When I moved to Ohio more than two decades ago, one of the first local history stories my late father-in-law told me was about America’s earliest nationally-covered murder trial. Did you know, he asked, that the murderer is buried right here in Pittsfield, the township immediately north of Wellington? He lent me a book to read about the trial, though I confess I do not recall its title. During my recent investigation of the town clock, I found myself telling that story to a lifelong village resident, who had never heard it before. After our conversation, I looked up the details of the crime, both to refresh my own memory and to confirm that I had not relayed anything inaccurate. I learned that yet another book has now been written about the case, and courtesy of the Oberlin Public Library I was able to read it this week. The book, published in 2025, is called The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson.

I will not go into great detail about the case; there are numerous books and articles that have been published about it, dating as far back as 1833. (There are also websites that offer summaries and images to those who want a quicker fix.) But the facts, in brief, are these: In December 1832, a young factory worker called Sarah Maria Cornell was found hanged in the fields of a Tiverton, Rhode Island (today Fall River, Massachusetts) farm. Though the immediate presumption was suicide, subsequent investigation and a sensational public trial revealed the victim had been raped and impregnated by her Methodist minister, Ephraim Kingsbury Avery. Letters discovered among her personal effects suggested that Cornell and Avery arranged a secret meeting at the Tiverton farm to negotiate his paying child support–to use a modern term–in exchange for her silence. Instead, Cornell and her unborn child were found dead, leaving behind only a slip of paper in her rented room that instructed, “If I am missing enquire of the Rev. E. K. Avery.”

Avery initially fled the state, but was tracked and remanded for a trial that made headline news across the young nation. Pioneering a victim-blaming strategy all too familiar in our present day, Avery’s attorneys argued that Cornell was, by turns: mentally unstable; a thief and pathological liar; a whore suffering from horrific venereal disease contracted from one of her multiple previous lovers (any one of whom could have fathered her child); besotted with her married minister but enraged enough at his rejection to kill herself and their child simply to frame him. The minister, by contrast, was presented as the embodiment of humble Christian virtue. The jury found insufficient evidence to prove Avery’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt and he was found not guilty on June 2, 1833.

While the standard of evidence may not have been met for a jury conviction, the court of public opinion had a lower bar. Avery was widely believed to be guilty of both the rape and murder of his parishioner. Though he tried to rehabilitate his public image by publishing a pamphlet telling his version of events, followed by a dismally received speaking tour, the minister was burned in effigy multiple times and nearly lynched by a crowd in Boston. It may be hard to believe today, when the tidy, white spires of Methodist churches dot the American landscape, but in the 1830s Methodism was considered an upstart, pernicious sect. Staid Congregationalists found Methodists’ charismatic preaching style and unmonitored backwoods tent revivals (precisely where Cornell claimed Avery raped her) to be at best heretical and at worst, socially catastrophic. Part of the intense public anger over Avery’s acquittal was likely rooted in this widespread distrust of his religious affiliation, and the belief that those who testified on his behalf–smearing Cornell’s good name in the process–were simply Methodists closing ranks to blindly defend one of their own, regardless of his actual guilt or innocence.

I recommend Dawson’s book, which details not only the murder and trial, but also tells the story of Rhode Island author Catherine Read Arnold Williams. Williams was convinced of Avery’s guilt and conducted her own investigation into the facts of the case, beginning mere months after the murder. Her work, Fall River: An Authentic Narrative , was published in 1833 and can lay claim to the title of first “true crime” book ever printed in America. Dawson also convincingly argues that the case inspired Nathanial Hawthorne to pen his most renowned work, The Scarlet Letter (1850). The novel tells the story of a woman made pregnant by a cowardly minister, who hides the shame of his paternity even as the woman’s life is nearly destroyed.

Ephraim Avery eventually fled New England to try and outrun his own notoriety. He moved his wife and six children to Pittsfield, surrounded by other members of the extended Avery family. He died there in October 1869 and is buried in the Pittsfield cemetery on Route 58, just four miles straight down the road from my house. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if I could locate any local obituaries. The Lorain County News made no mention of the scandalous past, reporting only, “AVERY.–In Pittsfield, on the 23rd inst. of heart disease. Mr. Ephram K. Avery[.] Aged seventy years. The funeral services were attended at his residence by a large number, on Sabbath last” (10-27-1869, pg. 3). The Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph had more to say. Avery’s death would surely bring to mind, they wrote, “the circumstances of an excitement about the year 1833, which, for intensity and wide spread prevalence, has scarcely been excelled by any of the thousand and one events that have since absorbed the public attention.” The deceased was “suspected, arrested, and tried, both in civil and ecclesiastical courts, as the author of [an] atrocious homicide…the excitement on the subject was as intense in Ohio and other distant States as in Massachusetts. One-half of the people believed him innocent, and the other half were well-persuaded of his guilt” (11-13-1869, pg. 1).

I am also well-persuaded of his guilt and I suspect, reader, that if you pick up Dawson’s book or any one of multiple others, you will be, as well. The only two people who know the full truth are of course long gone from the world. Ephraim Avery left his mortal remains in Pittsfield. Sarah Maria Cornell eventually found her eternal rest in Fall River’s Oak Grove Cemetery, not far from an even more infamous local resident, Miss Lizzy Borden.

A few days ago, I was invited to visit Wellington’s First United Methodist Church to see a truly unique piece of history. My hosts were Tim and Leslie Simonson, whose beautifully restored home on South Main Street I wrote about all the way back in Wellington’s bicentennial year of 2018. Mr. Simonson repairs clocks in a workshop located in a barn behind his home, and the object I was asked to look at had apparently been biding its time there for a quarter-century.

The massive piece, mostly made of cast iron atop a wood-frame base and roughly the size and shape of a weaving loom, is the mechanism that powered Wellington’s town clock (and accompanying bell) from 1869 until–it is believed–the mid-1950s. It is at least 160 years old and perhaps older. Mr. Simonson has been in possession of this wonderful object for roughly 25 or 30 years and told me quite interesting stories about it past.

The gears are made of cast iron, with a single bronze wheel. No maker’s marks or any identifying information has been found on the component parts, though given its design Mr. Simonson believes it could date as early as the 1830s or ’40s. He recalled hearing that the mechanism was donated or purchased second-hand from a congregation in New England; unfortunately, I have not yet been able to verify that. The object was designed to both power a tower clock and strike an hourly bell. It had no external power source but was wound, by hand, once a week. Mr. Simonson assures me that the object is still in working order, and if wound and maintained would perform its intended function even today.

At some point after the current Town Hall was built in 1885 (more on that below), the mechanism was relocated from the Methodist Church steeple. It was installed in the Town Hall’s attic, accessible for winding only via a ladder that passed through a narrow trap door. A hole was cut through the attic floor to allow a six-foot pendulum and three heavy weights to hang down, like a grandfather clock but at massive scale. The third floor of the Town Hall used to serve as a ballroom and these components were visible to anyone using that space, though enclosed for their protection. Mr. Simonson told me a wonderful story about the clock rope breaking in the 1950s, sending a weight crashing down through the floor and into the second-floor clerk’s office below, and said this was part of the impetus for replacing the aging works.

At some point in the mid-twentieth century, the mechanism was replaced with something more modern that did not require manual winding. The old workhorse remained in the Town Hall attic for years, until it was given to local jeweler Paul Robinson. A young Tim Simonson helped him disassemble the components for removal. When Mr. Robinson died, the object somehow made its way to Ashland, Ohio, about thirty miles south. An Amish craftsman accepted the unusual piece in lieu of payment for a job and years later, offered it back to an amazed Mr. Simonson, who recognized it at once. And so it made a full circle journey home to Wellington and spent the next three decades in a clock shop on South Main Street. (Mr. Simonson tells me the original dials and pendulum are in the Town Hall basement to this day.)

Wellington’s First United Methodist congregation is celebrating its bicentennial this year, so the wonderful motor has been put on display inside the church. The Simonsons invited me to come take a look and I offered to do a bit of research in period newspapers, to see if we could learn anything else about its history. Within a few hours, I had pages and pages of notices related to the construction of the church, the installation of the bell and clock, and in later years, the fierce public debate over where the clock ought to be located. Below is a small sampling.

