A history of Rockport Township, roughly the area between present-day West 117th Street to the east and the North Olmsted and Bay Village borders on the west, to Brookpark road, south.

Written by Ralph Pfingsten, who graduated from John Marshal in January 1958, and spent 30 years as a science teacher in the Cleveland schools. He has been working on this book since 1998, aiming to have a history of the school completed for the school's centennial in 1999. "I soon found that I really couldn't separate the school from the community," Pfingsten said.

His research kept reaching further and further back. When he got to about the 1800's, in Ohio he found that each township in Ohio, roughly five -square mile area, developed with a central city. But that was not the case with Rockport, which was split down the middle by the Rocky River.

So, Lakewood developed first, it was along the lakeshore that's where most of the early migration went, then Rocky River shortly after that.

Because of this schism between east and west, there was never any sense of township that developed. The end result is that, of the original Rockport Township there are no records remaining any place, and nobody has any idea where they went including the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Pfingsten decided to start from scratch and work forward.

This is a hardback book. Copyright 2004. Signed copies are available.

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