Part 2 From County Communities The names for many townships and villages can be traced to individuals, as in the case of Meadville. Bloomfield Township (1811) was named for an early settler, Thomas Bloomfield, who came from New Jersey by way of Fayette County in 1797. Jonathan Titus arrived in the eastern part of the county about 1796 in what an early historian termed "a state of single blessedness." He married in 1804. Though he named his settlement Edinburg after his mother- in-laws birthplace, the town quickly became known as Titusville. Richard Custard arrived south of Meadville in 1797, eventually opened the Black Horse Tavern on the new state road to Pittsburgh, and the area is still known by his name. The waterfall near Custards which was a local attraction for years is now nearly obliterated by the interstate north-south highway which still closely follows the old route to Pittsburgh. Amos Line, a Quaker, was a surveyor for the Pa. Population Co in 1800. He bought a 400 acre tract for $4 per acre, moved there from New Jersey in 1818, and laid out what was to become the village of Linesville in 1825. He served as the first postmaster and schoolteacher in his town. William Kerr moved west from Philadelphia in 1811. He purchased 100 acres across French Creek from Meadville, taught at the Meadville Academy, and then opened the store which gave Kerr's name to the village which grew on his land. In 1815 Jacob Guy settled in thick wilderness to the east of Meadville, built a mill two years later, and in 1833 opened a store to serve his community of Guy's Mills. Townville took its name from Noah Town. He migrated from Granville, N.Y., first to Meadville and then to a farm to the east in 1831. It took him two years build the saw mill which would ship much lumber to Pittsburgh. Samuel Rice put his saw mill on Oil Creek in an unbroken forest where Riceville now stands. A few years later (1837) Seth Lincoln built his own mill and started a village, now known as Lincolnville. In 1842 Anson Sherman laid out Shermansville as a lumber shipping port on the canal to the west of Conneaut Lake. It is not entirely clear for whom the town of Cochranton is named. Thomas Cochran bought land there and gave it to his son. Slightly later Charles Cochran, who was unrelated or only distantly related to the earlier Cochrans, settled in the present limits of the community in 1800; his son James ran a store and tavern and was a justice of the peace. Harts Cross Roads was so-called in the 1820's for James and Wm Hart who settled there; it was also unofficially called Hartford for several decades and finally was incorporated as the borough of Hartstown in 1850. The list could go on: Espyville (John Espy, 1833); Miller's Station (George Miller, 1808); Fredericksburg (Frederick W. Hudekoper, 1863). There are many more. Sometimes a founder's name would be forgotten no mater how well established it might have seemed in early years. For example, blacksmith Abner Evans arrived in 1796 and built a mill at the outlet of Conneaut Lake. His community was known for more than a century as Evansburg, but his name is now forgotten in favor of the name of the lake. Alexander Power selected his tracts as pay for his work as a young surveyor in 1794 and 1795. His town, where he ran a mill and served as postmaster, was known for years as Powerstown, he suggested, however, the name of Conneautville, and his preference was honored. Henry Broadt (or Bright) in 1797 started a village first called Brightstown. Because this blacksmith belonged to a religious group known as Dunkards (German baptists who formed the Church of the Brethren and believed in total immersion adult baptism) or Harmonites (they emphasized commercial harmony), in time the village became known as Harmonsburg. The town named Aikenville, for the two brothers who built a mill there, became Spartansburg in 1846. Peter Titus was the original settler of Hydetown, but it is named for the two men who bought his mill. Despite all they did in Richmond Township, Daniel and Ebeneezer Hunt, the first settlers, are not memorialized. Daniel Saeger was more fortunate, as the land he bought from Roger Alden in 1824 came to be known as Saegerstown, rather than as Alden's Mills (the second "s" would be dropped in the mid-twentieth century). Roger's cousins, Timothy and Isaiah, also failed to perpetuate their names, as the village of Aldenia which they laid out north of Evansburg on the shores of Conneaut Lake did not prosper. The growth of most of these communities was slow and steady, although figures might show an occasional decline as a new township split from an older one. Meadville numbered 2,578 inhaabitants in 1850 and 7, 103 two decades later; in 1860 the population of Vernon Township was 1,533 of Troy 954, of Sparta 1,019, of South Shenango 1,393, of Beaver 1,090. Cambridge Township held 1,012 inhabitants in 1860, but by 1870 it counted only 747, as Cambridge Borough had by then become a separate entity with a population of 452. On the other hand, the oil boom gave Titusville a tremendous surge in growth; numbering only 438 persons in 1860, Titusville held 8,639 in 1870. Hope you enjoyed! Bev