Randolph Township, Portage County

How Randolph Township, Portage County began

Randolph Township, the only Randolph Township in Ohio, was surveyed as Town 1, Range 8 by Amzi Atwater and Wareham Shephard in 1797, whose unnamed assistant died there of drink and heat that same summer — the township's first recorded death. It was named for Randolph Storrs, son of principal proprietor Col. Lemuel Storrs of Connecticut. Bela Hubbard and Salmon Ward, arriving from Middletown, Connecticut by ox-cart in March 1802, were the first settlers; Ward made four hard journeys back east for more colonists before vanishing on the last one, probably drowned or murdered. Hubbard later developed the 'Hubbard squash' from seeds obtained in southern Ohio. In October 1846 the township served as a station on the Underground Railroad, and the following spring its citizens turned back an armed party of Virginia slave-catchers who came to reclaim two fugitives sheltering with local millers. The roughly 25-square-mile township in southern Portage County includes the unincorporated community of Saint Joseph along its western edge, and since 1969 its schoolchildren have attended the Waterloo Local School District. Today it has 5,276 residents (2020).

Settled March 1802 (Bela Hubbard and Salmon Ward, first settlers), incorporated Petition to organize Randolph (with Suffield) granted by county commissioners, December 3, 1810; first township election January 12, 1811, by Bela Hubbard and Salmon Ward (first settlers); Col. Lemuel Storrs of Connecticut (principal proprietor).

Where the name comes from

Named in honor of Randolph Storrs, son of principal proprietor Col. Lemuel Storrs of Connecticut, when the county commissioners granted authority to organize the towns of Suffield and Randolph under that name in 1810.

Before the town

No Native American village, camp or mound site specific to Randolph Township is documented in the sources consulted, and the township is not among those the 1957 county history 'Portage Heritage' lists as holding recorded prehistoric sites. For the county's broader Native history.

Timeline

1. summer 1797 — Surveyor Amzi Atwater and his assistant Wareham Shephard run the township's lines and camp on a stream in its southern part; an unnamed assistant, said to have drunk too much whisky in the heat, dies and is buried on the township's southern line, its first recorded death.
2. March 1802 — Bela Hubbard and Salmon Ward, of Middletown, Connecticut, arrive by ox-cart from Jefferson County, New York, and build the township's first cabin under a large tree half a mile west of the future Center.
3. 1803-1804 — Salmon Ward makes three round trips to New York to bring back more settlers, including his brother Josiah Ward's family; on a fourth trip in spring 1804 he disappears and is never heard from again, presumed drowned in Lake Erie or murdered.
4. 1803 — Bela Hubbard raises the township's first wheat crop, four acres among the stumps yielding 100 bushels, after borrowing a plow from ten miles away and carrying it home on his back.
5. July 5, 1812 — The Congregational Church organizes at Oliver Dickinson's house, with fifteen members by year's end.
6. December 3, 1810 — County commissioners grant the petition to organize the townships of Suffield and Randolph, the latter named for Randolph Storrs; the first township election follows January 12, 1811.
7. October 1846 — Gen. William Steadman escorts two fugitives from slavery, John and Harriet, to Randolph, a flag-station on the Underground Railroad, where millers Mead & Brainerd give them work at a secluded steam mill southeast of the Center.
8. May 1847 — An armed party of Ohio River boatmen, sent by a Virginia slaveholder to recapture John and Harriet, is confronted by Mead and Brainerd with axes and then surrounded by citizens from across the township, who escort the would-be captors back to the hotel and out of town by morning; the couple marries the following week and is helped on to Painesville and freedom.
9. 1829 — St. Joseph's Catholic Church of Randolph is founded by German immigrants; it is regularly organized under Rev. Victor Housner in 1865, and by 1884 counts 900 souls in its congregation.
10. 1969 — The Waterloo Local School District begins serving Randolph Township students.

Stories

A station on the Underground Railroad

In October 1846, Gen. William Steadman, on a visit to Granville, Ohio, encountered two fugitives from slavery, John and Harriet, making their cautious way north toward Canada, and helped them reach Randolph, a recognized flag-station on the Underground Railroad. Millers Mead & Brainerd put the couple to work at their steam flouring and saw mills, tucked a mile and a half southeast of the township Center in a secluded spot chosen for exactly this purpose. Word of their whereabouts eventually reached a Virginia man named Mitchell who claimed to own them, and on a rainy Saturday evening in early May 1847 two men with teams and heavy wagons rolled into the Randolph Hotel and took rooms; soon after, ten Ohio River boatmen in sailor dress and two well-dressed young men were seen making their way east along the steam-mill road. Warned in time, Mead and Brainerd hid the fugitives in Mead's attic and met the arriving party at the door with axes, holding them off through a tense parley until citizens poured in from every direction, surrounded the slave-catchers, and marched them back to the hotel under guard until morning, when Randolph residents personally escorted them out of the county. The two young men in the party turned out to be the claimant's own sons, who went home, in the county history's words, 'more than ever disgusted with Ohio abolitionists.' A week later John and Harriet were married before a large gathering of the township's best citizens, then moved on to Painesville and, eventually, safety.

The Hubbard squash

Bela Hubbard, the township's first settler, is credited with more than simply being first on the ground: the winter squash variety that carries his family name and became famous well beyond Ohio is said to have originated with him, grown from seeds he obtained in the southern part of the state. It was one small footnote to a hard life on the Randolph frontier, where Hubbard had arrived by ox-cart with Salmon Ward in 1802, buried Ward's memory when his companion vanished on a supply trip two years later, and eventually married the only other unmarried woman in the township, Clarissa Ward — as she liked to remind him, he had to marry her or no one, since there was no one else to choose from.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

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• Ravenna City6% of residentsLake Hodgson
• Spring Lakes Mobile Home Park6% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Fairlane Water Co.6% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Portage County Wr - Rivermoor4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Fox Run Estates4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Canton Public Water System3% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Stark County Water District2% of residentsWells in Tuscarawas Valley sand & gravel aquifer

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Private schools (1)

Public libraries (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (9)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-30

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