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Born in Piqua, Ohio, the Mills Brothers grew up and attended school in Bellefontaine. The brothers — John, Jr., Herbert, Harry, and Donald Mills — were the first African-American vocal group to perform on a national radio broadcast and achieve commercial success. Enjoying worldwide fame throughout their career, the Mills Brothers popularized such hits as “Tiger Rag,” “Paper Doll,” and “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” After the death of John, Jr. in 1936, the remaining brothers were joined by their father, John, Sr. In all, the Mills Brothers recorded over 1,200 songs.
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John Campbell (1818-1891), founder of Ironton, was an ironmaster and president of the Ohio Iron & Coal Company, a Presbyterian, and an abolitionist. This house and barn, which he built in 1850, became a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves crossing the Ohio River from Kentucky. Fugitives were concealed here and furnace wagons transported the escapees northward by way of Campbell’s furnaces in Lawrence and Jackson counties.
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In the years leading to Ohio statehood in 1803, Ames Township citizens decided to establish a stock-owned circulating library. Since cash was scarce during Ohio’s frontier era, some citizens paid for their $2.50 shares by the sale of animal pelts, which were taken to Boston for sale in the spring of 1804 by merchant Samuel Brown. There he acquired fifty-one volumes, primarily books on history, religion, travel, and biography, as the first accessions for the Western Library Association. Senator Thomas Ewing later related that he paid his share with ten raccoon skins, thus suggesting the collection’s popular name “the Coonskin Library.” Judge Ephraim Cutler was the first of many librarians who kept the library until 1861.
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Like many nineteenth century communities in Ohio, Stryker owes its birth and early growth to the railroad industry. Stryker, named for Rome, New York, attorney and railroad executive John Stryker, was surveyed on September 19, 1853, beside the proposed Northern Indiana Railroad. For more than fifty years, “track pans” at Stryker allowed steam locomotives to take on 5,000 gallons of water while traveling at forty to fifty miles per hour, saving valuable time, “the principal enemy of railroad schedules.” On July 23, 1966, the U.S. rail speed record of 183.85 miles per hour was set through Williams County, including through Stryker. The Stryker depot was constructed in 1900 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 7, 1989. (continued on other side)
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Born in Pennsylvania in 1791, Bishop John Seybert came to Ohio in 1822 and preached throughout the mid-west. Seybert served the faith for forty years as an itinerant preacher, a presiding elder, and the first bishop of the Evangelical Association, one of the original denominations that is now part of the United Methodist Church. As a circuit rider, he traveled on foot, horseback, and spring wagon a distance of 175,000 miles, preached 9,850 sermons, held 8,000 prayer and class meetings, and made about 46,000 pastoral calls and 10,000 calls on the sick. Seybert often paid his own expenses on the meager salary of $100 per year. He died in 1860 and is buried in the Bellevue – Flat Rock area.
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Monroe County’s rugged terrain hindered commerce and communication during the 1800s. In the early 1870s Woodsfield businessmen, led by banker Samuel L. Mooney, promoted a narrow-gauge railroad to connect to the Baltimore and Ohio at Bellaire. Narrow gauge railroads were popular during this boom era because they cost less to build and operate than standard-gauge lines and could traverse sharp curves and steep terrain. The Bellaire and Southwestern Railway was completed through Armstrong’s Mills and Beallsville to Woodsfield in December 1879, giving Monroe County a welcome modern link to the rest of the country. Its initial success prompted its extension westward, and it was soon renamed the Bellaire, Zanesville, and Cincinnati Railway, reaching Zanesville via Caldwell in late 1883.
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The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) traces its origins to mid-18th-century England, where it served as a mutual benefit society for traveling workmen. Odd Fellowship moved to the United States in 1819; the first Ohio lodge was established in 1830, and the Canfield Lodge was instituted in 1850. The charter members of this lodge were E.J. Estep, John G. Kyle, James Powers, W. M. Prentice, and William W. Whittlesey. Many of the early members of this lodge were businessmen, lawyers, physicians, and tradesmen. Lodge 155 remains one of the oldest active lodges in northeastern Ohio. (continued on other side)
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The Scioto Salts Licks, located in and around Jackson, is an area where naturally occurring salt water, known as brine, flowed to the surface as a salt-water spring. It is known that the spring existed since the Pleistocene Ice Age because numerous bones, probably including those of mammoth and ground sloth, were excavated there. Native Americans obtained salt here for at least 8,000 years and did so until 1795 when the Treaty of Greenville separated the Native American and European populations. Early pioneer settlers utilized the licks in the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, constructing salt furnaces that extended for four miles up and down Salt Lick Creek. Salt was a precious and necessary commodity, and the early settlers in the area profited from its trade.