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Due to what is known as the Sharon Conglomerate or pebbly sandstone, these ledges have played an important role in the daily life of local residents and the economy. The porousness of this rock, which underlies much of Geauga County, supplies most of the county’s drinking water. Thompson Ledges also provided building stone with stone cutters working in quarries turning out doorsteps, watering troughs, gateposts, culverts, and bridges from mid-1800 to 1911 for use in Thompson, Geauga County and occasionally beyond. After 1900, cement became the preferred building material, but still used silica pebbles from the Ledges for gravel and cement. The Ledges have an unusual ecosystem containing several distinctive forests. A chestnut oak forest is pervasive on the top while a northern hemlock forest exists in the exposed creaks and crevices of the upper rim and ledges.
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Built in 1816 by General Reasin Beall and his wife Rebecca Johnston Beall, the homestead is recognized as the oldest existing residence in the City of Wooster. Born in 1769 in Maryland, Reasin Beall came to Ohio in 1801. In the War of 1812, he was promoted to brigadier general of the Ohio militia. After the war, Beall served one term as a Republican to the Thirteenth Congress and ten years as a register of the land offices at Canton and Wooster. After Beall died in 1843, his daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Joseph Stibbs II received his house.
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Born in Lancaster, Fairfield County, John Sherman moved to Mansfield to practice law and was elected to Congress in 1854 as one of the first Republicans. In 1861, Sherman was elected to the U.S. Senate. An authority on finance, Sherman was instrumental in shaping federal financial policy in the years following the Civil War, and President Rutherford Hayes appointed him Secretary of the Treasury in 1877. During the “Greenback” debate, he re-implemented the gold standard, stabilizing the currency during an inflationary period. Sherman returned to the Senate in 1881 and served until early 1897 when President McKinley appointed him Secretary of State; in declining health, he resigned in 1898. He died in Washington, D.C. and is interred in the Mansfield Cemetery.
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In an effort to maintain peace with Native Americans, the British imposed the Proclamation Line of 1763, which prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. Some settlers did not recognize British authority and continued to move westward. Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore, realizing that peace with Native Americans was improbable, amassed troops and headed west, camping at the Hocking River to meet with a unit commanded by Andrew Lewis. En route, Lewis’s troops were attacked on October 10, 1774 at present day Point Pleasant, West Virginia, by a force of Delaware and Shawnee led by Cornstalk.
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The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. Largely through the efforts of Chillicothe attorney John Poland, the War Department selected Chillicothe as the site of an army training camp for inductees from Ohio, West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. Construction began at Camp Sherman, named for Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, in June 1917. When the first recruits arrived in September, more than fourteen thousand workers had erected two thousand buildings on the 1,700-acre site. The rapid influx of soldiers increased Chillicothe’s population from 16,000 to 60,000.
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Canals were an important means of transportation when Carroll was founded in 1829 by William Tong and his brother Oliver, who chose this site because it was where the proposed intersection of the Lancaster Lateral Canal and Ohio-Erie Canal would be constructed. This is the only site in Fairfield County where two canals met and came to be known simply as “the junction” by local residents. Canals became obsolete with the emergence of railroads and the last canal boat passed through Carroll in 1897.
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After completing Fort Winchester, Brigadier General James Winchester ordered his troops to cross to the north side of the Maumee River. The troops occupied the new site, Camp #2, from November 3-10, 1812. An earthen fortification was built for protection. Militia soldier Elias Darnell recorded on November 4th that “The weather is very rainy, which makes our situation extremely unpleasant…. Four of this army have gone to the silent tomb to-day never more to visit their friends in Kentucky; the fever is very prevalent in camp; nearly every day there is one or more buried.” Winchester referred to a burial place for the encampment in his General Orders for November 5th. Camp #2 proved to be too wet and marshy, Winchester ordered his army to move to six miles down river to a site called Camp #3.
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The history of New Knoxville provides one of the best examples of chain migration to America. After the Shawnee were removed from what would become Auglaize County, James Knox Lytle, cousin to James Knox Polk, purchased land in Washington Township. Lytle platted a village of 102 lots in 1836, calling it Knoxville to honor his mother’s family. Meanwhile, newly married Wilhelm and Elisabeth Fledderjohann Kuckhermann (later Kuck) immigrated from Ladbergen in northwest Germany. Having missed their boat to St. Louis, the couple lived briefly in Stallostown (Minster) and Bremen (New Bremen). They wrote home, encouraging others to emigrate; in the summer of 1835 the Fledderjohanns (Elisabeth’s family), Meckstroths, and Lutterbecks arrived. The families bought land near the site of Knoxville. (continued on other side)