Happy 200th Birthday Avon Lake! (Or Maybe Not So Fast)

Just how old Avon Lake is, and when the city’s bicentennial should be celebrated is up for debate with two different groups recently claiming two different years. The issue is expected to be settled for good in November with most parties agreeing 2019—not 2012—should be the year of the city’s bicentennial.

One group, led by resident Pat McDonald, began seeking volunteers for the city’s 200^th birthday party in 2012, marking the anniversary of the year (1812) signs welcoming visitors to Avon Lake say the city was founded.

That date is at odds with members of the Avon Lake Historical Preservation Commission, that supports a bicentennial date of 2019.

, who sits on the Commission, said the issue was discussed at length at a recent Commission meeting, which voted 7-0 to support 2019 as the official bicentennial date.

Last week, McDonald said after hearing that city leaders supported the 2019 date, plans for a 2012 celebration would be scrapped and fliers in town seeking volunteers for a 2012 celebration had been taken down.

“That’s the date (the city) decided,” McDonald said. “We’re not doing it next year.”

Like many others, McDonald believed a bicentennial date would be based on signs welcoming visitors to the city that say “Founded 1812.”

“Everybody assumed it was going to be 2012, obviously the definition of ‘founded’ and ‘settled’ is the difference,” McDonald said. “Are we going to get new signs?”

Mayor K.C. Zuber said 2019 was the obvious date.

“I remember the city’s Sesquicentennial celebration (150^th anniversary) in 1969,” he said.

A June 19, 1969 photo in the Cleveland State University archives depicts Avon Lake mayor John Picken with Ed Mitchell (Chairman of the Sesquicentennial Committee) and Don Ames  during the city’s Sesquicentennial celebration.

History is murky

What appears to be the root of the debate is whether to acknowledge that Noah Davis, who built a cabin here in 1812 only to vacate it the following year, was a passer through or a settler.

Avon Lake Historian Nancy Nelson Abram, who authored Avon Lake: A Journey in Time, mentions in her book Davis lived near the Lake Erie shoreline from 1812-13.

 “As for our area, which includes both Avon and Avon Lake at that time, it is reported in Lorain County records, 1812 is the settlement date and Noah Davis as the first settler,” Abram wrote, noting that the term “temporary settler” is used in many accounts.

Davis built a log cabin and the disappeared the next year. There is no record as to exactly what happened to Davis after 2013.

In 1965, The Avon Lake Story, by Milburn Walker was published. In it, Walker also mentions Davis, saying “Possibly the first person who built a cabin in this area was Noah Davis who built a three-sided cabin probably in 1812 or 1813.”

The book also notes the first permanent settler along the lake shore was Adam Miller, in 1819. Miller built what is known today as , an Ohio Landmark in Miller Road Park.

Kos said John Shondel, chairman of the Avon Lake Historical Preservation Commission, will make a presentation to city council in November that will include “overwhelming evidence” that the correct bicentennial date is 2019.