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The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 defined the boundary of the northern and southern tier of states to be carved out of the Northwest Territory, as a line drawn east from the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan until it intersects Lake Erie. Controversy over the exact location of that line led to the 1834-1837 boundary dispute between the State of Ohio and Michigan Territory. Passions ran high as everyone on both sides of the boundary knew that a great port city (Toledo) would emerge in the disputed territory. President Andrew Jackson settled the dispute in 1836 when he signed an act that recognized the current border between Ohio and Michigan, giving Michigan 9,000 square miles of Upper Peninsula land and awarding the disputed strip of approximately 470 square miles to Ohio. Michigan then joined the nation as a state the following year.
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One of Ohio’s greatest manhunts ended here on the morning of July 23, 1948. Robert M. Daniels and John C. West, parolees from the state prison in Mansfield, had gone on a killing spree that left six people dead. Driving west on U.S. Route 224 in a stolen auto transport truck, the pair approached this intersection and encountered a roadblock. It was manned by Van Wert County Sheriff Roy Shaffer, Frank Friemoth, the county game warden, and Sergeant Leonard Conn of the Van Wert city police. West was driving the truck; Daniels was asleep in a car overhead. As Sheriff Shaffer climbed onto the truck and apprehended Daniels, West leaped from the cab and shot Conn in the chest and Friemoth in the arm. Conn returned fire and killed West. The officers survived their wounds. Daniels was convicted, sentenced to die, and electrocuted at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus on January 3, 1949. This marker pays tribute to all law enforcement officers who risk their lives to protect the citizens of their communities.
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Described as a Columbus “institution” when he died in 1969, Emerson C. Burkhart was born on a farm in Union Township, Putnam County in 1905. The son of Albert and Nora Burkhart, Emerson graduated from Kalida High School in 1924 and from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1927. After studying art in Provincetown, Massachusetts and in New York City, he settled in Columbus and, in 1937, married Mary Ann Martin, an artists’ model who devoted herself to his career. Burkhart was a prolific painter and completed an estimated 3,000 pictures during his 40-year career, including street scenes, rural landscapes, and more than 250 self-portraits, once noting his face was “cheaper than a model’s and always there.”
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Begun in 1833, the Miami Extension Canal linked the Miami Canal in Dayton to the Wabash & Erie Canal at Junction. Engineering difficulties, epidemics, and the Panic of 1837 delayed completion of the Extension until June 1845, when the packet boat Banner first navigated the almost 250 miles distance from Cincinnati to Toledo in three days. New Bremen was the northern terminus for a period while work continued northward on the Extension. Designated the Miami & Erie Canal in 1849, it served as the primary avenue of commerce and military transport, and as a “post road” before the railroad era. The Miami & Erie remained in use until 1913, long after the canal era had passed. Along the course of the canal, New Bremen was the approximate midway point between Cincinnati and Toledo.
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Jacob Foos, while surveying the Military Road north from Fort Morrow to Fremont during the War of 1812, dug a well at this site. General William H. Harrison and his troops, on their way to Lake Erie, camped here and drank from the well. This area was known as “Jacob’s Well” until the founding of Marion in 1822.
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King Solomon Lodge, the first Masonic Lodge in Lorain County, was chartered on December 11, 1821, with Heman Ely as Worshipful Master. Ely (1775-1852), a prominent land developer, founded the City of Elyria in 1817, and built the first grist and saw mills and frame house in the village. Through his efforts, Elyria became the county seat in 1823.
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Opened in 1926, Tanks Memorial Stadium became the home of the Ironton Tanks semi-professional football team. The Tanks were formed in 1919 and through the years played other semi-professional teams as well as teams from the American Professional Football Association that became the National Football League in 1930. In twelve seasons the Tanks had a record of 85 wins, 19 losses, and 14 ties, including wins against the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. The Tanks disbanded in 1931, but five players moved on to the Portsmouth Spartans, which became the Detroit Lions, and other NFL teams picked up four other players. Tanks Memorial Stadium is one of the few remaining roofed high school football stadiums in the country.
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Of the city’s 5,667 people in 1849, 3,500 fled, and 400 of those remaining were victims of cholera. Most are buried here, some only in rough boxes in a common grave. The scourge came again in 1850 and 1852 but with less toll. “Dismay stalked abroad in the daytime and the drowsy night was hideous with the wailings of the disconsolate.”
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