Twinsburg Township, Summit County

How Twinsburg Township, Summit County began

Twinsburg Township, the only Twinsburg Township in Ohio, was originally called Millsville, or known simply by its range and number, before twin brothers Moses and Aaron Wilcox, who owned several thousand acres in its northeast section, offered six acres for a public square and $20 toward the first schoolhouse if the township were renamed in their honor; the 1881 county history dates this naming to 1819, a year after Wikipedia's date, and notes the twins themselves did not move to the township until 1823, four years after it took their name. The township's principal stream, Tinker's Creek, was named in 1796 by Gen. Moses Cleaveland for his boatman Joseph Tinker, who drowned the following year when his boat capsized on Lake Erie during the second Western Reserve exploring expedition. Lewis Alling of Connecticut bought 400 acres in 1816-17 and sent his 16-year-old son Ethan and three hired men ahead in March 1817 to begin clearing land, the township's first settlement; Lewis and the rest of the family arrived that July. Like much of northeastern Ohio, the township's county affiliation shifted repeatedly before settling: Washington County (1788), Jefferson County (1797), Trumbull County (1800), Portage County (1808), and finally Summit County in 1840. The original township was considerably larger than its present, discontinuous remnant, having given up territory to the incorporated city of Twinsburg and the village of Reminderville, and recorded 3,857 residents in the 2020 census.

Settled March-July 1817 (Ethan Alling and hired men sent ahead in March by his father Lewis Alling, who arrived with the rest of the family in July), incorporated township organized and first election held April 1819 (Portage County); county affiliation: Washington 1788, Jefferson 1797, Trumbull 1800, Portage 1808, Summit 1840.

Where the name comes from

Named for twin brothers Aaron and Moses Wilcox. Wikipedia and the city's own Wikipedia article date the brothers' offer of land and school funding to 1818; the 1881 county history instead dates the actual renaming to 1819, the same year the township organized, and specifies the brothers offered six acres at the center for a public square and $20 toward the first schoolhouse. Before the renaming the township was called Millsville, or known only by its survey range and number; the Wilcox brothers themselves did not move to the township until 1823.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, or treaty site specific to Twinsburg Township is documented in the sources consulted. The township's principal stream, Tinker's Creek, was named by Gen. Moses Cleaveland in 1796 in honor of his expedition boatman Joseph Tinker, who drowned the following year when his boat capsized on Lake Erie; this is a naming story rather than a Native site. The township lies within the Connecticut Western Reserve, land opened to settlement by the 1785 Treaty of Fort McIntosh and confirmed by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1788 — The land later forming the township is administratively part of Washington County.
2. 1796 — Gen. Moses Cleaveland, exploring up the Cuyahoga River with boatman Joseph Tinker, names Tinker's Creek in his honor.
3. 1797 — Jurisdiction shifts to Jefferson County; Joseph Tinker drowns on Lake Erie when his boat capsizes during the second Western Reserve exploring expedition.
4. 1800 — Jurisdiction shifts to Trumbull County.
5. 1808 — Jurisdiction shifts to Portage County.
6. 1817 — Lewis Alling's son Ethan, age 16, and three hired men arrive in March to begin clearing Alling's newly purchased 400 acres; Lewis Alling and the rest of the family arrive July 7, making a household of fourteen in one log house by year's end.
7. 1817-05 — Major Elisha Loomis, E. W. Mather and Lester Davis arrive from Connecticut and build a cabin at the falls on Tinker's Creek, later called Loomis Mills; Loomis, who had twice sailed round the world, builds a saw mill that year.
8. 1817-07 — Lewis Alling Jr., Gideon Thompson and Zenas Alling drive 104 merino sheep 660 miles in thirty days; wolves, dogs and disease finish the flock.
9. 1818 — E. W. Mather builds a frame grist mill at the falls; Mills and Hoadley plat the village of Millsville there but scarcely sell a lot at $50 to $200.
10. 1819 — The township organizes; an April election under Portage County's commissioners draws nineteen voters, and the township is named Twinsburg for twin brothers Aaron and Moses Wilcox, who offer six acres for a public square and $20 toward the first schoolhouse though they have not yet moved there themselves.
11. 1819-11-23 — Maria Stanley is the first child born in the township.
12. 1821-03-19 — Emery W. Alger and Eliza Dodge are married by Lewis Alling in the first marriage; that spring Joel W. Thompson builds a small distillery at a spring in the southeast.
13. 1823 — The Wilcox twins finally move to the township that has carried their name for four years.
14. c. 1824 — The Wilcox twins give lots to tradesmen and mechanics who will settle at the Center, avoiding the mistake of Mills and Hoadley, and ten or twelve families gather there within five or six years.
15. 1825 — The Wilcox brothers obtain a post office at the Center, with Moses Wilcox the first postmaster; Ethan Alling begins dairying with twenty-two cows, the first cheese made in Twinsburg.
16. 1826-12-25 — Ethan Alling's tavern on the southeast corner of the square opens with a Christmas ball.
17. 1828 — Ethan Alling and Jabez Gilbert buy the entire stage line and have the Hudson-to-Cleveland route moved through Twinsburg Center, giving the village a tri-weekly mail and one to five stages daily.
18. c. 1830 — A branch of the Cuyahoga Falls temperance society is organized; by 1833 it has 224 members and no liquor is sold in the township.
19. c. 1835 — Apollos White dams Tinker's Creek and builds a grist mill and saw mill; the grist mill burns about 1865.
20. 1840 — The township joins the newly created Summit County, its current jurisdiction.
21. 1860-1880 — Dairy sales rise from more than $75,000 in 1860 to nearly $100,000 in 1880, making Twinsburg noted for its dairy interests.

