, OH
Stephen and Viola Armstrong moved their family, including 13-year-old Neil and his younger siblings, June and Dean, to the house at 601 West Benton Street in 1944. Here, Neil explored his fascination with flying by reading aviation magazines and building model airplanes. Neil completed flying lessons at nearby Port Koneta airport and earned his pilot’s license on his sixteenth birthday, even before receiving a driver’s license. Neil graduated from Blume High School in 1947 and studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue University on a Navy scholarship. The Korean conflict interrupted his studies, but he left the Navy as a decorated combat pilot, flying 78 missions. After graduating from Purdue in 1955, Neil worked at what would become the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Soon after he became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California. (Continued on other side)
, OH
Captain Gordon C. Greene, a veteran riverman, was born in Newport, Ohio, on September 8, 1862. In 1890 he started the “Greene Line” with the “Henry K. Bedford,” a small shallow draft steamer; he owned twenty-five packets in his lifetime. The “Greene Line” later became the “Greene Steamboat Line” then the “Delta Queen Steamboat Company,” with the original port at the Newport Landing. The Greene family launched packets for tours on the Ohio River and its tributaries. Captain Greene died in 1927 at Hyde Park, Cincinnati, and is buried in Newport Cemetery. (continued on other side)
, OH
Raised in an Ohio orphanage, Warren G. Grimes (1898-1975) ran away after finishing the ninth grade and at age 16 went to work for the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He later became a partner in an electrical business where he was instrumental in designing and developing the first lights for the Ford Tri-Motor airplane. In 1930 Grimes moved to Urbana and founded a small lighting fixture plant, Grimes Manufacturing. The inventor of the familiar red, green, and white navigation lights found on the wing tips and tails of aircraft, Grimes, known as the “Father of the Aircraft Lighting Industry,” also developed other aircraft fixtures, including landing, instrumental, and interior lights. Every American-made airplane flown during World War II was equipped with Grimes lights. Grimes served as mayor of Urbana and chairman of the State of Ohio Aviation Board.
, OH
On April 1, 1818, six families from the Cilcennin area of Mid-Wales sailed from Aberaeron, Wales to Baltimore. The group of 36 people was led by John Jones Tirbach. From Baltimore they traveled to Pittsburgh and then by flatboats down the Ohio River toward their destination-Paddy’s Run in Butler County in the southwest corner of Ohio. They stopped in Gallipolis for provisions where their boats were cut loose by either travel-weary women or citizens of Gallipolis who wanted them to stay. The men found work on the Gallipolis to Chillicothe road that was under construction. The terrain reminded them of Mid-Wales, so they purchased land near Centerville and remained. These Welsh prospered and wrote home to Wales with news of their success, prompting others to come. (continued on other side)
, OH
Lake Erie commerce has played a central role in the development of Huron. Important among Huron’s maritime industries were shipbuilding and commercial fishing. The city’s shipbuilding industry dates to the first decades of the nineteenth century. Shipyards were located on the Huron River’s west bank, slightly north of this marker, and also upstream at Fries Landing. Among the vessels built at Huron were the Great Western, constructed in 1838 and the first lake ship to have above-deck cabins, and the Golden Age, which, at 286 feet, was the largest craft on the Great Lakes when built in 1886. Huron shipbuilding declined as the nineteenth century drew to a close. Commercial fishing emerged thereafter, serving as Huron’s economic cornerstone for over fifty years. Huron’s fishing enterprises included the Huron, Kishman, Scott, and Zimmerman fish companies. By 1950, however, polluted lake waters ravished the once-lucrative industry. Although shipbuilding and commercial fishing are no longer a part of Huron’s daily life, they each had a profound effect upon the community’s growth for nearly two centuries.
, OH
Fawcettstown, later to become East Liverpool, marked the first Ohio community to be encountered by early river travelers as they headed toward new challenges and new lives in the expanding nation. Indian canoes, flatboats, and steamboats carried increasing traffic, both passenger and freight, along these Ohio “Gateway” shores. Many of these early craft were built locally and local residents served as crewmen. Products from farms and ceramics from this city’s pioneer potteries were shipped from this site. The wharf area also served as a landing place for many of the early English potters who came here to ply their trades and, in the process, create a defining industry. The river continues to play an important role in industrial and recreational capacities.
, OH
Country music writer and recording star Lloyd Estel Copas was born on July 15, 1913 on Moon Hollow near Blue Creek in Adams County, Ohio. Reared by musical parents, he learned to play the guitar and fiddle at an early age and began a singing career by age 10. As early as age 14, Copas started playing and singing on radio stations in Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee. He later adopted the sobriquets “Oklahoma Cowboy” and “Cowboy Copas.”
, OH
Datus and Sara Kelley built their home here in 1843, known as the Island House. It was located up the hill from the steamboat landing and across the street from the island store (the Lodge, 1854). In 1873, Jacob Rush bought the property and built a 102-room hotel. This “pleasure resort” was 224 feet wide and three stories tall. It featured many amenities, including a bowling alley, billiard parlor, bath houses, laundry, barber shop, livery stable, and a dancing pavilion (the Casino) overlooking the lake. A fire destroyed the structure in November 1877. Later owners of the property where the hotel stood were Clara Fann and George Schardt in 1892, Frank Stang in 1895, Jacob Kuebler in 1899, and John Himmeline in 1905. Himmeline sold the property to the Village for use as a park in 1925.
614.297.2300
Contact Us
