673 M. ELYRIA, Pop. 20,474.
(Train 3 passes 12:52; No. 41, 5:27; No. 25, 4:07; No. 19, 9:12. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 6:22; No. 26, 7:57; No. 16, 10:34; No. 22, 2:04.)
Elyria was founded about 1819 by Herman Ely in whose honour it was named. Ely came from West Springfield, Mass., built a cabin on the site of the present town, and later erected the first frame house in the township. The city lies at the junction of the two forks of the Black River, each of which falls about 50 feet here, furnishing considerable water-power. There are sandstone quarries about the town. The chief manufactures of the city are automobile supplies, telephones, electric apparatus, flour, feed, canned goods, machine parts and iron pipe; the annual output is valued at about $10,000,000. Eight miles to the southwest is Oberlin (Pop. 5,000), the seat of Oberlin College.
Slab Hall, Oberlin College (1832)
Oberlin College was founded in 1832 "to give equal advantages to whites and blacks, and to give education to women as well as to men." Other objects were "to establish universal liberty by the abolition of every form of sin" and "to avoid the debasing association of the heathen classics and make the Bible a text book in all departments of education." The traditions of Oberlin are strongly religious, and from Charles Grandison Finney, revivalist and president of the college from 1851 to 1866, sprang what is called the "Oberlin Theology," a compound of free-will and Calvinism. Before the Civil War the village was a station on the "underground railway," and the influence of the college made it a centre of extreme abolitionist sentiment.