Hartsgrove Township, Ashtabula County

How Hartsgrove Township, Ashtabula County began

Hartsgrove Township, number nine of the fifth range of the Connecticut Western Reserve, was drawn in 1798 by William Hart of Connecticut, but Samuel Mather Jr. also claimed it, and the township was called Matherstown during a lawsuit of more than twenty years that left it the last in Ashtabula County to be settled, in 1822. Hart's daughter, wife of the Rev. William Jarvis, received the north half of the township, about 8,000 acres, as a wedding gift. George Alderman and his cousin Frederick were the first settlers; the township was organized on April 5, 1830, and its hunting forests remained an unbroken wilderness for twenty years more. By the 1850s it had three cheese factories and in December 1850 a public meeting called the Fugitive Slave Law 'no law.' A tornado struck it on July 2, 1859. The township had 1,624 residents in 2020 and has no municipality.

Settled 1822 (George Alderman, first settler), platted about 1826 (surveyed into 100-acre lots by Timothy R. Hawley), incorporated April 5, 1830 (organized), by George Alderman, first settler; land drawn in 1798 by William Hart, later held by his son Richard W. Hart and his daughters.

Where the name comes from

The township was first called Matherstown for Samuel Mather Jr., who claimed it, but the 1798 drawing of the Connecticut Land Company showed that William Hart of Connecticut had drawn township nine of the fifth range. The two men's lawsuit ran for years, the Hart heirs prevailed, and the name became Hartsgrove 'in honor of the rightful owner,' the 1878 county history says (William Hart); Wikipedia says it is named for Richard W. Hart, William's son, who held the land. The 'grove' is the wooded land.

Before the town

No Native village, trail or mound within Hartsgrove Township is recorded. The 1878 history says the township's forests were for many years the hunting-ground of the settlers of neighboring townships 'as well as of the Indians,' and the 1924 history that Indians 'for some years after the advent of the white man continued to come there in numbers and remain indefinitely hunting.' The township lies east of the Cuyahoga River in the Connecticut Western Reserve, where Native title was cleared by the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, before the Connecticut Land Company's survey. Elsewhere in the county, the record includes the Whittlesey-culture villages at Conneaut, the Mississauga village there of about 1747, and the county's legends.

Timeline

1. 1798 — William Hart of Connecticut draws number nine of the fifth range in the Connecticut Land Company's division; Samuel Mather Jr.'s rival claim to it as Matherstown begins a lawsuit of more than twenty years.
2. 1800 — A marked road is cut from Esquire Gregory's on the Grand River in Harpersfield south through Trumbull and Hartsgrove to Judge Griswold's in Windsor, the first road through the township.
3. 1804 — The pioneer mail route from Warren to Austinburg begins to run diagonally through the township; it is carried for twenty-six years before a post office is set up.
4. 1822 — George Alderman of Windsor settles on lot 148 and builds a log cabin, the first settler; his cousin Frederick Alderman joins him on the lot the next year.
5. about 1826 — The township's roughly 16,000 acres are surveyed into 100-acre lots by Timothy R. Hawley and his son Dr. Almon Hawley for Judge Isaac Mills, agent of Richard W. Hart.
6. February 10, 1827 — The first deed in the township is recorded: Judge Mills conveys twenty acres of lot 149 to Destine Alford.
7. 1828 — Thomas Burbank moves into the vacated Alderman house; Frederick Alderman marries Ann Burgess, the first marriage, before Elijah Hill, justice of Windsor.
8. 1829 — Destine Alford, Shubel Adams, David Griffin and Carmi Hoskins arrive; Parmelia Frazer teaches seventeen pupils in Adams's log house, and Hoskins builds the first sawmill.
9. April 5, 1830 — The township is organized with John Thomas as clerk; Thomas Matteson becomes postmaster and justice, the 'Slab school-house' is built of split logs, and on July 20 a Methodist class forms there.
10. 1833 — A Methodist class is organized at Hartsgrove Center by Rev. John C. Ayres with ten members; Orson Grant builds two sawmills on Matherstown Creek.
11. 1834 — John White builds the township's first frame house, on lot 126.
12. 1837 — General Charles Stearns opens the first store; an Episcopal parish of twelve forms and meets in the school-house until about 1850.
13. 1838 — On Richard W. Hart's death about now, nearly half the remaining land passes to his daughters Mrs. Jarvis and Hetty B. Hart; Stearns and William Jarvis (2d) become agents, and Jarvis the sole agent from March 1841.
14. 1844 — Dr. Hiram Morgan settles as the first physician; the Methodists build a 32-by-40-foot church at the Center.
15. 1850 — Charles Stearns starts the township's first cheese factory; three operate at once in later years, and in the best years about $200,000 of cheese is made annually.
16. December 1850 — A public meeting of Hartsgrove citizens passes fifteen resolutions against the Fugitive Slave Law, one declaring it 'no law' (Ashtabula Sentinel, December 21, 1850).
17. 1858 — A Disciples church is organized after revival meetings in the ballroom of the hotel; it becomes the largest in the township.
18. July 2, 1859 — A tornado sweeps the county and strikes Hartsgrove hardest, unroofing houses and barns and destroying forests and orchards; R. D. Norris reports it to the Ashtabula Sentinel.
19. 1873 — The Masonic lodge (chartered 1867) and the town build a two-story hall at the Center, dedicated January 23, 1874; the Grove Grange follows in 1875.
20. 2020 — The census counts 1,624 residents in the township (1,157 in 1990).

