Peru Township, Huron County

How Peru Township, Huron County began

Peru Township's first settlers, Elihu Clary, Henry Adams and William Smith, walked in from Cleveland and arrived on lot five, section one, on June 15, 1815, when the area was called Vredenburgh after a speculator who had bought up Firelands claims; the settlers voted to rename it Peru in the winter of 1820. Daniel Mack, who arrived in 1816 and built the township's first grist and sawmill, gave his name to the crossroads village of Macksville, once a busy wagon-trade stop with an academy founded in 1822. Its best-known landmark today is the Macksville Tavern on Peru Hollow Road, a National Register-listed stagecoach-era building.

Settled June 15, 1815 (Elihu Clary, Henry Adams and William Smith, first settlers), by Elihu Clary and William Smith, of Deerfield, Massachusetts; Henry Adams, of Marlborough, Vermont.

Where the name comes from

The 1909 county history says the township was first called Vredenburgh after a Mr. Vredenburgh who bought up the claims of the Firelands sufferers; in the winter of 1820 the settlers met at Joseph Ruggles's house to change the name and chose Peru by vote. The history gives no reason for the choice of Peru.

Before the town

The 1909 county history says there was no Indian village in Peru Township at the time of the first settlements, but that for a number of years afterward Indians came twice a year or oftener and encamped nearby for several weeks to hunt deer, turkey, raccoons and other game. No named site, trail or earthwork in the township is recorded.

Timeline

1. 1815 — Elihu Clary, Henry Adams and William Smith arrive on foot from Cleveland on June 15 and build the township's first log cabin on lot five, section one; the area was then known as Vredenburgh.
2. 1816 — Daniel Mack settles at what becomes Macksville and builds a sawmill on the stream there within a year or two, giving the village its name; Thomas Tillson and the Adams and Raymond families also arrive this year.
3. 1816 — The first religious meetings in the township are held at the house of Elijah Clary, where Mr. Coe preaches the first sermon, and Henry Adams opens the first house for travelers in the fall; in the summer Polly Pierce outruns a bear on the forest path home from a visit to her father-in-law in Greenfield.
4. 1817 — Isaac Sutton, Levi R. Sutton and Elias Hughes become the first settlers west of the Huron River in the township, moving into their cabins on April 2 after starting improvements in late March.
5. 1817 — Monroeville, whose water system later also serves part of Peru Township, is laid out as 'Monroe.'
6. 1817 — Henry Adams plants the first apple orchard with seed his brother Newell brought from Vermont; Daniel Mack builds the township's first grist and sawmill; and in the fall Joseph Ruggles adds a room to the Tillson cabin and opens it as a tavern signed with a pair of deer horns and called the Buck Horn.
7. 1818 — The first school is kept by Nancy Adams, daughter of Bildad Adams of Greenfield, in a log house in Macksville; Dr. Moses C. Sanders arrives in August; and the first post office, named Peru, opens in Thomas Tillson's house, soon moved to Macksville under Sanders.
8. 1820 — In the winter the settlers meet at Joseph Ruggles's house and vote to rename the township from Vredenburgh to Peru; the first township election is held there on April 3, with James Vantine, Elijah Clary and Richard Eaton as trustees, and the first state election on October 10 polls twelve votes.
9. 1820 — Daniel Mack builds the first frame house in the township, and Dr. Sanders opens the first store at Macksville in 1820 or 1821; Henry Adams teaches sixteen pupils in the winter of 1820-21.
10. 1822 — The Lima Academic Society of Peru incorporates a two-story frame academy at Macksville, opened in December under Amos B. Harris and named Lima Academy in the expectation the village would be renamed Lima; it lasts a single year and the building becomes a common school and meeting-house.
11. 1897 — Willard's Water Department, serving another part of Peru Township, is established.
12. 1976 — Macksville Tavern, on Peru Hollow Road at the crossroads community of Macksville, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 3.
13. 2020 — The census counts 1,054 people in Peru Township.

Stories

Pudding and molasses until the mud dried

Elihu Clary's family was among Peru Township's first, arriving in 1815 when the land was still called Vredenburgh. In a letter he wrote decades later, in 1857, Clary recalled that in the spring of 1816 his household lived for three weeks on nothing but pudding and molasses -- 'not for want of money, which was then very plenty, but provisions were not to be had in Huron county, and the roads to the south were at that time impassable with teams.' Relief came only when the spring sun dried the mud enough for wagons loaded with pork and flour to get through, followed soon after by a drove of cattle. Clary's wife, meanwhile, had made her own two-hundred-fifty-mile trip from Buffalo on a man's saddle, and once welcomed newly arrived neighbors, the Pierces, with a meal of roasted raccoon and boiled turnips -- the ordinary fare of a township still being carved out of the woods.

A tavern that outlasted the road it served

Macksville Tavern sits on Peru Hollow Road in the small crossroads community that gave it its name, one of the relatively few stagecoach-era taverns in this part of the Firelands to survive with enough integrity to earn National Register listing, which it received on May 3, 1976. Buildings like it once punctuated the overland routes threading through Huron County's townships, offering travelers a meal, a bed, and a change of horses between the county seat at Norwalk and points west; most were converted to houses, torn down, or simply abandoned as rail lines and later automobiles rerouted travel away from the old wagon roads. Macksville Tavern's survival, still standing generations after the stagecoach trade that built it ended, makes it Peru Township's clearest physical link to the county's early transportation history.

Polly Pierce and the bear

In the summer of 1816, according to the Huron County histories, Mrs. Polly Pierce set out through the dense forest with her little dog to visit her father-in-law, Alden Pierce, in Greenfield. The family sent her home with a load of provisions, and within a mile of her cabin she met a huge bear that seemed intent on making a meal of the traveler, her provisions or the dog. Determined that he should have none of them, she took the provisions under one arm and the crouching dog under the other and ran for her life; she reached the cabin door with the bear only a few rods behind. It was the only incident of her own that survived of the many pioneer stories she liked to tell.

Vredenburgh becomes Peru

Peru Township was first called Vredenburgh, after a Mr. Vredenburgh who had bought up the claims of Firelands sufferers until he owned the second, third and fourth sections. The first section belonged to other eastern owners, and it was on that section, on lot five, that Elihu Clary, Henry Adams and William Smith arrived on foot from Cleveland on June 15, 1815. In the winter of 1820 the settlers met at Joseph Ruggles's house on lot 28 to change the name, and voted for Peru. The same man's house hosted the first township election that April and the first state election in October, and his tavern, the 'Buck Horn,' was marked by a pair of deer horns. The village of Macksville took its name from Daniel Mack, the original owner of its land, but its post office has always been called Peru, so that the village is now generally known by that name. In the days of wagon trade before the railroads Macksville had four stores, two distilleries, three breweries, two asheries and a hotel that often kept twenty to twenty-five teams overnight.

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

Every historic place in Huron County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Monroeville Village41% of residentsWest Branch Huron River, stored in Monroeville's reservoir
• Willard City35% of residentsWest Branch Huron River, stored in Willard's upground reservoir
• Norwalk City23% of residentsHuron River / East Branch Huron River (via Upper, Memorial, and Lower Reservoirs)
• Milan Village0% of residentsLake Erie (Sandusky Bay backup intake)

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