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The Peter J. Miller House was constructed around 1830 and is one of the last remaining pre-Civil War lakefront houses in Lorain County. The architecture is Greek Revival. Peter Miller married Ruth Houseworth in 1828. They had five children. In 1851 Peter Miller died and it’s believed that his family continued to reside on the property until 1925. The City of Avon Lake purchased the property in 1962. The house was opened for tours, and restoration proceeded, as funds were available. In 1975 the water heating system burst and caused extensive damage. In 1985 a new committee took over and was successful in restoring the house. Volunteer trustees have overseen the operation of the house as a museum since September 1989.
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On Memorial Day in 1907, interurban car 123 crashed into the rear of interurban car 129 at the intersection of 5th Street and Middle Avenue. Eight passengers died including Homer Allen, son of Elyria businessman Edgar F. Allen. Inadequate hospital facilities are believed to have contributed to some of the deaths. After the accident, Allen dedicated himself to fundraising for better hospital facilities in Elyria. Allen’s efforts came to fruition with the opening of Elyria Memorial Hospital in 1908 and the Gates Hospital for Crippled Children in 1915. In 1919, the Elyria Rotary Club endorsed E.F. Allen’s plan to help crippled children. The plan helped to establish international “crippled children’s societies” and the Easter Seals organization.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield Connecticut in 1811 and moved to Cincinnati in 1832 when her father, prominent Congregational minister Lyman Beecher became the pastor of the city’s Second Presbyterian Church and president of Lane Theological Seminary. Married to Calvin E. Stowe in 1836, she bore six of the couple’s seven children while living here. Life in the city provided Stowe with the firsthand accounts about the evils of slavery. Already a published writer, she drew upon these experiences and the death of her infant son Charley in 1849 to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Published in book form in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin almost single-handedly popularized the cause of anti-slavery, made Stowe famous, and remains an icon of the American anti-slavery movement. A prolific writer, she wrote a book a year for nearly thirty years of her life. After moving from Cincinnati in 1850, the Stowes lived in Brunswick, Maine, Andover, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, where she died in 1896.
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Known by the trade name Henderson’s Printing, the business was a mainstay of Dayton’s African American community for almost 60 years and became a printer of choice for everything from advertising materials, office forms, and a community publications called “housewife savers.” John William Henderson Sr. (1913–1991) purchased his first printing press and founded the business in 1941, bringing to it experience as an instructor of journalism and printing at Wilberforce University. The business’s first location was the family home at 421 Kearney St. After several moves, the business settled at 301 Washington Street in 1958.
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Construction of the Columbus, Piqua, and Indiana Central Railroad started in 1850 and was finished in 1854. Later referred to as the “Panhandle Railroad,” it ran from Columbus to Bradford. During the Civil War, the line carried supplies and troops and it was extended from Bradford to Richmond, Indiana. President Lincoln’s funeral train traveled the route on April 29, 1865. Eventually, three railway lines crossed Urbana: the Big Four, the Pennsylvania, and the Erie. “Corn brooms,” woolen cloth, horse carriages, and tinware were shipped by railroad to national markets and regular passenger service carried residents to destinations across the country, including Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and Washington, D.C. (Continued on other side)
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On this site stood the home of Elisha and Polly Mygatt Whittlesey and their ten children. Also here was his law office and a records office that was moved in 1965 to Pioneer Village at the Canfield Fairgrounds. Already an attorney in his home state, Elisha (1783-1863) with Polly (1787-1855) emigrated from Danbury, Connecticut in June 1806 to Canfield in the Western Reserve where he was admitted to the Ohio bar and was prosecuting attorney from 1807 to 1823. During the War of 1812, Whittlesey was adjutant to Maj. Gen. Elijah Wadsworth and later a secretary to Gen. William Henry Harrison. Whittlesey opened a law office in Canfield in 1813, specialized in land cases, and was one of the founders of Norwalk, Ohio in 1815. In 1820, he was elected to the first of two terms in the Ohio General Assembly. (Continued on other side)
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George Curry (1819-1885) was one of seven children born to a tenant sheepherder in the Cheviot Hills of Scotland. He immigrated to Ohio during the 1840s and married Scottish immigrant Agnes Milligan (1830-1893) in 1855. The couple moved to Licking County in 1865, and purchased 160-acres of farmland in 1873 to establish a sheep farm. They soon became known for their fine Spanish Merino herd. In the late nineteenth century, Ohio was a leader in the wool trade, with Licking County leading the state’s wool production by 1870. At the time of his death, George Curry was “a well-known stock dealer, and was greatly esteemed” in the community. Five generations of George and Agnes Curry’s family lived and farmed their Licking County land, until it was divided into parcels and sold in 1979.
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Built in 1832 by Robert and Elizabeth Cary, Cary Cottage was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Two of the Cary children, Alice and Phoebe, became well-known poets. Their works include reminiscences of Ohio. William Procter purchased Cary Cottage and the surrounding land in 1903 to help Florence and Georgia Trader achieve their vision of establishing Clovernook Center for the Blind. Cary Cottage became the first home in Ohio for blind women. Clovernook Center for the Blind offers rehabilitation and employment to individuals who are visually impaired.