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Near this site stood the former Custer Homestead of Emanuel and Maria Custer from 1856-1865. For two years it was the boyhood home of Captain Tom Custer, younger brother of famed General George Armstrong Custer. At age 16, Tom misled a recruiter in neighboring Gilead, Ohio about his age and enlisted in the Civil War. He later earned two Congressional Medals of Honor, the first person in history to do so, for capturing enemy flags at Namozine Church on April 3, 1865 and at Sailor’s Creek on April 6, 1865. His parents relocated to Monroe, Michigan during the Civil War. Tom continued serving in the Army during the Indian Wars in the West and often visited his brother Nevin in Tontogany. He, along with his brothers George and Boston, brother-in-law James Calhoun, and nephew Harry Reed, were killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.
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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]
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In search of a westward-flowing river, French explorer and trader Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) mounted an inland expedition from the south shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Grand River in the fall of 1669. Thought to be the first European to see the Ohio River, La Salle journeyed up the Grand River and portaged to a tributary of the Ohio; from there he descended as far as the falls at Louisville, Kentucky. La Salle’s explorations both expanded the fur trade and helped to consolidate French claims to the Mississippi River valley. French dominance in Ohio ended following British victory in the French and Indian War (1754-1763).
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Frances Dana (Barker) Gage was born on October 12, 1808, in Marietta. She married James L. Gage in 1829 and they raised eight children, including four sons who served with Union forces during the Civil War. Throughout much of her life, Frances was deeply involved with the Temperance and Anti-Slavery movements and Women’s Rights issues. Presiding over the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron in 1851, she invited Sojourner Truth to give her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. The Gage family moved in 1853 to St. Louis, the western extension of the Mason-Dixon Line, where her life was threatened whenever she spoke out against slavery. During the Civil War, she traveled south to aid Union soldiers and teach freed slaves. Though crippled and permanently disabled by a stroke, she continued to lecture on social issues until 1867. Frances Dana Gage died on November 10, 1884, in Greenwich, Connecticut.
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The Indian Point Site contains the remains of a prehistoric Native American earthen enclosure, officially known as the Lyman site, named after a former property owner. The site contains two earthen walls that are bordered by ditches. Steep cliffs provide natural barriers on two sides of the enclosure. Archaeological digs have uncovered many artifacts here, including pottery sherds, tools, pipes, and beads. There is evidence that the walls were built around 140 B.C., and the site was occupied again around 1500 A.D. by the Whittlesey Tradition people. It is uncertain if the site was a village or was used as a ceremonial center. After 1650 A.D., the area became a neutral hunting ground for various historic tribes.
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During the American Revolution, Fort Laurens became the only Continental military fort in what would later be Ohio. Continental army troops and militia, led by General Lachlan McIntosh, built the fort between November-December 1778. Named for the president of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, the army intended to use the fort to launch an offensive against British-held Fort Detroit, observe enemy movements, and stage attacks on British-allied Indian villages. To fulfill terms in the “Treaty with the Delaware” (1778), McIntosh chose a site about two miles south of the “Great Crossing” on the Tuscarawas River in friendly Lenape (Delaware) territory. (Continued on other side)
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With the intention of becoming a “gentleman farmer,” John Johnston began development of his Upper Piqua farm in 1808 with a two-story log cabin and this double pen log barn. The surrounding outer sheds were built to protect the log pens from the weather. One of the oldest structures of its kind in Ohio, the barn is built around two hand-hewn log pens, each sixty-foot square. The barn served the family’s farming activities and was a storage facility for trade goods Johnston needed when the farm was the Piqua Indian Agency, 1811-1829.
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Thomas Burk Sr. purchased a quarter section of federal land here in 1804. A school house was erected on this purchase in 1809. That same year, a road from Williams’ Mill (Millville) was blazed and a saw mill was built on Indian Creek west of this marker. Obadiah Welliver opened a tavern on his purchase in 1812. Burk sold his grist mill in 1818 and it is thought that the hamlet around this mill was called Dogtown because of a vicious dogfight there. In 1825, Reily Post Office was established at Welliver’s Tavern. That year a woolen mill with textile production machinery was built by Elias Sayres, near the saw mill. Multi-millionaire Elias Jackson (“Lucky”) Baldwin (1828-1909), the founder of Santa Anita Racetrack near Los Angeles, was born here.