Oxford Township Grange Hall in Bloomingville

Now a private residence, the Oxford Township Grange Hall was the center of community life for many years from the early 1900s until the 1980s. The building is located at the intersection of Taylor Road and Mason Road in Oxford Township of Erie County, Ohio.   Farming was the main occupation of residents of Oxford Township in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  In the picture above, from the 1910s, several individuals can be seen with their horses and buggies. 

Bloomingville is an unincorporated village in northern Oxford Township of Erie County. Hewson Peeke wrote in A Standard History of Erie County, Ohio, that the earliest settlers in Bloomingville arrived in 1810. Bloomingville was one of the largest towns in northern Ohio at that time, with a church, mill, school, inn, and post office established in that first decade. The Bank of Sandusky Bay was built in the village in 1816-1817, but it was not granted a charter.  The old brick bank building is pictured below.

Eleutheros Cooke and his family lived in the former bank building in 1819, and his son Pitt Cooke was born here. Andrew W. Prout lived here in the 1830s. (The building no longer stands.)  The Bloomingville Cemetery is located adjacent to the former Grange building, with burials dating back to the early 1800s.

You can read more about the history of Oxford Township in several histories of Erie County, Ohio, at the Sandusky Library. 

The historic marker at Bloomingville Cemetery gives a brief summary of the community's history