This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Stark County Historical Society!
We're celebrating in a variety of ways this year, including a brand new Facebook series called "70 Artifacts for 70 Years." Throughout the year, we will be posting items from our collection that tell the story of Stark County. Our Archivist Mark Holland and I have split the responsibility: I will be posting 35 objects and he will be posting 35 archival items. Each will be accompanied by a brief history of the piece.
Our friend Su Nimon has reworked our logo in platinum, which is the symbol of a 70th anniversary. We have used it as a "watermark" of sorts to identify the photos in this series.
In addition to posting on Facebook, we will each be posting our selected items in our blogs. You can visit Mark's blog here.
We're excited to share all of these wonderful artifacts with you! Some of them will be familiar, but others will not. We hope you enjoy learning more about the place we call home.
Here is the first post of the series:
Compass and Plat
1947.2.1 and 1946.1.1
One of the oldest artifacts in the Museum’s collection is the compassBezaleel Wells used when he laid out and recorded Canton as the first town in Stark County on November 15, 1805. He divided the town into 300 lots spread over 100 blocks, with 3 lots per block, as show in this copy of the original plat. The new settlement was located between “North Street” (now 6th Street N) and “South Street” (now 6th Street S). The rest of the streets between were numbered. The major street running through the center of town was to be called “Market Street,” and would be wider than the other streets, since most of the town’s business would be conducted there. The main east-west thoroughfare would be called Tuscarawas Street. The intersection between Tuscarawas and Market was the geographic center of town and would become known as “Public Square.” Wells named the streets running north and south after tree names: Plum (now McKinley), Poplar (now Cleveland), Cherry, and Walnut.
