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Built in 1816 by General Reasin Beall and his wife Rebecca Johnston Beall, the homestead is recognized as the oldest existing residence in the City of Wooster. Born in 1769 in Maryland, Reasin Beall came to Ohio in 1801. In the War of 1812, he was promoted to brigadier general of the Ohio militia. After the war, Beall served one term as a Republican to the Thirteenth Congress and ten years as a register of the land offices at Canton and Wooster. After Beall died in 1843, his daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Joseph Stibbs II received his house.
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Ohio, first native-born governor, Wilson Shannon was born in February 1802 in the Mt. Olivet area near Barnesville. After attending Ohio University and studying law in Kentucky, he returned to Belmont County to practice and was elected county attorney in 1833. Shannon served two terms as governor of Ohio, from 1838 to 1840 and again from 1842 to 1844, resigning to accept a presidential appointment as minister to Mexico. After participating in the California Gold Rush, Shannon returned to Ohio and was elected to Congress in 1852. President Pierce then appointed him territorial governor of Kansas, an office he held until 1857. After a notable career of public service, Shannon died in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1877.
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Born in Steubenville in 1814, Edwin McMasters Stanton studied at Kenyon College and opened his law practice in Cadiz in 1836. The grandson of North Carolina slaveholders, Stanton opposed slavery. A successful railroad attorney and War Democrat at the beginning of the Civil War, he accepted the challenge of reorganizing President Abraham Lincoln’s War Department. Stanton enforced unpopular draft laws, fought draft, restricted the press, and nationalized the railroads. An effective planner and logistician, Stanton moved 20,000 soldiers more than 1,200 miles in a week by railroad to relieve the siege of Chattanooga in 1863. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Stanton clashed with President Andrew Johnson and provoked the act that led to Johnson’s impeachment. He died four days after President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1869.
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Robert C. Henry, the first African-American mayor of an Ohio city, was born in Springfield, Ohio, on July 16, 1921. He attended Springfield High School and graduated in 1939. After high school, he attended Wittenberg University and the Cleveland College of Mortuary Science. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Central State University. In 1961, Springfield citizens elected him to the City Commission, where he served until being appointed mayor by his fellow commissioners in 1966. Henry was among the first African-American mayors of a U.S. city, and is especially notable due to Springfield’s majority white population at the time. After his tenure as mayor ended in 1968, Henry was chosen by presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon for fact- finding missions in Vietnam. Robert C. Henry died on September 8, 1981.
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The first African-American elected to government office in the United States, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) won the office of Clerk of Brownhelm Township on April 2, 1855. Born in Virginia and raised in Chillicothe, Langston graduated from Oberlin College in 1849 and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1854, becoming Ohio’s first black attorney. He served as the first president of the National Equal Rights League in 1864, and subsequently as professor of law, dean, and acting president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1890, he became Virginia’s first black congressman. Throughout his career Langston set a personal example of self-reliance in the struggle for justice for African-Americans.
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The commercial building that stood at 305 Main Street for over a century was built by Justus S. Law in 1897. On April 1, 1897, Law leased the Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias joint-use of the third floor, rent-free, for 99 years after they completed its construction and added a slate roof to the building. Although the Pythians purchased the remainder of the building in 1921, they continued to share their “Castle Hall” with the Odd Fellows until 1965. In July 1974, the Pythians assigned their Pleasant City property to the Ohio Knights of Pythias Home in Springfield. From 1974 to 2012 the property exchanged private ownership multiple times until forfeited to the state in 2020. After the dilapidated Victorian building was demolished in 2021 the land was donated to the Village of Pleasant City.
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In 1870, African American men in Circleville attempted to vote in municipal elections. Despite the recent ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, pollsters refused their votes on the basis that state law forbade them from receiving the ballots. The Second Baptist Church was the site of a meeting of 147 African American men seeking redress. Together with Republican leaders these men produced petitions that were sent to the United States Senate and House of Representatives. These petitions gave the Republican Party the grounds to introduce bills to enforce the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The passage of the Enforcement Act of 1870 imposed criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote and also helped to shift power and authority from the individual state legislatures to the centralized Federal government.
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The current Preble County Courthouse, the third courthouse erected on this site, was designed by noted architect and Preble County native Harvey Heistand. Its cornerstone was laid on March 17, 1917, with a copper box containing a bible, historic papers, and other memorabilia placed under the stone. Upon completion, the building was dedicated on September 10, 1918, with three thousand people attending the ceremony. Designed in the Neo-Classical style, the exterior was constructed of Indiana Bedford limestone with ten immense columns that extend upward from the second floor. Above the colonnade, a dentiled entablature is inscribed, Salus Populi Suprema Lex, meaning “The health of the people is the supreme law.” The façade is enhanced with a bricked courtyard flanked by balustraded terraces. [continued on other side]