Summerfield

• James M. TuttlePerson · 1823-1892

How Summerfield began

Summerfield sits in southwestern Marion Township in northeastern Noble County. Pioneer Samuel Danford settled just north of the site in 1817, and Moses Horton is credited in the 1887 county history as the founder of the village, which was platted in 1827 and named for Rev. John Summerfield, a Methodist minister. It was the second-largest village in Noble County through the late 19th and 20th centuries, peaking near 582 residents in 1890, and today is a small farm-country village of a few hundred people. Union general James M. Tuttle, born nearby in 1823, is the community's best-known native son.

Settled 1817 (Danford farm, just north of the village site), platted 1827, by Moses Horton, per the 1887 county history's chapter heading naming him 'the Founder of Summerfield'.

Where the name comes from

The village was named after John Summerfield, an early-19th-century Methodist minister, rather than for a local family or geographic feature.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, mound, or treaty site specific to Summerfield or Marion Township turned up in the sources checked (the village's own Wikipedia article, the NRHP listing for the adjoining Danford farm, and the county-formation article). Noble County was not organized until 1851, decades after the Greenville Treaty line (1795) and Ohio's Native removals of the 1820s-1840s had already passed through this part of the state, and general Ohio Native-history sources describe the Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape, Miami, Ottawa, and Mingo as present across the wider region without naming a site in what is now Marion Township.

Timeline

1. 1817 — Samuel Danford settles on land just north of present-day Summerfield, in what became northeastern Noble County; his farm complex is later listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
2. 1818 — Local Methodists begin meeting for worship at the Danford farm, the origin of what became the Glady Methodist Church near Summerfield.
3. 1823 — James Madison Tuttle is born near Summerfield, in what was then Monroe County, Ohio; he later commanded Union troops that took Fort Donelson in 1862 and became an Iowa state legislator.
4. 1827 — Summerfield is platted and named for Methodist minister John Summerfield.
5. 1833 — The present Danford farmhouse, a brick Greek Revival house on a stone foundation, is built north of Summerfield to replace the family's original 1817 log cabin.
6. 1851 — Noble County is organized from parts of Guernsey, Monroe, Morgan, and Washington counties, placing Summerfield in the new county for the first time.
7. 1869 — The Glady Methodist congregation, meeting on the Danford farm since 1818, builds its church building on the Danford property; the adjoining Glady Cemetery holds Samuel Danford's grave along with other early Noble County pioneers.
8. 1880 — The village's population peaks in the 1880-1890 period, reaching 582 residents by the 1890 census before beginning a long decline.
9. 1980 — The Samuel Danford Farm, Church and Cemetery is added to the National Register of Historic Places (reference no. 80003204).
10. 2020 — The census records 237 residents in Summerfield, down from 254 in 2010.

Stories

A farm meeting becomes a church and a cemetery

In 1817 Samuel Danford settled on land just north of the future village of Summerfield and put up a log cabin, where his family lived for sixteen years. His wife was an active Methodist, and by 1818 neighbors were already gathering at the Danford place for worship. That informal meeting grew into the Glady Methodist Church, which finally got a building of its own on the Danford property in 1869. Alongside it the family set aside ground that became the Glady Cemetery, where Samuel Danford, his family, and many of the district's first settlers are buried. In 1833 the family replaced the old log cabin with a brick Greek Revival house on a stone foundation, which still stands. The whole complex, house, church, and cemetery, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as a rare intact record of how a single pioneer farm could seed a congregation and a burial ground that outlasted it.

A general born in a Monroe County farmhouse

James Madison Tuttle was born on September 24, 1823, in the rural country near Summerfield, at a time before Noble County existed, when the land still belonged to Monroe County. In 1846 he moved to Farmington, Iowa, where he took up farming and merchant work and was later elected sheriff and then county treasurer of Van Buren County. When the Civil War broke out he entered the Union Army and rose to brigadier general, leading the first Union troops into Confederate-held Fort Donelson in 1862. After the war he returned to Iowa business and mining ventures and served two terms in the state legislature, first as a Democrat and later as a Republican. He remains the most nationally prominent person with roots in the Summerfield community.

Photographs

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

No water-system data is linked to Summerfield's ZIP codes yet.

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-12-02

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