Greene Township, Trumbull County

• Mosquito Creek LakeBuilt 1944 · 7,850 acres

How Greene Township, Trumbull County began

Greene Township was laid out in the Western Reserve as the township of Greene, which originally included Gustavus and Kinsman, and was named for Gardner Greene of Massachusetts, a proprietor who exchanged it with Joseph Howland, the owner of Howland. The sale was delayed by litigation until 1843 or 1844, making it the last township in the county to be settled, and Lydia Wheelock Merritt and her sons were the first settlers in 1816, followed by the Wakefield, Harrington, Rice and Bartlett families from Vermont by way of Canada and western Pennsylvania. Kinsman was set off in 1819 and Gustavus in 1820, when Greene held its first election at William Harrington's house. A crossroads called Greensburg grew up at its center, with a post office that ran until 1892, and two National Register landmarks stand near the hamlet of Kenilworth: the Greene Township Center school building and the Liberty G. Raymond Tavern, built in 1832.

Settled 1816, incorporated 1820 (first township election, after Kinsman was set off in 1819), by Lydia Wheelock Merritt and her sons were the first settlers; the Wakefield, Harrington, Rice and Bartlett families followed.

Where the name comes from

Named for Gardner Greene of Massachusetts. In the allotment of the Western Reserve Company's lands Joseph Howland secured the township of Greene and Gardner Greene secured the township of Howland; they afterwards exchanged and named the townships accordingly. Greene sold the east half to a Mr. Parkman, and the 1909 county history says no deed signed by Greene himself is on record in Trumbull County.

Before the town

No Native village, camp or treaty event specific to Greene Township is recorded in the sources reviewed. The township lies in northeastern Trumbull County 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. Upton's 1909 county history adds that Indians were quite numerous in Greene in the early days and that residents still found pipes, arrowheads and, once, a perfect Indian ax; that Indians made maple sugar in the township by dropping red-hot granite stones into hollowed-out logs of sap, and that R. C. Rice, plowing, turned up a quantity of such fire-scarred stones near maple trees showing old tap scars; and that an Indian considered dangerous, standing in the road opposite two settler women alone in a cabin, fled to the woods when one aimed a gun at him.

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

Timeline

1. 1816 — Lydia Wheelock Merritt, about sixty, and her sons Ichabod and Aaron arrive on an April night as the township's first settlers, sleeping on a bedstead of poles and bark under the stars; Ephraim Rice, John Wakefield, Roswell Bartlett and John and William Harrington, who had chosen lots earlier from General Perkins, the land agent, build five cabins together.
2. 1818 — Edwin Wakefield, later a Disciples minister, is born, the first male child born in Greene; David Rice arrives at Greensburg after a 1,700-mile sleigh trip and builds a log grist mill on Mosquito Creek.
3. 1819 — Differences over public matters split Greene, which had included Kinsman, Gustavus and Greene, and Kinsman is set off as its own township.
4. 1820 — Gustavus is made a separate township, which makes Greene a township of its present size; the first election is held at William Harrington's house, with Ebenezer Kee clerk and Ephraim Rice, John Harrington and Roswell Bartlett trustees.
5. 1825 — The crossroads community of Greensburg begins developing at the township's center.
6. 1832 — The Liberty G. Raymond Tavern and barn are built at the junction of State Route 87 and Dennison-Ashtabula Road, at Kenilworth.
7. 1840 — Greene boys build a log cabin on an ox cart, hung with coonskins and a flag made by neighborhood women, and ride it to Warren for the Corwin Whig meeting; it is drawn by Ben Lewis's oxen and arrives at daylight.
8. 1843-44 — The litigation that kept Greene unsold, last of the county's townships to be settled, is finally settled in 1843 or 1844.
9. 1850s — Charles A. Harrington's private school at the Greene center grows from 29 to 200 scholars and runs until the Civil War; it takes the place of an academy.
10. 1892 — Greensburg's post office closes.
11. 1900s — Greene's district schools are centralized in the early twentieth century: voters bond the township for $8,000, sell the district schoolhouses for $2,000, and build a $8,200 brick central school.
12. 1975-06-20 — The Liberty G. Raymond Tavern and Barn are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
13. 1978-03-08 — The Greene Township Center school building, at Colebrook Road and Kenilworth, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

The strike at the Harrington raising

When William Harrington built the first frame house in Greene, the custom was whiskey at every raising, but Harrington decided there would be none. The neighbors arrived to find John Wakefield making the pins for the beams, and were told they would have plenty of food but no whiskey. They held a meeting off to one side, sent a committee to tell Harrington there was a strike, and then asked that they be allowed to buy whiskey for themselves at the store. Wakefield spoke up: if there was whiskey, he would not make the pins. The men dropped their work and went into a field to play ball, leaving four or five old men, some boys and two young men, whom the contractor, Isaac Morey, said could never raise the great frame logs. They raised it anyway, and the chairman of the committee demanding whiskey later became a temperance man and an ardent Prohibitionist, which the county historian called one of the great joys of a radical.

Epitaphs of Greene

The old Greene cemetery has gravestones whose verses the 1909 county history gives as local curiosities. Isaac Sirrine went up to Ashtabula County and brought back his own tombstone, marked except for the date of his death, with an epitaph he said he composed himself, ending that nobody knew or cared where he had gone or how he fared. After he died his brother James, sorry on reading it, had cut beneath it a line saying his brother James and his wife Emmaline were his friends all of the time. Sirrine's three daughters, who died of consumption in their prime, share a stone reading 'Here lies three daughters all in a row.' Another stone marks a kindly old man with a huge wen on his head, with a verse saying his children would never again hear his tread or see the wen upon his head.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Trumbull County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Cortland City71% of residentsGroundwater wells (7 wells)
• Orwell Village29% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (3)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Who holds office

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

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 1 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

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 2025-12-23

Cite this page