Dear Jan and Bruce,

This is probably where I should have begun this endeavor, rather than in the middle where I did begin, but if I had, we might both have lost interest pretty quickly. Of course, you may have lost interest before this, but I'm enjoying myself and plan to inflict more of these tales on you. This is sort of to set the stage.

I was born and grew up in the town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. If you look at a map of Ohio, in the north-east quadrant, and find Cuyahoga County and follow the eastern county line southward you will see, about half-way down, a small rectangular projection extending into neighboring Geauga County. In this rectangle and in an area of about the same size adjoining on the west lies the picturesque village of Chagrin Falls. There is a reason for this bulge in the county line. The town was settled, by most accounts, in 1833 and by 1834 was home to seven families attracted by the water power available where the Chagrin River drops over the falls. There they built a grist mill and a lumber mill. The village grew and so did a rather awkward problem - the county line ran pretty much down the middle of Main Street. Those living west of the line resided in Orange Townshop and their county seat was Chardon about twenty miles to the northeast. In January 1841, a land swap was arranged and the county line rerouted around the village. But the town continued to grow and shortly spread across the boundaries and parts of it are still in the two jurisdictions.

It was in and around Chagrin Falls that my ancestral families lived. The Burnetts were the first to arrive in the immediate area when Joshua Merriam Burnett with his eldest son, Henry, came west from Massachusetts in 1814 and settled on 600 acres in South Newbury in Geauga County. Actually, my earliest ancestor in the general area was Elijah Hill who came from New York State in 1813 and lived first in Ashtabula County, moved to Dover and to Brooklyn in Cuyahoga County, and finally settled just south of Chagrin Falls in 1833. The McFarlands came in 1818 when Daniel McFarland, Jr., with his wife Avis Reynolds and six of their fourteen children, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren moved west from Massachusetts and bought 2000 acres in Bainbridge surrounding the intersection of old U.S Route 422 and Ohio Route 306. The crossroads is still called "McFarlands Corners"; my mother grew up there and her old homestead is still standing. John Nelson Foote, his wife Rebecca Farwell and their growing family came from Vermont sometime in the 1830's, living in Newberg (now part of Cleveland), Bainbridge, and Aurora, before moving on to Indiana. Sylvester Winchester, his wife Rosella Eldred and daughter Cordelia, came from Madison County, New York, in the 1840's, following her parents who had migrated earlier to Bedford, Ohio. The Winchesters moved on to Chicago, Illinois, and then to La Porte, Indiana, before returning to settle in the Bedford area. The Fosters, John and his wife Relief Bean and children Sylvanus, Ann, and John, came from Maine in 1844 settling first in Warrensville. They were farmers; some of their descendants continued to farm, some moved into town, and I grew up surrounded by uncles, aunts, and cousins. There were even those that I didn't know were relatives until I got into genealogy.

Chagrin Falls was, and is, a lovely little town, nestled (and that's the only word that fits) in the Chagrin River valley astride the north branch of the river and surrounded on all sides by hills. It has the look of New England which is not surprising. Most of the homes and commercial buildings were built in the 1800s and very early 1900s, so it was well-established and change came very slowly. The buildings have been well-maintained in their original form and decor and the whole village remains very attractive. The great old elm trees that lined the streets in my childhood were lost in the 1930s to disease but the maples and sycamores have filled in nicely. I might mention that there are really three definitions of Chagrin Falls as a geopolitical entity. There is the village itself bounded by its corporate limits; there is the larger area of Chagrin Falls Township some of which lies outside the village limits; and there is the postal district encompassing the village, the township, and the surrounding municipalities (mostly unincorporated) of Moreland Hills, Orange, Hunting Valley, Gates Mills, South Russell, and Bainbridge all of which have Chagrin Falls mailing addresses. But to me, Chagrin Falls means the village proper with its population, then and now, of about 3400 souls.

