'The people's friend'

This article is the third in a three-part series on the life and story of influential Medina figure H.G. Blake.

After retiring from politics in 1863, H.G. Blake was offered many honors. He might have progressed from the national stage to the international when he was offered the position of consul general in Palermo, Sicily – quite a feat for the impoverished youth he had once been.

He declined.

He was also offered the governorship of one of the Western territories by President Ulysses S. Grant. He declined that, as well as the opportunity to seek the Republican nomination for governor of Ohio.

However, when asked to run for mayor of Medina, he agreed. He could then attend to his numerous business and civic affairs and spend time with his family. Also, his health had been declining, and he needed to be closer to home.

On his return to Medina from Washington, Blake sold the East Washington Street house, which had been a station on the Underground Railroad, and moved to a house on Prospect Street. (In 1890, that house was moved several feet south to make room for the opulent Shingle Style home built by his daughter Elizabeth and her husband R.M. McDowell. Today it belongs to the Medina County Historical Society and is a museum known as the Phillips/McDowell House.)

Blake was rudely awakened on the night of April 14, 1870, to a major catastrophe. A fire had broken out on Medina’s Public Square, and by daybreak, 45 buildings – including the entire business district around the square – were destroyed, including his Old Phoenix Bank.

Blake moved swiftly to rebuild. His first action was to buy a new safe and reopen the bank in the judge’s office in the courthouse – one of the few buildings spared. Next, he organized the Medina Building Association, which spearheaded the rebuilding process.

The Old Phoenix Bank was one of the first to be rebuilt, although on a much grander scale than the old one. He called it the Phoenix Block, and it housed not only his new bank offices but stores and a theater with a seating capacity of 500. Today it still dominates the south block of the square and is home to Huntington Bank.

Other business owners followed suit, and within a decade, Public Square emerged as the collection of elegant Victorian structures that we know today. The 1881 “History of Medina County” credits Blake’s efforts to rebuild the square: “To his counsels, encouragement and example … Medina today is a pleasant, substantial town.”

In 1871, Blake brought the railroad to Medina. It took him almost 20 years to do so. After a failed attempt in the 1850s, Blake ended up owning the proposed right-of-way. When a second opportunity came in 1869, he joined with other community leaders to sell the project. He then gave the roadbed to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and construction began.

The first train arrived in Medina on Nov. 15, 1871, carrying invited guests, and, according to “Historical Highlights of Medina,” a giant celebration was held.

“This celebration included a large number of lengthy speeches … frequent interludes of band music, a one-hundred gun salute by an artillery company and a two-hour public dinner for 1,200 people. The November weather was bleak, but the jollification was joyous.”

Blake also continued his efforts as an attorney. His most notorious case was representing Frederick Streeter in one of Medina’s most compelling trials.

Joann King writes in “A Medina Family Saga 1830-2020”: “Shubal Coy, a local livestock dealer, was murdered, along with his wife and son on South Elmwood St. in July 1863. Soon after … H.G. Blake formed a town committee to investigate … and begin considering suspects. It is a long story of capture, escape and recapture, but Frederick Streeter was the man charged and tried. H.G. Blake was the defending attorney. He lost the case. The jury convicted Streeter and the judge set the date for the hanging, Medina’s only recorded public execution.”

Blake also carried on efforts to help Civil War veterans collect back pay and bounty money, and he assisted in aiding freed slaves as well. He and his wife, Betsy, formed the Medina branch of the Freedmen’s Aid Society and coordinated the collection of food and clothing to be sent south.

Not long before his death, Blake wrote a one-page autobiography. He ended it with these words: “I ardently supported President Lincoln and all measures to put down the rebellion. I was always an ardent anti-slavery man and a friend of the slave.”

Blake died of pneumonia at age 57 on April 16, 1876. The entire town went into mourning. Public Square was draped in black bunting, and a banner fluttered from the balcony of the Old Phoenix National Bank with the words: “The People’s Friend.”