Beaver Hat Town
Records of establishment do not exist; however, when Wooster’s surveyors of the New Purchase arrived in 1808 found a small encampment of Deleware Indians settled in an apple orchard, very near what is now the Wooster Cemetery.1 Chief Pappellelond, the leader of the town, called it his “apple chauquecake,” translated as “apple orchard.” It is said that the grove is one of the many planted by Johnny Appleseed.2 Sitting at the intersections of the Cuyahoga War Trail, the Great Trail, and the Killbuck path (now Routes 585, 3, and 83 respectively),3 the area covered by Pappellelond’s chauquecake served as an important center of commerce and travel pre- and post-American expansion. The town later came to be known by Pappellelond’s English name, given to him by Wooster’s surveyors - Beaver Hat Town.
1 Ben Douglass, History of Wayne County, Vol. 1 (Indianapolis, IN: B.F. Bowen & Company, 1910).
2 Paul Locher, “Johnny Appleseed popularity part of the lore,” The Daily Record, January 9, 2008, http://devserver.the-daily-record.com/news/article/3111792.
3 Lindsey Wilger Williams, Old Paths in the New Purchase, (Wooster, OH: Atkinson’s Printing Inc., 1983).