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Luke Chute is the site of an early mill that harnessed river power. About 1815, Luke Emerson and Samuel White built a dam part way across the river. This created a rapid between the shore and the end of the dam, the chute. Here they constructed a mill to grind grain. The system of locks and dams built on the river from 1836 to 1841 not only made the Muskingum River navigable by steamboats, but also harnessed the power of the river. After 1841, at least one mill was located at most of the dams. Water power encouraged industry in the Muskingum Valley.
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This historic village was a hub for early Ohio industry and travel. The natural geography of the area provided ideal conditions for the establishment of a variety of mills. Col. Robert Patterson, an ancestor of the founder of National Cash Register in Dayton, John Patterson, chose Clifton for the site of a woolen mill, which furnished material for the American army during the War of 1812. Davis Mill, established in 1802 and in operation today as Clifton Mill, produced meal and flour for Civil War troops. A major stop on the stagecoach trail, “The Accommodation Line,” which ran from Springfield to Cincinnati from 1827 to 1840, the village bustled with the commotion of travelers. The once flourishing industry of Clifton faded as railroad traffic bypassed the village and manufacturers left the area.
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On July 18, 1907, Dr. Lee deForest broadcast the first ship-to-shore radio message from the steam yacht Thelma. The communication provided quick, accurate race results of the Annual Inter-Lakes Yachting Association (I-LYA) Regatta. Frank E. Butler, a Monroeville, Ohio, native and assistant to deForest, was stationed in the pavilion at Fox’s Dock (known today as The Jet Express Dock) and received the radio transmission. The creation of the vacuum tube by deForest permitted the rapid development of radio and eventually television. The inventor disliked the existing term “wireless,” and chose a new moniker — “radio.” On this site wireless-transmission radio broadcasting was born.
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Myron T. Herrick, Governor of Ohio from 1904 to 1906, was born in Huntington Township in 1854 and lived here until age 12. A respected Cleveland attorney and businessman, Herrick was a friend and confidant to Senator Mark Hanna and Presidents McKinley, Taft, and Harding. His public service career culminated in two appointments as ambassador to France, from 1912 through the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and again from 1921 until his death in 1929. Enormously popular with the French people, Herrick escorted Charles Lindbergh in Paris after his historic 1927 transatlantic flight.
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Here in 1887, frustrated locals destroyed the Six Mile Reservoir when legal efforts to close it failed. Years after any boat ran on the Wabash & Erie Canal, its water source, the 2,000-acre reservoir, became a stagnant, uncultivable breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos. Legislative attempts to abandon the canal and reservoir failed because manufacturers in Defiance used the waterway to float logs downstream. On the night of April 25, 1887, 200 men calling themselves “The Dynamiters” carried a banner that read, “No Compromise! The Reservoir Must Go!” and converged here, overpowered citizen guards, gouged the banks of the reservoir, dynamited the bulkhead and lock, and burned down the lockkeeper’s house. The next day, Governor Joseph B. Foraker denounced the acts of the “mob of lawless and rioting men.” (Continued on other side)
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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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Two Deputy U.S. General Land Office Surveyors traversed Goll Woods: Benjamin Hough in 1815 and Captain James Riley in 1821. Hough (1772-1819) established the Michigan Meridian in 1815 and was county and state office holder in Ohio. Riley’s life was more tumultuous. Riley (1777-1840) captained the merchant ship Commerce, which wrecked off the Saharan coast in 1815. Riley and crew were enslaved for four months until ransomed by British diplomat William Willshire. In 1817, Riley published a famous account of his time in North Africa, and, in 1819, was appointed a surveyor by Surveyor General Edward Tiffin. Moving to Northwest Ohio, Riley named the village he founded in 1822, Willshire, for his deliverer. Riley returned to New York in 1826 and to the sea, where he died. Riley’s book went through more than twenty editions by 1860 and Abraham Lincoln credited the account as one that influenced him deeply.
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Built in the 1840s by William and Catharine Hubbard and known as “Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard” or “The Great Emporium” by fugitive slaves, the Hubbard House was an important terminus on the fabled Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. The Hubbard House sheltered escaped slaves who had risked life and limb after crossing the Ohio River into the North. From the Hubbard home, slaves walked one-quarter mile to the Hubbard and Company warehouse on the Ashtabula River, where friendly boat captains awaited to ferry their passengers to Canada and freedom. The U.S. Department of the Interior listed the Hubbard House on its National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
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