Local History · From Brunswick Hills Township
Beebetown, the phantom town at the corner of three counties
In 1823, Abram Beebe crossed from New York with his wife, nine children, and an ox team, and bought fifty acres where Medina, Cuyahoga, and Lorain counties meet. Most of the town he founded is gone.
In 1823, Abram Beebe left Canandaigua, New York, and drove west with an ox team. He brought his wife Dorcas and their nine children. He paid $165.50 for fifty acres at the point where Medina, Cuyahoga, and Lorain counties met and where four townships shared a corner: Brunswick, Liverpool, Strongsville, and Columbia. He built a log house on the Liverpool corner.1
The Fuller family took the Strongsville corner the same year. They spent their first winter in a hunter's hut. Mrs. Fuller had brought pear seeds from New York. One of the trees she planted was still standing 140 years later.2
By February 12, 1826, the neighbors had organized a Free Will Baptist congregation in the farmhouse of a settler named James Miller. The charter members were Russell Gilmore, Truman and Ann Walker, Elijah and Nancy Bennett, and John and Marian Ann Fuller.3 A two-story log church went up in the mid-1830s; the upper floor served as the schoolhouse. A frame church replaced it in 1852.
Beebetown grew a school, a post office, a cheese factory, a blacksmith shop, and a general store. On May 6, 1906, the congregation dedicated a new brick church, the one still standing today. F.G. Mayer led the music that day. Godfrey Herrold donated the bell.4
Then the town faded. The general store closed. The cheese factory closed. The blacksmith shop was torn down. The post office was absorbed by the surrounding townships. What survives today is the 1906 brick church, the Beebe Town Cemetery, and a former schoolhouse converted into a private residence.
The corner where four townships and three counties meet is still there. Abram Beebe's log house is gone; the pear tree is gone; but the bell Godfrey Herrold donated in 1906 is still in the belfry.5
A note for the map-readers: the brick church technically sits on the Liverpool Township side of the corner, and the surrounding history straddles multiple townships. Brunswick Hills claims the story because the community sprawled across all four sides and Brunswick Hills is one of them.
Footnotes
- 1823 Beebe arrival, $165.50 for 50 acres. Documented in Wikipedia's Beebetown, Ohio entry and in the Brunswick: Our Hometown local history compiled in 2002 (via Cleveland.com's 2013 coverage).
- Fuller family, hunter's hut, Mrs. Fuller's pear tree. From the same Cleveland.com 2013 coverage. The 140-year-old pear tree detail is drawn from that source.
- Feb 12, 1826 organization of Columbia Free Will Baptist Church. Founding date, charter members, and location at James Miller's farmhouse are all documented in the A.E. Clement church history hosted at ahjur.org.
- May 6, 1906 dedication of the brick church. Music leader F.G. Mayer and bell donor Godfrey Herrold are named in the Clement history. The log church date differs between sources (Clement says circa 1834; Wikipedia says circa 1838); we say “mid-1830s” because both are that decade.
- Church still standing at the four-township corner. Confirmed by Wikipedia's Beebetown entry (coordinates 41°16'29"N 81°52'41"W) and by the Historical Marker Database and Theclio entries for the site.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Beebetown, Ohio.” en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, “Brunswick Hills Township, Ohio.” en.wikipedia.org
- A.E. Clement, Beebetown Church History (via ahjur.org). ahjur.org
- Cleveland.com, “Beebetown” profile, May 25, 2013.
- Brunswick: Our Hometown (Medina County Ohio, July 2002).
- Theclio, Beebetown Cemetery and Church entry. theclio.com
Beebetown is one of the clearest phantom-town cases in Medina County — a real 19th-century community with school, post office, cheese factory, blacksmith, and general store, most of which is now gone. What survives can be visited: the 1906 brick church, the cemetery, and the crossroads itself.