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In 1968, Richard Nixon won the presidency partly based on a campaign promise to end the Vietnam War. Though the war seemed to be winding down, on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, triggering protests across college campuses. On Friday, May 1, an anti-war rally was held on the Commons at Kent State University. Protestors called for another rally to be held on Monday, May 4. Disturbances in downtown Kent that night caused city officials to ask Governor James Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to maintain order. Troops put on alert Saturday afternoon were called to campus Saturday evening after an ROTC building was set on fire. Sunday morning in a press conference that was also broadcast to the troops on campus, Rhodes vowed to “eradicate the problem” of protests at Kent State. (Continued on other side)
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Named for General Zebulon Pike, killed in the War of 1812, Pike County was organized in February 1815. Commissioners were charged with establishing a county seat and on May 12, 1815 accepted a conveyance of 40 acres from Elisha Fitch. The new seat was named “Piketon.” In 1816, the commissioners let a contract for the construction of a courthouse and jail. A fine two story courthouse with brick laid in Flemish bond was finished in 1819. A fire destroyed some country courthouse offices on October 9, 1844. The repaired courthouse was the seat of county government until 1861 and is part of the Piketon Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Limestone headers above the windows have the names of the county government offices.
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Acclaimed author, conservationist, and farmer Louis Bromfield was born in Mansfield in 1896. A graduate of the city’s schools, he went on to study agriculture at Cornell University in 1914, but left in 1915 to help run his family’s farm. In 1916, Bromfield enrolled in Columbia University to study journalism. As America entered World War I, he enlisted in United States Army Ambulance Service and saw action in seven major European battles. Determined to become a writer, Bromfield finished his education after the war and became a reporter. In 1921, he married Mary Appleton Wood and they would have three daughters. Bromfield’s first published novel, the Green Bay Tree (1924), was a critical and commercial success; his third novel, Early Autumn, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927. The Bromfields moved to France in 1925 where they lived until 1938. In all, he published thirty books and authored numerous stories, articles, and screenplays during his writing career.
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Abraham Lincoln and his family stopped in Steubenville on February 14, 1861 on their way to Lincoln’s presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. Traveling by train, once in Steubenville he departed the depot to address a large crowd of Ohioans and Virginians from a platform at Market and High Streets. When Judge W.R. Lloyd introduced him as the only person who could preserve the Union during this time of national crisis, President elect Lincoln electrified the attentive audience by eloquently speaking on the commitment to the Constitution by people from both sides of the Ohio River, on the differing opinions of what the Constitution means, and on the virtues of majority rule. Fifty-seven days later, the Civil War began. No one at the time knew that Steubenville native Edwin M. Stanton would become Lincoln’s Secretary of War and that Stanton would give the immortal tribute at Lincoln’s death in 1865 saying, “Now he belongs to the ages!”
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Archibald Worthington (1818-1895) was a freed slave from Virginia, a Civil War veteran, and prominent landowner in Highland Township. Census records indicate he was manumitted prior to 1850, and by 1860 owned land in northwest Ohio. Worthington also farmed, boarded freed slaves, and owned apple orchards and livestock. April 1866 township records show that he supported the local school for Black families. He and his wife Elizabeth raised three children: Henry, Mathilda, and James. Henry enlisted in the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer infantry, one of the first Black regiments formed in the Civil War. He died January 8, 1865, in a prison camp and is buried in North Carolina’s Salisbury National Cemetery. Mathilda and James both met partners and married, had children, and left the area. Archibald Worthington died in 1895 and is buried in Wilmington’s Sugar Grove Cemetery.
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The New California Church was organized in 1826 at a time when the congregation was called the Associate Congregation of Darby and represented Presbyterians whose ancestors came from the “Seceder” tradition of Scotland. Seceder Presbyterians were so named because they left or “seceded from” the mainstream Presbyterian Church when the English Crown claimed the right to name ministers. Their desire for religious freedom brought them to America where they were one of the earliest denominations to condemn slavery. The congregation met at members’ homes until building its first church in 1833, a log structure. The first minister to serve this congregation, the Reverend James Wallace, who served from 1832-1841, was an outspoken opponent of slavery, and this congregation maintained that anti-slavery stance under later ministers. The present church was built in 1904. (continued on other side)
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Born in Ashland County in 1819, Lorin Andrews studied at Kenyon College (1838-41) and achieved renown as an Ohio school superintendent and advocate for public elementary and secondary education. As Kenyon’s president beginning in 1854, the charismatic Andrews enlarged the college and enhanced its reputation. Sensing war’s inevitability even before the April 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, Andrews offered his soldiering services to Governor Dennison and organized Company A of the Fourth Ohio Volunteers; Kenyon alumnus Henry Banning raised Company B. Many Kenyon students, including Charles McCook of the “Fighting McCooks,” followed their example. Andrews contracted typhoid fever during the Western Virginia Campaign and returned to Gambier, where he died on September 18, 1861. His remains are interred in the Kenyon cemetery.
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Originally belonging to the William Henry Harrison family, this cemetery was known as “The Pasture Graveyard” until the Civil War era. It became the final resting place of many members of the Harrison and Symmes families as well as other early settlers to the North Bend area. It was in use until 1884 when Maple Grove Cemetery opened as the official township cemetery.
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