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Using the power of eminent domain, the United States Government purchased 9,000 acres of land in Perkins Township, Erie County, Ohio to build the Plum Brook Ordnance Plant in 1941, displacing many families and businesses. This tract included the original Perkins cemetery, the resting-place for many of the township’s founding families who settled here in 1809 and victims of the numerous cholera epidemics of the early to mid-1800s. Though many of the earliest graves could not be located, most were re-interred here as part of the war effort on the home front during World War II.
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King Solomon “Sol” White was born in Bellaire on June 12, 1868. A Baseball legend, he was an all-around player, manager, and organizer in the Pre-Negro Leagues (1887-1912) and the Negro Leagues (1920-1926). White first played with integrated baseball clubs the Bellaire Globes (1884-1886) and Wheeling Green Stockings (1887). After 1887-1888 color barriers were imposed on baseball, White played on segregated minor league teams. They included: the Pittsburgh Keystones, Cuban Giants, York Colored Monarchs, Cuban X-Giants, Page Fence Giants, and Chicago Columbia Giants. As a coach, he helped organize and lead the powerhouse Philadelphia Giants to their 1904-1907 championships. White died on August 26, 1955, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Staten Island’s Frederick Douglas Memorial Cemetery. In 2006, “Sol” White was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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Shortly after Oberlin Colony was established in 1833, a two-acre burying ground was set aside south of Plum Creek in the area bounded by Main, Morgan, and Professor streets. By 1861, however, with the town and Oberlin College growing and the Civil War escalating, the need for a larger cemetery became clear. After an extensive search, 27.5 acres of land belonging to Henry Safford were acquired one mile west of the center of Oberlin. H.B. Allen was hired to create a design in the style of the Rural Cemetery Movement, and in July 1864 Westwood Cemetery was formally dedicated. Burials in Westwood had actually begun in August 1863, and over the next few years hundreds of remains were reinterred from Oberlin’s “Old Cemetery” and from burying grounds in surrounding communities. In the mid-1860s the cemetery was enlarged to its present 47 acres, and in 2004 burials and memorials were estimated to number almost ten thousand. (Continued on other side)
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Originally part of the Casterline farm, this cemetery was once the site of the 1824 Bazetta Presbyterian Church, the first church in Bazetta Township. Ziba Casterline deeded .75 acres for the cemetery to the church in 1829 for five dollars. When the small log structured church was relocated to Lot 55 in the township, the cemetery remained. Buried in the cemetery are several early settlers, including Moses Hampton, Joseph Headley, Joseph Pruden, and John Hulse, the first white child born in the township. [continued on other side]
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In 1820, Mark Evans, John Davis, and Jacob Waggoner acquired from Daniel Triplett an 18-rod-square parcel (approximately two acres) at this location on which to build the first school in Plain Township. Education was not publicly funded at the time and the first teacher, Jacob Smith, “kept” school for $1.50 per scholar. The fact that part of the school lot became a cemetery suggests that the log building was also used for church services, as was a log school a mile and a half east of here on Central College Road. (continued on other side)
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In the early years of the nineteenth century, a religious unrest known as the Second Great Awakening spread across much of the American frontier. Among the most influential of the evolving religious organizations were the Campbellites, or Disciples of Christ, founded in the 1820s by Thomas and Alexander Campbell. The Campbellite movement sought to “restore” New Testament Christianity by calling for a return to the primitive church revealed in the gospels. Campbellites denied creeds and oath-taking and rejected sectarianism. They believed in baptism by immersion and communion on Sundays. Followers also dealt with problems and transgressions of members within the church and did not use civil courts. They held a millennial view that professed human happiness and the belief that Christ would reign on earth for a thousand years. Believers spread this word to the pioneers of the Doty Settlement and elsewhere. By 1850, there were ninety Campbellite Churches in Ohio.
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On July 30, 1816, the year before the establishment of Butler Township, a group of farmers of German background founded the Stillwater Church. The log structure with adjoining cemetery was located on three acres between Dog Leg Road and Frederick Pike. In 1842, the congregation replaced the log building with a brick one. In 1873, they moved the building to the northeast corner of Dog Leg and Little York Roads and renamed it St. Paul Lutheran Church. With a fruitful history of sharing God’s love, St. Paul celebrated it’s 200th anniversary on Sunday, July 31, 2016.
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Born in Kentucky in 1793, his family moved to the Ohio country in 1797. Taught by his mother and in a log-cabin school near Dayton, he began teaching here by 1809. Purchasing land here in 1811, he served at Fort Greenville in the War of 1812. He married Priscilla Knight in 1815 and fathered eleven children. He held offices of assessor, appraiser, constable, trustee, justice of the peace, and attained the rank of Brigadier General in the Ohio Militia. He died in 1883 and is buried here in Lostcreek Cemetery.