David FISK
Biography

David Fiske was born on the top of one of the beautiful hills of Shelburne, Franklin Co., Mass. He had a good common school education, and married Laura Severance, who was born in the same town. Previous to his marriage he had formed a partnership with two other young men for building and running a saw mill, a grist mill and a cloth factory at the falls of the Deerfield river, then called Salmon Falls, from the abundance of that fish caught there. These falls made a fine water power and the banks on either side were owned by Captain Martin Severance, Laura's father. For nearly twenty years he was the head of these establishments, and then chief owner. He built a pretty little house on the river side for his bride. In it were born his eight children, and there three of them died.

There also their golden wedding was celebrated and there his beloved wife died, after 56 years of married life. In 1832 he sold out his manufacturing interests, having caught the western fever, and removed with his family to Ohio, making the long journey from Albany over the Erie canal by packet boat, then considered a rapid and luxurious mode of travel, and by lake to Cleveland, which was then but a pretty group of fourteen houses under the bluflf by the river. There he first bought 180 acres on the bluff on which now stands the whole business part of Cleveland. But, he wanted a farm, and found better soil out at Strongsville, 18 miles southwest, and exchanged his purchase of the Cleveland site for twice as many acres, where into whose black soil he could thrust a "sabre's tail clear up to the head;" where into the hollow trunk of a fallen sycamore a man could walk upright with a tall hat on and where the black walnut trees made grand rails for fences. Six rails and posts, and rider high to keep the deer from the crops. He sold his farm on which he had built a fine house, the first between Cleveland and southern Ohio. The raising of that house was an event. He and his wife had seen too much of the baleful effects of rum in New England, it was wholly banished from their house and they determined to raise the heavy black walnut frame without its aid. They notified everybody for twenty miles around of this "raising" "without rum." Everybody said that nobody would come and the frame would have to go up on such terms. But everybody came to see and jest at the failure of these temperance cranks. When they came, however, they found a magnificent spread of mother's best cookery and long tables under fine trees and a half a dozen pretty girls to serve them and so knew that no stinginess was at the bottom of it and the boss and carpenters gave them a good report of the way they were treated by the new-comers, and all turned in to the work right merrily and the raising went off fine and after the jolly feast that crowned it the ringleader of the crowd which came to show them that they could not raise a house without rum, mounted a table and made a speech, saying that it was the best raisin' he had ever heard of, and that Mrs Fiske was the handsomest woman and the best hostess in Ohio. At that the whole crowd thanked her and her husband for having raised their house without rum, so that they were all going home sober and yet jolly, and then the crowd gave a rousing cheer and swung their hats, and the impossible was achieved. Some
kinsmen who had settled over in Michigan in Sarnia now, Jackson then, had written that there they had no fever and that there was a fine farm there for him, so they packed up their goods into covered wagons drawn by horses and cattle, and went across the black swamp, a trip of six weeks. Took the new farm and found their old enemy had followed them from Ohio so they were after a couple of years shaken out of Michigan and out of the western fever as well, and returned to Melburne, where he bought a part of the large farm on which he was born. He ultimately exchanged it for a part of the farm on which his wife was born at the Falls, and finally, it still standing, he bought the identical house he had built for his bride, moved into it and there in 1867 his beloved wife died in the very room where eight of her children had been born.

After her death he lived for eight years (part of the time only, the summers) with his eldest son, Orlando, in Shelburne, or with his brother Samuel, yet spending about two thirds of his time with his son Asa in Rochester and with Mrs. Hart in Philadelphia or New Haven.

He fell asleep at 85 in his brother's house in Shelburne, in the fall of 1875, after an hour or two of suffering, with his eldest son at his bedside. He was of a most gentle, genial, kindly nature, a lover of music, of fun, of man and of God, was for many years a deacon in the Congregational Church and respected and honored by all who knew him. In his old age he straightened up after his life of hard work, grew stouter, let his luxuriant silver beard grow full, and was a marvelously fine picture of hearty, alert and serene age. His two eldest daughters married clergymen, and the eldest son, for his first wife, a sister of Fidelia Fiske. Two others of the family attained merited distinction as clergymen and authors.

(FISKE AND FISK FAMILY BEING THE RECORD OF THE Descendants of Symond Fiske, Lord of the Manor of Stadhaugh, Suffolk County, England, from the time of Henry IV. to Date, including all the American Members of the Family. by FREDERICK CLIFTON PIERCE.)

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