Ransom

Rowland Bird and his family arrived in what is now Ransom in March of 1836, and by 1847 there were enough residents to establish a post office. Soon the village contained five stores of various kinds, two blacksmith shops, a harness shop, tow boot and shoe shops, two wagon shops, a hotel, four churches, a brick school house and a population of about 200. 

The Ransom Central Office (see telephone wires coming into the side of the building) was also the home of the Cooper family.

In the fall of 1876, the Ransom Cornet Band was organized with thirteen members, but only twelve instruments.

Carol A. Lackey

A Personal Look at Ransom's History

Roger Douglass, a descendent of the Bugbee/Burt Families of Ransom Township, contacted us with this information of his family's history in that area.

I saw the Ransom postcard photo titled "East side main street looking south." I am familiar with that postcard. Around 1970 I wrote many things down from my great aunt, her cousins and some neighbors. I wrote things from my mother, too, up thru until her death in 2006. The first store building in the photo is the drug store. Today, what remains of the Ransom Feed Mill sits in that location.  Some people might think it is the same building, but it is not. My grandfather John Entrikin worked in that drug store, and it later burned down. The building that is there now, and what was the Ransom Feed Mill, was originally the Rebekah Lodge Building. My great aunt was a member of that lodge. That building originally sat in the open space that exists between two houses on Ransom Road, directly south across from the Ransom Congregational Church. That building also contained the local bank before it was moved. I'm not sure if it is still on the building, but it used to have a wooden goat symbol on the top of the front. My mother was born on the south edge (lower Ransom) of town, and she said when she was a small child in the early 1920's, that she and other children were afraid of that goat on that building!

The Ransom Cemetery.  As noted in the burials book, some people buried at Ransom Cemetery were transferred to Burt/Evergreen Cemetery. The Ransom Cemetery was located up near the first farmhouse (that now exists) on the north side of Ransom Road, west of the Ransom Congregational Church.