Area History

When you go to Westbrook from the center of Mansfield, you’re not going ‘west,’ and when you get there you won’t find anything like a ‘brook’ because it is situated up on the top of a hill. In order to understand why that particular name is attached to the most beautiful park in the city, […]

When most people think of Charles Mill they picture a scenic lake on the east coast of Richland County, but the name originated from a site that was an actual mill once, grinding grain for farmers. The grist mill, photographed here in 1901, was so busy in the 1800s that it spawned a small settlement […]

Long before Bexley Hall was a part of Kenyon College, the building was the site of an Episcopal seminary school founded in parallel by the college’s founder, Bishop Philander Chase. For many years, before the organization broke off from Kenyon and relocated elsewhere, it served as a training ground for ministers for the Episcopal Church, […]

Sometimes, when everyone’s at each other’s throat about politics, drastic things can happen. Like that time when treason was committed on the square in Mount Vernon … if that’s what happened. It depends on whom you ask. Major General Ambrose Burnside, and by extension, his boss, Abraham Lincoln, thought it was pretty much treason to […]

Most of our famous natives achieved their renown in the world by virtue of their accomplishments: what they made, or what they wrote, or what they did. We have, however, one local who became well known all over the US, yet he never made or wrote anything; and all he really did, in the way […]

Springmill Road has had that name for at least 150 years, and it is named for a Spring and a Mill that, amazingly enough, both still exist. It is named Springfield Township because there are innumerable places in the landscape where water just rushes out of the ground. One of the most powerful of these […]

If Thomas Jefferson had his way in 1784, Richland County would not be in the State of Ohio. Our address would be Mansfield, Saratoga 44901. The county line would border on two other US states: to the east would be the State of Washington; and to the north—just across Main Street in Plymouth—would be the […]