The History of Bay Village, Ohio

   Bay Village residents through history have treasured their hometown for its beauty, bounty, and tranquility.

   Bay Village and the 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 claimed the lands. Finally, because of the confusion and the need for the 13 new United States to reach an agreement, all the states except Connecticut gave up their claims in 1780 and 1781. Connecticut refused to give up what it called its Western Reserve, and this area remained under Connecticut’s control until Ohio became a state in 1803.

   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 member 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 hometown of Dover, Connecticut, which was named for its resemblance 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 six-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 Leverette Johnson, and fellow traveler Reuben Osborn, arrived from New York and began claiming their respective lots.

   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 at 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 memorabilia from the Cahoons and other early settlers.

  The Cahoon family barn, built in 1882, was converted in the 1930s into a community center that continues to serve the community today. In 2010, the Bay Village Historical Society partnered with local activists to place a reproduction cupola atop the Community Center.

   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 arrived in 1811, followed by 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 were 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., began construction in 1895 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 Bay View Hospital, operated by the Shepards. Today, it is part of the Cashelmara condominium complex.

   In 1901, due to squabbles over how tax revenues were spent, the City of Bay Village was established in 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. A modern building has replaced it and now houses Bay Middle School. Other schools followed as the population increased.

   By the late 1970s, the library at Dover Center and Wolf Road was too small to serve the community. As a result, voters approved the construction of a new library on November 7, 1978. However, like the old library at Rose Hill, this new library eventually became outdated, prompting community calls for a new facility. In 2022, a modern library was completed, and with numerous municipal projects underway, Bay Village continues to progress.

Today, Bay Village is home to approximately 16,000 residents. Like those who came before them, the current residents appreciate the city’s beauty, resources, and tranquility.