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On this bluff lies one of the two great animal effigy mounds built by Ohio’s prehistoric people. Shown here, Alligator Mound is a giant earthen sculpture of some four-footed animal with a long, curving tail. Archaeologists believe the animal is perhaps an opossum or a panther, but not an alligator. The earthwork is approximately 250 feet long, seventy-six feet wide, and four feet high. Like the Great Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio, Alligator Mound is not a burial mound. The Newark Earthworks, built by the Hopewell people between 100 B.C. and A.D. 400, are three miles to the east. Scholars do not know who built Alligator Mound, but it may be the work of the Hopewell.
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Charles W. Follis was born on February 3, 1879, in Virginia. His family moved to Wooster where he attended Wooster High School and helped establish the school’s football team. In 1901, Follis enrolled and played baseball at the College of Wooster and played football for the Wooster Athletic Association where he earned the nickname “The Black Cyclone from Wooster.” In 1904, Follis signed a contract to play football with Shelby Athletic Club, making him the first African-American professional football player. Follis faced discrimination on and off the field leading to many injuries. After a career-ending injury in 1906, Follis played baseball for the Cuban Giants of Long Island. He died of pneumonia in 1910 at the age of 31 and is buried in Wooster Cemetery.
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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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The Mount Zion Chapel of the Christian Church was built in 1872 on this hill adjacent to the members’ cemetery outside of Clermontville. The site was part of a two-acre parcel that had been secured from the farm of William R. Clark, Sr. for church and cemetery purposes. The Mount Zion Chapel replaced the Boat Run Christian Church that was organized in 1842 by a sect called the Christians, or the New Lights. Their first meeting house in Clermontville was dedicated on June 4, 1843 and damaged by floods in 1871. Worship was first held in the new frame church with the new name on October 6, 1872 and the church remains active today.
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Overlooking the “Middlegrounds,” an early site of railroad, immigration, and commercial activity, the Oliver House opened in 1859 as Toledo’s premier hotel. It was designed by nationally prominent architect Isaiah Rogers, in the Greek Revival style, and built by the family of William Oliver for whom the hotel was named; owner of this land, Oliver was one of Toledo’s earliest real estate investors. (Continued on other side)
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The Friends Burying Grounds, once located here on Lot 17 in the Village of Damascus, is the oldest cemetery in Butler Township, Columbiana County. Expansion of the Friends Church necessitated the re-location of the Friends Burying Grounds. No markers were found to identify the graves of the 118 persons exhumed here. The exhumed remains were re-interred in the Damascus Cemetery on Valley Road, one block east of this location. The exhumation (2001-2002) was directed by Prof. Dr. John White of Youngstown State University, assisted by staff, students, and volunteers.
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On the evening of August 3, 1920, at 10:30, two men hurrying home after working at the local Railway Y.M.C.A. discovered smoke and flames at the D. Arnold & Sons Lumber Company. Bradford firemen, with the help of area firefighters, could not contain the raging fire because of the intense heat and lack of available water. By the early morning light, townspeople saw that their town had been almost totally destroyed. Thirty-four businesses and twelve homes were burned to the ground with losses totaling over one million dollars. Many businesses never rebuilt and claimed huge losses due to the lack of insurance coverage. The Ohio State Fire Marshal investigated the fire and ruled arson as the origin. Authorities never apprehended or charged any suspects.
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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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