Root, Ephraim

Attorney, Vienna Township Proprietor

Birth: October 6, 1762, Coventry, Tolland County, Connecticut
Death: March 24, 1825, Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut
Burial: Old North Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut
Find a Grave memorial

Ephraim Root was one of the three proprietors of Vienna Township. He graduated Yale College and married Eunice Buell in the years between 1782 and 1784. He began to practice law in Hartford, Connecticut, and continued to do so until 1812.

Root was one of the 57 shareholders in the Connecticut Land Company and served as the Company's secretary. In 1800 Root visited Vienna and Trumbull County. In June of that year he contracted with William Titus Brockway to be his land agent. Two years later, Root was serving in the Ohio Territorial Legislature.

Root, the owner of many tracts of land in the Connecticut Western Reserve, is memorialized in the name of another township he founded in Portage County: Rootstown, founded in 1802 and granted township status in 1810. Other townships created of Root-owned land include Hartford (Trumbull County), and North Ridgeville and Wellington (Lorain County).


Updated 2/12/2023
The article is based on Vienna, Ohio, "Where We Live and Let Live": Town 4, Range 2 of the Connecticut Western Reserve (Apollo, PA: Closson Press, 1999), pp. xviii, 22-25, and further research by Shirley T. Wajda, September 2012.