Honoring Bay Village History
In 1971, my sister, Gay Menning, and I along with the Bay Village Historical Society, co-wrote the first written history of Bay Village, Ohio. “Bay Village: A Way of Life” was delivered just in time for Christmas, 1974. It is already into its second printing. Today, this book is the Bible of Bay Village history. $25.00
shipping: $5.00
The Last Will and Testament of Ida Maria Cahoon, granddaughter of the first family in Bay Village, specified that the cemetery be forever maintained. Ida had an interest in the cemetery because her grandparents, the first settlers of Bay Village, and her entire immediate family, consisting of her parents and all of her siblings, were interred there.
A portion of “Item 21” in the will of Ida Cahoon reads: “The Lakeside Cemetery situated west of said land on Lot Numbers Ninety-three (93) and Ninety-four (94) in the Village of Bay, in which lie buried many early settlers, is to be sacredly cared for and if need be, protected upon the North by stone wall, but never to be removed from its present location.
“If any of the conditions be violated or said Mayor or Village Council refuse to accept said trust, then and in that event, I give, devise and bequeath the land and Real Estate, in this item named and described to the Board of Trustees of the School Teachers Pension Fund of Cleveland, Ohio, and their successors in office forever as a home for the use of the retired Teachers of the Public Schools of the City of Cleveland, Ohio .”
The History of Bay Village, Ohio
Bay Village residents through history have treasured their hometown for its beauty, bounty and tranquility.
Bay Village and surrounding areas were home to wandering tribes of Erie Indians when the first white men explored this area, about 1600. The lands were fertile hunting and fishing grounds. The most important Indian trail in Ohio is now Lake Road, which runs through Bay Village.
In 1778, the State of Virginia had made this part of the country its Northwest Territory during the Revolutionary War. New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut, however, also laid claim to the lands. Finally, because of all the confusion and the need for the 13 new United States to come to an agreement, all the states except Connecticut gave up its claims in 1780 and 1781. Connecticut refused to give up what it called its Western Reserve and, until Ohio became a state in 1803, this area belonged to Connecticut.
During its ownership, the Connecticut Land Company sold some of the land and gave many acres to Connecticut citizens who had lost their homes and farms during the Revolution. This area was called “The Firelands” because the people had lost their homes and barns to the fires of war.
One of the members of the Connecticut Land Company was a surveyor named Moses Cleaveland. He and his friends made the trip on horseback from Connecticut in 68 days to the new land they had purchased. They arrived on the banks of the Cuyahoga River with their Indian guides in July, 1796. The party explored, surveyed and marked off land into townships five miles square.
The township lines between the Cuyahoga River and the Firelands to the west were surveyed and laid out in 1806. Two men from Connecticut bought Township Number 7, bordered by Lake Erie on the north, the township of Olmsted on the south, Rockport (Rocky River) on the east and Avon on the west. The cost: about $32,000 for 25 square miles.
The owners, Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Stowe, named it Dover Township after their home town of Dover, Connecticut, which was named because it looked similar to Dover, England, and, probably, because the cliffs along the lake looked like the high, white cliffs of England’s shore.
Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Stowe never came to the lands they owned; they left it to their sales agents to sell the farm lots to new settlers.
As early as 1799 a man named Joseph Cahoon visited this area and wrote to his wife Lydia in Vermont about a new, beautiful countryside he had found. (Cahoon’s family was Scottish, the name being Colquhoun in Scotland.)
After returning home to Vergennes, Vermont, in 1807, he bought Lot 95 on the Lake Erie shore at the mouth of a creek. Two years later, at age 52, with his wife, five sons and three daughters, and all their belongings packed into a covered wagon, they set out for the eight-week walk to their new home.
The Cahoon family stopped their wagon on the morning of October 10, 1810, near a bubbling little creek. Cahoon, a miller by trade, had picked the land knowing he would need waterpower to turn his mill.
That same afternoon, after righting a spilled wagon in the Rocky River, Asahel Porter and his family, together with his 17-year-old brother-in-law, Reuben Osborn, arrived from New York and claimed Lot 94 to the west.
With winter approaching, Cahoon and his sons, with nothing more than axes and muscle, built a log cabin in four days. Animal skins covered the windows; the door was the bottom of the wagon.
