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Joseph Cahoon brought his family from Vergennes, Vermont, to Dover Township in 1810, and they established themselves as the first permanent settlers in what would become Bay Village, Ohio. The Cahoon house, called Rose Hill, was built in 1818 and replaced the log cabin the family built upon their arrival. Granddaughter Ida Maria Cahoon bequeathed her family’s 115-acre homestead as the Cahoon Memorial Park to the citizens of Bay Village in 1917. In accordance with the family’s wish, Rose Hill serves the community as a museum and library. The Reuben Osborn House (1815), thought to be the oldest frame house between Cleveland and Lorain, and the Community House (1882), formerly the Cahoon barn, join Rose Hill on the grounds of the memorial park. Providing a variety of recreational and educational activities, Cahoon Memorial Park is the center of community activity in Bay Village.
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President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, created a national tragedy, and the nation mourned as his body was transported by rail from Washington, D.C. back to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried. As the nine-car Lincoln Funeral Train passed through Champaign County, U.S. military forces secured curves, bridges, and railroad crossings along the route and spiked switches closed to insure the train’s safety. The Funeral Train passed through the Village of Cable at 10:13 p.m. 150 feet southeast of here. As a large crowd assembled around several large bonfires, a lone soldier stood alone in the rain in the center of the crowd holding an American flag. Many residents stood silently along the tracks, hillsides, and valley fields, soaked in their wet clothes waiting to pay their respects to the fallen president. After Cable, the Funeral Train continued west and downhill toward Urbana, Westville, and St. Paris.
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St. Mary Church was dedicated in 1868 in response to the spiritual needs of the growing German-Catholic population of Columbus’ South Side. The original schoolhouse, which stands behind the church, was erected in 1865 under the direction of Rev. Francis X. Specht, St. Mary’s first pastor. It served as a temporary house of worship until the Gothic-style church was completed. St. Mary’s distinctive spire – soaring 197 feet into the Columbus sky – was added in 1893. By 1865, Columbus’ population was one-third German, and the South Side had become a thriving working-class community. The new immigrants built homes and churches and established schools. Local German businesses, organizations, and newspapers prospered. German Village is one of the premier historic restorations in the world, and is the largest privately funded historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. More than 1,600 buildings have been restored since 1960.
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For more than two centuries, this burial ground has been a final resting place for those individuals whose lives represented the community history of Canfield. The earliest existing tombstone marks the death of Huldah Tanner in 1803. Seven earlier deaths in Canfield Township are recorded from 1798 to 1803, but the gravesites are unknown. Elijah and Rhoda Hopkins Wadsworth formally deeded the cemetery to the citizens of Canfield in 1810 with a first edition of land donated by Matthew B. Whittlesey in 1811. In 1862-1863, the graveyard was again enlarged. For seventy years the cemetery and fencing were maintained on a volunteer basis. When the Village of Canfield was incorporated in 1869, the care and management was vested in a board of trustees. (continued on other side)
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In 1833, John Randolph from Roanoke, Virginia, died leaving three wills that requested that all of his slaves be set free and that land be purchased for them. Although contested for thirteen years by his family, the slaves were freed and the executor of the wills, Randolph’s cousin Judge William Leigh purchased about 2,000 acres of farm land in Mercer County, Ohio. Traveling by wagon train, the freed slaves, 383 in all, reached their destination in 1846, but were forced to turn back by earlier established white settlers. They turned around and ended up north of Piqua where they purchased land and developed the Village of Rossville. Later some moved on to other places in Miami County and well as Shelby County. In Rossville, they established an African Baptist Church in 1869, cemetery in 1866, and public black school in 1872.
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In 1846, the same year that Mahoning County was created, Ohio’s General Assembly passed an act “for the encouragement of agriculture.” An outgrowth of this legislation led to the founding of the Mahoning County Agricultural Society in April 1847. Boasting a membership of 170, the Society agreed to sponsor competitions for premiums to be distributed at an “annual fair and cattle show the next fall.” Canfield was the geographic center of the county and selected as the site for the first fair. In October, from the lawn of the First Congregational Church, Comptroller of the United State Treasury Elisha Whittlesey welcomed participants. Admission was one shilling (twelve and one half cents). The Village Green overflowed with exhibitions of prized livestock, harvests, plowing contests, and horse racing. Early fairs were one-day events attended primarily by gentlemen. However, the church provided a venue for ladies to display their handiwork. (continued on other side)
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In 1827, noted evangelist Walter Scott came to Canfield and visited with a number of area Baptist families living on Palmyra Road and in the vicinity of Dean Hill. A follower of Alexander Campbell, Scott delivered powerful sermons that persuaded some to establish a new church congregation in the Disciple faith. After meeting in congregation members’ homes, a framed meeting house was erected circa 1830 on land purchased from William and Orsemus Dean. This church stood across from William Dean’s brick residence. A burial ground was provided at the site with existing grave markers dating to 1837. Veterans from all the wars of this nation are buried here, including Benjamin Dean of the 105th Ohio Infantry Regiment who died from wounds suffered in the 1863 Battle of Murfreesboro in Tennessee. (continued on other side)
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On this site stood the home of Elisha and Polly Mygatt Whittlesey and their ten children. Also here was his law office and a records office that was moved in 1965 to Pioneer Village at the Canfield Fairgrounds. Already an attorney in his home state, Elisha (1783-1863) with Polly (1787-1855) emigrated from Danbury, Connecticut in June 1806 to Canfield in the Western Reserve where he was admitted to the Ohio bar and was prosecuting attorney from 1807 to 1823. During the War of 1812, Whittlesey was adjutant to Maj. Gen. Elijah Wadsworth and later a secretary to Gen. William Henry Harrison. Whittlesey opened a law office in Canfield in 1813, specialized in land cases, and was one of the founders of Norwalk, Ohio in 1815. In 1820, he was elected to the first of two terms in the Ohio General Assembly. (Continued on other side)
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