Mr. BACON had conceived the idea of a religious colony, and made a contract with the owners for nearly the entire township; in all about 12,000 acres at $1.50 per acre.  Payments were to be made upon time, but when payments were made for any part in full a deed was to be given.

            In the preceding year he had a new survey made of the township upon his own plan.  He divided it into sixteen squares of 1,000 acres each, called Great Lots, a mile and a quarter on each side.  A road or highway was established sixty-six feet wide on each line of the Great Lots, except the exterior or township line.  These roads all run north and south or east and west.  A public square of seven and a half acres was laid out as a common centre for churches, schools, stores, etc.  From this square roads ran to each of the four corners of the township.  The plan is shown in the annexed diagram, as given in 1842, by Col. Charles WHITTLESEY (see page 521), in his sketch of Tallmadge.  Here he passed his youthful days and from his sketch these facts are derived.

            “At the common intersection of roads on the public square stands (1842) a guide-post, having eight fingers or hands, pointing in as many directions, with the names of two to four adjacent places painted upon each.  On each of these avenues there are now planted double rows of elms from the adjoining forests.  The northwest diagonal intersects the town line about half a mile east of the corner, in order to avoid the Cuyahoga river, and the southwest diagonal has a deviation in a straight course in the village of Middlebury; otherwise all these roads, amounting to forty-five miles in length, are now travelled in right lines through the town as laid out by Mr. BACON.

            It was the intention of the contractor, Mr. BACON, to introduce a community of property to some extent, and among other things to have a large tract appropriated as a common pasture for all the sheep of the settlement, the proceeds to be drawn in proportion to the stock put in.

            No immigrants were to receive land who were not professors of the Congregational or Presbyterian Church, and two dollars for each 100 acres was to be paid for the support of the gospel.  The latter provision was inserted in some of the early contracts and deeds, but, in fact, never went into effect.

            During the spring and summer of the year following Mr. BACON’s establishing here, families came in rapidly, nearly all originally from Connecticut, especially from Litchfield county; many came direct from other settlements in Ohio, as those from Ravenna who “were driven out,” writes WHITTLESEY, “by the systematic oppression of a large proprietor and agent, Benjamin TAPPAN.”

            The first settlers prior to 1812 were: In 1808, Dr. A. C. WRIGHT, Joseph HART, Adam NORTON, Charles CHITTENDEN, Jonathan SPRAGUE, Nathaniel CHAPMAN, Titus, his father, Titus and Porter, and others of his sons, William NIEL, Joseph BRADFORD, Ephraim CLARK, Jr., George KILBOURNE, Capt. John WRIGHT, Alpha WRIGHT, Eli HILL.

            In 1809, Jotham BLAKELEY, Jotham BLAKELEE, Conrad BOOSINGER, Edmund STRONG, John WRIGHT, Jr., Stephen UPSON, Theron BRADLEY, Peter NORTON.

            In 1810, Elizur WRIGHT, Justus BARNES, Shubel H. LOWREY, David, John Samuel, David, Jr., and Lot PRESTON, Drake FELLOWS, Samuel M’COY, Luther CHAMBERLIN, Rial M’ARTHUR, Justin BRADLEY.

[page 640]       In 1811, Deacon S., Norman, Harvey, Leander, Cassander, Eleazar and Salmon SACKETT, Daniel BEACH, John CARRUTHERS, Reuben UPSON, and Asa GILLETT.

            On the 21st of January, 1809, Geo. KILBOURNE and his wife Almira, Justin E. FRINK, Alice BACON, wife of David BACON, Hepsibah CHAPMAN, Amos C. WRIGHT, and Lydia, his wife, and Ephraim CLARK, Jr., with his wife Alva A. CLARK, associated themselves together as a church, named the Church of Christ in Tallmadge.  Thus in the second year of its existence were the principles of the Bible adopted as the rule of moral government in this settlement.  In 1813 the church had twenty-seven members, mostly heads of families within the township.

            The stern purity of those New Englanders relaxed none of its rigor in consequence of a removal from the regular administration of the gospel in the East to the depths of a Western wilderness.  The usual depreciation of morals in new countries was not experienced here.  To this day the good effects of this primitive establishment of religion and order are plainly visible among this people and their posterity, who will no doubt exhibit them through all time.

