Middlefield Post
By Nancy Huth
It's Your Post'WPlus ellBeing' Country Roads
After growing up on East 126 street, a logically, but not very picturesquely named street, I’ve always been fascinated by colorful street names. When streets no longer followed a grid design, but began to curve and wander, they were called avenues, roads, lanes and drives. They might be named after trees (Elm, Oak) or after flowers (Tulip, Primrose). There would be a group of them named after rivers, poets, inventors. Here in Geauga (Indian for raccoon) many street names have a history, or at least a meaning or a message. It’s clear where Chardon Windsor Road will take you, depending on the direction you’re traveling. Same for Claridon Troy Road. Early settlers often had streets named after them such as Tay l o r-We l l s Road. Middlefield itself was named for being halfway between Painesville and Warren on the railroad line. So when you reached this town you knew you were at mid-point. How about Swine Creek? How
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did that ever get its name? A naturalist from the Geauga Park District told me that though there is no written proof, the oral story is that local farmers used to water their pigs and hogs in the creek since there were an abundance of oak and hickory nut trees for the animals to forge on. Another story is that farmers drove their hogs over land to holding pens in Middlefield, stopping to water them at the creek. Nauvoo has always sounded like an Indian word to me, but it is derived from a variant of the Hebrew “nawveh”, meaning a place of rest or a beautiful pasture. We know it from Psalm 23:2 “He makes me to lie down in green pastures”. The street was so named by Mormons who settled there in the mid 1800s. Founder Joseph Smith had studied Hebrew in Kirtland. Girdle Road is so named because trees were girdled to stop their growth. One meaning of girdle is a ring cut around a tree trunk branch removing the bark. Jug Road was named after a
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bootlegger who lived there and hung a jug out in front of his property. Tavern Road was named after an early tavern located on the corner of Mumford Road and Route 168. It was rumored that this was a stop on the Underground Railroad, so it was colloquially
called Nigger Tavern. Shedd Road used to be called Fritzle Byler Road. Fritzle in German means little Fritz. This Swiss man was the grandfather of Andy Byler who runs Byler Meats on Shedd Road. Roads such as Peters, Nash and Newcomb were named after families, as was Bundysburg which has a cemetery on it where members of the Bundy family are buried. Mespo-Parkman Road was originally called Coffee Corners Road after a coffee peddler spilled his wares there. My thanks to Eli Miller in Mesopotamia for filling me in on many interesting facts. Eli owns a Geauga County Atlas and Directory from 1937 which has ads for Hostetler General Building Contractors and Fritinger Builders Supplies, which used to stand where CVS is now. These are names still familiar in Middlefield and surroundings.
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