Map - Berea, Ohio (Berea)

Berea is a city in Cuyahoga County in the U.S. state of Ohio and is a western suburb of Cleveland. The population was 19,093 at the 2010 census. Berea is home to Baldwin Wallace University, as well as the training facility for the Cleveland Browns and the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds. Also near Berea is the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Berea was established in 1836. The first European settlers were originally from Connecticut. Berea fell within Connecticut's Western Reserve and was surveyed and divided into townships and ranges by Gideon Granger, who served as Postmaster General under President Thomas Jefferson. Abram Hickox, a Revolutionary War veteran, bought the first plot in what is today Middleburg Heights and in 1808 traveled west from Connecticut to his new purchase. Dissuaded by the swampy and heavily forested land he decided to settle in Cleveland. He became successful as Cleveland's first full-time blacksmith. His plot of land was sold to his nephew, Jared Hickox, who came to the area with his wife Sarah and family in 1809. They followed an ancient Indian highway down through the forest from Cleveland and then, at what is now the corner of Bagley and Pearl roads, began to hack their way directly west. About two miles in they found Granger's plot markers and set up their homestead. Today this area is a strip mall on Bagley Road, just down the road from Berea. At the time Hickox discovered Granger's plot markers, the area was a swampy lowland and, as fate would have it, the Hickox's two grown up sons died from typhoid fever shortly after the family's arrival. The family farm was in dire straits, having been so severely depleted of male laborers. Love came to the rescue, however; and the area's spirits were lifted by its first marriage, that of Jared's daughter Amy Hickox to a recent arrival, Abijah Bagley. Bagley ended up taking over the farm and managing it into a successful concern. Today, Berea's largest street bears his name.

In 1827, educator John Baldwin moved to Middeburg Township where he joined forces with James Gilruth and Henry Olcott Sheldon, Methodist circuit preachers who wanted to form an ideal Christian community. In 1836, they pledged to pool all their properties to create a Utopian "Community of United Christians." Members of the Community vowed to avoid all luxuries and temptations that would prevent them from achieving the Methodist ideal of "sanctification," or perfect love of God. In 1836, Baldwin and the others of the Utopian Community tried to think of a name for their new town. Nehemiah Brown proposed Tabor (perhaps from the biblical Mount Tabor), but Henry Sheldon suggested Berea, citing the biblical Berea in the Acts 17:10-11. They decided to let God decide the Community's place name by flipping a coin, and the coin came up Berea. Financial disputes led to the dissolution of the Community and the departure of James Gilruth within a year. John Baldwin and Henry Sheldon then teamed up with Josiah Holbrook, the founder of the American Lyceum movement for adult and community education, to found the Berea Seminary, a central instructional facility for Lyceum teachers, and a Lyceum Village composed of community members dedicated to creation of an educated population. The Lyceum Village concept never caught on in Berea due to the 1838 Public School Act, but the idea of an ideal community centered around a school continued even after the Berea Seminary closed. The failure of these two Utopian experiments left John Baldwin and Henry Sheldon in deep debt. However, Baldwin had since 1838 been making grindstones from sandstone in the creek bed of the Rocky River. In the 1840s, Henry Sheldon began selling them via the Erie Canal in New York State. This was the beginning of the Berea quarrying industry. After the Big Four Railroad was built from Cleveland to Cincinnati, Baldwin built a railroad to connect his quarries to the Big Four Depot.

In 1845, Baldwin convinced the North Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church to charter a new school: a new Utopian venture of sorts, because the new school, the Baldwin Institute, would provide education to all, regardless of sex, race, religious creed, or ability to pay. In 1855, it was renamed Baldwin University. By the 1880s, the quarries had begun to intrude on the site of the university. In 1891, the school broke ground for a new campus at Front Street and Bagley Road. New buildings were constructed and old buildings were moved. In 1866, James Wallace purchased the site of the Lyceum Village from the German Children's Home to become the German Wallace College Campus. In 1913, Baldwin University and German-Wallace College merged to become Baldwin–Wallace College, now Baldwin Wallace University. Berea High School was the town's first high school, founded in 1882.