            Individuals not professors of religion considered it a paramount duty to provide for religious services on the Sabbath.  Elizur WRIGHT, who became an extensive proprietor in the Brace Company’s tract, readily adopted the plan of Mr. BACON, and inserted it in his first conveyance.  But this scheme was considered by most of the inhabitants as an encroachment upon their personal independence, and was generally resisted.  Very early, however, a regular mode of contribution was established for the support of the gospel.

            The materials of society which Mr. BACON had introduced were not of the proper kind to carry out his project.  There was too much enterprise and independence of feeling among the early settlers to form a community of the character contemplated by him.  Differences of a personal nature rose between him and many of the inhabitants, both upon pecuniary and religious matters.  His purchases being made on time, without means and at high prices, and the sales not being sufficient, payments were not made to the original proprietors; the expenses of survey had been considerable, interest accumulated and the contract was finally abandoned.  He left this region in the spring of 1812.  The lands not sold came back to the proprietors; and some that had been sold and the payments not made to them were in the same situation.  The large owners at this time were TALLMADGE and STARR in the central and eastern part; Elizur WRIGHT and Roger NEWBERRY in the west.

            In the summer of 1875 two of the grandsons of Mr. BACON, both Congregational clergymen, Theodore Woolsey BACON and David BACON, came from the East, and selecting a boulder had engraved upon it an historical statement, as a memorial to him and the founding of the church.  A picture of it on another page is engraved from the photograph.  A large concourse of people attended the memorial services, which consisted of addresses by the grandsons and others, with prayer and songs.  The site is about two miles south of the centre and half a mile north of the Cuyahoga, on the spot where stood the BACON cabin, the ground having been purchased for the purpose.

HISTORICAL MISCELLANY

DRIVING AWAY THE EVIL SPIRIT

            On June 17, 1806, an eclipse of the sun occurred.  It occasioned much consternation among ignorant whites throughout Ohio, and great terror among the Indians.  Those in Summit county were greatly frightened, notwithstanding its having been foretold by some of their squaws, who were not believed and put to death for witchcraft.  (The squaws probably got their information from some of the whites.)

            When the sun was obscured, the terrified savages gathered together, and forming a circle, commenced marching around in regular order, each one firing his gun and making all the noise possible, so as to frighten away the evil spirit menacing the destruction of the world.

            One “brave,” who had fired off his rifle just as the shadow began to pass from the sun, claimed the distinction of having driven away the evil spirit—a claim which his fellow-barbarians recognized, and for this valorous deed and invaluable service, at once raised him to the dignity of chieftainship.

STIGWANISH AND HIS TOTEM

      STIGWANISH, or SENECA, as he was sometimes called by the whites, although that was the name of his tribe, had many noble traits of character, was friendly to the whites and much respected by them.  (See Lake County).

            His people for years cultivated corn fields near where the village of Cuyahoga Falls now stands.  In Boston township they erected a wooden god or totem, around which they held feasts and dances, before starting on hunting and possibly marauding expeditions.

            They would make offerings and hang tobacco round the neck of the totem, which the white settlers would steal as soon as the Indians had left.  The tobacco was said to have been of a superior quality.

            When the Indians went farther west in 1812, this god was taken with them.

DEATH OF NICKSHAW

            STIGWANISH had a son, “GEORGE WILSON,” and a son-in-law, NICKSHAW, each of whom was killed by a white hunter named WILLIAMS at different times, but in both cases under circumstances hardly creditable to the white hunter.  The death of NICKSHAW occurred in December, 1806; he had traded a pony with one of the settlers, and being worsted in the bargain wanted to trade back, which John DIVER, the settler, refused to do.  NICKSHAW threatened vengeance; he told the settlers he had been cheated, and intended to shoot DIVER.  Later, while at the cabin of his brother, NICKSHAW and another Indian called and tried to get DIVER to come out, but he would not, and his brother Daniel went out to placate the Indians when he was fired upon, and though not mortally wounded was blinded for life.

