Results for: african-american-community-activism
Across from 372 Main Street
Rutland

, OH

Surgeon and songwriter Brewster Higley VI was born in Rutland in 1823, the grandson of Brewster Higley IV, a veteran of the American Revolution and founder of Rutland. Higley began studying medicine at age 18 and opened his first practice in Pomeroy, moving to Indiana and then to Kansas in 1871. The following year he penned the words to the famous Western song, “Home on the Range.” This perennial favorite became the state song of Kansas in 1947. Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, And the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the skies are not cloudy all day.

102 N. Marion Street
Waldo

, OH

The first road through Marion County followed the Scioto Trail of the Native Americans. This 120-foot wide strip through Wyandot territory led from Lower Sandusky (Fremont) to the Greenville Treaty Line. A confederation of Ohio tribes ceded it to the United States at the Treaty of Brownsville, Michigan, in 1808. During the War of 1812, the troops of General William Henry Harrison’s Army of the Northwest traveled this road en route to Fort Meigs and the British fort at Detroit, using it to transport supplies to the army and to the chain of forts and blockhouses that protected the road. After the American victory, this area was opened for settlement by the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids, and soldiers who discovered the area while traveling the Military Road were among the first settlers. (continued on other side)

100 South Madriver Street
Bellefontaine

, OH

Born in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, William Lawrence moved to Bellefontaine shortly after graduating from Cincinnati Law School in 1840. Lawrence was prosecuting attorney for Logan County (1845); a member of the Ohio Legislature (1846, 1847, 1849-51, 1854); Judge of the Common Pleas and Third District Court (1857-1864); colonel, Eighty-fourth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Civil War; United States Congressman (1865-1871, 1873-1877); Founder and President of Bellefontaine National Bank (1871); First Comptroller of the United States Treasury (1880-1885); and original owner of Lawrence Woods State Nature Preserve, Hardin County. Judge Lawrence was instrumental in helping Clara Barton found the American Red Cross and served as its first vice president and chairman of the Executive Board.

40 E Main Street
Centerburg

, OH

A descendent of Knox County’s earliest pioneers, Confederate Brigadier General Daniel Harris Reynolds was born just three miles west of Centerburg in 1832. He attended Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, where he became a close friend of Otho Strahl, another Ohio born Confederate general. Reynolds taught school in Ohio before studying law in Iowa and then Tennessee. Admitted to the bar in 1858, Reynolds established a law practice in Chicot County Arkansas. An advocate of secession, Reynolds chose to serve the Confederate States of America in his adopted state of Arkansas at the start of the Civil War. Well respected in his community, he raised a company of cavalry known as the “Chicot Rangers.” (Continued on other side)

315 Jefferson Street
Port Clinton

, OH

As the county seat. Port Clinton is home to the present Ottawa County Courthouse, completed on May 20, 1901 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Constructed in the Richardson Romanesque style, the exterior of the courthouse was built using sandstone quarried at Amherst, Ohio. Pink marble wainscoting, an ornate staircase, and stenciling enhance the interior. A copy of William Powell’s mural, “Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie,” is featured along with smaller murals depicting early county industries–farming, fishing, fruit growing, and quarrying. Memorial tablets honor veterans from the Spanish-American War and Civil War.

74 W. Church Street
Xenia

, OH

James Sr. and Rebecca (Junkin) Galloway moved with their family to Greene County from Kentucky in 1798, constructing their first home, a small log cabin. Galloway built the present structure around 1799 near the bend in the Little Miami River near what is now Goes Station on U.S. 68. In 1936, the Greene County Historical Society moved the home to the corner of Second and Monroe streets and then to the present site in 1965. The 1974 Xenia Tornado caused serious damage to the building, which has been restored and maintained by the historical society. James Sr. served as a hunter during the American Revolution, procuring game for the army, and while in Ohio, was the first treasurer of Greene County. His son James Jr. served as the first County Surveyor.

230 N. Main Street
North Baltimore

, OH

Located in southern Wood County, the village of New Baltimore was founded in 1860, with the first plat of twenty-nine acres recorded by B.L. Peters in 1873. Official incorporation occurred February 7, 1876, with the name being changed to North Baltimore in 1880. The town flourished owing to the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1873, from which the town took its name, and the discovery of rich oil and gas deposits in 1886. First settlers included: Jacob Dirk, George Franks, Levi A. Tarr, and B.L. Peters. The population of the village grew from 700 in 1880 to 2,857 in 1890. One of the first buildings, which was erected in 1860, served as a school and meeting hall and was located on the northwest corner of Main and Broadway streets. This area, then known as “The Great Black Swamp,” had given birth to a thriving town.

0 West Central Avenue
Camden

, OH

In 1817, Revolutionary War veteran and Camden co-founder James Moore Sr. and his wife, Mary, deeded a plot to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) to erect a place of worship. Although a church was not built until 1825, the earliest burial stone recovered on the plot was that of five-year-old Simon P. Zimmerman, dated 1818. Many subsequently interred were victims of the cholera epidemic of 1849. Felix and Rachel Marsh, in 1852, sold an adjacent one-acre plot to the MEC trustees “for a graveyard.” The expanded cemetery became known as Orchard Hill Cemetery due to the nearby fruit orchards. Prominent citizens of early Camden as well as veterans of American conflicts from the Revolution through the Civil War are buried in the cemetery. (Continued on the other side)