Gustavus Township, Trumbull County

How Gustavus Township, Trumbull County began

Gustavus Township was surveyed and its lots numbered in 1800; Colonel Lemuel Storrs, who purchased part of lot number two, gave the township the name of his son, Gustavus. Josiah Pelton first viewed his purchase on horseback that same year, but actual settlement began when his son Jesse and Ruhamah DeWolf raised a log cabin on June 4, 1802, after Josiah offered 100 acres to the first woman willing to make her home in the township's wilds. The township remained attached to Greene Township until it was detached and organized separately in 1821. It sits in Trumbull County's northeastern corner, bordering four Ashtabula County townships as well as four in Trumbull, with no incorporated municipality inside its own borders; the Farmdale area, birthplace of Clarence Darrow, is served through its ZIP code by the Kinsman post office after the original Farmdale post office building was demolished.

Settled 1802-06-04 (Jesse Pelton and Ruhamah DeWolf's cabin raising, the township's first permanent settlement; Josiah Pelton had viewed his purchase in 1800), incorporated 1821 (detached from Greene Township and organized separately; first officers elected September 11, 1821), by Jesse Pelton and Ruhamah DeWolf, first settlers.

Where the name comes from

The township was surveyed and its lots numbered in 1800; Colonel Lemuel Storrs, who purchased part of lot number two, gave the township the name of his son, Gustavus, per the 1882 county history.

Before the town

No Native village, camp or treaty event specific to Gustavus Township is mapped in the sources reviewed, but the 1882 county history gives two direct glimpses. It says that Dr. Allen of Kinsman, the first doctor to practice in the township, treated Indians as well as whites, among them some then living on the Pymatuning who had smallpox 'in early times', and that he controlled the disease so effectively that it never spread. It also records that in 1812, after the men left for Fort Stephenson, settlers feared an attack by the British allies' Indians, and Mrs. Newton fled to the center when boys shouting over a killed fawn sounded to her like a war cry. The township lies in Trumbull County's northeastern corner, in country the county history describes as Delaware hunting ground used by Seneca and Mingo bands in the 1700s.

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

Timeline

1. 1800 — The township is surveyed and its lots numbered; Colonel Lemuel Storrs, having purchased part of lot two, names the township for his son Gustavus. Josiah Pelton visits on horseback that year to view his own purchase, turning his horse loose to graze along the Pymatuning before it went half-wild and had to be lassoed for the trip home.
2. 1802-06-04 — Jesse Pelton and Ruhamah DeWolf, who had accepted Josiah Pelton's offer of 100 free acres to the first woman willing to settle in the township, raise the first log cabin, assisted by men from Vernon; a heavy rainstorm forces the whole party to stay the night.
3. 1804-04-06 — The township's first wedding, Eliphaz Perkins to Zilpah Pelton, takes place -- the couple reportedly waited a year for a missionary to arrive and perform the ceremony, since the township had no justice of the peace at the time.
4. 1804 — Obediah Gildersleeve arrives from Hartland, Connecticut with his family and settles east of the center; he dies the following year and is among the first burials in the township graveyard.
5. c. 1808 — Calvin Cone, a Hartland, Connecticut settler and Trumbull County state senator (1806-09), is appointed the township's first justice of the peace.
6. 1809 — The first public school opens in John Lane's log barn, taught by Sally Wakeman, reached by children following a path marked by blazed trees.
7. c. 1809 — A Methodist class forms with Zenas, Polly and Mercy Pelton and others, and the Rev. Henry Cowles of Austinburg preaches through the summer at Josiah Pelton's house; before that Rev. Thomas Robbins, sent by the Connecticut Missionary Society, had preached the first sermon at Jesse Pelton's.
8. 1812 — Nearly every able-bodied man volunteers for the War of 1812; Marquis Andrews leads a company toward Fort Stephenson at Lower Sandusky the day after the call.
9. 1813 — The township's first schoolhouse is built on the farm of Riverius Bidwell.
10. 1821 — The township is detached from Greene Township and organized as a distinct township; first officers are elected September 11, with Ithemur Pelton, Asa Case and Rufus Beman as trustees.
11. 1825-04-27 — A church organization forms on the plan of union adopted by area Congregationalists and Presbyterians; first officers are chosen June 15.
12. 1825 — A post office named Gustavus is recorded from 1825 to 1912 in the postal-history list; the county history says Riverius Bidwell was its first postmaster.
13. c. 1828 — George Hezlep, formerly a clerk for John Kinsman, opens the first store in the township at the northeast corner of the center.
14. 1830 — The Rev. Joseph Badger resigns as postmaster, having kept the mail in a small hand-basket and persuaded the department to stop Sunday mail delivery.
15. 1835 — Rev. Benjamin Fenn is installed as pastor of the Presbyterian church on June 16, succeeding Joseph Badger, who had supplied the pulpit since 1825 and resigns for age and a failing voice.
16. 1841-44 — Citizens subscribe $10 shares in 1841 to build an academy; Buell Barnes, then in the Legislature, gets it incorporated; a two-story brick building goes up in 1843-44 and Gustavus Academy opens in the fall of 1844 with Franklin B. Hough as principal.
17. c. 1860 — The Methodists build their present church at the center.
18. 1870 — Gustavus Lodge No. 442, Free and Accepted Masons, works under dispensation from April 19 and receives its charter on October 19.
19. 1881 — A winter revival at the Methodist church brings about one hundred conversions, and a boarding hall for the academy is built at a cost of about $2,300.
20. 2020 — The census records 834 residents in Gustavus Township across 25 square miles, with no incorporated municipality within its borders.