            The Indians fled, and a party of settlers, under Maj. H. ROGERS, started in pursuit.  They came upon the camp of the Senecas about midnight on a cold, clear night, at a point near the northwestern boundary of the county.  Surrounding the camp they closed in upon the Indians, but NICKSHAW escaped them and fled to the woods.  He was followed by George DARROW and Jonathan WILLIAMS, who, after a three mile chase, overtook NICKSHAW and called upon him to yield; this he refused to do, although without means of defense.  WILLIAMS then shot over his head to frighten him into subjection, but without the desired effect; whereupon he fired again, killing the Indian.  The body was placed under a log and covered with brush.  Afterward it was decently buried by the whites.

            Some of the settlers, deeming the death of NICKSHAW unwarrantable and likely to occasion trouble with the Indians, demanded an investigation.  The investigation, however, ended in a “hoe-down,” with plenty of whiskey and a $5 collection for WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS, THE HUNTER

            Johathan WILLIAMS belonged to that class of old pioneer hunters who knew no fear, were fully equal to the Indians in woodcraft, and bore them an inveterate hatred.  He lost no opportunity to kill an Indian.  He was six feet in height, with strong physique, swarthy complexion, lithe and noiseless in his movements.  He supported a family.  With his two dogs and rifle he was feared and shunned by the Indians, and was continually on his guard against them, as his life was threatened many times.

DEATH OF “GEORGE WILSON”

            On one occasion, stopping at the house of one of the settlers, WILLIAMS was told that “GEORGE WILSON,” a good-for-nothing son of STIGWANISH, had been there, drunk and ugly, and had made an old woman, whom he found alone, dance for his amusement until she sank to the floor from exhaustion.  WILLIAMS at once started after the Indian, and overtook him in the vicinity of a piece of “Honeycomb swamp.”  Taking advantage of the Indian while off his guard, he shot and killed him.  Then depositing the body in the swamp, he pushed it down into the mud until it sunk out of sight.

            The disappearance of “GEORGE WILSON” created a great sensation among the Senecas, but it was not known until years afterward what had become of him, although the Indians and settlers suspected WILLIAMS as the cause of it.

“BLUE LAW” IN OHIO

            Some years after the organization of Copley township in 1819, one of its citizens, early one Sunday morning, was aroused from his slumbers by the noise of a great commotion in his pig pen.  Hastily donning his clothes, he seized a rifle and rushed out of his cabin just in time to see a bear disappear in the forest with one of his pigs.  He pursued the bear and shot it; whereupon he was brought before the Squire for violating the Sabbath, and fined $1.  Shortly afterward the citizen left that community and joined the Mormons.  The historian does not so state, but if he was prompted to this as a result of the fine imposed for violating the Sabbath, he was so far, perhaps, justified in joining the Mormons, who had no laws against shooting marauding bears on the “Lord’s day.”

A LOTTERY SCHEME

            In 1807 the improvement of the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers was the great idea of Northwestern Ohio.  Col. Charles WHITTLESEY gives the following interesting description of a scheme to this end:

            “It was thought that if $12,000 could by some means be raised the channels of those streams could be cleared of logs and trees and the portage path made passable for loaded wagons.  Thus, goods might ascend the Cuyahoga in boats to Old Portage, be hauled seven miles to the Tuscarawas, near New Portage, and thence descend that stream in bateaux.  This great object excited so much attention that the Legislature authorized a lottery to raise the money.”

        The tickets were headed “Cuyahoga and Muskingum Navigation Lottery.”  They were issued in May, 1807, the drawing to take place at Cleveland, the first Monday in January, 1808, or as soon as three-fourths of the tickets were sold.  There were 12,800 tickets at $5 each.  There were to be 3568 prizes, ranging from one capital prize of $5000; two second prizes of $2500 each, down to 3400 at $10.  The drawing never came off.  Many years after, those who had purchased tickets received their money back, without interest.

A DESTRUCTIVE TORNADO

            On the 20th of October, 1837, there passed through Stow township a tornado of great destructive power.  It occurred about three o’clock in the morning, struck the western part of the township, passed north of east, and exhausted itself near the center of the township.  Its roar was terrific, its force tremendous; in its course through heavy timber, every tree within a path forty rods wide was snapped like a pipe-stem.  It was accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning, roaring thunder, and down pouring rain.  It passed over Cochran pond.  The residence of Frederick SANDFORD was torn to fragments, killing his two sons and mother-in-law outright, injuring Mr. SANDFORD so that he died within a few hours, while Mrs. SANDFORD and her daughter escaped severe injury.  Other houses were struck and felled or damaged, but no other deaths resulted.  Farm utensils were twisted and torn to pieces.  Domestic animals killed, as well as fowls and birds; the latter being plucked clean of feathers.

