Nehemiah Hubbard had come from Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut, and was the first owner of the land covering Plymouth Township. The Honorable Matthew Hubbard came in 1804 and was his agent.
Leaving their homes in Plymouth, Connecticut, William Thompson and Thomas McGahhe brought their families in 1805 with Thompson erecting the first log house. He stayed only a few years, leaving by 1807. That same year, Samuel White came and planted the first orchard of forty trees. After four years, the trees produced a healthy crop, the first in Plymouth and Ashtabula Townships. At the time the crop was plentiful, Captain Moses Hall is assumed to have been the owner and history says he distributed the entire crop among the sick of the township. The Captain would also build the first frame home in the northwest corner of his lot.
White would be followed each year by others, including David Burnett, Wells Blakeslee, Thomas Gordon and William Foster. While each family’s journey would have difficulties, Foster’s was unique. He came from Sacket’s Harbor, New York, arriving in 1810. When he reached Niagara Falls in his small boat, he hired a team to haul the vessel seven miles around the falls.
Captain Moses Hall settled the northwest corner lot of the township in 1811, having made the trip from Connecticut. Captain Hall would father a son who would become known as Rev. John Hall, a missionary among Episcopal parishes. He wrote one of the earliest histories of Ashtabula County and also a history of his life and work here. That same year, a large group of families arrived from Plymouth Hollow, Litchfield County, Connecticut. They were Zadok and Warner Mann, John and Ashur Blakeslee, Lynus Hall, Titus Seymour, David Warren and Elias C. Upson.
Zadok Mann owned 900 acres of heavily timbered land which he bought for 25 cents an acre paying for it by clearing two acres for one and had the first crop of wheat. He gave each of his children a farm, gave the ground for a church lot and sold the balance in that way.
The log home of Captain Manoah Hubbard was the site of the 1810 marriage between Hubbard’s daughter, Julia, and Mr. Walker Richmond of New York. The first white child born in the township was in 1807 when Edmund, son of David and Mary Polly Burnet gave his first cry on the former Wells Blakeslee farm. Miss Dorcas Seymour Welton was the first person buried in what today is known as “Maple Grove Cemetery.”
In my book, “Where Have All the Schoolhouses Gone?”, I wrote of the early history of Ashtabula County schools. On page 100-101, I wrote that the site of the signing of the township organization was the 1810 log schoolhouse that stood in the hollow, short distance north of the cemetery on a farm owned by Ashur Blakeslee. From the memoirs of the late Carl Latimer, I learned the school was known as Plymouth Ridge and was built on what was known as the “North Road to Sheffield” across from the old William Foster Home.
Warner Mann was the first schoolteacher for twelve students. The story has been passed down through township families that these early scholars were said to have been in constant fear of wolves as they walked through the thick woods on their way to Plymouth Ridge School. It would take seven more years before a frame school house was built, three fourths of a mile north of the center. By 1885, brick was used by a Kingsville stone mason named Pinkerton to build a new school. Pinkerton was assisted by Randall H. Seymour, grandfather of Clarence Seymour of Plymouth Ridge.
Randall H. Seymour also built the Brew School on Seven Hills Road, west of the Blakeslee log cabin today. The land was known as the Friedstrom Place. Nancy (Castle) Morrison, grandmother of Bob and Henry Morrison, was born on the land in 1821 and graduated from the Brew School in 1836.
Gathering together on the 4th of July, 1838, in the schoolhouse, the early Plymouth Township settlers officially signed the organization of the township named after the home they had left, Plymouth, Connecticut.
Chosen as judges on that day were Robert Seymour Samuel Burnett and Josiah Allen. The clerks were Levi P. Blakeslee and Wells Blakeslee. Warner Mann was elected as the first justice of the peace. Warner was in the first party to come from Connecticut in 1810 and married Amanda Blakeslee.
Mail and grain grinding were essential to the settlers. Mail brought news from home and encouragement. Mills ground what the settlers had grown and provided nourishment. In 1846, the first post office began receiving and sending mail with Postmaster Walter M. Mann running the office, a job he did for 12 years. Later, the office would move to the depot with H. B. Seymour as postmaster.
