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The Sheridan monument was erected by and given to the Village of Somerset by the State of Ohio in 1905 to honor the memory of Somerset’s General Phillip Henry Sheridan. “Little Phil” was raised in Somerset and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1852. He rendered valuable service to the Federal Army in the Civil War at Stone’s River, Missionary Ridge, Yellow Tavern, Winchester, Cedar Creek, Five Forks, and Appomattox. He later commanded in the West and became General of the Army in 1883, received his fourth star, and died in 1888. The heroic sculpture, created by Carl Heber of New York, portrays “Sheridan’s Ride” to Winchester. Somerset citizens paid for the granite base through a children’s “penny fund.”
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In April 1830 four Dominican sisters from St. Catherine’s, Kentucky, founded St. Mary’s Academy, the first Catholic school in Perry County. Bishop Edward Fenwick, first Bishop of Ohio, donated a small brick house and attached building situated on an acre of land for the school’s use. Classes began with forty students. The following year the sisters built a three-story structure with a dormitory for boarders; by the end of the Civil War, enrollment had increased to 134 students, and St. Mary’s gained recognition as one of the finest schools in Ohio. An 1866 fire destroyed the academy, and in 1885 the Dominican sisters reestablished the academy as a parish school. The present Holy Trinity School building dates to 1968.
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On February 10, 1899, a United States Weather Bureau Station, operated by Steve Eveland, in the small hamlet of Milligan, Ohio, now part of McLuney, reported a temperature of 39 degrees below zero. To date, this is the lowest temperature officially recorded in Ohio. Milligan’s location in the flat valley of the Moxahala Creek made it susceptible to cold air masses drained from surrounding elevations. The record-breaking temperature in Milligan was recorded in the midst of a severe cold spell throughout Ohio that began on February 8 and ended on February 15, 1899 when temperatures reached a few degrees above zero. While Milligan can no longer be found on a map, it has been known as the coldest spot in Ohio for over one hundred years.
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Mariah Storts Allen was Ohio’s last surviving first generation daughter of a Revolutionary War soldier. She was born August 4, 1842 in Bearfield Township and died May 2, 1933 in New Lexington. Her father, John Jacob Storts, volunteered to fight for American independence at age 13 and camped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Allen was a descendant of Ohio’s First Families and an Honorary Member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The DAR refers to first generation daughters as “Real Daughters.”
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St. Joseph Catholic Church, called the cradle of the faith in Ohio, was the first Catholic church in the state. In 1809, Jacob and Catharine Dittoe deeded Father Edward Fenwick, who had traveled from Kentucky, 320 acres of ground to build the church. The original church, dedicated on December 6, 1818, by Father Fenwick and Father Nicholas Dominic Young, was a log cabin with a bare dirt floor measuring 18 feet by 22 feet. Father Fenwick was soon installed as the first Bishop of Cincinnati. Construction on the present church began in 1839.
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Lutheran congregations formed in Perry County beginning in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. The Mother Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania, sent missionary pastors to Ohio to preach to the growing number of Lutherans moving into the state. St. Paul congregation was formed in 1812 under the leadership of William Forester. On September 14, 1818, the Joint Synod of Ohio, the first synodical organization of Lutherans west of the Appalachian Mountains and one of the earliest predecessors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was founded in Somerset at the original log church on this site. St. Paul’s current church on W. Main was constructed in 1844.
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Philip Sheridan was most likely born in County Cavan, Ireland in 1831, but records do not indicate his actual birthplace. His family moved to Somerset when Philip was a child and lived down the avenue from this site. His family later owned the house across the street. His military interest was inspired by “Muster” day and frequent visits from a young West Pointer named William T. Sherman. Sheridan graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1853 and served on the Western Frontier Indian campaigns prior to the Civil War. In 1862, Sheridan became Colonel of the Second Michigan Calvary. At Stones River, Tennessee, he commanded a Division of the Twentieth Corps and stubbornly held General William S. Rosecrans’ right flank, distinguishing himself in battle. (continued on other side)
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Zion (Ribel’s) Church was built on this site in 1808. The log structure was located in the Zion Ridge Cemetery, adjacent to the first school in Thorn Township. The congregation of Zion Reformed Church is the oldest in Perry County still in existence. The church was officially organized in 1806 when the German Reformed and Lutheran congregations joined together in building the first church in Perry County. They purchased this land on June 30, 1806, and shared the building, alternating Sundays, until 1911. In 1803, Reverend Johannes Christian Koenig (John King) became the first minister to settle in Perry County and became the founding minister for the German Reformed congregation. In 1805, Reverend Wilhelm Georg Forster (William Foster) was the first Lutheran minister to settle in Perry County and was the founding minister for the Lutherans. The present Zion Reformed Church was built across the street from the original church in 1910.
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