New London, OH

New London is a Huron County village twenty-four miles south of Lake Erie, with the Huron–Ashland county line just south of town. The 2020 census counted 2,416 residents. Its first permanent settlers arrived in 1816, and early families from New London, Connecticut supplied the name. The village was incorporated in 1853, giving the crossroads a municipal shape that has lasted through changes in farms, roads, and local industry. New London is close enough to the lake for the north-south map to matter, but its daily life still feels tied to the surrounding townships.

The Carnegie library is the village's best surviving institutional story. Elizabeth Nancy McConnell opened a library in her home on New Year's Eve 1910, then helped secure a $10,000 Carnegie grant. The present building opened in July 1916 and still stands on South Main Street, where its local-history and genealogy collections keep New London's older stories in circulation. The village also has a reservoir and campground, schools, and the ordinary services that make it a working Huron County place. New London has the kind of map where a nineteenth-century settlement, a twentieth-century library, and a reservoir all sit within a few minutes of one another.