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is a village located atop the highest point in Wayne County, Ohio, United States. The population was 2,799 at the 2000 census. Doylestown is served by a branch of the Wayne County Public Library.
Doylestown was officially founded and recorded on Christmas day, 1827 by William Doyle, a Scotch-Irish Pennsylvanian who first settled in Ohio in Milton Township, some six miles west of his soon-to-be-namesake. Upon moving to the village, Doyle employed a carpenter, John Montgomery, to help him build the first building, a log tavern. Soon after, Doyle encouraged family and friends from Pennsylvania to join him.
Opportunity already existed in the surrounding lowlands of the hilltop town with streams flush with running water to power mills.
Woolen mills brought commerce to Doylestown but nothing could prepare it for the mining boom when coal was discovered in the deep hollows southeast of the village in 1840. Known as Rogues' Hollow for the wild goings-on of miners seeking work after the canals were completed, the hollow was congested with saloons, houses of ill repute, disease, dust and Sunday dog fights.
"Uptown," (as the village is referred to by surrounding residents) entrepreneurs developed pottery works, aluminumware and aluminum welding and in 1861 John F. Seiberling arrived and opened the Excelsior Mowers and Droppers factory, the premiere farm equipment company of its time. The boom brought craftsmen and merchants from surrounding states to Doylestown via the Ohio and Erie Canal which brought passengers and goods from Lake Erie to Clinton, Ohio east of Doylestown. The eventual influx of Roman Catholics led to the building of SS Peter and Paul R.C. Church, recognized as the first church built in the massive Cleveland Diocese. Doylestown's economic downfall took place when on May 16, 1910, a fire destroyed the mower works and eventually the village's altitude made the cost and logistics of receiving and shipping goods too prohibitive.