Windham, Ohio: The Beckett Company's Village

In the spring of eighteen eleven, sixteen families departed Becket, Massachusetts as an organized company, walked west for six weeks, and settled on a tract in the Connecticut Western Reserve south of Nelson Township in Portage County, Ohio. They named their township for Windham, Connecticut, the original home of many of the group. The settlement went through two earlier names, Strongsburg and then Sharon, before formally adopting the name Windham in eighteen twenty.

The first religious service was held outdoors in July of eighteen eleven, weeks after they arrived. Windham village incorporated in eighteen ninety-two and remains a small community of about one thousand seven hundred people set among the farm country of northeast Ohio.