History of Farmington

FARMINGTON
Ending its Second Century

by

Dorothy Sloan Anthony

The Founders
First settlers came to Farmington (Ohio) from Connecticut in 1805 and many of the subsequent villagers also came from there.  In 15 years 375 people resided in the township.

Josiah Wolcott purchased 1,000 of the 17,000 timbered acres of the unnamed township and formed a party to make the six-week trip to explore the Grand River property.   With his nephew, Lewis and his brother Theodore, son Horace and Gad Hart fought their way through the wilderness to the assigned purchase.  There in the vast land they chopped a hole in the forest and wintered in a lean-to on the south side of the present Main Street where the Anthony home now stands and where the Kibbee home was later built.

The enthusiastic men constructed log cabins for their families, one north of East Farmington, one at the Center and the other on present day Second Street in the village.  They made the return trip to Connecticut and came back with their families and the scanty possessions that could be transported on horseback on the narrow blazed foot path across the mountains.

The Wolcott family is of English ancestry and Lewis was the eighth generation from Henry, the founder of the Wolcott family who emigrated to America in 1628.   Lewis retraced his steps to the frontier with his parents and family and settled on land near Farmington which was ever afterward the home of the family till the mid 20th century.

An epitaph on Farmington's first burial stone in Hillside Cemetery tells a mournful tale:

       "Parents and friends, a long adieu: I leave this wilderness to you;
       My body lies neath the stone.  The arrests of death you cannot shun."

Mary (Polly) Wolcott, daughter of Josiah fell into a stream enroute to the new country and succumbed to an ensuing illness.  Her death, the first in the township was December 2, 1808.

One week later the first birth in the township was Caroline Wolcott, later Mrs. George Holmes.  In December that year Lewis Wolcott and Nancy Higgins were the first to wed and their son, Joseph, was the second child to increase the scant population.

Other families filtering in were those of Zenus and David Curtis, Elihu Moses and Gad Hart.  In the 1820 census there were 53 households with ten of these being Wolcotts,  In the 1880 census there were still 10 Wolcott families.

Village of Henshaw
Samuel and Luther Henshaw had made the original survey in 1804 and 1805 and when the settlers arrived the township with its few rude shelters was known as Henshaw.

It continued under this name till the first election was held in 1817 and was changed to Farmington for Farmington, Conn.  Qualified electors voted for justice of the peace, clerk-treasurer, overseers of the poor, fence viewers, appraisers of property, constable and supervisor of highways.  Supervisor of highways was rather a pretentious title for most of the roads were only recognizable by blazes on trees and few bridges afforded river crossing when the water was high.  First hard-surfaced roads were built here in the 1920's.

The village wasn't incorporated until 1891 with a mayor and council.

The State Road to Painesville from Warren, running across the southwestern section of the township was long used without bridges or roadwork.  The first bridge on Grand River was near East Farmington on a route from Warren through Bristol to Mesopotamia.

Most of the pioneers engaged in farming. Of necessity, families had to be nearly self-sufficient, save for the milling of grain.  Tilling, sowing and harvesting were accomplished in the maze of tree stumps and fallen trunks.  The agrarian community extended well into the 19th century but because of its railway facilities it became a manufacturing and industrial center.

A narrow gauge railway first carried passengers from Youngstown to Painesville as the Painesville and Youngstown Railroad Co.  By 1873 the railroad was known as the Painesville, Youngstown & Pittsburgh.  This made Farmington as accessible as any inland village.  When this became successful the line became the property of the Baltimore & Ohio RR. Passenger service continued until the early 1930's and freight service was maintained until the B&O terminated its rail service here in the 1970's.

Austin D. Kibbee, active in promoting the growth of the community, served in the state legislature from 1864 till 1868 and was instrumental in getting the railroad through Farmington.

Industry Begins
At various times there were cheese factories, cabinet work that turned out tables and chairs, pail and basket factories and asheries.  For 25 years it was the home of the "Never Slip Fence Stretcher", founded by long-time Mayor Frank Hart who had the distinction of serving 16 successive terms.  He was a descendant of the early Gad Hart family which came early and intermarried with the Gillettes and were prominent in business and professional pursuits.

Other endeavors were an up-to-date grain elevator, foundries and bending works, brick kilns where the clay was dug for many of the brick homes in the area and for foundations for others.

Early entrepreneur Austin Kibbee had the most flourishing mercantile business between Painesville and Pittsburgh, operating until 1895.  Part of his business was transacted from his establishment where the Willrich apartments have been reconstructed on Main Street, and part from his home across the street in the present John Anthony home. It was the oldest house now standing and was entered on the tax list in 1827.

