“Fullertown made a huge contribution to the development of this township. We’re glad it will be recognized forever.” – Trustee Jan Blair
What would bring 50 Geauga County movers and shakers out to a busy intersection in Newbury Township on a chilly Oct. 21 morning in the pouring rain?
Answer: To install a permanent marker honoring the once-bustling but long-gone Fullertown community.
During a steady downpour last Friday, a busload of members of Leadership Geauga’s Class of 2016 joined township officials and local history enthusiasts at the southwest corner of Sperry and Fairmount roads to install and dedicate a permanent sign describing Fullertown.
Leadership Geauga is a nonprofit organization that seeks to identify current and future leaders from a cross-section of Geauga County, exposing them to the county’s realities, opportunities and challenges so they might positively contribute to Geauga’s economic, social and civic development.
“This is a bad intersection; we’re all nuts to be out here doing this,” remarked Newbury Township Trustee Bill Skomrock Jr., as township road workers set up orange cones and directed traffic during the brief ceremony.
“As trustees, we’re proud that they selected our site to recognize, when they could have chosen many, many others in the county,” Trustee Jan Blair said.
“This all falls in line with our bicentennial celebration next year,” Skomrock added.
Class member Samir Gautam, managing director for Caritas Financial in Chester Township, said the decision to recognize Fullertown came from last year’s Leadership Geauga Adult Heritage Day, a bus tour of the county’s heritage sites.
“This area is rich in its history,” Gautam said. “We discussed it on the bus and decided we needed to do something to recognize that.”
The group decided to honor Fullertown’s history with a permanent marker and applied for a mini grant from the Lake-Geauga Area Association of Realtors. They ordered the custom sign from a company in Erie, Pa., for about $1,200.
Gautam said the project took about a year to complete.
Orville and Carol Desellems, who live on the southwest corner, volunteered to allow the sign to be erected in their yard.
Township Trustee Glen Quigley said there had been a previous marker in another spot at the intersection, closer to Sperry Road, but he believed it had been hit and destroyed several years ago during one the intersection’s frequent crashes, sometime before the current flashing caution light had been installed.
Local historian and former county archivist Bari Oyler Stith, who now serves as the director of the graduate and undergraduate programs in historic preservation at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, researched the history of Fullertown and wrote the words for the sign.
Fullertown was one of four original settlements of Newbury Township, begun in 1820 when Thomas Fuller and his business partner opened a gristmill on the Chagrin River in an area where many trees had been felled by a tornado.
Fuller’s gristmill soon became a commercial center, which included a sawmill and woolen mill, and eventually a school, post office, doctor’s office and other businesses.
Today, the businesses are long gone, but several century homes remain along the river.
“Now this area will be known forever,” Blair said. “Fullertown made a huge contribution to the development of this township. We’re glad it will be recognized forever.”
