The times were unsettled on the frontier, and in 1812, fearing an invasion by the British and their Indian allies, the Wolcotts fled to Newburgh, on the Cuyahoga River. Shortly after they left, a large force of Indians emboldened by Tecumseh or his brother, The Prophet, came ashore and fought the first skirmish of the War of 1812 on Ohio soil on September 29, 1812. A monument about 1/2 mile west of the Keeper's House tells the story. Elizabeth Wolcott died at Newburgh during the war. What may be her grave has been recently discovered in the Erie Street Cemetery, in Cleveland, Ohio, just across the street from Jacobs Field!
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British at
Put-in-Bay in 1813 and soon thereafter it became safe for the settlers of
the Marblehead Peninsula to move back to their homes.
*Part of this brief history is taken from The Marblehead Lighthouse, Lake Erie's Eternal Flame by Betty Neidecker.
|
One of the first settlers on the Marblehead Peninsula was Benajah Wolcott.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut on April 7, 1762, he enlisted in the army
at the age of 14 and served until 1784, when he was 22 years old. Without
land or a trade or profession, he worked for others until 1806 when he was
hired to work on a survey team going out to map the western most one-half
million acres of the Connecticut
Western Reserve. This Sufferers Land or The Firelands, along Lake Erie, would be given to
Connecticut people who had been burned out by the British during the
Revolution.
Benajah returned to Connecticut when the survey was finished, determined
to settle on the Marblehead peninsula. In 1809 he bought 114 acres here,
and came out with his wife, three children, and two hired men. They built
a log cabin near the site of the present stone house.
Benajah Wolcott and his children moved back after 1814 and found their cabin to
be intact. Their financial situation was also much improved by Benajah's
Revolutionary War veteran pension which he was granted and received in
1819. He married Rachel Miller on March 10, 1822 and on June 24 he was
appointed keeper of the newly completed lighthouse on Marblehead. The
government appropriated funds for the building of the lighthouse itself
and for a home for the keeper on the same site. Benajah Wolcott, it would
seem, had two homes, one at the lighthouse and one which he had built by
William Kelly, the stonemason who built the lighthouse, at his farm three miles away for his new bride.
This house was built of
limestone from an early quarry a short distance from the back of the
house. The house is an excellent example of early domestic architecture in
the Firelands.
