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Rock Hollow School was originally built in 1877 in a wooded ravine two miles south of Ringgold, Union Township, and housed classes for fifty-seven years. The first class was held in November 1877, with John D. Davis of Ringgold teaching. Grades one through eight were taught in this one-room building, with an enrollment average of twenty to twenty-five pupils. The school closed in 1934 and sold in 1937 to Hettie Woodward, a former student and teacher at Rock Hollow School. In 1980, the heirs of the late Hettie Woodward donated the school to the Morgan County Historical Society for preservation. Fearing vandalism due to its remote location, the historical society relocated the building to its present site in Malta in 1991. The building was disassembled and rebuilt in exact original condition. Rock Hollow School was officially rededicated on November 1, 1992.
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Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. (July 1, 1877 – November 26, 1970), the nation’s first African American general in the Regular Army, was born in Washington, D.C. Davis first served as a temporary first lieutenant of the 8th U.S. Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War. Following that conflict, he enlisted as a private in the 9th U.S. Cavalry, serving in the Philippine Insurrection where he began to rise in rank. Davis was promoted to first lieutenant in 1905, captain in 1915, lieutenant colonel in 1920, colonel in 1930, and brigadier general in 1941. His military career took him around the world. In 1909, he was detailed as Military Attache to Monrovia, Liberia. During World War I, Davis was stationed in the Philippines. In 1938, he took command of the New York’s African American 396th National Guard Infantry, later known as the 369th Coast Artillery (Antiaircraft) Regiment. (Continued on other side)
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Cornelius D. Battelle was born July 13, 1807 in Washington County, Ohio. He entered the Methodist Episcopal Church on October 30, 1825 and the Pittsburgh Methodist Conference in 1833. He was assigned pastoral circuit duties in rural eastern Ohio and the small river settlement of “Belle Aire” where he delivered his first sermon in a warehouse during the winter of 1838. He established the first Methodist class of eleven members in 1839 and rallied subscriptions to build the first church in the community. He served the Ohio Conference for 64 years before his death on July 2, 1897.
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Born in New Jersey, Richard and Sarah Conine, the founders of the village of Pataskala, moved to Lima Township and lived on this site as early as 1821 when Richard established a grist mill nearby. Their homestead also served as a stagecoach stop on the mud pike between Columbus and Newark prior to the coming of the railroad. Richard platted “Conine Town” south and west of here in 1851, and the town was renamed Pataskala soon after. The public-spirited Conines contributed to the building of several area schools and churches and donated land for the Pataskala Cemetery. After their deaths, Sarah’s nephew Jacob Van Dorn inherited the property. John Hawley purchased the home in 1887 and for many years it was known as “The Hawley House.” It was demolished in 1964 to make way for commercial development.
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People living in Marietta and along the Muskingum River shared a history of slavery opposition. Manasseh Cutler, from Massachusetts and an Ohio Land Company agent, helped draft the Ordinance of 1787 that prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. General Rufus Putnam, Captain Jonathan Stone, and other Ohio Land Company Revolutionary War veterans, founded Marietta at the mouth of the Muskingum River in 1788 bringing with them their anti-slavery sentiments. A proposal to legalize slavery in the proposed state of Ohio was vetoed largely due to the efforts of Marietta’s Ephraim Cutler and General Putnam at the 1802 Ohio Constitutional Convention. These conditions were precursors toward the formation of the Underground Railroad as fugitive slaves crossed the Ohio River seeking freedom. From 1812 through 1861, large numbers of fugitive slaves fleeing toward Canada, were aided by descendants of early settlers who operated Underground Railroad Stations along the Muskingum River. (Continued on other side)
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Field Musician Richard W. Thompson. Tunes played on fife and drum regulated a soldier’s life in camp and his actions on the battlefield. Heard over the roar of battle and through the haze of smoke, fifes and drums – field music – communicated orders to massed troops quickly. Richard Willoughby Thompson (c. 1742-1837), buried in Fancher Cemetery, was a field musician during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. According to his grandson Henry’s recollections from the 1920s, Thompson was born in Dublin, Ireland, and enlisted in the British army, where his service culminated in his capture while picking blackberries. He switched allegiances, joined the colonials, and was sent to Virginia. Thompson was appointed the Fife Major of the 5th Virginia Regiment and remained a Fife Major as Virginia units organized during the war. (Continued on other side)
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In the late 1790s General Benjamin Whiteman built near this site one of the first log cabins in Alpha, the first settlement in what would become Beavercreek Township of Greene County. The cabin, later owned by Whiteman’s father-in-law, Owen Davis, and leased for use as a tavern to Peter Borders, became the first courthouse of Greene County. Twenty-five feet square, it had one room below and a chamber above, serving as the family sleeping quarters. A small ladder through a hole in the ceiling reached the upper level. The building was constructed of burr oak logs with a roof made of clapboards held in place by long poles laid across them. Considered to be one of the finest houses in that part of the county, the cabin had one door, one window, and a huge fireplace with an outside chimney built of sticks, stones, and clay. (Continued on other side)
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Border warfare characterized the American Revolution on the northwest frontier. Between August 26 and September 15, 1781, sixty-four survivors of Lochry’s Expedition were held captive by “Butler’s Rangers” (British-allied Indians led by George Girty) in a camp near this site. Colonel Archibald Lochry’s battalion of Pennsylvania militia, part of a larger punitive expedition under General George Rogers Clark and traveling down the Ohio River behind the main force, was attacked by Girty’s men ten miles downstream from the mouth of the Great Miami River near present-day Aurora, Indiana. Thirty-seven militiamen were killed in the August 24 battle, including Lochry, and the rest captured. Afterwards Rogers abandoned his objective of capturing British-held Detroit. The captives were taken to Detroit and eventually to Montreal. Tradition holds that fewer than twenty of Lochry’s battalion ever returned to their homes.
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