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The Connecticut Land Company surveyed Vienna Township as Township 4, Range 2, in 1798. The Township’s proprietors were Ephraim Root, Uriel Holmes, Jr., and Timothy Burr. Survey members Dennis Clark Palmer, Isaac Flower, and Samuel Hutchins and their families were the first to settle here in 1799. Between 1810 and 1840, Vienna was a center for the wooden works clock industry in Trumbull County and the Connecticut Western Reserve, with six factories located amid farms, sawmills, and quarries. After coal was discovered in 1866, over twenty mines were opened, bringing boom times for two decades. Vienna’s miners helped to bring about Ohio’s first mining safety law in 1874. Vienna was the birthplace of abolitionist and attorney John Hutchins (1812-1891), who represented Trumbull and Ashtabula counties in the United States Congress (1859-1863) and raised troops during the Civil War.
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The discovery in the mid-19th century of iron-rich black band ore in this region helped revitalize Mahoning Valley’s iron industry. The land now called Mineral Ridge was primarily a farming community before the 1850s. In the 1830s, coal was discovered and mining began on a small scale. For years, it was believed that the coal seam sat on top of a layer of slate, which was considered to be of little worth. In the mid-1850s, however, John Lewis, superintendent of the Mineral Ridge Coal Mines, identified what was previously thought to be slate as valuable black band ore instead. (Continued on other side)
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A native of Coshocton County, William Green (1870-1932) began his working life as a coal miner at age 16 and rose rapidly in the leadership of the United Mine Workers of America. Twice elected to the Ohio Senate, Green served as president pro tempore during his second term. He was instrumental in enacting Ohio’s first worker’s compensation law in 1912, at a time when progressive-era ideals conflicted with an impersonal industrial system where workers enjoyed few rights and little security. Green, one of the outstanding American trade union leaders of the twentieth century, served as president of the American Federation of Labor from 1924 until his death in 1952.
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One this site, December 10, 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union merged with the trade unionists of the Knights of Labor to create the American Federation of Labor. Delegates elected Samuel Gompers president and dedicated the Federation to improving the life of America’s working men and women. The A.F.L. recognizes November 15, 1881, as its anniversary date to honor the origin and legacy of F.O.T.L.U.