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, 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)
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Clifton Gorge is a classic example of a canyon cut into dolomite and shale bedrock that dates to the Silurian Period 400 million years ago. Created by meltwater released from the retreating continental glacier some 15,000 years ago, the cool, moist gorge has maintained a diversity of native plants, such as the red baneberry bush, that are now rare elsewhere in Ohio. The Little Miami River powered grist and cotton mills, paper factories, and breweries in the gorge during the nineteenth century. In 1973 the upper gorge became a state nature preserve.
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In 1817 the United States government signed a treaty with a number of Native American tribes in northern Ohio, including the Seneca Indians. The Fort Meigs or Maumee Rapids Treaty bound the Seneca tribe to cede all claims to land north of the Greenville Treaty line, and in return they received a 40,000 acre reservation at Lower Sandusky (Fremont) and a $500 annuity to be paid each year in perpetuity. The reservation’s boundary began 1.5 miles north of here and extended 6.5 miles to the south. The width of the reservation was 8 miles with the western boundary at the Sandusky River. Beginning in 1830, with a policy of Indian removal developed by the administration of Andrew Jackson, tribes east of the Mississippi River were pressured to move to reservations in the West. The Seneca Indians moved to northeast Oklahoma in 1831.
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Descendants of slaves, who may have reached Ohio through the Underground Railroad, and other African Americans, formed the community of Flatwoods in the southwest part of Bokescreek Township. This one-room schoolhouse was built circa 1868 for African American children of Flatwoods and remained open until 1923. Remnants of past lessons remain inscribed on the chalkboard. The schoolhouse was threatened with demolition in 1999 and later moved to Veteran’s Park. The Logan County Historical Society owns and maintains the site as a living history museum.
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The first African-American elected to government office in the United States, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) won the office of Clerk of Brownhelm Township on April 2, 1855. Born in Virginia and raised in Chillicothe, Langston graduated from Oberlin College in 1849 and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1854, becoming Ohio’s first black attorney. He served as the first president of the National Equal Rights League in 1864, and subsequently as professor of law, dean, and acting president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1890, he became Virginia’s first black congressman. Throughout his career Langston set a personal example of self-reliance in the struggle for justice for African-Americans.
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The Muskingum River forms at the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Walhoning rivers at Roscoe Village and flows south approximately 100 miles to the Ohio River at Marietta. During the first half of the nineteenth century, fugitive slaves from Virginia crossed the Ohio River and followed the Underground Railroad lines north toward Canada. Four Underground Railroad lines converged in Roscoe Village on the Muskingum River. The first followed the river north out of Marietta through Rainbow and Waterford. An Ohio River crossing at Belpre connected runaways with the Muskingum River at Putnam in Muskingum County. Two others came from the west through Granville in Licking County and New Concord in Muskingum County. From Roscoe Village, fugitive slaves sometimes traveled from station to station along the Ohio-Erie Canal that was completed in 1825. The canal ended at Lake Erie where the runaway slaves were assisted in crossing into Canada.
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After completing Fort Winchester, Brigadier General James Winchester ordered his troops to cross to the north side of the Maumee River. The troops occupied the new site, Camp #2, from November 3-10, 1812. An earthen fortification was built for protection. Militia soldier Elias Darnell recorded on November 4th that “The weather is very rainy, which makes our situation extremely unpleasant…. Four of this army have gone to the silent tomb to-day never more to visit their friends in Kentucky; the fever is very prevalent in camp; nearly every day there is one or more buried.” Winchester referred to a burial place for the encampment in his General Orders for November 5th. Camp #2 proved to be too wet and marshy, Winchester ordered his army to move to six miles down river to a site called Camp #3.
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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.
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