COULDN’T MAKE HIS LIVING AS PREACHER

By Glenn H. Leggett

Published in the Star Beacon in 1919

     About the year 1808 Seth Thayer came to Ashtabula from Connecticut. He was an ordained Episcopal minister of the Church of England, but he could not make a living at preaching the gospel, so he gave it up and went into farming. He owned what is now Woodland Park, but the property then extended far out into the lake.

    In the year 1810 Seth Thayer became a father of a son, who later was known as Capt. G. A. Thayer. The boy was born in a log cabin on the Woodland Park property. All but six months of his life Capt. Thayer lived in sight of the lake and those were probably the most unpleasant of his entire life. They were spent in a house on Prospect  street to which he had moved with the intention of leaving the Harbor forever. Homesickness overcame him, however, and he moved back to the Harbor and his dearly-beloved lake. He spent his last days and died in the house which is now the residence of B. S. Bliss, 123 Walnut street.

FOR FORTY-FIVE YEARS SAILED THE LAKES

     From the time he was 15 years of age until he was 60 Capt. Thayer sailed the lakes.

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     When he was a young man he helped chop the wood that burned the brick used in the construction of the old Harmon house at the top of (illegible, possibly Mill Hill), now the property of B.B. (illegible). He also helped manufacture the brick used in the building the old (illegible) Watsons home which stands at the summit of the Columbus street hill owned and occupied now by Joe Smith, an Italian merchant...