"The New Church. Our citizens are all aware that the Methodists here are building a fine Church, but we venture few of them have an idea of its beauty. Last week we examined the spires and lineal, wrought from galvanized iron by E.Y. Kneeland, of Buffalo, N.Y. The work consists of six gothic spires and the lineal, all wrought in such a manner as to resemble carved wood or sculptured stone. We do not believe a better job in this branch of mechanics can be found in the State of Ohio. The designs were by J.L. Hillier, of this place, and place him high in his profession as an architect. The walls of the building are rapidly growing, and will soon place all other structures in town in the shade" (Lorain County News, 7-24-1867, p 3).

"Severe Accident. On Sunday several boys were in the steeple of the new Church when one of them, — Clifford, jumped on a trap door, breaking it through and falling a distance of twenty or twenty-five feet, to the entry below, striking on a barrel, breaking his collar bone, dislocating his shoulder, and cutting him severely. He was taken up insensible and carried to J.H. Wooley’s, where he was attended by Dr. Rust. In the afternoon, he was taked [sic] to his home, some two miles from town. We think there is some one blamable in the affair, first in allowing boys, or any one else, to be clambering about the steeple on Sunday, and second in making man traps or boy traps in such dangerous places" (LCN, 5-6-1868, p 3).

"Clock and Bell. The Ladies of our village secured the right to the commissary department of the Fair, and erected a large dining Hall, and fed the great crowd in admirable style, and we are glad to state at a good profit to themselves as the funds will go towards a bell and clock in the new Methodist Church. Their profits we have not learned, but from estimates it will not fall short of three thousand dollars" (LCN, 10-14-1868 p 3).

"The bell for the new church arrived last week, and was placed in position on Saturday, and played well its part on Sunday. The weight of the bell is about twelve hundred pounds. It has a very fine tone" (LCN, 12-9-1868, p 3).

"The Town Clock is in position, and presents a ‘striking’ appearance. It was put up by a gentleman named Bill, from Cuyahoga Falls, O. The clock will cost not far from 500ドル. The money was mostly raised by subscription, and from various festivals and exhibitions gotten up for the purpose. It is a very pretty piece of workmanship and is a credit to the builders and an ornament to the Church and village" (LCN, 8-18-1869, p 3).

[Excerpt from an article about a proposed installation of city water.] "The question now is how can the Council get a tank elevated sufficiently to force the water to all parts of the city. It has been recommended that they build a tight floor immediately over the town clock, fasten up the small windows in the steeple of the church and force it full, then lay the pipes to all parts of the city, and in this way get the water distributed. It really looks as if such an arrangement would not be satisfactory, but we do not wish to dictate to the majority" (Wellington Enterprise, 7-3-1879 p 3).

In the less than two decades between construction of the church and construction of the current Town Hall, Wellington underwent a radical evolution. The cheese boom of the 1870s, made possible by a heavily-trafficked rail line, meant that Wellington became a significant regional commercial center. For business people of that era just as now, time was money. The entire nation was in a protracted period of switching over to standardized time zones, and the town found itself arguing incessantly about both the change and the clock. What time should it reflect, and who should be responsible for maintaining it? Should the village council offer financial support for something so obviously important to the life of its citizens, even though it had no legal say over the privately purchased time piece? The Wellington Enterprise commented on the matter again and again throughout the late 1880s.

Here is a typical notice: "The town clock has not been of any benefit to the public for many months. Mr. Wight, the jeweler informs us that the clock is good for forty years of actual service if kept running and properly cared for. The council have declined to appropriate any funds for the care of it, claiming they had no authority. We hope that the incoming council will take the matter in hand and appropriate money and set the clock to going, and if any tax-payer complains, his portion shall be remitted to him. An intelligent public are not likely to enter a protest against any appropriation of money for a public benefit and of so small an amount as it would require to keep a public timepiece moving and in repair" (WE, 4-3-1889, p 5).

I have not yet been able to confirm the exact date when the clock moved from the church to the 1885 Town Hall, but it did not happen right away. As late as 1890, William Vischer was appointed to a committee “to receive the clock now in the belfry of the Methodist church, from the hands of the legitimate owners, with a view to turning it over to the Council,” (WE, 2-5-1890, p 5). Thirteen months later, the clock was still in the belfry and the council was approving the purchase of boots for one E.S. Johnson, a town employee tasked with maintaining the clock. Johnson apparently needed boots so he could “conduct the weights to the cellar, in case the ropes should break, to avoid damage to the belfry as has been the case on previous occasions" (WE, 3-4-1891, p 5). Apparently the Town Hall was not the only building damaged by broken ropes and falling weights.

I feel so fortunate that people around the village want to share their particular souvenirs of Wellington’s past with me and with each other. So many fascinating stories are brought to light by a single object. And it always makes me wonder what else is tucked away, waiting to be discovered in nearby attics and basements. Right now, this wonderful object is out for all to see and appreciate in the Methodist Church. Go and see it if you can.

This spring, I chanced upon a listing on an online auction site for a nineteenth-century photograph taken in Wellington and still housed in its original wooden frame. It was an image I had not seen before and appeared to have close-range views of several downtown buildings, so I purchased it. Life then got in the way, as it often does, and for several months the frame sat untouched on my work table. But today is Veterans Day in the United States, so it seemed an appropriate moment to share it with all of you.

The image depicts at least fifty-five members of Hamlin Post 219, Wellington’s local chapter of the GAR. I have written about the Grand Army of the Republic before; the fraternal organization for those who served the Union during the Civil War began the first Memorial Day observances in 1868. May 30th was the annual date designated for commemorations and this photograph captures Wellington’s 1887 parade group. Most of the men hold small bouquets of flowers, presumably distributed by the “GEO. L. SEARS, FLORIST” wagon just visible at left-center. These might have been tokens presented for their own service or might have been intended to lay on military graves. A careful examination reveals a second group of men clustered behind the GAR line; I suspect those are members of the marching band that always accompanied the solemn procession from Town Hall to both Pioneer and Greenwood Cemeteries.

In order to reach the photograph, I first carefully disassembled the frame. This meant removing frayed wire and small screw eyes that were not original but still old enough to no longer be a trustworthy hanging method. Once I was able to lift away the piece of scrap wood used as a backing board, it became evident how dirty the entire object was. After cleaning all the components, I could finally see that the image itself was in perfect condition and remains clear and crisp 138 years later.

Removing the photograph from the frame also allowed for scanning at a high resolution, making it easy to enlarge and reveal details more difficult for the naked eye to perceive. Unfortunately, there are no extant issues of the Wellington Enterprise from 1887 that might have provided us with a list of participants that Memorial Day. But the Wellington Genealogy Group maintains an online membership roster for Hamlin Post 219, including studio portraits and obituaries when these are known. It would be a fun challenge to use the identified resources and try to put names to the men who marched in that parade so many decades ago, now themselves long among the Dead.

This is a topic I have long wanted to write about but was not sure I could do justice to it without a great deal of in-depth research. I am still not convinced but want to at least document a significant fact about the history of the village and note that it deserves future attention.

I have written before about the opening of the railroad line through Wellington in the summer of 1850. In early November that same year, the federal census was taken. Scrawled in the margins of several pages are things like “Rail Road Contractors” and “Irish shanty.” Since I am of Irish heritage, that last caught my eye. I assumed the people recorded on those lines were hired manual laborers living in the township temporarily. Short of investigating each individual name, I was not certain how to learn more.

I recently decided to take a closer look at the 1850 census, carefully counting the places of origin for all 1,556 residents. What I found was a bit astonishing. I have noted in this blog several times that 19th-century Wellington was a diverse place, with a significant part of the population born outside the United States. Doing this statistical analysis allowed me to put concrete numbers behind that assertion. In the 1850 census, one-quarter of the village–25% or one out of every four people–was not born in America. Here are some of the totals:

• Ireland (236)
• England (41)
• Canada (18)
• Germany (10)
• Isle of Man (3)
• Scotland (2)

[Note that this is strictly a tally of the “birthplace” column. There are households–one mentioned below–where not every member was born abroad. So it is important to remember that while there were 236 people born in Ireland, if the number of Ohio-born children from those families was added the total number of ‘Irish residents’ would be even higher.]

