As Akron celebrates its bicentennial in 2025, we’re looking back at two centuries of headlines.
Visit BeaconJournal.com every Sunday morning throughout the bicentennial year for a look back at the week in Akron history.
Here’s what happened this week in local history:
1825: The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church voted to detach the presbyteries of Portage, Huron and Grand River from the Synod of Pittsburgh to form the Synod of the Western Reserve. During a meeting in Philadelphia, the assembly further resolved that Northeast Ohio’s new synod would hold its first meeting in Hudson in September.
1875: The body of Jimmy McEnnerny, a native of Ireland, was found floating in the Ohio & Erie Canal between Locks 14 and 15. Spectators crowded the banks as a crew removed the man from the water. A coroner’s jury rendered a verdict of death by accidental drowning, and gravediggers buried the body in a potter’s field. “McEnnerny is represented as being very dissolute in his habits,” the Summit Beacon reported.
1925: The Cuyahoga-Portage Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution announced plans to mark the beginning and end of the Portage Trail with two large boulders bearing bronze tablets. One would be placed near Summit Lake and the other would be positioned at Old Portage in what we now know as the Merriman Valley.
1975: Retired Goodyear Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Edwin J. Thomas, 76, who had served on the board of directors and trustees at the University of Akron since 1952, announced he would retire in June. “I’ve served almost a quarter of a century,” he wrote to Gov. James A. Rhodes. “Sometime or other you ought to step aside and let someone else serve.”
2000: President Bill Clinton stopped at Akron-Canton Airport for a private meeting with business, labor and community leaders to discuss U.S. trade relations with China. He also met with local organizers of the Million Mom March, an upcoming rally in Washington, D.C., calling for stricter gun control. Clinton left for Minnesota after nearly two hours.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron at 200: Presbyterians, Portage Trail, a dead body and Bill Clinton | Local history
Reporting by Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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