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In 1817, Revolutionary War veteran and Camden co-founder James Moore Sr. and his wife, Mary, deeded a plot to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) to erect a place of worship. Although a church was not built until 1825, the earliest burial stone recovered on the plot was that of five-year-old Simon P. Zimmerman, dated 1818. Many subsequently interred were victims of the cholera epidemic of 1849. Felix and Rachel Marsh, in 1852, sold an adjacent one-acre plot to the MEC trustees “for a graveyard.” The expanded cemetery became known as Orchard Hill Cemetery due to the nearby fruit orchards. Prominent citizens of early Camden as well as veterans of American conflicts from the Revolution through the Civil War are buried in the cemetery. (Continued on the other side)
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In 1854, Samuel and Rebecca McClellan Collins deeded 1.28 acres to Beavercreek Township, Greene County, for the purpose of building a schoolhouse. The first two schoolhouses were constructed of stone with fireplaces for heat. Collins neighborhood children in first through eighth grade were educated in the present red brick building until 1944, when decreased enrollment forced Xenia Township to close the school. Virgil and Helen Bryson Brantley, great-granddaughter of Samuel and Rebecca Collins, purchased the school property in 1982 and began the restoration of the vandalized and deteriorated schoolhouse. The pony/coal shed and privies were rebuilt on their foundations. (Continued on other side)
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George Sumner Huntington was born on April 9, 1850, in East Hampton, Long Island, New York. His father and grandfather had both been medical practitioners, and George followed them into the medical profession, graduating from Columbia University in 1871 at the age of 21. The following year he moved to Pomeroy and married Mary E. Heckard. On February 15, 1872, Dr. Huntington traveled to Middleport to address the local medical society, composed of physicians of Meigs County, Ohio and Mason County, West Virginia. As a child, George had accompanied his father on sick calls, observing common and uncommon afflictions. On one such visit, he witnessed a family afflicted by chorea, a nervous disorder marked by uncontrollable and irregular movements of the arms, legs, and face. His address in Middleport, titled “On Chorea,” referenced what would be known later as Huntington’s Disease. (continued on other side)
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Born in Alexandria in 1853, Willoughby Dayton Miller received his primary education in a nearby one-room schoolhouse. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1875 and then studied in Edinburgh, Scotland. Later, he traveled to Berlin, Germany where he met an expatriate American dentist, Dr. Frank Abbot, who encouraged him to study dentistry. Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in 1879, Miller returned to Berlin and joined Abbot’s practice. Two years later, he gained a research appointment at the University of Berlin where he embarked on a career that brought the science of bacteriology into dentistry. In 1889, he published his research findings of the study of oral bacteria and the process of dental caries (tooth decay) entitled The Micro-Organisms of the Human Mouth. For his work, Miller is credited as the first to accurately describe the process of tooth decay. (Continued on other side)
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Aluminum pioneer Charles Martin Hall was born in 1863 in Thompson, Ohio (Geauga County), and moved with his family to Oberlin in 1873. Hall graduated from Oberlin College in 1885, studying chemistry under Professor Frank Fanning Jewett (1844-1926). Jewett, who lived in this house from 1884 to 1923, encouraged Hall’s interest in chemistry and aluminum, then a semi-precious metal. Hall discovered an electrochemical reduction process for producing metallic aluminum from aluminum oxide dissolved in molten cryolite in his woodshed laboratory at his family’s home at 64 East College Street on February 23, 1886. This process, the culmination of research with Jewett, became the basis for the aluminum industry in America. In 1888 Hall co-founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, later the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Upon his death in 1914, Hall left one-third of his estate to Oberlin College.
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Wilberforce University, founded at Tawawa Springs in 1856 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, is the first private historically black college or university in America. The inspirations for Wilberforce were an unwavering faith in God, an acknowledgement of the contribution of the British abolitionist and Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, the leadership of AME Bishop Daniel Payne, and the belief in the potential of all women and men to learn and prosper. Wilberforce embraces the love of learning and the use of education as a tool of personal and community empowerment. Wilberforce seeks to cultivate and meet the historic hunger for freedom and liberty of all people. Today, Wilberforce is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and educates diverse students from across the nation and around the world. Wilberforce continues to serve as a beacon for learning and research.
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Interest in the new field of aeronautics grew dramatically when the United States entered the World War I in 1917. The army chose Dayton as the site for a research-and-development program for military aviation because of the area’s transportation links to major cities and its engineering and testing facilities. McCook Field, north of downtown between Keowee Street and the Great Miami River, was charged with researching, developing, and testing military airplanes and accessories. For nearly a decade, many advancements in aviation occurred at McCook Field. They included new aircraft, controllable-pitch propellers, bulletproof gas tanks, free-fall parachutes, and night-observation cameras. In the 1920s, larger and more-powerful aircraft overwhelmed the small field, which featured a large sign to warn pilots: “This field is small. Use it all.” In 1927, aeronautical engineering was transferred to newly-created Wright Field, now a part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
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Willard Van Orman Quine was one of the greatest philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. Born in Akron on June 25, 1908, Quine studied philosophy and logic at Oberlin College (B.A. 1930). He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932 and spent his entire career on the Harvard faculty, from 1956 to 1978 as Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy. Quine’s early research in logic led to his New Foundations system of set theory and to the Quine-McCluskey algorithm, used in computer science. His textbook Methods of Logic established the standards for undergraduate logic instruction. (Continued on other side)