As a sidebar, among those born in the U.S. I found sixteen home states represented–at a time when there were only thirty-one. Ohio, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are all to be expected but there were also residents from as far afield as Louisiana, Mississippi, and even one William Clark, a teenage carpenter and joiner who gave as his birthplace “Cherokee Nation” (pg. 2). Since Clark was born around 1832, I believe this refers to territory in Georgia, Cherokee ancestral homelands before their 1838 forced removal by U.S. troops to reservations in “Indian Territory,” present-day Oklahoma. William Clark may have been a child survivor of the Trail of Tears.

While many of the Irish people recorded in the 1850 census had come to the village specifically to construct the railroad (and apparently remained in Wellington as a “home base” even as the daily work of extending the tracks shifted farther away) there were Irish people living in otherwise non-Irish households whose residency was entirely unconnected to the infrastructure project. Richard Maxwell, for example, was a nineteen-year-old shoemaker–likely an apprentice of some kind–living in the home of Massachusetts-born Philo Herrick, also a shoemaker (pg. 2).

Though single male laborers usually lodged together in groups, there were also family units like Michael and Ellen McDonnell, who had six children; five had been born in Ireland but the youngest, Bridget, had been born in Ohio just nine months before (pg. 4). Parkinson Lewell, a forty-one-year-old farmer, had seven children with wife Jane but all had been born in Ohio. Since their eldest was a twenty-two-year-old son, that couple had presumably emigrated a quarter-century earlier (pg. 5).

I always imagined the railroad worker “shanties” grouped around the tracks, probably in the northeastern quadrant of the village where a Roman Catholic parish would be founded in 1851. The census gives a more nuanced picture. Though there are several large clusters of Irish names, they are spread across the entire document, appearing on 23 of 38 pages and suggesting places of residence broadly dispersed across the town.

This single topic is complex enough that one could easily write a book about it. Researching these individuals, learning how far they traveled in their lifetimes, whether any ever returned to Ireland–how many settled in Wellington permanently–would reveal countless stories of the immigrant experience in America. It is difficult to even conceive of something similar happening today. If one-quarter of the 1850 census subjects were foreign-born, and our current population (according to the 2020 census) is around 4,800 people, it would be the equivalent of over 1,200 construction workers suddenly arriving to build a state-of-art underground superhighway. Imagine the increased road traffic, the unfamiliar faces, the long lines at grocery stores and restaurants.

Actually, when I write it out like that, it just sounds like Fair Week.

If you read my recent two-part history of the house at 210 South Main Street, you may recall learning about a piece of firefighting equipment with a bit of a murky past. Even its proper name has proven elusive: is it a pump truck, a hose carriage, or a hand pump? Was it made in 1880 or 1830 or neither? Is it the first fire engine used in Wellington or does it have no connection to Wellington whatsoever…or some as-yet-unknown third scenario? The answers to these questions have recently become (slightly) clearer.

To recap: Mayor Elbridge G. Fuller formed the first volunteer fire brigade in the village and its first engine, purchased in 1881, was named in his honor. There is an early firefighting vehicle in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum but it is definitely not that ‘E. G. Fuller’ engine. As it happens, though, the vehicle at the Ford does seem to have a Wellington connection.

I was in correspondence with curatorial and research staff at the Ford Museum for several months, trying to resolve the mystery. Their object file–calling it a hose carriage–had little additional information. "This vehicle is said to have been built originally for the Humane Hose Company of Cleveland, Ohio. It was sold to the Cleveland Veteran Volunteer Firemen’s Association in 1896, presumably as a parade vehicle, and in 1920 to the Lorrain [sic] County Volunteer Fire Association of Vermilliion [sic], Ohio. Henry Ford purchased the carriage in 1930."

My friend and fellow local historian, Marilyn Wainio, is currently going through every early twentieth-century issue of the Wellington Enterprise on microfilm, for a different research project. She spotted an article on the front page of the August 20, 1920 edition that may provide the connective tissue between our town and the Ford’s object. It describes the annual convention of the Lorain County Firemen’s Association, held in the city of Lorain that year. “Wellington fire-fighters were in attendance in goodly numbers, besides other citizens of this place,” it reads. But the real star of the show was a recently acquired antique.

“A hand pump, built in 1843 and used for years by volunteer firemen in Ohio cities, and a dozen members of the Cleveland Volunteer Firemen’s Association were the center of attraction in the parade in the afternoon. Lorain was crowded with visitors. More than 500 volunteer firemen from other cities were there. The members of the association firemen from Lorain, Medina, Oberlin, Wellington, Elyria, Vermilion, Huron, Amherst and Cleveland were present. Interest was shown in the old fashioned fire fighting apparatus, the old Cleveland hand pump and the Amherst pump.” Given that both the object file and the article mention a transfer of the vehicle from the Cleveland group to the Lorain County group, for the purpose of parade use, and both note the year 1920–the year this ‘hand pump’ or ‘hose carriage’ first appeared in Lorain County’s parade–it seems likely this is the same object.

How Henry Ford came to learn about this antique fire truck and purchase it for his new museum (which would open to the public in 1933) is still unknown to us. If the vehicle was used in local parades for a decade, it likely made a stop in Wellington during that time. We also have photographs of the village brigade in 1890, posing on Public Square. Similar equipment appears in the background of both these images. So the mural on side of the Town Hall remains both attractive and historically accurate. I’m sure we are all relieved.

The first time the story of Wellington’s naming appeared in print was 1876, nearly six decades after the village was first settled. Washington W. Boynton (1833-1916), a one-term state representative born in New Russia Township, gave a lengthy Centennial Independence Day address in Elyria that was later printed by the Western Reserve Historical Society. The Early History of Lorain County clocked in at more than sixty-five pages, of which Wellington got just one-and-a-half. That section closed, “The town was named after William Welling, one of the first settlers. The then recent achievement of the Duke of Wellington, on the plains of Waterloo, may have inspired a ready acquiescence in the suggested name. Welling subsequently took up his residence in Medina county” (pg. 346).

Three years later, The History of Lorain County, Ohio expanded the tale. “In selecting a name for the township, the honor of naming it was put up and struck off to the highest bidder. The bid being an offer to chop out roadway, the highest offer to chop, linear measurement, to win. Charles Sweet bid eighty rods, and the naming of the township was accorded to him. He named it Charlemont, which was not acceptable to the rest. They offered to do Sweet’s job for him, he surrendering his right to name. He consented, and Wellington was the name agreed upon, to the satisfaction of all concerned, some favoring that name through admiration of the Iron Duke, others through a desire to honor their compatriot, William T. Welling, one of the first five who came, so that all were gratified” (pg. 351).

I have always been skeptical of this story. The glories of the Battle of Waterloo aside, I find it difficult to believe that a community of Massachusetts farmers, one generation from the end of the American Revolution, would name their new settlement after a British military commander. And America’s relationship with Britain had not improved in the interim. Harriet Ingersoll Nesbett (1807-1886), one of the earliest residents of Grafton, chronicled her family’s journey west and observed, “Buffalo is just rising from its bed of ashes,” a reference to the burning of that nascent city by the British Army during the War of 1812. That event happened just two years before the Ingersolls passed by, and four years before the Wellington contingent.

The alternative explanation–that the village was called after “first settler” William Welling–felt more plausible. But Welling is not listed in the 1820 federal census of the as-yet-unnamed Township 3, Range 18 (then Medina County) leading me to wonder how long he stayed. I knew nothing about the man to investigate. Until now.

Fellow local researcher Marilyn Wainio, currently making her way through microfilm reels of early twentieth century Wellington Enterprise issues, sent me an article she thought I might find interesting. Published in March 1914, it is a letter to the editor from Norton T. Horr, explaining how the town was named. Citing “recently discovered facts,” Horr wrote that the first four settlers from Berkshire County, Massachusetts (namely Ephraim Wilcox, John Clifford, Charles Sweet and Joseph Wilson) traveled “by the way of Albany and the Mohawk Valley. Passing through Fort Plain in Montgomery county, New York, they were joined by William Welling.” He added that “the town was organized in 1821, at which time it was given the name of Wellington, after the William Welling who then lived there, but who shortly, thereafter, removed to Medina county, where he married and reared a family” (pg. 8). Though Horr frustratingly never explains where his “recently discovered facts” originated, here at least were biographical details that could be verified.

