Brittain was a small settlement in Ohio. Founded in 1832, it was part of the township of Springfield[1] until it was absorbed by Akron.
It sat east of Akron at the crossroads of roads from Tallmadge (north), Mogadore (east), North Springfield (south) and Middlebury (west), 1,066 feet above sea level. The Little Cuyahoga River ran through Brittain and was joined by Springfield lake Outlet Creek on its outskirts.[2]
The area may have been a settlement area for indigenous Americans when the John T. Brittain family arrived in 1832.[3] Among the early settlers was Benjamin Hilbish, who farmed wheat from 1849, raised a family, and built a home in 1869.
A house built by the Brittain family around 1874 still stands on Brittain Road.
In 1892, Sheriff Alanson Lane wrote, "Brittain (formerly for many years known as "White Grocery" [after its clean streets and several grocers]), one mile east of the city limits, on the Mogadore road, has had a hotel or two, store, post office, school house, wagon shop, blacksmith shop, clay-mill, etc., with private residences to correspond."[4]
In 1910, Brittain had a one-room school house, a post office, a Methodist church, hotels, clay mill, blacksmith, and a grist mill.[5] The Roegers family had a carriage manufacturing workshop. A sawmill at Oak Hill sat on the Little Cuyahoga River.
As Akron absorbed Middlebury to the west, and then spread into Brittain, several parts were lost to urban sprawl. After World War II. the interstate highway project built a highway over most of what was left of Brittain.
Brittain Road in Akron is named after the village. Most of what was once the Village of Brittain is at the current intersections of East Market and Mogadore Road in Akron, in the Ellet school cluster.
References
edit- ^ "Charles Wilhelm". Illustrated Summit County Map, 1891. Summit Memory. p. 49. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
- ^ "Springfield Township Map from the Illustrated Summit County Ohio, 1891 page 162". Summit Memory. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
- ^ "Portraits and residence of the Brittain family from the 1874 Combination Atlas of Summit County, Ohio". Combination Atlas Map of Summit County, 1874. Summit Memory. p. 110. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
- ^ Lane, Samuel Alanson (1892). Fifty Years and Over of Akron and Summit County. Beacon Job Department.
- ^ "Atlas and Industrial Geography of Summit County – Brittain, Boston & Millheim". Atlas and Industrial Geography of Summit County, 1910. Summit Memory. p. 119. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
External links
edit- "A map of Springfield Township in Summit County, Ohio. This is part of an 1856 Summit County map made from actual surveys by Hosea Paul, Civil Engineers Surveyor". Summit County Map 1856. Summit Memory. p. 37. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
- "A map of the city of Springfield by J. Douglass Moler in the Topographical Atlas of the State of Ohio and the United States". Topographical Atlas of Ohio – 1872. Summit Memory. p. 46. Retrieved 30 April 2015.