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The Walnut Grove Cemetery is the burial place of members of the Zane and Martin families. Their graves lie within the brick enclosure. The cemetery is also the resting-place of many early Martins Ferry residents, including veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. The Zane and Martin families were significant in the pioneer history of the region. Betty Zane’s legendary heroism at Fort Henry (now Wheeling, West Virginia) helped settlers resist an attack by the British and their Native American allies in September 1782. (Continued on other side)
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Dudley Nichols was born in Wapakoneta in 1895, the son of Dr. Grant and Mary Mean Nichols. He spent his childhood in a home on this site and graduated from Blume High School before leaving Ohio. After working as a journalist in New York City, he relocated to Hollywood to become a screenwriter for such films as Stagecoach, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Bells of St. Marys. In 1936 Nichols won an Oscar in the category Best Adapted Screenplay. He refused recognition for his work on The Informer because of strained relations with the Hollywood establishment. Nichols was the first person to ever refuse the prestigious award saying, “As one of the founders of the Screen Writers’ Guild, which was conceived in revolt against the Academy, and born out of disappointment with the way it functioned against employed talent-I deeply regret I am unable to accept the award.”
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On July 4, 1796, Moses Cleaveland and his survey party landed at the mouth of Conneaut Creek on the southern shore of Lake Erie in what is today Conneaut, Ohio. The Connecticut Land Company, a private land speculation enterprise, had hired General Cleaveland as its agent to survey the Connecticut Western Reserve lands and to found a settlement along the Cuyahoga River, later named Cleveland. Group members pitched tents and erected a crude shelter to protect the provisions and survey equipment before celebrating the independence of the new country with toasts and salutes. The next day they organized into field groups to begin the historic survey of measuring the townships and ranges of the Western Reserve.
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Here, on September 6, 1918, Bryan’s Air Mail Field began operations as one of Ohio’s first official airfields with the arrival of a survey flight to establish air mail service between New York and Chicago. Scheduled service began on July 1, 1919, and stretched west to San Francisco on September 8, 1920, completing the 2,666 mile U.S transcontinental air mail route. Flying the Curtiss JN-4H “Jenny,” R-4, Standard JR-1B, and later, the De Havilland DH-4, aviators pioneered cross continental flight in open cockpit biplanes without radios or electronic navigational aids and reduced coast to coast mail delivery from 87 hours by rail to 33 hours by air.
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One of the most effective political orators of his era, Tom Corwin (nicknamed “the Wagon Boy” for his War of 1812 service) resided here from 1839 until his death. A Whig stump speaker known for his wit and eloquence, he was elected governor of Ohio in 1840 and campaigned for William Henry Harrison in his presidential victory that year. Corwin served six terms in Congress and one in the Senate, where he spoke out against the Mexican War in 1847. He also served as secretary of the treasury in the Fillmore administration and as President Lincoln’s minister to Mexico. Built and first occupied by Corwin’s brother-in-law Phineas Ross in 1818, the Corwin House is representative of Federal-style architecture of this period.
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During the summer of 1863, General John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate cavalry leader from Kentucky, invaded southern Ohio with 2,460 mounted men. Throughout the campaign Morgan’s men plundered and looted before being captured by Union forces. On July 17, Morgan led his troops into Wilkesville stealing horses, sacking stores, and robbing private citizens. That night Morgan and some of his troops took lodging and meals with his first cousin Ruth Virginia Althar Cline and her husband Dr. William Cline. Morgan’s troops camped near the house of John and Elzia Levis where Elzia cooked for the men for fear they would harm her family. Additional soldiers of the raiding party stayed on the village square. Legend has it that while Morgan slept at the Cline Mansion, his black servant stole his looted money, and abolitionists Dr. Cline and Abraham Morris, helped him escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
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In 1787, the construction of Fort Steuben was completed by Captain John Francis Hamtramck and soldiers of the 1st American Regiment, who were sent to the frontier by the United States government to remove illegal squatters and protect government surveyors from American Indian raids. The surveyors were platting the First Seven Ranges of the Northwest Territory. The surveyed land was sold for settlement or offered to soldiers as payment for military service during the Revolutionary War. Consequently, the states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin were formed from the settlement of the Northwest Territory. Fort Steuben was named after Baron Frederich Wilhelm Augustus Steuben, who had served in the Revolutionary War and from which the town derived its name. Captain Hamtramck abandoned the fort in 1787 by order of Colonel Josiah Harmar, and by 1790 the remains of the fort had disappeared. Fort Steuben has been reconstructed on its original location.
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Col. William Crawford’s army of 480 Pennsylvania volunteers passed near this site on June 3 to attack the Indians near Upper Sandusky. On June 4-5 they encountered a combined force of Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, and, unexpectedly, Butler’s Rangers, a British unit from Detroit. The expedition was a disaster; about 300 Americans escaped. On June 6, about six miles west of this marker, the opposing forces met again at the “Battle of Olentangy.” With minor losses, the Americans continued their retreat, reaching the Ohio River on June 13. Crawford was captured, and burned at the stake on June 11.
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