Reserve, and they often turned homesick eyes, talked lovingly and
lingeringly of "down country," as they all called loved and cherished
New England. Most of the first settlers were poor, but hardy and
enterprising. The two last qualities were absolutely necessary to take
them through the long, wearisome journey to Ohio, the then far West.
They took up lands, built cabins, and forced a subsistence from the
newly-cleared, stumpy virgin soil. This homogeneous people constituted
a practical and thorough democracy. Their social relations were based
on personal equality, varied only by the accident of superior talents,
address or enterprise, and as yet but little modified by wealth or its
adventitious circumstances.

Among the emigrants scattered here and there was occasionally found a
branch of a "down country" family of some pretensions, dating back to
services in the Revolution, to old wealth, or official position.
Among these were one or two families at Painesville, near the lake, at
Parkman, several at Warren, and more at Cleveland, who had made each
other's acquaintance, and who, as the country improved and the
means of communication were perfected, formed and kept up a sort of
association over the heads, and hardly within the observation, of the
people generally. Of these, as we may say, by right of his wife,
was Judge Markham. He was a hardy, intelligent, and, for his day, a
cultivated man, who came early into the woods as an agent for many
large stockholders of the old Connecticut Land Company, and a liberal
percentage of the sales placed in his hands the nucleus of a large
fortune. Sagacity in investments and improvements, with thorough
business capacity, had already made him one of the wealthiest men on
the Reserve; while a handsome person, and frank, pleasant address,
rendered him very popular. He had been for several years an associate
judge of the court of common pleas for Geauga county, and had an