Century Village
We have visited many Open Air Museums and have found that often the best are the smaller, more local ones. Burton is a town to the east of Cleveland and adjacent to its English-style village green we found exactly such a museum. Over 20 historic buildings from Geauga County have been reassembled here. The centre of the museum is the Hickox House which stands on its original site. Eleazer and Stella Hickox built the house in 1838. When her widowed father became blind she invited him to move into her home, but he refused to leave his log cabin. The problem was solved in 1849 by dismantling his house and rebuilding it alongside the Hickox house attached to the side porch. The Hickox House now serves as the main museum in the grounds of Century Village.
Cook House
The tents in front of the Cook House were in place for the school event. The Cook House is though to be one of the first frame houses in Geauga County, built in 1806 by Merriman Cook. He was related to the Cooks who came to the colonies on the Mayflower. The farmhouse remained in the Cook family for more than a century. The house was reconstructed at Century Village in 1971 and the barn from the farm was reconstructed alongside in 1973. The house and farm are still used for the farming of adjacent fields using 19th century practices.
Schoolhouse
We visited Century Village just before the Memorial Day Holiday, and found that it was running a special event for local schoolchildren. This limited what we could see, but it did mean that there were special displays set up around the village such as the ’Photographic Emporium’ display on the right of the picture. The single room schoolhouse on the left of the picture was built in 1872 at Newbury, Ohio. It was moved to the museum in 1954. Click Tab 2 to see a picture of the interior of the school.
Dressmaking Shop & Marshal's Office
Courtesy of the school event we were unable to see inside either the Dressmaking Shop (on the left) or the Marshal’s Office. The Marshal’s Office has been reconstructed from multiple buildings, the prison cell originating in Middlefield and the rear rooms from a former doctor’s clinic from Chardon, Ohio.
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© Mike Elsden 1981 - 2025
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