Early Letter from Bowling Green, Ohio, 1838

Early Letter from Bowling Green, Ohio, 1838 by Alan Borer

Bowling Green in Wood County, Ohio, was named by the mailman. Joseph Gordon, a native of Kentucky, suggested the name of a town in his home state. Bowling Green Ohio in its very early days was made possible only because a few sand dunes stuck out high enough to provide some habitable land from the surrounding Great Black Swamp. The earliest settlers arrived in 1832. A post office was established in 1834 and that was the office that Gordon named. The village was not incorporated until 1855, when the draining of the swamp made more of the land usable.

I knew when I saw a letter from Bowling Green dated 1838 that the town was still a swampy, frontier settlement, famous only for mosquitoes and malaria at that time. The writer, one William Jennings, did not give the hamlet a good review:

I wish you would rite and inform me about what times you have in the woods. . . . because I cannot stand to live in this Country ere long for times is gitting hard . . . I done wrote in hurry the mail is ready to start. . . .

Jennings wrote his letter, filled with spelling errors, in a hurry. Joseph Gordon, the aforementioned mail carrier, was due to depart Bowling Green in a very short time for either Perrysburg or Bellefontaine, and Jennings wanted to finish his letter in time to send it with Gordon. Gordon was still on the job in 1838. Although Jennings did not leave enough information to further identify himself, the mailman carrying his letter had a minor claim to fame.

Also locally famous was Michael Myers, the recipient of the letter. Unlike William Jennings, Myers was content to stay in Wood County once he settled there. Born in Pennsylvania about 1801, Myers relocated to Columbiana County in northeast Ohio. He pushed westward again

. . . . in 1834, and purchased lands from the State, on the N.E. corner of Sec. 29 [Freedom Township, Wood County]. His wife, son, and four daughters accompanied him into the wilderness, and aided him in building a hewed log house, on the east side of the McCutchenville road, on the north or right bank of the Portage. . . . [p. 257] It was a larger cabin than was usually found in the wilderness, and this fact, taken together with the genial character of Myers, made it at once the mecca of immigrants. Within a decade, he thought it expedient to build a larger concern to entertain his guests, and in 1844 began the construction of the two-story frame building known to this day as “Myers Hotel” . . . . [p. 259]

In doing so, Michael Myers became the first resident settler of New Rochester. New Rochester, while unincorporated today, is still a locally remembered landmark for residents and by the neighboring, and once rival, village of Pemberville. His 1844 home, the “Myers Hotel,” stood many more years, passing into the hands of the Zepernick family. Innkeeper Myers offered rooms for transients as well as visitors staying awhile. It was located at the north end of the bridge across Portage River in New Rochester. The Myers Hotel was rumored to be a stop on the Underground Railroad as well.

Michel Myers wore many hats. In addition to his work as a farmer and a hotel keeper, he was postmaster of New Rochester for thirty years. Active in the Methodist church, Myers donated land for a Methodist church. He also welcomed itinerant preachers, and his home saw the first sermon preached in New Rochester in 1838. But while encouraging and welcoming the forces of settlement, Myers was also a true frontiersman. In the 1830s, the government paid a bounty to hunters who turned in wolf scalps, proving that the hunter had eliminated a supposedly rapacious wolf. Most of the hunters who collected wolf scalp bounties in 1835 were remnants of the Native American tribes of the area: Ke Korngosh, Missaukee, Aausk, Waseon, Pakee, Johnson Quson, and Osauge received $4.25 a scalp. Another, familiar, name was on the wolf scalp bounty list, that of Michael Myers.

Before the Civil War, letters sent to a postmaster were free of charge. Myers noted that his letter from William Jennings was “#1,” suggesting that Jennings wrote other letters, welcome or not. It is fortunate that even one letter survives, for it brings back a long-vanished Wood County of Indians, wolves, log cabins, and swampy roads. Complaints aside, William Jennings opened a window to a long gone time – even if he found life there uncomfortable.

[Quotes are from Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio (Chicago, 1897), pp. 256, 259.]