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The Indian Point Site contains the remains of a prehistoric Native American earthen enclosure, officially known as the Lyman site, named after a former property owner. The site contains two earthen walls that are bordered by ditches. Steep cliffs provide natural barriers on two sides of the enclosure. Archaeological digs have uncovered many artifacts here, including pottery sherds, tools, pipes, and beads. There is evidence that the walls were built around 140 B.C., and the site was occupied again around 1500 A.D. by the Whittlesey Tradition people. It is uncertain if the site was a village or was used as a ceremonial center. After 1650 A.D., the area became a neutral hunting ground for various historic tribes.
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As Oxford Township was developing in the mid-1800s, a cluster of farmsteads near its northern border developed and was designated the “Doty Settlement.” As was the custom, the community took its name from a prominent family in the area. In or near the settlement were a church and cemetery, a school, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, a distillery, a furniture shop, and a fulling mill for cleansing, shrinking, and thickening cloth. With the frontier spirit of self-reliance, it was seldom necessary to travel several miles into Oxford village for additional goods or services. Working together, the community farmed local fields and bartered for other items. Men, women, and children worked long, hard hours in the fields harvesting corn and wheat. It is evident that these families, living in an agricultural society, possessed many useful skills for surviving in the Ohio country.
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Joseph Cahoon brought his family from Vergennes, Vermont, to Dover Township in 1810, and they established themselves as the first permanent settlers in what would become Bay Village, Ohio. The Cahoon house, called Rose Hill, was built in 1818 and replaced the log cabin the family built upon their arrival. Granddaughter Ida Maria Cahoon bequeathed her family’s 115-acre homestead as the Cahoon Memorial Park to the citizens of Bay Village in 1917. In accordance with the family’s wish, Rose Hill serves the community as a museum and library. The Reuben Osborn House (1815), thought to be the oldest frame house between Cleveland and Lorain, and the Community House (1882), formerly the Cahoon barn, join Rose Hill on the grounds of the memorial park. Providing a variety of recreational and educational activities, Cahoon Memorial Park is the center of community activity in Bay Village.
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Joseph Cahoon brought his family from Vergennes, Vermont, to Dover Township in 1810, and they established themselves as the first permanent settlers in what would become Bay Village, Ohio. The Cahoon house, called Rose Hill, was built in 1818 and replaced the log cabin the family built upon their arrival. Granddaughter Ida Maria Cahoon bequeathed her family’s 115-acre homestead as the Cahoon Memorial Park to the citizens of Bay Village in 1917. In accordance with the family’s wish, Rose Hill serves the community as a museum and library. The Reuben Osborn House (1815), thought to be the oldest frame house between Cleveland and Lorain, and the Community House (1882), formerly the Cahoon barn, join Rose Hill on the grounds of the memorial park. Providing a variety of recreational and educational activities, Cahoon Memorial Park is the center of community activity in Bay Village.
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For more than two centuries, this burial ground has been a final resting place for those individuals whose lives represented the community history of Canfield. The earliest existing tombstone marks the death of Huldah Tanner in 1803. Seven earlier deaths in Canfield Township are recorded from 1798 to 1803, but the gravesites are unknown. Elijah and Rhoda Hopkins Wadsworth formally deeded the cemetery to the citizens of Canfield in 1810 with a first edition of land donated by Matthew B. Whittlesey in 1811. In 1862-1863, the graveyard was again enlarged. For seventy years the cemetery and fencing were maintained on a volunteer basis. When the Village of Canfield was incorporated in 1869, the care and management was vested in a board of trustees. (continued on other side)
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St. Mary Church was dedicated in 1868 in response to the spiritual needs of the growing German-Catholic population of Columbus’ South Side. The original schoolhouse, which stands behind the church, was erected in 1865 under the direction of Rev. Francis X. Specht, St. Mary’s first pastor. It served as a temporary house of worship until the Gothic-style church was completed. St. Mary’s distinctive spire – soaring 197 feet into the Columbus sky – was added in 1893. By 1865, Columbus’ population was one-third German, and the South Side had become a thriving working-class community. The new immigrants built homes and churches and established schools. Local German businesses, organizations, and newspapers prospered. German Village is one of the premier historic restorations in the world, and is the largest privately funded historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. More than 1,600 buildings have been restored since 1960.
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President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, created a national tragedy, and the nation mourned as his body was transported by rail from Washington, D.C. back to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried. As the nine-car Lincoln Funeral Train passed through Champaign County, U.S. military forces secured curves, bridges, and railroad crossings along the route and spiked switches closed to insure the train’s safety. The Funeral Train passed through the Village of Cable at 10:13 p.m. 150 feet southeast of here. As a large crowd assembled around several large bonfires, a lone soldier stood alone in the rain in the center of the crowd holding an American flag. Many residents stood silently along the tracks, hillsides, and valley fields, soaked in their wet clothes waiting to pay their respects to the fallen president. After Cable, the Funeral Train continued west and downhill toward Urbana, Westville, and St. Paris.
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In 1833, John Randolph from Roanoke, Virginia, died leaving three wills that requested that all of his slaves be set free and that land be purchased for them. Although contested for thirteen years by his family, the slaves were freed and the executor of the wills, Randolph’s cousin Judge William Leigh purchased about 2,000 acres of farm land in Mercer County, Ohio. Traveling by wagon train, the freed slaves, 383 in all, reached their destination in 1846, but were forced to turn back by earlier established white settlers. They turned around and ended up north of Piqua where they purchased land and developed the Village of Rossville. Later some moved on to other places in Miami County and well as Shelby County. In Rossville, they established an African Baptist Church in 1869, cemetery in 1866, and public black school in 1872.