Recordpub.com - PORTAGE PATHWAYS: No love lost: Zenas Kent turned his back on Ravenna to build rival town

By Roger J. Di Paolo

Record-Courier Editor

Zenas Kent may be rememberd as the founding father of the city that now bears his family's name, but he actually got his start in business in Ravenna.

And, if one historical account is to believed, Portage County's largest city actually might owe its existence to a falling out he had with another Ravenna businessman, which prompted him to invest his energies -- and considerable capital -- in establishing a town to rival the county seat.

"It is said that he declared he would live to see grass growing in the streets (of Ravenna)," historian E.Y. Lacey wrote in a 1933 account in the Evening Record, "and he set about to make his word good" by turning his interests to the tiny settlement of Franklin Mills, which was located west of Ravenna.

Whether that's really what motivated Zenas Kent to set his sights westward is unclear, but by the time he died in 1865 -- in the community that formally adopted his family name two years later -- Kent was, indeed, a thriving village and a worthy rival of Ravenna.

And, while the streets of Ravenna hadn't reverted to pastureland, a barren plot of land not too far from the center of town seemed to attest to Zenas Kent's bitterness toward the community where he began making his fortune and, in fact, lived longer than anyplace else.

A Connecticut Yankee, Zenas Kent came to Portage County in 1812, settling initially in Mantua. He lived briefly in Hudson, where he met Capt. Herman Oviatt, who helped set him up in business in Ravenna as a shopkeeper. It is said that he decided to settle in Ravenna because he believed it held more promise than his second choice -- Cleveland.

Oviatt & Kent, a general store, opened in 1815 at the corner of Main and Chestnut streets, on the present-day site of the Phenix Block. A carpenter by trade, Kent built the store himself and had his home there as well. That's probably where his son, Marvin, was born in 1816.

In addition to operating his store -- he later bought out Oviatt's interest in the firm -- Kent also became known as a contractor and was responsible for building the New England-style courthouse in downtown Ravenna in 1830.

Zenas Kent's obituary described him as a tradesman who was "more methodical than speculative" whose "devotion to his business was almost unparalleled."

His "indomitable will, native shrewdness and unflagging energy" as well as "an inflexible integrity" served him well as he continued to expand his business interests, becoming a very wealthy man in the process.

In 1832, he joined David Ladd in purchasing a 600-acre tract of land in Franklin Mills centered on the Cuyahoga River and erected a flour mill near what is now Stow Street.

Four years later, he sold his Franklin Mills holdings to the Franklin Land Company for $75,000 -- nearly $1.4 million in today's dollars -- although he eventually regained most of the land a few years later when the land company's plans to establish a silk industry failed. In 1837, he built a four-story commercial block in Franklin Mills that was said to be the tallest building in Northeastern Ohio at the time.

Kent retained his store in Ravenna while pursuing his interests in Franklin Mills and Hudson, where he was senior partner in Kent & Brewster. Marvin, his elder son, had been involved in the Ravenna shop since the age of 10, when his first duty was to see that the whiskey bottle his father made available to customers was filled. In 1845, after 30 years in business in Ravenna, Zenas sold his store to Marvin and another son, Charles.

Historical accounts shed no light on the falling out that Lacey references, although Kent's obituary notes that he "was not given to sociability" and "made few intimate friendships."

"His very firmness caused him at times, when his confidence was abused or when an injury was done to him, to resent it with impulsive impetuosity," the account noted. Perhaps that's what prompted him to turn his back on Ravenna in 1851, when he moved to Franklin Mills, where he had built a large home on River Street (on the present site of the Kent Free Library).

By that time, Zenas Kent's holdings in Franklin Mills included the large industrial block on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River, later known as the Alpaca Mill, which was across the street from his new home, and the Franklin Bank, which he established in 1849.

While he may have severed his commercial ties with Ravenna to pursue his interests in Franklin Mills, he retained property in the community where he had first settled and made his home for 35 years.

Among his holdings was a 20-acre parcel one block north of the downtown square, located on Bowery Street (present-day Highland Avenue) between Chestnut and Walnut streets. Known as "The Kent Lot," the site remained a desolate, undeveloped tract even as surrounding areas gave way to residential, commercial and industrial development.

"Deep drainage ditches skirted it on the west and south like forbidding moats," according to Lacey's account, and rail fences kept trespassers out. The area frequently flooded.

A shrewd businessman, Zenas Kent undoubtedly could have made a tidy profit from the sale of the tract, which was located in a prime spot. Why he opted to keep it off-limits to development is unknown. Was spite, indeed, involved?

"For decades after Zenas Kent left Ravenna, not a foot of the 20-acre plot could be purchased," Lacey wrote. The site occasionally was used as a tenting ground for traveling amusements, but otherwise "remained an undeveloped clearing ... a no-man's land in the heart of a growing community."

The Kent Lot was still a wilderness -- eyesore might be a better term -- when Zenas Kent died, and the site passed on to Marvin Kent and his other heirs who shared in an estate said to be worth $300,000 (nearly $4 million today). And that's how it remained until 1881, when the Ravenna Board of Education decided that it would be a prime location for a new high school.

The school board used eminent domain to acquire the one-acre parcel at the corner of Bowery and Walnut and went to court when the Kent heirs contested the action. A jury awarded Marvin Kent and his siblings $1,620 for the site.

After the school was built, the Kent heirs gradually opened up their holdings for residential development, selling the site piecemeal within a few years after the high school was built.

Today, more than 150 years after Zenas Kent left Ravenna, Walnut School, a remnant of the high school constructed in 1883, continues to anchor the corner of Highland and Walnut, while the north side of Highland Avenue includes a number of gracious homes built on the rest of the "no-man's land" he refused to develop.