Our Founding

Our founding fathers left their homes in Waterbury Connecticut and headed west to find new opportunities in the Western Reserve of Ohio.  Fifteen men left their families behind and hiked 600+ miles to what was to become North Ridgeville- a trip that would take them a month.  They left in April of 1810 and braved the still frigid temperatures, with ice still present on the lakes and rivers. They carried basic supplies on their backs and made their way west towards the beaches of Lake Erie – the only open route. At Buffalo, New York, they bought heavy farm tools and charged one of their party, Lyman Root, to accompany the tools to Cleaveland via a sailing ship.  The vessel itself is unknown, and it might have been smaller than the one portrayed in the right side of this panel.  The group planned to meet in Cleaveland, which was a still a recently settled town.  The ship must have had favorable winds, as it arrived in only seven days- a day before the others arrived by foot.  The Cuyahoga River mouth was blocked by a large sand bar. In addition, spring floods had cluttered the area with limbs and vegetation and the stench of the decaying vegetation was horrific. The left side of this panel shows their shipment being rafted across the sandbar into the river using poles. When the group reconnected with Lyman and the tools, some went 20 miles south to Columbia to borrow pack animals from their relatives, who had established a community there the previous year.  With this help the heavy items were hauled to Columbia.

Our 15 pioneers celebrated and recuperated in Columbia briefly, and on May 10, 1810, accompanied by some Columbia settlers, they carried whatever they could on their backs up the narrow and sometimes swampy Indian Trail (now Root Rd.) into their new township (Twp. 16-6).  They had exchanged their Connecticut lands to Ephraim Root for first choice of over a quarter of the new township and so, named this area “Rootstown” in his honor.  Before choosing their permanent farms, they set up a work camp. Two acres were cleared and a crude Bachelor’s cabin was built using crotches of young trees.  The cabin was a cross between a wooden tent and a normal cabin with a bark roof and it was large enough to sleep eighteen on it’s dirt floor.  The men slept on beds of leaves at first and a fire outside the open end kept out mosquitoes and wildlife.

During the summer of 1810 they operated out of this cabin and they were able to clear four farms and build four cabins.  In early July, Tillotson Terrell brought his wife Electa and three young children, as he built their cabin.  Weekly supplies were still brought in on their backs, but a shortcut road was being built to Columbia.  It was a couple more years until this “old mud road” became wide enough for a wagon and it was rarely dry enough to use.

The late Fall of 1810 the bachelor cabin became the winter resident of Noah Terrell and his family.  We assume the open end was closed and log walls were chinked to warm it’s residents over the cold winter.

Because the farm clearing and cabin building had progressed so well, David Beebe Jr. walked back to Waterbury, Ct. to lead the families west to Ohio.  Their two-ox drawn wagons were each led by a horse.  Riders included six women and twelve young children. Four men provided the necessary human muscle to work the wagon out of trouble.  Asa Morgan assisted part way to get them past the hazardous Cattaraugus Creek.  The group used a different route using the Lake Erie beach to the Rocky River, then up the river valley to where it meets the current Center Ridge Rd.  Wagoners preferred to cross rivers where they were wide , shallow and slow-flowing.  Sometimes people and precious cargo were ferried across first, sometimes extra oxen were hitched to each wagon for a surer easier crossing.  The valley was very heavily forested. (not as depicted in this panel)

Where Center Ridge Road now stands there was only a winding Indian trial on the floor of the forest.  The underbrush of scrub oak and green briar was so dense in places that even the eye could not penetrate it.

The women and children were temporarily quartered at an inn (cabin) of a Mr. Minor in Rockport. (now Rocky River).  Four men are shown in this scene clearing a path along the ridge, just wide enough to get the wagons through without the brush and limbs shredding the canvas.  The oxen were more often moving logs or grazing than they were pulling the wagons.  At the northeast corner of Rootstown they had to detour around the north side of several hundred acres of fallen trees.  A tornado had created this “windfall” place.  This barrier of horizontal giant trees was then thickly overgrown with brush and grapevines, which thrived in the unusual sunlight that flooded down to the forest floor.

The men worked for four days to clear and travel the final twelve miles from the Rocky River to the center of Rootstown.  They arrived at their new homes October 25,1810- just before the cold November rains.

This shows a typical farm here in Rootstown.  These farms were narrow holes carved into tall dense forest.  Usually little sunlight would reach the ground in this area, but tall trees did not grow in the swamps which lined the south edge of the ridges.  These openings allowed some extra sunlight to reach their sun-hungry crops in midday.

When the young families arrived in Rootstown (to be renamed Ridgeville in 1813), they found completed cabins in which to spend the winter. Some crops had already been harvested, while winter crops were growing.  These humble homes were a crude substitute for the fine frame homes they had left back in Connecticut.  These new cabins had dirt floors, except for two planks used to support their bedsteads.  They had no fireplaces, only open fire pits in the middle of the single room. Holes left in the roofs channeled away the smoke.

Standing water and lazy creeks were unfit for drinking, but springs of clear ground-filtered water emerged on the north sides of the ridges.  Water had to be carried in from the spring regularly.  The flat lands with subtle ridges lacked the charm of their familiar New England hills, but flat land was welcomed by the farmers more accustomed to rocky slopes.  Though cluttered with stumps that would take decades to remove, the soil was indeed deep and fertile as promised.  One generation later the region would host many large productive farms with handsome framed houses.

Illustrations done by the North Ridgeville High School Class of 2010.