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The Great Geauga County Fair is the longest continuously operating county fair in Ohio. The fair is a major county gathering event each year, pulling together people from the whole county. Geauga’s settlers imported the idea of the county fair with them from New England. The fair’s parent organization, the Geauga County Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, began holding fairs on Chardon Square in 1823. Since then, the Geauga County Fair has served as a gathering place and form of education to promote local agriculture and introduce farmers to new farming developments and each other. Controversy arose between 1840 and 1854 after Lake County ceded and Chardon, Claridon, and Burton vied for the permanent fair grounds. Burton’s proposal was accepted, improvements began immediately, and the fair grew quickly. The Great Geauga County Fair continues as a time-honored tradition.
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Harvey Howard, a local druggist, built the house at 407 North Market Street around 1860. After many owners, Captain James B. Taylor bought the home in 1893. Taylor commanded Company H of the 120th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He studied law after the war and moved his practice to Wooster in 1882. Taylor’s wife Emelie died in 1905 and in 1906 Taylor sold the property to become Wooster’s first city hospital. Many of the town’s noted physicians practiced here and the facility was eventually enlarged to accommodate 30 beds. The house was a hospital until 1943, when Central Christian Church purchased it. The church used the building for education programs and restored much of its decor, including four fireplaces, inlaid floors, and bronze door hardware.
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Through the terms of his will, British absentee landowner Samuel Gist (c.1723-1815) freed his 350 Virginia slaves and provided funds for their relocation, the purchase of land and homes, and the establishment of schools and churches. Gist’s executors acquired over 2,000 acres of land in Ohio, including two large tracts in Scott and Eagle townships in Brown County in 1819. In 1831 and 1835, an agent of the Gist estate purchased 207 acres in Fairfield Township (now Penn Township), Highland County, and divided the acreage into thirty-one lots. The Gist Settlement in Highland County was the last to be purchased and settled. In 1857, the Ohio Legislature granted the Highland County Court of Common Pleas control over the freedmen’s trust monies. In 2003 descendants of the freed Gist slaves still inhabited part of the original settlement.
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Urbana University was established by the Swedenborgian Church in 1850. Bailey Hall (1853), named after Francis Bailey (1735-1815), was designed by W. Russell West, architect of the Statehouse of Ohio. Bailey was an American Revolutionary War hero, official printer of the Continental Congress and printer of The Freeman’s Journal or the North American Intelligencer. He also printed The True Christian Religion papers. John (Johnny Appleseed) Chapman (1774-1845) distributed The True Christian Religion papers along with his famous apple trees throughout Ohio as a missionary for the Swedenborgian Church. Barclay Hall (1883) was named after Hester Barclay, a ward of Francis Bailey. It was Hester Barclay’s brother-in-law, John Young, who converted Chapman to the Swedenborg faith. Francis Bailey and Hester Barclay were the first male and female Swedenborgian converts in North America. Both Bailey and Barclay halls appear on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The dream of establishing a college was born in the hearts of members of the German Brethren Church. In March 1877, a meeting was held at the Maple Grove Brethren Church to discuss the establishment of a college in Ashland. A town meeting followed in June. At this meeting residents agreed to help raise $10,000 to establish the College. On February 20, 1878, the charter and by-laws were approved and the most desirable location for the campus was chosen. Ashland College opened in 1879 with two buildings, eight faculty, and 60 students. In 1881, four male students comprised the first graduating class.
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The Lincoln School, which stood on this site from 1869 to 1956, was a segregated elementary school intended for the city’s African American students, grades one through eight. Hillsboro was the site of the first Northern desegregation suit following the May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a decision that abolished the nation’s long standing “separate but equal” doctrine. (Continued on other side)
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Founded in 1850 by the Disciples of Christ, or “Campbellites,” this institution of higher education was chartered as Hiram College in 1867. The College’s original charter provided for instruction for both men and women, and Hiram served as an early example of successful coeducation. From 1857 to 1861, James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States, held the principalship of the institute. It continues today as one of Ohio’s successful liberal arts colleges.
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Betsey Mix Cowles dedicated her life to fighting slavery and improving the status of women. Her desire for a formal education led her to Oberlin College, where she completed two years of study in 1840. An advocate of immediate abolition, Cowles lectured on the moral depravity of slavery, opened her home, at this site, to fugitive slaves. Opposed to expansion of slavery into the West, Cowles protested the Mexican War. Cowles served as president of Ohio’s first women’s rights convention (in Salem) in 1850, and the following year wrote a treatise on equal pay for working urban women. She served as the first dean of women at Grand River Institute, and later became one of the first women public school superintendents in Ohio.
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