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The design for the fifty star flag was born here at Lancaster High School in 1958 when student Robert Heft designed it for a history class project. Reasoning that since Alaska was seeking admission as a state and that Hawaii would soon follow, Heft constructed a fifty star flag from an old 48-star flag using blue cloth to replace the field and white adhesive for the stars. When Heft received a B- on his project, his teacher, Stanley Pratt, promised that he would raise the grade if he submitted the flag design to their congressman, Walter Moeller. Moeller in turn passed the flag design on to the chairman of the Congressional Flag Design Committee, who also liked it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the design the official American flag in 1960. It is the only flag in American history to have flown over the White House for more than five administrations.
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About a mile south in St. Paul’s Cemetery, the Reverend Father Edward J. Fenwick, “Pioneer Apostle of Ohio,” organized the first Catholic parish in northern Ohio. The first mass was celebrated in the log house of Daniel McCallister. A century and a half later the cabin was dismantled, moved here, rebuilt, and rededicated in May, 1967 as the Log Cabin Shrine of Dungannon.
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A native of New Boston, Vernal G. Riffe Jr. served the 92nd House District in the Ohio General Assembly from 1959 to 1994. As Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1974 through 1994, he served longer than any other speaker in the state’s history. Widely regarded as Ohio’s most influential legislator of the late 20th century, Riffe, a Democrat, built effective political alliances across party lines. A powerful advocate for southern Ohio, he was instrumental in the growth and expansion of Shawnee State University.
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In 1927, Henry Abell, a master plumber, purchased a 100-acre dairy farm. When the Great Depression struck the nation two years later, Abell could find little work as a plumber and decided to develop his dairy farm. In 1934, he and his family began the Dairy, growing the farm to 500 acres and producing enough milk, ice cream, and other dairy products to supply five counties. The dairy closed in 1979, but today houses America’s Ice Cream and Dairy Museum, dedicated to the cultural history of the ice cream and dairy industry in Ohio and the United States.
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The village of Miltonville, located along the banks of Elk Creek, was platted in 1816 by George Bennett, Theophilus Eaglesfield, and Richard V. V. Crane. The creek served two grist mills, one built around 1804 and operated by a free black, Bambo Harris, and the second was built by George Bennett in 1815. An Indian burial ground was located on the east bank of Elk Creek near the site of Huff’s Ferry. Eagle Tavern, the area’s first three-story brick inn, was a stopover for stagecoach lines traveling the Miltonville-Trenton Turnpike. The village was known for pottery factories, vineyards and wineries, and Frisch’s brickyard, established in 1880. The United Brethren Church, organized in 1811, and Miltonville Cemetery were the sites of church conferences and celebrations. The Miltonville School operated from the 1800s to 1936, and the local post office was in service during the years 1889-1904.
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In the years leading to Ohio statehood in 1803, Ames Township citizens decided to establish a stock-owned circulating library. Since cash was scarce during Ohio’s frontier era, some citizens paid for their $2.50 shares by the sale of animal pelts, which were taken to Boston for sale in the spring of 1804 by merchant Samuel Brown. There he acquired fifty-one volumes, primarily books on history, religion, travel, and biography, as the first accessions for the Western Library Association. Senator Thomas Ewing later related that he paid his share with ten raccoon skins, thus suggesting the collection’s popular name “the Coonskin Library.” Judge Ephraim Cutler was the first of many librarians who kept the library until 1861.
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A soldier in Company A, 148th Infantry, 37th “Buckeye” Infantry Division, Cicchetti was part of the assault on the first important line of Japanese defenses at South Manila, Luzon, Philippines on February 9, 1945. He died of wounds received while leading a volunteer litter bearer team that rescued fourteen wounded men, deliberately drawing machine gun fire to himself in the process. “By his skilled leadership, indomitable will, and dauntless courage, Pfc. Cicchetti saved the lives of many of his fellow soldiers at the cost of his own.” President Truman posthumously awarded Cicchetti the Congressional Medal of Honor on December 8, 1945.
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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.
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