By 1849, the first store opened in a convenient spot. It was between the schoolhouse and the home of Charles Wright and run by William W. Mann. Mann would run the store for about 10 years before opening a mercantile store in East Ashtabula which he ran for two years. He then moved to the Ashtabula location on the corner of Centre and Park Streets.
The main businesses in Plymouth Township were devoted to the manufacture of butter and cheese as so many other townships were doing. Those farmers with 30 or more cows producing milk for cheese and butter were: B.P. Mann, Levi P. Blakeslee, Cornelius Morgan, Andrew Willey and H.C. Graham.
The second physician who located in Plymouth was Dr. David Warner who came with his family from Connecticut in 1816. His wife, Esther, was the daughter of Zadok Mann. She met with an untimely, tragic death in 1825 when she was thrown from a wagon while holding her grandchild. The grandchild was not seriously hurt but Esther died. Esther’s father, Zadok Mann, was also killed when he fell from a scaffold in his barn in 1846.
Elizabeth Miller came from Canada to Plymouth Township in 1818 and soon after married Henry C. Graham. They came across the lake in a bark canoe bringing all their worldly goods with them. One item was an iron kettle, which was passed down through many generations as a reminder of the Graham family beginnings on the Graham farm at Plymouth station when it was still an unbroken forest.
Another pioneer woman who helped develop the land in Plymouth Township was Mrs. Erastus Johnson (Candance West), who came in 1821 and raised ten sons and five daughters. Danger and adventure were everyday occurrences for pioneer families and often the wife had to handle it alone while her husband was gone from their cabin.
One day, Mrs. Winthrop Watrous (Pamela Castle) was spending the day with Mrs. David Burnett (Mary White) when they heard the pigs squealing. Going out to check, they discovered a bear in the pen. Both women put up such a fuss, the bear went away and the pigs were saved.
Nearly all the early settlers were Episcopalians and the first worship was held in 1817 with Zadoc Mann as lay leader. In 1819, a small chapel was finished and used until another parish was organized in the spring of 1834 and set off from St. Peter’s. It became St. Matthew’s in 1838. “The Parish of St. Peter’s Church, Ashtabula” was the first in the state of Ohio. Rev. John Hall was a missionary helping the parishioners during that time. In 1841 a new building was constructed a half mile east of the center. The Methodists finished building their church about 1874.
The story of one Plymouth Township settler reads like a novel. Dr. Chauncey Isbell married Olive Mann, daughter of Warner and Amanda Mann. Olive was born in Plymouth in 1824. They would make the choice to leave Plymouth Township and cross the plains to California in 1846. There is a copy of their journal kept in the Plymouth Township file at the Jefferson Historical Society and is a fascinating read. While crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains, they were met by General Fremont and his troops. They chose to join the Fremont party and stayed with them as surgeon and nurse until the end of the Mexican War in 1848. If you want to read the incredible ending to their story, stop in at the historical society.
Accidents were common and expected. Little Julia Blakeslee was just a young child when she crept or fell into a fire, burning her right hand terribly so she was unable to straighten her fingers the rest of her life.
Sarah Upson married B.P. Mann and is remembered for what she did to earn money for her wedding. She spun and wove thirty yards of toweling which she sold to pay for a pair of sheets and the fabric for her wedding bonnet. Yes, they wore bonnets instead of veils on those early days. The mother of Henry Hall, Valerious Hall, made the bonnet of rye straw that she braided, sewed and bleached. For a final touch she added pink and white ribbon for the seventeen-year-old bride.
So many marriages produced many babies. The Indians in the area made extra money by constructing rocking cradles for the settlers’ babies out of hewed logs. But when Ben Hall learned his wife was expecting twins, he chose to make their cradle out of rough boards. It was long enough to hold a child at each end.
John and Rachel Durey Ticknor came to America from England with their four small children in the summer of 1836 and settled in Plymouth where they resided until their deaths. Rachel out lived her husband and died in the home of her daughter, Mary A. Bailey of Jefferson. They had six sons and four daughters.
Still standing and maintained is the log cabin on Seven Hills Road, Plymouth Township built by father and son, Sala and John Blakeslee, 213 years ago. The Blakeslees were in the first ten families who settled the township.
These are just a few of the earliest settlers who left their homes to start new ones in Plymouth Township in 1805, the same year that Andover, Jefferson, Kingsville and Richmond were settled.
