the Eries of the coming of the Wyandots of the final triumph of the Iroquois, and flight of the people who have left their name on the lake. In the year 1851 drawings of these inscriptions were made by Col. Eastman, of the United States army, who was detailed by the government at Washington to examine them on the representation of Gen. Meigs, who had examined them. Copies of the inscriptions were made and submitted to Shingvauk, an Indian learned in Indian pictography, and who had interpreted prior inscriptions submitted to him. We copy a few lines from Schoolcraft's "American Antiquities," page 85 to 87 inclusive: No. 6, is a chief and warrior of distinction; 7, his pipe, he is smoking after a fast; 15-16, are ornaments of leather worn by distinguished warriors and chiefs: No. 14. ornaments of feathers; 33, is a symbol for the No. 10, and denotes ten days, the length of his fast; 34, is a mark for the No. 2, and designates two days, and that he fasted the whole time, except a morsel at sunset. "Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 43 represent different objects relied upon by the chief in the exhibition of his magical and political powers, denoting in him the sources of long life and potent influences; figures 30, 19, 41, denote a journey in snow shoes; 31-40, war clubs; 78, a road; 122, serpents who beset his path, etc., etc. These inscriptions were first brought to the knowledge of the white man," about the year 1833-4, soon after the purchase of the island by Datus and Irad Kelley, being discovered by Mr. Charles Olmstead, of Connecticut, while tracing, and studying the glacial grooves. Since then the rock has been visited by thousands of persons, and has become much worn, and some of it is so much obliterated as to prevent a full photograph being taken of it, as it was when first discovered. Prior to photographing the view shown of Inscription Rock Mr. Bishop and Mr. Addison Kelley, the latter shown on its summit, passed half a day in going over the partly obliterated lines in red chalk because red photographs black. The most celebrated locality perhaps in the world to show the marks of the receding glaciers is in this island region, and especially are they strong on Kelley's Island, as described on the third page of the article in this work, "Glacial Man in Ohio." Col. Chas. Whittlesey, in a paper read before the "American Association for the Advancement of Science," August, 1878, entitled "Ancient Glacial Action, Kelley's Island, Lake Erie," says: "These islands originally formed a part of the main land on the south and of the low coast to the west. Probably all of the lake west of Point Pellee, in the pre-glacial period, was more land than water. |