Murdered in 1826, he'd been waylaid by four men. The assault was apparently near Cleveland's new canal, as his attackers were canal workers. People carried cash, back then, no checks or credit cards, yet. We are reminded of old-time street robberies? His attackers planned to spend some at the local tavern? He needed the money, so resisted? However it happened, he was beaten, left mangled.
He'd been walking along a roadside connected to Newburgh, a place not yet annexed to Cleveland, still independent, upstream of Lake Erie, with water-powered mills. His businesses, if like his brother Jacob's, were not just farming, included milling, thus needed some wheel-turning falls. Walking to work or between businesses was normal in summertime, no autos yet. He might normally have enjoyed the view, when up above Mill Creek. The road likely was ridgetop or nearly so. Were there glimpses of the gigantic Great Lake down below, trees higher, in some other directions?
An Overlook Road would give a similar view later. It most clearly looks down at Lake View Cemetery, with a small lake on its premises and Garfield's tomb. One of David's sons would be buried there, Elah. He'd registered for his first marriage license from LeRoy Twp. where David and other Frenches had gone first and where a cousin called Amasa Clapp still lived when Elah married Clarissa Brown. Elah French was clearly named for Amasa's father, the Elah Clapp who died when Amasa was little, in 1811. In a more citified location by 1860, Elah ran a boarding house in Concord Twp., first wife Clarissa Brown and four children present, post office given as nearby Painesville. Later, called Ely/Eli by his second wife Augusta, he worked as a butcher in 1870 and then, near retirement in 1880, was occupied as a hackster, referring to the renting of hacks.
David's brother Jacob had had a son who did not leave for Michigan with so many others, stayed, Edwin French. He would be buried at Lake View also.
Others Ohio-born, of brother Jacob or of David's other brothers, left for MIchigan, some before it declared statehood. No birth records were kept earlier in Ohio as proof, but names were in land records together. (One transaction was by Ransom French, done with Edwin French, Ransom to leave, Edwin to stay.) They repeated unusual names, across their children, Greek ones, not biblical (buried at Lake View as a Williams was Amanda Climena French, of Edwin, while Climena, Camilla French, of Ransom French, was buried as a Shearer in California, earlier having gone there to teach, staying at the hotel of Ohio-born Alfred French in Milpitas before she married.)
The St Joseph River left Ohio and crossed three counties where Ransom and other Frenches in Michigan before it flowed into Lake Michigan. Its mouth faced Chicago, easy for steamboats to make their way across to Chicago with farm produce. The three counties were Berrien, St Joseph and Branch. Did David's son Ogden French try Michigan?
The trouble-causing canal for David was west of Mill Creek, probably parallel for a good stretch. Both the canal and Mill Creek crossed, from an older and thus smaller Cleveland, into "Newburgh Hamlet" and then into Newburgh Twp., though at different points. (The canal was further from his home at Leroy than was the Creek, both viewable on two old maps kept by the modern GIS dept. of Lake County.)
David died of his injuries several days later.
A copy of the news item is above left, its source viewed by clicking the image to enlarge it. He would have been carried home to die, to his family, at the Leroy end of the ridge roads, ending near mother Painesville Twp.
FAMILY. The era of unusual biblical names was ending, such as his parents', his father and grandfather both called Abiathar French, and his mother, Beriah Alvord, pronounced Alford, both of the Puritan-descended and thus bible-minded.
David and wife Lucy had four children with deaths located as of 2022, maybe two other children's deaths not tracked. They had named a son for an in-law, causing the biblical name of Elah to creep in. Daughter Elvira's name was Germanic. Ogden and Austin were not yet places, were still somebody's surnames. Relatives were trying new ones, such as Edwin, with Ransom a surname made into a first name. From a Greek story, came Climena, some said the mother of Hercules, some said a nymph. Was a Greek name a sign that teachers were in their midst?
There were variations. Their New Englander dialect used contractions, so Cl'mena was heard as Clemena. When daughter Elvira's name was said as 'lvira, it might be heard as Alvira. Longhand scribbles of her name might then misread by moderns as Almira.
She was "warned out" of Leroy in 1828 by Overseers of the Poor, shortly after her father's death. The overseers wanted no one who might eventually be poor, the elderly, widows and orphans known to be poor. Never mind the Beatitudes! Six-ish when David died, she would have been eight-ish then.
They wouldn't really do that, would they? Instead of finding her relatives, writing to Michigan, locating her older cousins?
SIBLING COUNT OF SIX. David's parents were said by in-law Spencer Phelps to have had six children come to Ohio, at or nearing adulthood, after an Abiathar III died "back there" in his early teens. Three of those coming were named in baptismal records back in MA. One was Jacob (Edwin's known father, as named in a bio done on his daughter's attorney spouse, A. J. Williams, also a legislator and abolitionist). Two others with baptism records were John and Timothy. Timothy was probably the one to marry an Allison, then went where? Some Timothy formerly of Ohio went to Michigan, but did so later, after possible nephew Alfred left for California and possible nephew Ransom died? John disappeared in to the anonymity offered by too many called John French b. Mass, in each generation, too hard to separate if not knowing wife and children's names or some unusual future location and occupation.
Neighbor Spencer Phelps remembered David's name. Records were said to burn in Rev. Enoch Hale's fire at Westhampton. Many were re-constructed from memory at family gatherings, for example, done at Westhampton when someone's parents died later (nicely done for the family of David's aunt, the Dorothy French who married neighbor Jehiel Alvord. David was a "double-cousin" of their children, his father Abiathar having been the older brother of Dorothy, his mother, Beriah Alvord, having been a sister of Jehiel.)
David and two sisters were presumed too young to be remembered in re-constructed records, if relatives "back in Mass." had encountered them at teenaged Abiathar III's funeral? Re-construction remained hard if no one returned form Ohio for later funerals, the War of 1812 stopping all kinds of travel.
Yet, brother Timothy was married close in time to David, once in Ohio, by a circuit-riding Methodist minister named Shadrach Ruark. Another name easily inferred was his sister Rebecca, stone linked to son Amasa Clapp, widowed by Elah Clapp, then married to Wm. McMillen. Her survivors attempted to put her parents' names on her stone, an imperfect cenotaph. "Abiather and Maria" was a mis-remembering of close to "Abiathar and Beriah", but it was findable.
It was a way to remember them. Graveyards disappeared as roads and streets came through. The main old one in Painesville would be covered with a school parking lot, Newburgh's "long gone", and so on.
For the sixth one to Ohio, there was a Rhoda French who married a Luther Keep (back in Mass?). Luther was of record buying and selling land, for awhile of Elkhart, Indiana, at the line where Michigan counties were splintered off and made into Indiana counties. Hearing of a better opportunity, they then went elsewhere?
An EARLY Climena French married an Eddy, a surname seen at Leroy/Painesville. Was she another of Jacob's children, her Greek name repeated in the name of Edwin's and Ransom's daughters, maybe as she'd died?
NAMED WITH BROTHERS IN 1820 CENSUS. The 1820 US Census specifically named David French, family "confirmed by proximity", that is by his closeness to Timothy and Jacob nearby, plus key in-laws, his wife's family, his sister Rebecca's family, in a place with populations still small.
That 1820 Census, totally handwritten, not on pre-printed forms, is viewable at FamilySearch.org. Household heads were ordered by surname, counting ,but not naming others in each household. People from his township of LeRoy were put with people from Painesville Twp., two places to be in Lake County, Ohio, in 1840, both still in Geauga in Chardon Twp in 1820.
Checking deed locations near Painesville's harbor, those on the Perry side of the Grand River (northeastish) were put in a Perry Twp list. Edwin was still farming, there. Those relatives on the other side in 1820 (south and/or westish) were lumped together under the mother Painesville Twp name.
The related family of Nathaniel French, not a brother, was under Perry in 1820, to go to Mentor by 1850. Confirmed in-laws and relatives of David were scattered about in the 1820 list. These included some of his wife Lucy's Hessian family, listed as "Kenieppe" in the 1820 ("Elijah" and "Chrisgan" for Christian). The Hessian's side simpler surname in the legal paperwork used the truer spelling Kn, on the Scandinavian end of the Germanics. Think of old-time football player Knute Rockne being "sounded out" in newspapers as "Canute Rockne".
Plus, there were Phelps, in-laws to David's wife Lucy. Neighbor Spencer Phelps is buried with Lucy's relative (sister?) at Mentor. Spencer was the one writing a history of the first Leroy families for a newspaper around 1860. The name Phelps was also seen back in Hampshire County, Mass., where they'd lived before Ohio. Certain Phelps were among the relatives of David's mother, Beriah Alvord.
David's sister Rebecca McMillen lived until 1853 and stayed local. The 1820 listed her spouse William McMillen, also her son Amasa Clapp. (The son was named for grandfather Col. Amasa Clapp, left behind in Mass.)
The original records of what became Lake County had burned in a fire at mother Geauga's courthouse in Chardon, before Lake County broke away. David's son Elah's marriage license naming Clarissa Ann Brown was better than their marriage record, as it stating LeRoy Twp. as the 1839 address. It clearly was after the fire, with Elah's 1840 Census not at LeRoy, but counting him at Chardon Twp, which remained in Geauga as its shopping town had the courthouse.
A John French, maybe of a different wing of the family, maybe David's missing brother, would show up in Chardon after Elah left, married but no children?
Surnames listed as Eddy and maybe Harmon maybe matched names of spouses for elder daughters of David's brothers, not yet married in 1820?
SIDE NOTE 1: A Cordelia French married an Orasmus Harmon. He co-bought land near varied recognizable Frenches and others in Branch County Mich. in 1838. ( His own name was almost unrecognizable, looking more like "Osmus"? ). One of the other buyers was Alfred French, who seemed to be picking 4-corner kinds of locations when filing claims in Branch County.
SIDE NOTE 2: A Climena/Clemena French married a Dennis Eddy, in Ohio, in Dec., 1822, church unnamed. She then must have died young, as her spouse then remarried in Ohio, according to records at FamilySearch.org. Their marriage is on p.7 of "The Puritan Manuscripts", a booklet with marriages of a certain period gathered from newspapers. A typo in the booklet gives the year of county creation as 1846, but 1840 is seen elsewhere.
The author of "The Puritan Manuscripts" wrote from Akron, OH. He would also write in 1933 on the Francis Nashes of Braintree. He was a Baptist Pastor, maybe of the Free Will/Universalist sort, who served from Madison, Wisc., and then, in 1913, at Tenth Street Baptist at Columbus, Ohio, congregation expanded to include Baptist students at Ohio State. An obviously intelligent man, his prior studies had been at Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisc., and at the Univ. of Chicago. He was Vernon S Phillips, D.D., meaning he had a Doctor of Divinity, a type of PhD, his Findagrave ID 158590803.)
CONFUSIONS. It's easy to confuse unrelated people in the Geauga/Lake County named French.
The 1820 list, alphabetic, named the three brothers in a row, David and Timothy French, with the eldest last, Jacob French. (John French was absent, moved, died, or shifted to a middle name. Spencer Phelps said John arrived first, with David and future in-law Charles "Kenieppe" to prep the land, meaning they brought the heavy plow and saws, the already married Jacob and Abiathar implied to come later, bringing children and household goods,)
Listed after Jacob in the 1820 Census was an unrelated Daniel Ide French, proven since 2014 to be of different male DNA (a Painesville attorney, land records showing he was early at Concord, his brothers Warren and Artemus and their parents Mary Ide and Seba French coming with Warren and Artemus).
Some confused the Lucy French (sister of Charles), married to this David French, with the Lucy Owen French married to Daniel Ide French.
Also to beware--David's side had a Zeba French,son of Nataniel, once of Perry, living in Mentor by 1850. Daniel Ide French's side had a Seba French, of Painesville, buried at Waahington Street Cemetery, now defunct, paved over for a parking lot
Both sets, this David's, and that Daniel's were of immigrants to Mass. in the Puritan era. David's ancestor, one of many named John French, but the only one to be declared a "freeman" at old Braintree in 1640, the only one to marry wife Grace, maiden name unknown as never given in paperwork in the States. They reared their children as a family of farmers and millers, barely south of Boston, at Braintree.
Daniel Ide French's ancestor, in contrast had a different John French as Puritan ancestor, his wife in two wills, making it clear that her maiden name was Kingsley and that her spouse was different in occupation, John French the tailor. Freedom's children were never at Braintree, instead born far north of Boston, up at Ipswich, almost in future Maine. People insisting that Grace have a maiden name tried to make her into Freedom Kingsley, then made the two genetically different Johns identical or father and son. That these were mix-ups was made clear in 2014, when a Braintree descendent still living near there, in MA, had his male Dna tested. John and Grace's middle son Dependence was ancestor to David's set and to a set headed by Nathaniel French, his son Zeba and grandson George buried at Mentor.
The unrelated Daniel Ide French proved a good man. He had had tried to help David's sister, Rebecca McMillen, and her spouse William, rescue the pioneering land settled pre-War of 1812 and left to her Clapp children, after her first husband died in Leroy in 1811, a man named Elah Clapp.
CANAL BROUGHT PROSPERITY TO CLEVELAND, BYPASSED PAINESVILLE. If people wish to survive, they have to adapt. The canal was a sign of progress. They would have a few decades of canal business and travel, before train routes replaced that, tracks laid, in part, on the flatness of canal paths, on riverside terraces leftover from old glacial melts, along rivers where paddleboats soon no longer went, tracks also following the edges of great-sized lakes, where schooners no longer sailed.
CEMETERIES GONE VS NOT. Progress has effects. Among the cemeteries wiped out as industry and suburban housing came were Newburgh's (no good list of graves made?) Painesville's old cemetery on Washington Street was paved over for a high school parking lot (a partial list was thoughtfully made, but listings were complete only for those stones still readable).
Among the few old stones still standing at this writing--
*His sister Rebecca's, at Brakeman Cem., in Lake County, Ohio, in the Leroy area. Her children and spouses would be buried there.