Stories

A creek named for a boatman who did not live to see it settled

Twinsburg Township's main waterway carries the name of a man who never lived to see the land it drains put to any use at all. In 1796, as survey parties fanned out across the eastern Western Reserve, Gen. Moses Cleaveland took an exploring trip up the Cuyahoga River with his boatman, Joseph Tinker, and when they came upon a substantial creek feeding into it, Cleaveland named the stream Tinker's Creek in his companion's honor. Tinker served again the following year on the Reserve's second exploring expedition, but that fall, as the party returned down Lake Erie, his boat capsized and he drowned. The creek that bears his name has run through the township ever since, a small, lasting monument to a boatman whose own death came before any settler had built so much as a cabin on the land his namesake creek would one day help drain.

A sixteen-year-old sent ahead to clear the land

When Lewis Alling of Connecticut bought 400 acres in the township in 1816 or 1817, he did not go himself first; he sent his sixteen-year-old son Ethan, accompanied by three hired young men, in March 1817 to begin the work of clearing land neither of them had seen. The party's journey was mostly muddy going except for one day's travel on lake ice from Buffalo to Dunkirk, and once they reached the township they had to follow a line of marked trees to find the spot Mr. Mills told them was its center, resting under a beech tree at the corner of what would become the public square. Finding the ground too wet, they pushed on to a half-finished, abandoned log cabin near the falls, where they moved in on April 15 with a barrel of stale pork, a barrel of flour, ten bushels of potatoes and a gallon of whisky as their entire provisions. Young Ethan kept house for the crew, cooking on a bake-kettle with no bail and serving meals on wood chips with sharp sticks for forks, until his father and the rest of the family finally arrived that July, bringing the household inside the small two-story cabin to fourteen people by year's end.

A stagecoach moved to the square

In the 1820s a well-traveled stage route ran from Hudson to Cleveland through Northfield Township, filling every hotel there with custom while Twinsburg Center looked on. Ethan Alling, who had cleared the township's first land as a boy and built the tavern on the square, decided to bring the traffic to Twinsburg. In 1828 he and Jabez Gilbert bought the entire stage property, and the route was promptly changed to pass through the Center. A tri-weekly mail followed, from one to five stages passed daily, and farmers heading to Cleveland markets rolled through the village. Mechanics and teachers arrived, and the county history ranked it among the most important events in the township's history. Alling's tavern had opened on Christmas 1826 with a ball, and the Wilcox twins, who had obtained the post office in 1825, were by then selling village lots cheaply to attract tradesmen, avoiding the overpricing that had killed Millsville at the falls.

Millsville, the village nobody would buy

The original proprietors of Twinsburg, Mills and Hoadley, saw the saw mill Elisha Loomis built in 1817 and the grist mill E. W. Mather added in 1818 at the ten-foot falls on Tinker's Creek draw settlers to the hills around, and platted a village called Millsville. They priced lots at $50 to $200, about ten times what the market would bear, and scarcely one sold. Tradesmen, mechanics and merchants went to larger villages, and by the time the proprietors realized their error it was too late; the county historian said they were left 'to repent in sackcloth and ashes.' Millsville remained only a name, used for a time for the whole township before the Wilcox twins' 1819 offer gave it the name Twinsburg. The Wilcoxes, arriving in 1823, sold lots cheaply and gave them to tradesmen, and the village at the Center prospered.

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

The Five Mile Crib, a small structure about 5 miles out in Lake Erie north of Cleveland's Edgewater Park The water here

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