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The Zoarville Station Bridge is a rare survivor of the earliest period of iron bridge construction in the United States, an era when unprecedented railroad expansion gave American bridge builders an international reputation for innovation. German immigrant Albert Fink first developed this truss design for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the early 1850s. Charles Shaler Smith, a prominent civil engineer and Fink’s former assistant, designed the bridge with patented features that improved on Fink’s original design. His firm, Smith, Latrobe & Company of Baltimore, Maryland, built this example in 1868 as a highway bridge over the Tuscarawas River in Dover. It was moved to this site in 1905 and abandoned in 1940. The Lebold family donated the bridge to the Camp Tuscazoar Foundation in 1997 for preservation and restoration. Of the hundreds of Fink Truss bridges built in the mid-1800s, the Zoarville Station Bridge is the last of its kind known to exist.
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The Hillcrest Children’s Home stood near this site in Wheelersburg and opened in 1921 to the first 57 of many children who would come to live there. A 50-room building intended for 100 children, Hillcrest often housed double to triple that number. The extended community supported Hillcrest, providing entertainment, sponsoring activities, and donating presents for the children whose times there left indelible memories. The home closed in 1970 and was razed the following year.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.