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Giuseppe Moretti was born in Siena, Italy, and immigrated to the United States in 1888. For 40 years he sculpted monuments and heroic figures in the United States and Cuba, employing the Beaux-Arts technique, known for its neoclassical style that tended to be heroic and dramatic in nature. Mor etti, known for his eclectic personality and for always wearing a green tie, was a prolific artist with completion of 12 World War I memorials, 19 monumental works, six church sculptures, 24 memorial tablets, 14 cemetery memorials, 27 sculptures in marble, bronze, and aluminum, and 27 bronze statuettes. He created the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Toronto in 1919 as a tribute to the 300 local citizens who answered the call for service during World War I. His other Ohio works include the John Patterson Monument (1925) in Dayton and statue of Simon Perkins (1895) in Akron.
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Daniel Arthur Rudd was born into slavery on August 7, 1854, in Bardstown, Kentucky. He became a newspaperman, lecturer, publicist, and tireless advocate for the Roman Catholic Church. After the Civil War Rudd moved to Springfield. Baptized and raised in Catholicism, he joined St. Raphael Parish, where the philosophy of racial equality offered by the church solidified his vision of justice. By 1885 he had established his own weekly newspaper, The Ohio State Tribune. He rebranded it The American Catholic Tribune (ACT) after moving to Cincinnati. Rudd claimed ACT was the only Catholic newspaper owned by an African American. At the height of its popularity in 1892, the publication had a circulation of 10,000. In 1893 Rudd was asked to chair the Afro-American Press Association, representing more than 200 black-owned newspapers.
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Legend has it that Mogadore’s first settler, Ariel Bradley, was a spy for George Washington in October, 1776. As a nine year old boy, Ariel crossed British lines on a supposed errand to the nearest grist mill and returned with troop positions and tent counts. In 1801, Ariel left Connecticut to make his new home in what would be Ohio. In 1807, he built a log cabin on a 146 acre plot of farm land that cost $335. Until 1825 the new community had been named Bradleyville, but Ariel did not want the area named after him. Martin Kent was building a residence and a sailor, John Robinson, climbed to the top of the framework, pulled a flask of whiskey from his pocket. Breaking the flask on the last beam of construction, Robinson shouted “Three cheers for Mogador,” which is a large city in Morocco, thusly christening the area Mogadore.
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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.
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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 the establishment of schools and homes. The executors of Gist’s will 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 Highland County and divided the acreage into thirty-one lots. This Gist settlement in Eagle Township was the first to be purchased and settled. It was recorded at Brown County on August 4, 1819 as 1197 acres of land divided among “150 Negroes who were emancipated by the will of Samuel Gist”. In 2009, descendants of the freed Gist slaves still inhabited part of the original settlement.
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The Warner Brothers – Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack – were members of a Jewish immigrant family from Poland that settled in Youngstown in the mid-1890s. The brothers attended local schools and worked in their father’s shoe repair shop and meat market before entering the motion picture business. They purchased a projector and opened the first of several theaters in the Mahoning Valley in 1905. The brothers left Youngstown for New York and Hollywood as their company developed into an industry leader. Warner Brothers Pictures, founded in 1923, released Don Juan in 1926, the first “talking picture” using Vitaphone technology. On May 14, 1931, the family gathered in Youngstown to dedicate a luxurious new Warner Theater to the people of the city where it all started, and to memorialize Sam, who died in 1927.
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When inventor and entrepreneur Garrett Augustus Morgan sold his Traffic Signal patent to General Electric in 1923, he used the $40,000 to purchase a 121-acre farm in Huron County in 1924. Advertising “a village of our own,” Morgan established the Wakeman Country Club — one of Ohio’s early African American recreation clubs — and offered 247 lots for $60 each in “Wakeman Heights.” Located near the intersection of State Route 60 and Chenango Road, the development provided country pleasures to Blacks excluded from the Country Club lifestyle. Club membership, included in the purchase of a lot, offered fishing, hunting, swimming, and horseback riding. A restaurant, dance hall, and amphitheater provided cultural and boxing events. The club waned during World War II and no buildings from the once-thriving Wakeman Country Club remain.
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First organized as the Kenton Lock Manufacturing Company in 1890, the Kenton Hardware Company became one of the world’s largest cast iron toy factories. Under the management of L.S. Bixler, toy stoves, banks, fire company outfits, horse drawn vehicles, automobiles and cap pistols were produced. The immensely popular Gene Autry cap pistol was produced at this plant beginning in 1938. The Company ceased production in 1952 but Kenton toys continue to be popular collectors items worldwide.