Was This Building Massillon’s First Jail?

Massillon, Ohio

Sitting at the top of the hill on Spring Hill Historic Home’s property is a small white structure with two entrances. The two-room building used to be used for storage, but was repainted, cleaned out, and somewhat restored to a point where it could become exhibit space. According to some historians in the area, this building used to be the Massillon’s first jail, built in 1854. But is it really?

Going Over the Timeline

According to the city of Massillon’s website, back in 1908 a new city hall was constructed with a jail in the basement, rendering the current jail at the time, which was only big enough for two cells, obsolete. As a result, this building was sold as auction and eventually moved to Pond Street SW where it was used as a tiny house.

In the mid-1980s, the building was purchased for $1 and moved to Spring Hill’s property due to its historic nature. At the time, Spring Hill seemed like the best place for it, as the property has quite a bit of land. The Massillon Museum and the Spring Hill Foundation provided the funds required to move the building to where it currently stands.

Some questions about when that jail turned home was built. If it was Massillon’s first jail, then it was constructed in 1854, one year after the village was officially incorporated. Newspaper accounts describe this jail as being 12 feet square and having once caught fire while several prisoners were inside, killing two of them.

However, there’s also an 1871 jail that the village council paid $5,000 to build after the fire. This makes it sound as though the original jail (from 1854) received some pretty bad fire damage, but no so much that it couldn’t be used for its original purpose. This doesn’t mean that it was torn down though.

The 1908 Auction

What is in agreement with the city’s account of the situation is that there was an auction in 1908 and the “old jail” whether it was the one from 1854 or 1871 was sold. A man named John Paul spent $85.06 on the building. The walls were removed so that workers could remove the old iron cells, which were placed in a temporary jail until the new city hall was complete.

At some point afterwards, John Paul sold the old jail to William Bantz, and this is where things get interesting. Newspaper accounts of the time state that Bantz took the building apart, along with the old fire engine house (also purchased at auction) and used them to build a new livery stable. He owned some property, which included a three-story building, at the old “Harsh Block” on West Tremont Street.

Later on that year, Bantz disappeared. He owed creditors around $19,000 (over $400,000 in today’s money), and possibly vanished due to the debts that he couldn’t pay. A year later, in 1909, he resurfaced as a patient at the Massillon State Hospital. There, physicians decided that he couldn’t take care of his estate or assets, so everything was once again sold at auction.

Appearing on Pond Street SW

In order to determine ownership of the Pond Street SW structure that experts claimed was the first jail, a deep-dive into the history of the street is required. Currently, there are nine parcels of land on the street. The numbering system, based on old city directories, changed between 1926 and 1927, leaving Pond Street SW with the following addresses: 13, 17, 31, 111, 28, 20, 16, and 12. One of the parcels doesn’t have an address attached to it.

According to the city directories, up until 1985, all eight of the parcels with addresses had houses that were occupied. In 1985, 31 Pond Street SW was listed as “vacant.” By 1990, that address disappeared from the directory, so it’s more than likely the one that housed the building referred to ad “Massillon’s First Jail.”

What does this mean? In order to find out who owned the land over the years, it’s necessary to go through the Stark County property records backwards, as current documents contain the numbers of previous ones, making it easy to look up. Skipping over the modern day records (as doxing people isn’t a good thing), the records show that in the 1890s, the land was transferred from Fredicka Rushen to her daughter, Sarah Pider. She owned the land until her untimely death in 1951, when a piece of burning paper from her trash pile caught her dress on fire.

Sarah Pider is thereby the one who owned the land when the “old jail” was placed on it.

This proves a few things. 1) That the building was indeed moved from Pond Street SW in mid-1980s. 2) That it was used as a tiny house. And 3) That it appeared on the property around the same time as the other houses on the street were built, between 1890 and 1916.

Was It Truly Massillon’s First Jail?

At this point, there are more questions than answers. A look at the bare bones of the building from the inside show that it does share some characteristics with 1800s construction, but an expert needs to look over the images in order to determine a time frame.

Until that happens, here are some possibilities:

If William Battz took apart the old jail and used it for his livery barn, was it put back together at auction time? (Not very plausible.)
William Bantz never got around the taking the old jail apart and it wound up being sold to Sarah Pider who turned it into a house. (Possible.)
The 1854 jail burned too badly to be restored, so the 1871 replacement is the one in question here. This would make the jail “Massillon’s Second Jail” which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. (Also possible.)
This isn’t an old jail at all, and is just another old building.

Sometimes history doesn’t give you clear answers at first, although the research on this one is far from complete.