Boston Township

NOTE: This article was published January 13, 2011 in the
West Side Leader and is reprinted here with permission. By Pam Lifke

BOSTON — The township will kick off its bicentennial celebration Jan. 15 with a reception honoring longtime former township trustee George Fisher Jr.

The reception for Fisher, who served as a trustee for 34 of the township’s 200 years, will be from 2 to 5 p.m. at Boston Township Hall, located at the corner of state Route 303 and Riverview Road.

“For one person to have served for that long is kind of remarkable,” said Boston Trustee Randy Bergdorf, who is a member of the bicentennial celebration organizing committee.

Although a larger celebration is planned for this summer, Bergdorf said the committee wanted to kick off the year with an event on Jan. 15, which is the actual 200th anniversary of the township’s founding. The event will include refreshments.

The bicentennial committee has been working on plans for the celebration since early 2010, according to township officials. Honorary co-chairs are Nancy Stanford Shrader and Robert Wolcott, whose families settled in the area in 1806, Bergdorf said.

Bergdorf said the committee is planning to celebrate the bicentennial June 18 with a full morning of activities at Woodridge Intermediate School and food and music that evening at the Boston Township Hall. The committee also has planned a few fundraisers to support its efforts, including a quilt raffle.

Fiscal Officer Joanne Noragon, also a bicentennial committee member, donated a quilt with blocks of pieced houses for the raffle. This adaptation of a friendship quilt has reproductions of early citizens’ signatures on sashes separating the quilt blocks. The signatures came from township documents going back to 1917 and represent citizens, road workers, storekeepers, merchants and township officials, Noragon said.

The first settlers in what would become Boston Township arrived in 1805 as a part of a surveying party, according to a history on the Boston Township website, www.bostontown ship.org. Alfred Wolcott and James Stanford came back to settle the land in 1806, erecting a cabin on the site of the present-day Boston Cemetery. There weren’t enough settlers to form a township until 1811.

Before formation of Boston Township, the area was known as Range 11, Town 4 of the Connecticut Western Reserve.

On Jan. 15, 1811, inhabitants of Boston Township met at the home of Timothy Bishop to organize the township, which at that time was a portion of Portage County. The organizers chose three township trustees, a clerk, a treasurer, two overseers of the poor, two justices of the peace and a constable.

A complete list of township officials dating from 1811 can also be found on the website, which hosts downloadable files of all meetings of the Board of Trustees that the township possesses. Only 25 years of meeting minutes are missing, and township officials said they still are hopeful missing books will be located. Missing are minutes from 1937 to 1948, 1963 to 1967 and 1975 to 1981.

Last updated September 15, 2026