By 1818, the Cahoons had built a large, five-bedroom frame house on a grassy hillside above the creek. Joseph called it the most beautiful spot in America. The house stands today as the Rose Hill Museum, filled with Cahoon and other early settlers’ memorabilia.
The Cahoon family barn, built in 1882, was converted in the 1930s to a community center, which serves the community today.
The Reuben Osborn house, the oldest frame dwelling between Cleveland and Lorain dating to 1814, was slated for demolition in the early 1990s and was moved from its lakeside lot to a spot near the Cahoon family home in Cahoon Park.
Settlers came fast between 1811 and 1818. They hacked out homesteads about a half-mile apart on the lakeside dirt road. They were farmers, millers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, teachers and more.
The Bassett family came in 1811, then the Halls and Crockers. The Saddlers came in 1816, the Windsors in 1817, the Wolfs in 1818, the Bradleys and Clagues in 1819. By 1840 Dover’s population was 960.
The first schoolteacher was Betsy Crocker, age 14, who began teaching in 1816 in a log schoolhouse on the lakeshore at Bassett Road. After a fire destroyed the log building, a wooden frame schoolhouse was built near the same spot in 1830. A red brick schoolhouse replaced that in 1869 and operated for 72 years. Most children went no further than the sixth grade.
In 1827 the first organized church was held at the old log schoolhouse. After the congregation grew, a huge log cabin church was built near the schoolhouse, replaced by a wood-frame building in 1840 and in 1908 by a brick building, parts of which still serve today as the Bay Methodist Church.
Joseph Cahoon’s granddaughter, Ida Maria Cahoon, who never married, was the last living relative, and when she died in 1917 she left the house and 150 acres to the new city of Bay Village, with the stipulation that the home be forever maintained as a library or museum. That land is now Cahoon Park.
John Huntington, one of the original partners in the Standard Oil Company, built a summer estate on 100 acres of land, now known as Huntington Park, part of the Cleveland Metroparks system. The park features the only public beach between Cleveland and Lorain, as well as the Huntington Playhouse.
An electric railway was built through the city about 1896. It ran from Cleveland to Toledo. Area residents built summer cottages in the city, many of which still stand today as refurbished family homes.
Besides the electric railway, the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad ran tracks through the area in 1882. The Dover railroad station and nearby store was the center of activity for many years. In 1963 the old station was moved to Huntington Park where it became part of the Baycrafters art shops.
Washington Lawrence, one of the founders of Union Carbide Corp., in 1895 began the construction of a large home on the lake in Bay Village. Across the street Lawrence constructed one of the first golf courses in the nation. Family members lived in the house until 1948, when it became the Bay View Hospital, operated by the Shepard family. Today it is part of the Cashelmara condominium complex.
In 1901, because of squabbles over the spending of tax revenues, the City of Bay Village was established in the area of Dover Township north of the railroad tracks. A city government was first elected in 1903.
The city continued to grow over the years. In 1914 a city hall was erected. In 1920 the Parkview School was built. Today it houses the Bay Middle School. Plans are underway to build a new middle school on the same site. Other schools followed as the population increased.
A library was built in the late 1970’s, and it now operates as part of the Cuyahoga County public library system.
The community is protected by a fine fire department housed in a building built in 1973 on Wolf Road. The city plans to erect a new police station adjacent to the fire station by 2003.
Today, Bay Village is a community of more than 16,000 individuals living in more than 6,200 homes. Like those who have gone before, they enjoy the city’s beauty, bounty and tranquility.
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by William Krause
Jack Dianiska has lived in his Henry Road home behind St. Raphael’s for 60 years. He contacted the Observer after the first Digging Dover column about Native American relics found in Dover. He had several incredible stories to tell.
He was excited to read about the stone mortar that was found along Cahoon Creek, uncovered when the former Zipp’s manufacturing site was being cleared for the Cahoon Ledges cluster development. What he was excited about was that he found a stone pestle in the same location at the same time! The pestle and mortar would have been used to grind nuts.
