Mantua Township, Portage County

How Mantua Township, Portage County began

Mantua Township, the only Mantua Township in Ohio, takes its name from Mantua, Italy, the fortress city that Napoleon besieged in 1796 during his Italian campaign — a name choice reflecting how closely early Western Reserve settlers followed European news. The 1885 county history names Amzi Atwater and Elias Harmon among its earliest settlers and preserves the story of 'Judge Atwater's Bear Fight.' The village of Mantua, which had grown up in the township's southern portion, became legally independent of it in 1993. The township holds the Mantua Bog and Marsh Wetlands state nature preserves, designated a National Natural Landmark in 1976, and the 1815 Snow House stands among its early-period buildings. Today the township has 4,576 residents (2020).

Settled fall 1798 (Abraham L. Honey, the first settler in Portage County), incorporated March 5, 1810 (order of the county commissioners), by Abraham L. Honey, Rufus Edwards, Elias Harmon, Amzi Atwater.

Where the name comes from

The 1885 county history says the name Mantua was given by John Leavitt, in honor of Napoleon, who had in 1796 captured the city of that name in Italy.

Before the town

Mantua Township is one of the townships the 1957 county history 'Portage Heritage' lists as holding recorded prehistoric mounds, though it gives no exact location for any specific mound within the township. No named historic-era Native American village or camp is documented for the township specifically in the sources consulted. For the county's broader Native history. The 1885 county history records only one Native episode in Mantua: the story that prowling Indians carried off Rufus Edwards's only flour, left overnight in a canoe, in the township's earliest years.

Timeline

1. 1798 — Abraham L. Honey drives the first stake, puts up a cabin and clears a patch in the fall, making Mantua the first township in Portage County to receive a settler; Rufus Edwards takes over his lot and harvests the first wheat the next season.
2. 1799 — Elias Harmon, the fourth settler, arrives on June 12 and moves into a house raised on July 2; Rufus Edwards opens a hand grist-mill in October, and Paschal P. McIntosh settles on Lot 23.
3. n.d. (early 1800s) — Amzi Atwater and Elias Harmon are recorded among the township's earliest settlers, per the 1885 county history, which also preserves the story known as 'Judge Atwater's Bear Fight.'
4. 1800 — Amzi Atwater and his brother Jotham settle on the west part of Lot 41, where Mantua Station now stands; Eunice Harmon, born July 16, is the second child born in the county.
5. 1803 — Rufus Edwards marries Letitia Windsor, the township's first wedding, with Amzi Atwater as the justice; the men of Mantua, Hiram, Aurora and Nelson form a militia company.
6. 1804 — On July 2 Mrs. Anna Judson, newly married, dies after being given arsenic by mistake, the township's first death.
7. 1807 — The Methodist society is organized in September by Rev. R. R. Roberts; the Baptists follow in 1809 and the Congregational church on May 31, 1812.
8. 1810 — The county commissioners create Mantua Township on March 5; Elias Harmon's census that year lists about 25 heads of families.
9. 1812 — Shalersville is cut off from Mantua as a separate township.
10. 1815 — The Snow House, an early-period building still standing in the township, is constructed.
11. 1821 — David Ladd and the glassblower Jonathan Tinker start the Mantua Glass Company on December 1, making bottle glass until the plant moves to Kent in 1823.
12. 1827 — Sidney Rigdon, preacher to the Mantua Baptists from 1826, leaves in 1827 and organizes a Disciples church that takes almost all the old Baptist members.
13. 1881 — The Mantua Association of Spiritualists is incorporated on July 9; the Camp-meeting Association of Spiritualists of northern Ohio follows on October 2.
14. 1884 — The township produces cheese in three large factories and ships potatoes from Mantua Station; a National Transit Company oil pumping station on the Pennsylvania-Cleveland pipeline operates at Mantua.
15. 1976 — Mantua Bog State Nature Preserve and Marsh Wetlands State Nature Preserve, together covering the Mantua Swamp region, are designated a National Natural Landmark.
16. 1993 — The village of Mantua, in the township's former southern portion, becomes legally independent of Mantua Township.
17. 2020 — The census counts 4,576 residents in the township.

Stories

Wheat, a canoe and the flour that vanished

The first wheat in Portage County was grown in Mantua, and in the township's first years there was no mill nearer than Burton. Rufus Edwards once gathered all the grain in the settlement and took it by canoe to Burton to be ground, arriving back at night; he left the flour in the boat, meaning to fetch it at daylight, and in the morning found that prowling Indians had carried it all off. It was all the flour the township had. Edwards built the township's first hand grist-mill in 1799, and Elias Harmon's day-book, printed in the 1885 county history, records him chopping, logging and working at the mill for Edwards in 1799 and 1800. Harmon himself had put up a house in July 1799 in four days: on July 1 he began to cut timber, on July 2 he moved in, and by July 4 the floor was laid.

Sidney Rigdon's year in the Mantua pulpit

The Baptist church at Mantua had been founded in 1809 by Elder Jones at a meeting near the Judson cabin, and its first baptisms were of Oliver Snow and wife, Jotham Atwater and wife, and Rufus Edwards and wife, in the Cuyahoga near Judson's. In 1826 the preacher to this society was Sidney Rigdon, whom the 1885 county history describes as 'subsequently Joe Smith's Lieutenant'. In 1827 Rigdon left the Baptists and organized a Campbellite, or Disciples, church, and he succeeded in taking almost all the members of the old Baptist church with him. The Disciples church in Mantua was reorganized on July 6, 1850. Wikipedia separately lists Eliza Roxcy Snow Smith and Lorenzo Snow, both leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, among the township's notable people, and the Snow home, built in 1815, still stands there.

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

Every historic place in Portage County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Portage County Wr - Mantua Village35% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Aurora City - Cleveland26% of residentsLake Erie
• Blackbrook Valley Estates10% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Cleveland Public Water System8% of residentsLake Erie
• Aurora Estates7% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mantua Mobile Home Park7% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Aurora City - Portage4% of residentsBuried valley/sandstone aquifer wells (12 county wells)
• Hiram Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Troy Oaks Homes1% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Nelson Ledges Estates MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Inn At the Pines Alf & Mc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Public schools (2)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-08

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