The heart of the village was the business district which lay along Main Street for about a quarter-mile. Main Street ran north and south and was bisected by the Chagrin River which ran east to west. At the north end of the business district, Main Street mounted abruptly up a very high and steep hill called Grove Hill. How high? About two long blocks. How steep? It was a challenging ascent on foot or by automobile. I one time went with a girl who lived up on that hill and there were, as I recall, fifty-two steps from the street up to her front door. Access to the north end of the business district was via Orange Street which ran east and west and crossed Main Street at the foot of Grove Hill. Going south and just south of Main Street bridge, Franklin Street angled to the right and ran south out of the business district, up the hill past our cemetery across the railroad tracks, and almost to the crossroads town of Solon. At the south end of the business district Washington Street ran east and west. Thus our downtown area was shaped like the letter Y. The triangular part in the center was a park called Triangle Park. It was tree-shaded, and held a horse trough, drinking fountain, rustic band stand, Civil War cannon, numerous wrought-iron benches, and a large granite monument with a bronze tablet listing the men from the village who served in World War I. I understand that there is a second stone monument now with a plaque listing those of us who served in World War II, and perhaps others. Up in Evergreen Cemetery is a tall sandstone shaft erected to the memory of "The Heroes Who Died in The Southern Rebellion of 1861." U.S. Route 422 (now "old 422") ran through the heart of town; entering via West Orange Street, right on Main Street and south the whole length, then left on East Washington Street and out of town, or vice versa. This was the main highway between Cleveland and cities to the west, and Youngstown and Pittsburgh et al to the east. East of the Main Street bridge and less than a hundred yards upstream was a concrete mill dam which visitors mistook for the falls. The falls, and it is quite a respectable falls, is just west of the Main Street bridge. From the bridge you look down on the top of the falls which is never unimpressive. For a proper view you had to go behind the buildings and descend a flight of steps going about halfway down the river back to a viewing platform, all built by the WPA. Strangers never found their way and natives went down only on special occasions like when the river was at flood stage because that river stank. The cause was chemical-laden effluent from the paper mill about a mile upstream at the eastern end of the village. The Paper mill, actually the Chase Bag Co., sat on the north bank of the river and manufactured paper and industrial paper bags. There was a dam adjacent to the mill which impounded the lower pond, known to us as the paper mill pond, and another dam about a mile upriver which created the upper pond, known as Whitesburg. Each covered maybe forty acres, and we kids took them over for swimming, fishing, camping, floating our homemade canoes and kayaks, and ice skating when they froze, and we never thought to ask for permission. On a warm summer afternoon you would find forty or fifty boys and girls of all ages happily splashing around. Invariably some wise guy would decide to show off by walking across the top of the dam, and fairly often he would slip and fall over the dam thereby injuring a leg or ankle or arm. When that happened the general opinion was that it was his own fault and I never heard any talk of law suits. By contrast, I stopped there once in the 1970's when I had been in Chagrin visiting Dad, to find the area enclosed in a chain link fence and before I could step out of my car a security guard hustled up to warn me off the property. Anyway, the paper mill used a lot of river water and dumped their waste water back into the river. I don't remember hearing any overt complaints, either, even though there was no aquatic life in the river or wildlife along the banks. Folks would wrinkle their noses, but a smelly river, like smoke from the mill stacks, meant that the mill was working, and that meant jobs and paychecks.

Our village was the main shopping center for the surrounding area. There were, as I remember, four automobile dealers, three or four service stations, three hardware stores, two furniture stores, two or three owner-operated groceries which were displaced, in my teen years, by chain groceries, Kroger, A & P, and Fisher Brothers where I clerked for a couple of summers. The owner-operated meat markets succumbed at the same time, but the three or four owner-operated drug stores survived the arrival of a large Standard Drug Co. store which moved into the ground floor of the Masonic Temple. Those locally-owned drug stores were all alike; narrow and dark, with an ice cream counter and wire-framed "ice cream" chairs and little round "ice cream" tables; a goodly display of cigars, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco, and another of magazines and newspapers. Way in the back were pharmaceuticals. In an old mill building hanging precariously on the river bank at the south end of the Main Street bridge was a popcorn shop, venerable back in my day and still there and still selling popcorn - a true landmark. We had a five-and-ten-cent store, a shoe store, a haberdashery, a bakery, and two restaurants. One was sort of blue collar, "Cuppa coffee, piece of pie" eatery; the other was Crane's Canary Cottage which Duncan Hines in one of his early Guides to Good Eating books called the finest restaurant in which he had eaten. Our Town Hall was on the west side of Main Street almost at the north end of the business district; a large building topped with a steeple, with offices on the first floor, a large meeting room on the second, and our police station and jail in the basement. Our fire station was on the east side of Main Street almost at the south end of the business district. Next to it, south, was Bright's Drug Store which doubled as the bus station, then Harris's hardware, then our Post Office then the Chagrin Falls Bank, an imposing two-story gray limestone building with sturdy ornate brass doors which occupied the northeast corner of Main and East Washington Streets. Going east on Washington Street, there was a service station, our movie theater, the Chevrolet agency, four houses, and then the entrance to our school grounds. The second of those houses was the residence, later both residence and office, of Dr. Paul Curtis MD, our doctor, a distant relative by marriage and for whom I was named; the fourth house belonged to Mr. Fred Leach, our insurance agent. We lived directly opposite the Chevrolet agency. There were two other MDs, Dr. Cameron and Dr. Steele; two dentists, Dr. Brown and Dr. Stem (our dentist); and several attorneys although as kids we never came in contact with them and weren't too sure what they did. On the school ground there were a two-story brick High School with maybe a dozen classrooms, a chemistry lab, and a woodworking shop in the basement; an older two-story brick elementary school; a small wooden building with two classrooms for the first grade; and a heating plant below the hill.