(On what was once Phelps land, bought maybe first by a Hungerford and then definitely a Germanic family from upstate NY with name Britishized as Breakeman, Breakman, and finally Brakeman. The Brakemans did not plow the markers down, nor use them for sidewalk paving, but preserved the remaining stones, by then under public care. )
*Son Elah French's stone, is in East Cleveland, bur his son, a second Elah, is at that of Cleveland's cemeteries doubling as an art museum, so much to see, better preserved than average, having President Garfield's towered multi-story tomb, offering another up-high view.
(Just 8 years old when his father died, Elah became a hotel keeper by his 40s. One of his hotel guest in 1860 was a Jehiel Alvord. Elah and Jehiel's fathers were David French and Isaac Alvord, "double cousins", each with one parent an Alvord and one parent a French. Such cousins and their children are often extra close if similar in age. That Jehiel was a bachelor, to live and die near his workplaces in and around Westhampton, buried at his death place of Williamsburg in 1893, so was "just visiting" in 1860.
Elah's son was another Elah, the one with greenhouses (with some involvement in the planning of Lake View Cemetery?) Relative Ransom French's son AO French would also have a horticultural knack out in Michigan, just beginning a university degree in agricultural degree when the Civil War interrupted, not able to stop the "peach yellows" when that attacked his orchard, so switching what he grew. He was Alfred Orin according to descendants, but his parents spelled his name as Alvord French in their 1850 US Census
INDENTURES IN THE 1820s? If his orphans' father had businesses, in a day of no life insurance, then that father's unexpectedly early demise meant taxes and bills came suddenly due, with the income previously used to pay them no longer there. Geauga County has partial lists of those indentures, just those that were court-enforced, so not complete, but giving an idea of local timing, late 1820s through 1852. Some thinkers saw indenture as a temporary slavery, while often voluntary for grown-ups at the beginning, involuntary for children at the start. The income from selling sizeable contracts for seven years of labor could be used to pay parents' unpaid debts, a "little something" promised to the child at indenture's end, if still living. The contract said what the final incentive would be. The Geauga website said a common combination was a suit of clothes and a cow or two or a bible, which some say could cost maybe a week's wages.
Because they were in the States and not in Britain, because they were US north, and not US south, the local indentures were good in one sense. They tried to ensure a better life, later, by requiring that the child be educated. Even so, people who were anti-slavery might still endorse child indenture.
Even with education required, indenture was not a happy thing. Mothers might lose all of their children if they and close relatives could not afford for each family to buy a child's contract. Outcomes for those whose contracts were bought by strangers or unwise family members varied, from great, to terrible, even deadly. A useful apprenticeship for some? balanced by others treated slave-like, fed tiny scraps, sleeping in the barn's hay loft, whipped? While some were kept near home and mother, others were maybe taken to a new state or new country, never to return? Maybe sent out to sea as a cabin boy or scullery maid? Think of Shirley Temple's movie "The Little Princess" to understand little tiny girls as scullery maids.
What happened to Elah's sister Elvira? His brothers Ogden and Austin? Were there more than those four? The Hessian grandfather's will, dying too early to rescue them, named six, added two girls, an Alvah and an Abigail? The will was viewed by his descendant a MaryAnn Weisenberger.
Signs are Elah was maybe taken by his uncle Jacob's family, as he was able stay close. He is thus buried in Cleveland, where some of Jacob's land transactions can be found. Elah's cemetery is not random,, but with the extended family of his uncle Jacob's known son, Edwin French.
While Jacob's grave, like David's, is lost, Edwin's and Elah son's are both at Lake View. Also there--Edwin's son-in-law AJ Williams. He was an attorney who seemed extra-conscientious, his father a circuit-riding Methodist minister, himself an attorney turned state rep in the days of electing abolitionists, pre-Civil War. His time in the state leg earned him biography space. The son-in-law's biography spoke of his in-laws. It gave key details of Jacob's parents, and thus of David's.
Edwin's son made money, before going out to Wimberley, enough to build one of the mansions for which Cleveland was famed in its millionaire days. Like too many old Cleveland-area cemeteries, the old Cleveland mansion is gone. The son's wealth came once railroad cars needed engineered parts? When trucks replaced trains, a lot of that type of business and thus some of Cleveland's wealth departed, slowed some by car and truck companies coming in, iron and then taconite being shippable by Lake from Duluth, John Rockefeller's businesses and Case engines helpful, the Cleveland Clinics adding medical work later. )
* David's orphaned daughter, Elvira, married name Pinney, buried at Mentor, in Lake County. Her father died when she was six.
(Also seen as Alvira, misreadable as Almira. Girls were declared adults at age 12, keeping taxes low as a foster family then no longer needed to be paid for her room and board, implying somebody thought 12 was an age when marriage was to be allowed. In order to avoid worse things, a young girl might marry the first man who showed an interest, even though not compatible. Her first marriage ended in divorce, her second lasted decades, with her bio at FindaGrave saying her brother Elah signed his permission. She then wed one of the Ohio men called Azariah Pinney, his stone lost, some sons' stones still standing.)
GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS SOURCE: In 1826, the still large mother township called Painesville contained a region, uphill, so away from the mosquitoes, described later as Leroy Twp. It housed the early arriving French, Clapp, Keneippe and Phelp families by 1806, after some of their young men went there earlier to clear and otherwise prepare for the rest to come from western Mass. In mother Geauga, at first, their lakeside south part became its own county, Lake, an Atlas of 1840 made then, mapping road, towns and property-owners for each of Lake County's Townships.
Newburgh Twp, like Leroy, was uphill of the big lake, Erie, but further west, ridgetop places connected by ridge roads, with Mentor, the location of Elvira's stone and Spencer Phelps, between Leroy and Newburgh. Newburgh was on the Chagrin River, the waterpower there attracting mills. The two rivers to either side were more important, as used for shipping, their ports downhill from the ridge roads. Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, to the west, would not matter much until its canal to the Ohio River was finished, its drainage drying up stagnant sloughs that fed malaria-causing mosquitoes, in addition to giving access to the Mississippi. Painesville's Grand River, to the east, its water access technically at Freeport, made Painesville busier than Cleveland, pre-Canal. Then, the tables turned.
NEWBURGH-WIMBERLEY TRADE. As part of Geauga in 1826, you'd think Newburgh would have become part of Lake, but, instead, a different deal was made. Newburgh was transferred into Cuyahoga County, to be annexed later, much of it now inside Cleveland proper. In return, Cuyahoga County gave Lake the shoreside area that became Wimberly.
DEATH SOURCE. The items telling of David's death and naming the main culprit were in an unspecified newspaper, select parts transcribed and saved inside the "Annals of Cleveland", one of the wonderful WPA projects in the Depression era. The Annals author is "United States Work Projects Administration (Ohio)". The two related clippings, David's death and the culprit's conviction, were on page 16 of a section called the "Cleveland Newpaper Digest Jan 1 to Dec 31, 1826"
OLD LEROY SOURCES. There were more sources. An old 1895 source called " the Women of Leroy" told of the Frenchs coming to Leroy in 1806 with six children (inferred from other things as four sons and two daughters, one or two others dying back in New England). Old neighbor Spencer Phelps, elderly by Jehiel Alvord's visit in 1860, wrote up his memoirs of Leroy history that year, for the Painesville Telegraph, since transcribed by modern volunteers.
Phelps came first, with a different group than David's, but including David's future in-law Elah Clapp. David and his brother John then came with David's other future in-law, spelled by Phelps as Charles Keneep, to prepare the Leroy land for their families. The implication, not actually stated, was that David was one of the six (adult) children brought to Leroy, so a a son of Abiathar French, who, back in a place accustomed to Puritan names, had wed Beriah Alvord, her brother, an earlier Jehiel Alvord, wedding Abiathar's younger sister Dorothy, aka Doritha.
FAMILY HESSIANS. David married Lucy "Knieppe" locally, on May 9, 1809, in records done by local genealogy groups (recall her brother Charles as one helping David and John clear Leroy land together. Lucy and Charles were children of a Hessian soldier, Christian, sounded out as Chrisgan by Phelps in his writing, and his Massachusetts wife, Meribah Miller. Christian would arrive later than Charles, with the other older adults, women, travel-capable elderly and children.)
Varied Hessians had been brought down into western Mass., as the Rev. War ended, after fighting on the British side. In their case, their father Christian was not captured in battle, as true of many others. Instead, he deserted to the American side. However, they had come into American care, the German-speaking Hessians were marched from NY's Fort Ticonderoga, southeast-ish, to Northampton, Mass., a place close to the Abiathar Frenches, as their place of Westhampton was created when its church separated from that of mother Northampton. Christian would be put into a work obligation, as a penalty for having fought against the colonists. That indenture would result in his, once freed, marrying Meribah, the daughter of his "employer" (his indenture-holder). Sooo...not all indentures ended badly.
HIS WIFE. Lucy Keneippe/Keneipp/Kneippe French's life course after David's death is for now unknown. (COMMENT: The American spellings of Chrisgan/Christian changed the vowel order. This mattered. The original German put the E after the I. The result was Kniep, which meant tavern/inn owner, with Knieppe a variation. The American mis-spells, looking at the simplest, Kneip, means knife.)
Some thought Lucy remarried. A "Keneippe" tree gives her death as in 1853, with no details or sources.
HIS CHILDREN. Family researcher MaryLou French Weisenburger found David's orphaned children listed in legal papers of his father-in-law "Christian Keneippe":
David's girls were Alvah, Almira/Elmira and Abigail, hard to find as Frenches, except that, according to the Lake County Historical Society, Almira French was "warned out" of Leroy Township around 1828. That was only two years after her father died. Presumably, they did this as she had reached the legal age of maturity for girls (12 for girls, 14 for boys, with her brothers not warned out at the same time). The city officials wanted no poor or angry orphans in this place?
The outcomes of these warnings are rarely reported. Did they expect her to marry at 12? Hire herself out to predatory employers? We hope that one of her uncles or aunts was told and came to rescue her.
Of David's three boys, Austin, Ogden and Elah, David's son Elah would have been named after the only other Elah near the Frenches then, Elah Clapp. Elah Clapp, coming to Leroy early to clear land, married David's sister Rebecca. The story of Leroy said their wedding was the year after arrival, so 1807. He and Rebecca had at least two children, Octava/Octavia Clapp & Amasa Clapp. (Some sources also cite an Ogden Clapp, but we've so far found no good traces of that name.)
Elah Clapp died in 1811. His would have been the first burial of an adult in what is now called Brakeman Cemetery, but was, in 1811, still Phelps land. A Mr. Hungerford came into possession before the Brakeman family moved in, so donated it for a permanent cemetery.
Elah's death made Rebecca French a young widow. Like David's children, Elah's two children also knew partial orphan-hood. Then, Rebecca remarried, to a William McMillen, who stuck up for his new wife's children, Octava/Octavia and Amasa, on a land issue. The concerned land that would have been inherited from Elah, but the title had become tainted, as it had come through Elah's father, Col. Amasa Clapp. How did the problem arise? Today, it would be solved by title insurance. Back then, third parties wanted Amasa's heirs to make good on some decades old debt of a fourth party, an old Mass. tax collector/sheriff. Col. Amasa's co-signed a bond for that tax collector back in Massachusetts. (In records of some Braintree Frenches, a whole bunch refused to be tax collector, the implication being that the collector owed the money unpaid.) Twenty years after the bond's terms had been violated by the insured tax collector(not by Amasa), those making the bond came looking for Amasa's old assets, wanting to take away land formerly in his possession. Land in Mass. where the debt was made could not be touched due to Statute of Limitations. Somebody with connections convinced Ohio judges to rule that statutes of limitations did not apply out-of state. The land in Leroy Twp had been bought by Col. Amasa by lottery method out of the Western Reserve lands given to Conn. in negotiating state boundaries as colonies turned to state. Cola masa then sold or otherwise passed the land along to others, but, who paid Amasa for it, cleared it of trees and wolves and bears, planted with roads and buildings and orchards, fences added. It was by the time of the key judge's opinion worth a lot more than at the time of the bond default years earlier. If the land had been in Mass. where the bond was made, the statute of limitations would have forbidden a taking without compensation for improvements. More land owners were affected than Rebecca's children..
A HAPPIER FAMILY STORY- ARRIVAL HISTORY.
The following was the short version of a letter to the editor by Spencer Phelps, the original written in a charmingly folksy, New Englander way:
"Dec. 20, 1860 Painesville Telegraph
"3,3 History of the early settlement of
LeRoy by Spencer Phelps.
"In 1800 a company of 6 or 8 persons from
Chesterfield, Hampshire Co., Mass.,
purchased from the Connecticut Land Co.,
part of a township then known as New
Connecticut—now known as LeRoy. The
names were; Col. Amasa Clapp, Benj. Bates,
Moses Kingsley, Nathaniel Edwards,
Ebenezer Parson, and Benj. Parsons. In
1802 Samuel Lord, also, purchased part of
the township. Col. Clapp sent two of his
sons, Paul and Elah, and a hired man named
Jonathan B. Russell to this area. In the fall,
Elah returned home. Russell settled in
Mentor on the place where O. S. Hodges
now resides. He later removed to Lorain
Co. where he probably died.
"In 1803, Elah Clapp and I returned
to LeRoy. In 1804, Paul Clapp returned to
Chesterfield and in the summer 1805,
moved his family, being the first family that
settled in LeRoy. That year, three young
men—John and David French, and Charles
Keneep—came on and took up land. In
1806, three families by the name of French
and Chrisgan Keneep, settled in the
township. The same year a child of Paul
Clapp, age 4 or 5 years died. It was the first
death in the township.
"In 1808 Elah Clapp married Rebecca
French. In Dec., 1808, I married Mary,
daughter of Chrisgan Keneep. In 1809, three
families—Bates, Reed and Gurney—settled
in the township. Elah Clapp died in 1811,
leaving one son who now resides on the old
homestead.
"In 1815, I sold my farm to Mr.
Brakeman who still owns it, and I settled in
Painesville (now Concord) on the farm now
owned by Wm. Merrill.
"Samuel Phelps is totally blind.
Some of his children live in Des
Moines."
PHELPS SOURCE: The better (full) version is viewable at a Rootsweb link from the Lake County Historical Society:
rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohlake/history/leroy.html
=============================================
Copyright 2015, revised Feb., 2016, revised again March, 2022 and July, 2023 by JB, Julia Brown, Austin, Texas. Permission granted for use at this Findagrave page, id 147426816.
