North Canton, Ohio
Near Akron, Ohio
The town now called North Canton spent its first decades as New Berlin, settled largely by German immigrants in the eighteen thirties. It might have stayed a quiet farming village if a local janitor named James Spangler had not noticed that sweeping floors aggravated his asthma. In nineteen oh eight Spangler patched together a fan, a pillowcase, and a broom handle and built one of the first portable electric suction sweepers.
He sold the patent to his cousin's husband, a leather-goods merchant named William Hoover. Hoover founded the Electric Suction Sweeper Company, ran a free-trial ad in the Saturday Evening Post, and built a manufacturing empire in New Berlin. The company grew so dominant that the British made vacuuming a verb: to hoover.
The town renamed itself North Canton in nineteen eighteen.
