"The Cozad-Bates House is one of the oldest remaining structures in Cleveland's University Circle. The original section, built circa 1853 is the only pre-Civil War residential structure left in the neighborhood. Built by Samuel and Jane Cozad's son, Andrew Cozad, the first section used locally made brick to form a simple two-story, one-room-deep vernacular English-I house. The family owned a large portion of the land which is now occupied by University Circle. Justus Cozad, Andrew's son, returning from the west where he worked as a railroad superintendent and civil engineer, built the later section on Mayfield Road for his larger family in 1872. It is a rare surviving example of Italianate - influenced residential architecture, including a hipped roof, curved bay windows, paired eave brackets, and prominent belvedere. The house listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and designated as a Cleveland Landmark in 2006."
2007, University Circle Inc., The Ohio Historical Society, 87-18
"Many Cleveland settlers were anti-slavery and abolitionists. After the opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal, Cleveland became a destination for fugitive slaves and the bondsmen who tracked them. Before the Civil War, slaves moved through Ohio's Underground Railroad network that extended two hundred and fifty miles from Ripley to Cleveland. Known by the secret code name "Hope," Cleveland became a destination for freedom seekers making their way north to Canada. Persons seeking freedom were often aided by abolitionists in University Circle, formerly a part of East Cleveland Township. To celebrate Cleveland's story of anti-slavery, the courageous people who sought freedom, and the station operators who helped them, this home was saved through the advocacy efforts of the Cleveland Restoration Society, Restore Cleveland Hope Inc, and University Circle Inc. Donated by University Hospitals in 2006, the home is reflective of Cleveland's anti-slavery era and legacy of abolition.
2007 University Circle Inc., The Ohio Historical Society, 87-18
Set back on a deep front lawn, the Cozad-Bates House, built in 1853, is one of the finest examples of Italianate architecture and the only pre-Civil War structure still standing in the University Circle area. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1974, it stands empty, abandoned, neglected for the last 15-20 years.
The Cozad and Ford families owned much of the land that is now known as University Circle. These families were prominent members in the anti-slavery effort when Cleveland was an active station on the Underground Railroad.
The City of Cleveland Landmarks Commission documented that the University Circle area was a major center of Abolitionist and Underground Railroad activity during the three decades preceding the Civil War.
The Cleveland Restoration Society and the City of Cleveland Landmarks Commission have been working to preserve the Cozad-Bates House for years. Restore Cleveland Hope's mission is to preserve and transform Cozad-Bates from a house to a teaching center celebrating Cleveland's Underground Railroad history.
Please take a look at the following links that tell the story of this Cleveland Landmark:
http://www.restoreclevelandhope.org/
http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/news/6208
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/06/cozadbates_house_honored_with.html
http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=11850
http://www.intheirpath.org/
2nd Floor:
Italianate, Belvedere, Paired Eave, Hipped Roof, Curved Bay Window
Joan Southgate's blog during her 500+ mile walk to honor the Underground Railroad
The blog archive for the Cozad Bates House for the National Trust for Historic Preservation
Introduction
The Cozad-Bates house in modern Little Italy, Cleveland, Ohio, has generated quite a bit of interest and intrigue over the last few years. On its own, its importance as a structure comes from its status as one of the last vestiges of Victorian, Italianate (and earlier) architecture still standing in the Mayfield-Euclid Rd. area. The history of this house is evocative; it was originally built in 1853 by one of the first families to settle in the present University Circle area, and possibly used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. This house is entwined with the early history of Cleveland itself, and since it has been saved from threat of deterioration or demolition, its story is beginning to emerge. In this report is focused on the documentary and material evidence to answer questions about the construction, use, and daily activities associated with the house.
