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The schooner Idaho was built in Milan during prosperous times, which started with the opening of the Milan Canal in 1839. The canal connected the village with Lake Erie by way of the Huron River and facilitated the development of the area’s shipbuilding industry and port, as Milan became one of the busiest grain ports during the 1840s. Completed at the A. J. Mowry shipyard in 1863, the Idaho sailed the Great Lakes until the economic panic of 1873. The Idaho was headed to the Milan dry dock for repair, but due to depressed economic conditions, the crew abandoned her here at the lower lock of the Milan Canal. Eventually, only “bones”, or iron pins, from the Idaho’s hull could be seen protruding through the mud of the abandoned lock. The last remnants of the schooner have since disappeared from the lock and now reside in Milan museums and in personal collections.
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In 1884, the first natural gas well was successfully drilled in Findlay, and when The Great Karg Well, then the largest in the world, was drilled in 1886, the boom was on. Many industries, especially glass, were attracted to Findlay, lured by free or cheap gas for fuel. They included eight window, two bottle, two chimney lamp, one light bulb, one novelty, and five tableware glass factories. Famed manufacturing pioneer and inventor Mike Owens (later associated with Owens Illinois) managed the Richardson Glass Works, located at this site in 1891-1892. Tableware glass companies included Bellaire Goblet (1888-1892), Columbia Glass (1886-1892), Dalzell, Gilmore & Leighton (1888-1901), Findlay Flint Glass (1889-1991), and Model Flint Glass (1888-1893). Tableware companies employed women as decorators and packers. Hundreds of skilled glassworkers came from the eastern states of America, as well as Europe, especially Belgium, France, and Germany. Bottle glassworkers were among the first workers to unionize and to use collective bargaining.
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Aluminum pioneer Charles Martin Hall was born in 1863 in Thompson, Ohio (Geauga County), and moved with his family to Oberlin in 1873. Hall graduated from Oberlin College in 1885, studying chemistry under Professor Frank Fanning Jewett (1844-1926). Jewett, who lived in this house from 1884 to 1923, encouraged Hall’s interest in chemistry and aluminum, then a semi-precious metal. Hall discovered an electrochemical reduction process for producing metallic aluminum from aluminum oxide dissolved in molten cryolite in his woodshed laboratory at his family’s home at 64 East College Street on February 23, 1886. This process, the culmination of research with Jewett, became the basis for the aluminum industry in America. In 1888 Hall co-founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, later the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Upon his death in 1914, Hall left one-third of his estate to Oberlin College.
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The Johnson Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1902 by brothers James B., J. Will, Isaac T., and Charles F. Johnson, all of Quaker heritage. The company manufactured tin and galvanized iron ware for railroad lines across the United States. The initial product was the No. 1 long-spouted locomotive oiler with the patented dripless spout. That was quickly followed by other types of oil cans, signaling equipment, engine buckets, tallow pots, torches, track inspection devices, tin cups, and caboose and cabin car lamps, all carrying the Diamond J trademark. The makers created the patterns and everything was cut, riveted, and soldered by hand. As production expanded, the original frame building at 605 Miami Street was replaced by a brick structure in 1910, the southernmost part of the present building. (continued on other side)
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There are 48 known members of the Postle family buried in the cemetery. Their stories are interwoven with the history of Prairie Township, Franklin County, and Ohio. In 1810, Shadrach and Anna Stacia Postle were among the first settlers of Prairie Township. Their son Job was a veteran of the War of 1812 and later owned the Checker Inn, a popular stopping place on the National Road. In the 1860s, Smith Postle and his son, William Sylvester Postle, were some of the first manufacturers of clay drainage tile in Ohio. Their products improved drainage in farm fields and fostered the growth of the tile industry in the state. Gabriel Postle was the first Postle buried in the cemetery in 1829. Twelve graves are of children under the age of six, which testifies to the hardships endured by the area’s early residents. Other graves include those of John Whitehurst, a freed slave who lived with the family of the Job Postle and John Tracy, a veteran of the Civil War. In 1870, Nancy Postle was the last person buried in the cemetery.
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The Peoples Bank Theatre, built in 1919 and called the Hippodrome, marks an age when movies transitioned from silent films and nickelodeons into a major national industry and pastime. Designed by Columbus architect Fred Elliott for the C&M (Cambridge and Marietta) Amusement Company, the theatre featured a granite archway, 1,200 seats, a 35-by-55-foot stage, an orchestra pit, and the first air conditioning of its kind in Marietta. The Hippodrome opened May 9, 1919 with the silent film Daddy Long Legs, starring Mary Pickford. Shea Theatres of New York bought the Hippodrome and remodeled it in 1949, replacing the Hippodrome’s distinctive stone archway with a two-story southern colonial-style facade. Renamed the “Colony,” it opened June 25, 1949, showing the Esther Williams’ musical Neptune’s Daughter. (Continued on other side)
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Industrialist and entrepreneur Franklin Augustus Seiberling (1859-1955) named his fledgling rubber goods manufacturing company “Goodyear” to honor Charles Goodyear, the man who invented the vulcanization process for curing rubber. Seiberling founded the company with his brother, Charles Willard, because of their desire to participate in an enterprise that afforded an “opportunity for invention.” Incorporated in 1898, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company rapidly grew with the young automotive industry and helped establish Akron as the “Rubber Capital of the World.” Among Seiberling’s many significant inventions were the tire-making machine and the detachable wheel rim. He resigned from Goodyear in 1921 and went on to found the Seiberling Rubber Company. Stan Hywet Hall, F.A. Seiberling’s estate in west Akron, is a National Historic Landmark.
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On April 19, 1891, a head-on collision between two trains of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company occurred at the Kipton depot. Eight people lost their lives, and the depot was heavily damaged. The crash occurred when a fast mail train heading east near Kipton and a passenger train going west from Elyria collided. The passenger train was supposed to let the mail train go by, but the conductor had not realized that his watch had stopped for four minutes and then restarted. As a result the passenger train was late getting to the stopping point. Looking into the matter, the railway company enlisted Webb C. Ball, a well-known Cleveland jeweler, to investigate time and watch conditions throughout its lines. Ball instituted the current railroad industry’s timekeeping program, which specified watches trainmen could use. His attention to accuracy and promptness led to the well-known saying, “Get on the Ball.”
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