Dan Mason
Trumbull County has had a sheriff since 1800, but there isn’t a lot of officially stored information on the office or a majority of the men who have served in the position, said Dan Mason who served as the jail administrator for Sheriff Paul Monroe from 2017 until January, when Monroe left office.
“It was really hard to do some research,” Mason said in a presentation to the Brookfield Historical Society in September. “I got not a whole lot on Google, there wasn’t a whole lot of records at the sheriff’s office. I was able to find some records at the county archive building. I was able to get some records at the main (Warren) library.”
Despite these obstacles, Mason was able to identify 43 men who had served as sheriff prior to Mike Wilson taking office in January.
The sheriff is responsible for operating the Trumbull County Jail, providing security at county buildings and serving as the chief law enforcer in communities that do not have their own police departments.
The sheriff also provides school resource officers to nine school districts; investigates complaints filed with the Trumbull County Children’s Services Board; manages Trumbull Action Group, the county’s drug task force; manages information on registered sex offenders; and partners with other agencies, including at the state and federal levels, in organizations such as the Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force and the Mahoning Valley Crisis Response Team.
Prior to Brookfield creating its own police department in 1976, the sheriff’s department was the primary law-enforcement agency in the township. Brookfield Chief Aaron Kasiewicz served as a TAG investigator prior to becoming chief last summer.
The position of sheriff developed in England in the 1600s, when it was essentially a person who carried out tasks as assigned by the king. The position carried over when English citizens started colonizing the New World. The first sheriff in Ohio was Ebeneezer Sproat in 1788, Mason said.
David Abbott, a Yale-educated lawyer, was the first elected sheriff of Trumbull County, taking office in 1800, the year Trumbull became a county.
The area now known as Mahoning County was part of Trumbull County at the time and the names of early Trumbull County sheriffs show up in street and place names of Trumbull and Mahoning counties, including James Hillman, who served in 1809; John Struthers, who served in 1815; Lemuel Reeves, who served in 1822; and Andrew Bushnell, who served in 1826.
George Mygatt, who served from 1830 to 1834, has the distinction of being the only Trumbull County sheriff to preside over a court-sanctioned execution, Mason said. Mygatt oversaw the arrangements for the execution of Ira West Garner, who was hanged from a tree at Chestnut and South streets in Warren.
“He was a devout Christian and it weighed heavily on his conscience,” Mason said of Mygatt.
Mygatt petitioned the governor to be excused from the duty of execution but his request was denied.
Joseph G. Butler, the industrialist and father of the creator of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, was sheriff from 1862-66.
Another sheriff of note was Russell Stein, who played football in the NFL in the 1920s. Born in Warren and raised on a farm in Niles, Stein attended Washington and Jefferson College in Waynesburg, Pa., where he was football team captain, an All-American and the Rose Bowl MVP in 1922.
Moving to the pros, Stein played for the NFL teams in Toledo; Pottsville, Pa.; Frankford, Pa.; and Canton from 1922-26. Stein served as sheriff from 1941-45, after which he wrote local sports articles.
“It was easier finding information about him being in the NFL than it was about him being Trumbull County sheriff,” Mason said.
Several sheriffs went on to higher office, and Robert Barnett, who served from 1961-76, was a veterinarian by training.
The longest-serving sheriff was Thomas Altiere, who was in office from 1993 through 2016.
As of September, the sheriff’s department had 65 deputies, 72 corrections officers and 15 civilian employees.
