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On a forested hillside south of New Straitsville, the spacious 1000 square foot Robinson’s Cave offered a secluded location with great acoustics where large groups of Hocking Valley coal miners could meet in secret. Beginning in about 1870, labor-organizing meetings were held at the cave by various emerging unions including the Knights of Labor. New Straitsville resident Christopher Evans, a well-known union organizer, used Robinson’s Cave to lead miners throughout the long Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884-1885. These meetings gave the miners a voice in the formation of a national organization called the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers, later renamed the National Progressive Union. The cave was also where non-union miners met to plan to set the Columbus & Hocking Coal & Iron Company mines on fire in a desperate attempt to end the Hocking Valley Strike. [continued on other side]
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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.
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The Society of Separatists of Zoar built the Zoar Town Hall in 1887 when the village was formally incorporated. Established in 1817 by German religious dissidents, Zoar became one of the most successful experiments in communal living during the 19th century. Early hardships encouraged the Zoarites, in 1819, to establish a communal system to ensure economic and social security. The Society disbanded in 1898. The Zoar Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.
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Daniel Arthur Rudd was born into slavery on August 7, 1854, in Bardstown, Kentucky. He became a newspaperman, lecturer, publicist, and tireless advocate for the Roman Catholic Church. After the Civil War Rudd moved to Springfield. Baptized and raised in Catholicism, he joined St. Raphael Parish, where the philosophy of racial equality offered by the church solidified his vision of justice. By 1885 he had established his own weekly newspaper, The Ohio State Tribune. He rebranded it The American Catholic Tribune (ACT) after moving to Cincinnati. Rudd claimed ACT was the only Catholic newspaper owned by an African American. At the height of its popularity in 1892, the publication had a circulation of 10,000. In 1893 Rudd was asked to chair the Afro-American Press Association, representing more than 200 black-owned newspapers.
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On October 3, 1920 the first game matching two professional teams of the American Professional Football Association, a league that would become the National Football League (NFL), was held on this field within Triangle Park. In that game, the Dayton Triangles defeated the Columbus Panhandles 14-0. The Triangle’s Lou Partlow scored the first touchdown and George “Hobby” Kinderdine kicked the first extra point. Three factories founded by Dayton businessmen Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering sponsored the Dayton Triangles team. The factories were the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), Dayton Metal Products Company (D.M.P.Co.), and Domestic Engineering Company (DECO), later call Delco-Light. They formed an industrial triangle of plants in downtown Dayton.
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On March 11, 1817, Rev. Roger Searle of Connecticut met with a group of settlers at the home of Zenas Hamilton in Medina Township and founded St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. On April 10, 1817, the congregants cleared land near Weymouth and built a log church, which served as a school, place of worship for other dominations, and meeting house. The congregation eventually moved to Medina to serve the village’s growing population. Around 1883, noted Detroit architect Gordon W. Lloyd designed a new church in the Victorian Gothic style, thereafter described as “incomparably the finest Episcopal church in any country town at the time.” The first service was held on December 19, 1884. St. Paul’s was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and is the oldest congregation in Medina County still in existence.
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Jabez Lyman Burrell (1806-1900), originally from Massachusetts, built this house in 1852. Burrell made his living as a cattleman and farmer, but devoted much of his time serving the cause of abolitionism, helping slaves, who had escaped the South, get to Sheffield and from there to Lorain and across Lake Erie to Canada. He was also devoted to equal education for all, providing funding to a freedmen’s school in Selma, Alabama, and serving as a trustee of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, well known for educating African Americans and women. From 1884 to 1934, this was the home of Henry Churchill King (1858-1934), who was the president of Oberlin College from 1902-1927. The Kings added the porches and rear wing and made their home a social center for the college and community. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a City of Oberlin Historic Landmark.
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The Granville Congregational Church erected this building in 1833 for its Female Academy and a church meeting room. The school prospered and, in 1837, moved to make way for the Granville Male Academy. The Welsh Congregational Church purchased the structure in 1863 and converted its two stories into a single room with full-height windows. Welsh language services were held here for sixty years. Granville Grange #2230 met in the building from 1923 to 1973. It then became Granville Historical Society’s property and, in 1981, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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