West Salem

• One West Salem corner, four fire maps, 1884-1904

How West Salem began

West Salem was laid out on June 14, 1834, by the brothers Peter and John Rickel on the quarter section Peter had entered in Congress Township, in Wayne County's northwest corner. Joseph Harbaugh built the first house, James Houston kept the first tavern and William Cass opened the first store. A post office opened in 1851 (a 1910 county history says Civil War days), the village was incorporated in 1868 with D. H. Ambrose as mayor, and by 1877 it had a brick school building called the finest in the county outside Wooster. The population peaked at 1,534 in 1990 and was 1,430 in 2020.

Settled 1820-1822 (Peter Rickel entered the land about 1820; his family arrived October 10, 1822), platted June 14, 1834 (plat recorded June 17, 1834, county records vol. 2, p. 443), incorporated 1868, by Peter and John Rickel, surveyed by George Emery.

Where the name comes from

No source checked explains why the Rickels chose the name Salem or added 'West.' The 1878 county history gives only the founders and the date.

Before the town

No mound, village or treaty event specific to West Salem is recorded in the sources checked. Douglass (1878) records, for the Congress Township neighborhood, that Wolf Run, a creek running into Muddy Fork near Myers' mill, was named for Captain Wolf, a Native man who often visited the home of settler Peter Henney, and that a child of Captain Wolf is buried near the creek on the Henney farm; the nation is not named. The 1910 county history says that when the first Totten and Poe families settled Congress Township a camp of 30 or 40 Native people lay near the Harrisville swamp, a few miles north in Medina County. Wayne County as a whole has a recorded Delaware (Lenape), Wyandot and Shawnee history.

• Grave of a child of Captain Wolf, by Wolf Run (burial) — north side of Wolf Run on the north line of the Henney (later Naftzger) farm, Congress Township, early 1800s (undated) (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1822 — On October 10 Peter Rickel and his wife Nancy arrive from Bedford County, Pennsylvania, with two children, and build a cabin in the woods; Peter had entered a quarter section two years before, and his brother John had come three years earlier.
2. 1834 — On June 14 Peter and John Rickel lay out West Salem; the plat is recorded June 17.
3. 1834 — Joseph Harbaugh builds the first house, on the site of the later McVicker tavern; Jacob Hyatt, its first renter, dies in it three months after moving in, and James Houston keeps the first tavern there.
4. 1851 — A post office named West Salem is established, according to the postal listing (a 1910 county history says Civil War days); it is still open.
5. 1862 — Jacob Parrott, listed among West Salem's notable people, a private in the 33rd Ohio Infantry, joins Andrews' Raid in Georgia in April and receives the first Medal of Honor in March 1863; his own biography gives Fairfield County as his birthplace and Kenton as his later home.
6. 1866 — In December Dr. Justin Georget brings the first printing press to West Salem and issues the monthly West Salem Review.
7. 1867 — The Agricultural Society of West Salem is organized, with William Buchanan as president.
8. 1868 — West Salem is incorporated, with D. H. Ambrose as the first mayor.
9. 1868 — John Wicks of Medina County starts the weekly West Salem Journal, which runs two years.
10. 1870 — West Salem Lodge No. 442, Odd Fellows, is instituted on June 10.
11. 1877 — The brick and stone school building is completed at a cost of $35,000, called the finest in Wayne County outside Wooster; it has eleven rooms and a hall seating 700.
12. 1902 — Two rural free delivery routes are established from West Salem; three more are added in 1904.
13. 1909 — The village, with about 700 people, installs a gasoline street-lighting system, a large city hall with opera hall (built about 1900) and a semi-volunteer fire department; the Greeley Milling Company runs a roller mill on the edge of town.
14. 1990 — Village population peaks at 1,534.
15. 2020 — Population recorded at 1,430.

Stories

Mrs. Peter Rickel remembers landing in the woods

On October 10, 1877, Nancy Rickel, widow of West Salem co-founder Peter Rickel, told the county historian that it was fifty-five years to the day since she and Peter landed in the woods with their two children, coming from Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Peter had come out two years earlier and entered the quarter section on which much of the town was later built. Their first neighbors were the Rev. John Hazzard, a Mr. Ford and Charles Crile; there were no roads, and they had a hard time getting the two-horse wagon through. They built a cabin with a puncheon floor and a stick chimney. Her brother John Rickel, an Albright preacher who came to the county three years ahead of them, joined Peter in laying out the village. Nancy Rickel had seven sons and two daughters, worked in the fields and hauled logs, and said she would gladly live in the woods again, where she could hear the wild birds sing as in the old days.

The first houses and the first press

The first house in West Salem was an old-fashioned frame built by Joseph Harbaugh on a lot that cost him ten or fifteen dollars, where McVicker's tavern later stood. Jacob Hyatt, who rented it first, died in it three months after moving in, and James Houston kept the village's first tavern there. John Reasor put up the second house, where Zehner's store later stood, and William Cass opened the first store, which had no counter but a bench and bought eggs and butter. Thirty-two years after the plat, in December 1866, Dr. Justin Georget brought the first printing press and published a monthly, the West Salem Review, then a medical review. After him came the weekly West Salem Journal in 1868, The True Citizen in 1869, and the Agricultural Commonwealth, begun by F. G. McCauley on January 1, 1871, which was renamed Buckeye Farmer and then West Salem Monitor.

The nation's first Medal of Honor, and a hometown question mark

Jacob Parrott was a private in the 33rd Ohio Infantry when he volunteered in April 1862 for a raid deep into Confederate Georgia: with 21 others he seized the locomotive General and tried to cut the South's rail supply lines in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase, or Andrews' Raid. Captured and beaten 110 times by captors who tried to make him talk, Parrott survived imprisonment and was exchanged; on March 25, 1863, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton presented him with the first Medal of Honor awarded by the United States. West Salem's Wikipedia article lists him among its notable people, but his own biography gives his birthplace as Fairfield County, Ohio, returned to Kenton, Ohio, after the war, and died there in 1908; it does not mention West Salem or Wayne County.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Rural Lorain Co. Water A58% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• West Salem Village42% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-04

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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