Plymouth

How Plymouth began

Plymouth was founded in 1825 and incorporated in 1834, its Main Street laid squarely on the Huron-Richland county line so that the village has always governed itself across two jurisdictions, with the Huron and Richland county sheriffs' departments splitting law-enforcement coverage. Its industrial identity came from locomotives: the Plymouth Locomotive Works built small industrial switching locomotives here for most of the twentieth century, closing in 1999, while the earlier Commercial Motor Truck Company sold trucks and tractors under the 'Plymouth' brand -- a name predating, and later legally distinguished from, Chrysler's Plymouth automobile division. Journalist David Ross Locke, whose satirical 'Petroleum V. Nasby' letters made him one of Lincoln's favorite writers, was born here.

Settled 1821 (B. Taylor, per the 1879 history), platted 1825 (as Paris), incorporated 1834, by Abram Trux, John Barney and Lemuel Powers.

Where the name comes from

The 1879 and 1909 county histories say the village was first called Paris and was renamed Plymouth on its organization in 1825; some opposed the change because Plymouth was a Yankee or Puritan name. The earlier record (from Wikipedia) says the name honors Plymouth Rock; the county histories do not say so.

Before the town

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

Timeline

1. 1819 — The First Presbyterian church of Plymouth is organized February 23 by Rev. William Matthews with 41 members; its first log church is built in 1824 or 1825 and the present brick edifice, begun in 1839, is finished in the fall of 1840.
2. 1825 — Plymouth is founded, straddling what becomes the Huron-Richland county line.
3. 1825 — A small schoolhouse, open to all denominations for school and religious meetings, is built in the year the village is laid out, with Aaron B. Howe as first teacher; Abram Trux builds a saw and grist mill soon afterward.
4. 1825 — Paris is renamed Plymouth on its organization; the change is opposed by some who call Plymouth a 'Yankee' and 'Puritan' name.
5. 1830 — Matthew McKelvey founds a seminary for young ladies in a small building, which draws girls from the surrounding country.
6. 1834 — Plymouth incorporates as a village.
7. 1849 — The Plymouth schools are organized as union schools on April 6; the union schoolhouse of 1851 is considered better than any in the villages of Huron or Richland counties.
8. 1853 — Twenty-two members withdraw from the Presbyterian church and form the Congregational church of Plymouth.
9. 1870 — The census counts 703 residents, up from 462 in 1860.
10. 1875 — A new six-room school building opens on September 13 with 350 pupils enrolled; the first graduating class, of six, leaves in 1877.
11. 1880 — The census counts 1,145 residents.
12. 1909 — Plymouth has two steam railroads and a trolley line, and Monteith's Lake, two miles south and the head of the Huron River, is a picnic ground called the Huron Valley Amusement Park.
13. 1970 — The census counts 1,993 residents, the village's peak, up from 1,822 in 1960.
14. 1996 — The Plymouth Greenlawn Cemetery Chapel, on the Richland County side of the village, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 22.
15. 1999 — The Plymouth Locomotive Works, the village's signature industry, closes.
16. 2018 — A Plymouth Historic District, extending into Richland County, is added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 7.
17. 2020 — The census counts 1,707 residents.

Stories

The Plymouth that beat Chrysler to the name

When Chrysler Motors launched its Plymouth automobile division in 1928, it was not the first American vehicle maker to use the name -- the Commercial Motor Truck Company of Plymouth, Ohio, had been building trucks and tractors under the Plymouth brand for years before that, and later the Fate-Root-Heath Company's Plymouth Locomotive Works carried the same small-town name into industrial locomotives. The overlap eventually produced a legal dispute over the trademark, and the courts sided with the Ohio company: its use of 'Plymouth' predated Chrysler's by several years, a small-town footnote to one of the twentieth century's biggest automotive brand names. The locomotive works stayed in business long after the Chrysler division existed, building small industrial switching locomotives in the village until it finally closed in 1999.

Paris becomes Plymouth

Plymouth, the Huron County histories say, was founded without design, where the State road crossed Beall's military trail thirty-five miles south of Sandusky. Houses went up at the crossing and in 1825 Abram Trux, John Barney and Lemuel Powers laid out forty-one lots for a town they called Paris, with sixteen log cabins already on the ground. When the name Plymouth was proposed, some opposed it as 'a damned Yankee name' and 'a cursed Puritan name,' but it was adopted, and with it, the 1879 history says, much of the principle that the word brings to mind. The village took an early stand on temperance, and for many years was avoided by a certain class because it was 'fanatical upon the drinking question'; Robert Morfoot raised the first building in Plymouth that went up without whisky. Lemuel Powers converted his distillery into a hat factory. The main street is the Huron-Richland county line, so the post office, south of Main Street, is in Richland County while perhaps most of the business houses are on the Huron side.

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

Every historic place in Huron County on the full map

Raw water pumped from the West Branch Huron River roughly 3 miles to a 215-acre, 2.3-billion-gallon upground reservoir at the Class III surface water plant on Central Ave. The water here

• Plymouth Village100% of residentsWest Branch Huron River, stored in Willard's upground reservoir

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (3)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2015: 8 of 15 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal emergency: declared 1980-05-30, released 1982-10-29. source
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-11-06

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.

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