Time being up, Sheriff Baldwin was about to cut the drop-rope, when he saw that the condemned man had clutched the rope over his head to save his neck from being broken. The Sheriff dismounted from his horse, climbed up the gallows and tied the prisoner's hands more firmly behind his back. The gallows was braced, and Omic contrived to clutch one of the braces with his hands, fastened behind his back as they were, as he fell when the drop-rope was cut. He hung in that position for some time, until his strength gave way and he swung off. When he had hung sufficiently long, the by-standers drew him to the cross-beam of the gallows, when the rope broke and the body of the wretched murderer fell into his open grave beneath. In the same year Mr. Johnson was path-master of Cleveland, and he retains in his possession the list of names of those who did work on the roads in that year, armed with good and sufficient shovels according to law. Mr. Johnson's success as a ship-builder encouraged him to persevere in that business. In the autumn of 1815, he laid down the lines of the schooner Neptune, sixty-five tons burden, not far below the neighborhood of the Central market. In the following Spring she was launched, and run on Lake Erie, her first trip being to Buffalo, whence she returned with a cargo of merchandise for Jonathan Williamson, of Detroit. In the Fall of that year a half interest in the Neptune was sold to Richard H. Blinn, Seth Doan, and Dr. Long. In 1817, she made a trip to Mackinac, for the American Fur Company, and remained in that trade until the Fall of 1819. In the Summer of 1818, Major Edwards, Paymaster Smith, and another army officer came to Mackinac on the Tiger, and engaged Mr. Johnson to take them to Green Bay, agreeing to pay him three hundred dollars for the trip. The same vessel, under Johnson's command, took the first load of troops from Green Bay to Chicago, after the massacre, Major Whistler engaging the ship for the purpose. In 1824, Johnson left the Neptune, and in company with Turhooven & Brothers, built the steamer Enterprise, about two hundred and twenty tons burden. This was the first steam vessel built in Cleveland, and her hull was made near the site of the Winslow warehouse. The engine, of sixty to seventy horse power, was brought from Pittsburgh. Johnson ran her between Buffalo and Detroit until 1828, when hard times coming on and business threatening to be unprofitable, he sold his interest in her, and left the lakes. In company with Goodman and Wilkeson, he built the Commodore, on the Chagrin river, in the year 1830, and that closed his ship-building career. By this time he had accumulated about thirty thousand dollars, a respectable fortune in those days, with which he invested largely in real estate, and waited the course of events to make his investments profitable.