SUMMIT COUNTY OHIO 
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Historical Collections of Ohio By Henry Howe LL.D.

				

	JOSHUA STOW was from Middlesex county, Connecticut, and was born in 1762. 
He was a proprietor of the township of Stow, surveyed in 1804, under his 
personal supervision, by Joseph Darrow, of Hudson. In our first edition it 
was stated Stow was a member of the first party of surveyors of the Western 
Reserve, who landed at Conneaut, July 4, 1796. *See V.I., p. 252.) Augustus 
Porter, Esq., the principal surveyor, in his history of the survey, in the 
Barr manuscripts, gives the following anecdote of Mr. Stow, who was the 
commissary of the party:
	A GENUINE SNAKE STORY. -In making the traverse of the lake shore, Mr. Stow 
acted as flag-man; he, of course, was always in advance of the party; 
rattlesnakes were plenty, and he coming first upon those in our track 
killed them. I had mentioned to him a circumstance that happened to me in 
1789. Being with two or three other persons three days in the wood without 
food, we had killed a rattlesnake, dressed and cooked it, and whether from 
the savory quality of the flesh or the particular state of our stomachs, I 
could not say which, had eaten it with a high relish. Mr. Stow was a 
healthy, active man, fond of wood-life, and determined to adopt all its 
practices, even to the eating of snakes; and during almost any day while on 
the lake shore, he killed and swung over his shoulders and around his body 
from two to six or eight large rattlesnakes, and at night a part were 
dressed, cooked and eaten by the party with a good relish, probably 
increased by the circumstance of their being fresh while all our other meat 
was salt.
	A REMINISCENCE. -Joshua Stow became a noted character in Connecticut to 
which he returned after his Ohio experiences. he was a strong old-style 
Democrat, and one of the first in the State to start to cry, "Hurrah for 
Jackson!" which he did so lustily that Old Hickory made him postmaster of 
the little town of Middletown.
	In the summer of 1835 I was a rod-man in the party who made the first 
survey for a railroad in Connecticut. The country people over whose farms 
we ran our lines were greatly excited at our advent. They left their work 
and came around us, and looked on with wondering eyes, calling us the 
"Ingun-neers." But few had been one hundred miles from home; scarce any had 
seen a railroad; had but a faint idea of what a railroad looked like. Our 
operations were a mystery, especially the taking of the levels. A dignified 
gentleman, the head of the party, Prof. Alex C. Twining, peering through a 
telescope, and calling out to the roadman, "Higher!" "lower!" "higher!" "a 
tenth higher!" "one hundredth higher!" "a thousandth lower!" "all right!" 
accompanied by a gyration of the arm, which meant screwing up tight the 
target; then came the reading of the rod, "Four-nine-seven-two." Remember 
these were old times, indeed, when letters cost from ten to twenty-five 
cents postage; before prepaid stamps on letters were known, and then when 
they did come into use the mucilage was so poor that sometimes, they were 
lost, which led to a profane wag of the time writing under one, "Paid, if 
the darned thing sticks!"
	One of our lines of exploration, was made three miles west of Middletown. 
One morning there approached us, as a looker-on, a queer-looking old man. 
He had come from his farm perhaps a mile away. He was short and stout; had 
a most determined expression of countenance; was attired in gray from head 
to foot; wore a gray roundabout jacket, and a shot-gun was hanging by the 
middle from his hand. This sort of Rip Van Winkle figure was bent over and 
dripping with water. Just before reaching us, while crossing a brook on a 
rail, the rail turned and he tumbled in. This was Joshua Stow, or, as 
called by the people at the time, "Josh Stow." He was then just 
seventy-three years of age; a man who had found rattlesnakes a savory diet, 
hurrahed for Gen. Jackson, and gave his name to one of the prettiest and 
most romantic spots of land in Summit county.
	It is a remarkable fact that the very township which Mr. Stow purchased 
and named after himself to show to posterity that such a man as Joshua Stow 
once lived should prove to have been about the most prolific in Ohio in its 
snake product. The County History thus states


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