The Aurora Historical Society has received a wonderful donation of early Aurora history. John Good of Newton, Ohio bought five receipts at a flea market and donated them. The receipts are small, three are hand written and two type-set with blanks for additional information.
The receipts acknowledge that three Aurora men, Calvin Harmon, Livi Higley, and Zardus Kent, worked on the public road in exchange for credit on their road tax on personal property and land. Kent worked on public roads under the direction of Apollos White, Supervisor between April and October of 1828. He received credit for $1.54. Livi Higley, working under Supervisor Josiah Westland, also in 1828 earned credit for 14 cents, while Calvin Harmon, working under Ebenezer Harmon in 1829, earned 8 cents.
The other two receipts, dated 1839, are I.O.U.’s that direct the Aurora Township Treasurer to pay money out of any not already appropriated. Gerchom Sheldon and Worthy Taylor requested that L. Hukon be given 75 cents and Samuel Hickox and Leman Hickox asked that $19.50 be given to Samuel Hickox. Although it is not a certainty, the payments were most likely for work done for the township.
These documents are great! They are in good condition, relatively easy to read and provide early examples of what men were doing in Aurora and how much laborers earned for their efforts. They also note the amount of land some of them owned and the tract and lot numbers. They provide us with names of inhabitants as well as Township Supervisors, some names that are not familiar to local historians before this donation. Historians can take that information and follow up with additional research to discover more facts about Aurora in the 1820s and 1830s.
To preserve the documents, AHS scans them, transcribes the text, and places them on acid-free paper in acid-free clear sleeves. This enables researchers the ability to handle the documents without damage and provides the text without asking modern readers to decipher old hand-writing.
To see these new artifacts as well as similar ones from Aurora’s early history, call the Aurora Historical Society at 330-995-3336.
