Results for: american-revolution
50 Park Avenue E
Mansfield

, OH

Born in Lancaster, Fairfield County, John Sherman moved to Mansfield to practice law and was elected to Congress in 1854 as one of the first Republicans. In 1861, Sherman was elected to the U.S. Senate. An authority on finance, Sherman was instrumental in shaping federal financial policy in the years following the Civil War, and President Rutherford Hayes appointed him Secretary of the Treasury in 1877. During the “Greenback” debate, he re-implemented the gold standard, stabilizing the currency during an inflationary period. Sherman returned to the Senate in 1881 and served until early 1897 when President McKinley appointed him Secretary of State; in declining health, he resigned in 1898. He died in Washington, D.C. and is interred in the Mansfield Cemetery.

2019 Nipgen Road
Waverly

, OH

Thirteen African American families migrated to Pebble Township in Pike County in the early 1820s from Virginia. Some of the families were former slaves while others were freeborn people of color. Their farm knowledge and skill helped to make them prosperous, angering some of their white neighbors who began a campaign of harassment. Ten of the original African American settlers eventually moved away, but despite the difficulties with the white population, other African Americans continued to arrive to the settlement. They founded a church, later known as the Eden Baptist Church, built a meeting hall, and organized a school. Several of the families were also involved in the activity of the Underground Railroad. The PP Settlement thrived until the 1950s when, for economic reasons, residents moved to other communities.

W. East St, W of S. Hinde Street
Washington Court House

, OH

Washington Court House was founded in 1810 by American Revolutionary War veterans from the state of Virginia. They also established Washington Cemetery in 1810 and located it in what was originally the southern part of the town. With the coming of the railroad, the cemetery’s size was reduced to what is now approximately half an acre of land containing one hundred and twelve headstones. One of the prominent people buried in the cemetery is Judge Wade Loofborough, known for his interest in the utopian socialist society called Fourierism. He purchased land in Clermont County to establish the society, but it failed. Loofborough eventually became a respected judge and lawyer in Fayette County. Other distinguished people buried here include veterans of the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

8410 Lincoln Street SE
East Canton

, OH

Golfer and World War II veteran William J. Powell, excluded from playing on many American golf courses because of his race, overcame the indignity of discrimination by creating his own course. Hand built in two years and opened in 1948, Clearview Golf Club is the first golf course in the United States designed, built, and owned by an African-American. The acclaimed course harmonizes with the landscape and bears many design elements of traditional British courses. A triumph of perseverance over discrimination, Clearview represents the historic postwar era when athletes first broke the “color line” in American sports.

18 Locust Street
Gallipolis

, OH

The Shawnee and Delaware Indians grew restless as numbers of Virginians encroached on their lands by settling along the Ohio River. On October 10, 1774, Lord Dunmore, of the Virginia Colony, ordered Colonel Andrew Lewis and his 1100 Virginia militiamen to attack the Shawnee Indians near Chillicothe, Ohio. While Lewis’s army camped across the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Shawnee Chief Cornstalk, with 1000 warriors, crossed the river upstream for a surprise attack on the Virginia militia. After a five hour battle, the Shawnee retreated west across the Ohio. Some refer to this as the last battle fought by the Colonists while subject to British rule, and really, the first battle of the American Revolution. On November 5, 1774, following a peace treaty between Cornstalk and Lord Dunmore at Camp Charlotte on the Pickaway Plains, Dunmore’s officers met at Fort Gower, Hockingport, Ohio (48 miles upstream) and passed this resolution of “liberty”: (continued on other side)

527 S Center Street
Springfield

, OH

Robert C. Henry, the first African-American mayor of an Ohio city, was born in Springfield, Ohio, on July 16, 1921. He attended Springfield High School and graduated in 1939. After high school, he attended Wittenberg University and the Cleveland College of Mortuary Science. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Central State University. In 1961, Springfield citizens elected him to the City Commission, where he served until being appointed mayor by his fellow commissioners in 1966. Henry was among the first African-American mayors of a U.S. city, and is especially notable due to Springfield’s majority white population at the time. After his tenure as mayor ended in 1968, Henry was chosen by presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon for fact- finding missions in Vietnam. Robert C. Henry died on September 8, 1981.

Intersection of Rice and Clinton Streets
Elmore

, OH

Israel Harrington (1779-1841) established a tavern at Lower Sandusky (now Fremont) shortly after the War of 1812. As a judge and land speculator, Harrington influenced the organization of much of northwestern Ohio. In 1824 he traded the tavern for land a short distance from this site, where an Indian trail crossed the Portage River. Elmore grew from this settlement. Harrington and his father (also Israel Harrington, a veteran of the American Revolution) are interred here, along with many of the pioneers who transformed this section of the Black Swamp into productive farmland.

300 S. High Street (OH 37)
LaRue

, OH

The Oorang Indian football team was founded by LaRue native Walter Lingo (1890-1966), owner of the Oorang Airedale Dog Kennels. The team, comprised of Native American Indians, played in the National Football League (NFL) in 1922-23. The star player and coach was Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), a Sac and Fox Indian. Thorpe gained international fame as a two-time gold medal winner (decathlon and pentathlon) in the 1912 Olympics and was acclaimed as the “World’s Greatest Athlete.” The team gave LaRue the distinction of being the smallest community ever to have an NFL franchise.