Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2022
                           All Rights Reserved
                        USGenNet Data Repository

        Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page:
                <http://www.us-data.org/fineprint.html>

Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott
for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/
===========================================================================
Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott
All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded.
===========================================================================
The Willoughby Independent
Friday, 9 April 1880
Vol. I - No. 52

         The Late JAMES COVERT

         A correspondent of the Herald gives the following
       concerning the early history and life of this old
       settler:
       
         MR. COVERT was born in the State of New Jersey
       in 1782, and was of French descent. In February,
       1807, he and his wife, in company with another fam-
       ily, set out with a span of horses and sleigh for
       the West. At Chautauqua, N.Y., their team gave out,
       and MR. COVERT and his wife were obliged to make
       the rest of the journey on foot, carrying their
       goods, which consisted of some clothing, a gun, an
       axe, a hoe, and $3 in money. They settled on the
       west side of the Chagrin river, and on the farm on
       which MR. COVERT died, he having lived on it seventy-
       three years. There were but six families here when
       he came, and he was here twelve years befor the
       township of Mayfield was organized. He was one of
       the first township officers, there being but twenty
       voters at the time, and it took thirteen of them to
       fill the offices. MR. COVERT had had two wives, and
       his family consisted of twenty-two children, fifteen
       of the first wife and seven by the second. Thirteen
       are living, and twelve were at his funeral. He ex-
       perienced all the hardships and privations of pio-
       neer life, and succeeded in accumulating a large
       property, and had long been the richest man in the
       township. He owned over 600 acres of land at his
       death. He was very temperate in all things, and a
       man of very strong contstituion. When he first came
       here he would go from his home in the morning to
       the mouth of the Chagrin river, a distance of eight
       miles, a do a day's work in harvest and return home
       at night day after day. Often when returning in the
       night the howling of the wolves would follow him for
       miles. He was remarkably smart for a man of his age,
       and he never had a doctor called to see him, in his
       recollections, until last January, when he accident-
       ly fell and received serious injuries that terminated
       in dropsy. He was very widely known and will be missed
       in the neighborhood in which he lived. He had been
       entirely deaf for a number of years previous to his
       death.
       
===============================================================================