REMARKABLE CASE OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

            One of the most remarkable cases of circumstantial evidence occurred in Northfield township.  It came near resulting in the conviction for murder of an innocent man.  The circumstances are quoted from Gen. L. V. BIERCE’s “History of Summit County,” a work valuable for its preservation of pioneer history:

            “An Englishman, named Rupert CHARLESWORTH, who was boarding with Dorsey VIERS in 1826, suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.  He was traced to the cabin of VIERS on the night of the 23d of July, but on the following morning when a constable went there to arrest him, he was gone and no trace of him could be found.  On the arrival of the constable, Mrs. VIERS was found mopping up the floor.  Questions were asked, but Mrs. VIERS told contradictory stories as to the disappearance of the man, alleging in one instance that he jumped out of the window and ran off and could not be caught; and in another, that he left when VIERS was asleep, and the latter knew nothing of his whereabouts.  A few days later some one announced having heard the report of a rifle at VIERS’ cabin the night of the man’s disappearance, and of having seen blood on a pair of bars which led from the cabin to the woods.  Years rolled on, and the excitement grew stronger with age, until, on the 8th of January, 1831, complaint was entered before George Y. WALLACE, Justice of the Peace, that VIERS had murdered CHARLESWORTH.  VIERS was arrested, and a trial of eight days followed.  Not only were the circumstances above narrated proved, but a hired girl who was working for VIERS at the time of the man’s disappearance, swore that a bed blanket used by CHARLESWORTH was missing from the cabin on the day of his departure, and that it was afterward found concealed under a haystack, with large, black spots on it, resembling dried and clotted blood.  It was also proved that CHARLESWORTH had a large amount of money, and that VIERS was, previous to the disappearance of the man, comparatively poor, but immediately afterward was flush with money.  To complete the chain of circumstantial evidence, a human skeleton had been found under a log in the woods, beyond the bars already mentioned.  Matters were in this shape when two men from Sandusky unexpectedly appeared and swore that they had seen CHARLESWORTH alive and well after the time of the supposed murder, though when seen he was passing under an assumed name.  On this testimony VIERS was acquitted; but his acquittal did not change public sentiment as to his guilt.  It was generally believed that the witnesses had been induced to perjure themselves.  VIERS, however, did not let the matter rest at this stage.  He began a vigorous and protracted search for the missing man, and continued it with unwavering perseverance.

            He visited all parts of the Union, and, after a search of years, he one day went into a tavern at Detroit, and in the presence of a large assemblage of men, inquired if any one knew of a man named CHARLESWORTH.  All replied no.  Just as he was about to leave a man stepped up to him, and taking him to one side, inquired if his name was VIERS, from Northfield.  VIERS replied that he was.  The stranger then said, “I am Rupert CHARLESWORTH, but I pass here under an assumed name.”  CHARLESWORTH was informed of all that had taken place, and he immediately volunteered to go to Northfield and have the matter cleared up.  On their arrival a meeting of the township was called, and after a thorough investigation it was the unanimous vote, with one exception, that the man alleged to have been murdered now stood alive before them.  It appears that he had passed a counterfeit ten-dollar bill on Deacon HUDSON, and fearing an arrest, he left the cabin of VIERS suddenly, and soon afterward went to England, where here remained two years, at the end of which time he returned to the United States under an assumed name, and went into the backwoods of Michigan, where his real name, former residence and history were unknown.  The name of the family was thus, almost by accident, cleared of infamy and shame.  This remarkable case is rivaled only by the celebrated case of the BOURNES in Vermont.”

