Duncan Virostko, Museum Assistant

“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools, The way to dusty death.” ~William Shakesphere, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

The 25th of Novemeber marks two hundred and thirty-one years since Rufus Dunham, the founder and builder of the Tavern which now bears his name, was born. A man of vision and drive, Rufus lived to the age of sixty eight, and in the course of his life helped to settle Cleveland and create for himself a lasting legacy. Rufus wore many hats, his roles ranging widely from farmer to political leader, from tavern keeper to real estate developer, and from coarse lumberman to beloved husband and father.

This is his story.

Born November 25th, 1793 to William and Experience Pratt Dunham, Rufus Dunham was one of the first generation of people to be born in the newly-formed United States. He grew up in Massachusetts, some thirty miles south of Boston, in the quiet inland farm village of Mansfeild.

Records show that Rufus had quite a complicated personal life in Mansfield. He was at first engaged to Rachel Shepard, December 29, 1816, announcing it to the town clerk. A record of the marriage was entered before January 17th, presumably the date set for the marriage. But it was later crossed out: Rufus never married Rachel. We cannot say for certain the exact circumstances which led to the dissolution of this engagement. We do know she would later have a son on April 3rd, 1817, whom she named Avery Otis Dunham. Rufus was undoubtedly aware of Avery, as he was still living in Mansfield at the time of the latter's birth and is listed as Avery’s father on the birth certificate. Why Rufus chose not to acknowledge Avery, we cannot say with any degree of certainty.

What we can say is that soon after, Rufus Dunham and Jane Pratt announced their intention to wed. Their wedding occurred June 22nd, 1817, and their marriage would last forty-five years. His first legitimate son, Charles H. Dunham was born on September 20th at some point after this marriage, although the exact year of his birth is unclear.

A model of Walk-In-The-Water, second steamboat on the Great Lakes and first on the lower lakes. Rufus Dunham sailed on her from Buffalo to Cleveland, possibly in May 1819.

At some point in 1818 or 1819, Rufus Dunham and his family first arrived in Cleveland. According to an 1857 article about his arrival in Cleveland , he traveled aboard one of the first sailings of the steamboat Walk-In-The-Water during this period. Although Rufus stated this took place in 1818, evidence suggests the event actually took place 1819. The Walk-In-The-Water maiden voyage was in late August of 1818, at the end of the shipping season on the Great Lakes. Rufus however claimed to to have arrived in Cleveland in May, meaning perhaps his trip likely took place in 1819, when the Walk-In-The-Water made a highly publicized sailing from Buffalo, NY.

Map of Cleveland ca. 1858, showing the area where Rufus Dunham lived and worked for his first few years in Cleveland. The small stream near the building labeled “Wm Shells Packing House” is Walworth Run, and approximately where Alfred Kelly’s mill was located. Pittsburgh St., today Broadway Ave., is visible across the river to the north. (Cleveland Historic Maps)

Rufus at this time lived in a log cabin on Pittsburgh St., which is now Broadway Ave. He worked for Alfred Kelley, at the latter’s nearby mill located on Walworth Run, a long since culverted stream which ran from Clark Ave and West 65th St, and joined the Cuyahoga River near Scranton Road and University Road. Today the area is called the Scranton Flats, and is part of the Ohio & Erie Towpath Trail, with the nearby “Scranton Spoon” fishing pier.

According to Dunham family lore, during this time Jane and Rufus shared a cabin with another family, a husband and wife. At one point, Rufus and the other husband went on a hunting trip, and neglected to bring firewood into the cabin for cooking. In revenge, Jane and the other man’s wife proceeded to simply set fire to the entire woodpile, and cook the men’s dinner over it. No doubt the men never repeated such a mistake!

In 1821, Rufus entered into an agreement to purchase the deed to the present property on which Dunham Tavern is located. The property was then owned by John H. Strong and his wife Elisabeth Cary of Chatham, Connecticut, sister of Mrs. Timothy Doan, another pioneer and founder of Doans Corner. Strong had been living in Cleveland since 1811, presumably on this land which was previously owned by his father David Strong and deeded to him in 1818.

