Homer Township, Medina County

How Homer Township, Medina County began

Homer Township was known as Richmond Township under Lorain County before being transferred, along with Spencer Township, into newly reorganized Medina County; its first permanent settler, John Park, arrived from Harrisville Township in the spring of 1831, more than a decade after the county's earlier townships were colonized. A wave of German Pennsylvania families settled the northeastern part of the township beginning in 1833, and the township organized in 1833-34, with its first election held at a log schoolhouse in June 1834. It was named, by tradition, at the suggestion of an itinerant minister who admired the classical Greek poet Homer, one of two Ohio townships to carry the name. It remains one of the county's smallest and least populous townships, centered on the unincorporated community of Homerville and never home to an incorporated municipality of its own.

Settled 1831-spring (John Park, first permanent settler), incorporated 1833-1834 (township organization effort granted 1833; first election held June 1834), by organized within Medina County after transfer from Lorain County; name suggested by an itinerant minister.

Where the name comes from

Named after the classical Greek poet Homer, at the suggestion of an itinerant minister passing through the area who was said to be a warm admirer of the poet; it is not definitely known when or by whose exact suggestion the name was adopted, but the 1881 county history records the minister-suggestion story as the prevailing local tradition. Two townships in Ohio share the name Homer. Before its Medina County organization, the same territory was known as Richmond Township under Lorain County.

Before the town

No Native village, mound, trail or documented encounter site specific to Homer Township turned up in the sources we checked; permanent white settlement did not begin until 1831, well after the 1805 Treaty of Fort Industry opened Medina County to settlement, though hunters and trappers put up a few short-lived log huts in the township as early as 1817. The county-level history file carries the fuller treaty context and the one specific, dated Native encounter located in the county -- Potawatomi hunters meeting a squatter in Liverpool Township in 1810.

Timeline

1. 1817 — Migrating hunters put up a few rude log huts in various parts of the future township, staying only briefly while thinning the population of wolves and bears.
2. 1831-spring — John Park, who had lived two years near Wooster and then in southwestern Harrisville Township, moves with his family into the territory that becomes Homer Township and makes the first permanent settlement, soon joined by Batchelder Wing.
3. 1833 — German Pennsylvania families -- among the first Eli Garman, Jonathan Holburn and John Miller -- begin buying land from Eastern speculator Samuel Neal and settling the northeastern part of the township, forming what becomes one of its most populous districts.
4. 1833 — County Commissioners grant a separate township organization for Homer, previously Richmond Township of Lorain County's Sullivan Township.
5. 1833 — The township counts seventy-two inhabitants; on August 1833 a daughter, Harriet, is born to John Park and his wife, the first birth recorded.
6. 1834-06 — The first township election is held at a log schoolhouse in the Vanderhoof District, with nineteen voters; John Tanner, John Park and Batchelder Wing are elected Trustees, Isaac Vanderhoof Clerk, and Asa Baird Justice of the Peace.
7. 1835 — The first personal property tax list, made by the township assessor, shows seven horses and forty-two cattle worth $1,735 in all.
8. 1836 — The autumn presidential election, the one in which Martin Van Buren was chosen, is held at the Center in a log school built the year before, with seventeen voters; Asa and Osias Baird are the first settlers at the Center, the future Homerville.
9. 1839 — Wikipedia dates the township's establishment to this year, six years later than the county history's 1833 organization.
10. 1840 — The township has 653 inhabitants, 132 voters, lands and buildings valued at $42,812 and taxes of $693.51.
11. 1847 — The discovery of galena (lead ore) in a riverbed in the western part of the township sparks a short-lived local silver rush; a mining company formed by Joseph Hibbard, P. Holt, Leander Baldwin and Samuel Vanderhoof leases land and digs for several weeks before the find is proven worthless.
12. 1850 — The township reaches its peak 19th-century population of 1,102, with 273 voters; it then declines to 993 in 1860, 886 in 1870 and 865 in 1880.
13. 1856 — A wedding charivari in the summer ends with fifteen or twenty young men arrested for riot and held on $1,000 bonds each; the trial at Medina draws a caravan of Homer people and ends in acquittal.
14. 1896 — The Cleveland & Southwestern Railroad is completed through Lodi and extended through the southeast corner of Homer Township to Ashland and Mansfield, establishing daily rail service.
15. 2020 — The township has 1,606 residents, up from 1,196 in 1990.

Stories

A Poet's Name on the Least-Settled Corner of the County

Most Medina County townships took their names from a proprietor, a home town back east, or a local landowner. Homer Township, organized comparatively late, took a more unusual path: an itinerant minister passing through reportedly suggested naming it for Homer, the classical Greek poet credited with the Iliad and the Odyssey -- a name with no direct connection to anyone who actually lived there. The 1881 county history admits it is not definitely known when or at whose exact suggestion the name was adopted, only that the story of the poetry-loving minister was the standing local explanation within a generation of the township's founding. The township grew slowly and stayed rural, centered on the small unincorporated crossroads of Homerville, and it remains today one of Medina County's least populous townships, never having incorporated a village of its own even as neighboring communities like Lodi and Spencer grew around railroad junctions and commercial centers.

The Homerville Silver Rush That Wasn't

In 1847, someone noticed small crystallized cubes glinting in the gray bedrock of a riverbed in western Homer Township, and word spread fast that a rich silver mine had been found. People came flocking in from across the county to see the discovery for themselves, and four local men -- Joseph Hibbard of Harrisville, P. Holt, Leander Baldwin and Samuel Vanderhoof -- organized a lead-and-silver mining company on the strength of it, leasing a stretch of land along the river bottom near the bridge on the Lodi-Homerville road. For several weeks they dug with real excitement, only to turn up nothing but what miners out West called "scabs" -- worthless mineral scraps. The glittering cubes were galena, a common lead ore, not silver, and Homer's brief mining boom quietly folded once the diggers accepted the delusion for what it was.

A German Corner in a New England County

While the southeastern part of Homer Township filled in with families who traced their roots back through Harrisville to New England, the northeastern part took a different course entirely. Beginning in 1833, families of German Pennsylvanians -- Eli Garman among the first, followed by Jonathan Holburn and John Miller -- bought land from an Eastern speculator and began clearing farms of their own, most of them buying their tracts sight unseen before Garman himself returned to Pennsylvania to fetch his new wife. More families from the same German districts followed, and within a matter of years their corner of the township had grown, by the 1881 county history's account, into one of its most populous and prosperous farming districts -- a distinctly different settlement story unfolding within sight of Homer Township's overwhelmingly New England-descended southern half.

The belling that went to court

In the summer of 1856 a young couple married in Homer Township and were staying at the bride's father's house. On the appointed night twenty or thirty young men gathered in costume with tin pans, bells and 'horse-fiddles' to give them a charivari, or 'belling.' Shotguns were fired and a live goose was thrown into the bridal chamber. The groom's irate father had state warrants issued for every young man whose name he could learn, and fifteen or twenty, some of them boys, were bound over on $1,000 bonds, which resident property-holders promptly furnished. At the Court of Common Pleas in Medina the Homer people drove to the county seat in a long caravan of four-horse teams with streaming banners, and after several days of excited trial the young men were acquitted. The father had to sell his farm to pay thousands of dollars in costs and attorneys' fees and left for the West.

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

Wells (14 listed as active in EPA SDWIS: Wells 1-7 and 10-15; Well 9 was deactivated 2025-11-17) in the Jerome Fork Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer, sited generally north of the treatment plant on Cleveland Road The water here

• Rural Lorain Co. Water A98% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• West Salem Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

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