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Major buildings dating from 1832 to 1898 surround the village green, the geographic center of Gustavus Township. Built in 1832 on the northwest quadrant, the George Hezlep House features Federal-Greek Revival architecture and has a closet reputedly used on the Underground Railroad. Built in 1840, the Farmers’ Exchange Store was originally a double entrance Greek Revival structure. The Storekeeper’s House, also a Greek Revival structure, was built next to the exchange store in 1840. South of this house is the Fraternal Hall, built in 1870. There were once four churches in Gustavus including the Methodist Church, built in 1856 with a temple front and a belfry, and the Congregational Church, built east of the center in 1854. The eclectic Town Hall was built in 1890 and fronts the southeast quadrant. The Gustavus Centralized School, reported as the first centralized school in the United States, was built in 1898 and was replaced by the current building in 1928.
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Completed in 1865, this home was the vacation retreat of Jay Cooke and his family. Known as the “financier” for the Union states during the Civil War, Cooke organized a program to sell millions of dollars worth of bonds to support the war effort. The house is of a high Victorian Italianate mode with a Gothic style tower topped with crenellations. Distinctive hood moldings outline windows and over-scaled and ornamental brackets support crowning cornices. The house, commonly known as Cooke Castle, hosted many notables of the time, including William T. Sherman, William Howard Taft, Rutherford B. Hayes, Salmon Chase, and John Brown, Jr. Born in Sandusky in 1821, Cooke, an avid fisherman, acquired the island for $3,001 in 1864. University trustee Julius Stone gave the island to The Ohio State University in 1925. The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks in 1966.
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The Marlborough Society of Friends Meeting was established in 1813 by the Salem Quarterly Meeting at the request of the Springfield (Damascus) Meeting. The Marlborough Friends and Lexington Friends combined to become the Alliance Friends in 1865 and relocated to 322 East Perry Street in Alliance, which was the site of a Methodist Episcopal Church. The Marlborough Friends Meeting House and the burying ground were sold to W.W. Holibaugh in 1897 and remain in private ownership. When State Route 619 was widened in 1941, some burials were exhumed and re-interred
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The house of Ebenezer Zane was built here in 1805. The structure was the meeting place for the First Methodist Quarterly Conference in 1819 where over 300 settlers in the area and about sixty members of the Wyandot tribe came together. Although the cabin was reconstructed in 1997, it is a symbol of harmonious relations between American settlers and the Wyandot in the years before the latter’s removal from Ohio in 1842.
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Welton Cemetery was known as Roselawn Cemetery until the early 1900s. Early settlers to the Burton area donated the land. Welton Cemetery is the burial place for veterans of the nation’s wars and for several state officials. Judge Peter Hitchcock (1781-1853) served in the War of 1812. From 1810-1852, he was elected to both houses of Ohio’s General Assembly and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives and served on the state’s Supreme Court. He was Chief Justice from 1831-1833 and 1849-1851. In 1850, he was a member of Ohio’s constitutional convention. (Continued on other side)
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In 1795, at the age of 23, Jeremiah Morrow came to the Northwest Territory from Pennsylvania. He purchased land along the Little Miami River in Deerfield Township and in 1799 married Mary Parkhill of Pennsylvania. Around 1800 he built this barn which is one of Warren County’s oldest standing structures. In 1801, Morrow was sent to the Second Territorial Assembly and to the first Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1802. In 1803, he was elected the new state’s first U. S. Congressman and was Ohio’s only congressman for ten years. In 1813 the Ohio legislature elevated him to U.S. Senate. In 1822 he became Ohio’s ninth governor. He went on to serve in both the Ohio House and Senate and at age 69 returned to Congress. An extraordinary man, Jeremiah Morrow gave his country 43 years of public service.
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One of America’s leading architects of the early 20th century, Cass Gilbert (1859-1934), was born in a home that stood at this site. After studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gilbert apprenticed with prominent architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White. The critical success of his first major public building, the design of the 1895 Minnesota State Capitol, established his national reputation. His influential 1912 Woolworth building, at 792 feet, was then the world’s tallest building, earning Gilbert’s nickname of “Father of the Modern Skyscraper.” Combining classical designs with modern technology, Gilbert also created the United State Supreme Court building (1932) in Washington, D.C., an enduring icon of American justice and democracy. His other achievements include the Arkansas and West Virginia capitols, the U.S. Custom House in New York, and several buildings at Oberlin College. Gilbert served as the president of the American Institute of Architects and the National Academy of Design.
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Despite the fugitive slave laws that prohibited harboring runaway slaves, fugitives found refuge in the Quaker village of Chesterfield, now Chesterhill. Legend tells that no runaway slaves were ever captured here, although many were hidden and helped on their way to freedom in Canada. A well-organized branch of the Underground Railroad ran through Morgan County with Elias Bundy as a principal conductor. Bundy sometimes concealed fugitive slaves in the woods east of Chester Hill. Historian W.H. Siebert says Bundy, Jesse Hiatt, Nathan Morris, Abel W. Bye, Joseph Doudna, Arnold Patterson, and Thomas Smith “belonged to the inner circle of old and reliable Friends [Quakers] upon whom dependence could always be placed.” The first Monthly Meeting was held on October 21, 1839 at the location of the present Meeting House, which was built in 1834.