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This cemetery stands as evidence of a once thriving African American farming community established in the 1820s. With the aid of community leader, Alexander “Sandy” Harper (c.1804-1889), Captina, originally called Guinea, became a stop on the Underground Railroad, a national network, shrouded in secrecy, of volunteers who directed slaves northward. Harper is buried in this cemetery, along with Benjamin Oliver McMichael (1865-1941), an educator who taught for twelve years in Captina/ Flatrock at a segregated schoolhouse. There are 113 known burials in the cemetery, including nine Civil War veterans. At this site in 1825, an African Methodist Episcopal Church was established to serve the community. Many of its members left Captina to work in cities, but the church continued services until 1962. The building then fell into disrepair and collapsed during a windstorm in 1978.
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Around 1900, the newly formed Litchfield Cemetery and Park Association needed a band to lead processions to and from the town cemetery on Memorial Day. The Litchfield Town Band was born. Urial Crow served as its first director, so the group was sometimes known as “The Crow Band”. Although there were periods when the band was inactive, it has been a community institution for more than a century. The group plays a broad repertoire of standards and marches by John Philip Sousa at Memorial Day and other commemorations, ice cream socials, and various community events. Directors have included Urial Crow, Loren Hayes (c. 1915), Floyd Koons (mid-1920s), Raymond Bradley (1935-1939), Hal Leach (1939-1945), Kenneth Bradley (1946-2011) and Cynthia Bennett (since 2012).
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The Friends Burying Grounds, once located here on Lot 17 in the Village of Damascus, is the oldest cemetery in Butler Township, Columbiana County. Expansion of the Friends Church necessitated the re-location of the Friends Burying Grounds. No markers were found to identify the graves of the 118 persons exhumed here. The exhumed remains were re-interred in the Damascus Cemetery on Valley Road, one block east of this location. The exhumation (2001-2002) was directed by Prof. Dr. John White of Youngstown State University, assisted by staff, students, and volunteers.
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Settlement came to Round Bottom in early 1795 following the end of the Indians Wars in what would become Ohio (1791-1795). Pioneers Allen Devol, David Wilson, Nathaniel Cushing, Peter Shaw, and Andrew Story came down the Muskingum River to this rich and extensive alluvion shoreline where agriculture became a way of life for them and later settlers. They built the Round Bottom Schoolhouse in the fall of 1795 from bricks fired in nearby fields. The school is one of the oldest one-room brick schoolhouses in the state.
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The Good Hope Cemetery is the final resting place for veterans of many of America’s wars, including David Jones. Jones earned the Medal of Honor as a member of Company I of the 54th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Union Army. During Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign, Jones volunteered for a mission known as the “Forlorn Hope.” It was the lead assault of a major attack and meant certain death or wounding for soldiers in the attacking party. Jones’ Forlorn Hope was part of Grant’s attempt on May 22, 1863 to storm Vicksburg’s defenses and take the city, avoiding a siege. The attack did not succeed. Of the 150 soldiers who volunteered for the assault, many were killed or wounded, including Jones. After a 47 day siege, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863—the same day as the Union’s victory at Gettysburg.
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Named for Grace Perkins, wife of Akron founder Col. Simon Perkins, Grace School was constructed in 1890 in the popular Jacobethan architectural style. Now known as Five Points, this area was not urbanized at that time; the Akron Rural Cemetery was nearby. Additions were constructed in 1918 and 1964. The school was decommissioned in 1977, but served as an Adult Service Center for the Akron Board of Education.
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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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The U.S. Army built a two-story blockhouse on a nearby hill during the War of 1812. The blockhouse was one of a series of such structures erected along the Greenville Treaty line to guard against Native Americans who supported the British during the conflict. After the war, Daniel Markley, one of Green Camp Township’s first white inhabitants, settled near the blockhouse. In 1963, the graves of twenty-five prehistoric Glacial Kame Indians and six white settlers were discovered near the blockhouse site. Seventeen War of 1812 veterans and eight others were also buried there. These bodies were subsequently removed and reinterred at Green Camp Cemetery. An abandoned right-of-way of the Erie Railroad, Dayton line, also passes through the area. Prairie grasses that once dominated parts of Marion County can still be found in the vicinity.