Chapter 12

The Public Square, or Monumental Park, is in the business centre of the city, about 1/2 M. from the lake and the same distance east of the Cuyahoga River. From this park the principal thoroughfares radiate. Euclid Ave., once famous for its private residences, but now the chief retail street of the city, begins at the southeast corner of the square. Cleveland's newest residence district is on the heights in the eastern part of the city.

Cleveland sometimes has been called the "Sheffield of America." Its prosperity is founded chiefly on its accessibility to oil, coal and iron. It is the largest ore market in the world. Forty million tons of iron ore valued at $125,000,000 are received annually in the Cleveland district, and the ore docks where much of this ore is handled, are of great interest. Cleveland also has extensive docking facilities,* said to be the finest in the country, for handling its immense trade in coal and grain. Cleveland's oil refineries, among the largest in the world, receive enormous quantities of crude oil by pipe line, rail and water.

The city has 2,500 manufacturing plants with 125,000 workers, producing annually goods worth about $375,000,000, of which $100,000,000 represents the products of its foundries and machine shops. Cleveland is the first city in America in the making of wire products and automobile parts, second in the manufacture of clothing and sewing machines and one of the leading cities in the production of complete automobiles. Shipbuilding (there are five large shipyards* here) is likewise an important industry, and Cleveland controls the larger share of the tonnage on the Great Lakes.

673 M. ELYRIA, Pop. 20,474. (Train 3 passes 12:52a; No. 41, 5:27a; No. 25, 4:07a; No. 19, 9:12a. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 6:22p; No. 26, 7:57p; No. 16, 10:34p; No. 22, 2:04a.)

Elyria was founded about 1819 by Herman Ely in whose honour it was named. Ely came from West Springfield, Mass., built a cabin on the site of the present town, and later erected the first frame house in the township. The city lies at the junction of the two forks of the Black River, each of which falls about 50 feet here, furnishing considerable water-power. There are sandstone quarries about the town. The chief manufactures of the city are automobile supplies, telephones, electric apparatus, flour, feed, canned goods, machine parts and iron pipe; the annual output is valued at about $10,000,000. Eight miles to the southwest is Oberlin (Pop. 5,000), the seat of Oberlin College.

704 M. SANDUSKY, Pop. 22,897. (Train 3 passes 1:35a; No. 41, 6:12a; No. 25, 4:44a; No. 19, 9:55a. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 5:38p; No. 26, 7:13p; No. 16, 9:45p; No. 22, 1:16a.)

English traders visited Sandusky Bay, upon which the city of Sandusky is situated, as early as 1748, and by 1763 a fort had been erected for protection against the French and Indians. On May 16th of that year, during the Pontiac rising, the Wyandot Indians burned the fort. A permanent settlement was established in 1817.

At the entrance to Sandusky Bay is Cedar Point, with a beach for bathing. This is an attractive summer resort. Outside Sandusky Bay are a number of islands, most of which belong to Ohio, but the largest, Point Pelee, is British. At the mouth of the harbour is Johnson's Island, where many Confederate prisoners were confined during the Civil War. There is a soldiers' and sailors' home here with accommodations for 1,600 persons. A few miles farther north are several fishing resorts, among them Lakeside and Put-in-Bay (South Bass Island), where the government maintains a fish hatchery. Out of this bay Oliver Hazard Perry and his fleet sailed on the morning of Sept. 10, 1813, for the battle of Lake Erie.

Having worked up in the U.S. Navy from midshipman to captain during which time he saw service against the Barbary pirates, Capt. Oliver Hazard Perry (1785-1819) was at the beginning of the War of 1812 placed in command of a flotilla at Newport, but soon transferred to the lakes. There, with the help of a strong detachment of officers and men from the Atlantic coast, he equipped a squadron of a brig, six schooners, and a sloop. In July 1813 he concentrated the Lake Erie fleet at Presque Isle (now Erie). In Aug. he took his squadron to Put-in-Bay, in South Bass Island.

