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Having settled in the Ridgeville area with his father, Justice McLean, in 1799, Justice John McLean was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1829 by President Andrew Jackson. He was best known for his anti-slavery dissenting opinion in the famous Dred Scott case. Founder of the Western Star, former Postmaster General, Congressman, and candidate for President, Justice McLean served on the Supreme Court until his death in 1861.
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The Ohio-Erie Canal, the most important development in the county’s early years, was started July 4, 1825 near Newark. The canal passed through Waverly along US 23 and portions of it can still be seen in Waverly today. Only four feet deep and bordered by tow paths with eight feet clearance, the 309 mile canal was completed in 1833 at a cost of more than $7 million.
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Named for John Paulding, a Revolutionary War soldier whose capture of a British spy implicated Benedict Arnold in treason, Paulding County was formed in 1820 from the last remaining unorganized area of Ohio. Sparsely settled, it remained under the jurisdiction of Wood County until 1824 and then Williams County until 1839. Paulding’s first county seat was established at New Rochester in 1839, then moved to Charloe in 1841. Neither village exists today. Centrally-located Paulding Center became the county seat in 1851, and a courthouse was built the following year. The present courthouse, built during the region’s timber boom of the late 19th century, was designed by architect Edward Oscar Fallis and patterned after his Lenawee County courthouse in Adrian, Michigan. The four-faced Romanesque style building was completed in 1888 at a cost of $40,000. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
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The first War of 1812 battle on Ohio soil was fought here when about 60 exhausted citizen soldiers were ambushed by about 130 Indians on September 29. Twenty men held the Indians at bay from a cabin while the main body escaped by boat to Cedar Point. Two days later the defenders were rescued. Forty Indians including several chiefs and 8 Americans were killed in the skirmish, neither a victory nor a defeat for either side.
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To Commemorate the first church erected in Union Township, Miami County, Ohio, this log replica was constructed in 1976 by the Union Township 4-H Clubs and the West Milton area Camp Fire Girls. The Laura Lions Club established this historic marker which stands on the site of the West Branch Quaker Burial Grounds near the location of the original church.
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The Cranberry Prairie, southwest of this marker, is a part of Ohio’s natural history. The place was named for the cranberries that grew in a swamp here prior to drainage of the area. The Cranberry Prairie was created by centuries of peat accumulation in a late Ice Age lake that formed at the base of St. John’s Moraine. Paleo-Indian or Early Archaic peoples probably killed the elk whose skeleton was dug up here in 1981. This elk was dated at approximately 7400 B.C. By the 1860s, immigrant German farmers had begun transforming the swamp into fertile farmland. “Wild Bill” Simison, a legendary inhabitant, lived in the swamp and settlers respected him for his knowledge of the area. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Granville Township School #7, St. Francis Catholic Church, and Bertke’s Store stood at the edge of the Cranberry Prairie.
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Born at Wallingford, Connecticut. Served during the Revolutionary War. Proprietor, Agent, and Surveyor of the Connecticut Land Company. Appointed Judge of Trumbull County by Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair, 1800. State Senator, Trumbull County, 1815-1816. Poland Justice of the Peace, twenty years. Moderator of St. James Episcopal Church, Boardman, 1809. First Worshipful Master of Erie Lodge No. 47, Warren, 1803, oldest lodge in the Connecticut Western Reserve and one of six lodges to form the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ohio, 1809.
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In 1742, a tribe of Kickapoo requested permission from Montreal’s Governor to move to a Mascoutin village on both sides of the river here. French “Coureurs de Bois” traders named the wide floodplain “La Prairie des Mascoutins” (The Meadow of the Mascoutin). In 1764, Captain Thomas Morris explored this newly acquired British territory, and met the prophetic dreamer Chief Katapelleecy here. General Anthony Wayne’s troops victoriously returned from The Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and burned “Prairie de Masque.” The Treaty of Detroit in 1807 created a hunting reservation to the east, allowing settlers to acquire the surrounding lands. Ethnic tensions climaxed in 1812, when an American Captain Logan was mortally wounded near here. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 caused the remaining tribes to move west.