And this is what I learned: William Tyron Welling was born in 1793 in New Brunswick, Canada, to a Loyalist family that lost everything and fled the colonies during the American Revolution. The Wellings returned in the early nineteenth century to the young United States, settling in New York. Twenty-four-year-old William did join the 1818 expedition that clear-cut ground to establish what we now call Wellington, but he himself moved to Grafton, then onto Medina. He appears in legal documents, tax records, and 1830 and 1850 census listings. History of Medina County and Ohio (1881) names him a Medina County sheriff and he also served on at least one state board. Sometime before 1855, he relocated wife Harriet Sophia Curtis Welling (1805-1884) and a portion of their large family–at least twelve children born over a mind-boggling thirty-eight years–to Wisconsin. He died in 1876, an early settler of yet another town called Black Earth, aged eighty-three. I have been unable to confirm a burial site but as a son killed in the Civil War is buried in the local cemetery, I assume William Welling’s remains are there, as well.

Nothing I discovered strongly contradicted anything in the stories, but I was no closer to being able to prove or disprove them. It occurred to me that it would be helpful to pinpoint the first time the name “Wellington” appeared in print. There are very few primary sources one can consult about the history of the village prior to 1850. I knew that as of December 1820 (date of the federal census), the settlement was officially unnamed. I also own a letter written by Betsey Webster Manley DeWolf (1798-1879) to her family in Massachusetts, datelined “Wellington July 22, 1822.” My theory was that sometime between January 1821 and July 1822 the name came into common use. But how on earth could I find evidence from such a narrow window of time? County tax records don’t begin until 1824 and the earliest ones do not include town names, they simply differentiate between “resident” and “non-resident.” There are no state or federal census records, no local newspapers, no journals so far as I know. And then it hit me: real estate transactions.

I began by visiting the Lorain County Recorder’s Office in Elyria but the county was not formed until 1822, the first deed books not created until 1824. By sheer luck, looking through the first volume I found two transactions made by Joseph Kingsbury “of Wellington” that did not get officially recorded until years after the fact. The earliest one dated to May 25, 1821 (vol. A, pg. 141-42).

I then went to the Medina County Recorder’s Office. The staff was somewhat dubious when I explained I did not have a specific name to research, that what I wanted to do was start with the earliest volume and go through it manually. They were a bit skeptical that I would find anything related to Wellington at all. But 560 oversized pages later, I had notes on more than thirty property transfers made between 1818 and 1822, most pertaining to land within the township but also deals made by Wellington residents concerning land elsewhere. The deeds were transcribed into the volume in the order they were received by the office, but sales were sometimes not recorded until long after they were made. I assume this is due, at least in part, to the challenges of traveling to the county seat in that period of time.

Because of this quirk of the recording system, the first place in the volume where “Wellington” is written is page 348, a pair of land purchases made in May 1821. But these are not the earliest use of the name. That distinction belongs to Frederick Hamlin “of the Township of Wellington” who signed a deed March 1, 1821 that was not officially recorded until seventeen months later (pg. 499).

Another record in the same volume puts William Welling in Grafton as witness to a deed signed there in February 1819. Why does this matter? It raises interesting questions. Consider this: according to the tales recounted in these published histories, there was a core group of four men who left the Berkshires together to break ground in what is now Lorain County. Along the way, they picked up a fifth man as an additional laborer, one who had no other connection we know of to any of them. This fifth man did not remain in the new settlement long–perhaps less than ten months, if the 1819 deed is evidence of Welling’s removal to Grafton.

A close reading of the 1820 federal census supports the idea that Welling was an outlier. Though the list includes only seven actual names–the white, male heads of households–we can fill in the gaps based on gender and age categories by matching, for example, John Clifford or Frederick Hamlin’s children with their “boy” and “girl” hash marks. Likewise, Hamlin’s line noted “One Physician” which must be Dr. Daniel Johns. Each subsequent county history featured names of settler groups and the year they arrived, which are consistent enough that I am confident I can identify all but three of the residents on the 1820 census.

Of those forty-five (excepting three locally-born infants) there were just three people not born or raised in Berkshire County. As Betsey Manley wrote her family in 1822, “[I] do not feel myself among strangers but living with those with whom I have ever been intimately acquainted.” Two of the three not from Massachusetts were women born in Connecticut and New Jersey, both married into Berkshire families. The third was William Welling. Does it seem plausible that a group of people who knew each other prior to emigration, whose lives were “intimately” interwoven by marriage and kinship networks back in their home state, would name their town after the sole person not part of the web, a man who seems to have left after less than a year’s residence? Bear in mind, too, that if Welling did move to Grafton as early as February 1819, the first recorded use of “Wellington” does not appear until more than two years later.

Obviously, I cannot definitely say one way or the other. I’m sure my skepticism is evident. Just for fun, allow me to toss another theory into the mix. Some of the proprietors back in New England recorded on deeds in the same Medina volume were from a place called “Willington” in Connecticut. (Frederick Hamlin and Charles Sweet were also born in Connecticut, which had strong connections with the Berkshires because north-south running rivers like the Housatonic were critical transportation and commerce highways.) In some of the earliest records, the area that would become Wellington was referred to as “New Connecticut,” the entire region of course being part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. An 1821 transaction involving Betsey Manley’s husband, Josiah, and her brother, Russel B. Webster, described them as “both of a place called New Connecticut in the state of Ohio” (pg. 490). Another deed from July of that year says that Joseph and Martha Kingsbury are “of Willington” (pg. 400).

Wouldn’t it be funny, I texted my husband jokingly from the Recorder’s Office, if in the tradition of Grafton, Pittsfield, Springfield, etc. this Ohio village was supposed to be named after a community in New England, not a British general? Wouldn’t it be funny if it was supposed to be called Willington and a fortuitous misspelling stuck somewhere along the way? Perhaps the 1818 tree-chopping competition actually happened; perhaps it was misremembered or even completely invented after the fact. (The creek that runs west of the village through Pittsfield is called Charlemont Creek, so they didn’t hate the name too much.) I had a chuckle and didn’t think more about it. Later, I decided to look into Willington, Connecticut, to see if there was some link to the Berkshires or to a particular family that I could identify. I started with Wikipedia, looking for citations of period sources I could check. And in the history section I read this: “Named ‘Wellington,’ in May 1725, from Wellington, Somersetshire, the birthplace of Roger Wolcott’s grandfather Henry Wolcott. However, when incorporated in May 1727, the town’s name was written as ‘Willington.'”

Reader, I am still chuckling.

In February 1907*, R. H. Kinnison sat down in his capacity as superintendent of Wellington’s public schools to write a letter of community support for a grant application. The village’s Methodist Church, led by Pastor Thomas W. Grose, had decided to ask internationally-known philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) to help buy the congregation a new organ. This is not as outlandish a request as it may seem; while Carnegie is remembered today as the nation’s greatest supporter of public libraries, he also loved organ music. A Manual of the Public Benefactions of Andrew Carnegie (1919) claimed the industrialist helped purchase more than 7,600 of the instruments, of which over 4,000 were in houses of worship across the United States. Interestingly, Ohio received more assistance (440) than any other state except Carnegie’s adopted home of Pennsylvania.

[*This letter is likely hand mis-dated “1906.” All subsequent materials in the application date to February/March 1907, with the award letter arriving that April. The catalog record for the application is also dated 1907. There is no indication in the correspondence that the process dragged on for more than a year.]

The superintendent wrote: “Dear Sir~Induced by your many generous bestoments [sic] in so many worthy ways, I make free to present you our need, namely a good organ for our Methodist Church here in Wellington. This village has a population of about 2500, has good churches, good schools, good people, but none of whom are possessed of much wealth. Our church structure has a fine auditorium seating from 800 to 1000, including our Sunday School Annex. But our organ is wholly unsuited to such conditions. We have a one manual organ, small in size and not good in tone. We have had it some 35 years, and it is much worn. Our membership numbers something over 300, but none of our people are possessed of large means, and we do not feel able to purchase such an instrument as we need. We would like at least a two manual organ, of good size and tone, one costing 2000ドル or 2500ドル. May I ask your cooperation in our effort to secure such an instrument. Should you feel kindly and generously disposed in the matter, we would be pleased with any proposition you may make us as to what you would do in supplementing our own efforts. Awaiting your reply, and trusting it may be of such a nature as to assure us of your continued generosity, I remain, Very Sincerely Yours, R. H. Kinnison.”

