Remarkable Ohio

Results for: civil-war
Jefferson Avenue
Toledo

, OH

This pioneer village, which was united with its downriver rival, Vistula, to be incorporated as Toledo in 1837, was platted by Cincinnati businessmen in 1817. The “Panic” of 1819 caused the enterprise to default. The village was re-platted in 1832. A two-story log warehouse along Swan Creek was the first important structure. The village was named for Captain James Lawrence, War of 1812 naval hero.

River St
Franklin

, OH

Two leading figures in nineteenth century national and state politics were born in log cabins located near this spot. Lewis Davis Campbell (1811-1882) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1849 to 1858, rising to the leadership of Ohio’s “Know Nothing” Party. During the Civil War he raised the 69th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and served as its first colonel. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson appointed Campbell U.S. Minister to Mexico. In 1870, Campbell was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for another term by defeating Robert Cumming Schenck. Campbell is buried in Hamilton’s Greenwood Cemetery.

Homer Public Library, 385 South Street
Homer

, OH

Soldier, engineer, and statesman, W.S. Rosecrans was born in Delaware County in 1819 and grew up in Homer. He graduated from West Point in 1842. During the Civil War, Rosecrans commanded the federal Army of the Cumberland. Popular with his troops, who called him “Old Rosy,” he was a cautious commander and, though victorious at, Corinth, Murfreesboro, and Chattanooga, he suffered major defeat at Chickamauga in 1863. A skilled engineer, Rosecrans developed coal properties in western (now West) Virginia before the war and helped design St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Columbus for his brother, Bishop Sylvester Rosecrans. Following the war he served as minister to Mexico and represented California in Congress from 1881 to 1885. He died in 1898 and is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Veteran’s Park, S triangle of OH 66 & Washington Avenue
Piqua

, OH

Local views on the Vietnam War mirrored national attitudes of pride and confusion. Piqua citizens participated in the “Letters for Life” campaign in 1970 for prisoners of war. Piqua Daily Call assistant news editor James W. DeWeese traveled to Paris in a frustrated attempt to deliver the letters to the Hanoi Peace delegation. The state activated the local Ohio National Guard unit in 1970 to help suppress anti-Vietnam student rioting in Columbus. The military conflict came home in 1966 when William Pitsenbarger became the first of eleven men from Piqua to die in Vietnam. In 1967, Piqua High School graduate Air Force Major William J. Baugh was shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. He remained a P.O.W. until 1973.

Park Street
Arlington

, OH

First a farming community, later a railroad crossroads in southern Hancock County, Arlington was one of the county’s earliest settlements. Gen. William Hull opened a trail into the area during the War of 1812 as he crossed Buck Run at Eagle Creek. He led his army to the Blanchard River to establish Ft. Findlay. Robert Hurd owned extensive tracts of land in the area, and his sons were the first recorded settlers, building a log cabin near this site in 1834. The rich farmland and abundant water soon attracted other settlers to the vicinity of “Hurdtown.” The name was changed to “Arlington” when the village was formally surveyed in November, 1844.

55 Main Street
Tarlton

, OH

Major General William Sooy Smith was born in Tarlton on July 22, 1830. He attended Ohio University and supported himself throughout his college undergraduate career, graduating in 1849. He then entered the United States Military Academy at West Point to pursue engineering and graduated 6th in the class of 1853. In 1857, Smith established the private engineering firm Parkinson & Smith and made the first surveys for the international bridge across the Niagara River near Niagara Falls. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Smith joined the 13th Ohio Infantry, winning the commission of colonel in June 1861. After early victories in western Virginia, he was promoted to brigadier general in April 1862 for his gallant and meritorious service at the Battle of Shilo. (continued on other side)

119 W. Elder Street
Cincinnati

, OH

The United States’ declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 resulted in a tragic display of hysteria directed against everything and anything German. In Cincinnati, German teachers were dismissed from public schools, German professors were censored, German collections and publications were removed from circulation at the Public Library, businesses with German names had their names “Americanized” and, by police order, only English language public meetings could be held. (Continued on other side)

2741 OH 266
Stockport

, OH

Following the American Revolution, the new Federal government, in need of operating funds, sold millions of acres of western lands to land companies. One such company, the Ohio Company of Associates, brought settlement to Marietta in 1788. Two years later, despite warnings of Native American hostility, an association of 36 Company members moved north from Marietta to settle “Big Bottom,” a large area of level land on the east side of the Muskingum River. The settlers were acquainted with Native American warfare, but even so, built an unprotected outpost. They did not complete the blockhouse, put pickets around it, or post a sentry. On January 2, 1791, a war party of 25 Delaware and Wyandot Indians from the north attacked the unsuspecting settlers, killing nine men, one woman, and two children. War raged throughout the Ohio Country until August 1794 when the tribes were defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.