In 1823, Strong died before his transaction with Rufus could be completed. In that same year, his first daughter, Loretta Jane Dunham was born, May 9th, 1823. Eventually, Rufus was able to negotiate with his heirs to acquire the farm in 1824.

The land in the present vicinity of Euclid Avenue was at this time still somewhat wild, and largely still forested. Rufus Dunham worked continuously to clear the land for farming. As he cleared away the forest, he put the idle timber to good use, building a number of charcoal kilns on the site. Often, felling of trees to clear farmland was conducted communally, with the help of neighbors, in so called “logging bees”. Each participant would bring a team of oxen, and logging chains, to help move the logs created by felling trees into a large pile, which would then be set ablaze, as there was no other use for such lumber at the time. Rufus himself could “always be relied on” to attend these efforts, and probably benefited from them himself. In later years, he would own a lumber wagon, which was sold at auction upon his death in 1862.

Around this time, the first phase of construction on Dunham Tavern began. In the beginning, it was intended as a new Federal style home for his family, equal to any back east on Mansfield. The house followed the typical “central passage” plan of construction: there was a central hall with a parlor on one side, for entertaining guests or spending private time with the family, and a “hall” on the other side, which functioned as a kitchen and dining room for the family. On both gable ends of the house were large fireplaces and chimneys to cook on and warm them in the winter. A staircase was located in the central passage, and led to bedrooms above for the family.

In 1831, Rufus Dunham was elected a Trustee of Cleveland Township. Although his term was only one year, the reputation as an upstanding citizen probably aided him in getting his first tavern license in 1833. In that year, Rufus made the first expansion to his house in order to convert it into a tavern, adding an addition on the west side of the house containing a tap room with a guest room above it and connecting the existing “hall” to the taproom via a serving window. Later, he would make additions to the north end of the Tavern, which would create an entirely new kitchen for Jane to help her cook for guests, new guest rooms on the second floor, and almost double the size of the building overall.

By 1837, Rufus Dunham was serving as part of a chair committee for the Whig party in Cleveland. They posted an ad in the Cleveland Leader, calling for a County wide party meeting at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland on Public Square. Delegates for each township then in the county were supposed to be elected by Saturday August 26th, with the meeting starting at 10 o’clock Tuesday 29th.

Tragedy struck Rufus Dunham’s life in September 1848. His eldest child, Charles Dunham, who had married not long before, succumbed to an illness described as “consumption”, which may have been tuberculosis. Charles had lost his wife to the same ailment but a few months earlier. How did it feel to Rufus to bury his son? Did he think of Avery, back in Mansfield, at this vulnerable moment? History does not record his feelings, but as a father his grief must have been immeasurable. Although sudden death in those days was a common occurrence, with which people were far more familiar, Rufus quite justifiably would have not anticipated outliving his own son, especially once he had reached the age of thirty-one.

An early “Dummy”, a combination locomotive-passenger car used for local trains, built in the 1850s. The Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railway train derailed in the court case in 1851 on which Rufus Dunham was a jury member, would likely have been of this type. (E. P. Alexander, ca. 1870)

In 1851, Rufus Dunham would serve on a jury in a rare early criminal case. The case concerned one Horace J. Brooks, charged with murder. On May 7th, 1851, Brooks killed the engineer Joel C. Westland and injured two ladies who were passengers of a local train of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railway running between Newburgh (now part of Cleveland) and Bedford. The train was described as a “dummy”, meaning a kind of combined steam locomotive and passenger car. It was a very light vehicle, and so it is no surprise that a single tie which was removed from the tracks, and set upright vertically between the rails like a post caused it to wreck. Westland was thrown from the train, and run over. One of the first men on the scene of the wreck was the Justice of the Peace, David L. Wightman, who quickly investigated. The case was an open and shut one: muddy boot prints led from the scene to Brooks’ farmhouse. Brooks had been annoyed with the railroad for building across his land, and it became known that he had previously tried to bribe others to sabotage the railroad. The jury, including Rufus, returned a guilty verdict. Dunham may have felt some sympathy for Brooks: after all, railroads were slowly ending the stagecoach traffic that had sustained Dunham’s Tavern for nearly twenty years. On the other hand, perhaps he was moved by the grief that must have been felt by young Miss Kenyon, who Westbrook had been escorting to Bedford on that fateful trip, and was presumably her beau.

