Hayesville

• Charles Mill LakeBuilt 1936 · 1,350 acres
• Pleasant Hill LakeBuilt 1937 · 850 acres

How Hayesville began

Hayesville grew out of a crossroads settlement first called Hayes Cross Roads, where the first settlers arrived in 1817. It was platted in Vermilion Township with plots recorded at the county seat in Mansfield on October 26, 1830, and incorporated as a village in 1849. The village became a regional center of learning through the Vermillion Institute, founded in 1843 and chartered in 1845, which for several decades rivaled Oberlin, Kenyon, and Denison as a co-educational school drawing students from thirteen states before declining after the Civil War. Hayesville's downtown retains its 1886 Town Hall and Opera House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Settled 1817, platted 1830 (plats recorded in Mansfield, October 26, 1830), incorporated 1849.

Where the name comes from

The settlement began as Hayes Cross Roads, later shortened to Hayesville, named for Linus Hayes, who acquired the land from original owner Lemuel Boulter. A post office was established at Hayes Cross Roads in 1827, three years before the village was formally platted.

Before the town

No village, trail, mound, or treaty-cession event specific to Hayesville or Vermilion Township is documented in the sources consulted. The village lies in the same county as the Lenape villages of Greentown (Green Township) and Jerometown (Mohican Township) and within land ceded piecemeal through the Treaty of Greenville (1795) and subsequent cessions, but nothing site-specific to Hayesville itself was found.

Timeline

1. 1817 — First settlers arrive in the area that becomes Hayesville.
2. 1827 — A post office opens at Hayes Cross Roads.
3. 1830 — Hayesville is laid out in Vermilion Township; plats are recorded in Mansfield on October 26.
4. 1843 — The Vermillion Institute is founded in Hayesville, becoming one of the first institutions of higher education in north-central Ohio.
5. 1845 — The Ohio Legislature charters the Vermillion Institute on March 4; its cornerstone is laid July 4, an event future U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes reportedly attended.
6. 1849 — Hayesville incorporates as a village.
7. 1886 — The Hayesville Town Hall and Opera House is built; it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 1976.
8. 1976 — The Hayesville Opera House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

A crossroads college that rivaled Oberlin

For a few decades in the mid-1800s, a village of a few hundred people in rural Ashland County ran a co-educational school that pulled in students from thirteen states and was spoken of in the same breath as Oberlin, Kenyon, and Denison. The Vermillion Institute was founded in 1843, chartered by the Ohio Legislature in March 1845, and had its cornerstone laid that July 4th before a crowd that reportedly included a young Rutherford B. Hayes, later the nineteenth President of the United States. Originally Baptist-affiliated, the school turned Presbyterian by 1849 and at its peak enrolled around 600 students. Its decline began with the Civil War, as students and faculty left in large numbers to fight, and the institute never fully recovered -- a story repeated at small denominational colleges across Ohio in that era, but one that briefly put a village of a few hundred people on the same map as the state's most prominent schools.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Ashland County on the full map

Groundwater wells (2 wells) The water here

• Hayesville Village67% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Ashland City30% of residentsJerome Fork Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (wells)
• Rural Lorain Co. Water A2% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• Bailey Lakes Village1% of residentsLake Erie

Fire and EMS stations (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, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-02-03
• Financial Audit, 2021 to 2022, released 2024-11-14

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

Cite this page