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The Town of Everett was a bustling town during the Canal Era.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library & Historical Society
Have you ever lived in a small town where you knew all your neighbors? Nestled deep within the valley, just south of the Village of Peninsula, Everett began as a small 1820s hamlet with less than ten residents. Landowner Alanson Swan owned horses and stables for Ohio & Erie Canal operations, a business that failed by the 1870s as canal traffic declined. In 1880, the Valley Railway connected Everett to outside villages, attracting more residents and visitors.
By century's end, Everett contained about 200 residents who farmed and lived self-sufficiently within the community. Railway passengers who visited Everett in the late 19th and early 20th centuries found a blacksmith, saloon, church, cemetery, dance hall, one-room schoolhouse, and Carter's General Store. The surrounding woods and wildflowers, vegetable gardens, shrubbery, and decorative flower beds added to the picturesque village scenery.
In the late 20th century, the National Park Service bought many properties in Everett as part of the establishment of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Decades later, former residents still express sadness over the loss of their family homes and sense of community.
Everett contained a few small businesses to support its rural residents.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library & Historical Society
Local Businesses
Local residents did not have to go far to meet their basic needs. Known as a "crossroads settlement," Everett's historic district is located around the intersection of Riverview and Everett roads. During the 1920s, Everett contained a post office, general store, school, church, cemetery, railroad station, and gasoline station. The gasoline station, located at Carter's General Store, may have been the first in the area. It was perhaps a harbinger of Everett's demise as cars and improved roads brought changes to rural life.
Carter General Store, Everett.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library and Historical Society
Valley Railway
In 1880, the Valley Railway established a depot near the crossroads and gave the community the name Everett, after the company's secretary-treasurer. With the establishment of rail transportation came Everett's first post office. The train provided the chief link with the outside world by bringing in mail and shipping out farm produce.
Carter's General Store
During the 1920s and 30s, Maude Carter owned Carter's General Store on Everett Road, selling mostly canned and boxed goods and gasoline. The store also had some meats and fresh produce. Bruce and Bertie Hamilton owned the business from 1944 to 1967, providing postal service from 1948 until 1953 (when service moved to Peninsula).
Penny Candy
2011 Oral History Project: Marjorie Osborne Morgan, who grew up in Everett, remembers buying penny candy from the Carter's General Store during the 1930s.
“Mrs. Carter’s store was . . . she had everything. She had meat, she had groceries, she had everything. And then where the post office was down there, she just had a few items, but she had this great big case as you went in the door, glass covered. It was full of penny candy. And that was our treat, because we could take two or three cents down there and go home with a bag of penny candy, you know. My friend that lives over there on Bolanz Road, she said, 'That used to be our big delight, wasn’t it?' I says, 'It was! That was our treat, if we could take three or four pennies down there and come back with a bag full of candy.'”
Mudboats
2011 Oral History Project: Marjorie Osborne Morgan, who grew up in Everett, describes how her family used mudboats, a type of skid, to transport goods to and from Everett's stores.
“When we lived up there on that, on the hill, and we needed things at the grocery store, there’s only one way you’d get there, and that would be hitch the horse up to what we called a mudboat, which was nothin’ but a box, a wooden box with some sides on it, because the roads were nothing but mud. And that’s the only way you could get to the grocery. ‘Cause the mud’d get that deep on it, and we’d hitch up and come down to the grocery store and get staples. And you talk about a rough ride . . . ”
Kepner's Store, Everett.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library & Historical Society
Kepner's Store
Miss Frank Ivel Kepner built her general store on the intersection's northwest corner sometime after 1920. She served as the community's postmistress from 1917 to 1948. The building is no longer standing, destroyed by fire in 1969.
Sager Gas Station and Confectionary
During the 1930s, the Sager Family ran a gas station and confectionary store on the intersection's southwest corner. As more people used automobiles, Everett became somewhat less isolated. In 1935, the railway depot was dismantled and the road leading to Akron was hard-surfaced, making driving easier.
