Fowler Township, Trumbull County

How Fowler Township, Trumbull County began

Fowler Township, originally called Westfield, was purchased from the Connecticut Land Company in 1798 by Samuel Fowler of Westfield, Massachusetts for under fifty cents an acre, and sold to settlers under his direction; his brother Abner Fowler, paid with 100 acres at the township center for his surveying work, became the township's first settler, building a cabin alone there in spring 1799 after his wife's death back in Massachusetts. Abner served as an advance agent recruiting settlers and died in 1806, the township's first death. Fowler was included in the Vernon election district when that organized in 1806, then set apart as its own township and election precinct in 1807. Early settlement clustered at Tyrrell Hill (also called Tyrrell's Corners) in the southeast, founded by seven Connecticut families who arrived together in 1806. The township remained a farming community through the 19th century, its cheese production notably large by 1880.

Settled 1799-04 (spring 1799), incorporated 1807 (set apart as a distinct township, having been part of the Vernon election district from 1806), by Abner Fowler, first settler, spring 1799.

Where the name comes from

The township, originally known as Westfield, was purchased from the Connecticut Land Company in 1798 by Samuel Fowler of Westfield, Massachusetts, who sold the land to settlers under his direction; it was later renamed for him. His brother Abner Fowler, who received 100 acres at the township center in payment for surveying the land, became the township's first settler.

Before the town

No Native village, camp or treaty event specific to Fowler Township is recorded in the sources we reviewed. The township lies in eastern Trumbull County near the Pennsylvania line, within the wider region the county's 1882 history describes as Delaware-occupied hunting ground used seasonally by Seneca and Mingo bands through the 1700s, but no source found names a site inside the township's present boundaries.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Seneca, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1798 — Samuel Fowler of Westfield, Massachusetts purchases the township, then known as Westfield, from the Connecticut Land Company for under fifty cents an acre.
2. 1799-04 — Abner Fowler, the proprietor's brother, becomes the township's first settler, building a cabin alone near the future public square after his wife's death in Massachusetts.
3. 1801 — Levi Foote of Westfield, Massachusetts, the first family in the township, settles near the center.
4. 1805-07-05 — Lydia Foote, daughter of Levi and Milly Foote, is born -- the first white child born in the township.
5. 1806 — Seven Connecticut families, including Elijah Tyrrell and the Meeker brothers, arrive together and settle the township's southeast corner, founding what becomes Tyrrell Hill (Tyrrell's Corners); the township is included in the newly organized Vernon election district the same year.
6. 1806 — Abner Fowler dies -- the township's first death -- and is buried in the old graveyard at the center.
7. 1807 — Fowler is set apart from Vernon as its own distinct township and election precinct.
8. 1807-08 — Esther Jennings, one of the 1806 Tyrrell-party settlers, teaches the township's first school in Wakeman Silliman's cabin on the bank of Yankee Creek; that August she marries Abner Fowler Jr., the first marriage ceremony in the township.
9. 1807 — Joseph Badger, the pioneer missionary, visits the Tyrrell Hill settlement and preaches the first sermon in the township; the same year the Meeker brothers get a saw mill running on Yankee Creek (a flood had washed out the first dam) and Harvey Hungerford builds the first flouring mill on the same dam.
10. 1812 — Captain Elijah Tyrrell commands the militia of Fowler and Johnston for the War of 1812; half the men are drafted, nine from Fowler, among them Alfred Bronson, who later becomes a Methodist preacher and returns to the township.
11. c. 1814 — James Fowler, son of the proprietor Samuel Fowler, builds the first frame house in the township, on the southwest corner at the center.
12. 1814-15 — The first regular school for all the settlers opens in a log schoolhouse about a mile south of the center, taught the first winter by Polly Nichols.
13. c. 1815 — Rev. Alfred Bronson organizes the Methodist church with his wife and six other members; its first building is a small frame church south of the center.
14. 1826 — Asahel Tyrrell builds a saw mill on Yankee Creek with a capacity of ten thousand feet of lumber a day.
15. 1835 — Asahel Tyrrell builds a cider still at Tyrrell Hill; vandals cut holes in his barrels and vats before the first run, wasting cider worth about $1,100.
16. 1852 — The Disciples church is built at the center, in the year of the great hail storm.
17. 1873 — The Congregational trustees sell their church lot and building at the center to the Methodist Episcopal church for $160 on August 18, ending an organization abandoned for lack of members.
18. 1878 — A post office named Tyrrell Hill opens, renamed Tyrrell in 1894 and closed in 1930; the Fowler office dates from 1826 and still operates by name.
19. 1880 — The township produces 272,970 pounds of cheese and 23,746 pounds of butter, alongside wheat, oats, corn and hay.

Stories

Auntie Thompson and the wolf

Bathsheba Burr Foote -- known to the settlement in her old age as 'Auntie Thompson,' after the third of her three husbands, and a relative of Aaron Burr -- was one of Fowler's earliest and longest-lived pioneers, dying at just five days shy of one hundred. The 1882 county history credits her with killing the first wolf brought down by any settler in the township: the animal seized a piglet from her pen in broad daylight while her husband was away, and she took up a gun and shot it herself. Thinking it dead, she dragged it to her own doorstep, then struck it with a club to make sure -- which only revived it enough to spring to its feet, forcing her to finish the job on the spot before it could escape.

A cabin built without a single nail

Elijah Tyrrell, who gave his name to Tyrrell Hill after leading seven Connecticut families into Fowler's southeast corner in 1806, built what the 1882 county history calls the largest and most substantial cabin in the township at that time -- eighteen by twenty-four feet, chinked and daubed with mud, its roof of split-oak clapboards held down by weight poles, its windows mere holes covered with oiled paper stretched over a wooden lattice. The account lingers on a telling detail: the whole structure, door hinges included, was built without a single nail or spike, every joint pinned or notched in wood, the beds strung with hickory withes and the tables pinned together from crossed poles -- 'somewhat clumsily, to be sure, but very solid and durable,' furniture made, as the book puts it, 'more for use than for ornament.'

The cider that ran into the ground

Asahel Tyrrell, a carpenter and mill builder at Tyrrell Hill, put up a cider distillery in 1835 when the township was thick with apples and peaches. He had stacked about eight hundred barrels of cider outdoors, and the night before he started the still someone cut holes in his barrels and vats; the loss was reckoned at about $1,100. The next spring he made two hundred barrels more and stilled them, and by 1838 about two thousand barrels of cider went through the still, which could turn out twenty-five barrels a day. In 1839 he built bigger storage rooms but cemented his vats with water-lime, which tainted the cider. He then shipped brandy to New York at a loss and quit the business.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · postalhistory.com

Mostly private wells The water here

• Cortland City93% of residentsGroundwater wells (7 wells)
• Trumbull Co. - Southeast7% of residentsMeander Creek Reservoir + Berlin Reservoir (Mahoning River basin)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-08-24: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2016: 4 of 4 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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-05-20

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