He'd been walking along a roadside connected to Newburgh, a place not yet annexed to Cleveland, still independent, upstream of Lake Erie, with water-powered mills. His businesses, if like his brother Jacob's, were not just farming, included milling, thus needed some wheel-turning falls. Walking to work or between businesses was normal in summertime, no autos yet. He might normally have enjoyed the view, when up above Mill Creek. The road likely was ridgetop or nearly so. Were there glimpses of the gigantic Great Lake down below, trees higher, in some other directions?
An Overlook Road would give a similar view later. It most clearly looks down at Lake View Cemetery, with a small lake on its premises and Garfield's tomb. One of David's sons would be buried there, Elah. He'd registered for his first marriage license from LeRoy Twp. where David and other Frenches had gone first and where a cousin called Amasa Clapp still lived when Elah married Clarissa Brown. Elah French was clearly named for Amasa's father, the Elah Clapp who died when Amasa was little, in 1811. In a more citified location by 1860, Elah ran a boarding house in Concord Twp., first wife Clarissa Brown and four children present, post office given as nearby Painesville. Later, called Ely/Eli by his second wife Augusta, he worked as a butcher in 1870 and then, near retirement in 1880, was occupied as a hackster, referring to the renting of hacks.
David's brother Jacob had had a son who did not leave for Michigan with so many others, stayed, Edwin French. He would be buried at Lake View also.
Others Ohio-born, of brother Jacob or of David's other brothers, left for MIchigan, some before it declared statehood. No birth records were kept earlier in Ohio as proof, but names were in land records together. (One transaction was by Ransom French, done with Edwin French, Ransom to leave, Edwin to stay.) They repeated unusual names, across their children, Greek ones, not biblical (buried at Lake View as a Williams was Amanda Climena French, of Edwin, while Climena, Camilla French, of Ransom French, was buried as a Shearer in California, earlier having gone there to teach, staying at the hotel of Ohio-born Alfred French in Milpitas before she married.)
The St Joseph River left Ohio and crossed three counties where Ransom and other Frenches in Michigan before it flowed into Lake Michigan. Its mouth faced Chicago, easy for steamboats to make their way across to Chicago with farm produce. The three counties were Berrien, St Joseph and Branch. Did David's son Ogden French try Michigan?
The trouble-causing canal for David was west of Mill Creek, probably parallel for a good stretch. Both the canal and Mill Creek crossed, from an older and thus smaller Cleveland, into "Newburgh Hamlet" and then into Newburgh Twp., though at different points. (The canal was further from his home at Leroy than was the Creek, both viewable on two old maps kept by the modern GIS dept. of Lake County.)
David died of his injuries several days later.
A copy of the news item is above left, its source viewed by clicking the image to enlarge it. He would have been carried home to die, to his family, at the Leroy end of the ridge roads, ending near mother Painesville Twp.
FAMILY. The era of unusual biblical names was ending, such as his parents', his father and grandfather both called Abiathar French, and his mother, Beriah Alvord, pronounced Alford, both of the Puritan-descended and thus bible-minded.
David and wife Lucy had four children with deaths located as of 2022, maybe two other children's deaths not tracked. They had named a son for an in-law, causing the biblical name of Elah to creep in. Daughter Elvira's name was Germanic. Ogden and Austin were not yet places, were still somebody's surnames. Relatives were trying new ones, such as Edwin, with Ransom a surname made into a first name. From a Greek story, came Climena, some said the mother of Hercules, some said a nymph. Was a Greek name a sign that teachers were in their midst?
There were variations. Their New Englander dialect used contractions, so Cl'mena was heard as Clemena. When daughter Elvira's name was said as 'lvira, it might be heard as Alvira. Longhand scribbles of her name might then misread by moderns as Almira.
She was "warned out" of Leroy in 1828 by Overseers of the Poor, shortly after her father's death. The overseers wanted no one who might eventually be poor, the elderly, widows and orphans known to be poor. Never mind the Beatitudes! Six-ish when David died, she would have been eight-ish then.
They wouldn't really do that, would they? Instead of finding her relatives, writing to Michigan, locating her older cousins?
SIBLING COUNT OF SIX. David's parents were said by in-law Spencer Phelps to have had six children come to Ohio, at or nearing adulthood, after an Abiathar III died "back there" in his early teens. Three of those coming were named in baptismal records back in MA. One was Jacob (Edwin's known father, as named in a bio done on his daughter's attorney spouse, A. J. Williams, also a legislator and abolitionist). Two others with baptism records were John and Timothy. Timothy was probably the one to marry an Allison, then went where? Some Timothy formerly of Ohio went to Michigan, but did so later, after possible nephew Alfred left for California and possible nephew Ransom died? John disappeared in to the anonymity offered by too many called John French b. Mass, in each generation, too hard to separate if not knowing wife and children's names or some unusual future location and occupation.
Neighbor Spencer Phelps remembered David's name. Records were said to burn in Rev. Enoch Hale's fire at Westhampton. Many were re-constructed from memory at family gatherings, for example, done at Westhampton when someone's parents died later (nicely done for the family of David's aunt, the Dorothy French who married neighbor Jehiel Alvord. David was a "double-cousin" of their children, his father Abiathar having been the older brother of Dorothy, his mother, Beriah Alvord, having been a sister of Jehiel.)
David and two sisters were presumed too young to be remembered in re-constructed records, if relatives "back in Mass." had encountered them at teenaged Abiathar III's funeral? Re-construction remained hard if no one returned form Ohio for later funerals, the War of 1812 stopping all kinds of travel.
Yet, brother Timothy was married close in time to David, once in Ohio, by a circuit-riding Methodist minister named Shadrach Ruark. Another name easily inferred was his sister Rebecca, stone linked to son Amasa Clapp, widowed by Elah Clapp, then married to Wm. McMillen. Her survivors attempted to put her parents' names on her stone, an imperfect cenotaph. "Abiather and Maria" was a mis-remembering of close to "Abiathar and Beriah", but it was findable.
It was a way to remember them. Graveyards disappeared as roads and streets came through. The main old one in Painesville would be covered with a school parking lot, Newburgh's "long gone", and so on.
For the sixth one to Ohio, there was a Rhoda French who married a Luther Keep (back in Mass?). Luther was of record buying and selling land, for awhile of Elkhart, Indiana, at the line where Michigan counties were splintered off and made into Indiana counties. Hearing of a better opportunity, they then went elsewhere?
An EARLY Climena French married an Eddy, a surname seen at Leroy/Painesville. Was she another of Jacob's children, her Greek name repeated in the name of Edwin's and Ransom's daughters, maybe as she'd died?
NAMED WITH BROTHERS IN 1820 CENSUS. The 1820 US Census specifically named David French, family "confirmed by proximity", that is by his closeness to Timothy and Jacob nearby, plus key in-laws, his wife's family, his sister Rebecca's family, in a place with populations still small.
That 1820 Census, totally handwritten, not on pre-printed forms, is viewable at FamilySearch.org. Household heads were ordered by surname, counting ,but not naming others in each household. People from his township of LeRoy were put with people from Painesville Twp., two places to be in Lake County, Ohio, in 1840, both still in Geauga in Chardon Twp in 1820.
Checking deed locations near Painesville's harbor, those on the Perry side of the Grand River (northeastish) were put in a Perry Twp list. Edwin was still farming, there. Those relatives on the other side in 1820 (south and/or westish) were lumped together under the mother Painesville Twp name.
The related family of Nathaniel French, not a brother, was under Perry in 1820, to go to Mentor by 1850. Confirmed in-laws and relatives of David were scattered about in the 1820 list. These included some of his wife Lucy's Hessian family, listed as "Kenieppe" in the 1820 ("Elijah" and "Chrisgan" for Christian). The Hessian's side simpler surname in the legal paperwork used the truer spelling Kn, on the Scandinavian end of the Germanics. Think of old-time football player Knute Rockne being "sounded out" in newspapers as "Canute Rockne".
Plus, there were Phelps, in-laws to David's wife Lucy. Neighbor Spencer Phelps is buried with Lucy's relative (sister?) at Mentor. Spencer was the one writing a history of the first Leroy families for a newspaper around 1860. The name Phelps was also seen back in Hampshire County, Mass., where they'd lived before Ohio. Certain Phelps were among the relatives of David's mother, Beriah Alvord.
David's sister Rebecca McMillen lived until 1853 and stayed local. The 1820 listed her spouse William McMillen, also her son Amasa Clapp. (The son was named for grandfather Col. Amasa Clapp, left behind in Mass.)
The original records of what became Lake County had burned in a fire at mother Geauga's courthouse in Chardon, before Lake County broke away. David's son Elah's marriage license naming Clarissa Ann Brown was better than their marriage record, as it stating LeRoy Twp. as the 1839 address. It clearly was after the fire, with Elah's 1840 Census not at LeRoy, but counting him at Chardon Twp, which remained in Geauga as its shopping town had the courthouse.
A John French, maybe of a different wing of the family, maybe David's missing brother, would show up in Chardon after Elah left, married but no children?
Surnames listed as Eddy and maybe Harmon maybe matched names of spouses for elder daughters of David's brothers, not yet married in 1820?
SIDE NOTE 1: A Cordelia French married an Orasmus Harmon. He co-bought land near varied recognizable Frenches and others in Branch County Mich. in 1838. ( His own name was almost unrecognizable, looking more like "Osmus"? ). One of the other buyers was Alfred French, who seemed to be picking 4-corner kinds of locations when filing claims in Branch County.
SIDE NOTE 2: A Climena/Clemena French married a Dennis Eddy, in Ohio, in Dec., 1822, church unnamed. She then must have died young, as her spouse then remarried in Ohio, according to records at FamilySearch.org. Their marriage is on p.7 of "The Puritan Manuscripts", a booklet with marriages of a certain period gathered from newspapers. A typo in the booklet gives the year of county creation as 1846, but 1840 is seen elsewhere.
The author of "The Puritan Manuscripts" wrote from Akron, OH. He would also write in 1933 on the Francis Nashes of Braintree. He was a Baptist Pastor, maybe of the Free Will/Universalist sort, who served from Madison, Wisc., and then, in 1913, at Tenth Street Baptist at Columbus, Ohio, congregation expanded to include Baptist students at Ohio State. An obviously intelligent man, his prior studies had been at Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisc., and at the Univ. of Chicago. He was Vernon S Phillips, D.D., meaning he had a Doctor of Divinity, a type of PhD, his Findagrave ID 158590803.)
CONFUSIONS. It's easy to confuse unrelated people in the Geauga/Lake County named French.
The 1820 list, alphabetic, named the three brothers in a row, David and Timothy French, with the eldest last, Jacob French. (John French was absent, moved, died, or shifted to a middle name. Spencer Phelps said John arrived first, with David and future in-law Charles "Kenieppe" to prep the land, meaning they brought the heavy plow and saws, the already married Jacob and Abiathar implied to come later, bringing children and household goods,)
Listed after Jacob in the 1820 Census was an unrelated Daniel Ide French, proven since 2014 to be of different male DNA (a Painesville attorney, land records showing he was early at Concord, his brothers Warren and Artemus and their parents Mary Ide and Seba French coming with Warren and Artemus).
Some confused the Lucy French (sister of Charles), married to this David French, with the Lucy Owen French married to Daniel Ide French.
Also to beware--David's side had a Zeba French,son of Nataniel, once of Perry, living in Mentor by 1850. Daniel Ide French's side had a Seba French, of Painesville, buried at Waahington Street Cemetery, now defunct, paved over for a parking lot
Both sets, this David's, and that Daniel's were of immigrants to Mass. in the Puritan era. David's ancestor, one of many named John French, but the only one to be declared a "freeman" at old Braintree in 1640, the only one to marry wife Grace, maiden name unknown as never given in paperwork in the States. They reared their children as a family of farmers and millers, barely south of Boston, at Braintree.
Daniel Ide French's ancestor, in contrast had a different John French as Puritan ancestor, his wife in two wills, making it clear that her maiden name was Kingsley and that her spouse was different in occupation, John French the tailor. Freedom's children were never at Braintree, instead born far north of Boston, up at Ipswich, almost in future Maine. People insisting that Grace have a maiden name tried to make her into Freedom Kingsley, then made the two genetically different Johns identical or father and son. That these were mix-ups was made clear in 2014, when a Braintree descendent still living near there, in MA, had his male Dna tested. John and Grace's middle son Dependence was ancestor to David's set and to a set headed by Nathaniel French, his son Zeba and grandson George buried at Mentor.
The unrelated Daniel Ide French proved a good man. He had had tried to help David's sister, Rebecca McMillen, and her spouse William, rescue the pioneering land settled pre-War of 1812 and left to her Clapp children, after her first husband died in Leroy in 1811, a man named Elah Clapp.
CANAL BROUGHT PROSPERITY TO CLEVELAND, BYPASSED PAINESVILLE. If people wish to survive, they have to adapt. The canal was a sign of progress. They would have a few decades of canal business and travel, before train routes replaced that, tracks laid, in part, on the flatness of canal paths, on riverside terraces leftover from old glacial melts, along rivers where paddleboats soon no longer went, tracks also following the edges of great-sized lakes, where schooners no longer sailed.
CEMETERIES GONE VS NOT. Progress has effects. Among the cemeteries wiped out as industry and suburban housing came were Newburgh's (no good list of graves made?) Painesville's old cemetery on Washington Street was paved over for a high school parking lot (a partial list was thoughtfully made, but listings were complete only for those stones still readable).
Among the few old stones still standing at this writing--
*His sister Rebecca's, at Brakeman Cem., in Lake County, Ohio, in the Leroy area. Her children and spouses would be buried there.
(On what was once Phelps land, bought maybe first by a Hungerford and then definitely a Germanic family from upstate NY with name Britishized as Breakeman, Breakman, and finally Brakeman. The Brakemans did not plow the markers down, nor use them for sidewalk paving, but preserved the remaining stones, by then under public care. )
*Son Elah French's stone, is in East Cleveland, bur his son, a second Elah, is at that of Cleveland's cemeteries doubling as an art museum, so much to see, better preserved than average, having President Garfield's towered multi-story tomb, offering another up-high view.
