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Construction of the Columbus, Piqua, and Indiana Central Railroad started in 1850 and was finished in 1854. Later referred to as the “Panhandle Railroad,” it ran from Columbus to Bradford. During the Civil War, the line carried supplies and troops and it was extended from Bradford to Richmond, Indiana. President Lincoln’s funeral train traveled the route on April 29, 1865. Eventually, three railway lines crossed Urbana: the Big Four, the Pennsylvania, and the Erie. “Corn brooms,” woolen cloth, horse carriages, and tinware were shipped by railroad to national markets and regular passenger service carried residents to destinations across the country, including Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and Washington, D.C. (Continued on other side)
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On this site, the first meetinghouse owned by the Hudson Congregational Church was dedicated March 1, 1820, twenty-one years after David Hudson first came to the Hudson area. Its members met here until they completed their sanctuary on Aurora Street in 1865. In August 1835, church members unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that slavery is”a direct violation of the law of Almighty God.” At a November 1837 prayer meeting, church member and anti-slavery leader John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery.
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Rev. George Messenger and his congregation built the first Universalist Church on this site. It was dedicated during a state convention of Universalists in Woodstock in June 1844. In 1893, Rev. John A. Carpenter was instrumental in erecting a new building — the one before you. It was dedicated Easter Sunday, April 14, 1895. The church’s front window memorializes the men of the 66th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, recruited from Champaign County during the Civil War. Woodstock in Rush Township contributed more of its sons to the Union cause per capita than any other community in the county.
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Thomas Burk Sr. purchased a quarter section of federal land here in 1804. A school house was erected on this purchase in 1809. That same year, a road from Williams’ Mill (Millville) was blazed and a saw mill was built on Indian Creek west of this marker. Obadiah Welliver opened a tavern on his purchase in 1812. Burk sold his grist mill in 1818 and it is thought that the hamlet around this mill was called Dogtown because of a vicious dogfight there. In 1825, Reily Post Office was established at Welliver’s Tavern. That year a woolen mill with textile production machinery was built by Elias Sayres, near the saw mill. Multi-millionaire Elias Jackson (“Lucky”) Baldwin (1828-1909), the founder of Santa Anita Racetrack near Los Angeles, was born here.
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In 1912, an endowment of $6,000 from Andrew Carnegie made it possible for the Bristol Public Library to become a reality. Four years earlier, the newly organized Bristol Library Association, headed and promoted by retired Judge Norman A. Gilbert, had established a subscription book service at the Congregational Church in Bristolville with books loaned from the state library. The Bristol Board of Education appointed a six-member Library Board of Trustees and a one mill levy provided financial support. Charles C. Thayer and Son designed the building in accordance with Carnegie’s recommendations and the local trustees’ suggestions. With Judge Gilbert’s unexpected death in November 1911, Board Secretary Dr. Edward Brinkerhoff was elected president to complete the vision of Judge N. A. and Mrs. Anna Gilbert for the library. (Continued on other side)
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Slifers Presbyterian Church is on land deeded to the local faith community by Philip and Elizabeth Slifer on December 2, 1816. Rev. Thomas Winters of the German Reformed Church and Rev. John C. Dill of the Evangelical Lutheran Church ministered to people of German descent who settled in the area. During the “cold plague” (a malaria-like malady) of 1819, they ministered to the sick and grieving, renewing the faith of many. The community pooled their limited resources and began building their first log church in 1819. It was completed in 1825 and expanded later that year as the congregations grew. They erected their first brick church in 1858 for a cost of $500. Pastors conducted services for both Lutheran and Reformed congregations in German.
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Public markets housing butchers, fish merchants, and produce vendors were once the primary source of perishable foods for residents of America’s cities. Cincinnati operated nine in 1859. Only Findlay Market, built here in 1852, survives. Cincinnati’s lost indoor markets include: Fifth Street Market: 1829 to 1870, Fifth between Vine and Walnut Wade Street Market: 1848 to 1898, corner of Wade and Bauer Avenue Canal Market: 1829 to 1864, Court between Vine and Walnut Court Street Market: 1864 to 1914, replaced Canal Market Jabez Elliott Flower Market: 1890 to 1950, Sixth between Elm and Plum Sixth Street Market: 1895 to 1960, Sixth between Plum and Western Row Pearl Street Market: 1901 to 1934, Market between Sycamore and Broadway
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The inhumanity of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 motivated anti-slavery activists to operate a covert network, the “Underground Railroad,” which helped fugitive slaves escape captivity. From the early 1800s to the end of the Civil War, local activists assisted runaway slaves on their journeys north to freedom. Guides (“conductors”) used their homes, farms, and churches (“stations”) to hide and shelter runaway slaves (“cargo.”) If captured, fugitives were severely punished and re-enslaved; “conductors” faced large fines and imprisonment, and Free Persons of Color risked being sold into slavery. A route often-traveled was once a path used by migrating buffalo, which became an Indian trail called the Bullskin Trace. It ran north from the Ohio River to Lake Erie and later became U.S. Route 68.
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