Dayton's connection to
Jersey is old and deep

By Benjamin Kline
DAYTON DAILY NEWS

  Everywhere you go in the Miami Valley, there's a New Jersey connection.

It's not the New Jersey of John Travolta, Bruce Springsteen, or Frank Sinatra; or the Meadowlands stadium. It's not the fact that our NCR Corp. was courted, wed, then left to fend for itself by a New Jersey suitor, AT&T.

Dayton's New Jersey connection is older and deeper.
The region's pioneer names reach out from the rich land that attracted the first settlers to this part of the Old Northwest. There is Elizabeth Twp. in Miami County; Jersey Street, Perrine Street, Huffman Hill, Spinning Road, Conover Street and Schenck Avenue in Dayton; ; the New Jersey Presbyterian Church at Carlisle.
Surveyor Israel Ludlow, of Morristown, N.J., laid out our town of 280 inlots and 50 outlots on Nov. 4, 1795. He named it for fellow speculator Jonathan Dayton, of Elizabethtown, NJ.
Did Dayton himself visit Dayton? There's no proof.
He did visit Ohio to pursue a debtor at Franklinton (Columbus), to talk business in Cincinnati or press lawsuits in the federal court at Chillicothe.
The late Randall Metcalf of Marietta, in an unpublished biography, finds that on Oct. 23, 1807, Dayton planned to spend a few days at a tavern in Lebanon.
That much time, Metcalf guessed, ``would indicate a visit to view his holdings in nearby Dayton, Ohio.''
Town lots in Dayton were selling at $10 each in January 1796, according to a letter John Cleves Symmes sent to Dayton in New Jersey. In Cincinnati, the lots were going for $100.
Dayton's New Jersey Land Co. holdings (still more than 60,000 acres as of May 1800) included title to only one of the town's inlots, according to local historian Virginia Ronald. That was Lot 127 on West Third Street, west of Ludlow Street. A city parking garage stands there today.
Other New Jersey people did come to stay, matching their perseverance, skills and bloodlines with the settlers from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and other states. Some made a big difference.
In Dayton, an Intimate History , Charlotte Reeve Conover lists a slew of New Jersey people whose character and hard work built Dayton from a cluster ofshabby cabins to a prosperous city. John F. Edgar, in Pioneer Life in Dayton &Vicinity , also traces first families.
In this hardy group, the Van Cleve, Phillips and Crane names stand out.
John Van Cleve was born in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1749, married Catherine Benham in 1772, fought in the Revolution and moved west from Monmouth County to Washington, Pa., then to Losantiville on the same day - Jan. 3, 1790 - thatthe place was renamed Cincinnati.
Poor Van Cleve never made it to Dayton. He was stabbed and scalped by Indians June 1, 1791, while plowing a field. His widow, Catherine, married Samuel Thompson and was in the boat that carried the first settlers to the head of St. Clair Street April 1, 1796. She was the great-great-grandmother ofOrville and Wilbur Wright.
John Van Cleve's son, Benjamin, became Dayton's first schoolteacher, postmaster and county clerk. His bachelor grandson, John Whitten Van Cleve (1801-58), was an artist, teacher, song writer, geologist, violinist, horticulturist town surveyor and engineer, lawyer, mayor of Dayton, founder ofWoodland Cemetery. In today's parlance, he would be the gifted child, the consummate civic leader.
Eliza Smith Houston was a great-granddaughter of the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson, the founder and first president of Princeton University. She was married to Horatio Gates Phillips at Lawrenceville, N.J., April 10, 1806, and came west on horseback with her new husband. Her brother George S. Houston, professor of mathematics at Princeton, followed in 1810, according to Edgar's account.
In her day and ours, she would be called an exceptionally high-class lady.
Eliza was ``always delicate, but never spared herself when there was anything she could do for others, especially if they were sick and in need,'' Edgar writes. She was an active Presbyterian, Sunday school teacher, founder of the Female Bible and Charitable Association, leader in all charitable work.
Until her death in 1831, Eliza ``gave to the little community the grace andculture of her personality,'' Conover writes. Her husband and her son, Jonathan Dickinson Phillips, were business and civic leaders. Their social conscience made Dayton a town where people looked after each other.
Important Daytonians who call Eliza Phillips their ancestor include the Greene, Thruston, Lowe, McCook, Craighead, Houk and Talbott families.
Another outstanding immigrant was Joseph H. Crane (1772-1851), a native of Elizabeth, N.J., who arrived in Dayton as a 32-year-old lawyer in 1804, when the community had a population of 19 and Montgomery County - covering a much bigger area than today - 526.
Local historian David C. Greer calls Crane the ``father'' of the Dayton legal bench and bar. Crane served as state representative, judge, soldier in the War of 1812, member of Congress, county prosecutor, mentor of young lawyers who later became leaders, and author of the state Practice Act by which legal activities were governed before Ohio's Constitution of 1851 was adopted.
``He was thoroughly educated in the classics, had a prodigious memory and could quote long passages of history and poetry at will,'' Greer says of Crane. ``He was a large-framed man, and when he came to the wilderness of southwestern Ohio, he came as a leader.''
Judge Crane was on the committee that bought the first public library books. He organized the Montgomery County Bible Society in 1822, served on theboard of the first bank in 1813, was a trustee of the Dayton Academy in 1820.
In an age when lawyers are widely scorned for their avarice and wealth, Greer observes that Judge Crane was so generous, he never made much money.
``As a man and a lawyer,'' Greer writes, Crane ``remains the best role model Dayton has produced for its bench and bar.''
But Dayton didn't produce these fine people. New Jersey did.
It was an ``arduous journey'' out here, as pioneer accounts often put it. Ties to Jersey loved ones often were broken forever. But the passage of time can make things more nostalgic than nasty.
In 1882 a 90-year-old pioneer Daytonian from Flemington, N.J., Mary Slaght Cain, said ``nothing could please her better than to talk of Jersey and the old times.''
When she came out to Ohio with her husband James in 1820, Mrs. Cain recalled, the party included 29 persons, 21 of them children no older than age9. It took four weeks with Conestoga wagons, but arduous?
``A jollier set never crossed the mountains,'' the old woman said.
That was a good example of Jersey spirit, transplanted to Dayton.
DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Copyright (c) 1996, Dayton Newspapers Inc.
Published: Sunday, January 7, 1996