Newbury Township, Geauga County

How Newbury Township, Geauga County began

Newbury Township's first permanent settler was Lemuel Punderson, a Connecticut Land Company agent who arrived about 1810 and built a gristmill and distillery near a pond that today, dammed and enlarged, forms Punderson Lake. The name Newbury probably honors Newbury, England, or Newburyport, Massachusetts, though a company director named Roger Newbury is also a candidate. By 1817 the township had 27 taxpayers spread across four small hamlets -- North Newbury, Newbury Center, South Newbury, and Fullertown -- each with its own post office, store, and church. Congressman and author Albert Gallatin Riddle grew up here and set several of his novels in 'the West Woods' of his boyhood township. Newbury had 5,244 residents in 2020 and today contains Punderson State Park.

Settled about 1810 (Lemuel Punderson, first permanent settler, per Newbury Township's own history; the 1879 county history's settlement list also gives 1810), incorporated 1817 (Wikipedia gives this as the township's establishment year; the township celebrated its bicentennial in 2017), by Lemuel Punderson, agent for the Connecticut Land Company.

Where the name comes from

Newbury Township's own history says the name probably came from Newbury, England, or Newburyport, Massachusetts, but notes that Roger Newbury sat on the board of directors of the Connecticut Land Company, which received title to the Western Reserve from the state of Connecticut -- so the township may instead be named for him. It is the only Newbury Township in Ohio.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, or site specific to Newbury Township is documented in any source we consulted. Wikipedia's article on the township states that the Seneca were 'the first known inhabitants, living in Newbury until they were forcibly removed to Indian Territory in Oklahoma in the 1830s,' but Newbury Township's own detailed 13-page bicentennial history -- which covers the township's settlement, roads, schools, churches, mills, and cemeteries in granular detail -- makes no mention of any Seneca village, reservation, or removal, and no Seneca reservation is documented anywhere in Geauga County by any source we consulted. This claim is therefore treated as unverified rather than repeated as fact; it may conflate Newbury with the well-documented Seneca reservation on the Sandusky River in Seneca County, more than 80 miles away.

Timeline

1. 1810 — Lemuel Punderson, a Connecticut Land Company land agent who had lived in Burton, becomes Newbury's first permanent settler and partners with a Mr. Hickox to build a gristmill and distillery at the foot of the 'Big Pond,' the future Punderson Lake.
2. 1812 — The 'State Road' is cut through from Chardon, spurring early settlement of North and South Newbury.
3. 1815 — The first school in the township opens; children walk to class 'through unbroken woods with nothing but blazed trees to direct on their narrow path,' the first of what would grow to nine one-room schoolhouses.
4. 1817 — By this year Newbury has 27 taxpayers, or heads of household, according to the county history.
5. 1834 — In February, Brigham Young marries Mary Ann Angel, a cousin of a Newbury resident and a Mormon convert, on the front porch of the Morton home on Bell Road, after Abraham Morton refuses to let Young inside the house.
6. 1856 — Residents build the Union Chapel in South Newbury on land donated by Anson Mathews; it is dedicated to free speech after the Brick Church across the street refuses to let former U.S. Representative and future president James A. Garfield speak there.
7. 1876 — On July 4, the South Newbury Woman's Suffrage Political Club plants a Centennial Oak across from Union Chapel to mark the nation's hundredth birthday and their cause; a jar with a history of the club and a program is buried in concrete at its base.
8. 1882 — The Geauga County Pioneer Association begins holding annual 'Pioneer Picnics' at Punderson Lake, an event that draws an estimated 5,000 people in 1886 alone.
9. 1951 — Punderson Lake and the surrounding land, purchased by the state's Division of Wildlife in 1948, open as Punderson State Park.
10. 2020 — U.S. Census records 5,244 residents in Newbury Township, down from 5,805 in 2000.

Stories

The unfinished mansion under Punderson Lake's lodge

Punderson Lake had already drawn crowds for decades -- steamboat rides at the Wales Hotel in the 1890s, thousands at the Geauga County Pioneer Association's annual picnics -- when, in the 1920s, Karl Long, head of a Detroit trucking firm, began building a 43-room summer mansion on its shore with 15 bathrooms and four fireplaces. He spent about $250,000 before running into financial trouble, and the mansion sat unfinished; the property reverted to its former owner and stayed that way until Ohio bought it in the 1950s and finished the building as the Tudor-style Punderson Manor House Lodge, the centerpiece of the new Punderson State Park. The lake itself had been part of the original land holdings of Lemuel Punderson, the Connecticut Land Company agent who built Newbury's first mill there around 1810 -- so the manor that greets today's park visitors sits on land a single Newbury pioneer family had already been working for well over a century.

A.G. Riddle, from the West Woods to Lincoln's Washington

Albert Gallatin Riddle was born in Monson, Massachusetts, in May 1816 and moved to Newbury with his family at age one; when his father died in 1823, some of the nine Riddle children were raised by friends and relatives in the township. Riddle read law in the office of future Ohio governor Seabury Ford, was admitted to the bar in 1840, and was elected Geauga County prosecuting attorney the same year. He moved to Cleveland in 1850 to practice criminal law, served as defense counsel in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue case -- a landmark of the antislavery movement -- and was elected to Congress in 1860 as a friend and supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Riddle was present at the First Battle of Bull Run, and his shocked letters home describing the Union Army's demoralization were published, against his wishes, in Cleveland newspapers; he lost his seat but Lincoln appointed him consul at Matanzas, Cuba, to monitor Confederate blockade-runners. In later life Riddle wrote a Civil War memoir and several novels -- Ansel's Cave, Bart Ridgley, and Young Sugar Makers of the West Woods -- all set in the Newbury of his childhood, which local tradition still calls 'the West Woods.'

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

Every historic place in Geauga County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Kimberly Estates76% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Burton Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Chardon City8% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Cleveland Public Water System1% of residentsLake Erie
• Leaders MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Scranton Woods1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Jacques Mobile Home Park, Llc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Geauga County Services Center0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Manchester Farms Water0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Chardon Estates0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Maple Ridge Mhc, Limited0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Maywood Community Inc.0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Private schools (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (5)

Spills reported since 2021 (7)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-30
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-13

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