North Fairfield

How North Fairfield began

North Fairfield began as a country store at a crossroads called Greenfield's Corners, renamed Steam Corners and then Steamburg after a steam sawmill went up in 1834, before settling on North Fairfield -- itself named for the surrounding Fairfield Township, which was in turn named for Fairfield, Connecticut. It grew into a small manufacturing center with a chair factory, a plow and stove foundry, and its own newspaper, but lost its chance at becoming a real town when a hoped-for railroad extension collapsed and took tens of thousands of dollars in local investment with it. It remains one of Huron County's smallest villages today.

Settled 1828 (post office) / 1829 (first postmaster commissioned), by Walter Branch, William Greenfield, Samson Baker and Samuel Foote.

Where the name comes from

North Fairfield derives its name from Fairfield Township, in which it sits; the township in turn is named for Fairfield, Connecticut, a town burned by British forces in the Revolutionary War. Before it was North Fairfield the settlement was known first as Greenfield's Corners, then as Steam Corners and Steamburg after Ebenezer Foote, Sampson Baker and Dr. J. N. Campbell built a steam sawmill there in 1834. The naming is documented in William Daniel Overman's 1958 reference work, 'Ohio Town Names.'

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, or site specific to North Fairfield is documented in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1828 — A post office is established at what will become North Fairfield; Walter Branch is commissioned the first postmaster on January 1, 1829, and serves four years.
2. 1831 — Ezra Smith, of Macksville, opens the township's first store at the settlement then called the center; Horace S. Moulton opens the first store at Greenfield's Corners itself the following year.
3. 1834 — Ebenezer Foote, Sampson Baker and Dr. J. N. Campbell build a steam sawmill, giving the settlement its working name, Steam Corners, later Steamburg; by the late 1840s six steam-powered shops and five dry-goods stores operate in the village, including a wool-carding works, a grist mill, an oil mill, an iron foundry and a machine shop.
4. 1847 — J. A. and E. Wakeman erect a brick foundry building that becomes the North Fairfield Plow and Iron Works, manufacturing stoves and, from 1855 under owner N. Burch, the Curtiss Iron Beam Plow.
5. 1850 — Ruggles, Kirtland & Burr buy out the village's cabinet-making shop and build it into a chair factory employing up to fifty men, one of the largest businesses in North Fairfield.
6. 1856 — The Fairfield Gazette, the village's newspaper, prints its first issue on April 23 under editor Robert McCune; the paper is later moved to Bellevue.
7. 1857 — The chair factory of Ruggles, Kirtland & Burr burns in the winter of 1856-57, a loss from which the firm cannot fully recover; the same period sees the collapse of a projected railroad extension through the village that had drawn more than $70,000 in local investment, ending North Fairfield's hopes of growing into a city.
8. 1857 — The Disciple Church erects a brick church building in North Fairfield village.
9. 1975 — Phoenix Mills, in neighboring Greenfield Township, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it shares North Fairfield's ZIP code (44855).

Stories

The bubble that never reached North Fairfield

By the late 1840s North Fairfield -- still known locally as Steamburg -- had six steam-powered shops, five dry-goods stores, a chair factory running fifty hands, and a foundry casting stoves and plows. Its residents believed a railroad was coming: a projected line called the Clinton extension was, on paper, one link in a chain meant to run from New York to the far West, and North Fairfield people put over seventy thousand dollars into it. The line was never built. A competing Milan canal scheme also failed. Then, in the winter of 1856-57, the village's largest employer, the Ruggles, Kirtland & Burr chair factory, burned in a single night and was never rebuilt on its old scale. Between the vanished railroad money and the fire, North Fairfield's chance at becoming a real town passed for good, and the 1879 county history concluded only that it would always remain 'a peaceful and pleasant home' without the bustle its founders once expected.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• North Fairfield Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 1 passed.

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.

Cite this page