Elizabeth Township Historical Society of Ohio

06/01/2026

VERNON D. MUMFORD POST #3
The Mumfords raised eight children (four boys and four girls), including Cecil, Bernice, Roger, Florence, Lester, Dewey, Betty and Genevieve. Sadly, their son,Lester, was killed in the Philippines in March of 1945, just months before the end of WWII. The rest of the family have lived their lives in Miami County. Vernon and Mae have many descendants living in the area, including grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren living right here in Elizabeth Township.

Shown in the first photo are Vernon and his sons with burlap bags of furs ready to ship. The second picture features Vernon in the car with the burlap bags (made by Mae on her treadle sewing machine) filled with furs to take to the train station in Troy.

05/31/2026

VERNON D. MUMFORD POST # 2
Vernon attended Pleasant Hill School, also known as the Mumford School, on the corner of St. Rte. 201 and LeFevre Rd., just a stone’s throw from his childhood home. He married a local girl named Ella Mae (called Mae) Tobias and they built a new home just west of the home where he grew up. It was a mail-order house also known as an “Aladdin Home”.

As a youth, Vernon bought a twenty-five cent handbook entitled, "Sloman’s Encyclopedia of Fur Fact and Things Worth Knowing", published by a fur dealer from Detroit, Michigan. He started there and then built his practice through hands-on experience and over time developed and perfected his own techniques in processing the hides. Because of his exacting nature and excellent business practices, over time Vernon became known as the most successful raw fur dealer in the Midwest.

05/30/2026

FUR DEALER- VERNON D. MUMFORD POST #1
Native Americans were trading furs along the waterways of North America centuries before Europeans arrived in America.

After the arrival of the British and French in what is now Ohio, the trading of fur (especially beaver pelts) drove the expansion and fueled wars. You can find more about that history here: https://www.ohiohistory.org/the-great-beaver-wars/

Up until the mid 1900s, fur was still being used for clothing...fox, raccoon, bear, mink, and beaver, etc. were commonly used for outerwear, throws and rugs, and so on. Women even wore fox stoles and carried fur muffs, and the like until about the mid-1960s.

While this isn't popular anymore, the practice of fur trading has a unique history in what was once the Northwest Territory. Farming the land and fur trading went hand-in-hand and pushed expansion westward.

Over the next several days, we will learn about one of the most well-known fur dealers in the Miami Valley. That man, Vernon D. Mumford, lived his whole life in Elizabeth Township. He was born in 1891 and lived on Le Fevre Rd. near St. Rte. 201. Join us for a look into the craftsmanship and business that made him famous within the fur business.

05/25/2026

ETHS board member and cemetery preservation chair, Sharon Maingi, spoke today at the Casstown Cemetery Memorial Day Program. She shared about our work in local cemeteries, primarily with cleaning, restoring and sometimes replacing Veteran headstones. Sharon's dedication to this project has been unwavering and we appreciate her hard work in honoring the memory of our Veterans.

05/25/2026

05/21/2026

The ETHS Cemetery Preservation committee spent hours placing close to 100 flags on Veterans’ graves in Elizabeth Township Historic District this past Tuesday in preparation for Memorial Day. We do our best to honor those who bravely served our country. "And they who for their country die shall fill an honored grave, for glory lights the soldier's tomb, and beauty weeps the brave." — Joseph Rodman Drake

05/20/2026

Our Society is very grateful for the support of community businesses that help with our work. We send out a BIG thank you to Balsbaugh Excavating + Concrete for providing a water tanker for our cemetery work at Saylor and Knoop Cemeteries this month. It was very much appreciated!

05/14/2026

ETHS’s Cemetery Preservation work continued this past weekend at Knoop Cemetery at Lost Creek Reserve, where volunteers cleaned Veteran headstones under the canopy of surrounding trees. It was a pleasant morning to complete this meaningful work. There were several ETHS members who helped, as well as young volunteers from Elizabeth Township Livestock 4-H Club, and Tipp City VFW Post 4615. Thank you all! Your assistance was much appreciated.

05/10/2026

This past Friday morning, Cemetery Committee Chair Sharon Maingi and ETHS President Missy Duer were honored to attend the Miami County Foundation's Spring Grant Awards Ceremony. ETHS was one of 64 grateful recipients of the Foundation generous monetary grant offerings.
We were given $2500 for ongoing repair & restoration of Veterans' gravestones who would be forgotten to history if their lives were not documented through these, their restored headstones. This generous grant money will go towards this valuable work.
Thank you so much- Miami County Foundation!

05/10/2026

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! Here are some of the mothers from Elizabeth Township at a reunion for The Four Ways Club in Elizabeth Township in 1988. In the mid 1900s, social clubs provided a way for mothers to have some fun AND many times serve the community in some way.

This particular club came about in 1948 and started the first kindergarten in Elizabeth Township by raising money for the program for several years until it was taken over by Miami County Board of Education in the early 1950s. They then sent care packages to servicemen and helped those in need in the community.

This was the best picture we could find of the group and we couldn’t identify everyone. However, we have a list of many of the women who were in the club, including: Louise Curtis, Reva Batdorf, Arline McMaken, Sarah Buirley, Betty Shock, Betty Myers, Celia Schaefer, Virginia Apple, Virginia Mason, Leona Batdorf, Nancy Faulder, Ruth Stickel, Jo Ray, Ruth Buirley, Josephine Wallace, Carol Mumford, Carolyn Myers, Naomi Vulgamore and Pauline Rhoades.

A big “thank you” to Sue Curtis who shared this in a wonderful article about The Four Ways Club for the ETHS May Membership Newsletter.