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On a forested hillside south of New Straitsville, the spacious 1000 square foot Robinson’s Cave offered a secluded location with great acoustics where large groups of Hocking Valley coal miners could meet in secret. Beginning in about 1870, labor-organizing meetings were held at the cave by various emerging unions including the Knights of Labor. New Straitsville resident Christopher Evans, a well-known union organizer, used Robinson’s Cave to lead miners throughout the long Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884-1885. These meetings gave the miners a voice in the formation of a national organization called the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers, later renamed the National Progressive Union. The cave was also where non-union miners met to plan to set the Columbus & Hocking Coal & Iron Company mines on fire in a desperate attempt to end the Hocking Valley Strike. [continued on other side]
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Fairfield County quickly mobilized after the attack on Ft. Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861 and the beginning of the Civil War. Parts of the county fairgrounds became Camp Anderson, in honor of Major Robert Anderson who commanded Fort Sumter during the attack. Enlisted men were trained there before being sent to war. Meanwhile the existing militia company- the Lancaster Guards plus new volunteers reported for duty at the Ohio Statehouse. They had the honor of being designated Company A of the 1st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The 1st OVI became the Capital Guard in Washington D.C.
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The first Mt. Tabor Church, a log meetinghouse, was erected on this site in 1816. It stood on land originally selected by Griffith and Martha Evans for a graveyard at the death of their daughter circa 1812. Deeds show the Evans family gave two and one half acres of land “for the purpose of erecting a meetinghouse and establishing a burying site.” Camp meetings, religious gatherings popular in frontier Ohio, were held on the hillside west of the meetinghouse. Simon Kenton was converted at a Mt. Tabor camp meeting in 1819. The log meetinghouse burned in 1824 and was replaced with a brick church on the same spot. In 1881, the present brick church was completed and dedicated.
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As the county seat. Port Clinton is home to the present Ottawa County Courthouse, completed on May 20, 1901 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Constructed in the Richardson Romanesque style, the exterior of the courthouse was built using sandstone quarried at Amherst, Ohio. Pink marble wainscoting, an ornate staircase, and stenciling enhance the interior. A copy of William Powell’s mural, “Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie,” is featured along with smaller murals depicting early county industries–farming, fishing, fruit growing, and quarrying. Memorial tablets honor veterans from the Spanish-American War and Civil War.
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In 1918, Charles Young made a desperate attempt to convince the U.S. Army that he was fit for duty. The Army’s highest-ranking Black officer, he had been medically retired and not given a command during World War I. To demonstrate his fitness, he rode 497 miles from his home in Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, D.C. Leaving on June 6 he made the journey in 17 days, 16 on horseback and 1 resting. Averaging 31 miles each day, he rode 45 minutes and walked 15 minutes every hour. Upon his arrival, Young met with Secretary of War Newton Baker. Pressured by the Black press and the White House, Baker hedged. He recalled Young to active duty a year later and assigned him to Camp Grant, Illinois, just five days before the end of the war.
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The Zoarville Station Bridge is a rare survivor of the earliest period of iron bridge construction in the United States, an era when unprecedented railroad expansion gave American bridge builders an international reputation for innovation. German immigrant Albert Fink first developed this truss design for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the early 1850s. Charles Shaler Smith, a prominent civil engineer and Fink’s former assistant, designed the bridge with patented features that improved on Fink’s original design. His firm, Smith, Latrobe & Company of Baltimore, Maryland, built this example in 1868 as a highway bridge over the Tuscarawas River in Dover. It was moved to this site in 1905 and abandoned in 1940. The Lebold family donated the bridge to the Camp Tuscazoar Foundation in 1997 for preservation and restoration. Of the hundreds of Fink Truss bridges built in the mid-1800s, the Zoarville Station Bridge is the last of its kind known to exist.
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As the county seat, Port Clinton is home to the present Ottawa County Courthouse, completed on May 20, 1901 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Constructed in the Richardson Romanesque style, the exterior of the courthouse was built using sandstone quarried at Amherst, Ohio. Pink marble wainscoting, an ornate staircase, and stenciling enhance the interior. A copy of William Powell’s mural, “Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie,” is featured along with smaller murals depicting early county industries – farming, fishing, fruit growing, and quarrying. Memorial tablets honor veterans from the Spanish-American War and Civil War.
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Tah-gah-jute, the Mingo chief named Logan, was a native of Pennsylvania. Logan moved to Ohio in 1770, and settled at the Pickaway Plains. Logan and his father, Shikellimus, had long supported friendships between Native Americans and white men; however, in the spring of 1774, his tribesmen and family were murdered at Yellow Creek, along the Ohio River. Once an advocate of peace, Logan went on the warpath and raided frontier settlements. These and similar raids along the Ohio frontier precipitated Lord Dunmore’s War in October 1774. After the Shawnees and their allies were defeated at Point Pleasant, Virginia governor Lord Dunmore marched up the Hocking River to the Pickaway Plains. Dunmore asked his interpreter, Colonel John Gibson, to assist in negotiations with Cornstalk and other Indian leaders, including Logan. Logan declined to attend the conference, but spoke to Gibson about his anger and betrayal.
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