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In 1912, the president of the Public Library Association in Paulding requested funding from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to build a library in Paulding. At first the Carnegie Corporation of New York refused, stating that it only provided funding to communities with larger populations, but when the Library Association said it would serve the entire county, which had a larger population, the request was granted. As a result Paulding became the site for the first “county” Carnegie library in the United States, built for a total cost of $40,000. Carnegie provided funding for 2,811 libraries, of which 1,946 were built in the United States. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the Paulding County Carnegie Library continues to service the needs of all citizens of Paulding County.
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Here, on April 6, 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, a contingent of Delaware Christian Indians, led by John Heckwelder, an assistant to Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, founded the last of five missions to occupy the Tuscarawas Valley between May 3, 1772 and September 8, 1781. The mission was located immediately adjacent to the west bank of the Tuscarawas River. Eighteen months later, British led Indian soldiers forcibly removed to the Upper Sandusky region all 400 of the Indian converts then living in the Tuscarawas Valley at the New Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem missions. Seventeen years later, Zeisberger returned to the Tuscarawas Valley and founded his last mission at Goshen on October 4, 1798.
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Begun in 1833, the Miami Extension Canal linked the Miami Canal in Dayton to the Wabash & Erie Canal at Junction. Engineering difficulties, epidemics, and the Panic of 1837 delayed completion of the Extension until June 1845, when the packet boat Banner first navigated the almost 250 miles distance from Cincinnati to Toledo in three days. New Bremen was the northern terminus for a period while work continued northward on the Extension. Designated the Miami & Erie Canal in 1849, it served as the primary avenue of commerce and military transport, and as a “post road” before the railroad era. The Miami & Erie remained in use until 1913, long after the canal era had passed. Along the course of the canal, New Bremen was the approximate midway point between Cincinnati and Toledo.
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The Ohio General Assembly established the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station in 1882. From its inception until 1892, the Station occupied 17 acres on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University before relocating to 470 acres in Wayne County. In 1965, the Station changed its name to the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) to more accurately reflect its mission and programs. In 1982, the Center formally merged with The Ohio State University. Today, the Center encompasses nearly 2,100 acres in Wayne County with 10 branches located across the state for a total of approximately 7,100 acres dedicated to agricultural research.
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One of Ohio’s earliest colleges, Alma College (earlier known as Alma Academy) was founded in 1818 and became Franklin College in 1825. Its founders were primarily of Scots-Irish descent who had settled in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio and were of the Presbyterian faith. Many nineteenth-century national and international leaders attended this school, including 8 U.S. Senators, 9 U.S. Representatives, 32 State Legislators, and 2 Governors. Notables include John Bingham, author of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and chief prosecutor of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassins; Civil War General George W. McCook; Ohio Supreme Court Justice John Welch; and Joseph Ray, publisher of the universally popular school text Ray’s Arithmetic. The slavery question bitterly divided the school, and its enrollment declined in the years following the Civil War. Franklin College closed in 1921, and its charter was later transferred to Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio.
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On February 10, 1899, a United States Weather Bureau Station, operated by Steve Eveland, in the small hamlet of Milligan, Ohio, now part of McLuney, reported a temperature of 39 degrees below zero. To date, this is the lowest temperature officially recorded in Ohio. Milligan’s location in the flat valley of the Moxahala Creek made it susceptible to cold air masses drained from surrounding elevations. The record-breaking temperature in Milligan was recorded in the midst of a severe cold spell throughout Ohio that began on February 8 and ended on February 15, 1899 when temperatures reached a few degrees above zero. While Milligan can no longer be found on a map, it has been known as the coldest spot in Ohio for over one hundred years.
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Ross County’s first courthouse was Ohio’s first statehouse. The courthouse was erected on the Public Square in 1801. Thomas Worthington, one of the building’s superintendents, laid out the foundation. Chillicothe was the last capital of the Northwest Territory, and the final session of the territorial legislature met in the courthouse in 1801. Ohio’s first constitution was written here in 1802. On March 1, 1803, Ohio’s first General Assembly convened in the building, making it the statehouse. During a time of strained relations between Native Americans and settlers in Ohio, the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh delivered a speech here in 1807 to reassure citizens that the Indians would remain peaceful. The courthouse served as the statehouse from 1803 to 1810 and from 1812 to 1816. The building was razed in 1852 to make way for the present courthouse.
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Henry Simon Winzeler, founder of The Ohio Art Company, was born in 1876 in the Winzeler family home just north of this site in Burlington. As a young man, he opened a dental practice in 1900 in the Murbach Building in Archbold on the corner of North Defiance and East Holland streets. Making a dramatic career change eight years later, Winzeler, inspired by an oval mirror in his aunt’s clothing store, started a company to manufacture picture frames. Calling it The Ohio Art Company, venture capital came from Winzeler’s Hub Grocery that he opened in August 1908 located on North Defiance Street. His picture frame company was opened in the Spoerle and Baer Building, a few doors down on the same street. [Continued on other side]
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