(Just 8 years old when his father died, Elah became a hotel keeper by his 40s. One of his hotel guest in 1860 was a Jehiel Alvord. Elah and Jehiel's fathers were David French and Isaac Alvord, "double cousins", each with one parent an Alvord and one parent a French. Such cousins and their children are often extra close if similar in age. That Jehiel was a bachelor, to live and die near his workplaces in and around Westhampton, buried at his death place of Williamsburg in 1893, so was "just visiting" in 1860.
Elah's son was another Elah, the one with greenhouses (with some involvement in the planning of Lake View Cemetery?) Relative Ransom French's son AO French would also have a horticultural knack out in Michigan, just beginning a university degree in agricultural degree when the Civil War interrupted, not able to stop the "peach yellows" when that attacked his orchard, so switching what he grew. He was Alfred Orin according to descendants, but his parents spelled his name as Alvord French in their 1850 US Census
INDENTURES IN THE 1820s? If his orphans' father had businesses, in a day of no life insurance, then that father's unexpectedly early demise meant taxes and bills came suddenly due, with the income previously used to pay them no longer there. Geauga County has partial lists of those indentures, just those that were court-enforced, so not complete, but giving an idea of local timing, late 1820s through 1852. Some thinkers saw indenture as a temporary slavery, while often voluntary for grown-ups at the beginning, involuntary for children at the start. The income from selling sizeable contracts for seven years of labor could be used to pay parents' unpaid debts, a "little something" promised to the child at indenture's end, if still living. The contract said what the final incentive would be. The Geauga website said a common combination was a suit of clothes and a cow or two or a bible, which some say could cost maybe a week's wages.
Because they were in the States and not in Britain, because they were US north, and not US south, the local indentures were good in one sense. They tried to ensure a better life, later, by requiring that the child be educated. Even so, people who were anti-slavery might still endorse child indenture.
Even with education required, indenture was not a happy thing. Mothers might lose all of their children if they and close relatives could not afford for each family to buy a child's contract. Outcomes for those whose contracts were bought by strangers or unwise family members varied, from great, to terrible, even deadly. A useful apprenticeship for some? balanced by others treated slave-like, fed tiny scraps, sleeping in the barn's hay loft, whipped? While some were kept near home and mother, others were maybe taken to a new state or new country, never to return? Maybe sent out to sea as a cabin boy or scullery maid? Think of Shirley Temple's movie "The Little Princess" to understand little tiny girls as scullery maids.
What happened to Elah's sister Elvira? His brothers Ogden and Austin? Were there more than those four? The Hessian grandfather's will, dying too early to rescue them, named six, added two girls, an Alvah and an Abigail? The will was viewed by his descendant a MaryAnn Weisenberger.
Signs are Elah was maybe taken by his uncle Jacob's family, as he was able stay close. He is thus buried in Cleveland, where some of Jacob's land transactions can be found. Elah's cemetery is not random,, but with the extended family of his uncle Jacob's known son, Edwin French.
While Jacob's grave, like David's, is lost, Edwin's and Elah son's are both at Lake View. Also there--Edwin's son-in-law AJ Williams. He was an attorney who seemed extra-conscientious, his father a circuit-riding Methodist minister, himself an attorney turned state rep in the days of electing abolitionists, pre-Civil War. His time in the state leg earned him biography space. The son-in-law's biography spoke of his in-laws. It gave key details of Jacob's parents, and thus of David's.
Edwin's son made money, before going out to Wimberley, enough to build one of the mansions for which Cleveland was famed in its millionaire days. Like too many old Cleveland-area cemeteries, the old Cleveland mansion is gone. The son's wealth came once railroad cars needed engineered parts? When trucks replaced trains, a lot of that type of business and thus some of Cleveland's wealth departed, slowed some by car and truck companies coming in, iron and then taconite being shippable by Lake from Duluth, John Rockefeller's businesses and Case engines helpful, the Cleveland Clinics adding medical work later. )
* David's orphaned daughter, Elvira, married name Pinney, buried at Mentor, in Lake County. Her father died when she was six.
(Also seen as Alvira, misreadable as Almira. Girls were declared adults at age 12, keeping taxes low as a foster family then no longer needed to be paid for her room and board, implying somebody thought 12 was an age when marriage was to be allowed. In order to avoid worse things, a young girl might marry the first man who showed an interest, even though not compatible. Her first marriage ended in divorce, her second lasted decades, with her bio at FindaGrave saying her brother Elah signed his permission. She then wed one of the Ohio men called Azariah Pinney, his stone lost, some sons' stones still standing.)
GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS SOURCE: In 1826, the still large mother township called Painesville contained a region, uphill, so away from the mosquitoes, described later as Leroy Twp. It housed the early arriving French, Clapp, Keneippe and Phelp families by 1806, after some of their young men went there earlier to clear and otherwise prepare for the rest to come from western Mass. In mother Geauga, at first, their lakeside south part became its own county, Lake, an Atlas of 1840 made then, mapping road, towns and property-owners for each of Lake County's Townships.
Newburgh Twp, like Leroy, was uphill of the big lake, Erie, but further west, ridgetop places connected by ridge roads, with Mentor, the location of Elvira's stone and Spencer Phelps, between Leroy and Newburgh. Newburgh was on the Chagrin River, the waterpower there attracting mills. The two rivers to either side were more important, as used for shipping, their ports downhill from the ridge roads. Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, to the west, would not matter much until its canal to the Ohio River was finished, its drainage drying up stagnant sloughs that fed malaria-causing mosquitoes, in addition to giving access to the Mississippi. Painesville's Grand River, to the east, its water access technically at Freeport, made Painesville busier than Cleveland, pre-Canal. Then, the tables turned.
NEWBURGH-WIMBERLEY TRADE. As part of Geauga in 1826, you'd think Newburgh would have become part of Lake, but, instead, a different deal was made. Newburgh was transferred into Cuyahoga County, to be annexed later, much of it now inside Cleveland proper. In return, Cuyahoga County gave Lake the shoreside area that became Wimberly.
DEATH SOURCE. The items telling of David's death and naming the main culprit were in an unspecified newspaper, select parts transcribed and saved inside the "Annals of Cleveland", one of the wonderful WPA projects in the Depression era. The Annals author is "United States Work Projects Administration (Ohio)". The two related clippings, David's death and the culprit's conviction, were on page 16 of a section called the "Cleveland Newpaper Digest Jan 1 to Dec 31, 1826"
OLD LEROY SOURCES. There were more sources. An old 1895 source called " the Women of Leroy" told of the Frenchs coming to Leroy in 1806 with six children (inferred from other things as four sons and two daughters, one or two others dying back in New England). Old neighbor Spencer Phelps, elderly by Jehiel Alvord's visit in 1860, wrote up his memoirs of Leroy history that year, for the Painesville Telegraph, since transcribed by modern volunteers.
Phelps came first, with a different group than David's, but including David's future in-law Elah Clapp. David and his brother John then came with David's other future in-law, spelled by Phelps as Charles Keneep, to prepare the Leroy land for their families. The implication, not actually stated, was that David was one of the six (adult) children brought to Leroy, so a a son of Abiathar French, who, back in a place accustomed to Puritan names, had wed Beriah Alvord, her brother, an earlier Jehiel Alvord, wedding Abiathar's younger sister Dorothy, aka Doritha.
FAMILY HESSIANS. David married Lucy "Knieppe" locally, on May 9, 1809, in records done by local genealogy groups (recall her brother Charles as one helping David and John clear Leroy land together. Lucy and Charles were children of a Hessian soldier, Christian, sounded out as Chrisgan by Phelps in his writing, and his Massachusetts wife, Meribah Miller. Christian would arrive later than Charles, with the other older adults, women, travel-capable elderly and children.)
Varied Hessians had been brought down into western Mass., as the Rev. War ended, after fighting on the British side. In their case, their father Christian was not captured in battle, as true of many others. Instead, he deserted to the American side. However, they had come into American care, the German-speaking Hessians were marched from NY's Fort Ticonderoga, southeast-ish, to Northampton, Mass., a place close to the Abiathar Frenches, as their place of Westhampton was created when its church separated from that of mother Northampton. Christian would be put into a work obligation, as a penalty for having fought against the colonists. That indenture would result in his, once freed, marrying Meribah, the daughter of his "employer" (his indenture-holder). Sooo...not all indentures ended badly.
HIS WIFE. Lucy Keneippe/Keneipp/Kneippe French's life course after David's death is for now unknown. (COMMENT: The American spellings of Chrisgan/Christian changed the vowel order. This mattered. The original German put the E after the I. The result was Kniep, which meant tavern/inn owner, with Knieppe a variation. The American mis-spells, looking at the simplest, Kneip, means knife.)
Some thought Lucy remarried. A "Keneippe" tree gives her death as in 1853, with no details or sources.
HIS CHILDREN. Family researcher MaryLou French Weisenburger found David's orphaned children listed in legal papers of his father-in-law "Christian Keneippe":
David's girls were Alvah, Almira/Elmira and Abigail, hard to find as Frenches, except that, according to the Lake County Historical Society, Almira French was "warned out" of Leroy Township around 1828. That was only two years after her father died. Presumably, they did this as she had reached the legal age of maturity for girls (12 for girls, 14 for boys, with her brothers not warned out at the same time). The city officials wanted no poor or angry orphans in this place?
The outcomes of these warnings are rarely reported. Did they expect her to marry at 12? Hire herself out to predatory employers? We hope that one of her uncles or aunts was told and came to rescue her.
Of David's three boys, Austin, Ogden and Elah, David's son Elah would have been named after the only other Elah near the Frenches then, Elah Clapp. Elah Clapp, coming to Leroy early to clear land, married David's sister Rebecca. The story of Leroy said their wedding was the year after arrival, so 1807. He and Rebecca had at least two children, Octava/Octavia Clapp & Amasa Clapp. (Some sources also cite an Ogden Clapp, but we've so far found no good traces of that name.)
Elah Clapp died in 1811. His would have been the first burial of an adult in what is now called Brakeman Cemetery, but was, in 1811, still Phelps land. A Mr. Hungerford came into possession before the Brakeman family moved in, so donated it for a permanent cemetery.
Elah's death made Rebecca French a young widow. Like David's children, Elah's two children also knew partial orphan-hood. Then, Rebecca remarried, to a William McMillen, who stuck up for his new wife's children, Octava/Octavia and Amasa, on a land issue. The concerned land that would have been inherited from Elah, but the title had become tainted, as it had come through Elah's father, Col. Amasa Clapp. How did the problem arise? Today, it would be solved by title insurance. Back then, third parties wanted Amasa's heirs to make good on some decades old debt of a fourth party, an old Mass. tax collector/sheriff. Col. Amasa's co-signed a bond for that tax collector back in Massachusetts. (In records of some Braintree Frenches, a whole bunch refused to be tax collector, the implication being that the collector owed the money unpaid.) Twenty years after the bond's terms had been violated by the insured tax collector(not by Amasa), those making the bond came looking for Amasa's old assets, wanting to take away land formerly in his possession. Land in Mass. where the debt was made could not be touched due to Statute of Limitations. Somebody with connections convinced Ohio judges to rule that statutes of limitations did not apply out-of state. The land in Leroy Twp had been bought by Col. Amasa by lottery method out of the Western Reserve lands given to Conn. in negotiating state boundaries as colonies turned to state. Cola masa then sold or otherwise passed the land along to others, but, who paid Amasa for it, cleared it of trees and wolves and bears, planted with roads and buildings and orchards, fences added. It was by the time of the key judge's opinion worth a lot more than at the time of the bond default years earlier. If the land had been in Mass. where the bond was made, the statute of limitations would have forbidden a taking without compensation for improvements. More land owners were affected than Rebecca's children..
A HAPPIER FAMILY STORY- ARRIVAL HISTORY.
The following was the short version of a letter to the editor by Spencer Phelps, the original written in a charmingly folksy, New Englander way:
"Dec. 20, 1860 Painesville Telegraph
"3,3 History of the early settlement of
LeRoy by Spencer Phelps.
"In 1800 a company of 6 or 8 persons from
Chesterfield, Hampshire Co., Mass.,
purchased from the Connecticut Land Co.,
part of a township then known as New
Connecticut—now known as LeRoy. The
names were; Col. Amasa Clapp, Benj. Bates,
Moses Kingsley, Nathaniel Edwards,
Ebenezer Parson, and Benj. Parsons. In
1802 Samuel Lord, also, purchased part of
the township. Col. Clapp sent two of his
sons, Paul and Elah, and a hired man named
Jonathan B. Russell to this area. In the fall,
Elah returned home. Russell settled in
Mentor on the place where O. S. Hodges
now resides. He later removed to Lorain
Co. where he probably died.
"In 1803, Elah Clapp and I returned
to LeRoy. In 1804, Paul Clapp returned to
Chesterfield and in the summer 1805,
moved his family, being the first family that
settled in LeRoy. That year, three young
men—John and David French, and Charles
Keneep—came on and took up land. In
1806, three families by the name of French
and Chrisgan Keneep, settled in the
township. The same year a child of Paul
Clapp, age 4 or 5 years died. It was the first
death in the township.
"In 1808 Elah Clapp married Rebecca
French. In Dec., 1808, I married Mary,
daughter of Chrisgan Keneep. In 1809, three
families—Bates, Reed and Gurney—settled
in the township. Elah Clapp died in 1811,
leaving one son who now resides on the old
homestead.
"In 1815, I sold my farm to Mr.
Brakeman who still owns it, and I settled in
Painesville (now Concord) on the farm now
owned by Wm. Merrill.
"Samuel Phelps is totally blind.
Some of his children live in Des
Moines."
PHELPS SOURCE: The better (full) version is viewable at a Rootsweb link from the Lake County Historical Society:
rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohlake/history/leroy.html
=============================================
Copyright 2015, revised Feb., 2016, revised again March, 2022 and July, 2023 by JB, Julia Brown, Austin, Texas. Permission granted for use at this Findagrave page, id 147426816.
