|
|
Pg 22
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND 25
The father, however, was not long permitted to enjoy his new home, for in the
late fall of 1829 he passed away, leaving two young children to the care of
his widow. Two years before his death he had removed from his farm to
the village of Zoar.
That town was a center for a society of Friends, called Separatists, and after
the death of the father the two children were bound to the society until their
majority. They were subjected to very severe discipline, as this venerable religious
community exemplified their faith in the ancient adage of not spoiling
the child by sparing the rod and enforced the maxim with the utmost patriarchal
severity upon the unhappy and helpless children. At a very early age Stephen
Buhrer was put to work on the farm and in the factories and had to do other
labor for which his years and strength scarcely equipped him. When in his ninth
year he was given charge of the sheep in the vast pasture ranges of Zoar.
There he labored for three years, or to the age of twelve, when he was placed
in a cooper shop belonging to the society. He not only learned the trade of
coopering but at different times did almost every kind of work incident to the
company's varied industries, such as doing a man's work in the brewing and
slaughtering department and often supplemented the same by acting as hostler
at the Zoar tavern and driving horses on the Ohio canal. He received no remuneration
for all this service, which he performed for six weary years, nor
was he given the educational advantages that were his just due. The only instruction
that he received was in Sunday school and in evening schools which
he attended after his tenth year at the close of a hard day's work. Notwithstanding
his strenuous labor, failing health, lonliness, discouragement and mental
depression, the noble inheritance of the German blood and brain enabled him
at last to assert the rights of nature, and in 1842 he left the society and came to Cleveland.
Mr. Buhrer began work at the cooper's trade, but his health was so impaired
that he could hardly earn enough to pay his board. Thinking that he
might recuperate in other lines, he accepted a position as traveling salesman,
in 1846, his territory covering, at first, Ohio, and later, western Ohio, Indiana and
Michigan. As he thus got out into the world his broader interests brought him
many valuable experiences and he came to see that Zoar was not the center
of the universe nor its religious teachings all that there was of practical Christianity,
as he had been taught in his childhood days. The prevailing malarial
fevers of that early time, however, cut short his career as a traveling man and
he returned by rail as far as Detroit, where his funds became exhausted and
necessitated the sale of some of his wearing apparel that he might pay deck
passage on a steamboat bound for Cleveland, which city he had come to regard
as his home. For two months, thereafter, ill health utterly incapacitated
him for labor, and as he was without funds he was about to be sent to the
poorhouse when the only friend he had in the city came forward and spoke
words of encouragement and hope and gave substantial proof of his friendship,
guaranteeing the payment of his board bill until his death or recovery. Thus
cheered and heartened, he seemed to take new lease of life and hope and was
soon enabled to again work at his trade, which he did for a year, gaining thus
a good salary, for he was skillful and competent as a cooper. He worked in
a shipyard for a brief period in the winter of 1847, but soon returned to
coopering.
His health and success were such that Mr. Buhrer now felt justified in establishing
a home of his own, to which end in 1848 he wedded Miss Eva Maria
Schneider, and they became the parents of three children: John, deceased, who
wedded Miss Carrie Downer, the latter residing in Chicago; Mrs. Mary Jane
Hanna, of Seattle, Washington; and Mrs. Lois Catherine Barstow, now of
East Orange, New Jersey.
With the added incentive of having a home for which to provide, Mr.
Buhrer, ambitious to engage in business on his own account, formed a partnership
Pg 26
|
|
