It was whilst he was with Stephen Remington that an event occurred that shaped Levi Johnson's future life. Considerable interest had been excited in regard to Ohio, towards which emigrants were frequently seen taking their way. A brother of Stephen Remington was sent west to spy out the land and report on its desirableness as a home. This committee of one, on lands, came to Newburgh, and was so strongly impressed with the advantages of the place from which Cleveland was afterwards said to be but six miles distant, that he allowed his imagination to run away with his veracity. He wrote back that he had struck the richest country in the world; that the soil was marvelously fertile, and that corn grew so tall and strong that the raccoons ran up the stems and lodged on the ears out of the way of the dogs. Great was the excitement in Herkimer county when this report was received. Such wonderful growth of corn was never known in York State, but Ohio was a _terra incognita_, and Munchausen himself would have had a chance of being believed had he located his adventures in what was then the Far West. Stephen Remington quit barn-building, shut up his shop, packed up his tools and started in the Fall of 1807 for the new Eden, on Lake Erie. In the succeeding Spring, Johnson followed in his footsteps as far as East Bloomfield, near Canandaigua, where he worked during that Summer, building a meeting-house. In the Fall of 1808, he shouldered his pack and set out on foot for the West. At Buffalo he found work and wintered there until February, when his uncle came along, bound also for the land of promise. There was room in the sleigh for Levi, and he was not loth to avail himself of the opportunity of making his journey quicker and easier than on foot. On the 10th of March, 1809, the sleigh and its load entered Cleveland.