East of the schools, just across Philomethian Street was the Rowe & Giles Lumber Yard which sawed logs into lumber and also manufactured doors, windows, cabinets, and other millwork. They also had, over on Washington Street a yard stocked with bricks, tiles, and such like, and which held a plant for making concrete blocks. Together with the paper mill, this was about all the industry there was. Just east of the lumber company was the railroad yard. Yes, we had a railroad, sort of. The Wheeling & Lake Erie RR (called locally the Walk & Leave Early) sent us one train a day. Chagrin Falls was the end of that section of line and with no way to turn the engine around the train which chuffed in importantly had to back out all the way to wherever it came from. There was a feed mill next to the train yard, Standard Oil Co. bulk storage tanks, and tipples for coal and gravel, etc.

Way up at the top of the East Washington Street hill, about a mile from downtown, was the Fair Grounds. It had been the grounds for the Cuyahoga County Fair until the fair moved to Berea (before my time). The buildings had been taken down and the wood salvaged. Last to go were the horse barns, and our boy scout troop salvaged enough to build a large cabin back in the woods behind. The concrete grandstand, however, survived, and still survives. Originally built for viewing harness races at the fair, it was adapted for viewing high school football games and is still in use. Over the years, the village constructed other recreational facilities on the grounds; tennis courts, an outdoor swimming pool, and baseball and softball fields.

The retail stores and professional offices clustered in the business district. The Brewster & Church Co., where Dad worked and had since 1912, was located on the west side of Franklin Street just across from the tip of Triangle Park. It was billed as a department store and was the largest store in town, employing about ten people. There was a men's department which sold men's clothing from business suits to coveralls and accessories thereto; and men's and women's and children's shoes and boots. The ladies department offered mainly yard goods, patterns, sewing needs, and notions. In the back was the phonograph department with a variety of phonographs in handsome wooden cabinets, all hand wound, and wide selection of phonograph records, ten-inch diameter black wax discs. There were even booths for listening to records before hopefully, buying. On the second floor at the top of a wide wooden spilt staircase was the rug department.

On the east side of Main Street was Wolf's Saddle Shop. Now you might think it catered principally to the farm trade and it did have some harness business, but the main source of trade was the rich folks who lived "down the river" in Hunting Valley and Gates Mills. Their wealth was "old Cleveland money" made in steel and lake shipping and real estate. How rich were they? Well, they maintained their private strings of polo ponies, and several polo teams, and two or three polo fields in the bottom land along the river. They also maintained the Chagrin Valley Hunt with a pack of genuine English fox hounds. Twice a week they would don their pink hunting coats, mount their hunters, sound the English hunting horns and go off chasing foxes around Geauga County. One of their number, Mr. David S. Ingalls, had a private airport, a grass field with a hanger for his private aircraft. Mr. Ingalls was a Navy flying ace in World War I and one-time Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His chauffeur, Mr. Homer Eggleston, was an active member of our Rifle & Pistol Club, a soft-spoken amiable man and an excellent marksman. Wolf's Saddle Shop also served the thoroughbred racing community at four nearby tracks; Thistledown, Cranwood, North Randall, and Bainbridge before it turned into a dog racing track.

There were three churches, until the Disciple Church merged with the Church of Christ to form the Federated Church. The Methodist Church was on Franklin Street just south of Washington. Up on Summit Street atop Grove Hill was Windsor Hospital, a private psychiatric facility, but they interacted very little with the village people. The closest general hospital was in Bedford about ten miles away. That's where I had my tonsils out when I was about five. Just to round out the picture, we had a combination bowling alley, pool room, and bar called the Stop Over, located on South Main Street where their back property line abutted our west property line. Behind the building there were lighted horseshoe courts. After Prohibition was repealed, there was another bar on the north end of Main Street.

We had electricity, from the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. Why would I mention that? Because about a mile east in Geauga County the people did not have electricity until around 1933. Dad, my bother and I had been hunting on our Little Farm up on Chillicothe Road and had stopped in at Lowe's Greenhouse & Nursery next door to warm up and pass the time of day, when the Lowe girls excitedly dragged us into their house to see their brand new electric lights. No more kerosene lamps.

There was a telephone system that served the village and connected us to the outside world. We had our own water system, fed from a well field just east of town, and our own sewer system. Our sewage treatment plant was located in the southwest corner of town on the same site with our town dump. We did not have trash pickup, that you hauled to the dump yourself where it was burned, as much as possible, and the residue covered over with dirt. The effluent and runoff from these facilities went into the river. Both installations were tended by a Mr. George Simmons, a stern looking man with one blind eye who was usually sooty from his labors, and the sight of Mr. Simmons posed against the flaming, smoldering, smoking, reeking trash heaps was enough to send me back to Sunday School. Actually, Mr. Simmons was a very nice man and his two sons, Frank and Howard, were good friends. I spent more than a few summer evenings riding with Frank in the police car, just to keep him company, but that's another story.

