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Founded in 1890 in Roseville, Ohio, Roseville Pottery Company was incorporated in 1892 with George Young as general manager. At the time, Roseville produced commercial pottery such as stoneware, flowerpots, and cuspidors. The company moved to this Linden Avenue location in 1898, and began creating art pottery. By 1917, all production of pottery was moved to the Linden Avenue Plant. The Roseville Pottery Company was among the most commercially successful producers of art pottery in America until closing in 1954. During its span of sixty-four years, Roseville opened four plants and produced an enormous quantity and variety of pottery made primarily from native Ohio clay. The hallmark of Roseville Pottery is its unmistakable dynamic and artistic quality, designed for the average consumer in a modern age. Roseville’s great success can be attributed to its ability to blend commercial enterprise with the highest standards of ceramic artware production.
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Natalie Clifford Barney was born in Dayton on October 31, 1876. Her family was wealthy and industrious, including her great grandfather who founded the Dayton Academy, Cooper Female Seminary, and Dayton Car Works. Natalie, who knew that she was a lesbian by age twelve, lived an outspoken and independent life unusual for a woman of this time period. Her openness and pride about her sexuality, without shame, was at least one hundred years ahead of its time. She published Some Portrait-Sonnets of Women, a book of love poems to women under her own name in 1900. American painter Romaine Brooks was Barney’s partner and companion for fifty years. (continued on other side)
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Thomas Stinson Cummin, owner of a successful dry goods store, built his home in the early 1870s on the outskirts of the growing village of Marion. The home was purchased in 1889 by Henry M. Barnhart, an inventor and co-founder of the Marion Steam Shovel Company. In 1927, it was sold to the Schaffner- Queen firm of funeral directors and converted into a funeral home. Franklin Schaffner had previously been responsible for the funeral arrangements for President and Mrs. Warren G. Harding. A succession of businesses has maintained the use as a funeral home. As of 2016, the building is occupied by the Denzer-Farison-Hottinger & Snyder Funeral Home. (Continued on other side)
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Congress passed Fugitive Slave Laws in 1793 and 1850, allowing federal marshals to arrest slaves that had escaped to the North and take them back to their southern owners. They could also arrest northerners suspected of aiding runaway slaves. These laws were contested throughout the North, including Ohio where one case received national press. It involved escaped slave Addison White who arrived in Mechanicsburg in August 1856. There he met abolitionist Udney Hyde and stayed at his farm while Hyde recovered from a leg injury. White’s master Daniel White learned of his location and went to Mechanicsburg in April 1857 with federal marshals. When attempting to take Addison and arrest Hyde on grounds of violating the Fugitive Slave Law, Hyde’s daughter ran to town and brought back residents with pitchforks and shovels to fight the marshals. Fearing for their lives, the marshals left, but came back to arrest the men who protected White. [continued on other side]
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Deerfield was laid out around 1795 and in 1802 Major Benjamin Stites, his son Benjamin, Jr., and John Gano officially recorded the village’s plat. A part of the great tide of Americans moving into the Northwest Territory (and Ohio after 1803), Deerfield’s early inhabitants included Revolutionary war veteran Ephraim Kibbey as well as Andrew Lytle, Nathan Kelly, William Snook, and War of 1812 veteran David Sutton. Deerfield was so called because it was a settlement in Deerfield Township, Hamilton County in the 1790s. (Continued on other side)
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After Wilbur Wright died in 1912, Orville Wright continued to develop and fly airplanes for the Wright Company. Orville flew seaplanes along this part of the Great Miami River from 1913 to 1914. This area had three advantages: deep water formed by a hydraulic dam, freedom from man-made obstructions, and a 90 degree bend in the river that allow him to take off and land either north-south or east-west, depending on prevailing winds. In June and July 1913, Orville made more than 100 flights, frequently with passengers, in the Wright Model C-H “hydroplane.” In 1913 and 1914, Orville and Wright Co. chief engineer Grover Loening developed the Wright Model G “aeroboat.”
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In 1810, Dr. Oliver Bigelow from Lansing, New York purchased a 4,000 acre tract of land in Monroe Township for $10,000. Dr. Bigelow planned to build a town. After mapping out streets, the town square, and a cemetery, he named the village Johnstown. Dr. Bigelow was the town’s first medical doctor and the first mayor. He died on November 5, 1817 and was buried in Bigelow Cemetery. Located in the southwest corner of the village, the cemetery became the resting place for more than 275 early residents as well as veterans of three wars. Their grave markers, though weathered by the seasons, serve as a reminder of their great contributions to their community and the nation.
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Believed to have been constructed in 1866, this facility is one of the largest of its kind in the nation. The complex of 200 ovens was erected by the Leetonia Iron and Coal Company, later known as the Cherry Valley Iron Works, to supply fuel for pig-iron producing blast furnaces that stood south of this site. The man-made “beehive” ovens were used to transform hard coal into coke. The “coking” process burnt impurities out of the coal. The end product — coke — was the best fuel source for the furnaces that were used to manufacture iron and steel. The facility discontinued operations in the early 1930s at the height of the Great Depression.