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The 19th century saw a great migration of Quakers from the Carolinas and from eastern Ohio to southwestern Ohio. Attracted by rich soil and abundance of fresh water and springs, Quakers became the dominant religious group in the region. Clinton County was referred to as the “Quaker County of Ohio.” In August 1870, members of the Society of Friends purchased at an auction an unfinished building on 14 acres of land and founded Wilmington College, the first Quaker institution of higher learning established in Ohio. College Hall is the original structure and the first classes commenced in April 1871. Wilmington’s importance as a Quaker center grew with the founding of Wilmington College, which houses the Quaker Collection of historical, literary, and genealogical publications in the Watson Library.
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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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Built in the 1840s by William and Catharine Hubbard and known as “Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard” or “The Great Emporium” by fugitive slaves, the Hubbard House was an important terminus on the fabled Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. The Hubbard House sheltered escaped slaves who had risked life and limb after crossing the Ohio River into the North. From the Hubbard home, slaves walked one-quarter mile to the Hubbard and Company warehouse on the Ashtabula River, where friendly boat captains awaited to ferry their passengers to Canada and freedom. The U.S. Department of the Interior listed the Hubbard House on its National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
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In 1885, 800 feet north of this marker, Benjamin Faurot struck oil after drilling into the Trenton Rock Limestone formation at a depth of 1,251 feet. This event marked the beginning of the great Oil Boom of northwest Ohio. The ensuing rush brought speculators who drilled hundreds of wells in the Trenton Rock (Lima) Oil Field that stretched from Mercer County north through Wood County in Ohio and west to Indiana. By 1886, the Lima field was the nation’s leading producer of oil, and by the following year it was considered to be the largest in the world. Production from the Ohio portion of the Lima-Indiana field reached its peak in 1896, when more than 20 million barrels were brought out of the ground. Though short-lived, the oil rush brought an influx of people, pipelines, refineries, and businesses, giving a powerful impetus to the growth of northwest Ohio.
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Thomas Howard, aged 66, a Revolutionary War veteran, arrived at the head of the great rapids of the Maumee from New York State in 1822. Three cabins were erected for his family and the families of his two sons Edward and Robert. The first death in this settlement was Thomas Howard in 1825; and this plot, then a wooded bluff on a sharp ravine, was chosen as a burial place. Other Howards were buried here, and in 1850, Tee-na-Beek, a family friend and one of the last of the Ottawa Indians in this area, was laid to rest in a corner of the family cemetery. WPA workers leveled the ground and relocated many graves in 1938. The Howard Cemetery is now owned and maintained by the Village of Grand Rapids.
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The oldest commercial enterprise in Ohio, the Chillicothe Gazette began publication on April 25, 1800, as Freeman’s Journal and Chillicothe Advertiser. That October it became the Scioto Gazette, and Chillicothe has had a Gazette ever since. It is the oldest newspaper in continuous operation west of the Allegheny Mountains, and the second oldest in the United States. Its first publisher and editor, Nathaniel Willis, was a Revolution-era Boston printer who reputedly apprenticed under Benjamin Franklin. Under his leadership the Gazette became one of the most influential papers in the expanding West. It first reported news transmitted by telegraph in 1847 and began daily publication in 1849. The Gazette moved into this building, a replica of Ohio’s first statehouse, in 1941.
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Hemlock Falls is located nearby. Two small streams cascade down the face of the massive sandstone cliff in the shade of tall hemlock trees. One of the falls drops about 60 feet and the other about 100 feet. The rock is Black Hand Sandstone deposited in the deltas along the great salt-water sea during the Mississippian Period about 350 million years ago. The cliffs were created later and were produced by erosion along the side of the valley of the ancient pre-glacial Groveport River. One large slump block, which has separated from the rock wall by weathering, may be the largest in Ohio. Plants more typical of the Appalachian Plateau and rare to Richland County can be found in this area. The ecosystem is typical of that found at the past edge of a glacier.
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The Scioto Salts Licks, located in and around Jackson, is an area where naturally occurring salt water, known as brine, flowed to the surface as a salt-water spring. It is known that the spring existed since the Pleistocene Ice Age because numerous bones, probably including those of mammoth and ground sloth, were excavated there. Native Americans obtained salt here for at least 8,000 years and did so until 1795 when the Treaty of Greenville separated the Native American and European populations. Early pioneer settlers utilized the licks in the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, constructing salt furnaces that extended for four miles up and down Salt Lick Creek. Salt was a precious and necessary commodity, and the early settlers in the area profited from its trade.
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