Stories

Matherstown, and a wedding gift of 8,000 acres

The township that became Hartsgrove was called Matherstown for Samuel Mather Jr., who claimed it, until the records of the Connecticut Land Company's 1798 drawing showed that William Hart of Connecticut had drawn number nine of the fifth range. The two men went to law, and the case ran for more than twenty years, so that Hartsgrove was the last township in Ashtabula County to be settled. Meanwhile the forests, unlike the cleared land around them, stayed a hunting ground for settlers from other townships and for Indians who kept coming and camping there. When Hart's daughter married the Rev. William Jarvis of Chatham, Connecticut, her father gave her the north half of the township, about 8,000 acres, as a wedding gift, and the Jarvises took an active part in its settlement. The first settlers, the cousins George and Frederick Alderman, squatted on lot 148 from 1822 and bought it later from Hart's agent, Judge Isaac Mills of Saybrook.

Hartsgrove calls the Fugitive Slave Law no law

In late 1850, at the height of the anti-slavery excitement after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the citizens of Hartsgrove met and passed fifteen resolutions, four of which the Ashtabula Sentinel printed on December 21. One said the meeting held the law 'in utter contempt, as being no law'; another that 'sooner than be slaves we will fight!' and that they would see the Union dissolved sooner than submit; a third listed laws that Herod, King Darius, Duke George, John Bull and Congress had made, ending with the law that would 'strip us of our humanity.' The 1878 county historian printed them to show the intensity of the feeling that fugitive slaves who passed through the county had stirred, and doubted that any public meeting of his own day could write such resolutions.

The tornado of 1859

On July 2, 1859 a storm of cyclonic force broke over Ashtabula County and spent its greatest fury on Hartsgrove. R. D. Norris, a prominent resident of the village who also ran the largest pearl-ash works in the Western Reserve, sent the Ashtabula Sentinel an account. Houses and barns were unroofed, their contents exposed to the driving rain that followed; forests and orchards were wholly or partly destroyed, and fences were strewn across the fields. People in the fields and on the roads were blown off their feet, and so suddenly did the storm come that few could find shelter. The Rev. W. Wilson, with his horse and carriage, was carried off the highway into an adjoining field, where he was found after the storm in a perilous situation and seriously injured.

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

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