Put-In-Bay

• Put-in-Bay and Perry's Victory MemorialPut-in-Bay on South Bass Island was Perry's anchorage before his September 10, 1813, Lake Erie victory. The 352-foot Perry's Victory memorial column opened in 1915.

• Jay CookePerson · 1821-1905
• Oliver Hazard PerryPerson · 1785-1819
• Owen BrownPerson · 1824-1889

How Put-In-Bay began

Put-in-Bay village occupies the southwestern part of South Bass Island and incorporated in 1877, though European settlement traces to about 1810, when Alexander Ewen kept roughly a thousand hogs on the island. The harbor gave Commodore Perry's fleet its base before the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie, and the village's economy has been built on tourism ever since, weathering the loss of the 625-room Hotel Victory to fire in 1919 and going on to host the 352-foot Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial. One of the island's more unexpected residents was John Brown Jr., eldest son of the abolitionist, who farmed grapes on South Bass Island's south shore for more than three decades and drew the largest funeral Put-in-Bay had ever seen when he died in 1895.

Settled c. 1810 (Alexander Ewen), incorporated 1877.

Where the name comes from

Named for the sheltered bay itself, where ships could "put in" for safety; the island was earlier called Isle des Fleurs (Island of Flowers) by French explorer Robert de La Salle's crew in 1679, a name used for roughly two centuries before "Put-in-Bay" took hold.

Before the town

No source found names a permanent historic-era Native village at Put-in-Bay itself, though nineteenth-century accounts describe Ottawa (Odawa), Miami, Shawnee, Seneca, Iroquois, and Erie people using the Bass Islands as shelter when crossing open water on Lake Erie, well before European settlement. The county and Put-in-Bay Township files cover the wider regional Native history and treaties.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa (Odawa), Miami, Shawnee, Seneca (Seneca-Cayuga), Iroquois, Erie.

Timeline

1. 1679 — Robert de La Salle's crew, stopping nearby, named the island group Isle des Fleurs for its wildflowers.
2. 1810 (approx.) — Alexander Ewen became the first known European settler, keeping about 1,000 hogs on the island.
3. 1813-08-16 — Commodore Perry's squadron began using Put-in-Bay's harbor as a naval base ahead of the Battle of Lake Erie.
4. 1862 — John Brown Jr., eldest son of the abolitionist John Brown, bought ten acres on South Bass Island's south shore and settled there after resigning from Civil War military service.
5. 1877 — Put-in-Bay incorporated as a village.
6. 1892 — The 625-room Hotel Victory opened, one of the largest resort hotels in the world at the time.
7. 1895-05-03 — John Brown Jr. died on South Bass Island and was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery after a Masonic funeral attended by thousands, described as the largest ever held at Put-in-Bay.
8. 1897 — Winemaker Gustav Heineman discovered Crystal Cave, lined with large celestine crystals, while digging a well beneath his South Bass Island winery.
9. 1919-08-14 — The Hotel Victory burned to the ground.
10. 1976-12-12 — Inselruhe, a South Bass Island residence, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
11. 1912-1931 — Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial was built starting in 1912, substantially completed by 1915, and formally dedicated on July 31, 1931.

Stories

The abolitionist's son who grew grapes on Perry's island

John Brown Jr. was the eldest son of the abolitionist John Brown, and by his own choice he spent no part of his adult life pretending to be anyone else's son; he had raised recruits, run guns, and fought for the antislavery cause in Kansas and during the Civil War itself. In 1862, worn down and having resigned his military commission, he bought ten acres on the quiet south shore of South Bass Island at Put-in-Bay and settled into an entirely different kind of life, raising fruit -- by one obituary's account, grapes he sold into the Detroit market from seven of his acres. He stayed there for the rest of his life, a Civil War-era radical turned island grape farmer, until his death on May 3, 1895. The island gave him back an unusually large send-off: he received a Masonic funeral that thousands attended, described afterward as the largest funeral Put-in-Bay had ever held, and he is buried in the village's Crown Hill Cemetery. His younger brother Owen, coincidentally, spent winters as caretaker of Jay Cooke's estate on nearby Gibraltar Island around the same period -- two sons of the same famous father, living quiet parallel lives a few hundred yards apart on the same small lake.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Ottawa County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Put-in-bay Village100% of residentsLake Erie

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (2)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-04-10: county board of elections.

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, released 2025-12-30
• Financial Audit, 2023, released 2024-11-26

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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