, OH
African-American history began in Piqua with the settlement of Arthur Davis in 1818 and expanded with the settlement of the freed Randolph slaves of Virginia in 1846. African-American religious heritage in Piqua began with the Cyrene African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1853 and the Second Baptist Church (Park Avenue) in 1857. Segregated education started in 1854 at the Cyrene Church and ended in 1885 at the Boone Street School. Several Piqua African-American men circumvented Ohio’s early ban against Civil War military service by joining the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. Following the Civil War an African-American Co-operative Trade Association established Piqua’s first African-American retail store. Continued on/from other side)
, OH
Heritage Farm is a typical mid-19th century farm of the Ohio Western Reserve and has been restored and preserved. The original parcel of land consisted of 325 acres, which was purchased by David Berdan in 1818. The farmstead has been home to Abram and Sarah Berdan, William and Rachel Pitkin, George and Julia Tibbitts, and Peter and Mary Groening. The Heritage Farm Museum site consists of 4 acres with a house, privy, carriage house, corncrib, granary, equipment shed, barn, milk house, and chicken house, and was open to the public on July 1, 2000.
, OH
Judge William H. West of Bellefontaine led a distinguished career in law, public service, and politics. In 1854 West helped found the Republican party in Ohio and six years later he participated in Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for the presidency. West served consecutive terms in both houses of Ohio’s General Assembly from 1857 to 1865 and was elected the state’s attorney general at the end of the Civil War. He became an Ohio Supreme Court justice in 1871 and in 1877 was his party’s nominee for governor. After losing his sight, Judge West retired from the court but continued to practice law. At the Republican party’s convention in 1884, the “Blind Man Eloquent” nominated James G. Blaine as the G.O.P.’s presidential candidate. Defining Republicans as a party for “union, freedom, humanity, and progress,” the judge’s nomination speech sparked a celebration that historian David McCullough described as “one of the most memorable events in the whole history of national political conventions.”
, OH
The Caldwell Downtown Historic District is the historic commercial and governmental core of the Village of Caldwell, which was founded in 1857 on farmland owned by Joseph and Samuel Caldwell. Caldwell serves as the county seat of Noble County, the last of Ohio’s 88 counties to be organized. The agricultural community prospered and by 1873 was the second-largest producer of tobacco in Ohio. The Pennsylvania Railroad arrived in 1872, and the development of salt, oil, coal, and natural gas extraction companies followed during the 1880s. Two separate fires in 1897 devastated portions of the north and south quadrants of the district. As a result, Caldwell formed a volunteer fire department and the Village Council introduced legislation prohibiting construction of wood buildings within a block of the public square. (Continued on other side)
, OH
On July 23, 1863, General John Hunt Morgan entered Guernsey County with 600 Confederate cavalrymen, the remnant of a 2,000-man diversionary raiding force that had traversed Kentucky, Indiana, and southern Ohio. Morgan’s forces halted in Old Washington on the morning of July 24 for rest and provisions. Three pursuing Union cavalry units under Brigadier General James M. Shackelford (1st and 3rd Kentucky, 14th Illinois) assembled on Cemetery Hill to the south and began firing on the Confederates in town. The raiders returned fire. In the exchange three Confederates were killed and several wounded. Eight were captured. Outflanked, Morgan proceeded northeast to Columbiana County, where he surrendered two days later. The three Confederate casualties are interred in the cemetery behind this site.
, OH
In 1884 the Ohio General Assembly authorized “the burial of the body of any honorably discharged union soldier, sailor or marine of this state who shall hereafter die without leaving means sufficient to defray funeral expenses.” Permanent government-issued headstones have been provided to veterans since the late 19th century. Between 1884 and the 1930s, Washington Cemetery buried 47 white soldiers (including 15 unknown) and 35 African-American soldiers. These veterans served in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and WWI. They are remembered for the sacrifices they made. In the fall of 2001, the cemetery underwent significant renovations, in which students of the Washington Senior High School Research History program aided in identifying the buried soldiers and restoring and replacing the gravestones. Here in Soldiers’ Row, the words of local United States Colored Troops veteran, Albert Bird, echo centuries later: “We have suffered to save the country; we ought to be remembered.”
, OH
Frederick Rice was born on September 29, 1753, near Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania and moved to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania around 1766. During the American Revolution he served under George Washington at Valley Forge and fought in the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, in which American forces surprised and captured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries. He served for two more years as a spy working against Native American tribes in western Pennsylvania. After his service he married Catherine Lauffer, and they raised eleven children to adulthood. Rice chose this 320-acre site, transferred to him in a deed signed by President James Monroe on May 21, 1821, because it offered excellent springs. He assigned the west half to son Simon and the east half to son Barnhart in 1822. Ownership remained in the Rice family until acquired for the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station in 1891, renamed the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in 1965.
, OH
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, England lost the American Revolution and ceded to its former colonies land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. By this time, pioneer settlers had reached the eastern bank of the Ohio River, but the Ohio Country, located west and north of the river, was still considered Indian Territory. The Indian tribes desperately defended their hold on this land. On August 20, 1794, United States forces led by Major General Anthony Wayne defeated an Indian alliance at the Battle of Fallen Timbers fought near modern-day Toledo. One year later, on August 3, 1795, the largest assemblage of northwestern Indian representatives at a peace settlement signed the Treaty of Greene Ville, which effectively ceded all land south of the Greene Ville Treaty line to the Americans. The Fort Laurens site was a reference point in the Treaty line. The Ohio Country was then rapidly settled, and in 1808, Tuscarawas County was organized.
614.297.2300
Contact Us
