Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Leonard Case, the giver of the Case School and the Case Library, born June 27, 1820, was a quiet, scholarly man, who gave wisely the wealth amassed by his father. The family on the paternal side came from Holland; on the maternal side from Germany. Mr. James D. Cleveland, in a recent sketch of the founder of Case School, gives an interesting account of the ancestors of Mr. Case.

The great-grandfather of Leonard Case, Leonard Eckstein, when a youth, had a quarrel with the Catholic clergy in Nuremberg, near which city he was born, and was in consequence thrown into prison, where he nearly starved. One day his sister brought him a cake which contained a slender silk cord baked in it. This cord was let down from his cell window to a friend, who fastened it to a rope which, when drawn up, enabled the young man to slide down a wall eighty feet above the ground.

After his escape, the youth of nineteen came to America, and landed in Philadelphia without a cent of money. Later he married and moved to Western Pennsylvania; and his daughter Magdalene married Meshach Case, the grandfather of Leonard Case.

Meshach was an invalid from asthma. In 1799 he and his wife came on horseback to explore Ohio, and perhaps make a home. They bought two hundred acres of the wilderness in the township of Warren, built a log cabin, and cleared an acre of timber around it. The following year others came to settle, and all celebrated the Fourth of July with instruments made on the grounds. Their drum was a piece of hollow pepperidge-tree with a fawn's skin stretched over it, and a fife was made from an elder stem.

The eldest son, Leonard, who was a hard worker from a child, at seven cutting wood for the fires, at ten thrashing grain, at fourteen ploughing and harvesting, took cold when heated, and became ill for two years and a cripple for the rest of his life, using crutches as he walked. Early in life, when it was the fashion to use intoxicating liquors, Leonard made a pledge never to use them, and was a total abstainer as long as he lived, thus setting a noble example to the growing community.

Determined to have an education, he invented some instruments for drafting, bottomed all the chairs in the neighborhood, made sieves for the farmers, and thus earned a little money for books. As his handwriting was good, he was made clerk of the little court at Warren, and later of the Supreme Court for Trumbull County, where he had an opportunity to study, and copy the records of the Connecticut Land Company.

A friend advised him to study law, and furnished him with books, which advice he followed. Later, in 1816, he moved to Cleveland, and was made cashier of a bank just organized. He was a man of public spirit, suggested the planting of trees which have made Cleveland known as the Forest City, was sent to the Legislature, and finally became president of a bank, as well as land agent of the Connecticut Land Company. He was universally respected and esteemed.

The hard-working invalid had become rich through increase in value of the large amount of land which he had purchased. He died Dec. 7, 1864, seven years after his wife's death, and two years after the death of his very promising son William, of consumption. The latter was deeply interested in natural history, and in 1859 had begun to erect a building for the Young Men's Library Association and the Kirtland Society of Natural History. This project his surviving brother, Leonard, carried out.

After the death of father, mother, and brother, Leonard Case was left to inherit the property. He had graduated at Yale College in 1842, and was admitted to the bar in 1844. He, however, devoted himself to literary pursuits, and travelled extensively over this country and abroad.

Ill health in later years increased his natural reticence and dislike of publicity. He gave generously where he became interested. To the Library Association he first gave $20,000. In 1876 he gave Case Building and grounds, then valued at $225,000, to the Library Association. It is now worth over half a million dollars, and furnishes a good income for its library of over 40,000 volumes. Under the excellent management of Mr. Charles Orr, the librarian, the building has been remodelled, and the library much enlarged. The membership fee is one dollar annually.