We really didn't have much trash to haul away except for the ash pile out by the barn, and Dad hired someone to do that. Kitchen trash was either burned in the cookstove or dumped on the ash pile. Glass and razor blades were dropped into the cistern in the woodshed. Paper and cardboard was saved and sold to the "paper rags" man who came by periodically. He wore a long black coat and a black hat, whiskers, and a thick accent. He would come pushing his cart up the street calling out "paapa rax" and we would sell him our papers for a few pennies. I never knew how he and his pushcart got to town; I assume that he had a horse and wagon or a truck somewhere. We didn't sell him rags, however, those were saved and turned into quilts and rag rugs and such. Another itinerant was the junk man who bought all kinds of scrap metal, but not tin cans. He was another black coat, beard, and accent type, but he drove a horse and wagon. Still another traveling recycler, of a sort, was the scissor and umbrella man. He had a large pushcart or later a small truck which he would park at the curb while you took him your scissors and knives to be sharpened and your umbrellas to be repaired.

Our police department consisted of a chief, three officers, and one police car, but it was enough to keep one officer on duty at all times and that was sufficient. Maintenance of law and order was the accepted responsibility of the citizenry. The police officer was their appointed representative and they provided all the backup he needed. Thus it was that people whose shop or office window looked out on the front door of the bank kept a rifle or shotgun handy This was the era of bank robbers such as John Dillinger and Bonny and Clyde who specialized in robbing small town banks. Dad, because of his marksmanship, was often called on to put down some animal believed got to be a threat and that couldn't be trapped.

Our fire department was entirely volunteer. There were the official volunteers who elected one of their number chief (a mostly honorary position) and maintained our lone fire truck. All other able-bodied men and older boys were unofficial volunteers because fire was everyone's concern. There was little fire-fighting equipment in the surrounding townships, maybe just a trailer-mounted pump to draw water from a farm pond or creek. If a house or barn caught fire and "got going good" all that could be done was to try to salvage the contents and keep the fire from spreading to other structures. So all available help was needed and sometimes that wasn't enough. The news of a fire usually came into our telephone switchboard from where the telephone operator would switch on the fire siren mounted on the roof of the fire station and stand by to advise the fire's location. The garage was never locked nor was the fire truck, so the first to arrive opened the doors and drove the truck out. Others arriving in time climbed aboard and the rest proceeded by car. Everyone available went to the fire; I've even hitched a ride with the preacher. I remember one Sunday when I was maybe fifteen and our family had eaten dinner at a restaurant in Chesterland at the junction of Mayfield and Chillicothe roads. We had just finished when the word was passed that the Telling Bell Vernon Dairy, about two miles south, was on fire. Like everyone else we piled into our car and took off for the scene. This was one of the major dairies serving the whole Cleveland area; there were probably twenty cow barns with maybe thirty or forty cows in each, and it was well and truly afire. Walking around to see if we could be of help I met up with Tommy Cathan, a good shooting and hunting buddy. Tom and I walked around back and there found a Sheriff's deputy with a .30-.30 rifle whose intent was to put some badly burned cows out of their misery. Trouble was the deputy was shaking so badly he couldn't load the gun and had spilled a whole box of cartridges on the ground. Tom simply lifted the rifle out the man's hand. I picked up the cartridges, wiped them off, and fed them into the magazine while Tommy dispatched the poor cows. The dairy burned to the ground and was never rebuilt. Fire was a fearsome thing.

We didn't have fire or police radio communications. The telephone was the fastest and best channel. After our telephone switchboard closed down in the evening, police and fire calls were routed to the home of Uncle Howard and Aunt Gladys Foster. Uncle Howard (Dad's brother) was postmaster and Aunt Gladys was Village Clerk and had been for many years. For a fire call, they switched on the fire siren and stood by to report the location. For a police call, they switched on two lights mounted high on utility poles at either end of Main Street. The police officer on duty would then unlock the station and call them for the message.

This then was our milieu and as kids we roamed it far and wide. As best I can remember, there seemed to be just two rules; stay out of trouble, and come home when the paper mill whistle blew at 5:00 PM. I've run on and on and told you a lot of things that I'm sure you don't care about, but that's what happens when an old man gets to reminiscing. Even so, I haven't told you about our house and how we lived and managed to survive without air conditioning or television or even radio, and maybe I'll do that next. Our town was not unlike a hundred or more other older small towns but it was the prettiest and I thought you might like to know how it was back then.

Love,

Pater

COPYRIGHT

RETURN TO MAIN PAGE