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Paul Allman Siple was born here on December 18, 1908. In 1927, he was chosen from thousands of ambitious Eagle Scouts to accompany Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his first Antarctic Expedition. Twelve years later, while attending Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, he earned a PH.D. in geography, writing Adaptations of the Explorer to the Climate of Antarctica as his doctoral dissertation. In it, he coined the term “windchill” to denote the rapid heat loss experienced by a body under strong winds. [continued on other side]
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The Wakeman Red Caps, perhaps one of the area’s best semi-pro baseball teams during the 1930s and 40s, first played night baseball under lights installed at Wakeman Field on July 24, 1935. The Field, no longer extant, was bounded by Hyde, Clark, Pleasant, and Townsend (Ohio Route 303) streets. The game was played only two months after Franklin D. Roosevelt switched on lights at Crosley Field for the Cincinnati Reds. The Red Caps were part of the Wakeman Baseball Club, an organization which was founded in 1889 and was sponsored by Charles S. Clark, Sr., and others. For aspiring local baseball players, playing night baseball for the Red Caps was a great honor. Wakeman Field was annually graced with Abe Saperstein’s Ethipian Clowns, an African-American traveling baseball team, and also saw appearances by Tom Manning, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Al Schacht, Jesse Owens, and other sports greats.
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Opened in 1926, Tanks Memorial Stadium became the home of the Ironton Tanks semi-professional football team. The Tanks were formed in 1919 and through the years played other semi-professional teams as well as teams from the American Professional Football Association that became the National Football League in 1930. In twelve seasons the Tanks had a record of 85 wins, 19 losses, and 14 ties, including wins against the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. The Tanks disbanded in 1931, but five players moved on to the Portsmouth Spartans, which became the Detroit Lions, and other NFL teams picked up four other players. Tanks Memorial Stadium is one of the few remaining roofed high school football stadiums in the country.
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In 1787, the construction of Fort Steuben was completed by Captain John Francis Hamtramck and soldiers of the 1st American Regiment, who were sent to the frontier by the United States government to remove illegal squatters and protect government surveyors from American Indian raids. The surveyors were platting the First Seven Ranges of the Northwest Territory. The surveyed land was sold for settlement or offered to soldiers as payment for military service during the Revolutionary War. Consequently, the states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin were formed from the settlement of the Northwest Territory. Fort Steuben was named after Baron Frederich Wilhelm Augustus Steuben, who had served in the Revolutionary War and from which the town derived its name. Captain Hamtramck abandoned the fort in 1787 by order of Colonel Josiah Harmar, and by 1790 the remains of the fort had disappeared. Fort Steuben has been reconstructed on its original location.
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After American militia troops forcibly ended the 1812 siege of Fort Wayne, General James Winchester’s Army of the Northwest marched down the north side of the Miami [Maumee] River to stop or retard advancing British troops sent to aid in the siege of Fort Wayne. After three days of difficult march, Ensign James Liggett of the 17th Regiment, volunteered to lead a group of four spies or scouts to the site of the old Fort Defiance. Liggett’s small force was surprised and killed on or about September 25 near here. The Americans tried twice to recover the bodies, but met with ambush from hostile Native Americans sympathetic to the British. Their bodies were finally recovered and buried in a common grave. Besides Liggett, they included Wyatt Stepp, Guy Hinton, William Bevis, and Nathaniel Mitchell of Woodford County, Kentucky, all of Captain McCracken’s Company, 1st Rifle Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Militia.
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To the right is the route taken by the U.S. Legion under Major General Anthony Wayne as it marched across what would become Van Wert County. The army of 2,800 men camped west of this marker near the present cemetery on the night of August 4, 1794. Wayne’s orders were to subdue Native American tribes and his destination was a major village at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers (now Defiance). Finding it abandoned, Wayne marched down the Maumee River and was attacked by a force of Indians on August 20. Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers ended the Indian Wars of the 1790s. The Treaty of Greene Ville, signed by Wayne and the representatives of twelve tribes, opened much of Ohio to American settlement. Side one includes a map on the right hand side of the marker showing the route of Wayne’s army through the eastern third of Van Wert County.
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Augustus West, an African American, was born in Madison County, Virginia on March 20, 1814, and moved to Ohio in 1837. Legend has it that West was a runaway slave and worked as a farm laborer before designing a scheme to purchase his own farm. West, with abolitionist Alexander Beatty, traveled into slave territory no fewer than three times where the pair would sell West, help him escape, and split the profits. After splitting the profits, West used his portion of the money to purchase 177 acres of land in Fayette County where he built his “mansion.” To remain inconspicuous and secure, West built the “mansion” as far from the main road as possible. (continued on other side)
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The great Native American Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, was born on the bank of a large spring at this site in 1768, at the very instant that a great meteor seared across the skies. The birth occurred while his parents, Shawnee war chief, Pucksinwah, and his wife, Methotasa, were en route from their village of Kispoko Town, on the Scioto River, to a major tribal council at the Shawnee tribal capital village of Chalahgawth (Chillicothe – now Oldtown), which was located “two arrow flights” northwest of this site. Though prohibited by tribal tradition from becoming chief of the Shawnees, Tecumseh rose to become one of the greatest warriors, orators, and military strategists of any tribe in America.
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