New Lyme Township, Ashtabula County

How New Lyme Township, Ashtabula County began

New Lyme Township's land was bought from the Connecticut Land Company in 1799 by Elisha Tracy and Judge Gilbert; Joel Owen, who acquired 1,000 acres, built the township's first house over the winter of 1803-04 while his wife and two children waited out the journey in Amsterdam, New York, then completed a nine-month, four-hundred-mile move by wagon, open lake boat, and foot that survived a Lake Erie storm and shipwreck before the family was reunited at their cabin on August 13, 1804. For nearly seven years the Owens were the township's only white family, sharing the land peaceably with some sixty encamped Native people who traded meat, sugar, and fish for garden produce. Real settlement came in 1811, when the Peck, Strickland, Way, and Gee families arrived from Connecticut together. Organized in 1813 as Lebanon, the township was renamed New Lyme by the state legislature in 1825. Its lasting landmark is the New Lyme Institute, founded in 1876-79 as a private academy that, according to Wikipedia, educated Judge Florence E. Allen, later the first woman to sit on a U.S. Court of Appeals, before closing in 1923 when state law required its buildings to become the township's public centralized school.

Settled 1803-1804 (Joel Owen, first house and settlement), incorporated 1813 (organized as Lebanon); 1825 (renamed New Lyme), by Joel Owen; land purchased from the Connecticut Land Company by Elisha Tracy and Judge Gilbert in 1799 for $2,400, or about 15 cents an acre.

Where the name comes from

The township organized in 1813 under the name Lebanon; the Ohio legislature renamed it New Lyme in 1825. The name honors Lyme, New London County, Connecticut, the home town of the Peck, Strickland, Way, and Gee families whose 1811 arrival made up the township's first real wave of settlement -- a connection the 1877 Condensed History makes explicit by identifying these families as being 'of Lyme, New London County, Connecticut.'

Before the town

No named village or specific site within New Lyme Township is recorded, but the 1877 Condensed History of New Lyme gives an unusually direct account of day-to-day contact: when Joel Owen and his family reached their cabin in August 1804, they found about sixty Native people, men and women, encamped on Owen's own land a short distance away, and the two households lived alongside each other in peace for years. The Owens' Native neighbors kept the family supplied with elk, deer, and bear meat, turkeys, sugar, and fish in exchange for whatever produce Owen could spare, and Mrs. Owen traded directly with the women of the camp -- who, the source notes with some amusement, did not deal as honestly as the men, sometimes slipping extra potatoes under their blankets while helping her measure out a half bushel.

