http://trees.ancestry.com/objects/b/...6b1f6485-3.jpg   Excerpt from The Pioneer Families of Cleveland, 1796-1840, Volume 1     .commentAuthor { color: #777; font-style:italic; margin: 5px 0; font-size: 8px; }  June 15, 1809 was an eventful day for the Hickok family of old Waterbury, Connecticut, for Abram and Eri, son and nephew of Captain Abraham and Jemima Foote Hickok, started early that morning with their families for Ohio.    Everything in the way of livestock and household furniture that could not be taken on the long journey was sold or given away. Each family had a wagon packed, and filled to over-flowing with bedding, wearing-apparel, cooking-utensils, dishes, and enough provisions to last through the first few weeks of travel, and the wagon was drawn by a yoke of oxen.  Abram and his wife Tamar Tuttle were both middle-aged when they abandoned their New England home, and started on this distant venture. They had five daughters, Ruth, Oriana, Lucy, Lucinda, and Dorcas. Ruth, the oldest, was 24 years old, and the youngest girl was about 15.  The father walked all the way to Cleveland, while the mother and daughters took turns, two at a time, in riding precariously on the wagon. It was well into August before their destination was reached, and, doubtless, the road between Buffalo and Cleveland seemed the longest part of the journey.  Abram Hickok was a blacksmith, and upon his arrival found awaiting him all the work he could do, as Nathaniel Doan, the first blacksmith, had been driven out of the hamlet by malaria, and was then living on the corner of Euclid Avenue and Fairmount Street.  Eri Hickok was a farmer, and when the party reached Cleveland, he was far from satisfied with the looks of its sandy soil, and decided to continue for a few days longer, and search for a farm better suited to his purposes.  This he found ten miles away in Middleburg Township in Berea County. The families were thus separated for the first time, but the cousins interchanged visits frequently, and two of Abram's daughters spent their last days with their Middleburg relatives and were buried there.  The first shop and dwelling of Abram Hickok was near the corner of Superior and Bank Streets, the present site of the Rockefeller Building. Either it was moved across the street near Seneca Street, or he built there a few years later, and before his death the smithy stood on Euclid Avenue, and his residence directly back of it, Number 27 Prospect Street. A narrow lane connecting the two streets at this point bore his name until about 1900.  Abram Hickok was a character, and his quaint sayings and unconventional doings furnished amusement for Cleveland as a hamlet, a village, and a city. He was familiarly known as Uncle Abram.  The sign over his smithy read:   UNCLE ABRAM WORKS HERE While celebrating the day, one Independence Day, he met with a serious accident, which laid him up for many weeks. Upon his recovery he changed the sign to read: UNCLE ABRAM STILL WORKS HERE He was a cousin of the Honorable John A. Foote, the noted Cleveland lawyer, his mother and the latter's grandfather being sister and brother. Abram Hickok was a member of Trinity Church and the church's sexton from its organization until his death. In that office he seemed The Head and Front of Episcopacy.  There was a time when the Stone Church and Trinity, both homeless, used the only schoolhouse together. The former had services morning and afternoon; Trinity in the evening.  One Christmas, falling on a Sunday, Uncle Abram planned to decorate the edifice with evergreens, candles, etc. for the evening service. It could be done only in the short interval that succeeded the close of the secong meeting of the Presbyterians. It is said that in his eagerness to begin the work, he begged Parson Bradstreet not to preach one of his damned, long-winded sermons this time.  Abram Hickok was tall, thin, and, within the memory of all, wore large bowed spectacles over a rather sharp-pointed nose. His portrait is preserved in the Western Reserve Historical Building. He was the village sexton, and laid away in the first cemetary nearly all who were interred there.  He was 80 years old at the time of his own death, having lived in Cleveland 36 years, and his grave is in the Erie Street Cemetary, near the front entrance.  Of Tamar Tuttle, his wife, naught can be learned save that she was a good woman, and the mother of his five daughters. As these daughters were exceptionally fine women, and universally respected, it will be inferred that not all of their good traits were inherited from their father.  Tamar Tuttle lived but six years after her arrival in Cleveland. A year after her death, in 1816, Uncle Abram married Phebe Stone, widow of Elisha Dibble. She died in 1839, aged 70 years, and was buried in Erie Street Cemetary by the side of her first husband. Abram Hickok then went to live with his daughter, Lucinda Hickok Caldwell, and died six years later.  Oriana Hickok, or Aunt Ora as she was best known, had two sons by her first marriage, Harvey and Abram Scott.  Lucinda Hickok was twice a widow while yet a young woman. She had a son, Samuel Cummings, who died in his teens, and by her second husband, Asel Caldwell, a lovely daughter and two sons. She kept a private school for many years on Superior Street, and helped much in forming the characters of the young people in those early years. She was remembered by gray-haired women of a past generation as one whom everyone loved and admired. She was a consistent Christian, and a sweet singer, who used her gift in the services of her church, or for the pleasure of friends and social events. Her daughter, Mary Caldwell, was very like her mother. She married John Bailey, brother of Robert Bailey, and removed to Sandusky, Ohio, where she died leaving two young sons and a daughter, Mary Bailey Henderson, now [1896] residing with her relative, Mrs. W. A. Price, in Cleveland.