Sufferers’ Land

A Village is Born on the Sand Ridge

by Dave Barton

That fall, Captain Enos Gilbert and his family arrived in Norwalk. They bought the unfinished House started by Amos Abbott, and, until it was finished, lived in a shanty workers had constructed while making bricks for Platt. The court met while the Gilberts were still in the shanty, and they boarded several members of the court there. The rest of the court stayed with the Benedicts or with David and Mary Underhill in their house a few miles to the west in Ridgefield Township. The Benedict house was so crowded that the boarders lay spoon fashion on the floor. Even then, there was not enough room for everyone and one of the lawyers slept sitting in a chair.

Soon after the court met, Enos Gilbert finished his house and several other settlers moved onto the ridge. In October, a young woman passing through the village on her way to David and Laura Underhill’s homestead saw but a few buildings – one store, two or three dwelling houses, an unfinished court house, and a tavern, consisting of three or four rooms below, and a place to dance above. It was kept by Enos Gilbert. [1]

The rest of that year and early in 1819, new settlers moved onto the sand ridge, building houses and stores in the settlement.

Businesses also started on the outskirts of town. A gristmill was erected on Reed’s Creek, one and three-quarters miles south of the village, and Platt and a settler named Obadiah Jenney built a sawmill a half mile south of town. Captain Peter Tice started a distillery just south of where the Courthouse is now. These three industries were essential to the new settlement. The sawmill made lumber out of logs and the gristmill and distillery turned corn into a marketable commodity.

That summer, Platt built a two story house in front of the cabin, using the brick he had had made the previous year. In July, he became Postmaster for Norwalk, and established the Post Office in his new home. The first mailbag he received contained only a single letter. [2]

Now the Benedict home would be the center of the social and business life of the community, the place where settlers in the village and nearby farms would stop for mail and news of the village and the outside world.

The town continued to grow. All the trades and businesses required to support the court and those who worked in it arrived — Druggist, Jeweler, Tavern Keeper, Baker, Carpenters and Joiners, Master Masons, Tanners, Couriers, Shoemaker, Cabinet maker, Hatter, Saddler and Harness maker. [3]

Around 1820, the first school in the village of Norwalk began in the shanty on Platt and Sally’s property, built two years before by the workers who made bricks for their new house. Eight or ten students attended, including Jonas and Eliza Ann Benedict. [4]

That same year, a man passing through town reported that Norwalk village was small, but appeared thriving, with one or two stores doing a fair business. Enos Gilbert, afterwards Sheriff, kept tavern in the frame building since occupied as a hotel by Obadiah Jenney, and now standing next west of Whittlesey block. – There was no church building. The houses were all on Main Street, and north of that was low, marshy ground with no settlers on it. Natural trees, chiefly oaks, were growing in Main Street, and after passing the center of the village the track became very narrow, worming among the trees. [5]

Norwalk had become a thriving village, but the level of growth Platt and Sally dreamed of had not materialized. After the initial burst of immigration, the flow of settlers dwindled as people bypassed the Firelands for lands further west.

Years later, an early settler explained what happened. About the time of the first settlements in this vicinity, in consequence of the favorable reports which the few who had got into the country made to their friends east to encourage them hither, the land owners got the impression that there was a great speculation to be made in their lands, they at once put them up to about double the price of government lands, and the result was to push the tide of emigration still farther West, where they could get lands for the sum of ten shillings per acre; this could be done by crossing the county line West into Seneca and Sandusky counties, yet the crowd was for Michigan. [6]

Norwalk would not grow as fast as Platt and Sally had hoped, at least not yet. For the time being, they would continue to grow their businesses as best they could, adapting to life on the frontier, and turning the little village on the sand ridge into a civilized town.

Footnotes:
[1] “Scattered Sheaves – No. 4, by Ruth – Maj. Underhill”, The Firelands Pioneer, September, 1860, p. 43.
[2] Descriptions of the first few years in Norwalk are from “Memoirs of Townships – Norwalk,” by Platt Benedict, The Firelands Pioneer, May 1859, p. 20.
[3] “Memoirs of Townships – Portland,” by F.D. Parish, The Firelands Pioneer, March 1859, p. 21.
[4] “Memoirs of Townships – Norwalk,” by Platt Benedict, The Firelands Pioneer, May 1859, p. 21.
[5] “A Journey from New England to the Firelands 55 Years Ago,” The Firelands Pioneer, October 1874, p. 88.
[6] “Memoirs of Townships – Fitchville, by J.C. Curtis, Esq., The Firelands Pioneer, May 1859, p. 33.

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This post was first published on this blog in 2009.

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