Cozad-Bates House Background Information
Local oral tradition has suggested that the Cozad-Bates House was used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. To help understand the validity of this assertion, we wanted to trace the house history from its initial construction to the turn of the twentieth century, and use that information together with archaeological evidence from the basement excavations. In doing so, we looked at who lived in the house, and when, along with the social sentiments of the families involved, as well as the local community in general. This allowed me to place this house in a larger social context in conjunction with material remains that will help in interpreting its past.
History and Use of the House
Justus L. Cozad (1833-1910) was born to Andrew and Sally Cozad, at the family farm in the vicinity of what is now Euclid and Mayfield Rd (Orth 1910:748). Justus married Ortentia Whitman (1833-1890) in 1858. They had four children, Florence, Sarah, Olive, who in 1882 married Theodore Bates, and Jane. Over the course of his early life, Justus’ various jobs took him out west to Nebraska, and to Indianapolis, but always brought him back to Cleveland, where he permanently settled in 1871. Justus was probably the first full time occupant of the Cozad-Bates House.
As a young adult, Justus took a job with the railroad, working for several different companies (Orth 1910:751). From there, in 1855 at the age of 22 he took a job with the US Deputy Surveyor, and traveled out west to Nebraska. In 1858 he returned to Cleveland to marry Ortentia, and then returned with her to Nebraska where he built a home and lived until he left government employment in 1862. At that time Justus received an offer to return to the East and resume work for the railroad company, becoming the general superintended and chief engineer for the rail line that ran from Ohio to Indianapolis (Orth 1910:752). Around 1871 Justus left the job with the railroad, and settled back to Cleveland with his family. He opened a title abstracting company with partner Jay Odell (Orth 1910:753).
Justus’ father, Andrew, built what is now the back portion of the modern Cozad-Bates house in 1853 for Justus. According to Justus’ papers, his father built him a small brick home on a piece of his substantial land holdings, on the south side of State Street (now Mayfield). Andrew had acquired a brickyard not far away, and used the surplus of bricks to construct the home for his son (Cozad nd: 187). Justus did not live in the house immediately after it was built; he was just 20 years old, and was already in the employment of the railroad. Justus wrote in his journal that after the initial construction of the house “it was 10 years before I ever lived in it”, and that “Andrew Duty, father of Daniel, lived in it for many years” (Cozad n.d.: 36). Andrew Duty was a brick maker, and his son Daniel married Justus’ sister, Sarah. So, according to Justus, his sister’s father in law occupied the house for some time.[1]
This claim that Duty lived in the house during its first 10 years is hard to substantiate. Andrew Duty was a brick maker, but is not listed in any of the Cleveland City Directories from 1850-1865, nor is he listed in the 1860 or 1870 Cleveland census. If he did occupy the house, he either did so very sporadically to be missed by the city directory and census, or else he was not considered important enough to be listed in the directory. He is not even mentioned in the Cozad family census entry of 1860. This is surprising, since even though this was still Cozad property, census documents usually list everyone, related or not, living on the property of the head of house. Therefore, it cannot exactly state when or for how long the Cozad house was occupied by Duty. We will return to the evidence of early occupation of the house in the archaeology section below.
When Justus gave up his post in Nebraska in 1865, he briefly moved his family back to Cleveland, and lived in the brick house for about a year. He then took a job with a railroad line, and quickly moved his family to Indianapolis for that job. During 1870, Justus wrote that during 18070 he came to Cleveland for a visit, and at that time he visited the house and cleared some vines and vegetation away from the structure (Cozad nd.:187). This suggests that the house may have been standing vacant for some time.
Justus and his family moved back into the brick house in 1871, about the time that he opened the title company. At that time Andrew Cozad gave Justus some of his original land grants in Cleveland, including the lot with the brick house. Justus then immediately built an extension on to the house that we now see as the current middle section of the standing house (Cozad nd:195-198). Research conducted by the Cleveland Restoration Society indicates that the addition may have taken place over two separate building episodes, in the mid 1860s, and then in 1872 (Adams 2007).
