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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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Production of synthetic soda ash began here, in America’s second plant, on November 1, 1900, by Columbia Chemical Company to support Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (now PPG Industries), marking birth of PPG’s diversified chemical operations. Principal founder John Pitcairn, first works manager Hugh Allen Galt. Plant subsequently added other chemicals. World’s deepest limestone mine (2200 feet beneath surface) established 1944. Soda ash discontinued 1973.
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Milan was a leading Great Lakes port after the completion of the 3 mile Milan Canal in 1839. Center of activity was the Milan Basin at this site where produce was brought from area farms for shipment to lake and world ports through 14 warehouses by as many as 20 schooners a day. Seventy-five vessels were built in the basin. Railroad competition and the flood of 1868 ended Milan’s port activity.
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One of the most influential icons of American popular culture in the mid-20th century, Roy Rogers was born Leonard Franklin Sly on November 5, 1911 in Cincinnati. He moved to this farm at age 8 from Portsmouth and lived here with his family until the Great Depression. He went to California in 1930, working as a truck driver, fruit picker, and country musician before signing a movie contract with Republic Pictures in 1937. Immediately popular, the clean-cut singing cowboy appeared in more than 100 western films, often making six or more movies a year during the 1940s. With his nearly equally-famous horse Trigger and his wife and partner Dale Evans-“the Queen of the West”-he subsequently starred in more than 100 television episodes of the family-oriented Roy Rogers Show from 1951 to 1957. A perennial hero and “good guy,” Rogers personified the mythical American cowboy who always fought fairly and lived by a strong moral code. He died in California on July 6, 1998.
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Manasseh Cutler, Rufus Putnam, Winthrop Sargeant, and Benjamin Tupper of the Ohio Company conceived Ohio University, which was encouraged by the Ordinance of 1787 and the Northwest Territorial Legislature in 1799, incorporated as the American Western University in 1802, and chartered by the Ohio State Legislature on February 18, 1804. The university is the first institution of higher learning in the Northwest Territory, second west of the Allegheny Mountains, and the first in the United States to be endowed with land by the government with proceeds used to pay for its operations-revenue from two townships was set aside to support the university. Opened on June 1, 1809, as an academy with three students, Ohio University awarded its first undergraduate degrees in 1815.
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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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On this site, the Miami and Erie Canal, that came north from Cincinnati and the Ohio River, intersected with the Wabash and Erie Canal that came from Fort Wayne and Evansville, Indiana. From this point, which became the town of Junction, the canals proceeded as one to Defiance, Toledo, and Lake Erie. From the 1830s to the 1870s, the canals played a key role in the settling of Paulding County, an area that was once a part of the Great Black Swamp. They held the promise of easier and quicker passenger transportation and commodity shipping and Junction became a landmark for fugitive slaves escaping to Canada. Once a thriving and growing community, the village of Junction became a forgotten historical note with the passing of the canal era and the coming of the railroads. Today, the Buckeye Trail and North County Trail follow the canal path through Paulding County.
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Francis McCormick (1764-1836), who fought under Lafayette at the siege of Yorktown, founded Methodism in the Northwest Territory. His evangelical and pioneer spirit led him from his Virginia birthplace to establish churches in the wilderness, first at Milford, Ohio, then here, at his village of Salem. He rests with his family and followers in the nearby churchyard.
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