By the very nature of its name, settler, it is assumed the person settled in the area. There was a man who came to Jefferson with his family for one month. Samuel Wilson is credited with being the first to come with his family to Jefferson, and after building a cabin of rolled logs and killing an ox for food, he died. His grave is unmarked, but it was the first burial in Hickok Cemetery.
The actual first settler was Michael Webster who came to Jefferson, Ohio, in 1804 from Franklin, New York. This area was still a part of Trumbull County and Richfield Township. Ashtabula County was established in 1807 and Jefferson Township in 1819 when six bordering townships were detached. At the time, Gideon Granger was Postmaster General under Thomas Jefferson’s administration. Granger named the area after the president he served.
Webster returned to Franklin, New York, in 1805 after clearing some of his land, and brought back his wife, Olive Loveland, and one child. For nine, long, lonely months, she was the only white woman in the township. She would bear a daughter and name her Polly, the first white child born in Jefferson. She would marry Thompson Wallace.
Coming the same year as Webster was Jonathan Warner, an unmarried man from Saybrook, Connecticut, who came to develop the 200 acres he had purchased west of the future courthouse. Jonathan Warner would play an instrumental role in the economic, educational and village political life.
In 1806, Nancy Friethy would come to Jefferson from Washington, D.C. She was courted by Jonathan Warner and he would ask for her hand in marriage. When the consent was given, a well-documented wedding took place in Jefferson. According to family and historical records, the new Mrs. Warner and her husband mounted a horse together and took their “wedding journey to his log cabin on the western end of Jefferson Street.”
The couple remained in the home the rest of their lives, with Mrs. Warner living there until her ninety-second year. Many improvements were made to the home over the years and it is still standing today, second house on the south side of West Jefferson from the traffic light and intersection of West Jefferson Street and Fairgrounds Road. The Warners’ daughter became Mrs. C.S. Simonds and lived in Jefferson until she was past seventy.
In 1808, Daniel Webster came with his wife, Deborah (Ferris), from Bradford, New York. With them were their two daughters, Lorena and Alvira. Two more daughters were born to the Websters after they came: Sarah and Harriet.
In 1808, Michael Webster, Jr.’s father and mother followed them to Jefferson. Michael Webster, Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth (Clark) would have ten children, greatly adding to the population of Jefferson.
During the War of 1812, Durlin Hickok and his wife, Betsy (Fletcher) came with their family from Sheffield, Massachusetts. Tea was very hard to get at that time and was worth its weight in gold. Missing this precious commodity, daughter, also named, Betsy, sent a dollar by the carrier who brought her from Erie a very small quarter of a pound of tea.
She paid him twenty-five cents for his services. To make the tea last longer, Betsy would alternate actually drinking some of the tea, and then simply just smelling the tea from the canister. What tough times those pioneers had! I love coffee; the taste and the smell of it. But the smell is never as good as the taste! The young Betsy would marry James Loomis. Both are buried in Hickok Cemetery.
Another Hickok daughter, Louisa, married Joseph Mead. She walked one and a one-half mile to Jefferson Baptist Church even into her mid-seventies. She was the oldest member at the church having joined fifty years before.
The Atkins family line is so large and instrumental in the history of Jefferson that no record of this township would be complete without sharing their impact. Their story was contributed by Ada Simonds to the 1896 book, “Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve.” Among the early settlers, none were more deserving of special mention than the daughters and wife of Quintus F. Atkins, who came here from Morgan Township in 1816. Atkins carried the U.S. mail between Cleveland and Detroit via Sandusky, later, between Vermilion and Cleveland.
When Ashtabula County was organized in 1811, Atkins was appointed sheriff, but a year later, he resigned and enlisted in General William Haenry Harison’s Army of the Northwest. After the War of 1812, Atkins was elected Jefferson’s sheriff, then appointed county auditor. In 1823, he was appointed by the state of Ohio to be superintendent of building the Maumee and Western Reserve Turnpike through the Black Swamp.
Quintus Atkins’ wife, Sally Wright, came with her parents to Jefferson from Connecticut in 1802. The following year of 1803, she married Quintus Atkins. The couple went on quite an adventure in the spring of 1806. Along with the Rev. Joseph Badger, they went on a mission trip to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the Indians at Sandusky, Ohio. They went by boat down the Grand River to Lake Erie. Mrs. Atkins held her first child, daughter, Emily, in her arms. They were met by the friendly Indians and their families in canoes and together they journeyed down the south shore of the lake to Sandusky.
The primary tribe at that time was the Wyandot, also known as the Huron. Small bands of the Delaware and Ottawa also lived in villages along the lower Sandusky River at that time. In 1806, when the Atkins and Rev. Badger visited the area, they would have met with Chief Tarhe, also known as “The Crane.”
Unfortunately, the Atkins and Badger suffered repeated attacks of fever and ague compelling them to return to their home in Morgan at the end of two years’ service. They brought with them a second daughter who had been born while they lived among the Indians who named the little girl, Spotted Fawn.
Twelve children were born to Quintus and Sally Atkins, nine of them daughters, most of them pioneers in various ways. They were known for their intelligence and strong Christian convictions.
Sarah Louisa Atkins became the wife of the Honorable Edward Wade in 1832. He was a U.S. Representative for four terms, and brother of Benjamin F. Wade. Unfortunately, she died shortly afterwards, leaving no children.
Daughter Stella Maria married Harvey Gaylord who came from Harpersfield, New York, in 1830. The couple married in 1830, the year he came to Ashtabula County and moved to Geneva in 1838, then to Saginaw, Michigan in 1864. Their first born was Augustine Smith Gaylord, born in 1831 who became a U.S. Representative. The town of Gaylord, Michigan, is named after him.
Mary Atkins traveled to California in 1854 through the Isthmus of Panama. This was a very daring thing for a young woman alone at the time. At San Francisco, she got a teaching job at Benicia, the first Protestant seminary for girls in California. She returned to Ohio and taught at the Cleveland High School. She married the Honorable John Lynch, of Louisiana, and returned with him to Benica, California where she established the Young Women’s Seminary. Today, it is a part of the Northwestern Colleges. She is remembered by an elaborate monument on the campus.
Her sister Martha Atkins married the Rev. John Todd and moved to Iowa. Martha taught school and prepared her son well to enter college. Soon after, she returned to her alma mater and became one of the second class of ladies to graduate from Oberlin College in the classical course.
Another daughter, Ophelia, married Dr. Manley Bostwick, one of the first physicians to practice in the city of Toledo. Sadly, he died at age 39 from a fall from a horse and is buried in Toledo. His wife, Ophelia, moved to Iowa.
The third daughter, Bertha Atkins, married Frederick Judson. a merchant from Michigan. Daughter Flora was a Jefferson schoolteacher and after her marriage, she and her husband moved to Portville, New York, where they had a successful lumbering business. Flora worked to make the conditions of the employees better.
Helen died unmarried in Cleveland. She was studying to be a foreign missionary when she developed a brain tumor which caused her to go completely blind before she died from the disease. Most of the Atkins daughters attended Oberlin College and became successful in whatever they attempted.
Because the Jefferson history is so extensive and instrumental in the development of our county, I will continue its roots next week as we explore the early days of Giddings, Fitch, and Wade families, as well as others.
