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Tribute has been paid to one of the pioneer business and industrial leaders of this area, an energetic Western Pennsylvanian who helped found the first paper mill and first wooden covered toll bridge in Ohio and the Northwest Territory.
Enterprises of John Bever not only included the mill and bridge, but extended to building materials, real estate and other businesses.
For 128 years, Bever's name has been kept alive in a special education bequest which began with $2,000 and a tract of land, became the now defunct Neville Institute in the East End and now stands at $78,000 on deposit in a bank.
An Ohio Historical Marker will be dedicated tomorrow afternoon along the Smiths Ferry-Calcutta Rd. commemorating the first mill and the bridge.
The mill, located on the east side of Beaver Creek, was erected in 1807 by Bever, Jacob Bowman of Brownsville, PA, and John Coulter of Brooke County, VA - now West Virginia.
Bever was born in Ireland, a son of a German father and Irish mother, and came to the United States in 1788.
He settled in Western Pennsylvania, developing a profitable business supplying materials for construction of blockhouses to protect the settlers from raiding Indians.
After Ohio was admitted as a state in 1803, Bever obtained a job as a surveyor in the new area, and in his travels through Columbiana County and other eastern counties, he came upon various lands which caught his fancy; and he purchased them, adding to his fortune.
The water power potential of Beaver Creek for manufacturing was also noted by Bever, and by August 1806, Bever and his two business companions had joined in a plan to build a paper mill along the creek.
Bowman was a well-to-do pioneer of Fayette County, PA, was postmaster and president of the bank at Brownsville where he also operated a mill making wrought iron nails, and apparently was the most knowledgeable of the trio about paper manufacture.
On Aug. 1, 1806, a contract was signed to build a $6,000 mill with equipment, to be known as "The Ohio Paper Mill" with the watermarks "C B & B" on the paper.
The Bever mill, a stone structure which overlooked the rock-clogged creek about three-fourths of a mile from the mouth, held a monopoly on paper manufacture in the new state for four years.
Not until 1810 were two other paper mills built - one in Hamilton County, the other in Warren County. By 1815 papermaking had become a thriving industry in Ohio.
In 1814 another mill was erected on the east bank of Beaver Creek near the Bever structure, and was called the Franklin Paper Mill, founded by Cramer, Spear and Eichbaum. It was operated by John Spear until his death in 1841.
Bever and Thomas Moore, postmaster at Smiths Ferry, built the covered span in 1809 after authorization by the legislature in February of that year.
Sometime around 1833 the bridge was turned over to Columbiana County as a gift by Bever.
Moore died in 1849 at the age of 72, and is buried with his brother, Shakespeare Moore, in the Georgetown Cemetery, according to Thomas Malone of Homeworth, director of the Northern Ohio Covered Bridge Society who has done considerable research upon the bridge and the paper mill.
Bever was first married about 1790 to Nancy Dawson of Georgetown, and they had five children.
She died about 1818, and two years later he married Lydia Vaughn who bore him a son, Henry, who later resided in Illinois.
He second wife died in 1849 at the age of 69.
Bever's final years were spent on his sprawling farm "Springford:' located on the high hill above the creek and river. In the home built for his second wife, Lydia Vaughn, he died May 26, 1836, at the age of 80, leaving an estate valued at $74,000.
At his request, he was buried on the side of the hill, about 200 yards from his home, in a low brick tomb dug into the side of the slope.
Nineteen years later, a violent rainstorm swept the area, gushing water demolishing the brick walls of the tomb and exposing the heavy wooden coffin.
Henry Bever, his son, had the remains transferred to the farm of the father of the second wife near Oneida, where today they lie beneath a stone slab, surrounded by a six-foot wall on the land now owned by Roland Snyder.
Bever, who operated a grocery store at Georgetown besides his other businesses, left a five-acre tract of land along the hillside of present Pennsylvania Ave. and Elizabeth St. for "a seminary of learning." In addition, a $2,000 endowment was to be "applied exclusively to the purpose aforesaid by vesting the principal in some public stock or in such other manner as that the principal will be secured and productive."
He named Alexander Young, James Morgan and William Phillips "and other judicious and intelligent persons, resident of Columbiana, not to exceed six in number ... as trustees of an academy or public school for the education of youth" to be appointed by the state legislature. Phillips at the time resided on the land to be used.
The will concluded, "and it is my wish and I enjoin it upon the trustees that they shall and do exhibit to the Court ... once in each year a statement of the institution and its funds."
A special bill incorporating Bever's directives, was approved by the Ohio General Assembly in March 1837, creating "Neville Institute."
Simon Morgan was hired for $23 a month as a teacher for the new school, operating in an old brick building bequeathed by Bever. In the 1850's, the trustees erected another structure, and the private school continued for a number of years, renting some rooms to the Liverpool Township board of education.
The Institute was open to any person who cared to attend. There were no fixed courses of study and - as was the custom of the early days - no compulsory attendance.
With the establishment of an attendance law, an arrangement was developed by the East Liverpool school district and the Institute trustees to share the cost of operating the school. Finally the city board of education offered to take over the Neville building, and the trustees accepted.
The accumulating funds, the still solid
bridge abutment and the crumbling stone foundation of the ancient
mill are Bever's monuments to a busy and productive life.
By Glenn Waight
For the East Liverpool Review
Article provided by C1yde Piquet