Lodi

• Ohio's deep timeOhio was once a tropical sea south of the Equator, home to giant trilobites and a toothless armored fish — and it has no dinosaur fossils at all.

How Lodi began

Lodi is the oldest settlement in Medina County, first explored in the fall of 1810 and permanently settled on February 14, 1811 by Joseph Harris, who laid out Harrisville Township's first cabin on the spot now known as the Tuttle lot, a few rods south of the village center. The name changed to Lodi, for the Italian town where Napoleon won a decisive 1796 battle, before the village formally incorporated in 1891. Its landmark building, the $85,000 Taylor Inn, opened in 1898 as one of the finest hotels in Ohio, before financial hardship led to its demolition in the 1930s. Today Lodi is a small Route 42 village still built around its historic square.

Settled 1811-02-14 (Joseph Harris, wife and child, with young James Redfield), incorporated 1891, by Joseph Harris, agent of the Torringford Land Company, Medina County's first settler.

Where the name comes from

First platted as Harrisville in 1811 to honor Judge Joseph Harris, whose family's arrival that February is separately recorded as Medina County's first titled, recorded settlement. The name later changed to Lodi, after the Italian town where Napoleon Bonaparte won a decisive 1796 victory that became a central element of the Napoleonic myth, convincing Napoleon of his own destiny for greatness. The 1881 county history, written seventy years after the founding, states plainly that there is no authentic record of when or at whose suggestion the post office name was changed from Harrisville to Lodi.

Before the town

The site Joseph Harris chose for his 1810-1811 settlement was, in the county historian's words, one of the favorite hunting grounds of the Wyandot and Ottawa, and their wigwams stood in good repair near the spot he selected for his house; the Indians withdrew to new lodges two to six miles off rather than live beside the newcomers, though relations stayed friendly. A well-worn Indian trail running from Sandusky to Wooster and on to Pittsburgh crossed Harrisville Township a few miles west of the center of Lodi, and hunters of several tribes used it regularly to carry hides and furs to market; the same Sandusky-to-Tuscarawas trail passed close by the Harris residence itself, and Indians camping along it in season built wigwams within a few rods of the settlers' cabins. A few years after settlement, Capt. Wolf, a Delaware described as a sort of missionary among the tribes north of the Ohio and an eyewitness to Commodore Perry's 1812 Battle of Lake Erie, frequently visited the Harrisville colony to trade news and stories, and let Joseph Harris's young son Albert ride along in his bark canoe on trapping trips to Chippewa Lake. In Harrisville, just south of the public green in what is now Lodi, is a large Mound Builder mound on which Judge Harris built his house around 1830; digging the cellar turned up nine human skeletons of unusually large stature, and further digging in 1869 turned up two more, more recently interred. The county-level history file carries the fuller treaty context for Medina County as a whole.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Ottawa, Lenape (Delaware).

• Lodi mound (mound) — just south of the public green in Lodi (the Harris house lot, Tuttle lot area), Mound Builder era; nine skeletons found in 1830, two more in 1869 (archive.org)
• Sandusky-Wooster-Pittsburgh trail (trail) — crossed Harrisville Township a few miles west of the center of Lodi, passing near the Harris residence, in active use through at least the 1810s-1820s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1810-fall — Joseph Harris, a young farmer from near Randolph in Portage County, walks west to explore the land, camps overnight on a ridge above the future village, and stakes a claim on what is now called the Tuttle lot.
2. 1811-02-14 — Joseph Harris, his wife, their two-year-old son and eleven-year-old James Redfield arrive by ox-sled train and settle permanently, the first settlement in Medina County.
3. 1811-06 — George Burr, his wife and brother Russell Burr arrive from Litchfield County, Connecticut and settle on a lot adjoining Harris.
4. 1817-04 — A complete political organization of the township is effected, at the time including the territory of present-day Harrisville, Westfield, La Fayette, Chatham, Spencer, Huntington, Rochester, Troy, Sullivan and Homer townships.
5. 1818 — First Congregational Church, the first church in Harrisville Township, is formed by Rev. Luther Humphrey, missionary Amasa Loomis, and six local families.
6. 1834 — Harrisville is established as a post office, with James Redfield running the first mail line under a government contract from Wooster to Elyria by way of Harrisville, Spencer, Penfield and Turner's Mills.
7. 1857 — The First National Bank of Lodi organizes; over 14 years it prints $157,080 in its own banknotes.
8. 1872 — A railroad opens from Seville to Massillon, later expanded and absorbed into the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling and then the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, boosting land values along its route toward Lodi.
9. 1873 — Lodi Hospital is built and operated by G.W. Jason; the village later purchases it and runs it as a community hospital.
10. 1886 — The Lodi Review newspaper is established; its circulation reaches 600 by 1890.
11. 1891 — Lodi formally incorporates as a village.
12. 1898 — A.B. Taylor builds the Taylor Inn at Bank and Elyria Streets for $85,000, as a memorial to his father; it becomes one of Ohio's finer resort hotels, with a tennis court, croquet grounds, marble lobby and piped-in spring water.
13. 1930s — The Taylor Inn, by then bequeathed to Oberlin College, is torn down amid poor financial times and building disrepair; a gas station is later built on the site.