How do we know what Kinnison wrote that day? Because the entire application still exists. Those readers following my research into 210 South Main Street may remember it was owned for decades by the Vischer family, who sold pianos and organs from an elegant showroom on what is now West Herrick Avenue. After I published my most recent entry on that house, the current homeowners–who also happen to belong to the Methodist Church–received an email from Ms. Kathy DeRuyter. She has been looking into the history of the congregation in preparation for its 2026 bicentennial. It was Kathy who first ran across a mention that Andrew Carnegie had sent money toward buying a new organ, and she who initially discovered that all the applications have been digitized and are publicly available through the Columbia University Libraries website. Here is Wellington’s application.

Reverend Grose responded to the required questionnaire that the “present Instrument” was thirty-five-years old and had cost 1,100ドル at the time of purchase. The writing is cramped and a bit difficult to read, but Grose added an interline addendum that seems to say, “Built by Geo. H. Ryder, Boston.” If his estimate of the organ’s age was correct, that would put its acquisition around 1865. William Vischer, Sr. began working as a traveling organ salesman during the Civil War. His obituary in the Wellington Enterprise noted, “Hearing that the Methodist church of Wellington wanted a church organ, and there being such an instrument in stock, he came to Wellington and sold the organ to this church, which many of the present members will remember” (3-25-1914, pg. 4). Vischer’s “day job” was as a school teacher in Cardington but his first child had just been born and he no longer wanted to be a traveling salesman. Before the end of the war in 1865, he had relocated his young family permanently. It seems the instrument Grose wanted to replace was the very one responsible for bringing the Vischer family to the village.

Another letter of support was submitted in February 1907 by a man called Karl Wilson Gehrkens, a teacher from Oberlin who described himself as “in no way connected with the Methodist church in Wellington, except that I go to Wellington (10 miles south of Oberlin) on Friday evening to drill the choir and on Sunday to direct the music of the church services.” Amusingly, he submitted the letter on printed stationary that proudly proclaimed him both “DIRECTOR M. E. CHOIR WELLINGTON, O.” and “CONDUCTOR WELLINGTON CHORAL SOCIETY.” Gehrkens might have been writing his own honest opinion but may also have been playing on Carnegie’s sympathies when he bemoaned Wellington as “one of those old towns where there was at one time considerable wealth, but which have made no industrial progress in the last few decades, and which have consequently no attraction for the progressive business man, and which have for that reason grown poorer instead of richer as the years have gone by.” Bear in mind that the choirmaster was writing barely twenty-five years after the high-water mark of the cheese industry. Many of the most impressive homes, civic buildings, and business blocks in town date to the period he describes as one of no progress.

In April 1907, the church received a letter indicating that Carnegie would provide up to half the cost of a 2,000ドル organ. Should the congregation elect to purchase something more expensive, he would go no higher than a 1,000ドル contribution. Church records reflect that he made good on his word. Since the 1908 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans contained at least twenty house models that could be fully constructed for under 1,000,ドル it was a substantial gift.

Interestingly, there is a relevant image in the Wellington Family Album collection that is from a real photo postcard (see above). According to the library catalog record associated with the picture, it had the following message hand-written on its reverse: “Wellington, Nov. 13th, 1903, Mrs. H.G. Brown, Kalamazoo, Mich.; My dear Dell, I rec’d your letter yesterday. We are well. This is a photo of our new organ. We dedicated it last Friday night, with a concert. Now we are looking for you anytime...Alelia P. Curtis.” Given that the Carnegie grant was not received until 1907, I am wondering if the inscription on this postcard was mis-transcribed. It is possible that the date which appeared to be “1903” was actually “1908.” After purchasing such a fine instrument, it makes sense that the Methodist congregation would want to commemorate its installation with a celebratory concert and possibly souvenir postcards.

I wonder if they mailed one to Mr. Carnegie?

ADDENDUM: Out of curiosity, I went to Herrick Memorial Library in the hope that they had the original real photo postcard depicting the organ in their collection. They did not. I then looked at the Wellington Enterprise for the fall of 1908, but could find no mention of a November concert or dedication ceremony for a new instrument. Unfortunately, there are no extant issues of the newspaper between October 7, 1903 and January 13, 1904, so I am not able to double-check that year. Unless additional information turns up within the church’s records, it looks like this little mystery will remain unsolved.

The house at 210 South Main Street has somehow, over the years, acquired the persistent misnomer of “the Tripp house.” I think there are multiple reasons for this. First, the house is mislabeled in the local walking tour brochure, an error which I believe traces back to documentation nearly fifty years old. In 1977, an Ohio Historic Inventory sheet was prepared for the property which called it the “E. S. Tripp House” and despite the fact that a grandson of the Vischer family was listed as the singular source of information, no Vischers were mentioned in the section titled, “History and Significance.” Second, the actual E. S. Tripp residence is no longer standing but like 210 South Main, it was a ramshackle old structure converted late in life into apartments. It’s possible two similar stories have become conflated in public memory.

But generations of the Vischer family lived on the west side of South Main Street, from approximately 1866 until the late 1940s (with direct-but-differently-surnamed descendants living there decades beyond that) while the Tripp homestead was on the north side of Mechanics Street, what we today call East Herrick Avenue. At one point, the Vischers owned three contiguous properties fronting South Main, a sort of family compound. The Tripps, meanwhile, expanded the footprint of their original residence until it was massive enough to comfortably hold both extended family and employees of their famous carriage works.

And of course, by the late nineteenth century the two families were linked through marriage. The one Tripp we know for certain lived at 210 South Main had been married to a Vischer for nearly two decades before she moved in.

In order to tease all these disparate strands apart and hopefully clarify the history of the property currently being rehabilitated on South Main, I will need to digress just a bit into the history of the Tripp family and their home on what was then East Main. We will also be meeting two William Vischers, one who owned but never lived in the house at 210, and one who did. Son William (the house occupant) was known to family and friends by his middle name, Bentley, sometimes appearing in the newspaper as “Bent,” so to minimize confusion I will refer to him primarily by that name.

William (1838-1915) and Marietta Edwards (1846-1924) Vischer
Owners 1881-1906

William Vischer was of Dutch descent, as were many of Wellington’s earliest Berkshire settlers, who often traced their own roots to the Hudson River Valley in the days when that body of water emptied into the harbor at New Amsterdam. Vischer was born in Saratoga County, New York in 1838. According to a biographical sketch in History of the Western Reserve (1910), he moved to Ohio “during the last years of the Civil War” and taught school at Cardington, a community sixty miles southwest of Wellington, which is today about half its population size. He is then said to have moved to New London, still working as a teacher, before settling in Wellington in 1867 “as a representative of the Estey Organ Company.” I actually found a notice in the Lorain County News of “Mr. Wm. Vischer, of Wellington” selling “his superior monitor organs” locally in 1866, but that is the tiniest quibble.

When William relocated to Wellington to sell musical instruments in 1866/67, he was already married to Marietta (or Etta, as she was often recorded) Edwards, also of Saratoga County, and the couple had a toddler son. By the time of the 1870 federal census, young Bentley Vischer was six and had gained a sister, Lillian, just two. At around this same moment in the life of the young family, William Vischer had a series of photographs taken by his friend, James B. Clark of Cardington.

During my research for this post, I connected with Mr. Aaron Davis, who is writing a book about Clark and his photography. It was he who first told me of Vischer’s life-long connection to Cardington; when J. B. Clark died the Morrow County Independent reported, “Mr. Vischer, of Wellington, an old friend, sang a solo at the [funeral] services” (11-10-1904). It was also Davis who informed me that Clark began doing more outdoor photography in the 1870s, after a fire in his studio, and that he tended to shoot in sets, a house image taken in the same “session” as a separate family portrait. Mr. Davis owns three beautiful Clark stereoviews taken in Wellington in the 1870s–two of Vischers–and once I knew what to look for, I was able to identify four more locally.

A question people frequently ask me is if I know where they can find a picture of their nineteenth-century house as it “originally” looked. For a brief but exciting moment, when Aaron Davis shared a stereoview labeled “W. B. Vischer Home, Wellington, O.” I thought I could provide that answer to the Hattons, current owners of 210 South Main. But upon closer examination, I realized I could not. The house in that image (shown above) is brick, while 210 is wood frame construction. That photo was most likely taken in the 1870s, decades too early to describe 210 as the home of “W. B. Vischer,” as we shall see. So what is that house? Well, William Vischer (Sr.) did live in a brick house in Wellington in the 1870s, the brick house one lot south of 210, the house that would eventually be numbered 216 South Main and be demolished in 2009. I believe the J. B. Clark stereoview shows 216 South Main Street a decade before it underwent the expansion and modernization documented in both the Wellington Enterprise and the Oberlin Weekly News in 1882.