On Sept. 10, Perry met the British squadron, under Capt. Barclay off Amherstburg, Ont., in the Battle of Lake Erie. Capt. Barclay, after a hot engagement in which Perry's flagship, the "Lawrence," was so severely shattered that he had to leave her, was completely defeated. "The important fact," says Theodore Roosevelt "was that though we had nine guns less [than the enemy] yet at a broadside, they threw half as much metal again as our antagonist. With such odds in our favor, it would have been a disgrace to have been beaten. The chief merit of the American Commander and his followers were indomitable courage and determination not to be beaten. This is no slight merit; but it may well be doubted if it would have insured victory had Barclay's force been as strong as Perry's.... It must always be remembered that when Perry fought this battle he was but 27 years old; and the commanders of his other vessels were younger still." Another distinction which Perry won on this occasion is that he enriched our diction when in writing to Gen. Harrison to announce his victory, he said, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

Perry commanded the "Java" in the Mediterranean expedition of 1815-16 and died of yellow fever at Trinidad in 1819.

Sandusky had a spacious landlocked harbour, much improved by government works and its trade in coal, lumber, stone, cement, fish, ice, fruit and grape juice is extensive. Its manufactures include tools, iron and steel products, chemicals, paper, agricultural implements, lumber products, gasoline engines, dynamos, glass and cement, with a total value annually of some $20,000,000.

757 M. TOLEDO, Pop. 243,109. (Train 3 passes 2:45a; No. 41, 7:25a; No. 25, 5:45a; No. 19, 11:05a. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 3:35p; No. 26, 5:15p; No. 16, 7:30p; No. 22, 11:08p.)[2]

[2. Note that westbound trains here change to Central time; while eastbound trains change to Eastern time at next station (Sandusky).]

Toledo was built on the site of Ft. Industry, erected in 1800. It lies within an immense tract of land, constituting several reservations bought by the U.S. government from several Indian tribes in 1795. Upon that part of the tract farthest upstream the town of Port Lawrence was laid out in 1807. In 1832 a rival company laid out the town of Vistula immediately below and a year later the two united and were named Toledo.

This district was the storm-centre for the more or less ridiculous episodes of the "Toledo War" in 1835, a dispute over the boundary line between Ohio and Michigan. This boundary, named the "Harris Line" (1817) after its surveyor, left in dispute a strip of land from 5 to 8 M. wide, a rich agricultural region within which lay Toledo. Gov. Lucas of Ohio, by authority of the State Legislature (1835), sent three commissioners out to re-mark the Harris line so as to include the bone of contention. When Gov. Mason, appointed by President Jackson as administrator of the territory of Michigan heard about this, he dispatched a division of militia to occupy Toledo.

Gov. Mason over-ran all the watermelon patches, stole the chickens, burst in the front door of a certain Maj. Stickney's house, and proudly carried him off as a prisoner of war, after demolishing his ice house.

Lucas responded by sending out the Ohio militia who occupied a post at Perrysburg, 10 M. to the south. No fighting took place in this most genteel of wars, although there were several arrests and much confusion.

A Dr. Russ, who was with Mason's forces on their march to Toledo gives a description of the soldiers' jumpy nerves. Various jokers had circulated dark stories of the number of sharp-shooting Buckeyes waiting for them at Toledo, which so alarmed this amateur legion that nearly one half of those who had marched boldly from Monroe availed themselves of the road-side bushes to withdraw from such a dangerous enterprise.

President Jackson put an end to the dispute by requesting Michigan to stop interfering with the re-marking of the boundary line, but slight outbreaks continued until he presently removed Gov. Mason from office, and until Congress in 1836 decided in favor of Ohio.

The city administration became famous for its efficient honesty after 1897, when Samuel Milton Jones (1846-1904) a manufacturer of oil machinery, was elected mayor by the Republican party. The Independent movement which he began was carried on by Brand Whitlock.

Mayor Jones was re-elected on the non-partisan ticket in 1(899?), 1901 and 1903, and introduced business methods into the city government. His integrity in business and politics gained him the nickname "Golden Rule Jones."

Brand Whitlock was born in Urbana, Ohio, in 1869. He began his career as a journalist, but decided to practice law instead. After four years of study in Springfield, Ohio, he was admitted (to?) the bar in 1897, when he removed to Toledo. In 1905 he was elected mayor of that city as an Independent, running against four other candidates, and was re-elected in 1907-1909 and 1911 under similar conditions. President Wilson in 1913 sent him as minister to Belgium where he made a distinguished record during the War. In 1919 he was appointed ambassador to that country. His _Memoires of Belgium under the German Occupation_, published in 1918, gives an excellent description of "frightfulness" in actual operation.

