Andover

• Pymatuning LakeBuilt 1934 · 17,088 acres

• Clarence Darrow1857-1938Kinsman-raised lawyer who began practice in Andover and Ashtabula and became Ame...

How Andover began

Andover village grew up inside a township first entered in 1805 or 1806 by the unmarried Epephras Lyman and permanently settled in 1808 by Zadoc Steele, the first man to bring a family into the wilderness; the township organized under the name Andover in 1819. A post office at the same spot was named Sharon in 1815 and renamed Andover in 1826. Future U.S. Senator Benjamin F. Wade, who would later preside over the Senate during President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial, settled in the township in 1823 as a young man. The village itself was not incorporated until 1883, the same period the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway built a branch line from Ashtabula to Youngstown through the area. A young, broke Clarence Darrow, freshly admitted to the Ohio bar, opened his very first law office here in late 1879, before relocating to Ashtabula two years later and eventually to a national reputation in Chicago. The village sits today beside Pymatuning Lake and Pymatuning State Park.

Settled 1805 or 1806 (Epephras Lyman, first to attempt settlement, unmarried); 1808 (Zadoc Steele, first permanent settler with a family), incorporated 1819 (township organized); 1883 (village incorporated), by Zadoc Steele, first permanent settler; township named and organized 1819; village grew from the Sharon/Andover post office and the arrival of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway branch line.

Where the name comes from

The village's post office was first named Sharon in 1815, then renamed Andover in 1826, taking the name already used for the surrounding township, which had organized and taken the name Andover in 1819 (having previously been treated as part of Wayne Township). Neither the 1878 nor the 1924 county history gives an explicit origin for the township name itself; New England-descended Western Reserve settlers commonly drew township names from Connecticut or Massachusetts hometowns, and Andover, Connecticut or Massachusetts is a plausible namesake, though no source we found confirms this.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, or site specific to Andover village or township is documented in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1805 or 1806 — Epephras Lyman, of New Hartford, Connecticut, becomes the first white person to attempt settlement in the township, on lot No. 6, living alone in a small cabin for about five years before marrying.
2. June 1808 — Zadoc Steele, having scouted the land on foot in 1806, arrives with his wife and son Walcott by sleigh and team, and becomes the first settler to bring a family into the township, occupying Lyman's old cabin until he builds the first log house.
3. 1809 — Mrs. Laura Steele makes the first cheese produced in Andover Township, from the milk of a single cow.
4. 1814 — Rufus Houghton completes the first grist-mill in Andover, and the same year the first post office is established at Epephras Lyman's house and the first school is taught by Miss Dorothy Houghton in Francis Lyman's log barn.
5. 1815 — A post office named Sharon is established in the area that becomes Andover village.
6. 1819 — Andover Township formally organizes and takes its name, having previously been governed as part of Wayne Township; its territory at first also included what is now Cherry Valley Township, relinquished in 1827.
7. 1823 — Benjamin F. Wade, later a U.S. senator and president pro tempore of the Senate who presided over President Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment trial and stood one vote from succeeding him as president, settles in Andover Township with his father James Wade and brothers.
8. 1826 — The post office is renamed Andover.
9. 1878 — Clarence Darrow is admitted to the Ohio bar after independent study and a brief stint at the University of Michigan Law School.
10. late 1879 — Darrow, newly admitted to the bar and effectively broke, opens his first law office in Andover, a small farming town about ten miles from his hometown of Kinsman, handling routine debts, grudges, and minor disputes for the local farming community.
11. 1881 — Darrow relocates his practice to Ashtabula, a larger city of about 5,000, where he enters local Democratic politics and serves as town counsel before moving to Chicago in 1888.
12. 1883 — Andover incorporates as a village, around the same period the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway builds a branch line through the area from Ashtabula to Youngstown.

Stories

A famous lawyer's first, unglamorous office

Long before he was one of the best-known trial lawyers in American history, Clarence Darrow was a broke twenty-two-year-old with a freshly minted Ohio law license and nowhere in particular to use it. Rather than compete for clients in a larger city, he set up his first office in Andover in late 1879 -- a small farming village about ten miles from Kinsman, where he had grown up -- and took whatever legal work the local community had to offer. It was not glamorous: debts owed and unpaid, grudges between neighbors, small frauds, the occasional minor crime, the ordinary friction of a farm town rather than the headline cases that would later make him famous. He stuck with it for about two years before deciding he was ready for more, moving his practice to the considerably larger city of Ashtabula. It is a reminder that even a career as consequential as Darrow's -- he would go on to defend Leopold and Loeb and to argue against William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial -- started in the same kind of small-town legal grind that thousands of other, now-forgotten lawyers spent their whole careers doing.

A dog that carried the mail between two cabins

Zadoc Steele's family kept a dog named Jewell who had grown fond of the Steeles' nearest neighbor, Samuel Tuttle, six miles away in Williamsfield Township, and would wander back and forth between the two households whenever he was scolded at home. The families noticed and turned the habit to use: whenever an emergency required word to pass quickly through the roadless wilderness, they tied a note around Jewell's neck and sent him on his way. The system was put to the test when Mrs. Steele, recovering from childbirth at the Tuttle home, was taken violently ill after returning to Andover and her husband could not leave her side. He wrote a note, fastened it to the dog, and sent him off; Jewell reached the Tuttles, who read the message and hurried back with the help that was needed. The Steeles' first son, born around this same event, ended up being born not in Andover at all but at the Tuttle place in the next township over, since that was where his mother had gone for care.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · conneautohio.us

Mostly private wells The water here

• Andover-camplands Water76% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Andover Village24% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)

Community health centers (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (4)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 5 of 5 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-09-15

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

Cite this page