Historic Lyme Village

Located just east of Bellevue, Historic Lyme Village is collection of buildings arranged to represent what a small Ohio village might have looked representing a 100 year time span beginning in early 1800s.

Besides the historic buildings, there is also several museums located on the grounds (Schug Hardware Museum, National Postmark Collectors Museum)

One of the historic buildings is the John Wright Mansion, an English immigrant that arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in Huron County. Besides serving in the Civil War, John Wright also purchased large tracts of land. In 1881 he constructed a new home that would later be listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its distinctive Second Empire architectural style. The 3-story brick structure is a dramatic structure in Historic Lyme Village when compared to the log-structures.

John Wright Mansion

John Wright, who was 20 years old when he arrived here from England. During his first year here he worked on a local farm in Lyme Township where he was paid $100 a year of labor.  With those earnings he purchased his own farm and married Betsey Ford, another native of England. In time he saved enough money to increase his land holdings to 4,000 acres of rich farmland when he retired from farming in 1884. John Wright died in 1907.

The National Postmark Museum

Operated by the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC) the National Postmark Museum dates back to the 1950s and became part of Historic Lyme Village in 1978. Since then, the museum has expanded and added on to its original structure where research and the archives are housed. The materials donated to the museum over the years by PMCC members and others is believed to be the world's largest and most extensive known single postmark collections.

 

The entrance to Historic Lyme Village and Museum, and the Postmark Museum is from SR 4.