Tracing Our Roots – Part Two: Families settle in Geneva area in 1805

In 1816, Geneva was officially a separate township, having been separated from Harpersfield Township. The original 1798 owners of the Geneva land were William Hart, Caleb Atwater and Gideon Granger.
The first white settlers up to 1808 were Theobalt Bartholomew, Elisha Ward, James Morrison, Sr., Levi Gaylord, John and Robert Lamont, Benjamin Custin, Eleazer Davis, Dr. Norman B. Johnson and Noah Cowles. Cowles Creek was named after Noah Cowles.
Levi Gaylord settled on the South Ridge, east of what was known as the Atwater tract, and began the first tannery and boot-making shop. A few years later, he turned to politics and spent the next 15 years holding many offices at the state and local level.
During the next seven years, 15 more families would come to the Geneva area. They would choose to settle on the South Ridge. Among them were Squire B. French, John Ketchum, John and Jacob Bartholomew, the Rev. Jonathan Leslie, Samuel Quinton, Abisha Lawton and Truman Watkins.
Another settlement would begin on the lakeshore in the northeast part of the township as early as 1811, but it would be abandoned because of various reasons, including the harsh conditions of Lake Erie at the shoreline, most likely.
On the North Ridge settled Samuel Thomason, Norman Webster and Harvey S. Spencer.
Josiah Alford came from Connecticut in 1817. His wife was Pauline Atkins, a sister of Judge Quintus F. Atkins. When Alford came to Geneva, he was already an established teacher having begun his profession in Granby, Connecticut. He continued teaching in seven of our townships and several other counties for 44 years. He died at his home on the lakeshore in Geneva in 1851.
Perhaps this early, good foundation of schooling led to the excellent teachers and school buildings of higher learning that identified Geneva as a place of higher learning. Geneva’s submission in the 1878 “History of Ashtabula County” devotes more pages to their educational foundation than most other county histories. Geneva first built a log schoolhouse of 1808, followed by a frame schoolhouse in 1821.
The early settlers took great value not only in schooling but in their faith and began meeting with other believers soon after arriving. As early as 1809, the Congregational Church was organized. The Baptist Church was formed in 1816. The Rev. John Leslie of the Presbyterian faith led their first service. They would build the first wooden church building in 1820. It stood on the corner of Main Street and Broadway. Rufus Munger, with the help of Orrin Knapp, cleared the timber from the site of the North Center Church. Munger would later write that he was too poor to buy shoes and often went to church barefoot.
In the loft of James Morrison, Jr.’s cabin in 1817, the Rev. Robert Montgomery led a group of Methodist. Montgomery was the grandfather of P.W. Tuttle, Esquire.
The Methodist class leader was Thomas Stevens and the members were James Morrison, Jr., his wife, Abisia Laughton, Phebe Custin, Anna Morrison and Samuel Quinton. A few years later, another class began to meet at North Centre. Attending with others were R.B. Munger and his wife, Maria, Jonathan Hammond and his wife, also, a man named Snediken and Betsy Munger.
Rufus Munger was the grandfather of Jennie Munger Gregory, who turned her Geneva-on-the-Lake boarding house over the Ashtabula County Historical Society to become its home. The home had belonged to Solomon Fitch.
Rufus Munger wrote his memoirs in 1885 titled, “Early Days in Geneva,” and it appeared in serial form in five issues of the Geneva Free Press-Times beginning Oct. 22, 1908.
In his writings, we learn a great deal about the early days of Geneva from one who lived through them. He came from Saratoga, New York, with his wife, Maria Andrews, in 1820, and settled on 100 acres just south of North Center on the west side of the road. He bought the land from Solomon Fitch. Solomon Fitch lived on the last house before reaching the lake which was sold to the Hill family in 1885.
On the land Munger bought from Fitch was a three-sided log house with one side simply boarded up. The couple lived in the home for ten years until they could afford to build another one.
In 1841, Rufus traded his farm at the North Center for Zachariah Olmstead’s farm of 160 acres which was located mostly north of where the Lakeshore & Michigan Southern railroad tracks run east and west of what is now known as North Broadway. It also took in the site of the Tuller house.
New settlers had been traveling to the area in oxcarts, horseback and by foot. But a new way of transportation opened up the area with the coming of the Erie Canal in 1820. The area began to greatly populate with the introduction of steamboats and the lure of lake shipping. The two Geneva distilleries of Sylvester Tuller and Eliphalet Mills made a great deal of whiskey for the settlers and the New York trade developed for them as a result of the opening of the canal by which they shipped their liquor.
The other settlers were alarmed at the sale of so much whiskey from their new settlement and a meeting was called to express their concern. Nothing ever came from the meeting, but it was noted in Rufus Munger’s notes because it was probably the first real temperance action in Geneva.
That same year, Deacon Cowles traded his horse for 400 acres of land in Geneva and gave a hundred acres each to his sons, Loren and Joseph. The land was located east and west of the square. At that time, the only settlers living in present business district of Geneva beside the four Cowles men were Joseph Bartholmew and a Thompson family member.
Joseph Bartholmew lived near the spring on today’s South Broadway. He sold out to Moses Wright and went west to Indiana. The story of other Bartholomew’s in Geneva was in last week’s story.
The first store owner in the center of Geneva was Eliphalet Mills. He not only had the post office in his home throughout the 1820s, he had a grist mill, tannery, distillery and blacksmith shop. With so much trade and increase in the number of settlers, S.S. Tuller opened up the Tuller Hotel in 1834 on West Main Street, today’s Route 20.
With so much enterprise, folks needed a bank, so in 1863, the First National Bank was formed with only one hundred dollars as its cash capital. The original board of directors included R.B. and H.S. Munger. Charles Talcott would come that same year, greatly adding to the business life of Geneva. Many more would follow, bringing enterprises and people to flourish in the budding town.
The enterprising and innovative, Norman S. Caswell, manufactured scythes, fork handles and other farming tools and loaded them into the back of his wagon and made a fortune. He would later partner with Charles Tinker to form Geneva Tool Works in 1868.
Land today encompassing Geneva on the Lake was first developed by Thomas Makepeace Fitch and Harvey Spencer, brother of the renowned Platt R. Spencer, the famous penman.
Platt R. Spencer, probably the most famous man that ever lived in Geneva, originated the Spencerian style of penmanship and is the standard of writing. He moved to Geneva from Ashtabula in 1831. Without any formal schooling, he became a natural orator, giving his first public speech at fourteen years of age on a Fourth of July celebration in Kingsville. He taught, wrote poems, gave speeches and even had a library built in his name on Main Street. He developed a pen and special ink to compose writings using his Spencerian method. In 1861, he was teaching at his own school, the Jericho Seminary in Geneva.
When Rufus Munger wrote his memories in 1885, he noted that the only original settler living in the village of Geneva in 1841 was Alpheus Cowles. Munger gave us a history that could have been lost if he had not taken the time to write it down. If you have a history of your township, no matter how small, that was recorded by an early settler or family member, I hope you will share it so it can be included in this series and hopefully, in the compilation of all the township history as written in this series. Next week we will explore the early settlement of Wayne Township.
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