Lowellville

How Lowellville began

Lowellville grew from two rival settlements on opposite banks of the Mahoning River: McGillville (or McGillsville), founded in the early 1800s by Revolutionary War veteran John McGill and his brother Robert with a grist mill and sawmill, and Lowell, across the river, probably named for the proprietors of the Lowell Milling Company. The two settlements, along with a third called Petersburg on Lowellville's south side, united in 1836 under the name Lowellville, platted that year by a Mr. Wick, with the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal reaching the town in 1839-1840 and spurring its growth. In 1844, the Mary Furnace, built by Wilkinson, Wilkes and Company, became, according to local historians, the first blast furnace west of the Allegheny Mountains to smelt iron using raw bituminous coal instead of charcoal -- a technique reportedly discovered by accident at a Mercer, Pennsylvania furnace during an 1837 charcoal-workers' strike -- and the furnace supplied iron for every American war from the Civil War through World War II. Railroads, waves of Italian immigration around 1900, and continued heavy industry shaped the twentieth-century village, which remains a small Mahoning River community today.

Settled Early 1800s (John and Robert McGill's mills; the Lowell settlement across the river), platted Platted as Lowellville in 1836 by a Mr. Wick, uniting the McGillsville, Lowell and Petersburg settlements, incorporated McGillsville and Lowell formally incorporated together as the village of Lowellville in 1890, by John and Robert McGill; unified and platted under the name Lowellville by Mr. Wick.

Where the name comes from

Accounts of the name disagree. One tradition holds that a small band of Seneca people forced westward settled at Pine Hollow near the future village in the early 1760s and that the name Loe-la, said to mean 'pheasant' and applied to a Seneca woman, was adopted and gradually changed by early Americans to Lowell. Another account credits the name to the Lowell Milling Company, proprietors of a flour mill on the north side of the river. The unified town took the name Lowellville when the McGillsville, Lowell and Petersburg settlements combined in 1836; some also say the Lowellville Milling Company, which opened in 1840, gave the final town its name.

Before the town

Local Lowellville tradition, recorded in a community history compiled for the village, holds that a small band of Seneca people, forced westward from their earlier territory, arrived at Pine Hollow near Lowellville in the early 1760s and maintained lodges scattered through the hollow into that decade; the same tradition describes Delaware people living in the area and a decisive battle between local Indians and a Ligonier, Pennsylvania militia occurring north of Lowellville in Coitsville, after which the militia is said to have killed the Native band. Indian burial grounds are reported just east of Lowellville. This account comes from a single locally compiled history rather than an archaeological or academic source, so it should be treated with appropriate caution.

Nations recorded here: Seneca-Cayuga (Mingo), Lenape (Delaware).

• Pine Hollow lodges and burial grounds (village) — Pine Hollow, near Lowellville, 1760s and after (local tradition, not independently dated) (gisapp.mahoningcountyoh.gov)

Timeline

1. 1802 — William Houston, a Scotch-Irish Revolutionary War veteran and former British prisoner of war, arrives in the Lowellville area from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with his family and settles in Coitsville Township just north of the future village.
2. 1809 — David Houston, William's son, buys a farm on Government Lot 79 in Poland Township and eventually owns 1,000 acres around Lowellville, some of which the town is later built on.
3. 1830s — John McGill, having come to the area around 1830 and bought up 200 acres facing the Mahoning River, builds the first grist mill; his brother Robert builds the first saw mill.
4. 1836 — The settlements of Petersburg (south side), McGillsville (west side) and Lowell (east side) unite and are platted as the town of Lowellville by a Mr. Wick.
5. 1837 — At a charcoal furnace in Mercer, Pennsylvania, owner David Himrod, facing a strike by his charcoal handlers, tries Brier Hill coal in his furnace instead and finds charcoal is not needed after all, sparking the raw-coal smelting technique that would transform the Mahoning Valley iron industry.
6. 1839 — The Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal, through Lowellville, opens, boosting the town's population and trade.
7. 1840 — The post office is established with S. H. McBride as postmaster; the Lowellville Milling Company opens the same year.
8. 1844 — The Mary Furnace, built by Wilkinson, Wilkes and Company and named for Mary Davis Mayhew, becomes, according to local historians, the first furnace in the United States to melt iron ore with raw coal and the first furnace west of the Allegheny Mountains to make iron directly from ore and coal.
9. 1880 — The Pennsylvania Railroad's Lowellville station is built in the Queen Anne style along Washington Street.
10. 1890 — The communities of McGillsville and Lowell are formally incorporated together as the village of Lowellville.
11. 1893 — Agostine and Antonini Vespasian, with their daughter Virginia, arrive from Riardo, Italy, becoming the first Italian family to settle in Lowellville and beginning decades of Italian immigration to the village.
12. 1917 — A fire of unknown origin destroys the First Presbyterian Church and the neighboring Methodist church, standing side by side; a new Presbyterian church is completed in 1919 using native limestone from the Arrel Quarry.
13. 1976 — The Lowellville Railroad Station is added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 30.

Stories

A strike that changed how iron was made

Lowellville's Mary Furnace, built in 1844 by Wilkinson, Wilkes and Company on land where iron ore, coal and limestone were all found locally, owed its existence to an accident of labor conflict a few years earlier and a few miles away. In 1837, David Himrod ran a charcoal-fired iron furnace in Mercer, Pennsylvania, and depended on charcoal handlers to keep it fed; when those workers went on strike, Himrod faced losing his furnace's heat entirely. In desperation he threw in Brier Hill coal instead of charcoal -- and discovered the furnace worked without charcoal at all. That improvised substitution became, according to Mahoning Valley historians, the first successful use of raw coal (rather than charcoal or coke) to smelt iron ore anywhere in the country, and the Mary Furnace at Lowellville, built on the same principle a few years later, is remembered as the first furnace west of the Allegheny Mountains to make iron directly from ore and raw coal. The furnace went on to supply iron for the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and both World Wars -- an entire regional industry traced back to one ironmaster's improvised fix for a labor shortage.

Three towns, one village

Lowellville did not begin as a single settlement. On the south side of the river sat Petersburg; on the west, McGillsville, founded by Revolutionary War veteran John McGill and his brother Robert, who built the area's first grist mill and saw mill; and on the east, a settlement called Lowell, whose name may trace either to the Lowell Milling Company or, by an older and less certain tradition, to a Seneca word for pheasant applied to a Native woman who lived nearby. In 1836 the three merged and were platted under a single name, Lowellville, though formal village incorporation did not follow until 1890. The town's religious history shows the same pattern of merger and division: a Free Presbyterian congregation split off in 1848 over the slavery question, using local abolitionists' barns as stations on the Underground Railroad, before reuniting with the mainstream Presbyterian church after the Civil War ended slavery in 1865. Even Lowellville's food culture reflects its layered immigrant history -- Italian families who settled from the 1890s onward built backyard bake ovens that produced not just bread but, eventually, what local memory credits as some of the valley's earliest pizza.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · gisapp.mahoningcountyoh.gov · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Mahoning County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Aqua Ohio - Struthers98% of residentsEvans Lake (Yellow Creek impoundment)
• Youngstown City2% of residentsMeander Creek Reservoir + Berlin Reservoir (Mahoning River basin)

Fire and EMS stations (2)

Public schools (2)

Police stations (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-17: county board of elections.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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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