Murdered in 1826, he'd been waylaid by four men. The assault was apparently near Cleveland's new canal, as his attackers were canal workers. People carried cash, back then, no checks or credit cards, yet. We are reminded of old-time street robberies? His attackers planned to spend some at the local tavern? He needed the money, so resisted? However it happened, he was beaten, left mangled.
He'd been walking along a roadside connected to Newburgh, a place not yet annexed to Cleveland, still independent, upstream of Lake Erie, with water-powered mills. His businesses, if like his brother Jacob's, were not just farming, included milling, thus needed some wheel-turning falls. Walking to work or between businesses was normal in summertime, no autos yet. He might normally have enjoyed the view, when up above Mill Creek. The road likely was ridgetop or nearly so. Were there glimpses of the gigantic Great Lake down below, trees higher, in some other directions?
An Overlook Road would give a similar view later. It most clearly looks down at Lake View Cemetery, with a small lake on its premises and Garfield's tomb. One of David's sons would be buried there, Elah. He'd registered for his first marriage license from LeRoy Twp. where David and other Frenches had gone first and where a cousin called Amasa Clapp still lived when Elah married Clarissa Brown. Elah French was clearly named for Amasa's father, the Elah Clapp who died when Amasa was little, in 1811. In a more citified location by 1860, Elah ran a boarding house in Concord Twp., first wife Clarissa Brown and four children present, post office given as nearby Painesville. Later, called Ely/Eli by his second wife Augusta, he worked as a butcher in 1870 and then, near retirement in 1880, was occupied as a hackster, referring to the renting of hacks.
David's brother Jacob had had a son who did not leave for Michigan with so many others, stayed, Edwin French. He would be buried at Lake View also.
Others Ohio-born, of brother Jacob or of David's other brothers, left for MIchigan, some before it declared statehood. No birth records were kept earlier in Ohio as proof, but names were in land records together. (One transaction was by Ransom French, done with Edwin French, Ransom to leave, Edwin to stay.) They repeated unusual names, across their children, Greek ones, not biblical (buried at Lake View as a Williams was Amanda Climena French, of Edwin, while Climena, Camilla French, of Ransom French, was buried as a Shearer in California, earlier having gone there to teach, staying at the hotel of Ohio-born Alfred French in Milpitas before she married.)
The St Joseph River left Ohio and crossed three counties where Ransom and other Frenches in Michigan before it flowed into Lake Michigan. Its mouth faced Chicago, easy for steamboats to make their way across to Chicago with farm produce. The three counties were Berrien, St Joseph and Branch. Did David's son Ogden French try Michigan?
The trouble-causing canal for David was west of Mill Creek, probably parallel for a good stretch. Both the canal and Mill Creek crossed, from an older and thus smaller Cleveland, into "Newburgh Hamlet" and then into Newburgh Twp., though at different points. (The canal was further from his home at Leroy than was the Creek, both viewable on two old maps kept by the modern GIS dept. of Lake County.)
David died of his injuries several days later.
A copy of the news item is above left, its source viewed by clicking the image to enlarge it. He would have been carried home to die, to his family, at the Leroy end of the ridge roads, ending near mother Painesville Twp.
FAMILY. The era of unusual biblical names was ending, such as his parents', his father and grandfather both called Abiathar French, and his mother, Beriah Alvord, pronounced Alford, both of the Puritan-descended and thus bible-minded.
David and wife Lucy had four children with deaths located as of 2022, maybe two other children's deaths not tracked. They had named a son for an in-law, causing the biblical name of Elah to creep in. Daughter Elvira's name was Germanic. Ogden and Austin were not yet places, were still somebody's surnames. Relatives were trying new ones, such as Edwin, with Ransom a surname made into a first name. From a Greek story, came Climena, some said the mother of Hercules, some said a nymph. Was a Greek name a sign that teachers were in their midst?
There were variations. Their New Englander dialect used contractions, so Cl'mena was heard as Clemena. When daughter Elvira's name was said as 'lvira, it might be heard as Alvira. Longhand scribbles of her name might then misread by moderns as Almira.
She was "warned out" of Leroy in 1828 by Overseers of the Poor, shortly after her father's death. The overseers wanted no one who might eventually be poor, the elderly, widows and orphans known to be poor. Never mind the Beatitudes! Six-ish when David died, she would have been eight-ish then.
They wouldn't really do that, would they? Instead of finding her relatives, writing to Michigan, locating her older cousins?
SIBLING COUNT OF SIX. David's parents were said by in-law Spencer Phelps to have had six children come to Ohio, at or nearing adulthood, after an Abiathar III died "back there" in his early teens. Three of those coming were named in baptismal records back in MA. One was Jacob (Edwin's known father, as named in a bio done on his daughter's attorney spouse, A. J. Williams, also a legislator and abolitionist). Two others with baptism records were John and Timothy. Timothy was probably the one to marry an Allison, then went where? Some Timothy formerly of Ohio went to Michigan, but did so later, after possible nephew Alfred left for California and possible nephew Ransom died? John disappeared in to the anonymity offered by too many called John French b. Mass, in each generation, too hard to separate if not knowing wife and children's names or some unusual future location and occupation.
Neighbor Spencer Phelps remembered David's name. Records were said to burn in Rev. Enoch Hale's fire at Westhampton. Many were re-constructed from memory at family gatherings, for example, done at Westhampton when someone's parents died later (nicely done for the family of David's aunt, the Dorothy French who married neighbor Jehiel Alvord. David was a "double-cousin" of their children, his father Abiathar having been the older brother of Dorothy, his mother, Beriah Alvord, having been a sister of Jehiel.)
David and two sisters were presumed too young to be remembered in re-constructed records, if relatives "back in Mass." had encountered them at teenaged Abiathar III's funeral? Re-construction remained hard if no one returned form Ohio for later funerals, the War of 1812 stopping all kinds of travel.
Yet, brother Timothy was married close in time to David, once in Ohio, by a circuit-riding Methodist minister named Shadrach Ruark. Another name easily inferred was his sister Rebecca, stone linked to son Amasa Clapp, widowed by Elah Clapp, then married to Wm. McMillen. Her survivors attempted to put her parents' names on her stone, an imperfect cenotaph. "Abiather and Maria" was a mis-remembering of close to "Abiathar and Beriah", but it was findable.
It was a way to remember them. Graveyards disappeared as roads and streets came through. The main old one in Painesville would be covered with a school parking lot, Newburgh's "long gone", and so on.
For the sixth one to Ohio, there was a Rhoda French who married a Luther Keep (back in Mass?). Luther was of record buying and selling land, for awhile of Elkhart, Indiana, at the line where Michigan counties were splintered off and made into Indiana counties. Hearing of a better opportunity, they then went elsewhere?
An EARLY Climena French married an Eddy, a surname seen at Leroy/Painesville. Was she another of Jacob's children, her Greek name repeated in the name of Edwin's and Ransom's daughters, maybe as she'd died?
NAMED WITH BROTHERS IN 1820 CENSUS. The 1820 US Census specifically named David French, family "confirmed by proximity", that is by his closeness to Timothy and Jacob nearby, plus key in-laws, his wife's family, his sister Rebecca's family, in a place with populations still small.
That 1820 Census, totally handwritten, not on pre-printed forms, is viewable at FamilySearch.org. Household heads were ordered by surname, counting ,but not naming others in each household. People from his township of LeRoy were put with people from Painesville Twp., two places to be in Lake County, Ohio, in 1840, both still in Geauga in Chardon Twp in 1820.
Checking deed locations near Painesville's harbor, those on the Perry side of the Grand River (northeastish) were put in a Perry Twp list. Edwin was still farming, there. Those relatives on the other side in 1820 (south and/or westish) were lumped together under the mother Painesville Twp name.
The related family of Nathaniel French, not a brother, was under Perry in 1820, to go to Mentor by 1850. Confirmed in-laws and relatives of David were scattered about in the 1820 list. These included some of his wife Lucy's Hessian family, listed as "Kenieppe" in the 1820 ("Elijah" and "Chrisgan" for Christian). The Hessian's side simpler surname in the legal paperwork used the truer spelling Kn, on the Scandinavian end of the Germanics. Think of old-time football player Knute Rockne being "sounded out" in newspapers as "Canute Rockne".
Plus, there were Phelps, in-laws to David's wife Lucy. Neighbor Spencer Phelps is buried with Lucy's relative (sister?) at Mentor. Spencer was the one writing a history of the first Leroy families for a newspaper around 1860. The name Phelps was also seen back in Hampshire County, Mass., where they'd lived before Ohio. Certain Phelps were among the relatives of David's mother, Beriah Alvord.
David's sister Rebecca McMillen lived until 1853 and stayed local. The 1820 listed her spouse William McMillen, also her son Amasa Clapp. (The son was named for grandfather Col. Amasa Clapp, left behind in Mass.)
The original records of what became Lake County had burned in a fire at mother Geauga's courthouse in Chardon, before Lake County broke away. David's son Elah's marriage license naming Clarissa Ann Brown was better than their marriage record, as it stating LeRoy Twp. as the 1839 address. It clearly was after the fire, with Elah's 1840 Census not at LeRoy, but counting him at Chardon Twp, which remained in Geauga as its shopping town had the courthouse.
A John French, maybe of a different wing of the family, maybe David's missing brother, would show up in Chardon after Elah left, married but no children?
Surnames listed as Eddy and maybe Harmon maybe matched names of spouses for elder daughters of David's brothers, not yet married in 1820?
SIDE NOTE 1: A Cordelia French married an Orasmus Harmon. He co-bought land near varied recognizable Frenches and others in Branch County Mich. in 1838. ( His own name was almost unrecognizable, looking more like "Osmus"? ). One of the other buyers was Alfred French, who seemed to be picking 4-corner kinds of locations when filing claims in Branch County.
SIDE NOTE 2: A Climena/Clemena French married a Dennis Eddy, in Ohio, in Dec., 1822, church unnamed. She then must have died young, as her spouse then remarried in Ohio, according to records at FamilySearch.org. Their marriage is on p.7 of "The Puritan Manuscripts", a booklet with marriages of a certain period gathered from newspapers. A typo in the booklet gives the year of county creation as 1846, but 1840 is seen elsewhere.
The author of "The Puritan Manuscripts" wrote from Akron, OH. He would also write in 1933 on the Francis Nashes of Braintree. He was a Baptist Pastor, maybe of the Free Will/Universalist sort, who served from Madison, Wisc., and then, in 1913, at Tenth Street Baptist at Columbus, Ohio, congregation expanded to include Baptist students at Ohio State. An obviously intelligent man, his prior studies had been at Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisc., and at the Univ. of Chicago. He was Vernon S Phillips, D.D., meaning he had a Doctor of Divinity, a type of PhD, his Findagrave ID 158590803.)
CONFUSIONS. It's easy to confuse unrelated people in the Geauga/Lake County named French.
The 1820 list, alphabetic, named the three brothers in a row, David and Timothy French, with the eldest last, Jacob French. (John French was absent, moved, died, or shifted to a middle name. Spencer Phelps said John arrived first, with David and future in-law Charles "Kenieppe" to prep the land, meaning they brought the heavy plow and saws, the already married Jacob and Abiathar implied to come later, bringing children and household goods,)
Listed after Jacob in the 1820 Census was an unrelated Daniel Ide French, proven since 2014 to be of different male DNA (a Painesville attorney, land records showing he was early at Concord, his brothers Warren and Artemus and their parents Mary Ide and Seba French coming with Warren and Artemus).
Some confused the Lucy French (sister of Charles), married to this David French, with the Lucy Owen French married to Daniel Ide French.
Also to beware--David's side had a Zeba French,son of Nataniel, once of Perry, living in Mentor by 1850. Daniel Ide French's side had a Seba French, of Painesville, buried at Waahington Street Cemetery, now defunct, paved over for a parking lot
Both sets, this David's, and that Daniel's were of immigrants to Mass. in the Puritan era. David's ancestor, one of many named John French, but the only one to be declared a "freeman" at old Braintree in 1640, the only one to marry wife Grace, maiden name unknown as never given in paperwork in the States. They reared their children as a family of farmers and millers, barely south of Boston, at Braintree.
Daniel Ide French's ancestor, in contrast had a different John French as Puritan ancestor, his wife in two wills, making it clear that her maiden name was Kingsley and that her spouse was different in occupation, John French the tailor. Freedom's children were never at Braintree, instead born far north of Boston, up at Ipswich, almost in future Maine. People insisting that Grace have a maiden name tried to make her into Freedom Kingsley, then made the two genetically different Johns identical or father and son. That these were mix-ups was made clear in 2014, when a Braintree descendent still living near there, in MA, had his male Dna tested. John and Grace's middle son Dependence was ancestor to David's set and to a set headed by Nathaniel French, his son Zeba and grandson George buried at Mentor.
The unrelated Daniel Ide French proved a good man. He had had tried to help David's sister, Rebecca McMillen, and her spouse William, rescue the pioneering land settled pre-War of 1812 and left to her Clapp children, after her first husband died in Leroy in 1811, a man named Elah Clapp.
CANAL BROUGHT PROSPERITY TO CLEVELAND, BYPASSED PAINESVILLE. If people wish to survive, they have to adapt. The canal was a sign of progress. They would have a few decades of canal business and travel, before train routes replaced that, tracks laid, in part, on the flatness of canal paths, on riverside terraces leftover from old glacial melts, along rivers where paddleboats soon no longer went, tracks also following the edges of great-sized lakes, where schooners no longer sailed.
CEMETERIES GONE VS NOT. Progress has effects. Among the cemeteries wiped out as industry and suburban housing came were Newburgh's (no good list of graves made?) Painesville's old cemetery on Washington Street was paved over for a high school parking lot (a partial list was thoughtfully made, but listings were complete only for those stones still readable).
Among the few old stones still standing at this writing--
*His sister Rebecca's, at Brakeman Cem., in Lake County, Ohio, in the Leroy area. Her children and spouses would be buried there.
