Leroy Township, Lake County

How Leroy Township, Lake County began

LeRoy Township was surveyed as Town 10, Range 7 of the Connecticut Western Reserve and first settled in 1802 by brothers Paul and Elah Clapp, sent out from Massachusetts by their father Amasa; it incorporated in 1820 as Chesterfield, renamed LeRoy in the late 1820s after an influx of settlers from LeRoy, New York. Indian Point, a fortified ridge above the confluence of Paine Creek and the Grand River, holds the township's best-documented prehistoric site, attributed to the Whittlesey culture and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. A brief 1820s-50s industrial boom at Paine's Hollow gave way to farming, and since the 1960s the township has become one of Lake County's exurban, low-density communities.

Settled 1802 (Paul and Elah Clapp, first settlers), incorporated 1820 (as Chesterfield Township); renamed LeRoy in the late 1820s, by Amasa Clapp's sons, Paul and Elah.

Where the name comes from

The township was originally named Chesterfield, after a town in Massachusetts, when it was surveyed as 'Town 10, Range 7' of the Western Reserve. In the late 1820s an influx of settlers arrived from LeRoy, New York -- itself renamed for wealthy New York City businessman Herman Le Roy, who had bought 85,000 acres in what became Genesee County, New York, from the Holland Land Company -- and the Ohio township took the same name shortly after. It is spelled with a lowercase 'r' to distinguish it from another LeRoy Township elsewhere in Ohio.

Before the town

LeRoy Township holds Lake County's best-documented prehistoric Native site: Indian Point, a hundred-foot ridge between Paine Creek and the Grand River, where two parallel earthen mounds of unknown purpose survive alongside excavated house clusters, on ground defended naturally by steep cliffs on two sides. The site is associated with the Whittlesey culture, farming villagers who built palisaded settlements on similar high ground across northeastern Ohio from roughly AD 900 to 1650; a historical marker on Seeley Road, erected in 2009 by Lake Metroparks and the Ohio Historical Society, places Whittlesey occupation there specifically between about 1200 and 1650. The township's own comprehensive plan also records, per older and now largely superseded local tradition, that the Erie ('Cat Nation') used the wider area, though a growing body of archaeological opinion instead treats the Whittlesey people themselves as the last prehistoric residents of northeastern Ohio, with the Erie's own core territory further east around Buffalo. After the Whittlesey left the region around 1650, the plan states that Seneca, Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa, Cayuga, Tonawanda, Iroquois and Delaware people used and passed through the Grand River valley over the following century, though no named historic-era village within the township itself is documented. Indian Point was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and is now a 261-acre Lake Metroparks park.

Nations recorded here: Whittlesey culture, Erie, Seneca, Wyandot, Ottawa, Cayuga, Delaware (Lenape).

• Indian Point (earthwork) — LeRoy Township, on a ridge between Paine Creek and the Grand River, Whittlesey culture, roughly AD 900/1200 to 1650 (leroyohio.com)

Timeline

1. 1802 — Amasa Clapp sends his sons Paul and Elah from Massachusetts to clear land and establish a farm, making them the township's first settlers.
2. 1818 — Colonel Hendrick Paine, nephew of the General Paine who founded Painesville, builds a grain and saw mill at what becomes Paine Falls, later adding a forge, tannery and charcoal ashery.
3. 1820 — The township incorporates as Chesterfield, with first trustees Hendrick Paine, Solomon Williams and Henry Brakeman.
4. 1820s — An influx of settlers from LeRoy, New York prompts the township's renaming from Chesterfield to LeRoy.
5. 1830-1850s — Paine's Hollow grows into an active industrial hamlet with a forge, tannery, wagon shop, tool-handle factory, tavern and distillery, before deforestation collapses the local mill-powering watershed and the settlement empties out by the 1850s.
6. 1830s-1860s — Uri Seeley, namesake of Seeley Road, builds a hidden second-floor room in his farmhouse used to shelter people escaping slavery on their way up the Grand River toward Fairport Harbor and Canada.
7. 1974 — Indian Point is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
8. 1959-1960 — ODOT begins building Interstate 90 through the township's north end in 1959, giving the once-isolated area an exit at Vrooman Road and pushing population from 937 in 1950 to 1,502 by 1960.

Stories

Two mounds on a fortified point

On a hundred-foot ridge where Paine Creek meets the Grand River, prehistoric builders raised two parallel earthen mounds whose purpose is still unknown, on a site so easily defended -- steep cliffs on two sides -- that most historians read it as a fortification. Archaeologists have excavated huts and house clusters near the earthworks, with more believed to remain unexamined; plowing and development since European settlement have disturbed other traces. The site, Indian Point, is associated with the Whittlesey people, farming villagers who lived in palisaded settlements along the Grand River and the Lake Erie shore from roughly the twelfth to the seventeenth century, before the trail of what happened to them goes cold in the historical record. LeRoy Township's own settlers gave the ridge its English name centuries later, and the site later served as a military camp for high school boys and a Finnish summer camp before Lake County Metroparks established the 261-acre Indian Point Park there in 1964; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places a decade after that.

A hidden room on Seeley Road

Uri Seeley farmed land in southern LeRoy Township at a time when helping someone escape slavery was itself a crime, and he built his house to hide that fact: a concealed room on the second floor, reachable in a way that would not have been obvious to a casual search, where people fleeing enslavement in the South could rest before continuing on. From Seeley's farm the route ran north along the Grand River to Fairport Harbor, where boats could carry escapees across Lake Erie to freedom in Canada -- the same corridor that made Fairport Harbor's docks and lighthouse a genuine gateway out of the country, not just a shipping point. A.W. Vrooman, another township resident whose name now marks Vrooman Road, is remembered alongside Seeley as sympathetic to the same cause. The road that still bears Seeley's name is one of the few places in LeRoy Township where a settler's name survives attached to a story rather than just a street sign.

Local history sources: leroyohio.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Every historic place in Lake County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Painesville City50% of residentsLake Erie
• Lake County East Water Subdistrict28% of residentsLake Erie
• Aqua Ohio - Mentor14% of residentsLake Erie
• Fairport Harbor Village5% of residentsLake Erie
• Chardon City2% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Ashtabula County Water System1% of residentsLake Erie
• Leaders MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Rustic Pines Mhc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Jacques Mobile Home Park, Llc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Geauga County Services Center0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Kimberly Estates0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Chardon Estates0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Maple Ridge Mhc, Limited0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-23: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 3 of 4 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 2.

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 2025-12-02

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