Ellsworth Township, Mahoning County

How Ellsworth Township, Mahoning County began

Ellsworth Township, in central Mahoning County, was settled beginning in 1804 by families from Connecticut and Pennsylvania and was formally established on March 22, 1810 by the Board of Commissioners of Trumbull County -- it was part of the original Connecticut Western Reserve, unlike the county's southern former-Columbiana townships. It is said to be named for Oliver Ellsworth, a Connecticut politician and landowner. Captain Joseph Coit, arriving around July 4, 1804, is credited with felling the township's first cleared tree, and other early families included the Reeds, Thomas Jones, Philip Arner and Hugh Smith. Before railroads reached the area, Ellsworth sat on a busy stagecoach and freight route between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, with two to four coaches passing each way daily. The township's central crossroads community, Ellsworth Center, grew around an 1818 or 1819 post office, a sawmill and a Pennsylvania Railroad station, and remains unincorporated today.

Settled 1804 (first settlers arrive), platted Within the Connecticut Western Reserve; township formally established March 22, 1810, incorporated Ellsworth Township organized by the Trumbull County Board of Commissioners; Ellsworth Center remains an unincorporated community, by Said to be named for Oliver Ellsworth, Connecticut politician and landowner; early settlers included Captain Joseph Coit, the Reed family, Thomas Jones, Philip Arner and Hugh Smith.

Where the name comes from

The township is said to be named for Oliver Ellsworth, a Connecticut politician and landowner with ties to the Connecticut Land Company; the 1882 county history does not say where the name comes from. It is the only Ellsworth Township in Ohio. The central crossroads community was known historically as Ellsworth Center.

Before the town

No Native village, trail or mound in Ellsworth Township is named in the sources consulted. The 1882 county history records only passing contact: when James Reed made his clearing in 1803 an Indian occupied a camp across the Meander from his, and Indians were 'frequent visitors at the house, but were never troublesome'; during the War of 1812 a morning of rifle fire from half-blood hunters shooting at a mark set the settlement into a panic that was afterwards remembered as 'the great Indian raid'. The township lies in the Connecticut Western Reserve, east of the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers, which until 1805 marked the edge of Native land in northern Ohio; the 1805 Treaty of Fort Industry (Ottawa, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Wyandot, Munsee, Delaware and Shawnee signers) moved that boundary west, so it concerned land west of Ellsworth (an earlier version of this page attributed this township's cession to Fort Industry).

Timeline

1. 1803-1804 — The Reed family, said to be the township's first settlers, and Philip Arner, who purchases land from Pennsylvania, arrive.
2. 1804 — Captain Joseph Coit arrives around July 4 and fells the first tree cleared for settlement in the township.
3. 1806 — Hugh Smith, of Maryland, settles in the township; Thomas Jones Jr., the first child born in the township, is born.
4. 1806 — Richard Fitch opens a tavern in a small log cabin at the site of the later hotel; a frame addition follows by 1812 and a large house about 1824, and he keeps it until 1837. Hugh Smith of Maryland, the Ripleys of Windham County, Connecticut, and Daniel Fitch of Norwalk also settle about this time.
5. 1809 — Rev. John Bruce, a New York-born Presbyterian, begins preaching in Ellsworth and stays five years; the congregation first meets in hewn-log meeting houses and in barns and open air.
6. 1810 — Ellsworth Township is formally established March 22 by the Trumbull County Board of Commissioners; the first township election is held April 2, with Richard Fitch as first justice of the peace.
7. 1811 — Miss Clara Landon of Canfield teaches the first school in a small log house east of the center; on June 8 the township constable serves a warning-out order on a newcomer likely to become a township charge.
8. 1818 — The Presbyterian and Congregational union church is organized March 26 with fourteen members under missionaries William Hanford and Joseph Treat; the town hall is built by subscription, the first Sabbath school meets in October, and three feet of snow falls on February 3.
9. 1819 — A post office opens at Ellsworth Center; Williams's 1882 history says the first postmaster, Lucius W. Leffingwell, was probably commissioned in 1818 and that Joseph Coit, his deputy and the village schoolteacher, took over and held the office until 1857.
10. 1822 — The first store in Ellsworth is opened by Adams and Lloyd of Philadelphia in a log house near the center.
11. 1824 — A Methodist society organizes in the township under Rev. Nicholas Gee.
12. 1828 — Berlin Township is set off from Ellsworth, which had comprised townships one of the fourth and fifth ranges, on March 4, and Ellsworth holds its first election in its reduced limits on April 7.
13. 1833 — The present Ellsworth church is built; it had met in the town hall since 1818.
14. 1839 — A Methodist society forms at Ellsworth Center and finishes a church in 1840, after Rev. Nicholas Gee's district-three church was completed about 1835.
15. 1857 — Captain Joseph Coit, born in Norwich, Connecticut, on August 18, 1783, who came in 1804 and was postmaster until 1857, dies on May 31.
16. 1861 — Ira F. Powers, enlisting July 4 in the Eleventh Ohio Infantry, is the township's first volunteer for the Civil War.
17. 1881 — The Methodists dedicate a new brick church at the center on February 17.

