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Manasseh Cutler, Rufus Putnam, Winthrop Sargeant, and Benjamin Tupper of the Ohio Company conceived Ohio University, which was encouraged by the Ordinance of 1787 and the Northwest Territorial Legislature in 1799, incorporated as the American Western University in 1802, and chartered by the Ohio State Legislature on February 18, 1804. The university is the first institution of higher learning in the Northwest Territory, second west of the Allegheny Mountains, and the first in the United States to be endowed with land by the government with proceeds used to pay for its operations-revenue from two townships was set aside to support the university. Opened on June 1, 1809, as an academy with three students, Ohio University awarded its first undergraduate degrees in 1815.
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A migration of Indians throughout Ohio began due to unstable conditions created by the American Revolution. The massacre of Christian Indians at the Moravian mission of Gnadenhutten in 1782 and Colonel William Crawford’s expedition against Wyandot and Delaware towns along the Sandusky fueled insecurities. Delaware, including a small group of Mingo Indians, abandoned the village of Helltown, five miles southwest of this site, and settled Greentown as early as 1783. Greentown, situated on an elevation on the Black Fork beyond the clearing behind this site, was presumably named for British loyalist, Thomas Green. John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) had an amicable relationship with the Delaware, owned land throughout the Black Fork Valley, and was known to visit Greentown on his travels throughout Ohio. Other visitors to the village included the Shawnee Prophet; Munsee Delaware leader, Captain Pipe; and local preacher, James Copus.
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Frederick Rice was born on September 29, 1753, near Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania and moved to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania around 1766. During the American Revolution he served under George Washington at Valley Forge and fought in the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, in which American forces surprised and captured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries. He served for two more years as a spy working against Native American tribes in western Pennsylvania. After his service he married Catherine Lauffer, and they raised eleven children to adulthood. Rice chose this 320-acre site, transferred to him in a deed signed by President James Monroe on May 21, 1821, because it offered excellent springs. He assigned the west half to son Simon and the east half to son Barnhart in 1822. Ownership remained in the Rice family until acquired for the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station in 1891, renamed the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in 1965.
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Robert Sprague Beightler was born in 1892 in Marysville. A graduate of Marysville High School, he began his career as a soldier in 1911, when he enlisted as a private in Marysville’s guard unit, Company E, Fourth Ohio Infantry Regiment. He served in Mexico from 1916-1917, World War I from 1917-1919, and World War II from 1940-1945. From his stint with the Ohio Infantry, he rose in rank to command the famous 37th Ohio National Guard Buckeye Division as Major General during WWII. Beightler was one of the most successful National Guard Generals and the only National Guard General to lead his troops through both training and combat in WWII. He was with his troops through 700 days of fighting in the South Pacific Theater. Fighting occurred on Bougainville Island and in the islands of New Georgia and the Philippines. (Continued on other side)
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Following the American Revolution, the British Crown sought to retain possession of the Ohio Country by sending chief British Indian Agent Alexander McKee and others to establish trading posts with Native Americans and resist American settlement. In 1786, Colonel Benjamin Logan led an American force against the British posts and tribes. Warned of their approach, McKee and a band of Shawnee, took their possessions, including a large drove of hogs, and fled north from the Mackachack Villages near present-day Bellefontaine. Their route was the Black Swamp Trail, now Napoleon Road. An attempted crossing of the rain-swollen Ottawa River turned disastrous, resulting in the loss of possessions and most of the hogs. The hill upon which the party camped following the failed crossing, located one half mile east of here, became known as McKee’s Hill, and the portion of the Ottawa River east of Lima has since been known as Hog Creek.
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With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, England lost the American Revolution and ceded to its former colonies land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. By this time, pioneer settlers had reached the eastern bank of the Ohio River, but the Ohio Country, located west and north of the river, was still considered Indian Territory. The Indian tribes desperately defended their hold on this land. On August 20, 1794, United States forces led by Major General Anthony Wayne defeated an Indian alliance at the Battle of Fallen Timbers fought near modern-day Toledo. One year later, on August 3, 1795, the largest assemblage of northwestern Indian representatives at a peace settlement signed the Treaty of Greene Ville, which effectively ceded all land south of the Greene Ville Treaty line to the Americans. The Fort Laurens site was a reference point in the Treaty line. The Ohio Country was then rapidly settled, and in 1808, Tuscarawas County was organized.
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In July 1863, Confederate General John H. Morgan led a force of 2,000 cavalrymen across southern Ohio. Morgan’s force entered Ohio from Indiana on July 13. A chase ensued as Union cavalry pursued Morgan’s men across twenty Ohio counties. Most of Morgan’s troops were captured in Meigs County at the Battle of Buffington Island. Morgan, with several hundred cavalry, managed to escape. They raced northeast, fighting skirmishes along the way, and forded the Muskingum at a point near Rokeby Lock on July 23, 1863. As they went, the soldiers raided local farms for food and replacement horses. They were finally captured in Columbiana County on July 26. The raid marked the northern-most point ever reached by Confederate forces. Across southern Ohio, frightened residents burned bridges over fordable streams and buried silver and jewelry to hide them from the marauders.
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Mariah Storts Allen was Ohio’s last surviving first generation daughter of a Revolutionary War soldier. She was born August 4, 1842 in Bearfield Township and died May 2, 1933 in New Lexington. Her father, John Jacob Storts, volunteered to fight for American independence at age 13 and camped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Allen was a descendant of Ohio’s First Families and an Honorary Member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The DAR refers to first generation daughters as “Real Daughters.”
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