John Grant (1779-1854)

& Nancy Grant (1780-1854)

Class of 2026 – Founders

John Grant (1779-1854) and Nancy Gibson Grant (1780-1840), Quaker Immigrants from Burlington County, NJ, claimed 160 acres of land in Lexington Township in 1806, building a small cabin near a small tributary of the Mahoning River near the current corner of Union Avenue and Main Street. Over the next five decades they would clear wide swaths of a deep forest to build a prosperous farm and an elegant brick house on a hill with their nine children. Their Quaker heritage led them to Ohio for new land and opportunities, and to strengthen America through advocacy for religious tolerance, the rights of Women and African-Americans through their involvement in the early anti-slavery movement.

The city of Salem, Ohio was founded in 1806 by Quakers who came to establish settlements in the new territory where slavery was illegal.   Quaker John Grant and his wife Nancy came to the area from New Jersey, where slavery was still legal, with two children. After moving to Ohio they had six more children.  John had purchased 160 acres of land from the government in what would later become Alliance for $2 per acre. The entire area was wooded and the Grants had to clear the land and put up a cabin before they could start farming.

Like all early settlers, John and Nancy Grant had to do almost everything by hand.  Trees had to be felled to clear land for fields, their cabin built, and furniture and utensils made.  Brickmaking was an arduous task involving digging, cleaning, molding, drying and firing local clay.  Food had to be grown, processed, and preserved for winter, wheat ground to flour for baking, and cream separated from milk and churned into butter.   Wool and Flax had to be spun into yarn and woven to make fabric.  Animals had to be kept for transportation, milk, meat, and eggs.  Lye made from wood ashes and water was mixed with animal fat to make soap; cotton or linen wicks dipped in animal fat to make candles.  Although goods and services soon became available (the railroads started coming through Alliance by 1850) and life became easier, most homes didn’t have electricity and indoor plumbing until the early 1900s or later.   

The family lived in the log cabin they built (near the current Salvation Army building on Main Street) for 22 years, until 1828.  At that time they built what is now the oldest standing brick house in Alliance, using bricks that John made.  It had one room, a porch and a loft.  The two parents and 5 children that still lived at home moved into the house.  Their farm and other enterprises were doing well and in 1834 they put an addition on the one room house (four daughters still lived at home).  It consisted of two rooms downstairs and two bedrooms up, with a dirt cellar.  As the Grant family continued to prosper the front part of the house was built in 1842.  Downstairs a foyer and two parlors were added, and upstairs two more bedrooms. 

Nancy Grant died in 1840 before the new part of the house was finished. In 1852, John Grant, then 74, sold his home and 126 acres of surrounding land to his daughter and son-in-law, Sarah Grant Haines and J. Ridgeway Haines.