(On what was once Phelps land, bought maybe first by a Hungerford and then definitely a Germanic family from upstate NY with name Britishized as Breakeman, Breakman, and finally Brakeman. The Brakemans did not plow the markers down, nor use them for sidewalk paving, but preserved the remaining stones, by then under public care. )
*Son Elah French's stone, is in East Cleveland, bur his son, a second Elah, is at that of Cleveland's cemeteries doubling as an art museum, so much to see, better preserved than average, having President Garfield's towered multi-story tomb, offering another up-high view.
(Just 8 years old when his father died, Elah became a hotel keeper by his 40s. One of his hotel guest in 1860 was a Jehiel Alvord. Elah and Jehiel's fathers were David French and Isaac Alvord, "double cousins", each with one parent an Alvord and one parent a French. Such cousins and their children are often extra close if similar in age. That Jehiel was a bachelor, to live and die near his workplaces in and around Westhampton, buried at his death place of Williamsburg in 1893, so was "just visiting" in 1860.
Elah's son was another Elah, the one with greenhouses (with some involvement in the planning of Lake View Cemetery?) Relative Ransom French's son AO French would also have a horticultural knack out in Michigan, just beginning a university degree in agricultural degree when the Civil War interrupted, not able to stop the "peach yellows" when that attacked his orchard, so switching what he grew. He was Alfred Orin according to descendants, but his parents spelled his name as Alvord French in their 1850 US Census
INDENTURES IN THE 1820s? If his orphans' father had businesses, in a day of no life insurance, then that father's unexpectedly early demise meant taxes and bills came suddenly due, with the income previously used to pay them no longer there. Geauga County has partial lists of those indentures, just those that were court-enforced, so not complete, but giving an idea of local timing, late 1820s through 1852. Some thinkers saw indenture as a temporary slavery, while often voluntary for grown-ups at the beginning, involuntary for children at the start. The income from selling sizeable contracts for seven years of labor could be used to pay parents' unpaid debts, a "little something" promised to the child at indenture's end, if still living. The contract said what the final incentive would be. The Geauga website said a common combination was a suit of clothes and a cow or two or a bible, which some say could cost maybe a week's wages.
Because they were in the States and not in Britain, because they were US north, and not US south, the local indentures were good in one sense. They tried to ensure a better life, later, by requiring that the child be educated. Even so, people who were anti-slavery might still endorse child indenture.
Even with education required, indenture was not a happy thing. Mothers might lose all of their children if they and close relatives could not afford for each family to buy a child's contract. Outcomes for those whose contracts were bought by strangers or unwise family members varied, from great, to terrible, even deadly. A useful apprenticeship for some? balanced by others treated slave-like, fed tiny scraps, sleeping in the barn's hay loft, whipped? While some were kept near home and mother, others were maybe taken to a new state or new country, never to return? Maybe sent out to sea as a cabin boy or scullery maid? Think of Shirley Temple's movie "The Little Princess" to understand little tiny girls as scullery maids.
What happened to Elah's sister Elvira? His brothers Ogden and Austin? Were there more than those four? The Hessian grandfather's will, dying too early to rescue them, named six, added two girls, an Alvah and an Abigail? The will was viewed by his descendant a MaryAnn Weisenberger.
Signs are Elah was maybe taken by his uncle Jacob's family, as he was able stay close. He is thus buried in Cleveland, where some of Jacob's land transactions can be found. Elah's cemetery is not random,, but with the extended family of his uncle Jacob's known son, Edwin French.
While Jacob's grave, like David's, is lost, Edwin's and Elah son's are both at Lake View. Also there--Edwin's son-in-law AJ Williams. He was an attorney who seemed extra-conscientious, his father a circuit-riding Methodist minister, himself an attorney turned state rep in the days of electing abolitionists, pre-Civil War. His time in the state leg earned him biography space. The son-in-law's biography spoke of his in-laws. It gave key details of Jacob's parents, and thus of David's.
Edwin's son made money, before going out to Wimberley, enough to build one of the mansions for which Cleveland was famed in its millionaire days. Like too many old Cleveland-area cemeteries, the old Cleveland mansion is gone. The son's wealth came once railroad cars needed engineered parts? When trucks replaced trains, a lot of that type of business and thus some of Cleveland's wealth departed, slowed some by car and truck companies coming in, iron and then taconite being shippable by Lake from Duluth, John Rockefeller's businesses and Case engines helpful, the Cleveland Clinics adding medical work later. )
* David's orphaned daughter, Elvira, married name Pinney, buried at Mentor, in Lake County. Her father died when she was six.
(Also seen as Alvira, misreadable as Almira. Girls were declared adults at age 12, keeping taxes low as a foster family then no longer needed to be paid for her room and board, implying somebody thought 12 was an age when marriage was to be allowed. In order to avoid worse things, a young girl might marry the first man who showed an interest, even though not compatible. Her first marriage ended in divorce, her second lasted decades, with her bio at FindaGrave saying her brother Elah signed his permission. She then wed one of the Ohio men called Azariah Pinney, his stone lost, some sons' stones still standing.)
GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS SOURCE: In 1826, the still large mother township called Painesville contained a region, uphill, so away from the mosquitoes, described later as Leroy Twp. It housed the early arriving French, Clapp, Keneippe and Phelp families by 1806, after some of their young men went there earlier to clear and otherwise prepare for the rest to come from western Mass. In mother Geauga, at first, their lakeside south part became its own county, Lake, an Atlas of 1840 made then, mapping road, towns and property-owners for each of Lake County's Townships.
Newburgh Twp, like Leroy, was uphill of the big lake, Erie, but further west, ridgetop places connected by ridge roads, with Mentor, the location of Elvira's stone and Spencer Phelps, between Leroy and Newburgh. Newburgh was on the Chagrin River, the waterpower there attracting mills. The two rivers to either side were more important, as used for shipping, their ports downhill from the ridge roads. Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, to the west, would not matter much until its canal to the Ohio River was finished, its drainage drying up stagnant sloughs that fed malaria-causing mosquitoes, in addition to giving access to the Mississippi. Painesville's Grand River, to the east, its water access technically at Freeport, made Painesville busier than Cleveland, pre-Canal. Then, the tables turned.
NEWBURGH-WIMBERLEY TRADE. As part of Geauga in 1826, you'd think Newburgh would have become part of Lake, but, instead, a different deal was made. Newburgh was transferred into Cuyahoga County, to be annexed later, much of it now inside Cleveland proper. In return, Cuyahoga County gave Lake the shoreside area that became Wimberly.
DEATH SOURCE. The items telling of David's death and naming the main culprit were in an unspecified newspaper, select parts transcribed and saved inside the "Annals of Cleveland", one of the wonderful WPA projects in the Depression era. The Annals author is "United States Work Projects Administration (Ohio)". The two related clippings, David's death and the culprit's conviction, were on page 16 of a section called the "Cleveland Newpaper Digest Jan 1 to Dec 31, 1826"
OLD LEROY SOURCES. There were more sources. An old 1895 source called " the Women of Leroy" told of the Frenchs coming to Leroy in 1806 with six children (inferred from other things as four sons and two daughters, one or two others dying back in New England). Old neighbor Spencer Phelps, elderly by Jehiel Alvord's visit in 1860, wrote up his memoirs of Leroy history that year, for the Painesville Telegraph, since transcribed by modern volunteers.
Phelps came first, with a different group than David's, but including David's future in-law Elah Clapp. David and his brother John then came with David's other future in-law, spelled by Phelps as Charles Keneep, to prepare the Leroy land for their families. The implication, not actually stated, was that David was one of the six (adult) children brought to Leroy, so a a son of Abiathar French, who, back in a place accustomed to Puritan names, had wed Beriah Alvord, her brother, an earlier Jehiel Alvord, wedding Abiathar's younger sister Dorothy, aka Doritha.
FAMILY HESSIANS. David married Lucy "Knieppe" locally, on May 9, 1809, in records done by local genealogy groups (recall her brother Charles as one helping David and John clear Leroy land together. Lucy and Charles were children of a Hessian soldier, Christian, sounded out as Chrisgan by Phelps in his writing, and his Massachusetts wife, Meribah Miller. Christian would arrive later than Charles, with the other older adults, women, travel-capable elderly and children.)
Varied Hessians had been brought down into western Mass., as the Rev. War ended, after fighting on the British side. In their case, their father Christian was not captured in battle, as true of many others. Instead, he deserted to the American side. However, they had come into American care, the German-speaking Hessians were marched from NY's Fort Ticonderoga, southeast-ish, to Northampton, Mass., a place close to the Abiathar Frenches, as their place of Westhampton was created when its church separated from that of mother Northampton. Christian would be put into a work obligation, as a penalty for having fought against the colonists. That indenture would result in his, once freed, marrying Meribah, the daughter of his "employer" (his indenture-holder). Sooo...not all indentures ended badly.
HIS WIFE. Lucy Keneippe/Keneipp/Kneippe French's life course after David's death is for now unknown. (COMMENT: The American spellings of Chrisgan/Christian changed the vowel order. This mattered. The original German put the E after the I. The result was Kniep, which meant tavern/inn owner, with Knieppe a variation. The American mis-spells, looking at the simplest, Kneip, means knife.)
Some thought Lucy remarried. A "Keneippe" tree gives her death as in 1853, with no details or sources.
HIS CHILDREN. Family researcher MaryLou French Weisenburger found David's orphaned children listed in legal papers of his father-in-law "Christian Keneippe":
David's girls were Alvah, Almira/Elmira and Abigail, hard to find as Frenches, except that, according to the Lake County Historical Society, Almira French was "warned out" of Leroy Township around 1828. That was only two years after her father died. Presumably, they did this as she had reached the legal age of maturity for girls (12 for girls, 14 for boys, with her brothers not warned out at the same time). The city officials wanted no poor or angry orphans in this place?
The outcomes of these warnings are rarely reported. Did they expect her to marry at 12? Hire herself out to predatory employers? We hope that one of her uncles or aunts was told and came to rescue her.
Of David's three boys, Austin, Ogden and Elah, David's son Elah would have been named after the only other Elah near the Frenches then, Elah Clapp. Elah Clapp, coming to Leroy early to clear land, married David's sister Rebecca. The story of Leroy said their wedding was the year after arrival, so 1807. He and Rebecca had at least two children, Octava/Octavia Clapp & Amasa Clapp. (Some sources also cite an Ogden Clapp, but we've so far found no good traces of that name.)
Elah Clapp died in 1811. His would have been the first burial of an adult in what is now called Brakeman Cemetery, but was, in 1811, still Phelps land. A Mr. Hungerford came into possession before the Brakeman family moved in, so donated it for a permanent cemetery.
Elah's death made Rebecca French a young widow. Like David's children, Elah's two children also knew partial orphan-hood. Then, Rebecca remarried, to a William McMillen, who stuck up for his new wife's children, Octava/Octavia and Amasa, on a land issue. The concerned land that would have been inherited from Elah, but the title had become tainted, as it had come through Elah's father, Col. Amasa Clapp. How did the problem arise? Today, it would be solved by title insurance. Back then, third parties wanted Amasa's heirs to make good on some decades old debt of a fourth party, an old Mass. tax collector/sheriff. Col. Amasa's co-signed a bond for that tax collector back in Massachusetts. (In records of some Braintree Frenches, a whole bunch refused to be tax collector, the implication being that the collector owed the money unpaid.) Twenty years after the bond's terms had been violated by the insured tax collector(not by Amasa), those making the bond came looking for Amasa's old assets, wanting to take away land formerly in his possession. Land in Mass. where the debt was made could not be touched due to Statute of Limitations. Somebody with connections convinced Ohio judges to rule that statutes of limitations did not apply out-of state. The land in Leroy Twp had been bought by Col. Amasa by lottery method out of the Western Reserve lands given to Conn. in negotiating state boundaries as colonies turned to state. Cola masa then sold or otherwise passed the land along to others, but, who paid Amasa for it, cleared it of trees and wolves and bears, planted with roads and buildings and orchards, fences added. It was by the time of the key judge's opinion worth a lot more than at the time of the bond default years earlier. If the land had been in Mass. where the bond was made, the statute of limitations would have forbidden a taking without compensation for improvements. More land owners were affected than Rebecca's children..
A HAPPIER FAMILY STORY- ARRIVAL HISTORY.
The following was the short version of a letter to the editor by Spencer Phelps, the original written in a charmingly folksy, New Englander way:
"Dec. 20, 1860 Painesville Telegraph
"3,3 History of the early settlement of
LeRoy by Spencer Phelps.
"In 1800 a company of 6 or 8 persons from
Chesterfield, Hampshire Co., Mass.,
purchased from the Connecticut Land Co.,
part of a township then known as New
Connecticut—now known as LeRoy. The
names were; Col. Amasa Clapp, Benj. Bates,
Moses Kingsley, Nathaniel Edwards,
Ebenezer Parson, and Benj. Parsons. In
1802 Samuel Lord, also, purchased part of
the township. Col. Clapp sent two of his
sons, Paul and Elah, and a hired man named
Jonathan B. Russell to this area. In the fall,
Elah returned home. Russell settled in
Mentor on the place where O. S. Hodges
now resides. He later removed to Lorain
Co. where he probably died.
"In 1803, Elah Clapp and I returned
to LeRoy. In 1804, Paul Clapp returned to
Chesterfield and in the summer 1805,
moved his family, being the first family that
settled in LeRoy. That year, three young
men—John and David French, and Charles
Keneep—came on and took up land. In
1806, three families by the name of French
and Chrisgan Keneep, settled in the
township. The same year a child of Paul
Clapp, age 4 or 5 years died. It was the first
death in the township.
"In 1808 Elah Clapp married Rebecca
French. In Dec., 1808, I married Mary,
daughter of Chrisgan Keneep. In 1809, three
families—Bates, Reed and Gurney—settled
in the township. Elah Clapp died in 1811,
leaving one son who now resides on the old
homestead.
"In 1815, I sold my farm to Mr.
Brakeman who still owns it, and I settled in
Painesville (now Concord) on the farm now
owned by Wm. Merrill.
"Samuel Phelps is totally blind.
Some of his children live in Des
Moines."
PHELPS SOURCE: The better (full) version is viewable at a Rootsweb link from the Lake County Historical Society:
rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohlake/history/leroy.html
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Copyright 2015, revised Feb., 2016, revised again March, 2022 and July, 2023 by JB, Julia Brown, Austin, Texas. Permission granted for use at this Findagrave page, id 147426816.
