Grafton Township, Lorain County

How Grafton Township, Lorain County began

Grafton Township is Town 4 in Range 16 of the Western Reserve, then part of Medina County. Major William Ingersoll's family came from Lee, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1816 and, by the accounts of the Ingersoll children, were the first settlers; the source's printed '1810' conflicts with its own details. Medina County's commissioners incorporated the township on 25 July 1818. Farming gave way to oil drilling in 1875-76, a quarry industry, and later prisons near the village of Grafton, which lies partly in the township; 2,789 people lived in the township in 2020.

Settled Fall 1816 (Major William Ingersoll and family, from Lee, Berkshire County, Massachusetts; the source prints '1810' but internal evidence points to 1816), by Major William Ingersoll.

Where the name comes from

The Medina County commissioners incorporated the township as Grafton on 25 July 1818, and no source consulted says why. The first settlers came mostly from Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Wikipedia suggests the village name may be a transfer from Grafton, Massachusetts, which is a guess.

Before the town

No mound, village or trail is recorded in Grafton Township. The one Native detail comes from Harriet Nesbett's memoir in the 1879 county history: in the first winter after the Ingersoll family arrived in November 1816, two Native men she names Goodhunt (printed 'Goodhurt' in that passage) and Red Jacket came into the family's log house, whose latch-string was never pulled in, and preferred its fireplace to their own bark-covered wigwam; one asked for a taste of tea. Elsewhere in Lorain County, the wider record includes James Smith's winter on the Black River in 1755-56 and the 1787 Moravian camp at its mouth.

Timeline

1. 1816 — Major William Ingersoll's family leaves Lee, Massachusetts, and travels by wagon through Albany, Buffalo, Ashtabula, Mentor, Newburgh and Cleveland (then under 100 people) to found the township's first settlement; the party fords Rocky River and passes through Columbia and Liverpool to reach their new home.
2. May 1816 — Fifteen to eighteen men from Berkshire County, Massachusetts, among them Jonathan Rawson, John and George Sibley and Seth C. and Thomas Ingersoll, come to choose land; all but the Sibleys and Rawson's hired workers go back east.
3. 4 November 1816 — Major William Ingersoll moves his family into the township and settles east of Kingsley's Corners; they shelter in the Sibley shanty for about two weeks while a log house is raised.
4. May 18, 1817 — Nancy, oldest daughter of Seth C. Ingersoll, becomes the first white child born in the township.
5. February 1817 — William B. Crittenden's family arrives from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the second family and the first at the township center.
6. Summer 1817 — The Methodist preacher Reuben Jones of Mantua delivers the first sermon in the township at the house of Eliphalet Jones; David Ashley builds the first sawmill on Rawson's lot, the only mill privilege on the Black River in the township.
7. November 5, 1818 — Grindell Rawson and Maria Ashley marry in the township's first wedding, performed by Henry Coit, Esq., of Liverpool.
8. Spring 1818 — Mary Sibley teaches the first school, in a log schoolhouse, to eighteen pupils.
9. 25 July 1818 — On petition of the inhabitants the Medina County commissioners incorporate the township as Grafton; the first election is held at Crittenden's house on 3 August 1818.
10. 1819 — The township's first convicted thief, a stranger passing through, is held overnight in the Ingersoll log house (his and the constable's big toes tied together with tow string) before being marched to the county jail in Medina.
11. 1827 — A two-story frame building at the center serves as town hall, school and church for all denominations.
12. 15 March 1834 — A Presbyterian church is organized at Grafton Center under the plan of union with the Congregationalists; an Episcopal congregation erects the township's first brick building the same year.
13. 1840 — Bishop Rappe of Cleveland organizes St. Mary's, the first Catholic church between Cleveland and Sandusky; it moves to Rawsonville about 1863.
14. 1846 — The village of Grafton, within the township, is platted as the railroad reaches the site (Wikipedia).
15. 1851 — The Justin Breckenridge House is built, according to Wikipedia; it is later listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
16. 1856 — A Pennsylvanian drills a well on Erastus Jones's farm that finds oil at thirty feet and yields about forty barrels before it fails.
17. July 1875 — Charles Rupert strikes oil at sixty feet on the Card farm, starting a boom in which about fifty wells are sunk; by 1879 some 350 had been drilled and about one in four found oil.
18. 15 August 1876 — J. C. Blood strikes oil at 162 feet on the Shafer farm, a well that pumps 130 barrels a day at first; the oil is too low in carbon to refine for lamps but is prized as a lubricant.
19. 2020 — Census records 2,789 residents in the township.

Stories

A pioneer daughter's road west

Harriet I. Nesbett wrote the settlement chapter of Grafton's history herself, drawing on her memory as a child in her father Major William Ingersoll's party. They left Lee, Massachusetts, with thirteen people, a span of horses, four yoke of oxen and three cows, asking innkeepers along the way for room enough for the whole train. She remembered Buffalo still rebuilding from its wartime burning, Lake Erie's water so empty of traffic that 'not a sail' crossed it, and Cleveland as a village of under a hundred people on 'that terrible hill.' The family forded Rocky River in three covered wagons, walked the last miles to spare the animals, and stopped at a log cabin in Columbia where a 'motherly-looking woman' was making hasty pudding in a brass kettle. From Liverpool, the men cut a final five miles of road through the underbrush before the family reached the ground that would become Grafton township.

An elopement in the woods

The township's first marriage performed by its own justice of the peace was also its first runaway match. Ezekiel A. Turner, a hired hand, arranged to meet his intended, Electa Boughton, at a set hour; she slipped away from her father's house under the pretext of an errand, wearing a clean checked apron as if she meant to visit a neighbor. Instead she found Turner, who had been chopping wood while he waited. He dropped his axe, she left her apron behind in the woods, and the two found the justice of the peace and were married the same day their families thought they had merely gone visiting.

Oil in the Black River valley

The pioneers had noticed dark scum on two marshy springs beside Center Creek, one on Eliphalet Jones's farm and one on Ashley Root's, but nobody used it. In 1856 a man from Pennsylvania sank a well on Erastus Jones's farm and found oil at thirty feet; it gave forty barrels and quit. The real excitement came in July 1875, when Charles Rupert struck sixty barrels a day on the Card farm. Oilmen came from Pennsylvania, land leased at inflated prices, and about fifty wells went down in six months. J. C. Blood, an old hand from the Pennsylvania fields, arrived in March 1876 and on 15 August struck 130 barrels a day at 162 feet on the Shafer farm, though the oil came mixed with salt water and could not be refined for lamps. By 1879 three hundred and fifty wells had been drilled, about one in four found oil, and only about one in seven paid.

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

Every historic place in Lorain County on the full map

Lake Erie, drawn through two separate offshore intakes serving the Lake Road filtration plant The water here

• Rural Lorain Co. Water A79% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• Grafton Village17% of residentsLake Erie
• Medina Co/northwest3% of residentsLake Erie
• Lagrange Village1% of residentsLake Erie
• North Ridgeville City0% of residentsLake Erie (mainly via Avon Lake Regional Water)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

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 2024-11-07

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