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The Platt and Nina Beecher House on Route 60 North was built in
1845. |
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The Wm. Olsen House on West River Road was built by Wm.
Bostwick (Circa 1836). It was known for many years as the Pierce Farm. |
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The First Congregational Church was organized in
1822 though religious meetings had been held regularly since January 1819. The pioneers who had struggled for freedom from England, moved west and fought the rigors of the frontier to create a new society, had gone through a democratizing process. Only an optimist could survive the ordeal. He became uncomfortable with the rigid puritan doctrine which emphasized damnation. When Finney, the revivalist of Oberlin College, was invited to set up his tent on Bela Coe's farm, President Mahan and several seminary students spoke to the heart of many Wakeman folk when they emphasized the mercy of God and salvation. The new hope engendered resulted in the formation of the Second Congregational Church. |
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The first mail route was established in 1829. Settlers
along a road from Wakeman to Grafton cleared the underbrush so Cole could carry the mail on foot once a week. Waldron was the second mail carrier. |
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Dr. Clark was the first physician in the area followed
by Drs. William B. Latin, Burrough, Trumbull, Jones, Bunce, Standart and Rose. |
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Dr. E. E. Beeman conducted experiments with
pepsin while he lived in Wakeman in the late eighteen hundreds. There was a small slaughterhouse on the Pierce farm where they scraped pepsin from cows' stomachs for his experiments. The story goes that when Dr. Beeman became concerned about the health of his secretary because she constantly chewed gum, she quipped, "Then why don't you put pepsin in it?" And he created Beeman's Pepsin Gum. Dr. Beeman is reported to have lived in Jim Busek's house on River Street and the Robert Bement house on Pleasant Street. |