John Anthony Home

  A factory for making baskets on property adjacent to the R&J Auto Sales (on Main St.)  lasted into the 20th century.  The first structure burned in 1900 and was rebuilt. Various industries used the factory after the company moved to Warren, until the 1920's when basket-making was resumed. 

The Miller Table Company which went out of existence in 1910 was originally a cabinet works and employed up to 75 men.  A company known as the Equipment Manufacturing Co. took over the table company and made a truck factory of it.   Wagon trucks were made there and at a foundry located in the old basket works and castings for the trucks were molded.  The entire plant burned in 1893 and the Equipment Mfg. Co. moved to Conneaut.

The Miller Table Company

About 1880 when drilling for water for the table company, gas was struck at 384 feet on the northwest corner lot of Main and Fourth Streets.

A factory for the manufacture of cane-seated chairs operated until its failure in 1895, and in the late 1880's a Bending Works produced sucker rods for oilwell pumping and other bent pieces.  A veneer plant closed at the death of its owner, D. Marnhunt.

The West Farmington Creamery Co., founded in 1912 as a division of Harmony Creamery Co. shipped 70,000 pounds of milk daily to Pittsburgh by rail.  Utilized was a one-of-a-kind glass-lined tank car knows at the "world's largest milk bottle".   The car returned to the village each night and barefoot youngsters in their overalls climbed inside to scrub down the interior before it was flushed out with hot water and steam from the creamery. 

Creamery Crew	Harmony Creamery

H. J. Clark supervised the plant and a decade later operated a cheese factory until 1944.  Cheese factories had operated in several township locations for undetermined lengths of time.  D. Dana shortly after the Civil War was producing six tons a month.

Saw mills and flax mills were operating within a few years after arrival of the first settlers.

Merchants-Commerce
The village became a trading center after Kibbee established a barter business.  He handled grain, farm products, hogs and beef which were hauled to Cleveland, Painesville, and Pittsburgh, later shipped by rail.  Farm products were traded for groceries and general merchandise as was potash made by Kibbee.

Farmington always had at least one general store, hardware, barber shop, coal and feed supply and funeral establishment which usually was in conjunction with a furniture store.  The shopping district has included a newspaper, the Mirror, published in the second floor of the hardware store, millinery, china and dress shops, beauty salons, confectioneries, wagon and livery stables, farm machinery sales, auto accessory stations, butcher shops, restaurants and railway depot.

The first township store opened on the southeast corner at the Center in 1825 but a tavern was opened in 1810 by William Wilson on Old State Road near Dulkas' Corners when there were only seven families in the township.

The postal service evolved about 1831 on State Road, three years later at the Center and in 1847 in the village.  Hard surfaced roads didn't come to the area until the 1920's.  Mail arrived morning and night by rail.

The southern part of the township was long known as Taftsburg for the Taft families living there.  Farmington had a unique record in early days of being a township of temperance taverns.  Spirituous beverages had to be brought in from other towns or made at home, and it was said the hardest part of making dandelion wine was letting it "set" for two weeks.

Village Progress
Sidewalks of "sawed stone" were laid in 1904.  The town had the reputation of having more stone sidewalks than any other of its size in Ohio.  There were well-spaced streets, village green, steepled church and well-preserved old homes.

In 1896 the Farmers Banking Co. was founded and for a long period of time was a successful institution in the building now used by the U.S. Post Office.  A robbery attempt was foiled by local law enforcement officers when tracks were noted in the snow around the building.  An alarm system was hastily installed and villagers in charge of long-time U.S. and Village Marshal, Will Anthony, kept surveillance in the Stevens store building across the street.   When the alarm sounded the safecrackers dropped their tools and guns and took off across the fields to the edge of town where they escaped on a handcar stolen from the railroad.  They made good their getaway but empty handed, and never again returned.  It closed at the time of the bank crash but all creditors were eventually paid off.

The town got electricity in the 1920's.  It was through the efforts of Mayor Hart that streets were lighted for several years with high powered gasoline street lights and he was one of the main boosters for electricity.

An Opera House, the "town hall", condemned in 1939, was built in 1903 across Main Street from the public school property.  Here home talent actors, visiting entertainers, lecturers, took their places behind the footlights.  Later it was used for Saturday night movies, recitals, school activities, graduation exercises, elections and community gatherings.

Asahel Lewis operated an early hotel in the village which then became the Purser Hotel and was razed for expansion of the public school apartments.

