Westfield Center, Ohio

Westfield Center was laid out in eighteen twenty-six. True to its New England roots, the village centered on a public commons, a design that still defines the community today.

Before long a village hall rose on the green, joined by churches, a general store, and an inn. Somehow the town also picked up a second name, Le Roy, and the two identities coexisted for decades before the village incorporated in nineteen fourteen under the Le Roy label. It took until the early nineteen seventies to reclaim the original Westfield Center name.

The village's most lasting export was financial. Local farmers chartered the Ohio Farmers Insurance Company here in eighteen forty-eight, a modest mutual-aid venture that eventually grew into the Westfield Group.