Before Grove City had a police department, the town marshal enforced local laws which included a variety of exhibitions that required licenses issued by the mayor. Local laws prohibited puppet shows, wire dancing, tumbling, juggling, menagerie, panoramas, a circus or any game that was slight of hand. Those who violated any of those laws were required to forfeit any illicit income and pay a $5 fine for each offense. Guess we’ll never know if the 1928 American Legion’s amateur minstrel show or Mrs. L. E. Grant’s April 4, 1929 masquerade party was held without being fined. The town marshal also had other unpleasant duties. He had to insure a dead horse, cow, hog, sheep or other animal found on a village street was promptly removed.

The first Manual of Rules and Regulations for the Division of Police in Grove City was published in 1969 by Lowell G. (Gene) Downey, safety director, under George M. Haughn’s administration. The document, now on display at the Grove City Welcome Center and Museum was based on Los Angeles Police Department guidelines. Downey previously served as a Grove City police officer and was the city’s first K-9 officer with Prince Victor von Trammheiler, a registered 75-pound German Shepherd from a royal blood line. Patrolman Glenn A. Stoll was the second K-9 officer with Rusty. Both were trained in the U.S. Air Force kennel at Lockbourne AFB (Rickenbacker today). The K9 corps was created locally by Chief E. L. Evans after he attended a Cincinnati meeting of police chiefs.

Who is Randolph Higgy? His name shows up on a Grove City & Green Lawn Street Railway pass signed by A. G. Grant, owner of the electric street car line that ran from Grove City to Greenlawn Cemetery where passengers could transfer to another line into Columbus. Higgy was a friend of William Foster Breck, founder of Grove City in 1852, who moved here from Fairfield County. He first purchased Breck’s sawmill when Breck decided to open a mercantile; then Higgy purchased Breck’s store around 1855 renaming it Higgy’s Store. After Breck’s death in 1865, Higgy succeeded Breck as the Grove City postmaster. By 1866 when Grove City incorporated as a village, Dr. Joseph Bullen was elected mayor and Higgy became village clerk. He is also mentioned as one of the town’s first marshals. In 1887, for an unknown reason, Grove City’s mayor and every member of the village council abruptly resigned and Higgy became mayor. Higgy married Catherine Grant, a daughter of Hugh Grant Jr.

Adam G. Grant’s name is well-known in Grove City history but his grandmother often doesn’t get the credit she deserves as an early pioneer woman. Her husband, Hugh Grant Sr., is usually credited as being the first white settler in the area. He purchased acreage in what was then Franklin Township (Jackson Township in 1815) but upon the journey from Pittsburgh via Chillicothe, he was unable to identify his property. Instead, he constructed a temporary shelter on the banks of the Scioto River where the family lived. After his untimely death, it was up to Catherine Barr Grant and their children to search and finally identified the property, a feat she accomplished. A log structure provided a new, permanent home for the family until around 1830 when a son, Hugh Grant Jr., built the brick house identified today as the Grant-Sawyer House now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Harrisburg Pike has had many names over the years. One not commonly remembered today was when it was referred to as Death Pike because of so many fatal auto accidents in and around Grove City. A few years after Adam Grant sold his street car line to the Applegate Syndicate, a Grove City Interurban, then called a traction vehicle, collided with a gravel truck in Briggsdale in a non-fatal accident. Years later, in an effort to slow motorists entering the village, Grove City created an unpopular speed trap with the town’s first motorcycle cop poised at Rose Avenue.