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Near this site on July 4, 1825 ground was broken in Ohio for the National Road. The National Road was America’s first federally planned and funded highway and linked the east coast of the United States to Old Northwest Territory. Albert Gallatin, President Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury, conceived the idea for the road and advocated for it. Construction began in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, but was interrupted by the War of 1812. The road reached Wheeling in 1818, but was again delayed until 1825 because of debates over the constitutionality of federal funding for road and infrastructure projects. The National Road in Belmont County began at Bridgeport on the Ohio River and ran 28.5 miles to the western end of the county at Fairview.
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People living in Marietta and along the Muskingum River shared a history of slavery opposition. Manasseh Cutler, from Massachusetts and an Ohio Land Company agent, helped draft the Ordinance of 1787 that prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. General Rufus Putnam, Captain Jonathan Stone, and other Ohio Land Company Revolutionary War veterans, founded Marietta at the mouth of the Muskingum River in 1788 bringing with them their anti-slavery sentiments. A proposal to legalize slavery in the proposed state of Ohio was vetoed largely due to the efforts of Marietta’s Ephraim Cutler and General Putnam at the 1802 Ohio Constitutional Convention. These conditions were precursors toward the formation of the Underground Railroad as fugitive slaves crossed the Ohio River seeking freedom. From 1812 through 1861, large numbers of fugitive slaves fleeing toward Canada, were aided by descendants of early settlers who operated Underground Railroad Stations along the Muskingum River. (Continued on other side)
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Frances Dana (Barker) Gage was born on October 12, 1908, in Marietta. She married James L. Gage in 1829 and they raised eight children, including four sons who served with Union forces during the Civil War. Throughout much of her life, Frances was deeply involved with the Temperance and Anti-Slavery movements and Women’s Rights issues. Presiding over the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron in 1851, she invited Sojourner Truth to give her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. The Gage family moved in 1853 to St. Louis, the western extension of the Mason-Dixon Line, where her life was threatened whenever she spoke out against slavery. During the Civil War, she traveled south to aid Union soldiers and teach freed slaves. Though crippled and permanently disabled by a stroke, she continued to lecture on social issues until 1867. Frances Dana Gage died on November 10, 1884, in Greenwich, Connecticut.
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In 1804 a group of neighbors in Granville, Massachusetts and Granby, Connecticut formed The Licking Company for the purpose of moving to “Newlands” in Ohio. Inspired and informed by the settlement of Worthington in 1803, the Company purchased 29,040 acres in the U.S. Military District. Advance parties surveyed and mapped a site, established a mill, and planted grain. The Company planned a public square, a school, library, quarry, burying ground, and property for the support of churches. In November and December 1805, some 150 emigrants in ox-drawn wagons arrived in their new home and built temporary shelters on the designated public square. On December 9 through 12 1805, Company members selected their Granville lots in an auction that was described as peaceable and honest.
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Envisioned by Fairview Village Mayor, David R. Bain, this community center was originally completed in 1937 as a project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era work relief program initiated by the Federal Government in 1935. A fire destroyed the original log cabin on December 14, 1937, just four days before the planned dedication. With the support of the community, Mayor Bain turned again to the WPA for funding and labor to rebuild the structure. This cabin, constructed of bricks on the original foundation, features an 8’x12′ mural painted by artists of the WPA’s Federal Art Project and which depicts Fairview’s history through the 1930s. The new cabin was dedicated on January 15, 1940, and was named in honor of Mayor Bain in 1957, four years after his death.
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Sandyville was founded in 1815 by future State Senator Henry Laffer. In 1936, the 275 villagers learned that the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District planned to control regional flooding with the construction of 14 dams including nearby Bolivar Dam. This dam would place Sandyville in a flood zone and force villagers to sell, abandon, or move their homes. Ultimately, the villagers united and decided to move Sandyville. Between August 1937 and early 1938, contractors (paid by the Conservancy District) relocated approximately 30 houses, 30 outbuildings, 2 stores, a post office, a town hall, and a restaurant (where cooking continued during the move!). The move required hard work, patience, and neighborliness, By 1938, the little village had moved one-half mile up the hill and villagers began to recreate their peaceful, pleasant surroundings for future generations.
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The Soldiers, Sailors, and Pioneers Monument was planned and promoted by Butler County Civil War veterans and financed by a county levy in 1899. The monument, built of Indiana Limestone, is near the center of the site of Fort Hamilton, built in 1791 and named in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury in President George Washington’s cabinet. Featured, are two large, colorful windows that recognize the contributions of Butler County women during the Civil War. Featured speaker at the July 4, 1906, dedication was Governor Andrew L. Harris, a Butler County native and Civil War veteran. His name is one of the more than 4,300 carved into the interior marble walls.
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During the American Revolution, Fort Laurens became the only Continental military fort in what would later be Ohio. Continental army troops and militia, led by General Lachlan McIntosh, built the fort between November-December 1778. Named for the president of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, the army intended to use the fort to launch an offensive against British-held Fort Detroit, observe enemy movements, and stage attacks on British-allied Indian villages. To fulfill terms in the “Treaty with the Delaware” (1778), McIntosh chose a site about two miles south of the “Great Crossing” on the Tuscarawas River in friendly Lenape (Delaware) territory. (Continued on other side)
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