Middletown, Ohio (Crawford Co.)
 

Crawford County, Ohio

 

Villages

Middletown, Ohio

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source:  Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum, November 2001

 
   

Cemetery, Few Homes in Middletown

Henry Hershner had a dream -- to make his community a rival to nearby Leesville and Galion economically.  It didn’t work out.  Today, Middletown isn’t even a town.  It is a dot on the map with a cemetery and a few nearby homes.  But in Hershner’s day, it had promise.

In 1835, along with Christian Snyder and Adam Ashcroft, Hershner began laying out the town, public square on the Columbus and Portland state road (what is now Ohio 598) exactly half way between Leesville and Galion, thus the name Middletown.  According to John Hopley’s 1912 edition of the History of Crawford County, Hershner, Snyder and Ashcroft engaged John Stewart to lay out the town, which was still technically in Richland County.  He plotted the public square and two diagonal streets.  The one running from southwest to northeast was the Portland Road and was called Columbus Street.  The other from northwest to southeast was the road from Bucyrus to Mansfield, and was called Bucyrus Street.  The town contained 30 lots, 18 of them on the Public Square and Bucyrus Street, and 12 on Columbus Street.

Hershner opened a tavern and store, quickly transferring it to his son, John, who ran it for several years.  According to Hopley, Jacob Hershner started a cabinet makers shop, Michael and John Hershner built the sawmill, and Washington Modie began a blacksmith and wagon shop.  Meanwhile, Snyder set up a horse-powered grist.

According to Hopley, the town thrived with two churches and a graveyard now laid out.  But as the channels of travel became diverted from the old road by new and better roads, as well as shorter routes through the county, the town began to decline.  The killing blow came in 1852 when the Ohio and Indiana Road (Crestline Road) passed it by to the north.  Its fate sealed, the businesses came to a standstill and many buildings were abandoned with tradesmen following the traffic to Leesville or Galion.  Years later, most of the area was cleared for a country residence for Galion businessman William Gledhill.

The burial ground contains the dead town’s founding fathers, Hershner, Snyder and Ashcroft.  They remain there still, with many of their descendants.  The oldest stone is that of Jacob Hershner, 1829.  The others include Henry Hershner, 1850; Adam Ashcroft, 1866, Christian Snyder, 1863, and his wife Mary, 1872, who died at the age of 104.

Just up the road, at the intersection of County Road 35 and Ohio 598, Adam Shumaker set up a town to be called Jacksonville.  Main Street was County Road 35, with Ohio 598 designated at Boundary Street.  To the east, another main thoroughfare, Second Street, was planned.  Shumaker mapped out 44 parcels of land for homes to be built on.  The town never got established, even though detailed plans were filed with the Crawford County auditor in 1847.  Today, a home sits on the northeast corner and recently the city of Crestline annexed what would have been the southeast corner of Jacksonville. Both towns are pretty much of a memory except for some old history books.



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Wednesday, December 30, 2015