While English teenagers went off on The Grand Tour of European antiquities, many American lads were arming themselves with an "instrument of death" and heading west to survey family lands. On May 29, 1811, nineteen year old Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, left the comforts of Elmwood. ...Continue

On March 30, 1817, Mary Hosmer wrote from Seville, OH, to her parents in Connecticut, "Beloved Parents: ...we were five weeks getting to Wadsworth Center. We had a very good road as far as Albany. From there to Canandaigua was very bad. ...Continue

In 1918, as young lads along the river in Vermilion, Ohio, we scooted around Tom Ball's shanty, his boats and the old lime kiln. It was our heaven beside the river, climbing on piles of lumber in the shade of the apple tree. Those were adventurous years. The artifacts around us were things. ...Continue

In a time when roads were little more than dirt paths cut through the wilderness, easily turned into quagmires by melting snow or a sudden shower, these waterways represented the only reasonable means of transportation. ...Continue

Trails made by wild animals in search of food or drink existed upon the earth long before the appearance of man, changing very slowly as local conditions were altered by erosion, climatic shifts or other causes. People began using these trails because they led to salt licks and to other. ...Continue