 Lewis Hotel

The Star Hotel was operated by the Coy Family in the building on north Third Street which later housed the Carpenter Funeral Home and still later was divided into apartments.

The State Road Hotel near Dulkas Corners was a stopping place for stage coaches when the town was young.

Cory Hall, a three-story brick seminary building in the present park which was burned in 1911 from a painter's torch, was remodeled for a resort hotel, Ingleside villa, attracting "automobilists".  Near the end of the first supposedly successful season it again burned, rumored to be of doubtful origin.  The building was covered by $10,000 insurance.  The vine-covered ruins stood in desolation until a WPA project filled the basements and leveled the ground.

A room inside the Ingleside Villa

A Heritage of Learning
The New Englanders with a heritage of learning and culture felt the need for schooling for their young folks and within eleven years the three 'Rs" were being taught in a log building.  The first district school was opened on the northeast corner at the Center in 1816, taught by Almira Hannahs of Nelson who later married Erastus Wolcott.  The following year a cabin for schooling was built in the village where Kibbee later built his store.  East Farmington also had a school after 1818.

The present location of the public school building has been used since 1886 when a frame building was constructed.  In 1912 it was moved to make way for a brick school.  Tom Cox, local carpenter, mason and former sparring partner of John L. Sullivan, moved the frame building to East Main Street.  It was subsequently used as an apartment house, and for some time as the VFW hall.  Two structures burned on the school site before the present one was built.

Knowing that education meant progress the earnest settlers in 1828 pooled their money and built Farmington Academy to augment the education received in the log schoolrooms.  This was a brick structure on Main Street where the Opera House afterwards stood.  Rev. Dan Miller from Hartford, Conn., identified with the Presbyterian Church and then the Congregationalists was the first teacher at the academy which served all of northern Ohio as the first preparatory school.  By 1850 it proved inadequate and was moved and known as Farmington Normal School.  Popular subscription then provided funds for Western Reserve Seminary, opened on what continues to be known as College Street.

The Seminary

The far-famed academy was in the spotlight for 70 years, made accessible by the railroad.  The campus, the present village park consisted of three acres of lawn and shade trees on the north side of the street and two acres on the south where the fire station now stands.  Three structures included Cory Hall, built in 1881, a three story dormitory for young ladies and the principal James Greer and his family, and a two story men's hall, 'Thunder Caste' with a live-in professor to subdue high spirits.   College authority was initially exercised by the Congregational Church.

Cory Hall

In 1854 the Erie Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church took control and established it as a seminary. Attendance averaged 300 students a year and brilliant young men in stiff collars and modest young ladies in long gowns were sent out to remarkable careers.

Enrollment fell off as centers of education changed and the last commencement was 1906.  The buildings were sold, remodeled and the short-lived Universal, Commercial and Industrial College of America opened.

Fire played havoc.  It was rumored among the villagers that the fires were of incendiary origin as there seemed to be adequate insurance.  The last of the buildings was destroyed by fire in the first decade of the 20th century.

Pictures of the Seminary burning

Seminary Who's Who
Among prominent educators who taught at the seminary was Platt R. Spencer, founder of the Spencerian system of Penmanship.  Nellie Wright was music supervisor for the lst two years of the seminary's existence.  She was a graduate of the State School for the Blind in Columbus.

The institute probably turned out more famous personages than any other institution of its size in the country.  Included mong those who received their education there was Asa Jones, former lieutenant governor of Ohio and prominent lawyer of Warren and Youngstown; Sen. William Stewart of Colorado who walked from Mesopotamia every day; Newton D. Chalker, wealthy attorney of Akron and benefactor of Southington; Charles E. Kennedy who made the Plain Dealer the most powerful newspaper in northern Ohio; James H. Kennedy who wrote "The History of Cleveland"; Clarence A. Darrow, world famous criminal lawyer; Charles A. Dana, assistant Secretary of  War for Abraham Lincoln and later editor of the New York Sun; Probate Judge Pickering of Cleveland; Probate Judge Wilbur A. Reeves of Trumbull Co., Judge John M. Stull of the Trumbull Bar and Ohio Lieutenant Governor; Junius Dana who founded Dana Musical Institute' Rev. Ira Gillette and his wife Edith Riggs Gillette who served many years in the African mission field, and numerous others.

In recent years, the late Judge Lynn B. Griffith who lived on a farm north of the village rode his mustang down to town each day to attend classes.  He didn't stay in Thunder Castle but stabled his horse across the street in Grandpa Griffith's barn at the Shakespeare Cottage.  In 1972 he said he thought he was the only former student still living.  Judge Griffith served 19 years on the Common Pleas bench in Trumbull County, twelve years as a member of the Seventh District Court of Appeals and three years as judge of the Supreme Court of  Ohio.  He never forgot his ties to Farmington.

