Canfield Township going through records, some historic

By ROBERT CONNELLY

rconnelly@vindy.com

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,” she 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.

These are some of the oldest records in the second floor of the Canfield Township Hall.

Newer records, such as maps of the township, date back to 1968 and are lined up in rows. On the top of some of those boxes are designs for construction of Panera Bread and Bob Evans, both restaurants on U.S. Route 224 near the state Route 11 interchange.

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.

“That’s what they do — so that we don’t make a mistake,” Heasley said.

Trustee Marie Cartwright said the consulting group has helped local government entities, such as the Western Reserve Joint Fire District that serves Poland, with handling of old records.

“It’s much easier if you’ve got somebody that really understands what needs to be done,” Cartwright said of Fulmer/Shaw. “They can do it quicker and more efficiently than we could because they’ve got the learning curve down because they do it for other townships and districts.”

The process of going through the records has been put on hold for the next few months, however. That’s because the man going through the records for the township has fallen ill, Heasley said. Township officials found out he was sick this past week.

“It’s going to be on hold until at least March,” she said.

The township approved a contract of $5,000 for Fulmer/Shaw’s services. Once it figures out what records to destroy or keep, the decision will be made on whether to use a mass-fire or mass-shred for the documents. Heasley said there are things that cannot be destroyed — such as maps, payroll and township meeting minutes — but the township has kept everything in not wanting to violate state law.

But before records are destroyed, the township will have the state historical society and the local Canfield historical society take a look at them for historic value, including those records from the 1800s and early 1900s.

“I don’t think we’re going to be destroying those records,” Cartwright said of some of the oldest records. “Those are the ones that are unusual. When you look at the way they write things in the book, its different. It’s not the way we do things today.”

Heasley also said about six years ago a government class from Canfield came in and helped organize the records into the organized boxes they are in now.

“They were reading the documents and what they were getting out of the documents was obvious because you could hear them [saying], ‘You’ve got to see this!’” recalled Heasley. “They were extremely, extremely surprised. I remember the one finding our curfew, and they didn’t know there was a curfew and that really took off. It was just phenomenal.”