Stories

A hundred acres for the first woman brave enough to come

Josiah Pelton rode out on horseback in 1800 to look over the land he had purchased north of Gustavus's center, turned his horse loose to graze the summer away along the Pymatuning, and by fall had to lasso the half-wild animal just to make it home to Connecticut. Back home, he made an unusual offer: a hundred acres of his own land to whichever woman would agree to be the first to make her home in the Gustavus wilderness. His son Jesse found a taker in Ruhamah DeWolf of Granby, Connecticut, and on June 4, 1802, with help from men who came over from Vernon, the two raised the township's first log cabin -- though a heavy rainstorm that broke out during the work forced the whole crew to spend the night before they could start home. Mrs. Pelton herself did not move into the finished cabin until that December; in the meantime her husband boarded alone, carrying his bread on foot from Vernon, and on one of those trips spotted a nearly seven-foot panther in a tree by the creek, hung his hat and coat on a bush with the family dog standing guard over them, and walked home for his gun to finish the job.

The preacher, the postmaster and the Sunday mail

The first post office in Gustavus opened a few years before 1830 at the farm of Riverius Bidwell in the south of the township. Residents at the center thought the location poor, and the Rev. Joseph Badger, the veteran Reserve missionary who preached in the township, drew a map showing every house to prove the center was the handiest spot, and sent it to Washington. He was then commissioned postmaster himself and the office moved to his house near the center. His next difficulty was that the weekly mail arrived on Sunday and he had scruples against working that day, so he wrote the department threatening to resign; the carrier thereafter came on a weekday. While in office he kept the mail in a small hand-basket. He resigned in 1830.

A night with the wolves

Joseph Badger told his Gustavus congregation one Sunday about the night before. Riding from Ashtabula with no path, he was caught by darkness, tied his horse, and lay down, until a wolf howled and a hundred seemed to answer. He cut a stout cudgel and walked around his horse all night, beating the trees and shouting, while the wolves circled close enough for him to hear their jaws snap. At first light they drew off, but later in the morning they were howling behind him again, when a full-grown deer, foaming at the mouth, crashed out of the brush and ran beside his horse until they reached a clearing about four miles on. The wolves turned back. Badger, who had been preaching in Gustavus since 1804, told the story as proof of a providence that preserved him through many such perils.

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

No water-system data is linked to Gustavus Township, Trumbull County's ZIP codes yet.

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Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Who holds office

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

Money issues on the ballot since 2017: 8 of 8 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

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• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-07

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