Living Here in 1886

A recent donation to our Archives collections provides a look at life—through the eyes of a young boy—approximately 140 years ago near today’s Lane Avenue and North Star Road. What we know today as a Speedway gas station tucked in that northwest corner, looked like this in the mid-1880s:

This is the family of Samuel W. Lakin gathered in front of their approximately 10 year-old farm house. The man standing off to the right is identified only as their live-in farmhand. Samuel is the long-bearded man in the center, and his son Samuel Arthur Lakin sits, hat in hand, to his father’s right. Known as Arthur, it is his written memories, donated by his great-granddaughter, that allow us a glimpse into his world.

While the Lakin’s home sat at the corner, the crops and farmland extended west from the house. This photo below shows the farming landscape of the “Fairview Farm Dairy” by “S.W. Lakin & Sons.” Samuel and Arthur appear in the foreground:

To place the Lakin farmstead in the context of the 1880s, this 1883 map—available on UAPL’s UA Archives site—shows the properties of southernmost Perry Township which is today’s Upper Arlington south of Fishinger Road:

Samuel W. Lakin’s property is 164 acres, and extends across today’s Lane Avenue approximately where the Lane Avenue Shops are today. Family lore says those are where Lakin’s orchards were. To better understand Mr. Lakin’s surrounding world:

• The green boxes show Pleasant Litchford’s lands, now divided and owned by his children, as Pleasant died in 1879. These properties are where our high school, Northam Park, and Tremont Center stand today.

• Today’s Lane Avenue is called “Fairview Free Pike,” possibly because it looked east and had a clear view of downtown Columbus.

• The yellow star denotes the location of a rural township school, not surprisingly called “Fairview School,” at the intersection of today’s Tremont Road and Lane Avenue. The term “free pike” generally meant direct main roads that were toll-free and managed by a public entity, like a township.

• Henry Miller, underlined in red, owns much of the land that becomes the original Upper Arlington development. His son, James T. Miller, sells 840 acres to the Thompson brothers in 1913 and is also our community’s first mayor.

• T.J. Price, also underlined in red, owns a working quarry—Marble Cliff Quarries—on the east side of the Scioto River.

Which leads to an interesting story, in Arthur’s own words, about “Father” (Samuel W.) when he served in the Civil War:

In this same memoir, Arthur also alludes to his attendance at the Fairview School with this verbatim quote [revisions in italics]: “My father…told me this story—when I told him of a history leson [lesson] in [I] had in old Fairview about 1887 (I’m guessing) about the hardships of Valley Forge…” This is one of the only references we have collected about a student at Fairview School.

The Lakin home stood for 79 years, until on April 4, 1954, it was used as a training site for local fire teams.

According to the April 5, 1954 Columbus Dispatch, over 800 fire personnel from over 50 Ohio communities and 10 states attended this event, and the number of on-lookers reached upwards of 15,000 people. The home was to be replaced by a “service station,” a business that has continued to serve Upper Arlington for almost as long as the house stood at that corner.

by Kristin Greenberg, February 2026. Donation by Mary Jane Mullin.