Noah Long

When Noah Long was seven and a half years old, his mother died leaving her three little children. As years passed, Noah often wished he could own a farm with a railroad running through it. The grandfather bequeathed a ninety-three and one-third acres of well-wooded farm to each of the orphans. As Noah's twenty-first birthday drew near, he selected $800 worth of standing timber to be sold off his farm. He then invested this money in eighty acres of land about one mile northeast of Holgate. After a few years a railroad was built, coming from Toledo through Noah's farm, Holgate, on west toward St. Louis; for years it was known as the Clover Leaf. Later Noah bought an adjoining eighty acres.

Noah and Eva Long were married June 19, 1889, and set up housekeeping on his land near Holgate about a half mile south of the intersection of the railroad, County Road H, and Madera Road, in a log house where they lived for six years and where their daughters Neva and Enid were born. They then built their new frame house north at the railroad where the children grew up. After attending country school for one or two years, they walked up the railroad to Holgate School for ten years. We often walked the rails for fun.

The Madera Road ran past both of the Long houses. Their mother said, that it was a corduroy road, which was made by laying logs close side by side and covered with dirt. Sometimes as they drove along it with horse and buggy, the narrow buggy wheels would get caught between the logs. This whole region you must remember had once been part of the Black Swamp and in the 1880's was not all drained out.

The first thing a land owner did was to cut down the trees and clear the underbrush out, burn all of them, and then get a plow and team, or one horse, and raised the second horse; a few hand tools such as scythe, hoe, rake, were necessary, as was a cow and sheep, a wagon for transportation and hauling corn. They couldn't raise wheat for a number of years, as the ground was too loose, but it was fine for corn and gardens. Every farmer had an orchard of apple trees.

As soon as the land was cleared, the owner began putting in tile ditches, all done by hand. These conditions prevailed on our farm. Some land was a little heavier.

In the early 1800's ancestors of Neva Clark's mother (Mrs. Noah Long) and others living in eastern Pennsylvania were attacked by Indians in a massacre and some of them were killed, others taken captive and forced to walk to Ft. Niagara, near the falls in western New York State and held captive several years. The girl and father were kept longer because the chief wanted her to marry his son. Finally the U.S. Government forced their release. On the six hundred or more mile trek home, the father died.

Noah and Eva Long built their new homestead two miles northeast of Holgate on the southeast side of the intersection of County Road H, Madera Road, and the Cloverleaf Railroad, now the Norfolk and Western. For some years before that a Mr. Hickox had a sawmill three or four miles east of that and transported the logs to the railroad and stored them on what later became our houseyard. Trains would stop there and the logs would be loaded on cars and hauled to some city.

Mr. Hickox maintained a "Tramway" which was a miniature railway, from his mill to the railroad along the north side of the road. Wood ties had been layed on the ground, timbers were spiked to the timbers. Some sort of small cars loaded with logs ran on these tracks. When we first moved down there, traces of them still showed.

Submitted by Mrs. Alva Clark