Sheffield Township, Lorain County

How Sheffield Township, Lorain County began

Sheffield Township is Town 7, Range 17, drawn by William Hart of Saybrook, Connecticut, and sold in January 1815 to Capt. John Day and Capt. Jabez Burrell of Sheffield, Massachusetts, for whose hometown it is named. Captain Joshua Smith and his son Douglas made the first permanent settlement on 13 November 1815, and by the next year the township filled quickly with families from Berkshire County. In June 1824 it became the first township organized by the new Lorain County. Pieces of it became the city of Lorain, the city of Sheffield Lake (1920) and the village of Sheffield (1933-34); the unincorporated remainder, 2.42 square miles, held 3,963 people in 2020.

Settled November 13, 1815 (Captain Joshua Smith and his seventeen-year-old son Douglas, following French Creek without a trail to lot sixty-four), by Captain Joshua Smith.

Where the name comes from

Named for Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the home of Capt. Jabez Burrell and Capt. John Day, who bought the township from William Hart in January 1815 and settled it with partners from the same town; the Sheffield Lake city website also says many early settlers came from Sheffield, Massachusetts.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or trail is recorded in Sheffield Township. The Black River and its mouth, a short way west, had been a Wyandot camping place in the 1750s and the site of the three-day Moravian Delaware camp of April 1787. Sheffield's own 1879 settlement account names no Native people.

Timeline

1. Before 1812 — William Hart of Saybrook, Connecticut, draws Town 7, Range 17 (Sheffield) in the Western Reserve land draft; about 1812 he promises Timothy Wallace his choice of lots if he will settle, and Wallace improves a few acres before abandoning them.
2. c. 1813 — Timothy Wallace makes the first (unsuccessful) attempt at settlement, improving a few acres of lot sixty-five under an agreement with landowner William Hart before abandoning it.
3. November 13, 1815 — Captain Joshua Smith and his seventeen-year-old son Douglas make the township's first permanent settlement on lot sixty-four, after following French Creek downstream without a trail; joined within days by Samuel B. Fitch and Asher Chapman, the four spend the winter of 1815-16 in a single rude cabin.
4. January 1815 — Hart conveys the township to Capt. John Day and Capt. Jabez Burrell of Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, who bring in partners Obadiah Deland, Joshua Smith, Joseph and Solomon Fitch, Isaac Burrell and Henry Austin.
5. June 1815 — The two Burrells, Day and Smith explore the township and select lots for themselves and friends.
6. Winter 1815-1816 — Smith, his son Douglas, Samuel B. Fitch and Asher Chapman winter in a small shanty; Freeman Richmond's family takes lot 2 in February 1816, the first settlement by a family.
7. February 1816 — Freeman Richmond settles on lot two; his wife becomes the first permanent white female settler in the township.
8. Spring 1816 — Henry Root, his wife and six children arrive from Sheffield, Massachusetts, and shelter in Smith's shanty; the families of Day (twelve people) and Burrell (ten) arrive in July and August.
9. March 1817 — Captain Smith brings his family from Massachusetts; the Rev. Alvin Coe preaches the first sermon in the township that spring.
10. Winter 1817-1818 — Dr. Preston Pond of Keene, New Hampshire, teaches the first school in a log building near the site of the present church.
11. Spring 1818 — A Congregational church of thirteen members is formed with the help of the Rev. Alvin Hyde.
12. 1819 — Jabez Burrell is elected justice of the peace while Sheffield is part of Troy Township.
13. June 1824 — The Lorain County commissioners, at their first session, incorporate Sheffield as the first township of the new county; the first election on 10 July 1824 chooses John Day, Isaac Burrell and A. R. Dimmick trustees.
14. 1834 — Charles Chaney builds the first gristmill on the Black River, on the site later held by the mills of W. and S. B. Day.
15. 1845 — Catholic families organize St. Theresa Church under the Rev. Peter Griesh, each paying a dollar toward an acre for a log church; a larger church follows in 1847.
16. 1873 — The Lake Breeze summer resort, the only hotel in the township, is opened by Jay Terrell.
17. 1894 — Lorain annexes land west of the Black River, including the future site of the Johnson Steel Company.
18. 1920 — Residents east of the Black River vote to leave the township and incorporate as the village of Sheffield Lake.
19. 1933 — Residents of the northern and southern parts of the village vote to separate, creating Sheffield Village south of Sheffield Lake.
20. 2020 — Census records 3,963 residents in the remaining unincorporated township, at a density of 1,660 people per square mile across just 2.42 square miles.

Stories

A winter alone in the woods

In October 1815, Captain Joshua Smith left Massachusetts for his newly purchased land in Sheffield township with a yoke of oxen, a horse, and his seventeen-year-old son Douglas. Smith left the boy to travel most of the journey alone while he visited friends at Sackett's Harbor, New York, not rejoining him until they were nearly to Ohio. On November 11 the pair reached Wilber Cahoon's home in Avon township, rested over the Sabbath, and on Monday, November 13, followed French Creek downstream with no trail to guide them, making camp on lot sixty-four -- the township's first permanent settlement. Their nearest neighbors were four miles off at the mouth of Black River. Within days two more young men, Samuel B. Fitch and Asher Chapman, joined them, and the four spent the winter of 1815-16 together in a single rough cabin, shut off from the outside world. The county history remembered Captain Smith as 'a humorous, jovial man' who kept the group's spirits up through the isolation.

The bear in the McGuffey Reader

In the summer of 1831 (as the 1879 history prints the date), seventeen-year-old Peter Miller set out on a Saturday afternoon from the center of Sheffield for his father's farm on the Avon lake shore, five miles through woods and past a swamp where bears were numerous. A she-bear with two cubs turned on him when he shouted. Miller climbed a small smooth elm, but to his consternation the bear climbed after him. He kicked her in the head; she seized his foot and fell, tearing it with her teeth, and started up again; he kicked with the other foot; a third time she climbed, and boy and bear fell together. The bear, startled by being pursued down the tree, jumped aside, and Miller ran, bareheaded and shoeless, to the settlement with his feet mangled. The settlers searched for the bear without success. William Day, quoted in the 1879 history, says the incident is 'familiar to every student of McGuffey's series of readers'.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · lakeshorerailmaps.com · sheffieldlake.net · sheffieldlake.net

Lake Erie, drawn from an intake crib about 26.5 feet deep and 2,800 feet offshore outside the breakwall, west of the Black River harbor The water here

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