Timeline

1. 1799 — Elisha Tracy and Judge Gilbert, of East Haddam, Connecticut, purchase the township's land from the Connecticut Land Company for $2,400, or about 15 cents an acre.
2. November 1803 — Joel Owen leaves Connecticut with his wife and two children by ox wagon, but on reaching Amsterdam, New York finds the season too advanced and the roads too poor to continue, and leaves his family there while he goes on alone to spend the winter building on his land in Ohio.
3. June-August 1804 — Owen returns for his family and they travel by open boat up the Mohawk River and along Lake Ontario to Buffalo, surviving a night storm that grounded their boat on a rock, then along Lake Erie's shore in stages, reaching their cabin on August 13, 1804, nine months and thirteen days after leaving Connecticut.
4. 1811 — Samuel G. and Daniel Peck, Joshua Strickland, Vinton B. Way, and John and Salmon Gee, all of Lyme, New London County, Connecticut, arrive and settle near Owen, followed later the same year by the Huntley, Miller, Chapman, and Beckwith families.
5. 1812 — Rev. Giles H. Cowles conducts the township's first religious meeting, at the home of Zopher Gee; in spring, Calvin Knowlton and Susan Peck marry at Samuel Peck's cabin, the township's first wedding.
6. 1813 — The township organizes under the name Lebanon, electing Daniel Huntley, Samuel Peck, and Perry Beckwith as trustees, Joseph Miller as clerk, Joel Owen as treasurer, and Edward Peck as constable.
7. 1814 — Joseph Miller builds the township's first saw-mill, on Whetstone Creek.
8. 1816 — Joel Owen sells his farm and moves to Saybrook (then Wrightsburg), later losing much of the property when the township's promoter, a man named Wright, went bankrupt; he later said he never enjoyed life more than during his seven isolated years in New Lyme.
9. 1820 — Zopher Gee and Samuel G. Peck build a second saw-mill, on Lebanon Creek, and fairly good roads have by this date been built through the township in all directions.
10. 1825 — The Ohio legislature renames the township from Lebanon to New Lyme.
11. 1826 — The Free-Will Baptist church organizes with nine members under Elder Samuel Wires; its church at Dodgeville is built in 1846.
12. 1865 — Albert Latimer and Jonathan Bishop establish the township's first cheese factory.
13. 1876 — Township residents, wanting an institution of learning for their children, begin organizing what becomes the New Lyme Institute.
14. August 21, 1879 — The New Lyme Institute's original building is dedicated, funded partly by Judge William S. Deming's donation of land, campus, and $3,000 in initial funding; it is incorporated in 1883 and grows under president Jacob E. Tuckerman from 1882 to 1897.
15. 1976 — The New Lyme Institute is added to the National Register of Historic Places.
16. 1923 — The New Lyme Institute closes after Ohio law requires townships to maintain centralized public schools; its trustees transfer the buildings and campus to the township for that purpose.

Stories

From a private academy to a state supreme court

The New Lyme Institute began in 1876 out of a simple wish: township residents wanted a real school for their children, beyond what a one-room schoolhouse could offer. Judge William S. Deming donated the land and $3,000 to get it built, and the school -- known briefly as the Northern Collegiate Business Institute before settling into its lasting name -- was dedicated on August 21, 1879 with an elaborate ceremony on its campus above Lebanon Creek, ringed by a semicircle of maples. Under president Jacob E. Tuckerman, who led it from 1882 to 1897, the Institute built a genuine reputation, and its alumni went on to real distinction: Benjamin S. Chapin, who became known nationally as a Lincoln impersonator, and Judge Florence E. Allen (her attendance rests on Wikipedia; we found no other source for it), who went on to serve on the Ohio Supreme Court and then, in 1934, became the first woman appointed to a United States Court of Appeals. The Institute's own end came not from decline but from a change in state law: when Ohio began requiring townships to run centralized public schools, the trustees simply handed the campus over to New Lyme Township in 1923, folding a private academy's legacy directly into the public system that replaced it.

Nine months to a cabin seven miles from anyone

Joel Owen's move to New Lyme was one of the harder pioneer journeys recorded for Ashtabula County. Leaving Connecticut in November 1803 with his wife and two small children, he found the roads so poor by the time they reached Amsterdam, New York, that he left his family there for the winter and pushed on alone to build a cabin on land he had never seen. He returned for them the following June, but rather than retrace the overland route he took to the water, rowing up the Mohawk River and along Lake Ontario to Buffalo. A night storm on the lake ran their small boat onto a rock and sprang a leak; they patched it and pressed on, driven ashore again and again by rough water, once for a full week. Mrs. Owen at one point had to wade ashore through a thunderstorm and simply lay down on the beach to sleep, exhausted, while the rain continued to pour. They finally reached their cabin on August 13, 1804 -- nine months and thirteen days after setting out -- to a home seven miles from the nearest white neighbor and shared, amicably as it turned out, with about sixty Native people camped nearby. Owen later said those seven isolated years were the happiest of his life.

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

Every historic place in Ashtabula County on the full map

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• Aqua Ohio - Village of Jefferson55% of residentsLake Erie
• Roaming Shores Village44% of residentsLake Erie
• Dfc Mobile Home Park1% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Shale and injection wells (2)

Superfund sites (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 3 of 3 passed.

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