Mr. Dianiska wondered if the man who found the mortar – which I’ve only heard about but haven’t seen – had ever contacted me. He hasn’t. Later, when Mr. Dianiska and I met (with masks of course), I was able to hold the pestle and it had the same finely crafted balanced feel in my hand as the stone celt mentioned in the first article. He also found a grooved stone ax in the dirt pile. Both the pestle and the ax were dated by an expert in stone tools as from the Early Archaic period.
The pestle and ax are made from the same hard, gray stone as the celt from the previous article. Archaeologists surmise that grooved axes and celts were probably companion tools used in the construction of wood framed dwellings. These tools became common 7,000 years ago. In the same pile of dirt Jack found shards of Native American pottery that come from a later period.
Mr. Dianiska has explored Cahoon Creek for artifacts for years; one of his beautiful finds was a white barbed point that the same expert mentioned above said was used for impaling fish. As a lifelong bow hunter Jack’s admiration for the artistry and skills of these Native American craftsmen was palpable.
After graduating from John Marshall High School in West Park, Mr. Dianiska worked for house building brothers Alex and Henry Bruscino. It was Jack’s job to make sure that truckers leaving the brothers’ post-WWII pre-fab house factory in West Park were not pilfering materials. He also worked for them in Bay Village.
According to “Bay Village: A Way of Life,” in 1950 the Bruscino Construction Company came to the aid of the rapidly expanding St. Raphael Parish by building a gymnasium which could be used temporarily as a church and in 1953 breaking ground for the now recently demolished permanent church building. It sounds like the Parish was “land rich and cash poor” and apparently for constructing these buildings at the lowest possible cost for St. Raphael’s, the parish gave or sold their backland east of what would become Donald Drive to the Bruscinos. According to Jack Dianiska, Henry Road was named for Henry Bruscino and the identical pre-fab houses were constructed and sold for $19,000 each.
This is where the other incredible artifact find that Mr. Dianiska made comes in. In 1960, after a seven-year stint in the military, he purchased one of those Bruscino-made homes on Henry Road from the original purchasers. Shortly after moving in, remembering that after the basements were dug and constructed the dirt spoils would be pushed back against the foundations, he decided to do some digging in his front bushes.
What he found was a handsome Native American stone point and a heavily encrusted copper coin, within one foot of each other. After cleaning off the coin as best as he could he saw that the coin had three fleur-de-lis and the words “Liard de Fran__” on one side and the profile of a head on the other. He took it to a coin dealer who could not find an exact match but said it looked similar to French coins of the 1500s and the 1600s. Jack conjectured that the arrowhead and coin were probably once together in a small pouch which had fallen to the ground and disintegrated. This ignites the imagination.
Wischmeyer Creek bisects Henry Road just a couple hundred feet east of Mr. Dianiska’s front door. One possible scenario is that a Native American encamped near Wischmeyer Creek lost a couple treasured possessions, to be found 450 years later as treasure for another man.
The French were the first Europeans to explore Ohio. They were the first to trade with Native Americans for furs. The “Jesuit Relations” published by French Jesuits in what is today Canada are the first to mention the Erie Indians which gave their name to Lake Erie. They were missionaries to the Huron Indians in Canada. Eight of them were martyred by the Iroquois in the 1600s and canonized in 1930. St. Raphael Church had a side altar dedicated to these martyrs for many years. It is fitting that of all the places in Dover that a French coin from this period would be found it would be on land once owned by St. Raphael Catholic parish.
by William Krause
The stone smokehouse now sits behind Rose Hill in Cahoon Memorial Park.
This is the first in a series of articles to be published as a walking tour of Lake Road by the Bay Village Historical Society in 2025.
This small, shake-roof structure is currently located just south of Rose Hill at 27715 Lake Road and is currently utilized by the Herb Guild. It was probably moved from 492 Bradley Road in 1973 when the c. 1872 Italianate Alfred Wolf home was torn down.
The Wolf home had been used as a city senior center until it was replaced by Bay Lodge.
“Bay Village: A Way of Life” states: “The old stone smoke house standing behind the [Wolf] homestead house was used as a jail prior to Horace’s [Wolf] becoming mayor. It was used to lock up prisoners until the Marshal could take them into the county jail.”
