1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Painesville

PAINESVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Lake county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Grand River, 3 m. S. of Lake Erie and about 30 m. N.E. of Cleveland. Pop. (1900) 5024, of whom 499 were foreign-born and 179 negroes; (1910) 5501. It is served by the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the New York, Chicago & St Louis and the Baltimore & Ohio railways, and by electric lines to Cleveland, Fairport and Ashtabula. It is the seat of Lake Erie College (non-sectarian, for women), the successor of Willoughby Seminary (1847), whose buildings at Willoughby, Ohio, were burned in 1856; the college was opened as the Lake Erie Female Seminary in 1859, and became Lake Erie College and Seminary in 1898 and Lake Erie College in 1908. Painesville is situated in a farming and fruit-growing country, and also has some manufactures. Three miles north, on Lake Erie, is the village of Fairport (pop. in 1900, 2073), with a good harbour and coal and ore docks. The municipality owns and operates its waterworks and street-lighting plants. Painesville was founded in 1800–1802 by settlers from Connecticut and New York, conspicuous among whom was General Edward Paine (1746–1841), an officer from Connecticut in the War of Independence; it was incorporated as a village in 1832, and became a city in 1902 under the new Ohio municipal code.