Jim Szalay, 1931.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library and Historical Society
Szalay Farm Stand
Since 1931, the Szalay family has sold sweet corn to local residents and visitors at their farm stand on Riverview Road at Bolanz Road. "Big Jim" Szalay purchased 67 acres in Everett, taking advantage of the damp valley soil and of potential customers commuting between Akron and Cleveland. Today, Szalay's Sweet Corn Farm is a local attraction and its roadside market has expanded to sell diverse products.
Everett schoolhouse and students.
NPS Collection
School in Everett
For any child in modern America, the school years define life. But can you imagine having less than ten classmates in your grade? During the 1930s, children in Everett attended a one-room school house, with one teacher teaching eight grade levels. Like most buildings in the village, the schoolhouse lacked electricity, phones, and indoor plumbing. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, students walked up the hill from their homes to their classes. The Everett school later closed and merged with a larger school in Peninsula, and the building became a private residence.
Click to read Helyn Toth's first-hand account of attending school in Everett, as well as her other memories of life in the village.
Typical School Day
Helyn Toth, who grew up in what is now Hunt House, talks about a typical school day in the 1930s.
Typical day at school, the teacher would come out to the front and ring her bell, and we would start having classes. And she’d have first grade reading, and then she’d have second grade something else, and third grade something else, and fourth grade math, and keep going up the line and we had classes all day. But we learned. We learned how to read, we learned how to multiply, we learned how to divide. And we thought maybe we didn’t know as much as we should, but when we went to Peninsula, we kept up with ‘em.
One-Room School House
Marjorie Osborne Morgan, who grew up in Everett during the 1930s, describes the Everett schoolhouse and the numbers of students her teacher taught.
First of all, of course we had to walk to school, rain or shine. And it was just one, one big room, and then it had rows of desks. And we start over here: First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. Would carry your lunch. There was a well and they’d go out with a bucket and dip down in the well, and there was always just a dipper in the bucket. And one of my friends was tellin’ us the other day, she says, “You know, I started carrying my own water. I didn’t like that everybody have that dipper in that water.” And I said, “That’s one of the hazards, I guess.” And she would teach the first and second grade together, and then maybe the third and fourth, fifth and sixth, then seventh and eighth grade. But there might be only three or four children in each grade, so at the most, at the most I think there was, maybe, probably eighteen or nineteen.
Everett Church of Christ
Courtesy/Peninsula Library & Historical Society
Church in Everett
On Sundays, at the conclusion of a long week of planting, harvesting, and selling crops, Everett community members gathered together at the local church. On this day of rest, residents tended to their spiritual needs and shared fellowship with neighbors. After a fire destroyed the original church in 1908, the community found the resources and energy to re-construct the Everett Church of Christ in the same location on Everett Road (renamed The Church in the Valley in the 1990s). The original church was a simple wood-frame building with curved pews and a belfry. Even after reconstruction and additions, visitors to the church today can still see vestiges of the earlier design.
Children and Church
2011 Oral History Project: Jan Thomas recalls how, as a child, she looked forward to eventually attending service upstairs with the adults.
“It was a wonderful little church. We had, downstairs you had the little kids, then when you got to be in seventh grade you could go upstairs (Yay!), into the real church, but you sat in the back, in the back two pews on the left-hand side, where the high school kids sat. And then the rest of ‘em all sat forward. But I mean, there were probably only fifty people in the whole community, so everybody knew everybody. But you graduated. You started downstairs and you came upstairs.”
Church Construction and Renovation
2011 Oral History Project: Hazel Broughton, former Everett resident, compares the older and newer versions of the church, and describes how church members and architects worked to preserve the structure's historical integrity.
“The original church was just a frame, a wood-frame building. It still has its belfry and the bell is rung on Sundays yet. They bought the pews from some other church that went out of business. That was before I came. And they bought the pews. They are a curved pew, but when we added on for Church in the Valley, the carpenter outfit that did it . . . You have to look very closely to tell which are the 'new' old pews, and the old pews. They tried to keep it identical for the historical part. They did a very good job.”
Street dance in Everett, 1949.
