In his early days in Cleveland he was chosen one of the village trustees. In 1828, when he held that office, and Richard Hilliard was president of the Board of Trustees, the members gathered one afternoon in an office and voted an appropriation of two hundred dollars to put the village in proper order. Great was the outcry at this wastefulness, on the part of some of the tax payers. One of the old citizens, who yet lives, met Mr. Crittenden and wanted to know what on earth the trustees could find in the village to spend two hundred dollars about. At a later date, when Cleveland was a city and Mr. Crittenden a member of the Council, it was voted to appropriate ten thousand dollars to protect the lake front from encroachments by the lake. Again was Mr. Crittenden met and upbraided for his extravagance in municipal affairs, such conduct tending to bankrupt the city. It is Mr. Crittenden's pride that he has had no serious litigation, his care in making contracts having saved him the unpleasant necessity of resorting to legal means to compel his debtors to fulfil their obligations. But whilst looking thus sharply after his own interests, avarice or parsimony has formed no part of his character, and he has been liberal according to his means. William A. Otis. William A. Otis was one of those pioneer business men, who settled in Ohio during the dark times which followed the war of 1812. He was one of those to whom we owe much, but of whom the present generation know little; who without capital or education gave an impetus to the Western settlement, by integrity, personal energy, economy, and good sense. By force of character alone, which was their only capital, they wrought such wonders that the wilderness was literally transposed into fruitful fields. Mr. Otis left his paternal home in Massachusetts, about the year 1818, on foot, to seek a home in the West. Having reached Johnstown, in the Allegheny Mountains, he hired for a few months as man of all work, in an iron establishment, and thence set forward, travelling as before, by way of Pittsburgh, to the township of Bloomfield, in Trumbull county, Ohio. His physical constitution was equal to the labors of a new country, which had nothing to recommend it but a rich soil, and which required above all things perseverance and hard work. He cleared land, furnished the settlers with goods, for which they paid in ashes, or wheat, and kept a comfortable tavern for the accommodation of travelers. The ashes were manufactured by himself into "black salts" or impure potash, more often styled "Pots," which was the only strictly cash article in the country. It was necessary to haul the casks of potash to the mouth of Beaver river, or to Pittsburgh, from whence they drifted on flat boats down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, and from thence were shipped to New York. Much of the teaming he did himself.