Categories: Stow

31 Oct 2012, Comments (0)

Clocks and Clock Towers of Summit County

Author: Rodney

There was a time when people couldn’t look at their car dashboard, the back of their wrist, or their cell phone screen to see what time it was. Community leaders put clock towers or some type of time piece in a prominent location. Employers put clocks up to remind employees to be to work on time. Some of these timepieces are new but they are based on a long standing tradition.

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, 1200 Firestone Pkwy, Akron.

 

Cuyahoga Falls City Hall, 2nd Street, Cuyahoga Falls.

 

Hudson Clock Tower, Corner of Main and Aurora Streets.

 

Post Clock in front of Buchtel Hall on the campus of Akron U.

 

Cuyahoga Falls 2nd Street Mall next to Broad Blvd.
“A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CLOCK” is a plaque inside the base where the inner-workings of the clock can also be viewed.

 

Post Clock on Ravenna Rd. just north of the square in Twinsburg.

 

Goodyear Clock on Plant 3/Innovation Center off Innovation Way, formerly Martha Ave.
Probably not many of you have driven past the clock on Martha Ave./Innovation Way, but I’m fairly sure most of you have seen it from the east leg of I-76.
The construction that you see in the pictures is part of the 2 year project that will keep Goodyear headquarters in Akron. When finished the old Plant 3 will be the new central offices, called the “Innovation Center” and will be connected to the current offices on Market.

 

Stow City Hall at Graham and Darrow Rd.

 

Everett Building at the corner of Main and Market in Akron.

 

Portage Lakes Clock Tower at Portage Lakes Dr. and Turkeyfoot Rd.

 

Goodyear Clock Tower on Market Street.

 

18 Mar 2010, Comments (0)

Wheat for the Wetmores

Author: Jeri

We are indebted to Charles Cook Bronson (1804-1886) for taking the time to record the stories of the pioneers that lived in this area. His hand written notes fill ten volumes and include events, stories, and biographies of some of the settlers in this area. Most of them are from the Tallmadge area where he lived, but i…nclude all Summit County. If he hadn’t asked Elisha Prior for the stories of his family, we would have never know as much as we do about the first family in Northampton. And now we come to him again for some interesting stories from Stow.

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With the help of his brother Titus, who had come with him, in 1804, William Wetmore cleared some of his land and put in a field of wheat. After threshing it with flails he had about 4 bushels. We have talked about the difficulties in milling grain in those early days. The closest mill that year was in Newburg, near Cleveland. He hired a man from Hudson who would take the grain to the mill, but would charge a price of one-half of the milled flour. If this seems a high price, realize that there were no roads and it would take one day to get there, one for the milling and one to return. The current going rate for the milling process was 1/8th of the milled flour. Meaning that from his approximately 240 lb. of wheat Wetmore got 74 lbs of flour. Lapin, the man that took the wheat wouldn’t take the whole amount at once and wouldn’t go till he, himself ran out of flour first. This meant that the Wetmore family would often go without. Mrs. Wetmore became creative, using the kernels of the wheat to make pudding. They frequently state that if not for the gifts of bear and deer meat from the neighboring Indians, they would have starved.

Posted on HASC Facebook by Rodney

18 Mar 2010, Comments (0)

The Kindness of Indians

Author: Jeri

From the notes of C.C. Bronson we find that Edwin Wetmore was the 2nd child of William Wetmore, first official settler in Stow. The year that they came to Stow, Edwin would have been 8 years old. Edwin upon reading the Doctor Wilcox’s account of their lives (see Friday’s post) was compelled to write his own remembrance…s. At this writing he would have been 76 years young.