He'd been walking along a roadside connected to Newburgh, a place not yet annexed to Cleveland, still independent, upstream of Lake Erie, with water-powered mills. His businesses, if like his brother Jacob's, were not just farming, included milling, thus needed some wheel-turning falls. Walking to work or between businesses was normal in summertime, no autos yet. He might normally have enjoyed the view, when up above Mill Creek. The road likely was ridgetop or nearly so. Were there glimpses of the gigantic Great Lake down below, trees higher, in some other directions?
An Overlook Road would give a similar view later. It most clearly looks down at Lake View Cemetery, with a small lake on its premises and Garfield's tomb. One of David's sons would be buried there, Elah. He'd registered for his first marriage license from LeRoy Twp. where David and other Frenches had gone first and where a cousin called Amasa Clapp still lived when Elah married Clarissa Brown. Elah French was clearly named for Amasa's father, the Elah Clapp who died when Amasa was little, in 1811. In a more citified location by 1860, Elah ran a boarding house in Concord Twp., first wife Clarissa Brown and four children present, post office given as nearby Painesville. Later, called Ely/Eli by his second wife Augusta, he worked as a butcher in 1870 and then, near retirement in 1880, was occupied as a hackster, referring to the renting of hacks.
David's brother Jacob had had a son who did not leave for Michigan with so many others, stayed, Edwin French. He would be buried at Lake View also.
Others Ohio-born, of brother Jacob or of David's other brothers, left for MIchigan, some before it declared statehood. No birth records were kept earlier in Ohio as proof, but names were in land records together. (One transaction was by Ransom French, done with Edwin French, Ransom to leave, Edwin to stay.) They repeated unusual names, across their children, Greek ones, not biblical (buried at Lake View as a Williams was Amanda Climena French, of Edwin, while Climena, Camilla French, of Ransom French, was buried as a Shearer in California, earlier having gone there to teach, staying at the hotel of Ohio-born Alfred French in Milpitas before she married.)
The St Joseph River left Ohio and crossed three counties where Ransom and other Frenches in Michigan before it flowed into Lake Michigan. Its mouth faced Chicago, easy for steamboats to make their way across to Chicago with farm produce. The three counties were Berrien, St Joseph and Branch. Did David's son Ogden French try Michigan?
The trouble-causing canal for David was west of Mill Creek, probably parallel for a good stretch. Both the canal and Mill Creek crossed, from an older and thus smaller Cleveland, into "Newburgh Hamlet" and then into Newburgh Twp., though at different points. (The canal was further from his home at Leroy than was the Creek, both viewable on two old maps kept by the modern GIS dept. of Lake County.)
David died of his injuries several days later.
A copy of the news item is above left, its source viewed by clicking the image to enlarge it. He would have been carried home to die, to his family, at the Leroy end of the ridge roads, ending near mother Painesville Twp.
FAMILY. The era of unusual biblical names was ending, such as his parents', his father and grandfather both called Abiathar French, and his mother, Beriah Alvord, pronounced Alford, both of the Puritan-descended and thus bible-minded.
David and wife Lucy had four children with deaths located as of 2022, maybe two other children's deaths not tracked. They had named a son for an in-law, causing the biblical name of Elah to creep in. Daughter Elvira's name was Germanic. Ogden and Austin were not yet places, were still somebody's surnames. Relatives were trying new ones, such as Edwin, with Ransom a surname made into a first name. From a Greek story, came Climena, some said the mother of Hercules, some said a nymph. Was a Greek name a sign that teachers were in their midst?
There were variations. Their New Englander dialect used contractions, so Cl'mena was heard as Clemena. When daughter Elvira's name was said as 'lvira, it might be heard as Alvira. Longhand scribbles of her name might then misread by moderns as Almira.
She was "warned out" of Leroy in 1828 by Overseers of the Poor, shortly after her father's death. The overseers wanted no one who might eventually be poor, the elderly, widows and orphans known to be poor. Never mind the Beatitudes! Six-ish when David died, she would have been eight-ish then.
They wouldn't really do that, would they? Instead of finding her relatives, writing to Michigan, locating her older cousins?
SIBLING COUNT OF SIX. David's parents were said by in-law Spencer Phelps to have had six children come to Ohio, at or nearing adulthood, after an Abiathar III died "back there" in his early teens. Three of those coming were named in baptismal records back in MA. One was Jacob (Edwin's known father, as named in a bio done on his daughter's attorney spouse, A. J. Williams, also a legislator and abolitionist). Two others with baptism records were John and Timothy. Timothy was probably the one to marry an Allison, then went where? Some Timothy formerly of Ohio went to Michigan, but did so later, after possible nephew Alfred left for California and possible nephew Ransom died? John disappeared in to the anonymity offered by too many called John French b. Mass, in each generation, too hard to separate if not knowing wife and children's names or some unusual future location and occupation.
Neighbor Spencer Phelps remembered David's name. Records were said to burn in Rev. Enoch Hale's fire at Westhampton. Many were re-constructed from memory at family gatherings, for example, done at Westhampton when someone's parents died later (nicely done for the family of David's aunt, the Dorothy French who married neighbor Jehiel Alvord. David was a "double-cousin" of their children, his father Abiathar having been the older brother of Dorothy, his mother, Beriah Alvord, having been a sister of Jehiel.)
David and two sisters were presumed too young to be remembered in re-constructed records, if relatives "back in Mass." had encountered them at teenaged Abiathar III's funeral? Re-construction remained hard if no one returned form Ohio for later funerals, the War of 1812 stopping all kinds of travel.
Yet, brother Timothy was married close in time to David, once in Ohio, by a circuit-riding Methodist minister named Shadrach Ruark. Another name easily inferred was his sister Rebecca, stone linked to son Amasa Clapp, widowed by Elah Clapp, then married to Wm. McMillen. Her survivors attempted to put her parents' names on her stone, an imperfect cenotaph. "Abiather and Maria" was a mis-remembering of close to "Abiathar and Beriah", but it was findable.
It was a way to remember them. Graveyards disappeared as roads and streets came through. The main old one in Painesville would be covered with a school parking lot, Newburgh's "long gone", and so on.
For the sixth one to Ohio, there was a Rhoda French who married a Luther Keep (back in Mass?). Luther was of record buying and selling land, for awhile of Elkhart, Indiana, at the line where Michigan counties were splintered off and made into Indiana counties. Hearing of a better opportunity, they then went elsewhere?
An EARLY Climena French married an Eddy, a surname seen at Leroy/Painesville. Was she another of Jacob's children, her Greek name repeated in the name of Edwin's and Ransom's daughters, maybe as she'd died?
NAMED WITH BROTHERS IN 1820 CENSUS. The 1820 US Census specifically named David French, family "confirmed by proximity", that is by his closeness to Timothy and Jacob nearby, plus key in-laws, his wife's family, his sister Rebecca's family, in a place with populations still small.
That 1820 Census, totally handwritten, not on pre-printed forms, is viewable at FamilySearch.org. Household heads were ordered by surname, counting ,but not naming others in each household. People from his township of LeRoy were put with people from Painesville Twp., two places to be in Lake County, Ohio, in 1840, both still in Geauga in Chardon Twp in 1820.
Checking deed locations near Painesville's harbor, those on the Perry side of the Grand River (northeastish) were put in a Perry Twp list. Edwin was still farming, there. Those relatives on the other side in 1820 (south and/or westish) were lumped together under the mother Painesville Twp name.
The related family of Nathaniel French, not a brother, was under Perry in 1820, to go to Mentor by 1850. Confirmed in-laws and relatives of David were scattered about in the 1820 list. These included some of his wife Lucy's Hessian family, listed as "Kenieppe" in the 1820 ("Elijah" and "Chrisgan" for Christian). The Hessian's side simpler surname in the legal paperwork used the truer spelling Kn, on the Scandinavian end of the Germanics. Think of old-time football player Knute Rockne being "sounded out" in newspapers as "Canute Rockne".
Plus, there were Phelps, in-laws to David's wife Lucy. Neighbor Spencer Phelps is buried with Lucy's relative (sister?) at Mentor. Spencer was the one writing a history of the first Leroy families for a newspaper around 1860. The name Phelps was also seen back in Hampshire County, Mass., where they'd lived before Ohio. Certain Phelps were among the relatives of David's mother, Beriah Alvord.
David's sister Rebecca McMillen lived until 1853 and stayed local. The 1820 listed her spouse William McMillen, also her son Amasa Clapp. (The son was named for grandfather Col. Amasa Clapp, left behind in Mass.)
The original records of what became Lake County had burned in a fire at mother Geauga's courthouse in Chardon, before Lake County broke away. David's son Elah's marriage license naming Clarissa Ann Brown was better than their marriage record, as it stating LeRoy Twp. as the 1839 address. It clearly was after the fire, with Elah's 1840 Census not at LeRoy, but counting him at Chardon Twp, which remained in Geauga as its shopping town had the courthouse.
A John French, maybe of a different wing of the family, maybe David's missing brother, would show up in Chardon after Elah left, married but no children?
Surnames listed as Eddy and maybe Harmon maybe matched names of spouses for elder daughters of David's brothers, not yet married in 1820?
SIDE NOTE 1: A Cordelia French married an Orasmus Harmon. He co-bought land near varied recognizable Frenches and others in Branch County Mich. in 1838. ( His own name was almost unrecognizable, looking more like "Osmus"? ). One of the other buyers was Alfred French, who seemed to be picking 4-corner kinds of locations when filing claims in Branch County.
SIDE NOTE 2: A Climena/Clemena French married a Dennis Eddy, in Ohio, in Dec., 1822, church unnamed. She then must have died young, as her spouse then remarried in Ohio, according to records at FamilySearch.org. Their marriage is on p.7 of "The Puritan Manuscripts", a booklet with marriages of a certain period gathered from newspapers. A typo in the booklet gives the year of county creation as 1846, but 1840 is seen elsewhere.
The author of "The Puritan Manuscripts" wrote from Akron, OH. He would also write in 1933 on the Francis Nashes of Braintree. He was a Baptist Pastor, maybe of the Free Will/Universalist sort, who served from Madison, Wisc., and then, in 1913, at Tenth Street Baptist at Columbus, Ohio, congregation expanded to include Baptist students at Ohio State. An obviously intelligent man, his prior studies had been at Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisc., and at the Univ. of Chicago. He was Vernon S Phillips, D.D., meaning he had a Doctor of Divinity, a type of PhD, his Findagrave ID 158590803.)
CONFUSIONS. It's easy to confuse unrelated people in the Geauga/Lake County named French.
The 1820 list, alphabetic, named the three brothers in a row, David and Timothy French, with the eldest last, Jacob French. (John French was absent, moved, died, or shifted to a middle name. Spencer Phelps said John arrived first, with David and future in-law Charles "Kenieppe" to prep the land, meaning they brought the heavy plow and saws, the already married Jacob and Abiathar implied to come later, bringing children and household goods,)
Listed after Jacob in the 1820 Census was an unrelated Daniel Ide French, proven since 2014 to be of different male DNA (a Painesville attorney, land records showing he was early at Concord, his brothers Warren and Artemus and their parents Mary Ide and Seba French coming with Warren and Artemus).
Some confused the Lucy French (sister of Charles), married to this David French, with the Lucy Owen French married to Daniel Ide French.
Also to beware--David's side had a Zeba French,son of Nataniel, once of Perry, living in Mentor by 1850. Daniel Ide French's side had a Seba French, of Painesville, buried at Waahington Street Cemetery, now defunct, paved over for a parking lot
Both sets, this David's, and that Daniel's were of immigrants to Mass. in the Puritan era. David's ancestor, one of many named John French, but the only one to be declared a "freeman" at old Braintree in 1640, the only one to marry wife Grace, maiden name unknown as never given in paperwork in the States. They reared their children as a family of farmers and millers, barely south of Boston, at Braintree.
Daniel Ide French's ancestor, in contrast had a different John French as Puritan ancestor, his wife in two wills, making it clear that her maiden name was Kingsley and that her spouse was different in occupation, John French the tailor. Freedom's children were never at Braintree, instead born far north of Boston, up at Ipswich, almost in future Maine. People insisting that Grace have a maiden name tried to make her into Freedom Kingsley, then made the two genetically different Johns identical or father and son. That these were mix-ups was made clear in 2014, when a Braintree descendent still living near there, in MA, had his male Dna tested. John and Grace's middle son Dependence was ancestor to David's set and to a set headed by Nathaniel French, his son Zeba and grandson George buried at Mentor.
The unrelated Daniel Ide French proved a good man. He had had tried to help David's sister, Rebecca McMillen, and her spouse William, rescue the pioneering land settled pre-War of 1812 and left to her Clapp children, after her first husband died in Leroy in 1811, a man named Elah Clapp.
CANAL BROUGHT PROSPERITY TO CLEVELAND, BYPASSED PAINESVILLE. If people wish to survive, they have to adapt. The canal was a sign of progress. They would have a few decades of canal business and travel, before train routes replaced that, tracks laid, in part, on the flatness of canal paths, on riverside terraces leftover from old glacial melts, along rivers where paddleboats soon no longer went, tracks also following the edges of great-sized lakes, where schooners no longer sailed.
CEMETERIES GONE VS NOT. Progress has effects. Among the cemeteries wiped out as industry and suburban housing came were Newburgh's (no good list of graves made?) Painesville's old cemetery on Washington Street was paved over for a high school parking lot (a partial list was thoughtfully made, but listings were complete only for those stones still readable).
Among the few old stones still standing at this writing--
*His sister Rebecca's, at Brakeman Cem., in Lake County, Ohio, in the Leroy area. Her children and spouses would be buried there.
(On what was once Phelps land, bought maybe first by a Hungerford and then definitely a Germanic family from upstate NY with name Britishized as Breakeman, Breakman, and finally Brakeman. The Brakemans did not plow the markers down, nor use them for sidewalk paving, but preserved the remaining stones, by then under public care. )
*Son Elah French's stone, is in East Cleveland, bur his son, a second Elah, is at that of Cleveland's cemeteries doubling as an art museum, so much to see, better preserved than average, having President Garfield's towered multi-story tomb, offering another up-high view.
