Wakeman Township, Huron County

How Wakeman Township, Huron County began

Wakeman Township's first settlers, the family of Augustin Canfield, arrived from Litchfield County, Connecticut on May 23, 1817, after a three-week journey and a broken wagon axle, and built a fourteen-foot log cabin roofed and floored with elm bark. Most of the pioneers who followed came from Connecticut under an unusual settlement-speed agreement between a Southbury land company and the original Firelands proprietors. The township was set off from Florence and organized independently in February 1824. It is named for Jesup Wakeman, a Fairfield County, Connecticut land speculator who never lived on the land himself. The village of Wakeman lies in the township's center.

Settled May 23, 1817 (Augustin Canfield and family, first settlers), incorporated February 1824 (township organized, set off from Florence), by Augustin Canfield, Burton Canfield, Seymour Johnson and a hired man, from New Milford, Connecticut; township organizers Woodward Todd, Samuel Bristol, Justin Sherman, Silas French and Amial P. Pierce.

Where the name comes from

The township, and the village at its center, are named for Jesup Wakeman, an early settler of Fairfield County, Connecticut who speculated in western land between 1800 and 1840, including in the Firelands.

Before the town

For roughly a decade after the first settlers arrived, a band of fifteen to twenty Native families -- from the Upper Sandusky region and thought by the township's 1879 historian to be Wyandot and Seneca -- came into Wakeman twice each year, in spring to make maple sugar and in fall to hunt, traveling by canoes of their own manufacture, made of black walnut or whitewood. They kept a sugar camp east of the Vermillion River, with huts and sap-troughs made of elm bark, and used oxen borrowed from settlers (a request settlers remembered as asking for a 'Yankee cow') to haul their canoes around milldams. Settlers recalled friendly, joking encounters -- Native visitors asking for a 'Yankee hack' (an adz) by pantomime, and boys on a berry-picking trip being good-naturedly chased home by amused Native riders -- alongside occasional requests for whiskey that settlers say they generally refused. The group's last visit was in the spring of 1827; they packed their sap-troughs into their huts, shut the doors, and left, apparently expecting to return, but never did.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

• Wakeman sugar camp (camp) — East of the Vermillion River in Wakeman Township, on land later owned by Mr. Bunce, Until spring 1827 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1816 — A company of Southbury, Connecticut investors, including Burton Canfield, Bennet French and Joel Crane, buys about 4,800 acres in the township, agreeing to place one settler per 160 acres within thirty years -- a pledge fulfilled well ahead of schedule and the reason most of Wakeman's early settlers came from Connecticut.
2. 1817 — Augustin Canfield's family, the township's first settlers, arrive May 23 from New Milford, Connecticut; Amial P. Pierce and Samuel Bristol follow within weeks, and Erastus French joins them that fall.
3. 1818 — Burton M. Canfield, born April 18, is the first child of settler parents born in the township; Dr. Harmon M. Clark, the township's first physician, arrives in May.
4. 1823 — Justin Sherman builds the township's first frame barn, and a saw mill goes up on the La Chapelle the same year Burton Canfield builds one on the Vermillion.
5. 1824 — Wakeman is set off from Florence Township and organized independently in February, with an election held at the log schoolhouse near the Canfield place; Woodward Todd is elected clerk.
6. 1827 — A Native band that had camped seasonally in the township to make maple sugar and hunt makes its last recorded visit in the spring, packing up its sugar-camp equipment as if planning to return.
7. 1829 — Wakeman gets its first weekly mail route, after settlers Isaac Todd and Cyrus Minor petitioned to extend it from Grafton in Lorain County.
8. 1843 — The township's only recorded murder takes place in May: Alexander Lawtha strangles his wife with the help of a neighbor and dumps her body in a well; Lawtha is convicted, confesses, and takes his own life before he can be sent to the penitentiary.
9. 1852 — The first regular train runs through the township on November 24.
10. 1877 — The Cleveland Stone Company begins quarrying sandstone in the northern part of the township, continuing into the early 1920s (see the Wakeman village unit for detail).
11. 1923 — Inventor Garrett Morgan buys over a hundred acres of farmland near Wakeman village and opens the all-Black Wakeman Country Club there (see the Wakeman village unit for detail).

Stories

The bear that parted on good terms

Sheldon Barnes and his family settled near the township's west line in 1826 after a storm blew their lake vessel off course into Black River, forcing the mother and child to finish the trip to Wakeman on horseback while the father walked. Not long after they arrived, Mrs. Barnes was out in the woods near the house with her infant in her arms when she came face to face with a bear on the path. According to the settlement's own telling, the two simply 'parted on good terms, though without an embrace' -- one of many stories pioneers told about the wildlife that shared the township's woods with them in its first years.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Rural Lorain Co. Water A49% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• Wakeman Village31% of residentsLake Erie
• Northern Ohio Rural Water13% of residentsLake Erie
• Firelands Manor MHP4% of residentsLake Erie via Avon Lake Regional Water (blended with Rural Lorain Co. Water Authority supply)
• Erie Co. Vermilion District3% of residentsLake Erie

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 3 of 3 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-12

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