A history of Jefferson,
since 1803
Postcards, papers and photographs of Jefferson from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Jefferson was officially founded by Gideon Granger, U.S. Postmaster General during Thomas Jefferson's administration, in 1803. He envisioned the new settlement as a "Philadelphia of the West," and early plans for the village were based upon the layout of that city. A cabin was erected by Granger's agent in 1804, but the settlement's first permanent residents arrived only in 1805: the Samuel Wilson family. Wilson, misled by land agents, moved to Ohio in late autumn expecting to find a thriving city on Granger's land. Instead, he found a wilderness, broken only by trees emblazoned with Philadelphian street names, marking where future streets would be built. Wilson himself died after two weeks of herculean effort to prepare for the winter, but his family stayed on as the first citizens of Jefferson. In 1811, Jefferson was made the county seat of Ashtabula County.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Jefferson’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewMain Street, West, 1907: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Jefferson, decade by decade
1990s
4 historic places in Jefferson
4 places in Jefferson are on the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving. One is a National Historic Landmark, the highest tier, which fewer than 3% of listings reach.
Where they are
Architectural styles
When they were listed
LandmarkListed 1974Giddings, Joshua Reed, Law Office
Listed 1975Ashtabula County Courthouse Group
Listed 1981Jefferson Town Hall
Listed 1982Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad StationThen & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Jefferson, Ohio 1901 (1901) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.