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    Paris
    Paris
    Paris
    Ebook184 pages56 minutes

    Paris

    By Daniel Jay Grimminger Ph.D.

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In 1806, Rudolph Bair came to Ohio from Pennsylvania and settled on one of the highest points in Stark County and called it Paris. After its establishment in 1814, this town became an important center of business and the arts. As a stagecoach stop on the main road from Pittsburgh to the West, this village evolved into a hub of American culture. By the late 1800s, Paris had dry goods stores, a drug store, two hotels, wagon factories, harness shops, shoe shops, blacksmith shops, a meat market, mills, a vinegar factory, and three churches. Local farmers also came to Paris to do business, worship in Paris's churches, and absorb the latest news. The legacy of this village and its surrounding farmland lives on here in photographs, artifacts, and descendents of early settlers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439641019
    Paris
    Author

    Daniel Jay Grimminger Ph.D.

    Dr. Daniel Jay Grimminger is a lifelong member of the Paris Community. He holds a Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh), Doctor of Church Music (Claremont Graduate University), and a M.A. (Trinity Lutheran Seminary). He has served as the archivist for Israel�s Lutheran Church in Paris and as assistant archivist for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at Columbus. He currently teaches at Mount Union College in Alliance and resides on the old Charles Lutz Farm.

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      Book preview

      Paris - Daniel Jay Grimminger Ph.D.

      history.

      INTRODUCTION

      It is difficult to imagine modern-day Paris as being a one-time center of commerce and the arts. Currently there are no businesses within the village’s limits, and many people moving to the area are not joining the local churches nor are they getting involved with the annual festivities like people once did. This little village, however, was booming from the 1830s to the early 1900s.

      Paris’s location on the state road, The main thoroughfare of travel, gave it considerable prominence, according to one respected historian (Danner, 67). But by 1923, the oldest resident recalled just how things had changed from what he remembered in the early years of the village when his parents brought him from Pennsylvania (Howells). Paris was on the mail route from Pittsburgh to the West; the stagecoaches started to carry mail to the village, and horses were changed at Paris as early as 1824 (Kauffman, 149). According to another source, a post office was established in the village on August 22, 1822. The first postmaster was Daniel Burgett (Lehman, vol. I, 81).

      Paris’s founder, Rudolph Bair (d. 1820), originally came from York County, Pennsylvania, and served as a member of Ohio’s Constitutional Convention of 1812, having helped to draft the first state constitution. Between coming to Paris in 1806 and the actual founding of the village in 1814, he was appointed a justice of the peace in Osnaburg Township (then Columbiana County), which took in what is modern-day Paris Township (established on April 1, 1818). He was clearly an industrious man who had vision and worked hard to attract people to his new home, for in 1812 he built the first sawmill on the Black Creek (a half mile southwest of the village) and in 1814 he built the first gristmill on the same stream a mile up (Danner, 67). It was likely that Bair was just interested in Paris as a moneymaking opportunity. However, he was known to accommodate emigrants of limited means, often selling land to them on long-time payments and though these were not always met when due, he was never known to oppress a delinquent (Danner, 65).

      William Perrin noted in his 1881 history of Stark County, Ohio, that by the 1880s Paris had two dry goods stores, one drugstore, one provision store, two hotels, one wagon and carriage factory, one wagon factory, two paint shops, two harness shops, three boot and shoe shops, two blacksmith shops, one meat market, one planing mill, one sawmill, one gristmill, and one vinegar factory. The location and its people attracted artisans like Smythe and Harmel, who were potters of remarkable stoneware and crocks that were intended to adorn kitchens and basements while storing and pickling homegrown foods. Their work was on par with the great potters of Pennsylvania and Maryland.

      When the railroad came through the area later in the century, it contributed to Paris’s slow demise, as did the use of highways and the turnpike in the 20th century. Further, the loss of family ties to Pennsylvania cut out a whole demographic of visitors that served as a large nucleus of future residents and tourists in the 19th century. Paris’s history is nevertheless worthy of our attention, because its sons and daughters and their descendents have spread across the nation and the rest of the world; Paris’s history is the history of frontier America, it is the history of how most everyone lived in this country for many years. Thus when we document it, we record American culture in microcosm.

      This book is only the beginning of a larger history project. As interested people form a historical society in the village, it is this author’s hope that as more artifacts and photographs surface, that their owners will either donate them to the historical society or allow us to scan and photograph them for the preservation of our common heritage. A fuller narrative history is also planned that will include all of the families and landmarks that made Paris one of the great metropolises of this part of the country in the early 19th century.

      —Daniel Jay Grimminger

      One

      PEOPLE

      Modern-day historians know little about the earliest settlers of Paris. Rudolph Bair and his brother Christopher came to Paris in 1806 to search out land that they could claim at the Steubenville land office. That fall, Bair brought his wife and baby from Columbiana County to live in his unfinished log cabin, about a half mile north of the present village. Before their arrival, legend states that Bair encountered Native Americans along the Black Creek (down the hill west of town), and they fed him gravy made with bear’s hair (Paris, Ohio Sesqui-Centennial). Later settlers included Conrad Henning, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, who bought 100 acres from Bair in 1811 for $200. He became the first village blacksmith and his wife was the first midwife, having a record of no fatalities in over 500 home deliveries during her 30-year tenure in that capacity.

      Several doctors practiced medicine in the village’s history. Among them was Robert Estep, who came from Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1818; he was actually trained as a silversmith but became an important figure as he performed some of the earliest caesarian births in the country.

      Because dairy farming became one of the main professions in Paris Township, many people in Paris were ordinary folks; they were neither notable nor significant to people outside of the area, but their story needs to be retold, because this history of common people and their lives serves as a foundation for many of society’s present attitudes, beliefs, practices, and problems.

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