Another Revolutionary Patriot Gone
Died -- At the residence of his son, in Flatrock township, Henry county, Ohio, on the morning of the 22d inst., quietly fell asleep, ELIJAH GUNN, in the 96th year of his age.
He was native of Massachusetts, born near Boston on the 25th of December, 1759, and was personally familiar with many of the leading events which led to our Revolutionary War, and was much pleased to recount them. He well remembered attending the anniversary of the massacre of Boston citizens by British soldiers on the 5th of March, 1770, and heard Dr. Joseph Warren deliver anniversary oration at old South Church; when reciting some of the most thrilling passages of the eloquent Warren's speech, his breast would heave with emotion, and his eye though dimmed by more than four score and ten years, would lighten up with the old spirit of the Revolution, and glow with alternate patriotism and detestation of British oppression and wrong.
Mr. GUNN was one of the first settlers of the Western Reserve, and landed at the mouth of the Conneaut creek, in Ashtabula county, with the first surveying party of the Western Reserve, (under their agent Moses Cleaveland.) on the 4th of July 1796. The party numbered fifty-two persons, of whom two only were women -- Mrs. Stiles and Mrs. GUNN and child.
Early in the spring of 1797, Mr. GUNN removed to the present site of Cleveland. He told the writer of this obituary that he was at the first ball held in Cleveland, at the log cabin of Major Carter, on the 4th of July, 1801. Mr. GUNN continued to reside at Cleveland until after the close of the war of 1812, when he removed to Waterville, thence to Girty's point, on the Maumee, where he died. He was a man of the strictest probity, of laborious and industrious habits, of superior mind, well stored with the past history of our country and familiar with its progress and improvement until within the last two years, since which his sight and hearing have been so impaired that it was very difficult to converse with him. Previous to that time he frequently walked to Florida (three miles) and back alone, and never missed an election, but acted upon the maxim "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." It may be literally said of him, he has seen nations rise and fall -- one generation after another passing away, and his own country, from a few dependent colonies containing three millions of inhabitants, born into the family of Independent Nations, numbering twenty-five millions of souls. His life has been a long and eventful one, and he gave it up in a blessed immortality beyond the grave, loved and respected by all who knew him.