, OH
Paul Eugene Brown was born September 7, 1908, to Lester and Ida Belle Brown at their Norwalk home on 7 West Elm Street. He attended Benedict Elementary until his family moved to Massillon, where his football career began. Although small, Brown was a successful quarterback for Massillon’s Washington High School and Miami University in Oxford. In 1932, he returned to Massillon as head coach. Compiling an 80-8-2 record, he instituted new ideas now considered commonplace in football: the playbook, hand signals, and sending in plays. Ohio State University hired Brown in 1941 and he coached the Buckeyes to their National Championship in 1942. After WWII, Brown agreed in 1945 to coach Cleveland’s new pro team. Despite his objections, fans voted to name the new team after Coach Brown. (Continued on other side)
, OH
In 1796, surveyors for the Connecticut Land Company designated an area five miles square surrounding this place as Range 7, Township 7 of the Connecticut Western Reserve. A landowner’s expedition on June 15, 1798, arrived at the northwest corner of the township. One of its members, Thomas Umberfield (Umberville) brought his family to the center of the township (now Burton Village) on June 21, 1798. Here they built the first home, a simple log cabin located southwest of the spring at the end of Spring Street. The owner of the largest parcel of land in the township, Titus Street, was given the honor of naming the township. He named it after his son, Burton.
, OH
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government established the Civilian Conservation Corps, known as the CCC or triple C’s under the direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program. Nearly three and a half million men between the ages of 18-25 were employed throughout the nine-year program and worked on projects that included road construction, flood control, reforestation, and soil erosion prevention and creating state and local parks. The CCC had other names like “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” “Tree Troopers,” and “Soil Soldiers.” CCC workers were paid $30 a month for a forty-hour workweek, with $25 of the salary being sent back to the workers’ homes. The CCC remained in effect until 1942 after the Great Depression had ended and unemployment was down due to the creation of jobs associated with World War II.
, OH
The Rev. Jacob Ward founded the Brunswick Methodist Episcopal Church in April 1817 with 13 members: Rhoda Stow, John and Lucy Stearns, John and Hannah Hulet, Samuel and Sarah Tillotson, Thomas and Phoebe Stearns, Solomon and Polly Harvey, Lydia Crittenden, and Olivia Ashley. In 1830, John and Lucy Stearns donated land for a cemetery, which included space for a church. A new church was completed in 1872. Bricks used for the building were fired locally and the first windows were glazed with clear glass and protected by shutters. In 1916, the church was extensively remodeled and redecorated. Stained glass replaced the clear glass, the church bell was relocated to the newly-added tower, and the main entrance was moved from the center of the building to the vestibule in the tower. (Continued on other side)
, OH
In 1972 a group of Welsh-Americans chartered the Welsh-American Heritage Museum to preserve Welsh history and culture, and to preserve the Welsh Congregational Church. The old brick church was where songs of praises rang, as the Welsh gathered and sang beloved hymns of their homeland in four-part harmony. The church is a link in a long, unbroken chain of memories and still serves the community as a center of Welsh-American activities and a keeper of the community’s heritage. The red dragon and daffodil are symbols of Wales.
, OH
The Episcopal Society of Huron was organized in 1837, the Rev. F. M. Levenworth, pastor. The cornerstone of this building was laid May 23, 1838; it is the oldest church building in Huron, standing near what had been the original southern limit of the village. The Rev. Samuel Marks became pastor in 1839 and continued for over 40 years. This marker commemorates the church’s sesquicentennial observance in 1988.
, OH
Union Baptist Church, established in 1819, is one of Ohio’s early Black churches. Its pastor and members were active on the Underground Railroad from that early date. Between the 1840s-1860s Black churches along the route to and from nearby Poke Patch assisted over 200 escaped slaves. Members met in their homes until able to obtain a log cabin (circa 1879) on a Blackfork farm. In 1919, a larger church was built on land given by The Cambria Clay Products Company. The adjacent cemetery has over fifty veterans from the Civil, Spanish American, both World, Korean, and Vietnam wars. Donald Russell Long, laid to rest in 1966, received a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor. Union Baptist Church, the historic foundation of the Poke Patch-Blackfork community, celebrates an annual Church Anniversary to honor its legacy.
, OH
In 1817, Revolutionary War veteran and Camden co-founder James Moore Sr. and his wife, Mary, deeded a plot to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) to erect a place of worship. Although a church was not built until 1825, the earliest burial stone recovered on the plot was that of five-year-old Simon P. Zimmerman, dated 1818. Many subsequently interred were victims of the cholera epidemic of 1849. Felix and Rachel Marsh, in 1852, sold an adjacent one-acre plot to the MEC trustees “for a graveyard.” The expanded cemetery became known as Orchard Hill Cemetery due to the nearby fruit orchards. Prominent citizens of early Camden as well as veterans of American conflicts from the Revolution through the Civil War are buried in the cemetery. (Continued on the other side)