Westfield Center: A Mutual Agreement That Became a Fortune Five Hundred Firm

Westfield Center was laid out in eighteen twenty-six, named for the settlers' hometown in Westfield, Massachusetts. For two decades it was a quiet Ohio farm village, the kind you'd pass through without stopping.

Then, one winter evening in eighteen forty-eight, a traveling lecturer named Andrew Young stopped at the general store and explained how a mutual fire insurance company worked. Ohio farmers were losing barns and homes with no safety net. That night, the locals drafted a petition to the state legislature and won a charter on February eighth, eighteen forty-eight, founding the Farmers Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Medina County. Its first office was a room above that same general store. The company slowly grew into what is now Westfield Insurance, the largest employer in Medina County and one of the largest property-casualty insurers in the country. An offhand talk at a country store built a corporation that has been in continuous operation for more than one hundred seventy-five years.