In 1882, Justus backed a loan to his brother, Marcus, that his brother subsequently defaulted on. Justus nearly lost everything, and had to sell off much of his then substantial land holdings to raise the $10,000 needed to repay the debt. In doing so, he sold the property and house that he lived in. His daughter writes “He [Justus] sold the brick house we loved and 16 acres of land retaining a strip of three acres between Mayfield and Cornell, and built a frame house on the corner of Mayfield and Knox [modern E. 115th Street] in 1883” (Cozad nd.). Justus and his family lived in the frame house across the street, and in 1893 he turned his home into a boarding house run by him and his daughter Florence after his wife Ortentia died. An undated newspaper clipping in Justus’ papers cites that “Justus built the Theodore Bates Home at E. 115th street and Mayfield, on the other corner is the boarding house” that the Cozad’s ran. The boarding house that stood on the property is identified on a 1950’s map by Earl Mead meant to show Doan’s Corners as he remembered it from the 1890’s, and is further identified as a “hotel” on a 1912 Sanborn Map. Unfortunately, this house and the accompanying boarding house and out structures are no longer standing.
At this point it is unclear just when the front Italianate portion of the Cozad-Bates house was built, or by whom. By some time in the late 1880s Theodore Bates was living there with his wife, Justus’ middle daughter Olive. Justus Cozad and his family only really lived at the residence for about 10 years, from roughly 1871-1882.
The occupation of the Cozad-Bates house from 1853 to 1900 can be summed up as follows (taken from Cozad nd; Adams 2007):
- 1853-1865: Initial construction takes place in 1853, house maybe occupied occasionally by Andrew Duty.
- 1865-1871[2]: House occupied by Justus’s wife and children for one year in 1865, then left vacant.
- 1871-1881: Justus Cozad lives in the house, with his family. One or two additions are made to the structure.
- 1882-1890: Unknown occupants, presumably the front portion of the house added.
- 1890-1919: Theodore bates and his wife Olive Cozad Bates (Justus’ daughter) buy the house and live there.
- 1919-1960’s: House becomes apartment buildings and suites, owned by the Bates family.
Sentiment, Slavery, and The University Circle Area
One of the major questions to be addressed is how the Cozad house was used early on during Justus’ absence, shortly after the original section of the house was built. This is a critical time period in Cleveland, as well as the rest of the country, in regard to the status of free and enslaved peoples from Africa. It has been well documented that the Underground Railroad was active in the state of Ohio, and that Cleveland was an important stop for those traveling its course. Many Clevelanders were very opposed to slavery, and this area was seen as a local hot spot of the anti-slavery and abolitionist movements (Siebert 1898).
It is clear from documentary evidence that the Ford family who lived near-by in what is now the University Circle area helped to house escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad. The Cozad’s have less clear ties to the UGR, and it is difficult to say what part they played in the movement. They were anti-slavery, as is seen through their spiritual and religious activities. Sally Cozad, Justus’ aunt, established a Sunday school class in their small home on Euclid in 1822, and eventually it became part of the Presbyterian Church founded in part by the Cozad and Ford families on Euclid Road in 1843 (Post 1930: 135). However, in 1853[3] the congregation collectively decided to split with the Presbyterian Church due to “differences with the very conservative Presbytery in regard to the then vital question of slave holding” (Post 1930:136). In the Euclid Avenue Congregational Church Records from 1853, we see the direct decision to change church affiliations as noted in the Trustee Records: “[T]he church decided together to adopt a model of government wholly conformed to the congregational system [that would] decidedly promote the interests of religion in this church and congregation” (Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland [WRHS]: Euclid Avenue Congregational Church Records, 1822-1970, MS# 3577, Trustee Records 1847-1877:26-27). The central issue to the change in church affiliation had to do specifically with slavery, as in evidenced in further church documents.
