Sandusky Bay and Cedar Point 195 



Graves of some of the early white residents of Sandusky 

 just west of Ilg's brewery were opened by the waves so that cof- 

 fins stuck out of the bank and bones fell out 1850-'52. 



Submerged Forests. 



Persons who came to Erie county in the forties remember 

 seeing about the marshes connected with the bay many dead 

 trees which the}^ believed had been killed by high water, as the 

 trees were standing where it was too wet for such trees to grow. 

 Allen Remington, who came in 1839, saw great numbers of dead 

 trees that had been recently killed by high water standing where 

 there is now marsh in the eastern part of Sandusk}^ Bay. Lake 

 Erie in 1838 reached a higher level than ever before. Many trees 

 were killed also by the high water of 1858-62. George Hinde, 

 who owned a large tract of land in the northeast corner of Perkins 

 Township, Erie County, had hickory trees two feet in diameter 

 killed at that time. In the northwest corner of Huron Town- 

 ship eighty acres or more from a tract of 213 owned by Walter 

 Devlin had become marsh by 1904. On a good deal of this were 

 walnut trees. 



J. W. McGookey, who lives in Margaretta Township, 

 Portage Annexation, says: "About 1858-'62 large trees of oak, 

 elm, and many other kinds were killed by water standing over 

 their roots, along all the farms near his place and on the school 

 lands in the northwestern part of the township. Many other 

 forest trees were washed into the bay, as was also an orchard 

 north of the land now owned by Lewis Neill." 



Jonas Pearson of Vickery, informs me that in or near the 

 northeast corner of Riley Township, Sandusky County, sixty 

 acres of timber, hickory, oak and ash, were killed a number of 

 years ago when the water came up and stayed up several years. 

 Porter Wright told me that in section 36, Riley Township, on 

 land he formerly owned, oak, hickory and large elms were killed 

 iDy high water at about the time of the Civil War. Also .on land 

 lie still owns in sections 35 and 36, well back from the bay shore, 

 all the biggest and best ash, oak, elm, and hickory, many of 

 them he thinks two hundred years old, were killed at the same 

 time. He never saw elsewhere such a heavy growth of timber 

 -as on Graveyard Island and Eagle Island. It^ was principally 

 honey locust. In 1860 Allan Winters rowed his boat among the 

 standing trees at the head of the bay. He says a hundred acres 

 -or more of them were killed b}^ high water at that time. His 

 observations were chiefly north of the river and so refer to differ- 

 ent sections from those mentioned by Wright or Pearson. 



In the part of the bay north of Townsend Township abtmd- 

 -ant remains of a prostrate forest extend out half a mile from the 



