A Ravenna pioneer is spending her last years in Alliance. Since October, 1906, Mrs. Elizabeth N. Ward has been living with her sister, Mrs. H. G. Carrington. Mrs. Ward, who is the widow of Nelson Ward, dead six years, was born in Ravenna October 1, 1813, and lived in the town of her nativity for a continuous period of eighty-eight years. She is in remarkable health for one of her years and is able to entertain her friends in conversation as briskly and timely as though her age were less by half.
The parents of Mrs. Ward, Edmund and Lura Babcock, came from Connecticut and their journey to the Ohio wilderness was one of unusual hardship. They took an open boat at Buffalo, steamers not yet having appeared on the lakes, and for twelve days skirted the shore headed for Cleveland. When they tried to land their boat struck ground a long way out and Mr. Babcock swam ashore, bearing his wife and daughter through the water. Commodore Perry, who defeated the British on Lake Erie, was the cousin to Edmund Babcock.
On arriving at Ravenna, Edmund Babcock lived with his brother, Almon Babcock, who was landlord of a tavern that stood on the site now occupied by Beatty's clothing store. Mrs. Ward was born in the house that stood on the site later occupied by the Waterman drug store. The building was about as open as a sieve and it was no infrequent thing for its rooms to about evenly divide the reception of the elements with the outside. Rain, snow and wind were familiar companions.
Mrs. Ward's recollections of Ravenna date from when it was a very ordinary country village, no larger than Atwater now is. It was solid woods to the old Robinson house, now the home of Judge Rockwell. To the south the forest came to what is now Court House Park. Deer, bears, wolves and all kinds of lesser wild game held dominion in the wilds about. Mrs. Ward says that many a night she has lain in bed huddling in terror at the howling of the wolves that came out in droves. Many a time she and her sisters were commissioned by their father to drive the sheep into a little old log barn, where they were barricaded for the night, and where the baffled pack would howl like furies in their midnight assaults.
Mrs. Ward describes the flight of wild pigeons as one of the wilderness wonders. Millions of these birds would appear in flocks so dense and so large as to entirely cover the sky and shut out the light of the sun as effectually as night. Chickens would go to roost and the housewives would light their tallow dips. Armed with poles and clubs, people would visit the vast colony and knock the birds off the trees by the hundreds. Mrs. Ward says that her father often brought a bushel basket full of dead pigeons home after such an expedition. No one who saw their seeming infinity of numbers would have believed that some of the people then living would see the day when they had entirely disappeared from this section.
She remembers when the use of tow or punk and flint and steel was the only known method of starting a fire and says that she has often been sent to the neighbors to borrow coals when they were unable to originate their own hearth flames.
Mrs. Ward remembers Campbellsport in its palmy days, a threatening rival of Ravenna. And she has clear memories of what she says was called "Puckerhuddle" and sometimes "Skunk's Hollow" in those days — the location where ex-Mayor H. W. Riddle established his summer home. "I have attended many a funeral and followed the remains to the cemetery formerly located at this place," she said, referring to Portage County's "Buried Village," remains of which were unearthed in excavation for an artificial lake on the Riddle site.
"The time was within my recollection when Ravenna had neither church nor schoolhouse," she said. "I remember when children in Ravenna came in numbers to attend a school in what is now the Bean district. The first Sunday school I ever attended was in my father's woods near the present home of Judge Rockwell. The first church was on the green in front of the present jail structure."
Mrs. Ward tells of the discovery and naming of "Mother Ward's Pond," afterward rechristened "Crystal Lake": "My husband's grandmother had a cow that strayed into the forest. The cow had a bell attached to her and the old lady, hearing its tinkle, followed the sound into the depths of the forest and was astonished on finding the animal near a small lake, the existence of which had been unknown to her and I think to anyone else."
Indians were not infrequent visitors at Mrs. Ward's childhood home. One day a party of eight of them nearly frightened her out of her senses by calling at the door. They were generally peaceful and always hungry — but straggling bands left from the tribes that once owned the lands from which civilization had banished them.
Mrs. Ward says she sees, as in a vision, the succession of oxcart, stage coach, canal boat, steam and electric railroad, road carriages, coaches and other vehicles, bicycle and automobile. Nearly everything in fact known to modern economy and convenience has come onto the stage of life within the period of her 88 years. "People didn't have time to get sick in those days and neither did they have time to study up things artificial or superficial," she said. "Everything as a rule was solid and genuine."