Burton

• Seabury FordPerson · 1801-1855

How Burton began

Burton was the first permanent white settlement in what became Geauga County, founded in July 1798 by three Connecticut families -- Thomas Umberfield, Isaac Fowler, and Amariah Beard -- who laid out a town square in the style of a New England village green. Two Ohio governors' contemporaries, Peter Hitchcock and Seabury Ford, made their homes here; Burton also claims Ohio's first telephone station (1877) and was the site, in 1972, of the human-cannonball performance that became the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co. Century Village, the Geauga Historical Society's outdoor museum of relocated nineteenth-century buildings, sits on the square today. Burton had 1,407 residents at the 2020 census, according to Wikipedia.

Settled July 1798, by Thomas Umberfield (also spelled Unberfield), Isaac Fowler, and Amariah Beard, previously of Washington County, New York -- the first permanent settlement in what became Geauga County.

Where the name comes from

Not found in the sources consulted.

Before the town

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

Timeline

1. 1798 — In July, Thomas Umberfield, Isaac Fowler, and Amariah Beard and their families make Geauga County's first permanent settlement at Burton, laying out a town square patterned after New England village greens.
2. 1799 — Lottie Umberfield, born at Burton that spring, is recorded as the first birth in the territory that becomes Geauga and Lake counties.
3. 1806 — Peter Hitchcock, who had moved to Burton with his wife in 1806 as one of the township's first families, is admitted to practice before the Ohio Supreme Court and becomes one of Geauga County's first attorneys; he later serves 28 years on the Ohio Supreme Court, 21 of them as chief justice, and is elected to the U.S. House.
4. 1849 — Seabury Ford, who moved to Burton with his parents in 1804 and married Burton's Harriet E. Cook in 1828, is inaugurated Ohio's 20th governor on January 22, having won the 1848 election by just 311 votes -- he is the last Whig to hold the office.
5. 1855 — Seabury Ford dies at his home in Burton and is buried at Welton Cemetery, where Peter Hitchcock is also interred.
6. 1877 — Burton is the site of what is remembered locally as the first telephone station in the state of Ohio.
7. 1972 — On August 30, performer Hugo Zacchini's human-cannonball act at the Geauga County Fair in Burton is filmed in its entirety, without permission, by a Scripps-Howard television reporter.
8. 1977 — On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co. that the First and Fourteenth Amendments do not shield a broadcaster from liability for airing a performer's entire act without consent.
9. 2020 — U.S. Census records 1,407 residents in Burton village.

Stories

The human cannonball and the Supreme Court

On August 30, 1972, Hugo Zacchini performed his family's signature act -- being shot from a cannon into a net -- at the Geauga County Fair in Burton, the same fairgrounds that neighbors the Century Village museum on the town's historic square. Zacchini had asked a Scripps-Howard television reporter not to film the performance, but the reporter came back the next day and captured the entire fifteen-second act anyway; it aired that evening on the Cleveland station's news. Zacchini sued, arguing the station had appropriated his professional property -- his whole act, not just a clip of it. The case bounced between Ohio courts before reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on June 28, 1977 that the First and Fourteenth Amendments do not protect a broadcaster from liability for airing a performer's entire act without consent, and that a state may require broadcasters to compensate performers for it. Decided by a 5-4 vote, Zacchini remains the only right-of-publicity case the Supreme Court has ever ruled on -- a small-town county fair act that became a permanent fixture of American media law.

A governor and a chief justice, both buried in Burton

Two of early Ohio's most prominent public men made their homes in the same small Western Reserve village. Peter Hitchcock moved to Burton in 1806, among the township's first settling families, taught as the first instructor at Burton Academy -- later absorbed into what became Case Western Reserve University -- and went on to serve 28 years on the Ohio Supreme Court, 21 of them as chief justice, before chairing the committee that wrote Ohio's Constitution of 1851. Seabury Ford arrived in Burton with his parents in 1804, married local resident Harriet Cook in 1828, and was elected Ohio's governor in 1848 by a margin of just 311 votes out of roughly 300,000 cast -- the last Whig ever to hold the office. Ford's single term, beginning in January 1849, was consumed by a bitterly partisan legislature fighting over slavery and the Mexican-American War, plus a cholera epidemic; he retired in poor health, suffered a paralyzing stroke, and died at his Burton home in 1855. Both men are buried in the village's Welton Cemetery.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Geauga County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Burton Village94% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Scranton Woods6% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Public EV charging (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 3 of 3 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, 2021 to 2022, released 2026-02-03

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.

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