The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
History paved on Vermilion streets
Street signs posted on the roadways harken back to the community’s history, including back when it was Vermilion Village.
Rich Tarrant, a Vermilion native and History Museum curator, said particular roadways in Vermilion and its sister townships, Vermilion and Brownhelm, pay tribute to some of the village’s first iconic developers.
A major roadway, Baumhart
Road, was named after one of Vermilion Village’s most prominent families. This road runs south from W. Erie Avenue in Lorain.
Tarrant said the family first came to the village when Elias Baumhardt immigrated from Hessen-Kassel, Germany; to New York, then to Vermilion in the 1930s with his wife Anna Martha Gleim and their five children.
Baumhardt came most likely due to poverty in Germany and began a wheat farm in the area of the old Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant in Lorain, on the corner of what is now Baumhart Road and W. Erie Avenue, Tarrant said.
Tarrant said that over time the family grew very large, creating two forms of the name used in the area.
There was a side of the family who referred to themselves as the Baumhardts, with a “d,” of Brownhelm and the Baumharts, spelled without a “d,” of Vermilion.
“On this side of town people used (Baumhart),” Tarrant said. “There was no reason, it was just the preference.”
Baumhart’s son Augustus was the patriarch of the family, according to a letter from
a family member, Brenda Baumhart Mezz.
He operated a successful dairy farm in Vermilion in the 1880s after immigrating from Germany. Baumhart and his wife Margarett had eight children — three girls and five sons.
The sons were known as the Baumhart Boys who became successful in the growth of Vermilion during the late 1800s and 1900s, Tarrant said.
Henry, Otto, Charles, George and Albert, also known as A.D, were involved in the drugstore business, worked as steam boilers, railroad engineers or members of the village’s council.
However, it was Albert Baumhart who lived longer than his brothers and became successful in the drugstore business, Mezz stated.
Albert was involved with the town’s first telephone exchange, the first motion picture theater, the first ticket agency for the Lake Shore Electric Interurban Railway, and he held a successful ice cream manufacturing and sales business.
The family’s success continued when Albert married and had two sons, David and Charles.
Tarrant said in a book on Vermilion’s History that David
Bauhmhart was an Ohio Congressional Representative for the 13th District and Charles Baumhart was a treasurer for the village, member of council and was the last to become mayor of Vermilion Village before it became a city in the 1960s.
Albert Baumhart died in 1961 at 88 years old, but the success of the Baumhart name remains to live on, Tarrant said.
Some other historic roadways are Edson Street, named after the town’s wellknown lake captain during the mid-1800s, Lucius Edson. The street is located west of Vermilion, crossing the Edson Creek between Adams and Decatur streets.
A road located in the city’s township, between State Road or state Route 60 and Coen Road, is Kneisel Road. It is named after John Kneisel, who was born in Germany in 1846 and died in Vermilion in 1921.
Tarrant said Kneisel was a farmer who owned much property in the area surrounding the road.
Perpendicular to Kneisel is Coen Road, which runs north and south from Sherod Park on W. Lake Road to Thompson Road. It is named after the village’s local banker, Edward Coen, who was born in 1864 in Indiana and died in Vermilion in 1922.
He and his brother Frederick Coen came to Vermilion to begin Erie County Bank, known as Key Bank today. Frederick Coen also ran Lakeshore Electric Interurban Railway, which was the biggest electric system in the world.
Traveling down Liberty Avenue today before entering Vermilion’s downtown, there are streets off of the main road mentioned in an American Romance poem written in 1855 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “The Song of Hiawatha.”
The poem is an American Romance, but one that is shared between Native Americans who reside on the Great Lake shores of Lake Superior, according to a Maine Historical Society Website dedicated to Longfellow.
These streets relating to a story of Native American traditions are Hiawatha Drive and Minnie Wawa, Ewa Yea and Wa Wa Taysee Streets. Minnie Wawa Street also leads to Nokomis Park, which is also a name in the poem.
Tarrant said these roads were developed roughly in 1920s when the area was was full of cottages, but it’s unknown by whom chose these names.