Columbus firm to advise Canfield on disposal of records

CANFIELD

Many years ago, the Canfield Township hall was the Mahoning County seat and main courtroom.

Youngstown, however, wanted the courts to be in the city.

“While we still had the horse and buggy, a group of men came up here, broke through the front door and stole the records, put them onto the back end of their wagon and rode their horses downtown,” said Carmen Heasley, township fiscal officer.

“The following day, they reported that all the county records are now down at the courthouse and that’s how they got the county seat. Nobody wanted to return the records,” he continued.

“When the people came into the township hall, they found records lying all over the floor and those are the records we have upstairs. I think it’s funny as heck — could you imagine in the middle of the night a couple men coming in here and clearing out all the records? But supposedly that truly happened.”

Those records that were left behind include cases from the 1840s and 1860s, which feature brown pages with yellow middles and leather bindings showing their age. These books are next to old township minute logs from similar time periods. One book has original bonds for the construction of U.S. Route 224.

Newer records, such as maps of the township, date back to 1968 and are lined up in rows.

The reason the records have collected is due to township officials not wanting to destroy something in violation of the Ohio Revised Code.

“When it came down to destroying records, practically every board has been concerned about it, so that’s one reason why we’ve hired in a professional,” Heasley said — Fulmer/Shaw Consulting Group, LLC, based in the Columbus area.

Read more about the plan in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.