---

Ridgeton Not So Different Today

Violet Bird said her hometown “was a community where everyone knew everybody.”  Bird, 70, is currently spending six months in Montana with her daughter Colleen, but she spends the other half of the year in Ridgeton, where she grew up.  In 1913, her father, Floyd Steiner, and his family came to Ridgeton from a community near the Ohio River. His father, J.W. Steiner, ”wanted to find a place that had a creek bottom, a railroad and high ground he could build his home on,” Bird told the Mansfield News Journal in 1999.  J.W. Steiner bought a large 1883 house next to the railroad tracks at 3541 Ridgeton Road for $15,525.

The family established the Ridgeton Elevator next to the property in 1925.  The elevator was first owned by J.W. and Floyd Steiner and Christ Schnarrenberger.  Schnarrenberger later sold his portion of the business to J. W.’s other son, Ellis.  The company went through a few changes until 1951, when a 50,000-bushel grain bin was added to the former 8,000-bushel bin.  At one time, the Steiners sold Allis Chalmer and New Idea farm implements.

Ridgeton never had its own school, Bird said.  The closest was a one-room schoolhouse at Beechgrove and Lemert roads.  But there was a sawmill and a small store, the latter owned by the Esterlys and located in a building on the southeastern side of Ridgeton Road.  It was here Bird had her first job outside the elevator.  She was paid $1 to watch the store in the afternoon while the shopkeeper went to Bucyrus to buy supplies.  Bird remembers bread for 10 cents a loaf and being upset when the cost increased to 11 cents because she had to make more change.  The building that housed the store was torn down many years ago, Bird said.  But many of the homes in the area remain the same.  Only a few have been demolished.

When Bird’s parents were married, J.W. Steiner moved from the large house at 3541 Ridgeton Road to a home at Beechgrove and Ridgeton roads.  Bird’s parents, Floyd and Hattie Steiner, then moved into the large house next to the elevator.  J.W. Steiner’s great-granddaughter, Suzanne Blank, and her family currently live in the home at Beechgrove and Ridgeton.

Blank, who moved back to the area in 1992, said she remembers farmers bringing their grain crops to the elevator when she was a child.  The establishment served as a social forum for the men who would talk and drink orange pop.  In 1939, J.W. sold the elevator to Floyd and Ellis for $1.  He was active in the business for many years after.  He died in 1997.  The Ridgeton Elevator is now owned by Country Star Cooperative.

Bird and her husband, Harvey, who are both teachers, live in the large home where she grew up on Ridgeton Road.  She expects the home will always stay in the Stein family, making Ridgeton a constant point in a sea of change.  In fact, the town hasn’t changed much in past years, Bird said.  With the exception of a few houses and the store being torn down, the community has remained pretty much the same for the past 70 years.

---

---

<< Back to Crawford County, Ohio

Tuesday, May 05, 2015