Buchtel is a well known name throughout the Akron community. There’s Buchtel Hall, Buchtel College, Buchtel Avenue, Buchtel High School. That acclaim is due, in no small part, to the generous service of Elizabeth Davidson Buchtel.
Elizabeth Davidson was born in Union County, Pa., in 1821. She married John Richards Buchtel in 1844. The marriage represented a union of temperaments and a commitment to social improvement.
It is difficult to trace Buchtel’s involvement in antebellum reform groups. By the Civil War, however, she was involved with the Akron Soldiers Aid Society. She never held a position in the association, but in 1864 she volunteered for the small committee that solicited donations of machinery, manufactures and mechanical products for Cleveland’s giant Sanitary Fair. The appointment was an ideal one. Her husband, who raised enlistments and bounty money during the Civil War, was also the agent of the Canton Buckeye Reaper and Mower Works.
After the Civil War, she and her husband dedicated much time and energy to the founding of a new college in the city. The Buchtels, both members of the Universalist Church, lobbied to get the proposed Universalist College for the city and then donated much time and money to the enterprise. In the end, the new college (now The University of Akron) was named after John Buchtel.
After the Civil War, the Buchtel name was synonymous with temperance. In 1874, John Buchtel ran for secretary of state on the Prohibition ticket. That same year, Elizabeth Buchtel signed the call for a temperance meeting at the First Methodist Church. That meeting led to the now famous Temperance Crusade of 1874 where Akron women visited saloons and prayed in the streets in an attempt to close down the liquor traffic in the city.
At the age of 59, Elizabeth Buchtel was paralyzed. She died in Akron in 1891.
Photo courtesy of the Beacon Journal.