In 1881, when Mayor E. G. Fuller decided to return his family to New York, William Vischer apparently could not pass up the opportunity to purchase the house next door. Deeds and corporation tax records show that he bought Fuller’s residence and land for 2,800,ドル commencing seven decades of 210 South Main belonging to the Vischer family. Son Bentley was still a teenager when his father bought the house, which immediately disproved my early theory that William acquired the property as a home for future grandchildren. In fact, though Bentley would marry six years later, he and wife Carrie Ann would not move into the house at 210 until 1906, a full quarter-century after his father first obtained it.

This raises two obvious questions: 1) who was living in the house during that twenty-five year period? and 2) why wasn’t Bentley living in his father’s “extra” house? As to the first question, I can offer a partial answer. I believe that for at least a few years, William Vischer rented the house to his own employee, John Charles Cole. Charlie Cole emigrated from England to America around 1885, and joined the Vischers’ household staff in 1890. Unfortunately, the federal census for that year no longer exists, but Cole is included in Wellington’s tallies for 1900, 1910 and 1920. In the 1900 census, John C. Cole, a naturalized citizen from England employed as a hostler (i.e. someone who cares for horses), was renting the house numbered 266 in the document; household 265 was William and Marietta Vischer.

In the photo at the top of this post, Charlie Cole is shown holding the reins of two horses. It is evident just how close together the houses at 210 and 216 were and how convenient a living situation for the person responsible for managing Vischer transportation needs. In later censuses, Charlie Cole was described as a “laborer in a private house” and–after William’s death–as Marietta Vischer’s “servant/gardener.” By then Cole was in his fifties and, more importantly, the family had transitioned from horse-drawn to horsepower: William bought a 1909 Chalmers 30, a luxury touring automobile he drove all over the county. 1910 was, not surprisingly, the first census in which the Vischer household included a listing for “chauffeur.”

William Bentley (1863-1948) and Carrie Ann Tripp (1861-1940) Vischer
Owners and Occupants 1906-1940/48

So where was Bentley Vischer living in those intervening years after his father purchased 210 South Main? He attended college at Cornell University, graduating in 1884. Returning home to Ohio, he joined his father’s piano and organ business on Liberty Street (today’s West Herrick Avenue), forever-after known as William Vischer & Son. In May 1887, he married Carrie Ann Tripp in her family home on East Main Street. “These two, dating back to high school days and perhaps even earlier, literally personified the saying of ‘two hearts that beat as one,'” wrote their contemporary Robert Walden (b. 1868) who lived opposite the couple on Dickson Street for decades. Every available source, including newspaper notices, the 1896 and 1903 Wellington village directories, the 1900 federal census, and a half-dozen inclusions in the periodic Cleveland Blue Book, all put Bentley and Carrie Ann on East Main Street, living in the Tripp family home.

I could write an entire, lengthy post on just the evolution of the Tripp house. From a lovely but simple frame structure, it expanded over time in width and length, until it was unrecognizable from its earliest days. Though not stamped “Clark’s Stereoscopic Views,” there is a photograph that is otherwise identical to the ones I have already included, with a distinctive yellow backing card. It is hand-labeled “Tripp House” on the reverse and I believe it shows the East Main Street residence before its massive growth spurt. An unidentified photo with it shows three little girls in a backyard setting, and I can’t help but wonder if among them are the two youngest children of Edward and Adaline Tripp: daughters Adelaide and Carrie Ann. (There was a twelve year gap between the two oldest and two youngest Tripp offspring.)

In 1906, ownership of the house at 210 South Main transferred from William Vischer to his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Carrie A. Vischer. (It was common practice to put the family residence in the wife’s name, to protect it against foreclosure in the event of business failure.) That same year, a dozen notices appeared in the Wellington Enterprise, describing extensive changes Bentley and Carrie Ann were making to their new home. For example, on April 11th the paper reported, “The residence of Mr. W. B. Vischer is being transformed into a large and pretty home. The main part is raised as is the north wing and both are now two stories. The front will be adorned with a large porch, which will make it pleasant indeed. Good improvement” (pg. 2). Tax records and Sanborn fire insurance maps confirm 1906 as the year the house got a full second floor and the distinctive porch for which it is locally famous.

We do not know why Bentley and Carrie Ann decided to move out of her childhood home after nearly twenty years of marriage, though her mother did die in early 1903. Nor do we know why they nearly doubled the square footage of their new residence when they would be living in it with just a single housekeeper and a daughter old enough to soon marry and move away. They remained at 210 South Main until Carrie Ann’s death in 1940, with Bentley dying eight years later. Their only child, Mary Vischer Richardson, briefly inherited the house but she was sixty and living in Cleveland so quickly sold it. The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram noted in 1950 that “the property has been unoccupied for several years, since the death of Mr. Vischer, a noted piano and organ man in Wellington” (5-2-1950, pg. 11).

After The Vischers

Regular readers of the blog will recall my aversion to writing about anything after the turn of the twentieth century. Carrying the Vischer story to 1950 brings me a full five decades beyond my comfort zone. I prefer, whenever possible, to avoid writing about people known to the still-living. So I will only briefly sketch the story of 210 since it was turned into an apartment complex. From 1950 to 1976, it was owned by Rolland and Marian West, hence the name West Apartments. John and Mary Rallis of New York owned it from 1976 to 1984. In that year, Eugene Collins–himself a resident of the building since 1960–purchased it. After his passing in 2009, his widow, Dellavene, kept it until nearly the end of her life. In total, the Collins family’s tenure rivaled that of the Vischers: sixty-three vs. sixty-nine years. Consider this final and rather extraordinary fact: for three-quarters of its 175 years, 210 South Main was primarily associated with just two families.

There is a lovely symmetry to the idea that as this remarkable house evolves into its third phase of existence–from single-family residence, to apartment building, to whatever its future holds–the greenspace directly opposite is entering the third phase of its history. It was Wellington’s earliest fairgrounds, then spent a century-and-a-half as the village’s main school campus. Now it is being reimagined as a wonderful park, complete with playground, jogging path, picnic area and bandstand–a true public commons. If history is any guide, the best predictor of how Wellington will change and grow into its third century may well lie in the hands of the next chain of people to call 210 South Main Street home.

For years, I have kept a piece of paper on which I jot down ideas for future blog posts. At this point, it mainly lists individual houses I would like to know more about and questions I have been asked, for which I did not know the answer. At the very top of that list is a single query I received over and over, both in person and through multiple comments posted to this blog: why is the west-running side road just south of town center called Magyar Street?

The issue came up again recently and I was determined to settle it, once and for all. Magyar Street was already so-named by the time of Wellington’s 1852 plat map. I always assumed–erroneously, as it turned out–that it likely originated as the family name of an early resident on that land. (See also: Johns Street, Hamilton and Adams Streets, Dickson Street, DeWolf Street.) But in combing through both federal census records and an 1857 village map that lists plot owner names, I learned there were no residents called Magyar in nearly the entire history of the town. Not only that, but all the mid-nineteenth-century residents had names of decidedly English-origin: Seely, Wooley, Lang, Smith, Wadsworth.

It can be very difficult to research anything that happened in Wellington between its initial settlement (1818) and 1850. Really, there is scant documentation of any substance prior to the Civil War-era of the early 1860s. Village Council records begin at incorporation in 1855. There are three extant maps from the 1850s, with varying amounts of useful information. Federal census records for the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s list only male heads of household and tell us virtually nothing about anyone else, especially compared to the wealth of demographic data (age, place of birth, level of education, marital status, profession, etc.) provided by later surveys. After checking county histories, cemetery records, and Oberlin and Wellington newspapers both published long after the fact in the hopes of finding a lucky reference to the past, I was no closer to any answer.

In desperation, I posted my own query to the Wellington Genealogy Group Facebook page. I asked if anyone had ever heard a family story about how the street got its name. In less than twenty-four hours, a page follower called Laura Kostyn solved the mystery. “Believe Lajos Kossuth gave a speech here following the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848?” she wrote.

