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General John Hunt Morgan of Kentucky led a force of Confederate calvarymen into Meigs County during a forty-six day raid north of the Ohio River. The advance forces burned Benjamin Knight’s carding mill and sawmill, the Shade River Bridge, and pillaged local businesses in Chester on July 18, 1863, while waiting for the rest of the column to catch up. This two-hour halt delayed General Morgan’s arrival at the ford at Buffington Island until after dark, allowing Union troops to arrive before he could make his escape. General Morgan surrendered eight days later near West Point in Columbiana County, the northernmost point ever reached by Confederate forces during the Civil War.
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The Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College grew out of the Cannon Act of March 22, 1870. “But let it be started,” Governor Rutherford B. Hayes told the Legislature in 1873, “with the intention of making it a great State University.” The little college opened September 17, 1873 with a faculty of seven and twenty-four students. One academic building at first housed everything. The campus, remote from the city, was surrounded by some of the original forest. In May, 1878 the name was changed to The Ohio State University. It was after 1900 before it really began to realize its educational potential, and its major growth occurred after World War II. By 1970, the Centennial Year, the university had more then met the hopes of its founders. A leading university with great manpower and physical resources, it had earned high standing in many fields covering a wide range of educational and research activities.
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Harold Hart Crane was born at this site on July 21, 1899, to Grace Hart Crane and Clarence A. Crane, the inventor of Lifesaver Candies, and lived here until the age of three. “A born poet,” according to e.e. cummings, Crane dropped out of high school in 1916 and moved from Cleveland to New York City to focus on a literary career. Mainly self-educated, Crane drew his influence from the writings of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. His major work, The Bridge (1930), uses the Brooklyn Bridge as the perfect metaphor to celebrate contemporary urban life. Uniquely lyrical in structure and full of imagery, it is considered one of the three major poetic sequences of the first half of the twentieth century along with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and William Carlos Williams’ Paterson. Crane died on April 26, 1932.
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Lucasville Cemetery was originally established as the Lucas Family burying ground, with Susannah Lucas as the first recorded burial on May 4, 1809. Susannah’s husband, Captain William Lucas, a Revolutionary War veteran, is interred here along with the first wife of Governor Robert Lucas, Eliza “Betsy” Brown Lucas. By 1816, the cemetery was used as a public burying ground. Hand carved monuments inscribed with poetry can be found in the old section. Recognized as one of the oldest cemeteries in southern Ohio, Lucasville Cemetery has interred veterans of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam.
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Irish railroad workers founded the Catholic community in Washington Court House in the 1850s, with the first Mass being held in a local shanty in 1852. In 1871, Father John B. O’Donoghue purchased three and 5/8 acres of land adjoining Washington cemetery on the outskirts of Washington Court House to build the St. Colman Church and adjacent cemetery. In 1885, much of Washington Court House, including St. Colman Church, was destroyed by a tornado. To mark the site of the church, a stone monument was erected on June 19, 1916. Over thirty-five veterans from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War I are buried in St. Colman Cemetery, and at least sixteen of these veterans were Irish immigrants. The cemetery’s highest decorated veteran, James Aloysius Ducey, served in World War I and World War II, earning numerous awards, including the Silver Star and the French Croix de Guerre.
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One of the most influential Native Americans of the 19th century, Tecumseh was born in 1768 in the Pickaway settlements on the Mad River and raised by older siblings at Old Town. A prominent Shawnee war leader who vigorously opposed American expansion, he fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers but refused to attend the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Greene Ville in 1795. Angered by purchases of Native American land in Indiana by the United States, Tecumseh promoted a pan-Indian confederacy to resist the encroachment of white settlers, traveling thousands of miles throughout the western and southern frontiers in an effort to gain supporters for the alliance. Tecumseh sided with the British during the War of 1812 and was killed at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813. His death ended hopes for a united Indian coalition.
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Lancaster’s native son, Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, was a four-star military genius. He played a major role in the Union victory during the Civil War as a brilliant commander and grand strategist who revolutionized war by incorporating psychological and economic warfare into his military tactics, culminating with the famous “March to the Sea” through Georgia. In retrospect, he declared “War is Hell.” Honoring an allegiance to the United States Constitution, he fought to preserve the Union. His self-written epitaph was “Faithful and Honorable.”
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Campbell Hill is named for Charles D. Campbell of Bellefontaine, who owned this land from 1898 to 1937. A marble stone marker atop the hill, set in 1900 by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, marks it as the highest point in Ohio at an elevation of 1549.09 feet. In 1951, the federal government established the 664th Aircraft Control and Warning (AC&W) Squadron here as part of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Its military and civilian operators used sophisticated radar and computer equipment to locate and identify aircraft as friendly or suspicious, and relayed information to a central site in Battle Creek, Michigan. This Cold War site operated until 1969. It was converted to civilian use as a vocational education center in 1974.