The park system includes about 1,000 acres, connected by a boulevard 18 M. long. Toledo University (2,100 students), which include Toledo Medical College, was founded in 1880.

The advantages of Toledo as a lake port have always been recognized, and its growth has been rapid. It is situated about 4 M. from Lake Erie, and is connected with it by a channel 400 ft. wide and 21 ft. deep--sufficient to admit the largest vessels from the lake to the 25 M. of docks. Toledo is a shipping point for the iron and copper ores and lumber of the Lake Superior and Michigan regions, and for petroleum, coal, fruit, grain and clover seed. There are factories for motor-cars, plate and cut-glass, tobacco, spices, and beverages, also lumber and planing-mills, flour and grist mills, etc., with products of an annual value of $200,000,000 or more. At Butler (367 M.) we enter Indiana.

880 M. GOSHEN, Pop. 9,525. (Train 3 passes 4:4(9?); No. 41, 9:45a; No. 25, 2:07a; No. 19, 12:52p. Eastbound; No. 6 passes 1:06p; No. 26, 2:59p; No. 16, 4:28p; No. 22, 8:32p.)

Situated on the Elkhart River, Goshen was first settled about 1828 by pioneers from New England. It is the seat of Goshen College, the only Mennonite institution of higher education in the U.S. The college was founded as Elkhart Institute in Elkhart in 1895, and was removed to Goshen in 1903.

The Mennonites are a religious body who nominally follow the teaching of Menno Simons (born in Friesland, a province of Holland, 1492; died 1559), a religious leader, who insisted that true Christianity can recognize no authority outside of the Bible and an enlightened conscience. There are Mennonite colonies in Holland, France, Russia and Germany, as well as in the U.S. The American Mennonites have been largely emigrants from Holland and Prussia. The principal American colony is at Germantown, Pa. (first settled 1683).

There is a Carnegie library, a city hospital and a fine high school building in the town. Goshen is an important agricultural and lumber market. Its manufactures include flour, lumber goods, ladders, iron, wagons, steel tanks, underwear, machinery, furniture and farm implements.

900 M. ELKHART, Pop. 24,277. (Train 3 passes 5:00a; No. 41, 10:05a; No. 25, 7:21a; No. 19, 1:10p. Eastbound: No. 6 passes at 12:50p; No. 26, 2:45p; No. 16, 4:10p; No. 22, 8:15p.)

Elkhart, originally "Elkheart" (the translation of an Indian word), is so named by the Indians from the shape of an island, near the centre of the city, formed by the junction of the two rivers, the St. Joe and the Elkhart, which make many turns and windings here. There are several parks, in one of which, McNaughton Park, a Chautauqua assembly is held annually.

Elkhart is a city of factories. Band instruments, furniture, telephone supplies, drugs, carriages, and many other products are included among its manufactures, which have an annual value of more than $15,000,000. Two Mennonite papers are published here.

915 M. SOUTH BEND, Pop. 70,983. (Train 3 passes 5:30a; No. 41, 10:38a; No. 25, 7:45a; No. 19, 1:43p. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 12:20p; No. 26, 2:22p; No. 16, 3:32p; No. 22, 7:45p.)

South Bend is situated on the St. Joseph River. Just north of the city is the portage between the St. Joseph and the Kankakee Rivers, by means of which P[`e]re Marquette in 1675 and La Salle in 1679 made their way into what is now the state of Illinois.

This portage was part of the long land and water highway by which the mound-builders in pre-historic times conveyed copper from the Lake Superior to points as distant as Mexico and South America.

As there is no place in the U.S. but the south shore of Lake Superior where native copper can be mined, its presence in the mounds, at remote points is an infallible guide in tracing the commercial intercourse of the Mound-builders. Copper boulders are also found on the shore, and even as far south as Indiana and Illinois. That the whole extent of the copper-bearing region was mined in remote times by a race of whom the Indians preserve no tradition there is abundant evidence, such as numerous excavations in the solid rock, heaps of rubble and dirt along the courses of the veins, copper utensils such as knives, chisels, spears, arrowheads, stone hammers creased for the attachment of withes, wooden bowls for boiling water from the mines, wooden shovels, ladders, and levers for raising and supporting masses of copper. The high antiquity of this mining is inferred from these facts: that the trenches and pits were filled level with the surrounding surface so that their existence was not suspected; that on the piles of rubbish were found growing trees of great age, such as hemlock trees having annual rings showing that they began before the coming of Columbus. Copper wrought into utensils is found in the mounds all the way from Wisconsin to the Gulf Coast, and the supply is too abundant to authorize the supposition that it was derived from boulder drift. So expert were these miners that on the site of the Minnesota mine they lifted a copper mass weighing 6 tons, supporting on a frame of wood 5 ft. high.

