1816-1916 Cedarville Centennial Souvenir

l :,· by Jesse Newport, who came from Virginia in 1810, All was then a wild wilderness here, and the thing that Jesse Newport did which we celebrate this 30th and 31st days of August, 1916, was the laying out of the town of Cedarville. When it was incorporated we do not know, as the docket and valuable papers were burnt with the Opera J!ouse jn 1886. Perhaps it was abo~t th~ time when a post-office was established. Jesse Newport surveyed a street on the north side of the creek, and running parallel thereto, sixty feet wide, and called it Chillicothe street. He laid off on the south side of the street, fifteen lots 82½ x 150 feet, and also nine lots, same size, on the north side. This is the street on which stand the U. P. and M. E. Churches. The village-to-be he called Milford, because he owned and operated a saw-mill here. It bore this name till 1834, when a post-office was established here 1iy"' the Government, and the name had to be changed to avoid conf us10n of post-offices. It was changed to Cedarville to perpetuate the memory of the cedars on either bank of Massie's Creek. By this time cabms were beingl)ui1Talong this street. Adm- . ~were made to the town from time to time, and new streets on the north side were laid out parallel to Chillicothe street. On the south side Cedar street was laid out. All ·were then in the woods. James Jeffrey, now 96 years old, and "et well preserved in mind and body, remembers when all the block on which the Cove– E_apter Church is loc;t~"d···was a thicket of lam brush. Thatwas 80 years ago,