EXPERIENCES OF DAVID BACON, MISSIONARY AND COLONIZER

        Rev. David BACON, the founder of Tallmadge, was born in Woodstock, Conn., in 1771, and died in Hartford, in 1817, at the early age of forty-six years, worn out by excessive labors, privations and mental sufferings, largely consequent upon his financial failure with his colony.  He was the first missionary sent to the Western Indians from Connecticut.  His means were pitifully inadequate; but with a stout heart reliant upon God he started, August 8, 1800, from Hartford, afoot and alone through the wilderness, with no outfit but what he could carry on his back.  At Buffalo creek, now the site of the city of Buffalo, took vessel for Detroit, which he reached September 11, thirty-four days after leaving Hartford, where he was hospitably received by Major HUNT, commandant of the United States garrison there.  After a preliminary survey he returned to Connecticut, and on the 24th of December was married at Lebanon to Alice PARKS, then under eighteen years of age; a week later, on the last day of the last year of the last century, December 31, 1800, he was ordained regularly to the specific work of a missionary to the heathen, the first ever sent out from Connecticut.

            On the 11th of February, 1801, with his young wife, he started for Detroit, going through the wilderness of New York and Canada by sleigh, and arrived there Saturday, May 9.  The bride, before she got out of Connecticut, had a new and painful experience.  They stopped at a noisy country tavern at Canaan.  They were a large company altogether; some drinking, some talking, and some swearing; and this they found was common at all the public-houses.

            Detroit at this time was the great emporium of the fur trade.  The Indian traders were men of great wealth and highly cultivated minds.  Many of them were educated in England and Scotland at the universities, a class to-day in Britain termed “university men.”  They generally spent the winter there, and in the spring returned with new goods brought by vessels through the lakes.  The only Americans in the place were the officers and soldiers of the garrison, consisting of an infantry regiment and an artillery company, the officers of which treated Mr. BACON and family with kindness and respect.  The inhabitants were English, Scotch, Irish and French, all of whom hated the Yankees.  The town was enclosed by cedar pickets about twelve feet high and six inches in diameter, and so close together one could not see through.  At each side were strong gates which were closed and guarded, and no Indians were allowed to come in after sundown or to remain overnight.

            Upon his arrival in Detroit the Missionary Society paid him in all $400; then, until September, 1803, he did not get a cent.  He began his support teaching school, at first with some success; but he was a Yankee, and the four Catholic priests used their influence in opposition.  His young wife assisted him.  They studied the Indian language, but made slow progress, and their prospect for usefulness in Detroit seemed waning.

            On the 19th of February, 1802, his first child was born at Detroit—the afterwards eminent Dr. Leonard BACON.  In the May following he went down into the Maumee country, with a view to establish a mission among the Indians.  The Indians were largely drunk, and he was an unwilling witness to their drunken orgies.  LITTLE OTTER, their chief, received him courteously, called a council of the tribe, and then, to his talk through an interpreter, gave him their decision that they wouldn’t have him.  It was to this effect:

            Your religion is very good, but only for white people; it will not do for Indians.  When the Great Spirit made white people, he put them on another island, gave them farms, tools to work with, horses, horned cattle, and sheep and hogs for them, that they might get their living in that way, and he taught them to read, and gave them their religion in a book.  But when he made Indians he made them wild, and put them on this island in the woods, and gave them the wild game that they may live by hunting.  We formerly had a religion very much like yours, but we found it would not do for us, and we have discovered a much better way.

            Seeing he could not succeed he returned to Detroit.  He had been with them several days, and twice narrowly escaped assassination from the intoxicated ones.  His son, Leonard, in his memoirs of his father, published in the Congregational Quarterly for 1876, and from which this article is derived, wrote:

      Something more than ordinary courage was necessary in the presence of so many drunken and half-drunken Indians, any one of whom might suddenly shoot or tomahawk the missionary at the slightest provocation or at none.  The two instances mentioned by him, in which he was enabled to baffle the malice of savages ready to murder him, remind me of another incident.

            It was while my parents were living at Detroit, and when I was an infant of less than four months, two Indians came as if for a friendly visit; one of them a tall and stalwart young man, the other shorter and older.  As they entered my father met them, gave his hand to the old man, and was just extending it to the other, when my mother, quick to discern the danger, exclaimed, “See! he has a knife.”  At the word my father saw that, while the Indian’s right hand was ready for the salute, a gleaming knife in his left hand was partly concealed under his blanket.