The earliest white settler was Pierre Navarre, one of the fraternity of the _coureurs de bois_--a wild, rascally, fearless crew of half-breeds and renegade whites, who were the first to invade this famous hunting country. The succession of sheltered prairies, rounded sand-hills, and reedy marches cut by sluggish streams widening into lakes, made a good haunt for all game, especially beaver. Now the water is mostly drained away and the land reclaimed, but at one time much of the region could be passed over in canoes.

Pierre Navarre (1785-1874) was the son of a French army officer. Besides Canadian French, he could speak the Pottowattomie Indian dialect, and had some knowledge of woodcraft and nature signs. In his calling of fur trader he made friends with the Miamis and their chief, Little Turtle, and when the War of 1812 broke out, offered the services of the tribe to Gen. Hull, as well as his own. The offers were declined, so the flouted Miamis transferred their allegiance to the British under Gen. Proctor. So good a scout was Navarre that a reward of $1,000 for his head or scalp was promised by Proctor. "He used to say," writes an old chronicler who knew him, "that the worst night he ever spent was as bearer of a despatch from Gen. Harrison, then at Ft. Meigs, to Ft. Stephenson (now Fremont). Amid a thunderstorm of great fury and fall of water, he made the trip of thirty miles through the unbroken wilderness and the morning following delivered to Gen. Harrison a reply." He died in his 89th year at East Toledo.

The University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, with 1,200 students, is the largest Catholic school for boys and young men in the country, and the American headquarters of the worldwide Order of the Holy Cross. Notre Dame was founded in 1842 by Father Sorin, a Frenchman, who accomplished his object under great difficulties.

When Father Sorin arrived in Indiana in 1841, leaving behind a comfortable life in France for missionary work among the Indians, he found on the present site of Notre Dame only waste land covered with snow, and only one building, a tumble down log hut. With $5 to begin work of erecting a school, he started in courageously, and spent five days repairing the hut and fitting it up so that one half served as a chapel and the other as a dwelling for himself and 6 lay-brothers. In 1844 his little college was chartered as a university by the legislature of Indiana. Father Sorin was elected superior-general of the Order of the Holy Cross for life. Besides Notre Dame, he founded many other schools and colleges in the United States and Canada. He died at South Bend in 1893. His co-worker, Father Badin, was the first priest consecrated in the United States.

The mural frescoes of the main university building are by Luigi Gregori, who was sent from the Vatican for this purpose, and who spent twenty years on this work and on the adjacent Church of the Sacred Heart. The latter is famous for its decoration, especially the beautiful altar. St. Mary's, a large girls' school conducted by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, has also fine buildings of more modern type than Notre Dame.

Schuyler Colfax at one time vice-president of the U.S. and for years an intimate and trusted friend of Lincoln's, lived here in his youth, as did the late James Whitcomb Riley. The soldier who, during the Great War, fired the first gun of the American army in France against the Germans was Alex Arch, a native of this city.

Though born in N.Y., Schuyler Colfax (1823-1885) passed his early years first in New Carlisle, Ind., then in South Bend, where his step-father was county auditor. After doing some journalistic work, he began his public career by making campaign speeches for Henry Clay in 1844. In 1852 he joined the newly formed Republican party, and served in Congress from 1854 to 1869. His name was widely mentioned for the office of postmaster-general in Lincoln's cabinet, but the president selected another man on the ground that Colfax "was a young man, running a brilliant career, and sure of a bright future in any event." In 1863 Colfax was elected Speaker of the House, and in 1868 vice-president. Four years later Colfax was implicated in a corruption charge, which though found groundless by the Senate Judiciary Committee, cast a shadow over the latter part of his life.