Lorenzo Carter (settler)

Born in 1767, Carter spent his early years in Warren, Connecticut, where he visited the local library frequently and developed an appreciation of books.

Elazer Carter enlisted in the Continental Army when Lorenzo was 11 years old, he came home from his temporarily disbanded unit and died of smallpox.

Carter made friends with the local Native Americans and it was his friendship with Chief Seneca (also known as Stigwanish)[2] that kept the Cleaveland colony alive through years of disease, floods and poor crops.

Carter was also an active member of the first library association in Cleveland which was formed in 1811 but quickly dissolved under the pressures of the War of 1812.

After hearing from his wife that a local Native American teen named John Omic had chased her around her home with a knife after she told him to stop taking vegetables from her garden, Carter visited the Omic home on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River.

"[4] In another exhibition of frontier justice, Lorenzo Carter prevented two Kentuckians from returning an African named Ben to slavery.

In the spring of 1806 Ben survived a shipwreck that killed everyone else on board just after setting sail from the nearby community of Rocky River.

In what has been termed a rescue, two men who worked for Carter stopped them at gun point and told Ben to make a break for the woods.

The cancer first manifested itself on his face and after consulting physicians in the East, he withdrew to an upper room where he refused all visitors.