Kingsville Township, Ashtabula County

How Kingsville Township, Ashtabula County began

Kingsville Township was first settled in 1803 by hunter Eldad Harrington, followed in 1805 by Captain Walter Fobes, whose 500-acre purchase and donated cemetery land made him the township's central early figure; the township organized in 1810. Its most memorable founding story is its name: an itinerant man surnamed King reportedly offered four gallons of whiskey to have the settlement, originally called Fobes Dale, renamed for him, and the offer was accepted. Kingsville Academy, chartered in 1834-35 and rebuilt after a suspicious 1847 fire, grew into a pioneering centralized school system by 1893, one of the first in the country to bus rural children to a consolidated school rather than scatter them across one-room schoolhouses. The county's infirmary, located in the township, burned in 1858 with the loss of six residents, in a fire a jury attributed to a fellow inmate.

Settled 1803 (Eldad Harrington, first settler), incorporated 1810 (organized), by Eldad Harrington, first settler; Captain Walter Fobes, first permanent settler and leading early landowner.

Where the name comes from

The township was first called Fobes Dale, for Captain Walter Fobes, then briefly considered Norwich amid naming disputes, before a transient man surnamed King offered four gallons of whiskey for residents to adopt his name instead; they accepted, and the name Kingsville stuck.

Before the town

The 1924 county history records generally peaceful relations between Kingsville Township's settlers and Native people still in the area in the early 1800s, alongside specific, more troubling recollections: Harvey Nettleton recounted a young man identified as Chief Po-ca-caw (also called John Omick) threatening children while sharpening a tomahawk on a grindstone, and another remembered incident involving a man named Armstrong behaving with hostility toward settlers' cabins. The same source, written from the settlers' perspective, also recounts violent confrontations, including a father's fatal pursuit of a man who had attempted to scalp his child, and the killing of a man caught stealing hogs. These accounts should be read as one-sided settler memory rather than a balanced record.

Timeline

1. 1803 — Eldad Harrington, a hunter, becomes the township's first settler.
2. fall 1805 — Captain Walter Fobes arrives from Norwich, Massachusetts, buys about 500 acres, and becomes the township's first permanent settler and leading citizen; he later donates land for the village cemetery and is its first burial, in 1816.
3. 1806 — The township's first school opens in Captain Fobes's home, taught by Rebecca Cowles to seven pupils.
4. August 1810 — A Congregational church organizes with six members, including Captain Fobes and his wife.
5. 1810 — Kingsville Township organizes; the first town election is held in a log cabin on the Conneaut River's bank, electing William Ferguson, Israel Harrington, and Roger Nettleton as trustees.
6. 1812 — A log schoolhouse is built on the Clark Webster clearing.
7. 1813 — The Baptist church organizes with seven members under Elder Benjamin Barnes.
8. 1821 — The first frame schoolhouse is built in North Kingsville.
9. 1823 — Whiskey production is common locally; three stills operate in the township this decade, run by Ward, Smith Webster, and Enoch Stevens.
10. 1829 — The first meeting for a temperance pledge society is held, with many local residents signing.
11. 1831 — The Methodist church organizes with sixteen members under Rev. Samuel Ayers, building the township's first brick meeting house in 1834.
12. 1834 — Mormon evangelists Hyrum Smith and Orson Hyde, associates of Joseph Smith, hold meetings in the township; in June 1838 twenty families of Mormon converts, including five from Kingsville, camp on the Nettleton property before emigrating west.
13. 1834-35 — A stock company forms Kingsville Academy, building a two-story, 42-by-28-foot structure funded by 60 shares at $10 each.
14. January 1841 — The Ashtabula County Infirmary opens in the township under first superintendent Obed Dibble.
15. February 2, 1858 — Fire destroys the county infirmary; six residents die, and an investigation finds an inmate, Mrs. Huldah Morrison, deliberately set the blaze by thrusting a lighted stick into her straw mattress and opening doors to fan the flames.
16. December 20, 1847 — Kingsville Academy's original building burns; two students, Kinner and Moore, confess to the arson. Moore is later executed in California for murder, telling authorities the academy fire had been his first criminal act.
17. 1848 — Kingsville Academy is rebuilt.
18. February 15, 1867 — A major fire destroys Kingsville's business center, though two buildings are demolished deliberately to stop the flames from spreading further.
19. 1893 — Under principal F. E. Morrison, Kingsville's school board successfully implements centralized schooling, transporting rural children to a consolidated school -- a nationally recognized early example of the practice, after Principal C.A. Corbin's 1890 proposal had initially been rejected.

Stories

The academy fire that led to murder

Kingsville Academy, built in 1834-35 by a stock company of sixty local shareholders, burned to the ground on the night of December 20, 1847. Two students, remembered in the county history only by the surnames Kinner and Moore, confessed to setting the fire. The story did not end there: years later, out in California, Moore was convicted and executed for murder, and in his final confession he told authorities that burning down the Kingsville academy had been his first criminal act -- the opening act, in his own telling, of a life that ended on a gallows on the other side of the continent. The academy itself was rebuilt the following year and went on to a far better-known legacy: by 1893, under principal F. E. Morrison, its school board successfully centralized the township's rural schools, busing children in from outlying farms rather than leaving them to walk to scattered one-room schoolhouses -- a reform significant enough that, per the local history, educators from Ohio and neighboring states came to study it, decades before school consolidation became common practice nationally.

The pipe smoker and the infirmary fire

The Ashtabula County Infirmary, the poorhouse that opened in Kingsville Township in January 1841, suffered what the 1924 county history calls the most distressing incident in the township's history on February 2, 1858. Fire was discovered around 5 p.m. and spread too fast to control; six residents died in the blaze -- Thomas Neno, Joseph Brunson, a Mr. Minor, Eliza Percival, Anna Ellison, and Mrs. Bennett, formerly of Jefferson -- while roughly sixty survivors were taken in by sympathetic village families for the night. The investigation that followed found the cause disturbingly direct: a boy at the infirmary reported that a resident, Mrs. Huldah Morrison, had asked him for a lighted stick to light her pipe, then instead pushed it into her own straw mattress and opened doors to create a draft that fed the flames. A jury concluded the deaths were caused by "the willful act of the pipe smoker," and Morrison was jailed.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · conneautohio.us

Mostly private wells The water here

• Aqua Ohio - Ashtabula72% of residentsLake Erie
• Conneaut28% of residentsLake Erie

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Superfund sites (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

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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, 2021 to 2022, released 2026-02-12

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