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Henry Kelsey Devereux was born into an aristocratic family on October 10, 1859 in Cleveland, Ohio. Ohio artist, Archibald Willard, chose Harry, as he was fondly known, to portray the drummer boy in one of America’s most famous patriotic paintings, “The Spirit of ’76”. At the time Willard approached him to pose, young Harry was a cadet at Brooks Military Academy. He married socialite Mildred French in 1885 and in 1910 they settled in her father’s pretentious country estate in Wickliffe, Ohio (presently Telshe Yeshiva College). His passion for harness racing and for breeding horses culminated in the organization of the American Association of Trotting Horse Breeders and his position as president of the Grand Circuit. The affluent and charitable Wickliffe resident died in 1932 at the age of 72.
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The Bellaire High School Clock Tower was erected in 1925 as the second town clock to be mounted on Bellaire’s public schools. C.W. Bates of Wheeling designed this tower, built by C.D. Keyser & Co. of Bellaire. The school building stretches 256 feet along 35th Street, and the tower rises 40 feet above the 3rd floor parapet of the roof. The clock faces are 6 feet, 7 inches in diameter. At the exterior corners of the bell room are 11 foot columns. The tower dome is painted red. E. Howard & Co. of Boston made the clock works and the McShane Bell Foundry of Baltimore cast the bell in August 1888. The BHS Alumni Association lighted the tower in 1998 to honor all “faithful and true-hearted” graduates of the school.
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One of the first industries in Marietta was shipbuilding. Due to the abundance of trees and the shipbuilding talent of the New England settlers, twenty-nine ocean going vessels were built in eight shipyards from 1800 to 1812. In 1845 shipbuilding resumed and seven more vessels were constructed. The last ship left dry dock in 1847. The first vessel built was the 110-ton brig St.Clair, captained by Commodore Abraham Whipple. Whipple was a noted Revolutionary War naval officer who escaped the British blockade in 1778 to carry important dispatches to France. He later captured ten vessels worth one million dollars from a British convoy and, in 1784, was the first to fly the American flag on the River Thames in England.
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Natalie Clifford Barney was born in Dayton on October 31, 1876. Her family was wealthy and industrious, including her great grandfather who founded the Dayton Academy, Cooper Female Seminary, and Dayton Car Works. Natalie, who knew that she was a lesbian by age twelve, lived an outspoken and independent life unusual for a woman of this time period. Her openness and pride about her sexuality, without shame, was at least one hundred years ahead of its time. She published Some Portrait-Sonnets of Women, a book of love poems to women under her own name in 1900. American painter Romaine Brooks was Barney’s partner and companion for fifty years. (continued on other side)
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The Ohio River begins at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and flows 981 miles to join the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois. The Iroquois called the river “Oyo” or “Ohio,” which the French translated as “La Belle Riviere,” the Beautiful River. It was an important transportation route for countless generations of Native Americans and, beginning in the 1780s, for Euro-American settlers. It was the main route to the opening West and the principal outlet for the region’s growing farm output. Congress first acted to improve navigation in 1824 and, later, by canalizing the river with a series of locks and dams beginning in 1878. River commerce has increased with industrialization, moving up to 150 million tons annually.
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In December 1772, Brother David Zeisberger and his followers began the construction of Schoenbrunn schoolhouse. The school was built in the Tuscarawas Valley on land given to Zeisberger in the spring of 1771 by the Delaware Native Americans as a Moravian mission to the Delaware. With the land, Zeisberger laid out the town of Schoenbrunn or “Beautiful Spring.” The school served Delaware Indian children, who were taught from special textbooks prepared in the Delaware and German languages by Zeisberger. John Heckewelder, who taught at the school, is recognized as the first schoolteacher in Tuscarawas County. The present reconstructed schoolhouse was dedicated on July 29, 1928 on the 155th anniversary of the completion of the school’s construction. The village can be seen just a few hundred yards south of this marker.
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Near this location stood the settlement of African American families known as “The Lett Settlement.” The Lett Settlement was a self-sustaining community of mixed race families, including the Caliman, Guy, and Lett families. The families had formed ties through marriage and common background during the mid-1700s in Virginia and Maryland. These early African American pioneer families came to Ohio as “free people of color,” and began acquiring land in Meigs Township, Muskingum County, and surrounding townships in adjacent counties during the 1820s. They were soon joined by the Brown, Clifford, Earley, Simpson, Tate, and Pointer families. The families of the Lett Settlement were land owners and tax payers in Ohio before the Civil War and challenged the State of Ohio for the right to vote and for access to education during the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s. (Continued on other side)
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Joseph Carter Corbin’s work in the Reconstruction-era south after the Civil War created many educational opportunities for African Americans. Corbin (1833-1911) was a professor, administrator, journalist, linguist, and musician. Born in Chillicothe, Ohio to free African American parents, he earned his bachelor’s degree and two masters’ degrees from Ohio University, in 1853, 1856, and 1889, respectively. In 1872, Corbin and his wife Mary moved to Arkansas where he served as the state superintendent of public education. In 1875, Corbin was appointed principal of Branch Normal College, which became the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. In 1898, he co-founded and became president of the Arkansas Teachers Association. He was also a leader in the Prince Hall Masons, an African American Masonic order. He served as a secretary and Grand Master of the lodge’s Arkansas chapter.
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