| Mansfield was a little town laid out around a public square in the
vast Ohio forests inhabited by wild animals and Wyandots. It was
staked out by a group of surveyors who named the place after their
boss in Washington who never set foot anywhere near the town that
bore his name. Beset almost immediately with peril from wartime
threats, the town gained its first identity as a safe haven in the
wilderness when two blockhouses were built on the Square for
settlers to gather in common protection. From this original
gathering, the heart of our community was born -- as a place where
people can feel safe, a place to come back to -- a home.
This is a home town. A lot of people are from Mansfield. No matter where in the world they may have gotten off to, they were raised here. This is our chief identity -- as a good a place to raise a family -- and that is the essence of hometown.
From its humble beginning there was no reason to think that Mansfield would ever amount to much-- it had the requisite number of frontier scoundrels, drunks and oddballs, wherever there was an open glade in the forest. But something about this place drew together men of vision who could see past the forest to a time when the town's placement in the heart of America would provide an opportunity to take a role in the country's growth. So they brought railroads here, and the rails brought industries, and the jobs brought people, and the people brought ideas that made the industries flourish.
There was a time, and more than once, when Mansfield led the nation with innovative ideas of life from stoves to streetcars to steel to Safety Town. It is still happening today -- in fields of networking and service technology -- that our town pioneers techniques and systems that become the standard in American life. It wasn't just that we made things, we created them from nothing... establishing whole new markets.
Every community has personality and a soul of its own, and just like an individual person, its character grows and changes as it moves through time. Having lived through so many different eras of American history, Mansfield has changed again and again in the light of each new decade of challenges, opportunities and trends. Facing new unknown futures over and over it has adapted a new face in every generation that reflects national styles and tastes, yet ever maintaining the unique qualities and charms inherent in its essential identity.
Click here to listen to the Bicentennial Moments created by Paul Lintern.
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1808 Plat
Blockhouse 1812
Stage Notice 1830's
Railroad 1840's
Fugitives 1850's
Johnny Chapman 1820's
Mansfield General Hospital 1918
Park Avenue 1930
City
Building 1970 
