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Bainbridge Center Historic District. Founded in 1817, Bainbridge Township was named for Commodore William Bainbridge, commander of the USS Constitution during the War of 1812. The unincorporated hamlet of Bainbridge Center is both the geographic and historic center of Bainbridge Township. The town hall, churches, stores, shops, a school, and post office were established in Bainbridge Center. The architecture of houses in the area, most notably those built during the Greek revival period, reflects the agricultural past of the community and its development in the twentieth century. Citizens gathered in The Center to attend church and school, shop, and participate in social and political functions.
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Bainbridge Center Historic District. Founded in 1817, Bainbridge Township was named for Commodore William Bainbridge, commander of the USS Constitution during the War of 1812. The unincorporated hamlet of Bainbridge Center is both the geographic and historic center of Bainbridge Township. The town hall, churches, stores, shops, a school, and post office were established in Bainbridge Center. The architecture of houses in the area, most notably those built during the Greek revival period, reflects the agricultural past of the community and its development in the twentieth century. Citizens gathered in The Center to attend church and school, shop, and participate in social and political functions.
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The present structure for the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church was built in 1849 on Macedonia Ridge north of Burlington, an abolitionist sanctuary for escaped and freed slaves since 1799. It was built by the existing Baptist congregation and a group of 37 freed slaves who had arrived in Burlington from Virginia. The Baptist congregation in Macedonia had organized in 1811-1813 and practiced their faith in their homes and later in a small building with a bell tower made of sticks. The 1849 church was the religious and social focal point for the black community and became the “Mother Church” for approximately eight Baptist churches that exist in Ohio and West Virginia. The Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
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Designed by architect Levi T. Scofield, the Ohio State Reformatory opened its doors in 1896 as a facility to rehabilitate young male offenders through hard work and education. A self-sufficient institution with its own power plant and working farm, the reformatory produced goods in its workshops for other state institutions and provided opportunities for inmates to learn trades. As social attitudes towards crime hardened in the mid-twentieth century, it became a maximum-security facility. The six-tier East Cell Block is the largest known structure of its kind. Considered substandard by the 1970s, The Ohio State Reformatory closed in 1990. It has served since as a setting for several major motion pictures. This Mansfield landmark was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
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Creator of some of America’s favorite cartoon characters, Milton Caniff was born in Hillsboro in 1907 and graduated from Ohio State University in 1930. He created his first comic strip in 1932 for the Associated Press Syndicate, and in 1934 introduced “Terry and the Pirates,” an innovative serial adventure featuring believable characters drawn with unprecedented realism. Enormously popular through the World War II years for both “Terry” and the comic strip “Male Call,” which he created for the U.S. military’s Camp Newspaper Service, Caniff subsequently introduced “Steve Canyon” in 1947. “Steve Canyon” ran for forty-one years until Caniff’s death in 1988. Credited with influencing generations of successful cartoonists, Caniff brought adventure, suspense, and sensuality to what had been largely a medium for humor and melodrama.
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African-American history began in Piqua with the settlement of Arthur Davis in 1818 and expanded with the settlement of the freed Randolph slaves of Virginia in 1846. African-American religious heritage in Piqua began with the Cyrene African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1853 and the Second Baptist Church (Park Avenue) in 1857. Segregated education started in 1854 at the Cyrene Church and ended in 1885 at the Boone Street School. Several Piqua African-American men circumvented Ohio’s early ban against Civil War military service by joining the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. Following the Civil War an African-American Co-operative Trade Association established Piqua’s first African-American retail store. Continued on/from other side)
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Frederick Rice was born on September 29, 1753, near Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania and moved to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania around 1766. During the American Revolution he served under George Washington at Valley Forge and fought in the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, in which American forces surprised and captured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries. He served for two more years as a spy working against Native American tribes in western Pennsylvania. After his service he married Catherine Lauffer, and they raised eleven children to adulthood. Rice chose this 320-acre site, transferred to him in a deed signed by President James Monroe on May 21, 1821, because it offered excellent springs. He assigned the west half to son Simon and the east half to son Barnhart in 1822. Ownership remained in the Rice family until acquired for the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station in 1891, renamed the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in 1965.
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Republican congressman William M. McCulloch was one of the architects of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first of three laws to recommit the nation to the cause of civil rights in the 1960s. “Bill” McCulloch was born near Holmesville to James H. and Ida McCulloch on November 24, 1901. Raised on the family farm, he attended local public schools, the College of Wooster, and, in 1925, earned his law degree from the Ohio State University. He married his childhood sweetheart Mabel Harris McCulloch (1904-1990) in 1927, after settling in Jacksonville to start his career during the Florida land-boom of the 1920s. It was in Jacksonville that the Deep South’s racial intolerance seared him. (Continued on other side)
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