What’s in a name? Mount Vernon’s Lambton Square

MOUNT VERNON — I recently received a request from History Knox reader Helen R. Rosser to dig into the history of Lambton Square, the tiny park on the north side of Mount Vernon, where Ohio 3 intersects with Mansfield Avenue and Curtis Street, just south of Mound View Cemetery. 

As it turns out, no immediate answer popped up on inspection, but there are certainly clues to lead us in a strong direction.

My first stop was to check with the city parks department, but administrative assistant Kristen Goldner didn’t have any information on the park’s name. She did point out, however, the Curtis connection. 

The name Henry Curtis looms large in Mount Vernon’s history, for Henry B. Curtis was a major figure both in this town and nationally in the 1800s. It was he who built the mansion at Round Hill at the end of Curtis Street, one of the streets which passes through Lambton Square.

It surely seems no coincidence that the park name is shared with Henry B. Curtis’ youngest son, Henry Lambton Curtis, who later inherited Round Hill. But how did his middle name come into the Curtis family? 

It’s almost certainly not through Henry B.’s family, which in all its well-documented Connecticut roots offers no example of the name’s usage whatsoever.

Instead, it likely comes from Henry L.’s mother’s family. Henry B. met Elizabeth Hogg some time after they both moved to Ohio, where they married in 1823. Henry B. came here from New York, where his ancestry goes back into the earliest New England colonies.

Elizabeth, however, had freshly arrived in Ohio from England, where she had been born in Chester-le-Street in the County Durham in north-eastern England, near Newcastle.

Unfortunately, not much about Elizabeth’s roots can be found other than the names of her parents, Percival Hogg and Elizabeth Hart.

But, to look at the situation like a detective, one would first look to see if there is any connection in or near Durham that is related to the Lambton name, and there most certainly is one, and a big one, at that.

Lambton Castle, a grand country home built in the early 1800s, is the home of the Earl of Durham, a prominent noble figure. For hundreds of years, the title of Earl of Durham has belonged to the Lambton family. 

Their castle — an expansion of an already-large estate dating back to the 1700s — sits atop the hills overlooking Chester-le-Street.

It could be that Elizabeth Hogg merely remembered the newly-built castle from her childhood before leaving to move to the United States, and wanted to preserve the memory in the name of one of her children.

It is also very possible that somewhere in her now-forgotten family tree, there was a direct connection to the Lambton family. 

After all, her marriage with a prominent lawyer (and later judge) like Henry B. Curtis certainly suggests that she had top-level social connections. She may have wished to document that noble tie in her youngest son’s name.

That son later had a son named Walter, and Walter had a son whom he named after his father. This Henry Lambton Curtis is well-remembered locally as the founder of Round Hill Dairy and president of the chamber of commerce.

He passed away in 1993, and thus will be in the living memory of many local people.

Inside the park, there are markers honoring donors of materials and labor to create the lovely park. Several trees nicely shade the elegantly fenced area.

All we need now is a castle.