            An Indian, intending to assassinate, waits until his intended victim is looking away from him and then strikes.  My father’s keen eye was fixed upon the murderer, and watched him eye to eye.  The Indian found himself strangely disconcerted.  In vain did the old man talk to my father in angry and chiding tones—that keen black eye was watching the would-be assassin.  The time seemed long.  My mother took the baby [himself] from the birch-bark cradle, and was going to call for help, but when she reached the door she dared not leave her husband.  At last the old man became weary of chiding: the young man had given up his purpose for a time and they retired.

            Failing on the Maumee, Mr. BACON soon after sailed with his little family to Mackinaw.  This was at the beginning of the summer, 1802.  Mackinaw was then one of the remotest outposts of the fur trade and garrisoned by a company of United States troops.  His object was to establish a mission at Abrecroche, about twenty miles distant, a large settlement of Chippewa Indians, but they were no less determined than those on the Maumee that no missionary should live in their villages.  Like those, also, they were a large part of the time drunk from whiskey supplied in abundance by the fur traders in exchange for the proceeds of their hunting excursions.  They had at one time no less than 900 gallon kegs on hand.

            His work was obstructed from the impossibility of finding an interpreter, so he took into his family an Indian lad, through whom to learn the language — his name SINGENOG.  He remained at Mackinaw about two years, but the Indians would never allow him to go among them.  Like the Indians generally they regarded ministers as another sort of conjurors, with power to bring sickness and disease upon them.

            At one time early in October, the second year, 1803, SINGENOG, the young Indian, persuaded his uncle, PONDEGA KAUWAN, a head chief, and two other Chippewa dignitaries, to visit the missionary, and presenting to him a string of wampum, PONDEGA KAUWAN made a very non-committal, dignified speech, to the effect that there was no use of his going among them; that the Great Spirit did not put them on the ground to learn such things as the white people.  If it was not for rum they might listen, “but,” concluded he, “Rum is our Master.”  And later he said to SINGENOG, “Our father is a great man and knows a great deal; and if we were to know so much, perhaps, the Great Spirit would not let us live.”

            After a residence at Mackinaw of about two years and all prospects of success hopeless, the Missionary Society ordered him to New Connecticut, there to itinerate as a missionary and to improve himself in the Indian language, etc.  About the 1st of August, 1804, with his wife and two children, the youngest an infant, he sailed for Detroit.  From thence they proceeded in an open canoe, following the windings of the shore, rowing by day and sleeping on land by night, till having performed a journey of near 200 miles, they reached, about the middle of October, Cleveland, then a mere hamlet on the lake shore.

            Leaving his family at Hudson, he went on to Hartford to report to the Society.  He went almost entirely on foot a distance of about 600 miles, which he wearily trudged much of the way through the mud, slush and snow of winter.  An arrangement was made by which he could act half the time as pastor at Hudson, and the other half travel as a missionary to the various settlements on the Reserve.  On his return, a little experience satisfied him that more could be done than in any other way for the establishment of Christian institutions on the Reserve, by the old Puritan mode of colonizing, by founding a religious colony strong enough and compact enough to maintain schools and public worship.

            An ordinary township, with its scattered settlements and roads at option, with no common central point, cannot well grow into a town.  The unity of a town as a body politic depends very much on fixing a common centre to which every homestead shall be obviously related.  In no other rural town, perhaps, is that so well provided as in Tallmadge.  “Public spirit, local pride,” writes Dr. BACON, “friendly intercourse, general culture and good taste, and a certain moral and religious steadfastness, are among the characteristics by which Tallmadge is almost proverbially distinguished throughout the Reserve.  No observing stranger can pass through the town without seeing it was planned by a sagacious and far-seeing mind.”

            It was fit that he who had planned the settlement, and who had identified with it all his hopes for usefulness for the remainder of his life, and all his hopes of a competence for his family, should be the first settler in the township.  He did not wait for hardier adventurers to encounter the first hardships and to break the loneliness of the woods.  Selecting a temporary location near an old Indian trail, a few rods from the southern boundary of the township, he built the first log cabin, and there placed his family.