And Laura was absolutely correct. Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894) was a Hungarian nobleman and journalist who briefly became Regent-President of Hungary during its rebellion against the Hapsburg Empire in 1848-49. Despite issuing a Declaration of Independence, the nation’s military efforts to free itself from the rule of a foreign empire ultimately failed. Kossuth went into exile, traveling first to Great Britain and then, in December 1851, to the United States.

Considered a revolutionary hero on par with the Marquis de Lafayette by the American people, Kossuth made a wildly popular, months-long speaking tour across the country. He reportedly visited sixteen states and a staggering 152 cities, trying to raise funds to liberate his people. President Millard Fillmore received him at the White House twice. He was given a bipartisan Congressional banquet. Everywhere he went, enormous crowds gathered to cheer him on. In just the surface level reading I have done on the topic, I’ve learned about a Kossuth historic district in Dayton, Ohio; a Kossuth County in Iowa; a community called Kossuth in Salem Township, Ohio; and the fact that there are three statues dedicated to the man in the United States–one in New York City, one in Washington, D. C., and one on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

Kossuth’s memory is particularly treasured in Ohio, because after the failed revolution of 1848-49, Hungarian immigrants began to migrate to the state in large numbers. Today, the Hungarian community in Cleveland, Ohio is said to be larger than any other in the world outside of Budapest. One of the organizations I contacted in doing the research for this post was the Cleveland Hungarian Museum.

So why is it called Magyar Street? “Magyar” is the Hungarian name for the national and ethic group native to Hungary. It is essentially what Hungarians call themselves, though they pronounce the word “MAG-yar.” (The pronunciation of Wellington’s street name has evolved over time into something closer to “Muh-GAR.”) When Lajos Kossuth visited Ohio, he spoke in Cleveland on February 2nd, then departed for Columbus to speak before the Ohio General Assembly on the morning of February 4th. His train route took him right through a host of familiar local locations: Berea, Grafton, LaGrange, Wellington, New London, Shelby, Galion and Delaware.

Kossuth spoke to the Wellington crowd from the back of his train car (and Laura Kostyn remembers seeing a drawing of the event hanging in a local home sometime in the 1970s, though I have not yet been able to track that down) then went on to give a speech on liberty at the Ohio State House that is believed to have influenced Abraham Lincoln when he drafted the Gettysburg Address. “The spirit of our age is Democracy. All for the people, and all by the people. Nothing about the people without the people–that is Democracy!” The enraptured Ohio legislature immediately asked if they could have his personal copy of the remarks, which were bound and added to the Ohio State Library, where they remain to this day.

Lajos Kossuth spoke in Wellington on February 4, 1852. The first plat map of the village was certified by the Lorain County Surveyor barely three weeks later, on February 24, 1852, then signed and sealed by a justice of the peace the next day. From that point on, the road that met the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati railroad line, likely the very spot from which the revolutionary hero greeted the small Ohio village, was forever known in his honor as Magyar Street.

Addendum: It occurred to me after I posted that now that I knew exactly what I was looking for, I might have better success searching the Wellington Enterprise for some mention of Kossuth’s visit. And indeed, I did. On March 12, 1885, the newspaper printed a reminiscence by J. B. Lang, frequent contributor of such “remember when” content. He began with a brief biographical sketch of Kossuth, provided some historical context for his tour of the United States, then wrote: “While on his way from Cleveland to Columbus, the people of Wellington, always full of patriotism and sympathy for the oppressed, assembled at the depot to catch a glimpse of himself and wife [sic]. While waiting for the train, Judge Granger, who was one of the business men, made a speech telling the people that the best way to see and hear Kossuth, was to raise a purse and present to him. Judge G., and I think Dr. Beach, passed their hats and the result was about fifteen dollars. When the train stopped Kossuth stepped out on the platform and received the purse and made us a neat little speech, and gave us a sight of the man and his rather peculiar dress; a soft hat with long black plume on the side, and a cloak with a large cape. These articles became very popular among the people as ‘Kossuth hats’ and ‘Kossuth cloaks.’ His wife sat in the car at an open window where we had a good look at a healthy, dark visaged, dutch woman [I think Lang uses ‘dutch’ to mean ‘Germanic’ but Terézia Meszlényi (1809-1865) was Hungarian] draped in black, with a large three cornered white handkerchief pinned about her neck,” (pg. 5). More than thirty years had passed but Lang correctly remembered Judge Granger presenting the purse, and he came remarkably close on the correct amount. I love the idea of there being a craze for plumed hats and dramatic cloaks in the village in the 1850s!

Six months ago, I published my two-hundredth post on this blog. I thought it quite possibly my last. In the decade since I began 19th-Century Wellington, life has changed dramatically in ways large and small. The world and I have both moved forward and it felt as though this particular project had drawn to a quiet but appropriate end. But if history teaches us anything, it is that life is thoroughly unpredictable and so here we are, dear reader. You and I, together again.

What has drawn me out of semi-retirement? A lovely old dilapidated house, so thoroughly obscured by brush and time that I suspect most of us in the village had stopped seeing it altogether. I certainly never could have guessed its astonishing past, the impressive list of people who called it home. It is no exaggeration to say that the story of this house is the story of Wellington, Ohio.

The town is two hundred years old; the core of the house is one-hundred-and-seventy-five. Our first permanent settlers were from western Massachusetts, as were the first inhabitants of the house. Wellington’s most famous moment came during the Civil War-era, when a young black man was wrested back from slave catchers, leading to a trial that inflamed an already-divided nation. One of the local lawyers present that day lived in the house, and went on to proudly cast Lorain County’s vote in favor of the Constitutional amendment that ensured no citizen’s right to vote would ever again be “denied or abridged” on account of race. And on, and on.

In its 175-year existence, two families owned the house for seven decades each, an astounding fact all by itself. Last fall, it was purchased by the Hatton family, who have just begun a complete historic restoration of the structure. It was they who asked me to investigate the house. Given all I found, I knew a single post would be far too long. Even before 210 South Main became an apartment building in the 1950s, it was already a century old. Below I lay out the stories of the first four families connected with the property; a second post will be devoted solely to the Vischers, the prominent Wellington family that first bought it when Rutherford B. Hayes was in office, selling when Harry S. Truman occupied the West Wing. It is impossible to do justice to the Vischers without also highlighting the Tripps, and their role in building our community.

Honestly, two posts may not be enough.

Hiram S. Couch (Land Owner 1839-1849; Builder of House ca. 1848)

There were actually two Albert Couches living in Wellington in its earliest days. One was a well-known furniture manufacturer who left numerous beds, settees, and bureaus scattered across town, not to mention a stunning home that still stands a stone’s throw from 210 South Main. The other Albert Couch (most likely a cousin) was also a furniture joiner by profession. In fact, several of his brothers and brothers-in-law were joiners and carpenters, including his older brother Hiram.

This second Couch family originated in western Massachusetts, though all but one of the six children–who lived so close together as adults that they are listed nearly sequentially in the 1850 federal census–were born in New York. Hiram Couch was still a boy, perhaps eleven or twelve, when he arrived in a settlement itself not yet a decade old. His mother, Mehitable Fox Couch, was a widow by the time the family landed in Ohio and she eventually remarried local bachelor John Howk. I have written extensively about the Howks; John and Mehitable’s graves still stand together in the Pioneer Cemetery.

Hiram Couch was unmarried and in his early 20s when he acquired the plot that would eventually become 210 South Main. It was then a small part of Lot 27, one of the original four quadrants of the grant that would be Wellington. Couch purchased from brothers Frederick M. and Homer Hamlin, sons of original 1818 settler Frederick Hamlin. County records show the property tax-valued annually at 38ドル until 1848, when it jumped to 238ドル just as it was sold to Charles Foote (see below). This strongly suggests that Hiram Couch erected a small house on the land–probably no more than two rooms deep–and very quickly sold it. He may never have occupied the house. In the 1850 census, he was living with his sister’s family; ten years later, he was living with his brother’s family. Since Couch was a carpenter by trade, he may have built specifically to increase the value of his real estate holdings without any intention of using it as a homestead himself.

Later in life, Couch did eventually marry. Katherine Baird Dimmock was born in Massachusetts and a few years older than her second husband. Her name first appears with his in the 1870 census, when they were both in their late 50s. Hiram died of kidney disease in 1883. His obituary noted that he was living on Mechanics Street–what we call East Herrick Avenue–and that he had been a village resident for more than fifty years. Kate, as she is listed on their headstone, died in 1900. Both are interred in Greenwood Cemetery.

