As a follow-up to his first book entitled Snowville, released in 2016, which delved into the history of the early settling of Brecksville, local author Jim Choma released a second book on the topic in May entitled Snowville: A Story of One Man And The Place He Made.
Whereas his first book focused on a wider view of the early settlers of Brecksville, his latest book narrows his view to the journey and struggles of Russ Snow and his family, chronicling Snow’s 1,000-mile-long journey in 1835 from central Maine to Brecksville, where he built a new life for his family in an attempt to escape the tuberculosis epidemic ravaging his native home.
Choma, who grew up on Columbia Road in Richfield, and now lives in a development off Snowville Road – named after the Snow family – first became intrigued with local history during his youth, as he would visit the small Columbia Road Cemetery in Richfield that contained the Snow family burial plot.
In later years, he came to realize that six gravestones of the Snow family, tucked away in a corner of Highland Cemetery, were placed too close together to allow for actual burials beneath. As an alumnus of the University of Akron, he enlisted the school’s assistance in his research…