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William Ellsworth “Dummy” Hoy was born in Houcktown on May 23, 1862. Although spinal meningitis as a toddler left him deaf and mute, Hoy became one of the great 19th century professional baseball players. He played centerfield for such teams as the Chicago White Stockings, Louisville Colonels, and Cincinnati Reds. In his 1888 Washington Senators season he led the league with 82 stolen bases and is one of the all-time leaders in that art. The defensive star’s record includes: 3,959 outfield putouts; 73 double plays; 2,054 hits; 40 home runs; 597 stolen bases; and, 210 strike-outs. Hoy is a member of the American Athletic Association for the Deaf Hall of Fame, as well as those of the Cincinnati Reds, Ohio Baseball, and Ohio School for the Deaf. He died in Cincinnati at the age of 99.
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In 1804 a group of neighbors in Granville, Massachusetts and Granby, Connecticut formed The Licking Company for the purpose of moving to “Newlands” in Ohio. Inspired and informed by the settlement of Worthington in 1803, the Company purchased 29,040 acres in the U.S. Military District. Advance parties surveyed and mapped a site, established a mill, and planted grain. The Company planned a public square, a school, library, quarry, burying ground, and property for the support of churches. In November and December 1805, some 150 emigrants in ox-drawn wagons arrived in their new home and built temporary shelters on the designated public square. On December 9 through 12 1805, Company members selected their Granville lots in an auction that was described as peaceable and honest.
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This section of the Miami and Erie Canal, constructed from 1833-1837, was vital to this region’s commerce and development. It allowed for farmers and businesses to get their goods to larger markets at a lower cost and faster speed than by hauling overland. Passengers could also travel across the area by canal boat. John Clark saw the location of the Lock 15, situated in Monroe Township at the junction of the Milton-Carlisle Pike (Main Street), as an opportunity and in 1840, platted the new town of Tippecanoe City (now Tipp City). Many types of commerce and trade grew up around the canal including boarding houses, saloons, a tannery, and a mill. Some of the original buildings still stand, such as a mill to the west of Lock 15, John Clark’s home at the southeast corner of Main and First streets, and the hotel at the northeast corner of Main and Second streets.
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“The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future and we’ll continue to follow…” President Ronald Reagan
As the second American woman in space, Judith Resnik (1949-1986) paved the way for the future of women in space exploration. A gifted science and music student and valedictorian of Firestone High School’s class of 1966, she earned a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1977 and was accepted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as an astronaut candidate in 1978. Her first flight was on the inaugural mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1984. Resnik was aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger as a mission specialist on January 28, 1986, when it exploded just 73 seconds after lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All seven crewmembers died in the explosion.
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In 1833, Archibald Smith (1803-83) began to build a sawmill a short distance east of here where a tributary enters Blacklick Creek. His work was soon destroyed, he wrote, by a “rise of water known as the great Fourth of July Flood.” Undaunted, he completed the mill the next year and used it to saw lumber from trees felled as he cleared land for cultivation. Archibald’s son, Dr. Isaac Newton Smith, described his father’s mill as the first on Blacklick Creek. Dr. Smith recalled four mills on Blacklick and one each on Sugar Run and Rocky Fork Creeks. These mills, he noted, received some of the best oak, butternut, chestnut, and walnut timber in the area. (Continued on other side)
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Harry Coulby was born of humble farming parents on January 1, 1865 in Claypole, England. At age 17, he immigrated to Cleveland to realize his dream of sailing the Great Lakes. He did not become a sailor, but instead became the commanding figure in the ore shipping trade. In 1886, Pickands Mather Company employed him, and Coulby, with imagination and a willingness to work, made the movement of ships and cargo his career. Within 20 years, he managed 100 ships, controlling the two leading fleets. He was described as the “Czar of the Lakes,” a tribute to his leadership qualities. Adopting President Abraham Lincoln’s method of making a point with a story, he became Wickliffe Village’s first mayor in 1916. His home, known as Couallenby, became the city hall. Harry died while visiting his birthplace on January 18, 1929, and was laid to rest in the churchyard that he had restored.
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On April 19, 1891, a head-on collision between two trains of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company occurred at the Kipton depot. Eight people lost their lives, and the depot was heavily damaged. The crash occurred when a fast mail train heading east near Kipton and a passenger train going west from Elyria collided. The passenger train was supposed to let the mail train go by, but the conductor had not realized that his watch had stopped for four minutes and then restarted. As a result the passenger train was late getting to the stopping point. Looking into the matter, the railway company enlisted Webb C. Ball, a well-known Cleveland jeweler, to investigate time and watch conditions throughout its lines. Ball instituted the current railroad industry’s timekeeping program, which specified watches trainmen could use. His attention to accuracy and promptness led to the well-known saying, “Get on the Ball.”
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The Canfield Township Hall was erected in 1884. It served as the first public building in which the Canfield citizens could conduct town business, elections, and public meetings. An example of Renaissance Revival or “Italianate” architecture, the building is typical of late Victorian commercial buildings, but constructed of wood rather than of the customary brick. Drafted by Colonel S. Kinney, it was originally constructed for the sum of $2,389 by G.W. Strock at the corner of South Broad and East Main streets, on a lot purchased for $500. In 1936, R.J. Neff moved the hall several hundred feet south to its present location. In addition to official township meetings, the second floor has been used for a variety of activities, including social meetings, lectures, contests, dances, and roller-skating. The building served as an early home of the Canfield Historical Society and operated continuously for over one hundred and twenty-five years.
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