This court case was a harbinger of the end of a chapter in Rufus Dunham’s life. With the coming of the Cleveland, Painesville, & Ashtabula Railroad, then often called the Cleveland & Buffalo railroad, in 1853 the Tavern ended its twenty-year-long run. The stagecoach business which had sustained the Tavern for many years came abruptly to an end, as rails now linked Cleveland and Buffalo, rendering the old Buffalo road which ran in front of the Tavern obsolete.

Rufus seems to have already retired in 1852, as the Tavern had already come under new management by a R. W. Moore, who was leasing the Tavern from him. Rufus had by this point constructed for himself a new home, immediately next door to the old Tavern. The process of selling the Tavern was complex, and took several years. Initially, Rufus sold it to brother-in-law Benjamin S. Welch and his father John Welch. They were to hold who it in trust for Rufus’ daughter-in-law, who like his own daughter was also named Loretta, and her husband James B. Wilbur. The Welchs and Wilburs subsequently attempted to sell the Tavern to Zalamon Fitch, an early banker, evidently against Rufus’ wishes. The resulting legal battle eventually resolved to the evident satisfaction of most concerned when the tavern was sold to George Williams, for whom Fitch seems to have been working as a buyer. Williams would use the Tavern as a home for himself and his relations until the 1880s. Evidently, Rufus and George were good neighbors, as upon his death most of the livestock and farm equipment Rufus still owned remained on Williams property, and a public auction was held there to sell it off.

Rufus was by now one of the few surviving early settlers, and apparently still in good health and spirits. And why shouldn’t he have been? He was by now living comfortably, with a small household staff to attend to the housework he and Jane could no longer handle in their advancing age. His daughters, Loretta Dunham Pier, and Caroline Dunham Welch, lived nearby, with Loretta’s home located less than a block away from the Tavern on the corner of Dunham Avenue, now East 66th St. And he had a plethora of loving grandchildren to regale with stories of the past. He even seems to have continued to farm the nearby land.

Times, however, were tumultuous. The Whig Party he had long been a member of was ripped asunder by the great question of the age: the expansion of slavery. As a Northern Whig, Rufus would have opposed slavery to some degree, although perhaps not so ardently as younger men. And what must have Rufus felt when the nation which he had witnessed growing from a tiny, recently liberated collection of colonies into a continent spanning power, as it exploded into a bloody fratricidal Civil War? To be old, and unable to do much of anything about it, surely must have made his heart ache in private moments.

By 1862, the news was looking grim for the Union, as there had been mostly defeats for the United States in the first year of war. Yet it does not seem to have outwardly affected Rufus much, as he was his usual jovial self to his friends and loved ones. And so on June 12th of that same year, he awoke at four o’clock in the morning as was his usual custom, and strode into the kitchen of his new home. He took his pipe in hand, and went to strike a match.

He never lit his pipe.

What happened in that terminal moment? It appears that Rufus sank slowly to the floor, quite dead, but the cause is uncertain. Possibilities include both stroke and heart attack, amongst many others.

What we do know is that Rufus’ household staff, a “hired man” and “serving girl”, ignored him while he lay dead on the floor. It was apparently common for Rufus to nap after his morning smoke, and post-facto they claimed that they believed he was sleeping. How plausible one thinks such a claim is would seem to be a matter of interpretation. Nonetheless, the tragic consequence of their actions was that it was one of Rufus’ four granddaughters, daughter of his beloved daughter Loretta Pier, who discovered that he was dead.

Lorreta Dunham-Pier, Rufus Dunham’s older daughter, lived in this house at Euclid & East 65th St, not far from Dunham Tavern.

Caroline Dunham would go on to move into her father’s second home beside the Tavern, at 595 Euclid Avenue, and with her sister Loretta Dunham Pier living just up the block continue to live in the same “Dunhamburg” neighborhood until the turn of the century. The Tavern would go on to see a third set of owners, the Stephens, move in during the 1880s and it would stay in their hands until its preservation as a museum in the 1930s.

