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Born in Chillicothe in 1872, Burton Stevenson’s life was devoted to the written word as a prolific author and anthologist, and as a librarian. Following stints as a journalist while a student at Princeton University and then at newspapers in Chillicothe, Stevenson became the librarian of the city’s public library in 1899. He held the post for 58 years. Stevenson helped secure a Carnegie Library for Chillicothe, completed in 1906, and became prominent for his service during World War I. He founded a library at Camp Sherman (an army training camp north of the city), which became a model for others nationally.
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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.
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Surgeon and songwriter Brewster Higley VI was born in Rutland in 1823, the grandson of Brewster Higley IV, a veteran of the American Revolution and founder of Rutland. Higley began studying medicine at age 18 and opened his first practice in Pomeroy, moving to Indiana and then to Kansas in 1871. The following year he penned the words to the famous Western song, “Home on the Range.” This perennial favorite became the state song of Kansas in 1947. Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, And the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the skies are not cloudy all day.
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When inventor and entrepreneur Garrett Augustus Morgan sold his Traffic Signal patent to General Electric in 1923, he used the $40,000 to purchase a 121-acre farm in Huron County in 1924. Advertising “a village of our own,” Morgan established the Wakeman Country Club — one of Ohio’s early African American recreation clubs — and offered 247 lots for $60 each in “Wakeman Heights.” Located near the intersection of State Route 60 and Chenango Road, the development provided country pleasures to Blacks excluded from the Country Club lifestyle. Club membership, included in the purchase of a lot, offered fishing, hunting, swimming, and horseback riding. A restaurant, dance hall, and amphitheater provided cultural and boxing events. The club waned during World War II and no buildings from the once-thriving Wakeman Country Club remain.
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James Sr. and Rebecca (Junkin) Galloway moved with their family to Greene County from Kentucky in 1798, constructing their first home, a small log cabin. Galloway built the present structure around 1799 near the bend in the Little Miami River near what is now Goes Station on U.S. 68. In 1936, the Greene County Historical Society moved the home to the corner of Second and Monroe streets and then to the present site in 1965. The 1974 Xenia Tornado caused serious damage to the building, which has been restored and maintained by the historical society. James Sr. served as a hunter during the American Revolution, procuring game for the army, and while in Ohio, was the first treasurer of Greene County. His son James Jr. served as the first County Surveyor.
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The Quaker village of Harveysburg was founded in 1829 on land originally a part of Colonel Abraham Buford’s Revolutionary War Land Grant. Levi Lukens, a Virginia Quaker, purchased the 1000 – acre survey in 1812 and sold a portion to Rhoden Ham in 1815. Ham then sold a portion of his holdings to William Harvey, a Quaker originally from North Carolina, who developed 47 lots for a village which thrived from its beginnings. Early businesses included grist mills, a tin shop, hardware store, blacksmith shop, a large pork packing plant, a bank, and a dry goods store owned by William Harvey. Its first post office opened in 1839. Harveysburg was incorporated in 1844. The village received its name from a merchant in Cincinnati who told William Harvey that he should add burg to his name and call the place Harveysburg.
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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)
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The most notable feature of Mantua Center is the “Village Green,” which harkens back to the New England heritage of Mantua Center’s early settlers. The Green sets upon land donated by Hezekiah Nooney Sr. and was important to both the social and commercial interests of the town. The businesses located here were a furniture and cabinet maker’s shop, harness shop, blacksmith shop, post office, tannery, ashery, dry goods store, and distillery. The Methodist Episcopal Church, now the Mantua Civic Center, stands at the southwest corner of the green. Eastlawn cemetery, with a burial that dates to 1816, sits along the south border. The cemetery serves as the final resting place for soldiers of several wars, including the American Revolution, as well as many other early citizens. In 1835 Horace Sizer constructed the stone wall around the cemetery adjacent to Mantua Center Road. [continued on other side]
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