Ohio was a _terra incognita_, and Munchausen himself would have had a
chance of being believed had he located his adventures in what was then
the Far West. Stephen Remington quit barn-building, shut up his shop,
packed up his tools and started in the Fall of 1807 for the new Eden, on
Lake Erie. In the succeeding Spring, Johnson followed in his footsteps as
far as East Bloomfield, near Canandaigua, where he worked during that
Summer, building a meeting-house.

In the Fall of 1808, he shouldered his pack and set out on foot for the
West. At Buffalo he found work and wintered there until February, when his
uncle came along, bound also for the land of promise. There was room in
the sleigh for Levi, and he was not loth to avail himself of the
opportunity of making his journey quicker and easier than on foot. On the
10th of March, 1809, the sleigh and its load entered Cleveland.

By that time it had come to be hard sledding, so the sleigh was abandoned
and the two travelers, determining to put farther west, mounted the horses
and continued their journey to Huron county. Here they fell in with Judge
Wright and Ruggles, who were surveying the Fire Lands. They wanted a
saw-mill, and Johnson's uncle contracted to build one at the town of
Jessup, now known as Wakeman. Levi turned back to Cleveland, and was
fortunate in finding a home in the family of Judge Walworth. The Judge
wanted an office built, and Johnson undertook to make it. Hitherto, all
the houses were of logs; but the Judge, having a carpenter boarding in his
family, aspired to something more pretentions. The building was to be
frame. At that time Euclid was a flourishing settlement, and rejoiced in
that important feature--a saw-mill. The lumber was brought from Euclid,
the frame set up on Superior street, about where the American House now
stands, and every day the gossips of the little settlement gathered to
watch and discuss the progress of the first frame building in Cleveland.