One of the most distinguished alumni of the academy was C.E.W. Griffith, uncle of Judge Griffith, who was a world renowned Shakespearean reader.  He was said to be the only elocutionist in the world who had committed the entire 36 plays of William Shakespeare to memory as well as many of Dante's works.  For several years he made annual tours abroad until crippled at the age of 25 while on tour.  Mr. Griffith traveled nowhere without his 'secretary-manager', John P. Callahan.  Though this evinced an occasional eyebrow raising, no one made comment as arrangements of this kind were not acceptable a few decades ago.

The Griffith home became his hobby and he modeled it to resemble the quaint English bungalow of Anne Hathaway with a plaque, "Shakespeare's Cottage" gracing the doorway.  Throughout his 30-year career his summers were spent here at the cottage on the southwest corner of College and Fourth Streets.  The vine-covered cottage was the showplace of the community with a veritable treasure trove of rare books and paintings in oil at which he was also accomplished.

Two views of Shakespeare's Cottage

Early Religion
Great grandfather began Sabbath meetings early, aware of the benefit of discipline.  Though Farmington through most of its history has been a one church community, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Baptists, Evangelists, Spiritualists, Mennonites and Methodists have promoted their doctrines.

A Congregationalist church was organized at the Center on a union plan in 1817 by Rev. Joseph Badger and Abiel Jones with 11 members.  In 1820 it was placed in charge of  the Grand River Presbytery and in 1860 it became wholly Presbyterian.   It continued until 1860 and then became purely Congregational.

The first missionaries and preachers were Rev. Badger, Leslie, Darrow, and Jones.  The latter apparently believed in caring for body as well as soul for he was the first doctor as well as preacher.

A frame building was built in 1828. It was 40 by 50 with a steeple and was used continuously till 1850.  The next structure was built at a cost of $1500.   A congregation founded in the village by Rev. Dan Miller in 1834 continued till 1866.  Its first edifice on the corner of College and Third St. stood for more than a century.  The first concrete structure in this part of the Connecticut Reserve, it was known as the 'The Mud Church'.  After serving for a house of worship, the building was used until the 1930's for storage and sales of machinery.

Seven members formed the first Methodist class in charge of Rev. Ira Eddy in 1818 in the log school at the Center.   The congregation sat on wood blocks and the sleepers of the building.  The village class was organized in 1822.  The present Methodist property was bought from Chauncy Taft, June 4, 1866 and the church was built in 1868.  Plans called for a brick building but when the kilns were opened, only enough bricks for the lower courses had hardened and the building was completed of lumber.  Rows of buggy sheds extended across the rear of the church lot until the 1930's. 

Allen Groff, early settler in Farmington and brick maker, contracted for the early brick buildings, many of which are still standing.  These included the seminary buildings, the old academy, the Lewis Hotel razed for school expansion, houses throughout the township and foundations for many others.  Brick kiln ponds can still be found on area farms.

A new parsonage was built in 1887 scheduled to cost $1000 when finished with another $200 for a horse barn.  The actual cost turned out to be $1500.  A chimney fire caused the parsonage to burn in March 1894 and was rebuilt the following July.

Social Life
Many popular lodges and clubs have at one time met in Farmington.  When the Knights of Pythias in 1894 erected their new temple still standing on College Street, Western Reserve Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons also met in the hall for some time and considered building a third story for their own use. This did not materialize and the Masons moved to a second-floor meeting room in the "Spiritualists" Hall across the street, since demolished.  They built their own temple on Main Street in 1940.   Both lodges had their women's affiliates, Pythian Sisters and Order of Eastern Star.

Through the years there have been foreign missionary societies, temperance organizations, Chamber of Commerce, Cemetery Association, grange, conservation, social and mother's clubs.

For a patriotic community which sent out more than 100 to serve with the Yankees in the Civil War, it was imperative that a chapter of the Gand Army of the Republic be formed with its auxiliary, Women's Relief Corps.  The Second World War prompted the development of a post of Veterans of Foreign Wars and its Ladies Auxiliary.

Probably the most interesting thing about the village is the people who have lived here and made it thrive and become the community it is today.  Early comers were not interested in setting the world to rights---only their own bit of America.   They weren't so busy earning salvation in the next life that they couldn't enjoy this one.

As nature has granted life like a loan, so the brave pioneers granted ownership of property to be used and transferred to future generations.

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01/17/03