Courtesy Peninsula Library & Historical Society
Dances
The contra dance was brought to the Cuyahoga Valley by its first settlers from New England. Although styles became more diverse over the years, dancing remained popular in valley communities through the early 20th century. They offered rare opportunities to meet and socialize with members of the opposite sex. Imagine Saturday nights full of excitement as residents flocked to local dances. An "orchestra" played while dancers followed the directions of the caller. As Helyn Toth explained, "Going to dances was no doubt the number one favorite social event … for people of varied ages in the valley."
Everett dance hall, now Everett Ranger Station.
NPS Collection
While most dances were local affairs, often held by the local Grange, some had a regional draw. Bedford Glens Park, near the edge of Tinker's Creek, began as a summer picnic and dancing resort in 1902, and, by 1924, quickly grew into a year-round dance and bowling emporium. The dance hall attracted popular bands, such as Ed Day and his Ten Knights orchestra. Young and old couples traveled from the valley, Akron, and Cleveland to join crowds in the beautiful, shining ballroom. Sadly, the grand wooden structure was lost to fire in 1944.
Street Dance
Hazel Broughton describes how the Everett community often came together dancing in the road.
The best square dance I can tell you about is I experienced, was a dance, which was called a “street dance.” And my father-in-law didn’t happen to call this dance, but it was at the corner of Everett Road and Riverview Road. Now they kept Everett Road open to Riverview and you could make a left and go to Peninsula, but you couldn’t turn right. That evening, it was a Saturday evening I believe, they closed the street off and we had a street dance. I had never been to a street dance. That was my first and only street dance. We just danced right in the street, and the orchestra was on a hay wagon.
Hay Wagon Orchestra
At the street dances in Everett, Jan Thomas recalls how the band played instruments on top of a hay wagon.
In the big building down there on the corner, where the park has their offices now, that was a dancehall upstairs. Very beautiful dancehall. And downstairs in one end was the bar where you went in the bar and then up the stairs to the dancehall, and the other half my aunt and uncle lived there. That was a big deal on a lotta Saturdays night, too. Back in those days, they danced and danced on Saturday night. The dancehall was the whole upstairs, and it had a special floor for dancing, you know. It might have been oak, I’m not sure, but it was fabulous, and slick, you know, you could—and it was really, really great, I mean… But then downstairs they had a bar, and there were always those who abused that. Nine times out of ten, I guess, in the olden days, that’s before I could even start goin’ there, they always had some kind of a big fight of some kind and ~laughs~ people goin’ home with bloody noses, because that was one of the things they did in olden days. They’d have too much to drink and then they’d fight. I mean, that was their entertainment!
NPS Collection
Fun in Everett
Growing up in the Cuyahoga Valley meant a life spent outdoors, entertaining yourself with what nature had to offer. Everett children enjoyed spending time outside: swimming, fishing, exploring, and collecting wildflowers. On hot days during the summer, Everett neighbors rang a bell to signal all the children to meet and go swimming in the river by the Everett Road Covered Bridge.
Childhood Fun
Jan Thomas, who grew up in Everett, talks about her time spent outside, playing and exploring.
What I liked the most was it was quiet. And it was peaceful. And, you know, you had your animals and your pets, and you can walk and we picked blackberries and go climb up on the hill that there was a flat spot up on top and we used to say that was the top of the world when we were little. And we’d climb up there and have to watch out because the pig lot was right next door to that, so… But we had a great time. We’d ride Grandpa’s horses, and then when I got in high school we had all the dances and hay rides, and so we had a good time.
Swimming and Walking
Irene Kusnyer, who grew up on the Szalay Farm in Everett, recalls swimming and taking walks with her friend Helyn Toth.
With Helyn, I did, we did a lot of swimming and stuff. We always found a new swimming pool. But Sundays. Whatta you gotta do Sundays? You’re out there in the boondocks. So we’d get together and, well let’s walk around the block. So we would start, and we’d walk all the way to Peninsula, and down Peninsula, and Akron-Peninsula Road, and back. That was our big day for today.
