Early History:

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. An 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 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. The 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 lands 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.

 
The 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 trip 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 water power 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, 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 four-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 Memorial 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 others.

The Bassett family came in 1811, then the Halls and Crockers. The Saddlers and Footes came in 1815, the Aldriches in 1816, the Windsors in 1817, and the Wolfs in 1818. 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.

The first organized church was the Dover Lake Shore Methodist Episcopal Church in 1827. Services were 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 1909 by a brick building, part of which still serves today as the Bay United Methodist Church.

 
Growth and Prosperity:

Joseph Cahoon’s granddaughter, Ida Maria Cahoon, who never married, was the last living relative. When she died in 1917, she left the house and 115 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 Memorial Park.

John Huntington, one of the original partners in the Standard Oil Company, built a summer estate in 1880 on 100 acres of land, now known as Huntington Reservation, part of the Cleveland Metroparks System. The park features the only public beach between Cleveland and Lorain, as well as the Huntington Playhouse, Baycrafters and Lake Erie Nature and Science Center.

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 Reservation 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 Sheppard family. Today it is part of the Cashelmara condominium complex.

Bay was once a favorite drop-off point for rum runners during the prohibition era. There were underground tunnels running from the lakefront to nearby basements.

 
From Township to City:

On July 20, 1901, Bay Township split from Dover Township because of squabbles over the spending of tax revenues. They took the railroad with it after a lawsuit decided by the Ohio Supreme Court. Bay became the Hamlet of Bay and operated like a township with trustees as a governing body. On March 10, 1903, the trustees of the Hamlet of Bay made application to the state to be incorporated into the Village of Bay. A village government election was held at the Oviatt Manufacturing Company building on April 6, 1903. Reuben Osborn was elected mayor. In 1948 a charter commission was elected and in 1949 the present charter was developed and became effective January 1, 1950. At the same time Bay Village became a city, having been certified as having 6,917 residents as of 1950. A very spirited election was held to name the new city and the winning name was "City of Bay Village".

The city continued to grow. In 1914 a city hall was erected. In 1922 the Parkview School was built. Today it houses the Bay Middle School and plans are underway to build a new middle school on the same site. Other schools followed as the population increased.

The first library was in the Cahoon home in 1921 and was called the Dover by the Lake Library. The current library building was completed in 1981 and updated in 1997. The library 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.

 
Famous People and Inventions:

Joseph Cahoon - Patented a grape hoe pulled by one horse
Brad Friedl - Internationally known soccer athlete and US Olympic Team Goalie
Patricia Heaton - Won an Emmy Award in 2001 for Everybody Loves Raymond
Rueben Osborn - Invented a flying harness to quickly hook up fire engine horses
Robert Patrick - Actor in X-Files and Terminator
Richie Patrick – Musician with band Filter
Richard North Patterson - Author
Ward Powell - Inventor
George Steinbrenner - American Shipbuilding and New York Yankees
Jesse E. Williams - Invented a welding machine used underwater to fix boats at sea

 
Author: Eric J. Eakin
Contributor: Gay Menning
Source: Bay Village : A Way of Life