History of the New Lyme Institute in Ashtabula County

A great institution of higher learning once stood along the banks of Lebanon Creek in New Lyme, Ohio, in southern Ashtabula County. The New Lyme Institute was built on a high elevation dotted with maple trees, a white fenced lush green lawn and a rippling creek running throughout with small bridges to cross the stream.
The education and staff were known far and wide. The buildings were large and spacious. Four storied girls’ and boys’ dorms as well as the main classroom building and a recitation hall provided the best in education and accommodation. The alumni and current students boasted of having received their education at the renowned school.
According to Moina Large’s 1924 “History of Ashtabula County, Vol. 1,” in 1877, Judge William S. Deming offered the first $3,000 to build the school if the area residents would match that amount. And, here I thought matching funds was a relatively new idea and yet it was being offered as a fundraiser 150 years ago. But I like it a whole lot more than buying cookies or magazines.
But Deming did not stop there with his offer. He also said he would donate the campus and other generous gifts. He helped establish a building committee that asked for subscriptions to be paid in installments. The plan worked and the Northern Collegiate Business Institute was founded in 1878.
Without the red tape of today’s construction and levies, the original building was finished and furnished by 1879 with the dedication, ceremony with great fanfare being held on Aug. 21, 1879. Oh, to have a picture of that day! The school was incorporated by 1883. I could not find when the name was changed to the New Lyme Institute.
The first buildings constructed were the boys’ dorm, the girls’ hall and the recitation hall. A few years later, a fire raged throughout the girls’ hall destroying it completely. The alumni gathered enough funds to rebuild and named it Tuckerman Memorial Hall after President Jacob Tuckerman.
Last week, I mentioned the James Christy Educational Fund, set up at the death of the bachelor hermit of Windsor, Ohio. Upon his death, both New Lyme and Grand River Institutes wanted funds from the Christy monies to go to their school. A debate ensued with New Lyme at the top of the list because Judge Deming had said he would match whatever they received from the Christy fund. In August of 1888 after Christy’s death, the fund amounted to $27,000!
Calvin Dodge was the executor of Christy’s will with the county commissioners in charge of distribution of money per Christy’s request, and that remains true today. In the end, Geneva’s County Teachers’ Institute received the first of many fund distributions throughout all these years. It was used by them to establish the Christy Summer School of Pedagogy to train and develop new and perspective teachers. Pedagogy is not a term commonly used today and before you think it has something to do with feet or pediatrics, it does not. It means training in methods, strategies and approaches to teaching.
In the fall of 1882, Professor Jacob E. Tuckerman, Ph.D., became president and held that position until his death fifteen years later at seventy-three years of age. The man had a hand in nearly every school of higher learning in the area.
He graduated from Kingsville Academy and Oberlin College. He was superintendent of Ashtabula County Schools before building Orwell Academy. He was a professor of mathematics then named President at Farmers’ College which became Belmont College in Cincinnati. Leaving that college, he became principal of Grand River Institute in Austinburg before becoming president of New Lyme Institute.
Attendance at the New Lyme Institute reached 300 and many notables were among the alumni. They came from close by and from afar, arriving by horse and buggy, wagon, and by train arriving at the New Lyme Station Depot and picked up by staff members.
While writing my book, “Where Have All the Schoolhouses Gone?”, the history of the early schools of Ashtabula County, I interviewed students and teachers of those early schools, most in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. One New Lyme teacher, Ruth Warner, had given her teaching memorabilia to her son, Carl Stokes, before she died. He kindly shared the papers with me. I was able to learn what happened to some of the many notable men and women who graduated from the New Lyme Institute.
E.C. Lampson, an 1894 graduate, became editor of the Jefferson Gazette and his descendants were future editors, John and Jeff Lampson. Benjamin C. Chapin, 1899 graduate, became an actor and speaker throughout the United States impersonating Abraham Lincoln. His name received top billing on the marquees of every theatre throughout the nation.
C.B. Wade, a 1900 graduate, owned a cattle ranch in Orangeville, Ohio, breeding shorthorn cattle. He owned the Edgewood Farm while his relative, J.E. Wade, owned Brookdale Farm.
An 1885 graduate, B. F. Perry, became a Jefferson lawyer and began a line of military men. Lyle Woodruff, 1887 graduate went on to graduate from Oberlin College and became head of a missionary society in Bulgaria and represented that country at a peace conference in Paris.
Cherry Valley student, Charles N. Crosby, graduated in 1893 and became one of the top silo manufacturers based out of Linesville, Pa. He was twice elected a U.S. Representative. Lucile Chapin, 1899 graduate, wrote poetry and became president of Charter Features Corporation in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey.
Florence Tuckerman, granddaughter of the president, became a judge in the Common Pleas court, Ohio Supreme Court and the Federal District Court of Appeals. Mabel Harmon, of New Lyme, attended the institute but died at age 18 either after graduation or shortly before. Her life was short, 1870-1890, but she left behind a host of Harmon family members throughout the southern part of Ashtabula County.
When a legislative bill was passed requiring each township to maintain a centralized school or pay to have its children sent elsewhere, the institute trustees turned over the buildings and grounds for a centralized school and it became the New Lyme School.
The former institute closed for classes in 1922 and opened for school classes in 1923. The boys’ dorm burned down in 1919 and the beautiful girls’ dorm, Tuckerman Hall, was sold to a farmer who tore it down. Only the main building remained. Repairs were made in 1930 and the school of four classroom offered two for high school and two for elementary. In 1938 a gym and more classrooms as well as indoor plumbing and air conditioning were added.
In 1944, the school’s name was changed to New Lyme Deming School in honor of Judge Deming. The school was closed when all the schools consolidated in the area to become the Pymatuning Valley School District. Today, if you drive through the area where the New Lyme Institute once stood on a beautiful campus on Institute Road, you will find very little traces of a place that provided such outstanding education that its influence spread around the nation.
But so many of the students took what they learned and shared it with the communities where they settled. We can only hope and pray that good influence will come from students graduating from our county schools today. Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.”