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The Village of Cridersville was founded in 1856. With the discovery of oil in 1885 the village prospered and grew quickly. Its business district developed along Main Street in the first block east of the railroad. The Town Pond Reservoir was constructed here in the 1890s to provide water in the event of fire. At 3:00 p.m. on May 2, 1918, a rubbish fire was started across the street from this pond and blew out of control. The fire ignited a nearby barn, and, with the aid of strong winds, soon carried to the business district on East Main Street. Wood frame construction and wooden shingles allowed the fire to spread rapidly. Within an hour both sides of Main Street were ablaze and the village had but a single hand pumper to fight the fire. (continued on other side)
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Seeking an alternative transportation route to distant markets, many farmers and manufacturers in Ohio wanted to connect the Ohio River to Lake Erie with a canal. Beginning in Cleveland the Ohio-Erie Canal ran south, the length of the state, to Portsmouth. The canal was a total of 308 miles long, 40 feet wide at the surface, and 4 feet deep. The Ohio-Erie Canal opened for traffic along its entire length in 1832 and consequently effected great change. Population along the canal increased, and commercial, political, and industrial growth in Ohio boomed. Products grown and manufactured in this previously isolated region now had access to world markets. Profits for farmers and merchants increased, and the entire state economy was bolstered. With the rise of railroads in the 1860s, however, canals were destined to become obsolete because the railroad was a faster and more dependable means of transportation. The canal system ceased to operate altogether after a disastrous flood in 1913.
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Construction of Waverly’s third church, built with locally produced brick, began in 1859 and was completed in 1860. The original deed, recorded on October 31, 1859, listed the value of the lot as $180. With the merger of the Evangelical Synod of North America with the Reformed Church in 1934, the name changed to Evangelical and Reformed Church. A merger in 1957 with the Congregational Christian Church changed the name to First United Church of Christ. In 1987 it became known as Waverly United Church of Christ, until its dissolution in 1992, when the building was given to Pike Heritage Foundation Museum. Original records and services were in German. In 1890 some English was introduced in services, and by the early 1900s was used on alternate Sundays. The church was remodeled and enlarged in 1869, but retains much of its original appearance. An annex was added to the church in 1959.
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Originally called St. Clairsville and platted in 1801, Decatur was named for early 19th century naval hero Stephen Decatur. It is among the oldest villages in Brown County, which before 1817 was a part of Adams County. Among its notable early residents were Nathaniel Beasley (1774-1835), the first surveyor of Adams County, and Sarah Boone Montgomery (1763-1848), a heroine of the border wars in Kentucky. Decatur and Byrd Township supported at least four known stations on the Underground Railroad. Many area residents helped conduct escaping slaves northward to freedom.
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Myron T. Herrick, Governor of Ohio from 1904 to 1906, was born in Huntington Township in 1854 and lived here until age 12. A respected Cleveland attorney and businessman, Herrick was a friend and confidant to Senator Mark Hanna and Presidents McKinley, Taft, and Harding. His public service career culminated in two appointments as ambassador to France, from 1912 through the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and again from 1921 until his death in 1929. Enormously popular with the French people, Herrick escorted Charles Lindbergh in Paris after his historic 1927 transatlantic flight.
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The design for the fifty star flag was born here at Lancaster High School in 1958 when student Robert Heft designed it for a history class project. Reasoning that since Alaska was seeking admission as a state and that Hawaii would soon follow, Heft constructed a fifty star flag from an old 48-star flag using blue cloth to replace the field and white adhesive for the stars. When Heft received a B- on his project, his teacher, Stanley Pratt, promised that he would raise the grade if he submitted the flag design to their congressman, Walter Moeller. Moeller in turn passed the flag design on to the chairman of the Congressional Flag Design Committee, who also liked it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the design the official American flag in 1960. It is the only flag in American history to have flown over the White House for more than five administrations.
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A founder of the Standard Oil Company, Henry Morrison Flagler spent his formative years in Bellevue and began his business career here in 1844, building his home near this site in 1858. He first became associated with John D. Rockefeller as a fellow grain merchant. The two later formed the Standard Oil Company in 1870 with capital partially furnished by members of the local Harkness family. Standard Oil became America’s largest and most powerful corporation in the late 1800s, and Flagler used his wealth to develop the state of Florida. His Florida East Coast Railroad, known as “the railroad over the sea,” extended from Jacksonville to Key West, Florida. The cities of Miami, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and St. Augustine grew with Flagler’s intensive development efforts.
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In 1927, Henry Abell, a master plumber, purchased a 100-acre dairy farm. When the Great Depression struck the nation two years later, Abell could find little work as a plumber and decided to develop his dairy farm. In 1934, he and his family began the Dairy, growing the farm to 500 acres and producing enough milk, ice cream, and other dairy products to supply five counties. The dairy closed in 1979, but today houses America’s Ice Cream and Dairy Museum, dedicated to the cultural history of the ice cream and dairy industry in Ohio and the United States.
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