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17-47 Columbia Township
Founded in 1807, Columbia was the first continuously inhabited settlement in Lorain County. Harmon, Levi and Azor Bronson, Calvin Hoadley, Jared Pritchard and others formed the Waterbury Land Company to buy the township from the Connecticut Land Company. In 1808, Sally Bronson named the township and became its first teacher. In 1809, the first church […]
16-47 Monteith Hall
Monteith Hall was built in 1835 as the residence of Reverend John Monteith (1788-1868) and family. Before coming to Elyria as the first superintendent of the new high school, Rev. Monteith was an educator and minister in Detroit, Michigan. He was instrumental in founding the University of Michigan, originally located in Detroit, and became its […]
15-47 Burrell Homestead
In June 1815, Captain Jabez Burrell settled this land after coming from Sheffield, Massachusetts. Five years later the brick homestead was constructed. Five generations of the Burrell family occupied the homestead continuously from 1820 to January 2001 when Eleanor B. Burrell passed away. In 1836, the racially integrated Sheffield Manual Labor Institute, a branch of […]
14-47 Sandstone Center of the World
The City of Amherst was founded in 1811. Beginning in 1847, Amherst developed and prospered around the sandstone industry and its associated quarries. This sandstone proved to be an important economic blessing to our early settlers and is the foundation of Amherst’s existence. Amherst sandstone shows lines of stratification or bedding when exposed in sections. […]
13-47 Oberlin College and Community Founded in 1833 / Abolitionism in Oberlin
Reverend John Jay Shipherd and Philo Penfield Stewart envisioned an educational institution and colony dedicated to the glory of God and named in honor of John Frederick Oberlin, a pastor in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. Early colonists signed a covenant pledging themselves to the plainest living and highest thinking. Oberlin (known as the Oberlin […]
12-47 Jay Terrell and his “Terrible Fish”
Around 1867, along the shale cliffs of the lakeshore of Sheffield Lake, Jay Terrell found fossils of a “terrible fish” later named in his honor as Dinichthys Terrelli. This animal, now known as Dunkleosteus terrelli, was a massive arthrodire (an extinct, joint-necked, armor-plated fish) that lived in the Devonian sea, which covered much of eastern […]
10-47 Helen Steiner Rice
Helen Steiner Rice was born on May 19, 1900, in Lorain, the daughter of Anna and John Steiner. Demonstrating an early propensity for writing, Helen planned for college, but her father’s death during the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic kept her working at the Lorain Electric Light and Power Company. In 1929 she married Franklin Rice, […]
9-47 The Burrell-King House
Jabez Lyman Burrell (1806-1900), originally from Massachusetts, built this house in 1852. Burrell made his living as a cattleman and farmer, but devoted much of his time serving the cause of abolitionism, helping slaves, who had escaped the South, get to Sheffield and from there to Lorain and across Lake Erie to Canada. He was […]
8-47 The Lorain Tornado, 1924
Just after 5:00 P.M on June 28, 1924, a tornado swept off Lake Erie directly into downtown Lorain. Within five minutes, seventy-eight people lost their lives. Fifteen died in the old State Theatre that stood upon this site, as an audience of two hundred watched a Saturday afternoon musical performance. More than one thousand suffered […]
7-47 John Mercer Langston
The first African-American elected to government office in the United States, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) won the office of Clerk of Brownhelm Township on April 2, 1855. Born in Virginia and raised in Chillicothe, Langston graduated from Oberlin College in 1849 and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1854, becoming Ohio’s first black attorney. […]