A. Horace Wolf served as the second mayor of Bay Village, from 1910 to 1915. He had inherited the property at 492 Bradley Road after his father, Alfred, was robbed and murdered in 1896. While this utilitarian structure may predate 1872 it is highly unlikely that it was built in 1810 when the first settlers in Dover Township arrived.
by William Krause
27715 Lake Road, c. 1814
The second in a series of articles to be published as a walking tour of Lake Road by the Bay Village Historical Society in 2025.
The Reuben and Sarah Osborn House was originally located at 29202 Lake Road, west of Lakeside cemetery. Reuben Osborn arrived in Dover on the afternoon of Oct. 10, 1810, the same day Joseph Cahoon and family were the first non-native American settlers to arrive in Dover Township.
Reuben brought his wife and children from New York the following May.
This was the first frame structure constructed in Dover Township and is the oldest existing frame structure between Cleveland and Lorain. It is a simple gabled structure with roofline, massing, and fenestration which hint of the Greek Revival style popular at the time.
Reuben’s grandson Reuben occupied the house in 1903 when Bay seceded from Dover Township, and he became the first mayor.
In 1995 the land along the lake where the house was located was sold to a developer. When the developer learned of the importance of the house, he donated it to the city which moved the house to its current location.
Today the house is used as a research repository for records of the Bay Village Historical Society.
by William Krause
c. 1814
Lakeside Cemetery in Bay Village
The third in a series of articles to be published as a walking tour of Lake Road by the Bay Village Historical Society in 2025.
The first pioneer death in Dover township was Rebecca Smith in 1811. Some early sources say that she was buried in this cemetery in 1811 and then moved elsewhere in 1820.
It is more plausible that Mrs. Rebecca Porter and her infant son Dennis, who tragically drowned off Rocky River in 1814, were the first burials in this cemetery because the original land for the cemetery was donated by her brother-in-law Reuben Osborn.
It was the first public burying ground in Dover Township, an area that today includes Bay Village, Westlake and the northern portion of North Olmsted. Additional land was purchased by township trustees in 1877, expanding the cemetery to a total of about one-half acre.
There are over 270 known burials including veterans from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
An Ohio Historical Marker was erected in 2002, and in 2005 money was raised to replace the fences surrounding the cemetery.
In 2021 owners of slivers of land surrounding the cemetery donated funds to construct barriers to prevent further erosion by Lake Erie.
by William Krause
27715 Lake Road, c. 1818
The fourth in a series of articles to be published as a walking tour of Lake Road by the Bay Village Historical Society in 2025.
This home replaced a log structure constructed in 1810 when the Cahoon family were the first pioneers in Dover Township. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The oldest part of the frame structure was constructed by Joseph and his son Joel using timbers milled in their sawmill on the premises.
After serving in the War of 1812 and work out of town as a contractor, and the death of his parents, Joel returned to live in the home with his wife Margaret who named it Rose Hill because of rose bushes planted by Lydia. Joel died in 1882 and the property passed to his five unmarried children.
Sometime during the Victorian era, a fashionable parlor was added onto the northeast corner of the structure and additional bedrooms were constructed under a peaked Gothic Revival roof. Ida Marie was the last surviving sibling. When she died in 1917, she willed the entire 115-acre homestead property to the Village of Bay. The house was used as a library from 1921 to 1960 and as a museum since 1974.
by William Krause
30663 Lake Road, c. 1830
The fifth in a series of articles to be published as a walking tour of Lake Road by the Bay Village Historical Society in 2025.
It was in 1816 that Aaron and Elizabeth Aldrich and a son moved from Rhode Island to Dover to live near Elizabeth’s brother Henry Winsor. In 1822, they moved to New York for Aaron to take charge of a cotton factory.
In seven years, Aaron earned enough money to move back to Dover and purchase a 140-acre farm, extending from Lake Erie south to what is now Wolf Road, and build this very fine frame house (in 1830).
Built as a double house it has a two-story west wing with a Federal style fan window in the attic and a single-story east wing. It eventually passed down to George Drake, their grandson.
Henry Winsor’s 1785 desk which he had brought to Dover in 1813, was in this house, crammed with papers that became the foundation of the first written history of Bay Village, “Bay Village: A Way of Life.” Today, that desk is part of the Rose Hill Museum collection.
The Aldrich house is very well preserved inside and out and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.