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Zachariah Price DeWitt was born of a Dutch family in New Jersey in 1768. With brothers Jacob and Peter, he migrated to Kentucky where, in 1790, he married Elizabeth Teets, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1774. By 1805 all three brothers had settled in Ohio near Four Mile (Talawanda) Creek. Here Zachariah and Elizabeth raised corn, hogs, and eventually, nine children. Zachariah became a prominent community leader, operating a sawmill, building houses in Oxford, serving as Masonic Lodge secretary, and commanding a rifle company during the War of 1812. Tradition has it that Elizabeth wore a black sunbonnet to cover a scar from having been scalped as a child in Kentucky. Elizabeth died in 1843, followed by Zachariah in 1851. Both are buried in Darrtown Cemetery.
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In 1810, early settlers here were Major Amos Spafford (1753-1818), his wife Olive (1756-1823), and their children Samuel, Aurora , Chloe (Mrs. Almon Gibbs), and Anna (Mrs. Richard Craw). In 1796, Spafford, a native of Connecticut, was a surveyor for the Connecticut Land Company. He drew the first map laying out Cleveland and named the city. He left there in 1810 following appointment as custom’s collector and postmaster for the new port at the foot of the Maumee River rapids, Port Miami of Lake Erie. Spafford was granted a 160 acre land patent on River Tracts #64 and #65 in Waynesfield township, signed by President James Monroe and was able to purchase it following the 1817 Treaty of the Rapids that extinguished Native American claim. Two years later, 67 families lived in the area, but most fled at the outbreak of the War of 1812.
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Robert L. Eichelberger was born in Urbana on March 9, 1886, the youngest of the five children of George Maley Eichelberger, an Urbana lawyer, and Emma (Ring) Eichelberger. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1903, he attended Ohio State University and then was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Graduating in 1909, he was appointed a second lieutenant of infantry. Four years later he married Emma Gudger, daughter of Judge H. A. Gudger of Asheville, North Carolina. For several years, he saw service in Panama and the Mexican border before joining the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia. From 1918 to 1920 Major Eichelberger observed the Japanese incursion into Siberia and became aware of Japanese methods. In 1940 he was appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point where he established regular courses to include flight training for Flying Army Officers. [continued on other side]
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Erected in 1828, the Randolph Mitchell House is a five-bay, Federal-style “I” house. Its facade features a doorway with an Adam-style fan and sidelights. The interior boasts a grand stairway in the foyer and fine woodwork throughout. Randolph Mitchell (1796-1847) was born in Rockingham County, Virginia. In 1819, Mitchell and his mother Sarah (1765-1844), settled in New Reading and he married Lydia Witmer (1798-1872). They had four children. A merchant, Mitchell kept an ample smokehouse and owned a tannery and real estate. He served as a justice of the peace for Reading Township. After Mitchell’s death, his son-in-law, Dr. W.W. Arnold (1818-1872) maintained his practice in the home, where he and Caroline Mitchell Arnold (1825-1888) lived. Their son William Arnold (1858-1948) acquired the house, which remained in the family until 1951. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
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In 1795, at the age of 23, Jeremiah Morrow came to the Northwest Territory from Pennsylvania. He purchased land along the Little Miami River in Deerfield Township and in 1799 married Mary Parkhill of Pennsylvania. Around 1800 he built this barn which is one of Warren County’s oldest standing structures. In 1801, Morrow was sent to the Second Territorial Assembly and to the first Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1802. In 1803, he was elected the new state’s first U. S. Congressman and was Ohio’s only congressman for ten years. In 1813 the Ohio legislature elevated him to U.S. Senate. In 1822 he became Ohio’s ninth governor. He went on to serve in both the Ohio House and Senate and at age 69 returned to Congress. An extraordinary man, Jeremiah Morrow gave his country 43 years of public service.
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The Moravian Church in America began missionary work among the Delaware and Mohican tribes of North America in the mid-18th century. David Zeisberger, one of the best-known Moravian missionaries, came to the Ohio country with Delaware converts from a mission in western Pennsylvania and founded Schoenbrunn in the Tuscarawas Valley on May 3, 1772. Josua, a Mohican convert and missionary leader, led Mohican and Munsee Christians downriver and settled Gnadenhutten (“Tents of Grace”) on October 9, 1772. Zeisberger served as lead missionary at both villages. By 1775, there was an estimated 200 inhabitants in the village. The British, along with Wyandot and Delaware allies, suspected the Christian Indians of aiding the Americans. To ensure their allegiance to the British, the inhabitants of Gnadenhutten were forcibly removed in 1781 and taken to Captives’ Town on the Sandusky River.
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Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth, renowned as “The Father of American Beekeeping,” lived in this simple two-story, eight-room house with his wife, Anne, and their three children from 1858 to 1887. Unchanged externally, the Greek Revival cottage features brick pilasters and pediments and a fan-shaped front window. In his garden workshop, Langstroth made experimental beehives, established an apiary, and on the ten acres that surrounded his home, grew buckwheat, clover, an apple orchard, and a “honey garden” of flowers. He imported Italian queen bees in efforts to improve native bees and shipped his queens to keepers across the United States and around the world. The Langstroth Cottage was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982. (Continued from other side)
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Ebenezer Sheldon (1754-1825) was born in Suffield, Connecticut. On April 19, 1775, he answered the “Lexington Alarm,” fought in the Revolution, and, in 1789, was appointed a captain in Connecticut’s militia. Following the Revolution, Sheldon, like many others, suffered financial hardships and sought a new beginning in the Western Reserve. In 1799, he established a homestead in Aurora and returned to Connecticut the following year to bring his wife Lovee and their six children to the area. A family legend relates that when Lovee saw the family’s home she “shed a few tears over the cheerless prospects” of her new life in the wilderness.