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The Lincoln School, which stood on this site from 1869 to 1956, was a segregated elementary school intended for the city’s African American students, grades one through eight. Hillsboro was the site of the first Northern desegregation suit following the May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a decision that abolished the nation’s long standing “separate but equal” doctrine. (Continued on other side)
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Major John James (1772-1854) established James Cemetery in 1828 on and around a Native American mound that is the only significant ancient mound remaining in the city of Jackson. The mound is about 70 feet in diameter and nearly six feet tall. In the late 1800s, this mound comprised one point of three ancient mound groups forming a triangular configuration along East Broadway Street, formerly known as James Street. One group was a few hundred feet northeast of here on the Watson farm and a second was just to the northwest on the Warnicke farm. These mounds were built by the Hopewell Culture, prominent in southern Ohio from about 100 BC to 400 AD. Major James, his wife, and several immediate family members are buried on the mound including Jackson County pioneers Andrew Long, Daniel Hoffman, and David Mitchell.
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General John Hunt Morgan led a force of 2,000 Confederate calvarymen into Meigs County on July 18, 1863, during a forty-six day raid north of the Ohio River. After a skirmish with the 23rd Ohio Infantry, the Confederates paused to drink and replenish their canteens with cool spring water found in Rocksprings. Nearby, Isaac Carleton, a Meigs County native, was shot and wounded by a Confederate soldier. After suffering set backs at Chester and Buffington Island, Morgan surrendered eight days later near West Point in Columbiana County. The surrender field was the northernmost point ever reached by Confederate forces during the Civil War.
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First Lady Lucy Ware Webb Hayes was born in this four-room Federal Vernacular house in 1831. Well educated for her time, she attended local schools, took classes in the preparatory department of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, and graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati in 1850. She married lawyer and future U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1852. They raised five children to adulthood. As a colonel’s wife during the Civil War, “Mother Lucy” boosted morale for the soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiment. In 1870, during Hayes’ first term as governor of Ohio, Lucy helped establish the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans’ Home as a state institution. (continued on other side)
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Ohio’s fifty-ninth governor, Marietta native C. William O’Neill was the only Ohioan to head all three branches of state government. An honor graduate of both Marietta High School and Marietta College, O’Neill won election to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1938, serving there until 1950 but interrupted from 1943-1946 when he was with General George Patton’s Third Army in Europe during World War II. In 1947 he became the youngest Speaker of the House in Ohio history. Elected Attorney General in 1950, he won the governorship in 1956, modernizing the highway and mental health departments during his tenure. His election to the State Supreme Court in 1960 and elevation to Chief Justice in 1970, noted by landmark judicial reforms, capped his exemplary career of public service to Ohio.
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Betsey Mix Cowles dedicated her life to fighting slavery and improving the status of women. Her desire for a formal education led her to Oberlin College, where she completed two years of study in 1840. An advocate of immediate abolition, Cowles lectured on the moral depravity of slavery, opened her home, at this site, to fugitive slaves. Opposed to expansion of slavery into the West, Cowles protested the Mexican War. Cowles served as president of Ohio’s first women’s rights convention (in Salem) in 1850, and the following year wrote a treatise on equal pay for working urban women. She served as the first dean of women at Grand River Institute, and later became one of the first women public school superintendents in Ohio.
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Built in 1822, this native limestone structure was the home of Benajah Wolcott, first keeper of the Marblehead Lighthouse (originally called the Sandusky Bay Light), and his second wife, Rachel Miller Wolcott. Benajah maintained the lighthouse from 1822 until his death ten years later. After Benajah’s passing the U.S. Government appointed Rachel as the keeper, making her the first female lighthouse keeper on the Great Lakes. The building is the oldest known residence still standing in Ottawa County and is a fine example of a “hall-and-parlor house,” an early American home design.
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Samuel Patterson arrived in East Orange in 1824 and, within a few years, began to hide runaway slaves in his home. He also invited anti-slavery speakers to the pulpit of the East Orange Methodist Church, which brought Patterson and his neighbors into conflict with the bishop. Following their consciences, they became Wesleyan Methodists and built a new church. A pro-slavery neighbor mocked them by calling their community Africa, and so East Orange was renamed. The village has disappeared, but several homes owned by Patterson and his neighbors still stand in this vicinity.
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