, OH
A native of New Boston, Vernal G. Riffe Jr. served the 92nd House District in the Ohio General Assembly from 1959 to 1994. As Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1974 through 1994, he served longer than any other speaker in the state’s history. Widely regarded as Ohio’s most influential legislator of the late 20th century, Riffe, a Democrat, built effective political alliances across party lines. A powerful advocate for southern Ohio, he was instrumental in the growth and expansion of Shawnee State University.
, OH
Harold Hart Crane was born at this site on July 21, 1899, to Grace Hart Crane and Clarence A. Crane, the inventor of Lifesaver Candies, and lived here until the age of three. “A born poet,” according to e.e. cummings, Crane dropped out of high school in 1916 and moved from Cleveland to New York City to focus on a literary career. Mainly self-educated, Crane drew his influence from the writings of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. His major work, The Bridge (1930), uses the Brooklyn Bridge as the perfect metaphor to celebrate contemporary urban life. Uniquely lyrical in structure and full of imagery, it is considered one of the three major poetic sequences of the first half of the twentieth century along with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and William Carlos Williams’ Paterson. Crane died on April 26, 1932.
, OH
Here in 1887, frustrated locals destroyed the Six Mile Reservoir when legal efforts to close it failed. Years after any boat ran on the Wabash & Erie Canal, its water source, the 2,000-acre reservoir, became a stagnant, uncultivable breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos. Legislative attempts to abandon the canal and reservoir failed because manufacturers in Defiance used the waterway to float logs downstream. On the night of April 25, 1887, 200 men calling themselves “The Dynamiters” carried a banner that read, “No Compromise! The Reservoir Must Go!” and converged here, overpowered citizen guards, gouged the banks of the reservoir, dynamited the bulkhead and lock, and burned down the lockkeeper’s house. The next day, Governor Joseph B. Foraker denounced the acts of the “mob of lawless and rioting men.” (Continued on other side)
, OH
In 1927, Henry Abell, a master plumber, purchased a 100-acre dairy farm. When the Great Depression struck the nation two years later, Abell could find little work as a plumber and decided to develop his dairy farm. In 1934, he and his family began the Dairy, growing the farm to 500 acres and producing enough milk, ice cream, and other dairy products to supply five counties. The dairy closed in 1979, but today houses America’s Ice Cream and Dairy Museum, dedicated to the cultural history of the ice cream and dairy industry in Ohio and the United States.
, OH
In 1832 a charter was granted by the state of Ohio for construction of a railroad between Sandusky City and Dayton. The right-of-way privileges included Hardin County. The first train, of the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad, arrived in Kenton from Sandusky on July 14, 1846. The railroad was completed to Dayton in 1851. The depot on this site was erected in 1882.
, OH
During the Indian Wars of 1790-1795, the United States built a chain of forts in the contested area of what is today western Ohio. These forts were built as a result of various tribes of the region attacking the encroaching American population as they moved north of the Ohio River. In October 1791, General Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, set out on a mission to punish the tribes and on October 12, ordered his forces to build Fort Jefferson, the fourth link in that chain of forts stretching north from Fort Washington (Cincinnati) to Fort Deposit (Waterville). Each fort was generally a hard day’s march of each other, and the site was chosen because of nearness to a supply of fresh water. The fort was named in honor of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.
, OH
The village of Miltonville, located along the banks of Elk Creek, was platted in 1816 by George Bennett, Theophilus Eaglesfield, and Richard V. V. Crane. The creek served two grist mills, one built around 1804 and operated by a free black, Bambo Harris, and the second was built by George Bennett in 1815. An Indian burial ground was located on the east bank of Elk Creek near the site of Huff’s Ferry. Eagle Tavern, the area’s first three-story brick inn, was a stopover for stagecoach lines traveling the Miltonville-Trenton Turnpike. The village was known for pottery factories, vineyards and wineries, and Frisch’s brickyard, established in 1880. The United Brethren Church, organized in 1811, and Miltonville Cemetery were the sites of church conferences and celebrations. The Miltonville School operated from the 1800s to 1936, and the local post office was in service during the years 1889-1904.
, OH
In the years leading to Ohio statehood in 1803, Ames Township citizens decided to establish a stock-owned circulating library. Since cash was scarce during Ohio’s frontier era, some citizens paid for their $2.50 shares by the sale of animal pelts, which were taken to Boston for sale in the spring of 1804 by merchant Samuel Brown. There he acquired fifty-one volumes, primarily books on history, religion, travel, and biography, as the first accessions for the Western Library Association. Senator Thomas Ewing later related that he paid his share with ten raccoon skins, thus suggesting the collection’s popular name “the Coonskin Library.” Judge Ephraim Cutler was the first of many librarians who kept the library until 1861.