Stories

A Memorial Hotel That Didn't Outlast Its Century

In 1898, hotelier A.B. Taylor built the finest building Lodi had ever seen: the Taylor Inn, raised at the corner of Bank and Elyria Streets for $85,000 as a memorial to his father. It was, by contemporary accounts, one of the finest hotels in Ohio, and by the early 1900s it had become a genuinely popular resort destination -- guests could play tennis or croquet on the grounds, relax in a spacious marble-floored lobby, dine in a hall lined with polished quarter-sawed oak columns beside grand fireplaces, or bowl and play billiards in a fully equipped game room, all while steam heat and drinking water piped in from the nearby Black River kept the place comfortable. The inn eventually passed by bequest to Oberlin College, but the Great Depression and the building's advancing age proved too much: it was torn down in the 1930s, its site eventually given over to a gas station, leaving Lodi's grandest 19th-century landmark surviving only in photographs.

The Mound Under the House

Joseph Harris's family were not the first to build on the rise of ground just south of Lodi's public green. When Judge Harris put up a dwelling there around 1830, his workers were digging into a Mound Builder burial mound twelve feet above the surrounding land and 160 feet long, its outline still traceable beneath large black walnut trees. Nine human skeletons came up out of the cellar hole, dumped in without any evident arrangement and buried at varying depths, the deepest about seven feet down; Harris's son Albert, then twenty years old, later recalled being able to fit one of the skulls over his own head like a cap. A small monument of cobblestones and charcoal sat at the mound's center, nine feet below the surface. Decades later, in 1869, workmen laying stone steps at the front of the house turned up two more, smaller skeletons only three feet down -- interments the family judged much more recent, and possibly from a different people entirely. No systematic study was ever made of the site; by the historian's account, the ground in front of the house, if dug over, would likely still yield more.

From Harrisville to Lodi

Lodi holds the distinction of Medina County's oldest settlement, first platted in 1811 as Harrisville, honoring Judge Joseph Harris, whose own family's arrival that same year is remembered separately as the county's first titled, recorded settlement anywhere. At some point before the village's 1891 incorporation, the name changed entirely, swapping a local judge's surname for Lodi, a town in northern Italy famous for Napoleon Bonaparte's 1796 victory there -- a battle contemporaries credited with convincing Napoleon of his own destiny for greatness. Even the county's own 1881 history, written by contributors who could still speak with people who remembered the founding, admits there is no authentic record of when the change was made or who suggested it.

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

Every historic place in Medina County on the full map

Groundwater wells (4 wells) The water here

• Lodi Village82% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Medina Co/northwest18% of residentsLake Erie

Hospitals (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (2)

Police stations (1)

Public EV charging (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (4)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 4 of 4 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked. The county's results on file run through 2025-11-04; later elections are not loaded yet.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-07-14
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-07-16

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Lodi, Medina County and its school district:

• Lodi Village: Renews a 3-mill property tax levy for the current expenses of Lodi Village for 5 years, beginning in 2026.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

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.

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