Lorain, Ohio - Name and History

Name and History

• The City of Lorain originally began as the small village named "Mouth of Black River", named at that time for its exact location on the west side of the mouth of the Black River (formerly called the 'Reneshoua River' and 'La Riviere de la Cuiliere'). The village began to take form about 1820, primarily through the efforts of pioneer settler John S. Reid, and expanded by his son and sons-in-law who renamed the village "Charleston" in 1836, but it was shortly later again name-changed to simply "Black River" village.
• By 1874, the village had grown considerably, and so was incorporated as 'Lorain', named for the County in which it is located. (Some original records for the County indicate the name had originally been chosen as "Colerain"; however, the residents who had chosen the final name "Lorain" for this County(which became independent from Huron County in 1824), had no direct connection to the Alsace-Lorraine area of France, which later historians had theorized.
• The city eventually expanded to encompass land on the east side of the river, including land which had been previously owned and occupied in 1807 by members of the Nathan Perry family of Cleveland, Ohio. Therefore, and because the Perry family are such well-known pioneers of Cleveland, some historians have attributed that family as the first pioneers of the City of Lorain; however, the Perry family did not establish the actual original village of Mouth of Black River. Nathan Perry, Jr., who ran an Indian-trading-post shanty on the east side of the river, only did so for a couple of fair-weather seasons, but then permanently moved back to Cleveland in Fall 1808. But the much later village of "Mouth of Black River" on the opposite (west) side of the river, was established by John S. Reid, and his family. John had first arrived to the area of the Black River in 1809, and helped to clear many of the area roads through the wilderness, including the Lake Road from the Black River to the Huron River. John finally permanently moved his family to the Black River's mouth in 1811. In 1812 he ran the first U.S. post-office here from his blockhouse/tavern, and the future village of Mouth of Black River settlement then sprang up around Reid's location, and was accelerated in the 1820s due to prospects of a canal (about 1823) and early railroad (about 1833) going through it, although neither project occurred. The main commerce that kept the little village alive in its earliest years, was the grain-shipping industry, as well as being a very early shipbuilding port beginning in 1819.
• John S. Reid's son Conrad Reid, was the first mayor after the city became named 'Lorain'.