The legacy that Rufus Dunham left was far reaching, and continues to this day. He, of course, was a multi-talented man who left behind him a significant architectural legacy in the form of Dunham Tavern. But beyond that, he also left a legacy of who he was as a person. Sources which mention Rufus’s personality describe him as being personable and jovial, a fitting temperament for a Tavern keeper. No matter the trials and tribulations of the day, no matter his own flaws and failings, he seems to have devoted himself to giving joy to others. By the time of his passing, he was known not just as an early pioneer, but as a well regarded member of the community who would always say hello whenever making a visit to Cleveland proper. Rufus lived, and died, in tumultuous times, as the early United States underwent significant social upheaval and change. In many ways, it was no less a tempest than our own present turmoil. Yet, as Rufus so ably demonstrated, even simple acts of kindness may go a long way to alleviate the suffering of the world. Today, Dunham Tavern Museum carries on Rufus Dunham’s tradition of hospitality, welcoming people from all walks of life through its doors without charge, with a mission to educate people about the past and inspire a better future.

Sources:

Gerda, Janice, “Rufus & Rachel: The Marriage That Wasn’t” , Dunham Tavern Museum, 2020

“The Pioneers”, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 15, 1857

Dubleko, Jim, “Where in the World is Walworth Run?”, ClevelandHistorical.org: https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/659

Gill Brooks, Katherine, Dunham Tavern, The Artcraft Printing Company, Cleveland, Ohio, 1938, Pg. 17

“December 4th 1818 Deed: David Strong to John H Strong”: https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145440414

“May 18 1824 Deed: John H Strong to Rufus Dunham”:

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145441504

Van Rensselaer Wickham, Getrudue, The Pioneer Families of Cleveland, 1796-1840, Evangelical Publishing House , Cleveland, 1914, Pg. 138: https://occgs.com/projects/rescue/family_files/files/STRONG%20Family.pdf

“Some of the Landmarks of Cleveland”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 14 1896

Annals of the Early Settlers, Vol I-II, Mount & Carroll, Cleveland Ohio 1880, Pg. 18: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annals_of_the_Early_Settlers_Association/Qw3VAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=rufus+dunham+logging+bee&pg=RA4-PA18&printsec=frontcover

Johnson, Crisfeild, History of Cuyahoga County Ohio, D.W. Ensign & Co., Cleveland, Ohio, 1879, Pg. 320:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Cuyahoga_County_Ohio/L_I7AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=rufus%20dunham

Cuyahoga County Archives, “Licence to Keep Tavern in This County Granted: Rufus Dunham; Court of Common Pleas, Journal F, April-June 1833, pg. 225”

Works Progress Administration, Annals of Cleveland 1818-1935: 1837 Volume XX Part I, Jan 1st-Dec 31st 1837, Works Progress Administration , Cleveland 1935, Pg 231-233: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annals_of_Cleveland/4foTAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=rufus+dunham+cleveland&pg=PA231&printsec=frontcover

Kennedy, Harrison & Day, Wilson, The Bench and Bar of Cleveland, Cleveland Print & Publishing Co., 1889, Pg 95: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Bench_and_Bar_of_Cleveland/s6kzAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=rufus+dunham+cleveland&pg=PA95&printsec=frontcover

“Heel and Toe ~ A Ball will be given this evening , by R.W. Moore at the old stand of R. Dunham, in East Cleveland.”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 21st, 1852

“February 16 1853 Deed: Rufus Dunham to Benjamin S. Welch”

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145474403

“October 13 1856 Deed: James B. Wilbur to Zalmon Fitch”

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145482402

“ February 11 1857 Deed: James B. Wilbur & Wife to George Williams”

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145483556

“February 14 1857 Quit Claim: Zalmon Fitch to George Williams”

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145484059

“April 3 1857 Quit Claim: Rufus Dunham & Wife to George Williams”

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145483120

“April 23, 1857 Deed: James Wilbur by Sheriff to George Williams”,

https://cuyahoga.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/145483080