Stories

A stagecoach crossroads before the railroad

Before railroads reshaped travel across northeastern Ohio, Ellsworth Township sat directly on one of the busiest overland routes in the region: the stage and freight road between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, which carried two to four coaches each direction every day through the township. That traffic gave the small settlement at Ellsworth Center, formally established with its own post office in 1818 or 1819, an outsized importance for a farming community of a few hundred people -- travelers, freight haulers and mail all passed through on a predictable, heavily used schedule that a purely agricultural township elsewhere might never have seen. When the Pennsylvania Railroad eventually built through the area, it added a station at Ellsworth Center alongside the existing post office and a sawmill, a transition from stagecoach to steam that mirrored what was happening simultaneously in county seats and market towns across the whole Mahoning Valley.

The hogs that walked home

James Reed came to Ellsworth from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1803, camped through the summer on the Meander, cleared ground and raised a crop of corn while an Indian kept a camp on the opposite bank of the stream. In February 1804 he brought two daughters with a yoke of oxen and a cart, following blazed trees and cutting road where he had to, and his wife and the rest of the family arrived in April. The family lived in a three-sided log camp with forked stakes driven in the ground for bedposts and made a good deal of maple sugar. Six of the hogs Reed had brought out, 'averse to living in a wild country', escaped and were found one morning by his father back in Pennsylvania, asleep in their old nest after walking some sixty miles alone. A bear also killed and partly ate a fat hog at night without waking anyone in the family. Reed sold out after a little over a year and moved to Canfield Township, where he died in 1813.

Captain Coit sings among the ashes

In the summer of 1806 several Connecticut families reached Ellsworth without cabins and stopped at the house of Captain Joseph Coit, a single man, until they could build. One day while Coit was clearing land in the north of the township his house caught fire and was destroyed with his watch, money, books and clothing. He came home toward evening to find the women in tears and nearly in despair, looked at the ruins without a sign of distress, and sat down near them and began singing, in a rich full voice, the hymn 'Contentment': 'Why should we at our lot repine, or grieve at our distress?' Coit, who died in 1857, went on to serve as township clerk, postmaster for decades, and captain of the local cavalry company.

The postmaster who taught school

Ellsworth's first postmaster, Lucius W. Leffingwell, lived too far from the center to keep the office, so he made Joseph Coit his deputy. Coit was also the schoolteacher, and the mail carrier, who came once a week on horseback, would tap on the schoolroom window when the postmaster was needed. The classes were left until the mail had been sorted, and the boys, Williams's history says, held high carnival in the teacher's absence but grew mysteriously sober as he came back. Coit later became postmaster himself and held the office until 1857.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Canfield City67% of residentsMeander Creek Reservoir + Berlin Reservoir (Mahoning River basin)
• Youngstown City30% of residentsMeander Creek Reservoir + Berlin Reservoir (Mahoning River basin)
• Aqua Ohio - Struthers3% of residentsEvans Lake (Yellow Creek impoundment)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-17: county board of elections.

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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-06-24

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