The secret history of my hometown

I grew up in a town on Lake Erie that was once known by its Native American name, Xeuma. It was later known, along with other neighboring towns, as the French Creek District, followed by its present name, Avon Lake. If you grew up in the Cleveland area, you probably know Avon Lake as a “new” suburb. But Avon Lake is not new, and its history is just as rich as Cleveland’s. While the city of Cleveland sits on what was once a no-man’s land, Avon Lake was home to Native American tribes living along the French Creek.

My family moved into a brand-new house in one of the first major sections of a neighborhood called the Westwinds in 1990. I was 4 years old. I quickly noticed a couple things: first, all the streets were named after sailing terms. My street was called Beacon Court, near the meeting point of Bounty Way and Long Point.

All the houses were shiny and new, with brand-new floors and carpeting. The newness was exciting. But it made it all the more alarming when the kids romped around in the basement and found black widow spiders. In fact, I still shudder thinking about it. The adults shrugged and said, “of course there are bugs in the basement, stay out of the crawl spaces,” and called an exterminator.

But “black widow” spiders and other nasty critters get their names for a reason. As an adult, I started to wonder if the developers had unwittingly plowed through a cemetery to build The Westwinds. The question was: whose cemetery? The neighborhood had been empty, wooded land behind a small farm before the developers purchased it in the late 1980s. There were no headstones.

But when we moved in, I kept noticing there were mounds. Not hills, and not artificial, landscaped embankments — but steep, cone-shaped mounds. They seemed to be packed with firm clay, although they had long ago become heavy with grass. My dad told me they were going to knock them down, so we were free to run and down them. I remember groups of kids playing tag and other games on “the hills.” It was a workout running up and down those mounds.

Fast forward to 2022. As an adult with limited but budding knowledge of local Native American culture, I would say those weren’t hills. Those were mounds. My guess is that they were burial mounds . Native Americans throughout in Ohio built some big ones. The Serpent Mounds in Chillicothe are famous examples. But indigenous people throughout the region used something called a “conical mound” as either a religious site or a grave. They’re all over Ohio, but they can be difficult to identify, as — probably by design — they blend in with the terrain.

I wonder if anyone even looked to see what was there before they bulldozed it.

During my years in the Westwinds, there were rumors of people finding arrowheads and pottery while landscaping. But no one came forward with anything tangible. Besides, it tended to be broken, and people assumed it was garbage. The world will never know — although, with better education, we can preserve more Native American artifacts in the future.

Sailors and sailing culture hold a special place in Avon Lake history, too. My parents bought a house in Avon Lake because my mom grew up going there to see her grandparents. My great-grandfather, William Masterson, was the son of Mamie Chambers, the main character in my novel, and Patrick Masterson. Patrick Masterson was a sailor on the Great Lakes in the 1800s, and he was always coming home with arrowheads and other “treasures.” Avon Lake didn’t have a name at the time. But Patrick would show his children the bluffs from afar, and described how his ships stopped there before getting to Cleveland. He told them “we keep secret things out there,” and liked to tell people that “a sailor’s secrets will not be revealed.”

In the mid-1800s, there were several homesteading families in Avon Lake. One was the Satter family, which had a “homestead” where they farmed, operated a vineyard, and took on sailors staying for the night. The Satter home was known for having “dancing girls” and allowing “rowdy upstairs entertainment.” The house is still standing among modern homes at the corner of Walker and Jaycox Roads. Naturally, it’s rumored to be haunted.

Great Lakes sailors loved telling stories about all the stuff they did in Avon Lake and how the whole area was “full of secrets.” They hinted there were lots of secrets around the wineries and in the expansive woods.

Those woods might be gone now, plowed over to make room for housing developments and golf courses. But patches of relatively untouched land remain, especially near the lake. And who knows what treasures could be found near the beach, where the sailors disembarked for the night. On Day 6 of my song challenge, I devote “Brandy” to my great-great-grandfather, Patrick Masterson, and his widow Mamie, who never let the memory of his sailor’s heart die.