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Isaac Scales (1786-1821) settled on this site. At his death, he was buried in his back yard. A large rock marked his grave. The land was reclaimed by Charles Olmsted who deeded it to the Township in 1835 for a public burial ground. Early settlers and veterans, who fought in six American wars including the Revolutionary, are buried here. The crypt was built in 1879.
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In 1833, Robert Busenbark deeded land to the directors of School District No. 6 for Busenbark School. Twenty years later, Robert and son David granted a right-of-way on their property for a station on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad (CH&D). One of eleven depots in Butler County, Busenbark station attracted the Kinsinger-Augspurger Warehouse and the Kennel Grain Elevator to the area in the 1860s. The railroad also enabled the cross-roads settlement to host an American championship prize fight in 1867. Fighting with bare knuckles in an outdoor ring, Mike McCoole bested Aaron Jones in a match seen by thousands. The Busenbark generating station supplied power to interurban lines until 1912 and later furnished electricity to local residents. Farmers and the Miami Poultry Yards depended on the trains and interurban to ship produce. The railroad depot disappeared between 1914 and 1916; the school closed after 1937; interurban service ended in 1939. All that remains of Busenbark is Busenbark Road, which was established in 1858.
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Acclaimed author, conservationist, and farmer Louis Bromfield was born in Mansfield in 1896. A graduate of the city’s schools, he went on to study agriculture at Cornell University in 1914, but left in 1915 to help run his family’s farm. In 1916, Bromfield enrolled in Columbia University to study journalism. As America entered World War I, he enlisted in United States Army Ambulance Service and saw action in seven major European battles. Determined to become a writer, Bromfield finished his education after the war and became a reporter. In 1921, he married Mary Appleton Wood and they would have three daughters. Bromfield’s first published novel, the Green Bay Tree (1924), was a critical and commercial success; his third novel, Early Autumn, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927. The Bromfields moved to France in 1925 where they lived until 1938. In all, he published thirty books and authored numerous stories, articles, and screenplays during his writing career.
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The village of Chagrin, founded in 1798, changed its name in 1834 to honor Dr. Westel Willoughby, a pioneer medical educator. That same year, the Willoughby University of Lake Erie was chartered, and the Willoughby Medical College opened its doors, signaling the beginning of medical education in northern Ohio. The Medical College trained 160 doctors, educated in contemporary methods of medicine, anatomy, chemistry, and surgery. Financial struggles and public outcry against grave-robbing — which supplied cadavers for anatomy classes — hampered the college’s development. The movement of faculty to Cleveland and the transfer of the state charter to Columbus hastened the demise of the Medical College in 1847, and laid the foundation for the establishment of the medical schools of Case Western and Ohio State universities. (Continued on side two)
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Before and during World War II, the aviation industry was vulnerable to adverse weather conditions, particularly thunderstorms. In 1945, Congress mandated the nation’s first large-scale, scientific study of thunderstorms. The Thunderstorm Project was a cooperative undertaking of the U.S. Weather Bureau, Army Air Force, Navy, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (predecessor of NASA). The first phase of the project was conducted in Florida in 1946 and the second phase in Clinton County in 1947, partly because weather fronts frequently pass through this area. Pilots from the Clinton County Army Air Force Base made many flights through storms of varying intensities and all stages of development. (Continued on other side)
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Augustus West, an African American, was born in Madison County, Virginia on March 20, 1814, and moved to Ohio in 1837. Legend has it that West was a runaway slave and worked as a farm laborer before designing a scheme to purchase his own farm. West, with abolitionist Alexander Beatty, traveled into slave territory no fewer than three times where the pair would sell West, help him escape, and split the profits. After splitting the profits, West used his portion of the money to purchase 177 acres of land in Fayette County where he built his “mansion.” To remain inconspicuous and secure, West built the “mansion” as far from the main road as possible. (continued on other side)
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Zion (Ribel’s) Church was built on this site in 1808. The log structure was located in the Zion Ridge Cemetery, adjacent to the first school in Thorn Township. The congregation of Zion Reformed Church is the oldest in Perry County still in existence. The church was officially organized in 1806 when the German Reformed and Lutheran congregations joined together in building the first church in Perry County. They purchased this land on June 30, 1806, and shared the building, alternating Sundays, until 1911. In 1803, Reverend Johannes Christian Koenig (John King) became the first minister to settle in Perry County and became the founding minister for the German Reformed congregation. In 1805, Reverend Wilhelm Georg Forster (William Foster) was the first Lutheran minister to settle in Perry County and was the founding minister for the Lutherans. The present Zion Reformed Church was built across the street from the original church in 1910.
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Originally belonging to the William Henry Harrison family, this cemetery was known as “The Pasture Graveyard” until the Civil War era. It became the final resting place of many members of the Harrison and Symmes families as well as other early settlers to the North Bend area. It was in use until 1884 when Maple Grove Cemetery opened as the official township cemetery.
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