, OH
William McKinley’s house, once located at this site, was the scene of his 1896 front porch campaign for President of the United States. During the campaign McKinley addressed about 750,000 people who came to his home in Canton. McKinley’s public service began when he volunteered at the start of the Civil War in 1861 as a private with the Union Army. He was discharged as a major after four years of service. Later McKinley became President of the Canton Y.M.C.A. and the Stark County Prosecutor. McKinley served in the United States House of Representatives between 1877 and 1891 and was then elected Governor of Ohio. He helped to found the Canton Public Library. McKinley won presidential elections in 1896 and 1900. His administration was characterized by high tariffs, money backed by gold, national prosperity, and the Spanish-American War. In 1901 an anarchist shot and killed President McKinley.
, OH
Lorain County Community College opened its Abbe Road facilities on October 3, 1966, making it the first community college in Ohio with a permanent campus. At the time, three buildings had been completed on the 250-acre site-Engineering Technologies, Physical Science, and Mechanical Services. By the end of the Fall 1966 semester, three more buildings opened-College Center, Business, and Physical Education. Lorain County Community College has become a cornerstone of the community, contributing to the educational and social and cultural enrichment of all Lorain County residents.
, OH
The Snowden Family Band was an acclaimed African-American stringband who performed in and around Knox County for nearly seventy years, from the 1850s into the 1920s. Buried in Morris Chapel Cemetery are Thomas Snowden (1803-1856), his wife Ellen Cooper Snowden (1817-1894), and their nine children: Oliver, Sophia, Mary, Ben, Lew, Phebe, Martha, Elsie, and Annie. Born into slavery in Maryland, Thomas and Ellen separately relocated to Knox County and to freedom during the 1820s. They married in 1834. In the 1850s, the six surviving children formed a band under Ellen’s direction. Talented musicians, the Snowden Family performed banjo and fiddle music for public events and at their homestead near Mount Vernon. Many believe that the song “Dixie,” attributed to minstrel Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), originated with the Snowden Family Band.
, OH
A fine example of the district school building common to Ohio in the early years of the twentieth century, this two-room, red-brick schoolhouse was completed in 1913. Accommodating elementary school children in east Berea and adjacent areas of Middleburg Township, the Berea “Little Red Schoolhouse” replaced an original wood-frame, one-room school built in the late nineteenth century on the same site. No longer active as a school, the building was used by the Berea Fine Arts Club from 1935 to 1980, and subsequently by the Berea Jaycees for meetings and community projects. This historic structure has been carefully restored and opened to public gatherings by the Berea Little Red Schoolhouse Foundation, Inc. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
, OH
Marion civic leaders Shauck Elah Barlow and Ida Harsh Barlow built “Waldheim,” their Colonial Revival residence, between 1903-1905. Ida Barlow, then president of the Marion Women’s Club, hosted a December 1905 meeting in her new home. Members discussed art, music, literature, and ideas for “civic improvement.” In 1909, this and other Marion clubs reorganized as the Marion County Federation of Women’s Clubs. Federation members soon organized into action: providing college loans to young women; sponsoring visiting city and later school nurses; purchasing trash receptacles; providing dental clinics for low-income residents; and funding railroad crossing safety equipment. Upon her death in 1945, Barlow bequeathed her house to the Federation as the “Women’s Club Home.” The new Federation headquarters offered meeting space for the Executive Board and the many associated clubs. (Continued on other side)
, OH
This site has long served the religious, education, and public interests of the residents of Mechanicsburg. A local Methodist congregation built its first church here in 1820, and the townspeople also used the structure as its village school. The Methodists replaced their original structure in 1837, using brick as the main building material. As the Methodist congregation grew, however, it was determined that a larger, more permanent structure was needed. As a result, the Mechanicsburg First Methodist Church was built here in 1858, and it served the congregation until 1894 when an African American based Second Baptist congregation purchased the building at a cost of $2,850. Besides religion and education, the site was also used as Mechanicsburg’s first cemetery. That cemetery lasted until the Maple Grove Cemetery was established and burials at this site were relocated there. [continued on other side]
, OH
In March 1884, public confidence of Cincinnati law enforcement was extremely low. The public believed that murderers and other serious offenders were not brought to justice promptly or received little punishment. Civil unrest was brought to a boil when a seventeen-year-old was sentenced to only twenty years for manslaughter after brutally murdering his employer. On March 28, thousands of citizens stormed the county jail and courthouse. The riots lasted three days requiring forces from the Sheriff’s Office, city police, and local and state militia to restore order. Fifty-four people were killed and more than 200 wounded. The courthouse and jail suffered enormous damage, and valuable records were destroyed from the assault and fire. The riot gained international notoriety and helped pave the way for removal of political favoritism and a larger police force.
, OH
Born in Alexandria in 1853, Willoughby Dayton Miller received his primary education in a nearby one-room schoolhouse. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1875 and then studied in Edinburgh, Scotland. Later, he traveled to Berlin, Germany where he met an expatriate American dentist, Dr. Frank Abbot, who encouraged him to study dentistry. Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in 1879, Miller returned to Berlin and joined Abbot’s practice. Two years later, he gained a research appointment at the University of Berlin where he embarked on a career that brought the science of bacteriology into dentistry. In 1889, he published his research findings of the study of oral bacteria and the process of dental caries (tooth decay) entitled The Micro-Organisms of the Human Mouth. For his work, Miller is credited as the first to accurately describe the process of tooth decay. (Continued on other side)