(Just 8 years old when his father died, Elah became a hotel keeper by his 40s. One of his hotel guest in 1860 was a Jehiel Alvord. Elah and Jehiel's fathers were David French and Isaac Alvord, "double cousins", each with one parent an Alvord and one parent a French. Such cousins and their children are often extra close if similar in age. That Jehiel was a bachelor, to live and die near his workplaces in and around Westhampton, buried at his death place of Williamsburg in 1893, so was "just visiting" in 1860.
Elah's son was another Elah, the one with greenhouses (with some involvement in the planning of Lake View Cemetery?) Relative Ransom French's son AO French would also have a horticultural knack out in Michigan, just beginning a university degree in agricultural degree when the Civil War interrupted, not able to stop the "peach yellows" when that attacked his orchard, so switching what he grew. He was Alfred Orin according to descendants, but his parents spelled his name as Alvord French in their 1850 US Census
INDENTURES IN THE 1820s? If his orphans' father had businesses, in a day of no life insurance, then that father's unexpectedly early demise meant taxes and bills came suddenly due, with the income previously used to pay them no longer there. Geauga County has partial lists of those indentures, just those that were court-enforced, so not complete, but giving an idea of local timing, late 1820s through 1852. Some thinkers saw indenture as a temporary slavery, while often voluntary for grown-ups at the beginning, involuntary for children at the start. The income from selling sizeable contracts for seven years of labor could be used to pay parents' unpaid debts, a "little something" promised to the child at indenture's end, if still living. The contract said what the final incentive would be. The Geauga website said a common combination was a suit of clothes and a cow or two or a bible, which some say could cost maybe a week's wages.
Because they were in the States and not in Britain, because they were US north, and not US south, the local indentures were good in one sense. They tried to ensure a better life, later, by requiring that the child be educated. Even so, people who were anti-slavery might still endorse child indenture.
Even with education required, indenture was not a happy thing. Mothers might lose all of their children if they and close relatives could not afford for each family to buy a child's contract. Outcomes for those whose contracts were bought by strangers or unwise family members varied, from great, to terrible, even deadly. A useful apprenticeship for some? balanced by others treated slave-like, fed tiny scraps, sleeping in the barn's hay loft, whipped? While some were kept near home and mother, others were maybe taken to a new state or new country, never to return? Maybe sent out to sea as a cabin boy or scullery maid? Think of Shirley Temple's movie "The Little Princess" to understand little tiny girls as scullery maids.
What happened to Elah's sister Elvira? His brothers Ogden and Austin? Were there more than those four? The Hessian grandfather's will, dying too early to rescue them, named six, added two girls, an Alvah and an Abigail? The will was viewed by his descendant a MaryAnn Weisenberger.
Signs are Elah was maybe taken by his uncle Jacob's family, as he was able stay close. He is thus buried in Cleveland, where some of Jacob's land transactions can be found. Elah's cemetery is not random,, but with the extended family of his uncle Jacob's known son, Edwin French.
While Jacob's grave, like David's, is lost, Edwin's and Elah son's are both at Lake View. Also there--Edwin's son-in-law AJ Williams. He was an attorney who seemed extra-conscientious, his father a circuit-riding Methodist minister, himself an attorney turned state rep in the days of electing abolitionists, pre-Civil War. His time in the state leg earned him biography space. The son-in-law's biography spoke of his in-laws. It gave key details of Jacob's parents, and thus of David's.
Edwin's son made money, before going out to Wimberley, enough to build one of the mansions for which Cleveland was famed in its millionaire days. Like too many old Cleveland-area cemeteries, the old Cleveland mansion is gone. The son's wealth came once railroad cars needed engineered parts? When trucks replaced trains, a lot of that type of business and thus some of Cleveland's wealth departed, slowed some by car and truck companies coming in, iron and then taconite being shippable by Lake from Duluth, John Rockefeller's businesses and Case engines helpful, the Cleveland Clinics adding medical work later. )
* David's orphaned daughter, Elvira, married name Pinney, buried at Mentor, in Lake County. Her father died when she was six.
(Also seen as Alvira, misreadable as Almira. Girls were declared adults at age 12, keeping taxes low as a foster family then no longer needed to be paid for her room and board, implying somebody thought 12 was an age when marriage was to be allowed. In order to avoid worse things, a young girl might marry the first man who showed an interest, even though not compatible. Her first marriage ended in divorce, her second lasted decades, with her bio at FindaGrave saying her brother Elah signed his permission. She then wed one of the Ohio men called Azariah Pinney, his stone lost, some sons' stones still standing.)
GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS SOURCE: In 1826, the still large mother township called Painesville contained a region, uphill, so away from the mosquitoes, described later as Leroy Twp. It housed the early arriving French, Clapp, Keneippe and Phelp families by 1806, after some of their young men went there earlier to clear and otherwise prepare for the rest to come from western Mass. In mother Geauga, at first, their lakeside south part became its own county, Lake, an Atlas of 1840 made then, mapping road, towns and property-owners for each of Lake County's Townships.
Newburgh Twp, like Leroy, was uphill of the big lake, Erie, but further west, ridgetop places connected by ridge roads, with Mentor, the location of Elvira's stone and Spencer Phelps, between Leroy and Newburgh. Newburgh was on the Chagrin River, the waterpower there attracting mills. The two rivers to either side were more important, as used for shipping, their ports downhill from the ridge roads. Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, to the west, would not matter much until its canal to the Ohio River was finished, its drainage drying up stagnant sloughs that fed malaria-causing mosquitoes, in addition to giving access to the Mississippi. Painesville's Grand River, to the east, its water access technically at Freeport, made Painesville busier than Cleveland, pre-Canal. Then, the tables turned.
NEWBURGH-WIMBERLEY TRADE. As part of Geauga in 1826, you'd think Newburgh would have become part of Lake, but, instead, a different deal was made. Newburgh was transferred into Cuyahoga County, to be annexed later, much of it now inside Cleveland proper. In return, Cuyahoga County gave Lake the shoreside area that became Wimberly.
DEATH SOURCE. The items telling of David's death and naming the main culprit were in an unspecified newspaper, select parts transcribed and saved inside the "Annals of Cleveland", one of the wonderful WPA projects in the Depression era. The Annals author is "United States Work Projects Administration (Ohio)". The two related clippings, David's death and the culprit's conviction, were on page 16 of a section called the "Cleveland Newpaper Digest Jan 1 to Dec 31, 1826"
OLD LEROY SOURCES. There were more sources. An old 1895 source called " the Women of Leroy" told of the Frenchs coming to Leroy in 1806 with six children (inferred from other things as four sons and two daughters, one or two others dying back in New England). Old neighbor Spencer Phelps, elderly by Jehiel Alvord's visit in 1860, wrote up his memoirs of Leroy history that year, for the Painesville Telegraph, since transcribed by modern volunteers.
Phelps came first, with a different group than David's, but including David's future in-law Elah Clapp. David and his brother John then came with David's other future in-law, spelled by Phelps as Charles Keneep, to prepare the Leroy land for their families. The implication, not actually stated, was that David was one of the six (adult) children brought to Leroy, so a a son of Abiathar French, who, back in a place accustomed to Puritan names, had wed Beriah Alvord, her brother, an earlier Jehiel Alvord, wedding Abiathar's younger sister Dorothy, aka Doritha.
FAMILY HESSIANS. David married Lucy "Knieppe" locally, on May 9, 1809, in records done by local genealogy groups (recall her brother Charles as one helping David and John clear Leroy land together. Lucy and Charles were children of a Hessian soldier, Christian, sounded out as Chrisgan by Phelps in his writing, and his Massachusetts wife, Meribah Miller. Christian would arrive later than Charles, with the other older adults, women, travel-capable elderly and children.)
Varied Hessians had been brought down into western Mass., as the Rev. War ended, after fighting on the British side. In their case, their father Christian was not captured in battle, as true of many others. Instead, he deserted to the American side. However, they had come into American care, the German-speaking Hessians were marched from NY's Fort Ticonderoga, southeast-ish, to Northampton, Mass., a place close to the Abiathar Frenches, as their place of Westhampton was created when its church separated from that of mother Northampton. Christian would be put into a work obligation, as a penalty for having fought against the colonists. That indenture would result in his, once freed, marrying Meribah, the daughter of his "employer" (his indenture-holder). Sooo...not all indentures ended badly.
HIS WIFE. Lucy Keneippe/Keneipp/Kneippe French's life course after David's death is for now unknown. (COMMENT: The American spellings of Chrisgan/Christian changed the vowel order. This mattered. The original German put the E after the I. The result was Kniep, which meant tavern/inn owner, with Knieppe a variation. The American mis-spells, looking at the simplest, Kneip, means knife.)
Some thought Lucy remarried. A "Keneippe" tree gives her death as in 1853, with no details or sources.
HIS CHILDREN. Family researcher MaryLou French Weisenburger found David's orphaned children listed in legal papers of his father-in-law "Christian Keneippe":
David's girls were Alvah, Almira/Elmira and Abigail, hard to find as Frenches, except that, according to the Lake County Historical Society, Almira French was "warned out" of Leroy Township around 1828. That was only two years after her father died. Presumably, they did this as she had reached the legal age of maturity for girls (12 for girls, 14 for boys, with her brothers not warned out at the same time). The city officials wanted no poor or angry orphans in this place?
The outcomes of these warnings are rarely reported. Did they expect her to marry at 12? Hire herself out to predatory employers? We hope that one of her uncles or aunts was told and came to rescue her.
Of David's three boys, Austin, Ogden and Elah, David's son Elah would have been named after the only other Elah near the Frenches then, Elah Clapp. Elah Clapp, coming to Leroy early to clear land, married David's sister Rebecca. The story of Leroy said their wedding was the year after arrival, so 1807. He and Rebecca had at least two children, Octava/Octavia Clapp & Amasa Clapp. (Some sources also cite an Ogden Clapp, but we've so far found no good traces of that name.)
Elah Clapp died in 1811. His would have been the first burial of an adult in what is now called Brakeman Cemetery, but was, in 1811, still Phelps land. A Mr. Hungerford came into possession before the Brakeman family moved in, so donated it for a permanent cemetery.
Elah's death made Rebecca French a young widow. Like David's children, Elah's two children also knew partial orphan-hood. Then, Rebecca remarried, to a William McMillen, who stuck up for his new wife's children, Octava/Octavia and Amasa, on a land issue. The concerned land that would have been inherited from Elah, but the title had become tainted, as it had come through Elah's father, Col. Amasa Clapp. How did the problem arise? Today, it would be solved by title insurance. Back then, third parties wanted Amasa's heirs to make good on some decades old debt of a fourth party, an old Mass. tax collector/sheriff. Col. Amasa's co-signed a bond for that tax collector back in Massachusetts. (In records of some Braintree Frenches, a whole bunch refused to be tax collector, the implication being that the collector owed the money unpaid.) Twenty years after the bond's terms had been violated by the insured tax collector(not by Amasa), those making the bond came looking for Amasa's old assets, wanting to take away land formerly in his possession. Land in Mass. where the debt was made could not be touched due to Statute of Limitations. Somebody with connections convinced Ohio judges to rule that statutes of limitations did not apply out-of state. The land in Leroy Twp had been bought by Col. Amasa by lottery method out of the Western Reserve lands given to Conn. in negotiating state boundaries as colonies turned to state. Cola masa then sold or otherwise passed the land along to others, but, who paid Amasa for it, cleared it of trees and wolves and bears, planted with roads and buildings and orchards, fences added. It was by the time of the key judge's opinion worth a lot more than at the time of the bond default years earlier. If the land had been in Mass. where the bond was made, the statute of limitations would have forbidden a taking without compensation for improvements. More land owners were affected than Rebecca's children..
A HAPPIER FAMILY STORY- ARRIVAL HISTORY.
The following was the short version of a letter to the editor by Spencer Phelps, the original written in a charmingly folksy, New Englander way:
"Dec. 20, 1860 Painesville Telegraph
"3,3 History of the early settlement of
LeRoy by Spencer Phelps.
"In 1800 a company of 6 or 8 persons from
Chesterfield, Hampshire Co., Mass.,
purchased from the Connecticut Land Co.,
part of a township then known as New
Connecticut—now known as LeRoy. The
names were; Col. Amasa Clapp, Benj. Bates,
Moses Kingsley, Nathaniel Edwards,
Ebenezer Parson, and Benj. Parsons. In
1802 Samuel Lord, also, purchased part of
the township. Col. Clapp sent two of his
sons, Paul and Elah, and a hired man named
Jonathan B. Russell to this area. In the fall,
Elah returned home. Russell settled in
Mentor on the place where O. S. Hodges
now resides. He later removed to Lorain
Co. where he probably died.
"In 1803, Elah Clapp and I returned
to LeRoy. In 1804, Paul Clapp returned to
Chesterfield and in the summer 1805,
moved his family, being the first family that
settled in LeRoy. That year, three young
men—John and David French, and Charles
Keneep—came on and took up land. In
1806, three families by the name of French
and Chrisgan Keneep, settled in the
township. The same year a child of Paul
Clapp, age 4 or 5 years died. It was the first
death in the township.
"In 1808 Elah Clapp married Rebecca
French. In Dec., 1808, I married Mary,
daughter of Chrisgan Keneep. In 1809, three
families—Bates, Reed and Gurney—settled
in the township. Elah Clapp died in 1811,
leaving one son who now resides on the old
homestead.
"In 1815, I sold my farm to Mr.
Brakeman who still owns it, and I settled in
Painesville (now Concord) on the farm now
owned by Wm. Merrill.
"Samuel Phelps is totally blind.
Some of his children live in Des
Moines."
PHELPS SOURCE: The better (full) version is viewable at a Rootsweb link from the Lake County Historical Society:
rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohlake/history/leroy.html
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Copyright 2015, revised Feb., 2016, revised again March, 2022 and July, 2023 by JB, Julia Brown, Austin, Texas. Permission granted for use at this Findagrave page, id 147426816.
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