       I well remember the pleasant day in July, 1807, when that family made its removal from the centre of Hudson to a new log-house, in a township that had no name and no other human habitation.  The father and mother, poor in this world’s goods, but rich in faith and in the treasure of God’s promises; rich in their well-tried mutual affection; rich in their expectation of usefulness and of the comfort and competence which they hoped to achieve by their enterprise; rich in the parental joy with which they looked upon the three little ones that were carried in their arms or nestled among their scanty household goods in the slow-moving wagon—were familiar with whatever there is in hardship and peril or disappointment, to try the courage of the noblest manhood or the immortal strength of a true woman’s love.  The little ones were natives of the wilderness—the youngest a delicate nursling of six months, the others born in a remoter and more savage West.  These five, with a hired man, were the family.

            I remember the setting out, the halt before the door of an aged friend to say farewell, the fording of the Cuyahoga, the day’s journey of somewhat less than thirteen miles along a road that had been cut (not made) through the dense forest, the little cleared spot where the journey ended, the new log-house, with what seemed to me a stately hill behind it, and with a limpid rivulet winding near the door.  That night, when the first family worship was offered in that cabin, the prayer of the two worshippers, for themselves and their children, and for the work which they had that day begun, was like the prayer that went up of old from the deck of the Mayflower or from beneath the wintry sky of Plymouth.

            One month later a German family came within the limits of the town; but it was not till the next February that a second family came, a New England family, whose mother tongue was English.  Well do I remember the solitude of that first winter, and how beautiful the change was when spring at last began to hang its garlands on the trees.

            The next thing in carrying out the plan to which Mr. BACON had devoted himself was to bring in, from whatever quarter, such families as would enter into his views and would co-operate with him for the early and permanent establishment of Christian order.  It was at the expense of many a slow and weary journey to older settlements that he succeeded in bringing together the families who, in the spring and summer of 1808, began to call the new town their home.  His repeated absences from home are fresh in my memory, and so is the joy with which we greeted the arrival of one family after another coming to relieve our loneliness; nor least among the memories of that time is the remembrance of my mother’s fear when left alone with her three little children.  She had not ceased to fear the Indians, and sometimes a straggling savage, or a little company of them, came by our door on the old portage path, calling, perhaps, to try our hospitality, and with signs or broken English phrases asking for whiskey.  She could not feel that to “pull in the latch-string” was a sufficient exclusion of such visitors; and in my mind’s eye I seem now to see her frail form tugging at a heavy chest, with which to barricade the door before she dared to sleep.  It was, indeed, a relief and joy to feel at last that we had neighbors, and that our town was beginning to be inhabited.  At the end of the second year from the commencement of the survey, there were, perhaps, twelve families, and the town had received its name, “Tallmadge.”

            Slowly the settlement of the town proceeded, from 1807 to 1810.  Emigration from Connecticut had about ceased, owing to the stagnation of business from the European wars, and the embargo and other non-intercourse acts of JEFFERSON’s administration.  Mr. BACON could not pay for the land he had purchased.  He went East to try to make new satisfactory arrangements with the proprietors, leaving behind his wife and five little children.  The proprietors were immovable.  Some of his parishioners felt hard towards him because, having made payments, he could not perfect their titles.  With difficulty he obtained the means to return for his family.  In May, 1812, he left Tallmadge, and all “that was realized after five years of arduous labor was poverty, the alienation of some old friends, the depression that follows a fatal defeat, and the dishonor that falls on one who cannot pay his debts.”  He lingered on a few years, supporting his family by travelling and selling “Scott’s Family Bible” and other religious works, from house to house, and occasional preaching.  He bore his misfortunes with Christian resignation, struggled on a few years with broken spirits and broken constitution, and died at Hartford, August 17, 1817.  “My mother,” said Dr. BACON, “standing over him with her youngest, an infant, in her arms, said to him, ‘Look on your babe before you die.’  He looked up and said, with distinct and audible utterance, ‘The blessing of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, rest upon thee.’  Just before dawn he breathed his last.  ‘Now he knows more than all of us,’ said the doctor; while my mother, bathing the dead face with her tears, and warming it with kisses, exclaimed, ‘Let my last end be like his.’”

            The village of Cuyahoga Falls is four miles northeast of Akron, on the line of the Pennsylvania canal and on the Cuyahoga river.  Manufacturing is already carried on here to a large extent, and the place is perhaps destined to be to the West w