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First Lady Lucy Ware Webb Hayes was born in this four-room Federal Vernacular house in 1831. Well educated for her time, she attended local schools, took classes in the preparatory department of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, and graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati in 1850. She married lawyer and future U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1852. They raised five children to adulthood. As a colonel’s wife during the Civil War, “Mother Lucy” boosted morale for the soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiment. In 1870, during Hayes’ first term as governor of Ohio, Lucy helped establish the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans’ Home as a state institution. (continued on other side)
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General John Hunt Morgan led a force of 2,000 Confederate calvarymen into Meigs County on July 18, 1863, during a forty-six day raid north of the Ohio River. After a skirmish with the 23rd Ohio Infantry, the Confederates paused to drink and replenish their canteens with cool spring water found in Rocksprings. Nearby, Isaac Carleton, a Meigs County native, was shot and wounded by a Confederate soldier. After suffering set backs at Chester and Buffington Island, Morgan surrendered eight days later near West Point in Columbiana County. The surrender field was the northernmost point ever reached by Confederate forces during the Civil War.
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Samuel Patterson arrived in East Orange in 1824 and, within a few years, began to hide runaway slaves in his home. He also invited anti-slavery speakers to the pulpit of the East Orange Methodist Church, which brought Patterson and his neighbors into conflict with the bishop. Following their consciences, they became Wesleyan Methodists and built a new church. A pro-slavery neighbor mocked them by calling their community Africa, and so East Orange was renamed. The village has disappeared, but several homes owned by Patterson and his neighbors still stand in this vicinity.
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The Temple of Rumley Church is of one of two remaining buildings in what once was Rumley, a thriving African American community in Shelby County. On May 19, 1837, the village was surveyed for Amos Evans, who built his hewed log dwelling and store. Brothers Joel and George Goings (aka. Goens), freed black men from Monongalia County, Virginia, purchased 80 acres of land that same year. They settled with their families near Rumley in Van Buren Township along with other free men and women of color, including former slaves. Joel Goings erected the first brick house in 1841, using bricks from his own brickyard. By 1846, the Rumley community stretched over 7,000 acres and included the Collins, Redman, Williams, Davis, Lett, and Brown families. (Continued on other side)
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In an effort to maintain peace with Native Americans, the British imposed the Proclamation Line of 1763, which prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. Some settlers did not recognize British authority and continued to move westward. Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore, realizing that peace with Native Americans was improbable, amassed troops and headed west, camping at the Hocking River to meet with a unit commanded by Andrew Lewis. En route, Lewis’s troops were attacked on October 10, 1774 at present day Point Pleasant, West Virginia, by a force of Delaware and Shawnee led by Cornstalk.
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Since 1868, Ironton’s annual Memorial Day parade has recognized those in Lawrence County who died while defending our country’s freedom. This was the same year in which the Grand Army of the Republic established May 30 as Decoration Day. Originally established to commemorate soldiers who died during the Civil War, the parade now honors those who served during all the nation’s wars. Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress in 1971. The Ironton event is recognized as the oldest Memorial Day parade in Ohio and the oldest continuing Memorial Day observance in the nation.
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Hugh Mosher was the fifer portrayed in Archibald Willard’s “Spirit of ’76”, one of America”s most famous patriotic paintings. Mosher was born on January 29, 1819 in Perry, Lake County (then part of Geauga County), Ohio. He served as Fifer Major in the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. After the conflict, Mosher was considered the finest fifer in the state, and performed at veterans’ reunions and other celebrations. Always popular and noted for his generosity, Mosher died on August 15, 1896 and is buried in Brighton (Lorain County), Ohio.
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Born in Steubenville in 1814, Edwin McMasters Stanton studied at Kenyon College and opened his law practice in Cadiz in 1836. The grandson of North Carolina slaveholders, Stanton opposed slavery. A successful railroad attorney and War Democrat at the beginning of the Civil War, he accepted the challenge of reorganizing President Abraham Lincoln’s War Department. Stanton enforced unpopular draft laws, fought draft, restricted the press, and nationalized the railroads. An effective planner and logistician, Stanton moved 20,000 soldiers more than 1,200 miles in a week by railroad to relieve the siege of Chattanooga in 1863. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Stanton clashed with President Andrew Johnson and provoked the act that led to Johnson’s impeachment. He died four days after President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1869.