Charles S. & Electa Foote (Owners & Residents 1849-1860)

The Footes were likely the first family to occupy the new house at what is now 210 South Main. They purchased the property for 1,000ドル in 1849. It was during their tenure that Wellington’s plat map was drawn in 1852; from that point onward, the land was legally known as block 1, lot 15.

At the time of the 1850 federal census, taken within a year of the family moving into the house, Charles Foote was a thirty-four-year-old shoemaker from western Massachusetts. Electa Van Deusen Foote was three years younger. The couple had a six-year-old daughter, Mary, and a four-year-old called George. Some documents suggest the Footes actually married in Wellington in 1840 and Mary, at least, is listed on the census as being born in Ohio. But a lengthy biographical sketch of George from History of the Republican Party in Ohio (1898) claims he was born in Alford–his parents’ hometown–in Berkshire County, Massachusetts in 1846. Perhaps the Footes were making a visit home at the time of his birth.

The sketch goes on to say that when George “had attained the age of fourteen years [ca. 1860]…his father, who wished to afford him every advantage possible, offered to send him to Oberlin College, where his sister was then a student” (pg. 49). Because of the coming war, Charles Foote’s business was already “prostrated” and his financial resources “severely taxed,” so George declined the chance to attend college and instead joined his father’s mercantile operation. The Footes closed up shop around 1864 and relocated to Cleveland.

Though their residency in Lorain County was comparatively brief, Charles Foote still had a significant role to play in the village’s history. He was one of the eighty-nine men who petitioned the state to legally incorporate Wellington in 1855, while he lived in the house on South Main Street.

Joseph H. & Mary L. Dickson (Owners & Residents 1860-1875)

Joseph Dickson is the first of two sitting mayors of Wellington to live in the house. He was a local attorney, present the day of the Oberlin-Wellington Slave Rescue, who later served two terms as Lorain County’s representative to the Ohio General Assembly.

Dickson was the Wellington editor for the co-published Lorain County News and his name appears hundreds of times during its thirteen-year printing run. Many editions mention him in multiple sections, including advertisements for his insurance business; notices of upcoming political lectures he was delivering; legal dockets listing his many cases; and personal notes in the Wellington column. Dickson was clearly a person of some ambition and if his press clippings are any indication, he took every opportunity to put his name in front of the voting public.

The Dicksons purchased the house on South Main Street in the tumultuous period between the Slave Rescue of 1858 and the outbreak of war in 1861. (Charles Fuller, meanwhile, briefly took his family to Mechanics Street before their eventual move north to Cleveland.) The house was listed in Mary Dickson’s name–a common step to protect a family residence from loss in the event of business failure–and for fourteen years she was the taxpayer of record.

Joseph Dickson’s role in the early development of the village cannot be overstated. He was postmaster until the spring of 1866, elected mayor in spring of 1867. The first building relocated from Huntington to Wellington was placed on the west side of Public Square to serve as both post office and his law office (LCN, 6-10-1863, pg. 3). Mary Dickson was a founding member of the Lorain County Suffrage Committee and recruited her husband to speak at their first-ever convention (LCN, 4-28-70, pg. 3). Joseph sat on the school board and started the committee to form Wellington’s first library; he was on its first slate of trustees and even vacated his own office when the committee decided it was the perfect location for public lending (LCN, 5-15-73, pg. 2; 5-22-73, pg. 2; 6-12-73, pg. 2).

But the man’s proudest accomplishment was undoubtedly his role in passing the last of the Reconstruction Amendments, which first enshrined into federal law the protection of voting rights regardless of race or color of skin, as well as explicitly protecting the right of formerly enslaved persons to vote. In his biographical sketch in the History of Lorain County, Ohio (1879), in which Dickson paid to include both a portrait of himself (see above) and a full-page illustration of the house he would leave 210 South Main for, he had space for just four paragraphs of text to record his entire life. He devoted an entire paragraph, the longest of the four, to preserving for posterity the fact that he had “contribute[d] something toward the legal recognition of the equality of all men before the law by voting for the adoption of the joint resolution ratifying, on the part of Ohio, the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States” (opposite pg. 352).

What his understated language does not mention is what a hard-fought battle it was. The same amendment had been rejected by the Ohio legislature in 1869. Dickson traveled all over the county, giving speech after speech to drum up public support. By a narrow margin, it passed in January 1870 and was very quickly nationally ratified, becoming the law of the land on February 3rd of that year.

Even after leaving the legislature, Dickson maintained a busy legal practice. He was still highly-regarded as a public speaker and an active politico across the county, chosen to introduce James A. Garfield when he spoke in Wellington in 1879. Garfield would be elected President of the United States the following year, only to die at the hands of an assassin just months after taking office in 1881.

Directly opposite 210 South Main, a side-street runs east to the edge of the village. It is called Dickson Street, an honor bestowed while the family still lived in the house.

Elbridge G. & Chloe E. Fuller (Owners & Residents 1875-1881)

Though his time in both Wellington and 210 South Main was brief, E. G. Fuller left his mark. A butcher who operated a meat shop on Liberty Street (i.e. West Herrick Avenue), Fuller was elected mayor within five years of arriving in town. In the year he served, he organized Wellington’s first volunteer fire department. They named themselves and their fire-fighting apparatus in his honor. We know this because just days after the company formed, there was a large fire in the downtown. It was reported in the February 3, 1881 edition of the Wellington Enterprise:

“Our New Fire Department. The sudden call on Sunday night for our new fire company came a little too soon for their preparations. The organization had not been completed. The first meeting for the purpose was held January 20th…The company was named the ‘Fuller Fire Company’ and the engine the ‘E. G. Fuller.’ A committee was appointed to have the name put on its sides, and [local carriage maker] Mr. Doland proceeded at once to do so, taking off the tongue and brakes to allow it to go to the paint shop on the elevator. The tires needed setting, and the wheels were taken off for that purpose. In this discouraging situation it was found when the [fire] call came…[W]ith the activity and perseverance belonging to them all, within twenty minutes [the firefighters] had it on the street ready for work…[B]ut for them and the little ‘Fuller’ we should now have no store, and the ENTERPRISE no home.” (pg. 3).

Former Wellington Assistant Fire Chief William Brown examined department records and discovered that at some point, the ‘E. G. Fuller’ apparatus had somehow made its way into the early American transportation collection of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Museum staff confirmed this to Brown when he contacted them to verify it. The engine is reportedly in long-term storage, not on public display, but curatorial staff provided Brown with the image above. South Lorain County Historical Society board member (and former board Vice President) Scott Markel used the image as a visual reference for a mural painted on the north side of Wellington’s Town Hall, first station of the Fuller Fire Company.

Fuller hosted the entire town council and the fire company at an oyster supper at 210 South Main later that same month, possibly to thank them for their service during the conflagration. Fifty people reportedly attended (Oberlin Weekly News, 2-18-1881, pg. 1). But just six weeks later, the same newspaper announced Fuller’s intention to return his family to Ellenville, New York. By the time the notice appeared, he had already sold both business and residence. He was only half-way through a two-year term as mayor, so a special election was called to fill the vacancy. The Enterprise announced an auction of household goods at the Fuller residence in April 1881 and days later the family was gone from the village for good.

Are you exhausted yet, dear reader? We have only covered thirty years (!) of history for 210 South Main Street. In part two, I will round out the house’s first century by walking you through the ownership of the Vischer family.

CORRECTION: After two months of corresponding with research staff at the Henry Ford Museum’s Benson Ford Research Center–and through them the museum’s Curator of Transportation–I must offer the following correction. The vehicle pictured above is what is known as a hose carriage, built sometime between 1830 and 1880. Both the vehicle and the image did come from the Henry Ford Museum but though the hose truck is associated with Ohio, it did not come from Wellington. According to the object file: “This vehicle is said to have been built originally for the Humane Hose Company of Cleveland, Ohio. It was sold to the Cleveland Veteran Volunteer Firemen’s Association in 1896, presumably as a parade vehicle, and in 1920 to the Lorrain [sic] County Volunteer Fire Association of Vermilliion [sic], Ohio. Henry Ford purchased the carriage in 1930.” To be clear, Mayor E. G. Fuller did form the first fire brigade in Wellington and its first engine, purchased in 1881, was named in his honor. But the vehicle in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum is not that engine.