Remarkable Ohio

Results for: civil-rights
407 N Market St
Wooster

, OH

Harvey Howard, a local druggist, built the house at 407 North Market Street around 1860. After many owners, Captain James B. Taylor bought the home in 1893. Taylor commanded Company H of the 120th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He studied law after the war and moved his practice to Wooster in 1882. Taylor’s wife Emelie died in 1905 and in 1906 Taylor sold the property to become Wooster’s first city hospital. Many of the town’s noted physicians practiced here and the facility was eventually enlarged to accommodate 30 beds. The house was a hospital until 1943, when Central Christian Church purchased it. The church used the building for education programs and restored much of its decor, including four fireplaces, inlaid floors, and bronze door hardware.

Hubbard House Underground Railroad Museum, 1603 Walnut Blvd
Ashtabula

, OH

Built in the 1840s by William and Catharine Hubbard and known as “Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard” or “The Great Emporium” by fugitive slaves, the Hubbard House was an important terminus on the fabled Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. The Hubbard House sheltered escaped slaves who had risked life and limb after crossing the Ohio River into the North. From the Hubbard home, slaves walked one-quarter mile to the Hubbard and Company warehouse on the Ashtabula River, where friendly boat captains awaited to ferry their passengers to Canada and freedom. The U.S. Department of the Interior listed the Hubbard House on its National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

OH 38 NE
Bloomingburg

, OH

The Bloomingburg Presbyterian Church and cemetery were established in the northwest corner of the current cemetery grounds on March 7, 1818. Several years later it became a center for anti-slavery activity. The Reverend William Dickey, who presided over the church and other members, devoted their lives to the anti-slavery cause not only in voice but also in abolitionist activity. By the mid-1800s, their work, as well as the fact that Bloomingburg had become home to a vibrant African American community, led to the town becoming the area center for the Underground Railroad, which helped transport many fugitive slaves to freedom in the north. Six soldiers from the American Revolutionary War, nineteen from the War of 1812, and over 100 from the Civil War and Spanish-American War are buried in the Bloomingburg Cemetery, including Henry Casey, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor at Vicksburg.

90 North Street
Clifton

, OH

This historic village was a hub for early Ohio industry and travel. The natural geography of the area provided ideal conditions for the establishment of a variety of mills. Col. Robert Patterson, an ancestor of the founder of National Cash Register in Dayton, John Patterson, chose Clifton for the site of a woolen mill, which furnished material for the American army during the War of 1812. Davis Mill, established in 1802 and in operation today as Clifton Mill, produced meal and flour for Civil War troops. A major stop on the stagecoach trail, “The Accommodation Line,” which ran from Springfield to Cincinnati from 1827 to 1840, the village bustled with the commotion of travelers. The once flourishing industry of Clifton faded as railroad traffic bypassed the village and manufacturers left the area.

46450 OH 248
Chester

, OH

General John Hunt Morgan of Kentucky led a force of Confederate calvarymen into Meigs County during a forty-six day raid north of the Ohio River. The advance forces burned Benjamin Knight’s carding mill and sawmill, the Shade River Bridge, and pillaged local businesses in Chester on July 18, 1863, while waiting for the rest of the column to catch up. This two-hour halt delayed General Morgan’s arrival at the ford at Buffington Island until after dark, allowing Union troops to arrive before he could make his escape. General Morgan surrendered eight days later near West Point in Columbiana County, the northernmost point ever reached by Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Historic Lock and Dam #6 park
Stockport

, OH

In the heyday of steamboating on the Muskingum, many people made their livelihood on the river. Jane McMillan, known as Old Jane, was one of the few women reported to have piloted boats on the river. In the 1840s she was co-owner of the “Zanesville Packet.” McMillan worked a variety of jobs, from cook to pilot. She was reported to know the twists and turns of the river so well that she could navigate safely at night, something many pilots refused to do. Isaac Newton Hook, a descendant of the earliest settlers in Zanesville, used skills he learned on the Muskingum River as a pilot on the Mississippi during the Civil War. He shipped supplies needed by the Union army. His tomb is in the Brick Church cemetery between Hooksburg and Stockport. He had the grave built out of concrete and above the level of the 1898 flood. The 1913 flood submerged the tomb, but it survived and can be viewed to this day.

Troy Road (OH 41)
North Hampton

, OH

Asa Bushnell, former Governor of Ohio, encouraged by the light grade of the land, decided to establish the Springfield, Troy, and Piqua Railway (ST&P) in July 1904. The interurban traction line utilized sixty-pound rail and traveled over only one bridge. With direct current electricity generated in Springfield, the ST&P used four double-ended fifty-foot cars, each with a railroad roof, arch windows, GE-57 engines, and fifty-horsepower motors. The ST&P traveled from Springfield’s Fountain Square to Maitland, Hill Top, Lawrenceville, Bushnell, North Hampton, Dialton, Thackery, Proctors, Christiansburg, Brights, and Casstown and ended at Troy’s North Market Street Bridge. Later rights were granted to travel over the Great Miami River into Troy in conjunction with the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railway. The northwest right-of-way from Casstown to Piqua was secured but never built.

SE corner of OH 58 and OH 162
Huntington

, OH

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.