SUMMIT, STOW, APRIL 2nd, 1872
I read with deep interest the article from your Hinckley correspondent, Doctor Wilcox, no doubt. To think he would give so minutely, and yet so truthfully, facts connected with my fathers early settlement in this township! As I read of the doings of my dear mother, in relation to the disposition made of that quite expensive flour; I thought of what she used to say and do with and by her importuning children. Mother used with aching heart and falling tears give sparingly of those carefully kept loaves of bread, lest there might be greater suffering by giving than witholding. But we, through the kindness of the Indians, lived to see better days. In the fall of 1805, my father was sick, apparently near unto death, and the kindness and attention we received from the Indian Chief, Wagmong, will go with me to the end of life. He was the chief of a tribe settled upon the south bank of the beautiful Stow Lake (Silver Lake). There are many things that might be said of and by the few remaining of the early settlement of this country that must be said soon, or never, for time is winging us away to our eternal homes.
Copied from Cleveland Herald
Edwin Wetmore

Posted on HASC Facebook by Rodney

18 Mar 2010, Comments (0)

A Rattlesnake and a Child

Author: Jeri

Now another story from Henry Wetmore via “The Bronson Book”, recorded here just as it was written. The cabin mentioned here would have been approximately where “Marc’s” is, remembering that in this forested wilderness, the only sign of civilization was this small cluster of log cabins, the only link with other settlers… being a blazed trail in the woods and swamps where Rt. 91 would be.

“About eighty rods from our house where we first settled, John Campbell who was one of the four heads of families mentioned, built a log house and put his wife and one child, a babe, in it. Having no boards in those days for floors, split logs were used, with the split side up. These would shrink and make open places, which, added to frequent knots and other irregularities, made rough and open floors. One day Mrs. Campbell put her child, then two or three years old, in the middle of the floor and gave it a tin of bread and milk, shutting the door, went up to see my mother. On her return she thought she would just look in through a little window to see what the child was doing, as she heard the child uttering some childish words, and, behold, there lay a large yellow rattle snake, coiled almost into the child’s lap, and was licking the milk off from the child’s apron, which had dropped upon it: and the child, just at the moment the mother looked in, was patting the snake over the head with the spoon to make him stop doing so. Mrs. Campbell opened the door with a scream, and the snake went down through a crack in the floor. She took the child to our house, and my Father and M. Campbell, who soon came, turned over the logs of the floor and killed the snake. It evidently smelt the milk, and with an instinctive impression of the child’s innocence and inability to hurt him, attempted to partake of some of the child’s food.”

Posted on HASC Facebook by Rodney

18 Mar 2010, Comments (0)

Stow’s Rattlesnakes

Author: Jeri

Here is another memory of Henry Wetmore (VI) just as C.C. Bronson recorded it.

My father came here with a single span of horses and one of them was bitten and died, which proved a great loss to us at that particular time. A man Samuel Baker, came here about 1808 or 09, and built a Log House just North of the Cemetery, …at that time a plan was formed to watch every spring at the different places where the snakes came up out of the Gulf until they should be exterminated. And Baker said he would be one of the number if Sunday was given to him, as he could not spend a working day, which was agreed to. One Sabbath morning, about 10 a.m. he discovered a large number of snakes just opposite the Cemetery coming out of a small crevice in the rocks about 10 feet below where he stood, at the base of which was a narrow strip of land above the abyss below, upon which the snakes were sunning. When Baker supposed they were all out he pulled off his coat and dropped it down the mouth of the crevice, and then with a pole prepared for the purpose he croked the crevice with his coat.
Then with the pole he descended and killed 65 rattle snakes. My Father, Brother, good old Deacon Butler, myself and others saw them counted, why I have mentioned Deacon Butlers name is this: he, with the few inhabitants here, was holding a Deacons Meeting at Stow Corners in a Log House, and just as Mr. Butler was in the midst of a prayer Bakers son came bounding into the room exclaiming at the top of his voice, “O, Dads got a pile of snakes; Dads got a pile of snakes!” The Deacon said “Amen”, and all ran out to view the slain enemy, which was a sight for is indeed and which I will remember. My Father hired Baker to blast open the den the next day, and found only one more in there, the largest one of all, supposed to be the pioneer, and the mother and grandmother of good share of those killed. The Den was like an old out door brick oven, only larger, and full of leaves carried in by animals before the snakes took possession. This watching was continued every spring until they were exterminated in this vicinity.

Posted on HASC Facebook by Rodney

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