Waite Hill

• Florence E. Allen1884-1966Cleveland suffragist and lawyer who in 1922 became the first woman on a state su...

How Waite Hill began

Waite Hill takes its name from William Waite of Marcellus, New York, who bought 629 acres of a wooded plateau above the Chagrin River in 1820 for $1,572.80; his sons Erastus and Alvan arrived in February 1821 to begin clearing it, and the extended Waite clan built the settlement's first log cabins by a spring on the property. The hilltop's isolation preserved its rural character even after Cleveland industrialists like John Sherwin, Dan Hanna and Charles Otis began buying land from the aging Waite family starting in 1907 for country estates; Kirtland Township trustees incorporated the Village of Waite Hill on June 16, 1928, with several of those same estate owners among its first elected officials.

Settled February 1821 (Erastus and Alvan Waite, clearing land bought by their father), incorporated June 16, 1928 (by Kirtland Township trustees' election), by William Waite (purchaser); Erastus and Alvan Waite (first residents).

Where the name comes from

The plateau and later village are named for William Waite of Marcellus, New York, whose deed of November 20, 1820 purchased 629 acres of the land -- then part of the township of Chagrin, Cuyahoga County -- for $1,572.80. His sons and their families settled it the following year.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail or site specific to present Waite Hill is documented in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1815 — Chagrin Township, which then included the Waite Hill plateau, is formed; it stretches from Lake Erie south to Mayfield Township.
2. 1820 — William Waite of Marcellus, New York buys 629 acres of the plateau on November 20 for $1,572.80.
3. 1821 — Erastus and Alvan Waite arrive in February to clear the land; their families follow that fall, traveling from Onondaga County, New York by way of Buffalo and a lake steamer to Fairport.
4. 1830 — Waite Hill settlers, several converted in Campbellite revivals, form the Church of the Disciples of Christ, known locally as the Willoughby Church.
5. 1834 — Chagrin Township, the Waites' home township, is renamed Willoughby in honor of Professor Willoughby of Herkimer County, New York.
6. 1840 — Willoughby Township, part of Cuyahoga County since 1807, is transferred to the newly formed Lake County.
7. 1862-1864 — Erastus and Orrin Waite, sons of Luther Waite, enlist in the Nineteenth Independent Battery, Ohio Light Artillery on August 6, 1862; Orrin is killed by a sharpshooter at Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia on June 29, 1864, and is buried near Marietta.
8. 1862 — E. Waite and Orrin Waite enlist in Shields' Battery, as recorded in the 1878 county history's Civil War roster of Lake County men; the Curtis memoir names the unit the Nineteenth Independent Battery.
9. 1907 — John Sherwin buys 105 acres from Eliza and George Waite on July 10, the first of several purchases by wealthy Clevelanders converting Waite family farmland into country estates.
10. 1928 — Kirtland Township trustees hold an election incorporating the Village of Waite Hill on June 16; first officials, elected July 14, include Dan Hanna, John Sherwin, Charles Otis and Warren King among the new estate owners.
11. 1954 — What remains of Willoughby Township, from which, by one account, Waite Hill separated in 1928, incorporates as the Village of Willoughby Hills.

Stories

Two brothers' letters home from Sherman's army

Erastus and Orrin Waite, grandsons of the pioneers who first cleared Waite Hill, enlisted together in August 1862, Orrin not yet nineteen. Their letters home survive in the family record: Orrin writing from Knoxville in September 1863 about a bloodless victory at Cumberland Gap and deserters streaming out of the Confederate ranks, Erastus writing from Georgia in May 1864 about hard fighting near Cassville and Buzzard Roost as Sherman's army pushed toward Atlanta. The letters stop abruptly: on June 29, 1864, a sharpshooter's bullet killed Orrin at Kenesaw Mountain. His parents asked to have his body brought home, but his captain explained that General Sherman had forbidden moving bodies north while the railroad was needed for supplies -- so Orrin was buried near Marietta, twenty miles from Atlanta, and stayed there. Erastus served out the war and came home in 1865, and within days of Lee's surrender that April, Waite Hill's five days of celebration turned to mourning when a rider galloped over the hill shouting that Lincoln had been shot. Two of the community's oldest men, unable to bear the news, took to their beds and died within months. A third young man from the same neighborhood, Sidney Tullar, wounded at the Wilderness and dead of infection after two amputations, was brought home and buried in the Waite Hill cemetery that same July.

From ox-carts to a country club board

The same plateau that took William Waite's sons weeks of ox-cart travel and lake-steamer passage to reach in 1821 had, by the early twentieth century, become easy weekend distance from downtown Cleveland by automobile -- and that accessibility, combined with the area's rolling, wooded scenery, drew industrialists looking for country estates. Starting with John Sherwin's 1907 purchase of 105 acres from Eliza and George Waite, one deed after another converted what had been three generations of Waite family farmland into large private holdings; names like Dan Hanna and Charles Otis (an Otis had married into the Waite family generations earlier, though this Otis line was unrelated) began appearing on the property records. By 1928, enough of the plateau had passed into estate ownership that its new residents chose to incorporate their own village rather than remain part of surrounding Kirtland Township (or, by another account, Willoughby Township), and the same men who had bought the Waite family's land -- Sherwin, Hanna, Otis, Warren King -- became the new Village of Waite Hill's first elected officials.

Local history sources: waitehilloh.gov · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · willoughbyhills-oh.gov

Lake Erie, drawn through a 60-inch intake pipe extending about 3,100 feet offshore from the Aquarius plant in Willoughby The water here

• Lake County West Water Subdistrict84% of residentsLake Erie
• Aqua Ohio - Mentor16% of residentsLake Erie

Police stations (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-23: county board of elections.

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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-06-23

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