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Hanktown, settled in 1846, was home to eighty-nine of the three hundred and eighty-three slaves, owned by John Randolph (1773-1833), a wealthy Virginian landowner and cousin to President Thomas Jefferson. Randolph had decided to free the slaves and indicated the decision in his will. His family, however, found three different wills and protested. Thirteen years passed before the slaves left the plantation. In 1846, Judge William Leigh arranged for the slaves to travel to Mercer County and purchased two thousand acres. (Continued on other side)
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Established in 1898 as the Russian Orthodox Church of the Dormition, Holy Assumption was founded by Carpatho-Russian immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Constructed in 1905-1906, it is considered to be the oldest Orthodox church building in Ohio. Archbishop Tikhon, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, consecrated the church and celebrated the first Liturgy. Tsar Nicholas II of Russian personally donated the four icons on the iconostas, or icon screen, as well as liturgical items. Both the Tsar and, by then Patriarch, Tikhon were murdered by the Bolsheviks during the 1917 Russian Revolution and were glorified as Saints of the Orthodox Church. Holy Assumption Orthodox Church continues to be a beacon of the Orthodox Faith on the Marblehead peninsula.
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The Canfield Christian Church began as a Baptist congregation in 1822 and church met for worship in William Dean’s home. The Mahoning Baptist Association Meeting of 1826 was held in David Hayes barn. In 1827, Walter Scott was asked by the Association to be the first paid traveling evangelist in the Mahoning Valley area of Ohio. Scott accepted the offer and moved his family to a house next to the Canfield Church. By June of 1829, the Canfield Church voted to lay aside the Baptist name for the name Disciples of Christ. They believed all creeds were unnecessary and took the Bible alone as their sole rule of faith and practice. In 1847, a new church was built. Charter members of the church include James and Sarah Caldwell, Ann Winfield, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Caldwell and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Flick, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Clark, Mr. and Mrs. John Flick, and Mr. and Mrs. Simmon Sackett and daughter. (Continued on other side)
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In spite of small numbers and being welcomed by the mostly white congregation of First Methodist Episcopal Church, African Americans in Findlay in the 1880s wanted to express their faith in ways that best reflected their freedoms and traditions. By the mid-1880s, the congregation was meeting in members’ homes and the Odd Fellows Hall, but began fund raising to build their own church in 1885. The congregation was admitted to the North Ohio Conference of the Third Episcopal District of the African Methodist Church in 1885, one of the first churches to be so admitted. The building on Liberty Street was well underway by the end of 1887 on a lot donated by Judge D. J. Cory. The original twenty foot by forty foot building cost $2,000 and immediately became a focal point for religion and social events for Findlay’s African American community. (Continued on other side)
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In the early years of the nineteenth century, a religious unrest known as the Second Great Awakening spread across much of the American frontier. Among the most influential of the evolving religious organizations were the Campbellites, or Disciples of Christ, founded in the 1820s by Thomas and Alexander Campbell. The Campbellite movement sought to “restore” New Testament Christianity by calling for a return to the primitive church revealed in the gospels. Campbellites denied creeds and oath-taking and rejected sectarianism. They believed in baptism by immersion and communion on Sundays. Followers also dealt with problems and transgressions of members within the church and did not use civil courts. They held a millennial view that professed human happiness and the belief that Christ would reign on earth for a thousand years. Believers spread this word to the pioneers of the Doty Settlement and elsewhere. By 1850, there were ninety Campbellite Churches in Ohio.
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In 1804 a group of neighbors in Granville, Massachusetts and Granby, Connecticut formed The Licking Company for the purpose of moving to “Newlands” in Ohio. Inspired and informed by the settlement of Worthington in 1803, the Company purchased 29,040 acres in the U.S. Military District. Advance parties surveyed and mapped a site, established a mill, and planted grain. The Company planned a public square, a school, library, quarry, burying ground, and property for the support of churches. In November and December 1805, some 150 emigrants in ox-drawn wagons arrived in their new home and built temporary shelters on the designated public square. On December 9 through 12 1805, Company members selected their Granville lots in an auction that was described as peaceable and honest.
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Marysville, Ohio. On August 10, 1819, Samuel W. Culbertson (1780-1840), a Zanesville lawyer, established Marysville at the convergence of Mill Creek and the road connecting Delaware to Urbana. Culbertson purchased 450 acres of land on July 10, 1817 and authorized Charles Roberts to survey the village, which originally contained 96 lots. Culbertson named the village in honor of his daughter, Mary Ellen (1810-1853), who later married US Congressman, Joshua Mathiot (1800-1849). The village was originally in Delaware County, located in part of the Virginia Military District. It was land given as bounties to soldiers from Virginia after the Revolutionary War. Union County, which included Marysville, was created in 1820, and Marysville became the county seat in 1822. (Continued on other side)
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Just three weeks after reaching Granville, pioneer villagers decided on December 9, 1805 to build a log cabin where eighty children would attend school. By 1820, public school classes were being held in a three-story brick building. When rail lines and the National Road bypassed the village, dreams of becoming an industrial and commercial center were dashed. Educational institutions, however, thrived and by the Civil War Granville’s citizens had organized the following: the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, later called Granville College and then renamed Denison University; the Granville Female Seminary, the Granville Episcopal Female Seminary, the Young Ladies’ Institute, the Granville Female Academy, and the Granville Male Academy. As Granville enters its third century, educational excellence continues to attract students to the community’s schools.
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