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Designed by architect Levi T. Scofield, the Ohio State Reformatory opened its doors in 1896 as a facility to rehabilitate young male offenders through hard work and education. A self-sufficient institution with its own power plant and working farm, the reformatory produced goods in its workshops for other state institutions and provided opportunities for inmates to learn trades. As social attitudes towards crime hardened in the mid-twentieth century, it became a maximum-security facility. The six-tier East Cell Block is the largest known structure of its kind. Considered substandard by the 1970s, The Ohio State Reformatory closed in 1990. It has served since as a setting for several major motion pictures. This Mansfield landmark was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
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Ohio’s first female county sheriff, Maude Charles Collins (1893-1972) of Vinton County was appointed to finish her husband Fletcher’s term after he was killed in the line of duty in October 1925. In 1926, she ran for the office in her own right on the Democratic ticket and handily beat males in both the primary and general elections. “Sheriff Maude” investigated crimes, answered calls, patrolled roads, and performed the duties of her office, all while raising five children. She gained national attention for solving an intriguing double murder case in 1926, later featured in Master Detective and Startling Detective magazines. In 1927 she was the first woman to deliver inmates to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. Collins, a pioneering woman in law enforcement, was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000. She is buried in Hamden Cemetery.
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Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), author of 27 works, gave up a successful business career in Elyria, Ohio, to concentrate on writing. Born in Camden, Anderson spent his formative years (1884-1895) in Clyde, and in 1919 he published his most notable book, Winesburg, Ohio. Clyde and small-town Ohio inspired many of its tales. Critics also praised his short story collections, including The Triumph of the Egg (1921) and Death in the Woods (1933). Commercially successful as a writer, Anderson moved to rural Virginia, where in 1927 he purchased and operated two newspapers while continuing his literary career. Through his writings and encouragement he was a major influence to a younger generation of writers, including William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck. Sherwood Anderson is buried in Marion, Virginia.
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Built for Waverly industrialist James Emmitt in 1861, The Emmitt House was partly the work of carpenter Madison Hemings, who claimed parentage by President Thomas Jefferson. It served as a tavern and store for travelers on the Ohio-Erie Canal that passed directly in front of the hotel. The Emmitt House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 as a key part of the Waverly Canal District, which encompasses many of the canal-era residential and commercial buildings in the downtown area. It underwent a year-long restoration project in 1989 that retained its historical flavor and design. It continues to provide hospitality to both residents and travelers.
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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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When local banker and businessman John Sanford Brumback left a large bequest to Van Wert County for the purpose of establishing a countywide library in 1897, such institutions did not yet exist, and Ohio had no legal provision for a tax-supported county library system. In response, the Ohio Legislature passed an enabling law in April 1898, marking the beginning of the county library system in the United States. Designed by Toledo architect David L. Stine and built of Bedford limestone in an eclectic Romanesque style, the Brumback Library was dedicated in 1901. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, it continues to serve as a center of knowledge for all of Van Wert County.
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Republican congressman William M. McCulloch was one of the architects of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first of three laws to recommit the nation to the cause of civil rights in the 1960s. “Bill” McCulloch was born near Holmesville to James H. and Ida McCulloch on November 24, 1901. Raised on the family farm, he attended local public schools, the College of Wooster, and, in 1925, earned his law degree from the Ohio State University. He married his childhood sweetheart Mabel Harris McCulloch (1904-1990) in 1927, after settling in Jacksonville to start his career during the Florida land-boom of the 1920s. It was in Jacksonville that the Deep South’s racial intolerance seared him. (Continued on other side)
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On this site the Ohio & Erie Canal flowed south and down-level under the Market Street Bridge. Nearby Pawpaw Creek and the canal culturally divided the Swiss settlers to the west in Basil and the Virginia pioneers to the east in New Market (Baltimore by 1833). In March 1825, the “Twin Cities” were “dedicated” one day apart and energized a feud that often erupted at the bridge where “the boys of one village entered the other at their peril and where the worst of the intervillage fights were held.” The rivalry stretched well into the twentieth century and was arguably terminated with an uneasy consolidation of the two towns in 1947.
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