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Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. He immigrated to Allegheny City Pennsylvania with his family when he was 13. While operating the telegraphs for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Carnegie perceived the great need for steel in the railroad industry. With this insight, he founded the Carnegie Steel Corporation which operated for 35 years before he sold it to J.P. Morgan in 1901. Andrew Carnegie wrote the article, “Wealth” in 1889 in which he said that a responsible person of wealth should help his fellow man. Carnegie’s philanthropy provided 2,509 libraries throughout the world. Carnegie was already familiar with the city when he wrote a letter to offer funds to build the Steubenville library on June 30, 1899.(Continued on other side)
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First organized as the Kenton Lock Manufacturing Company in 1890, the Kenton Hardware Company became one of the world’s largest cast iron toy factories. Under the management of L.S. Bixler, toy stoves, banks, fire company outfits, horse drawn vehicles, automobiles and cap pistols were produced. The immensely popular Gene Autry cap pistol was produced at this plant beginning in 1938. The Company ceased production in 1952 but Kenton toys continue to be popular collectors items worldwide.
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Near this site, an iron truss bridge collapsed into the Ashtabula River during a blizzard, plunging a passenger train with 160 on board into the gulf below. Nearly 100 people were killed in this, one of the worst train disasters in American history. The most well known passengers were Philip Paul Bliss (1838-1876) and his wife, Lucy. A leading gospel songwriter, Bliss wrote more than 100 hymns including the music to “It Is Well With My Soul.” The unidentified were buried in a mass grave at Chestnut Grove Cemetery that is marked by a tall granite monument listing the names of those who died. The local hospital was founded as a result of this disaster and features an audio history in the James Lewis Smith Memorial Courtyard in front. The incident also led to reforms in bridge design and railroad safety.
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The Zoarville Station Bridge is a rare survivor of the earliest period of iron bridge construction in the United States, an era when unprecedented railroad expansion gave American bridge builders an international reputation for innovation. German immigrant Albert Fink first developed this truss design for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the early 1850s. Charles Shaler Smith, a prominent civil engineer and Fink’s former assistant, designed the bridge with patented features that improved on Fink’s original design. His firm, Smith, Latrobe & Company of Baltimore, Maryland, built this example in 1868 as a highway bridge over the Tuscarawas River in Dover. It was moved to this site in 1905 and abandoned in 1940. The Lebold family donated the bridge to the Camp Tuscazoar Foundation in 1997 for preservation and restoration. Of the hundreds of Fink Truss bridges built in the mid-1800s, the Zoarville Station Bridge is the last of its kind known to exist.
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The Warner Brothers – Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack – were members of a Jewish immigrant family from Poland that settled in Youngstown in the mid-1890s. The brothers attended local schools and worked in their father’s shoe repair shop and meat market before entering the motion picture business. They purchased a projector and opened the first of several theaters in the Mahoning Valley in 1905. The brothers left Youngstown for New York and Hollywood as their company developed into an industry leader. Warner Brothers Pictures, founded in 1923, released Don Juan in 1926, the first “talking picture” using Vitaphone technology. On May 14, 1931, the family gathered in Youngstown to dedicate a luxurious new Warner Theater to the people of the city where it all started, and to memorialize Sam, who died in 1927.
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Established in 1823, the pioneer settlement of St. Marys became a thriving 19th century milling center following completion of the Miami & Erie Canal in 1845. The Reservoir Mill, built by Scott, Linzee & Co. in 1847, led this period of industrial growth as the first mill in St. Marys powered by the canal’s water. Robert B. Gordon purchased it in 1855 and in 1896 the mill passed to his son, Robert B. Gordon Jr., who formed the firm Gordon, Hauss & Folk. Producing “Purity” and “Pride of St. Marys” flour, Gordon, Hauss & Folk owned the mill until 1955. The mill was used as a grain elevator until 1972, then as a storage facility for the next 40 years. (Continued on other side)
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Pioneer Pavilion, one of the oldest structures in Youngstown, is a rare surviving example of early nineteenth-century industry. James Heaton constructed this sandstone building in 1821 as a mill for carding and fulling wool. A millrace from Mill Creek and a waterwheel on the west side supplied the power. In the 1830s and 1840s, the woolen mill was converted to a storage facility for the nearby Mill Creek Furnace and later served as a cattle barn. In 1891, Youngstown attorney Volney Rogers purchased the property for Mill Creek Park, renovating the building in 1893 as a dining and dancing facility, and naming it Pioneer Pavilion. Generations of area residents spanning three centuries have celebrated social events in this historic landmark.
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Evidence abounds that Garrettsville was at the center of the maple industry in Ohio from the 1880s into the twentieth century. In 1881, Garrettsville held the first ever-professional association of maple syrup/sugar producers, a tradition that continued annually into the early 1900s. The one square mile of Garrettsville was home to several maple syrup canneries in the 1880s and to syrup evaporator manufacturers. It was also the home to Lifesavers candy, originally a maple sugar based company. In 1893, Garrettsville sent a contingent of maple syrup and sugar producers to the Columbian Exhibition at the Worlds Fair in Chicago. In that year, a Garrettsville area farmer was awarded the first place medal for the best maple sugar in the world.
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