replied that being a young sailor he did not understand how to heave-to.
The officer told him to bring the mail ashore, but was met with a refusal,
it being contrary to instructions. Johnson started back to his craft and
was followed by a party of men from the fort, who manned a boat and gave
chase. Johnson, on boarding his vessel, spread sail, and being favored
with a good breeze, drew away from his pursuers and reached Detroit, where
he placed the mail in the post-office.

During the early part of the war, whilst Johnson was building his vessel
and in other ways kept busy, he was chosen coroner of Cuyahoga, being the
first to hold that office in the county. The sparseness of the population
rendered his duties light, the only inquest during his term of office
being over the body of an old man frozen to death in Euclid.

Samuel Baldwin was the first sheriff of the county, and Johnson was his
first deputy. His first experience in office was noticeable. Major
Jessup, in command of the troops, had brought to Cleveland from
Pittsburgh a Mr. Robins, who built from thirty to forty flat bottomed
boats, or batteaux, to be used in the transportation of the troops. The
Major ran short of funds and left a balance unpaid in the cost of
construction. Robins brought suit, and the Major, thinking the deputy
sheriff probably had some unpleasant business for him, studiously avoided
an interview with Johnson, and whenever they met by chance, pulled out
his pistols and warned Johnson to keep his distance. It so happened,
however, that no legal documents had been put in his hands for execution,
so that the Major was alarmed without cause.

But the groundless scare of the impecunious Major was a trifling affair
compared with the grand scare that overtook the whole people along the
lake in the autumn of 1812, at the time of Hull's surrender One day a