On February 14, 1852, the congregation called a meeting to discuss the matter and to “ascertain the minds of the church members on the subject of a change of our form of church government and also the relation we sustain to the sin of slavery through our connexions [sic] within the… General Assembly [of the Presbyterian Church]” (WRHS: Euclid Avenue Congregational Church Records, 1822-1970, MS#3577, Church Records p. 50).
The church leaders asked that every single person in the congregation give their opinion on this matter. One week later, the congregation passed 5 resolutions outlining their anti-slavery beliefs and their dissatisfaction with the Presbyterian Church for not taking a stronger stance against slavery, and the steps they would take to change the church affiliation to more closely match their beliefs. When put to a vote to the entire congregation, it was decided by a great majority to change church government[4]. They write in their account of this “we as a church feel a solemn duty before God…to separate ourselves from a voluntary connexion [sic] with acknowledged and admitted sin” (p. 51). They saw slavery as a sin, and wanted to distance themselves from its practice since the Presbyterian Church was not willing to do so (Miller 1997:5).
The actions of the congregation as a whole speak of their strong beliefs against slavery. They took a major step in righting a wrong they felt was being committed by staying with the Presbyterian Church government and what it stood for. However, it is very interesting to see what the congregation then went on to write about the change in government after the vote was passed. In the church records, it states:
We do not intend to exalt the subject of slavery into undue importance – our opinion is that in all cases whether as a case of discipline or a question…to the fellowship of the church, or as a topic for the pulpit it should be treated precisely like any other sin equally great. (WRHS: Euclid Avenue Congregational Church Records, 1822-1970, MS#3577, Church Records p. 50, original underline)
Although the church itself had taken a fairly moderate stand against slavery, there is limited evidence that some members may have acted on their own to take a more proactive position in the anti-slavery movement, specifically through participation in the Underground Railroad. In 1925 Horatio Ford, one of the decedents of Cyrus Ford (one of the original organizers of the Presbyterian Church) wrote the following about his family (Ford 1925:16):
The citizens of East Cleveland, hesitated not to act as they believed and preached….Horatio Ford’s house, like that of his father Cyrus Ford, that of Asa Cady, and as that of his wife’s grandfather Samuel Cozad had been, was such a station [in the UGR], and many a night trip was made by his market wagon to the dock at Cleveland with something more precious than the apparent hay or cornstalks in its box. [bold text added]
So according to the remembrances of the Ford descendants, Justus’ grandfather was an active participant on the Underground Railroad, allowing his house and buildings to be used as stops for slaves making their way to Canada through Cleveland. While all of this evidence certainly does suggest that members o the Cozad family in general was anti-slavery and that at least one member of the family was an abolitionist, we cannot see so clearly is what other members of the family did about it.
Justus himself writes in his diary that when he was young he often worked and ate side by side in the fields with runaway slaves (Cozad nd:5). At first this statement seems to imply that he took an abolitionist view of slavery, but this may not be an accurate interpretation of his words. The context in which he writes this should be considered; he was writing in his memoir about working the family land in Cleveland. At first he says his family was able to hire good American workmen, and then often European immigrants. When it got harder to find good Anglo workers, the family turned to hiring runway slaves. More than anything, this passage shows Justus’ ambivalence toward their presence. He would eat and work with them, but he was not doing anything more for them to help them in their struggle. Again, this is a very similar stance to the one found in the church to which he and his family belonged. There is nothing in writing to suggest that he or his immediate family ever took a more direct stand in the anti-slavery movement by assisting with the transportation or concealment of fugitive and runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. As I will demonstrate next, the archaeological evidence to date is also of limited help in understanding if this house was ever used as an Underground Railroad stop in the 1850’s and 60’s.
[1] Duty genealogy comes from www/heritagepersuit.com/Cuyahoga/cleveland301.htm
[2] The date that Justus moved back into the brick house is listed in several places as either 1871 or 1872.
[3] Post (1930) puts this date as 1862, this date is incorrect based on the Church’s own documents.
[4] Church records do note that there were a few dissenters who wanted their names recorded in the record book as such.
