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On this site, on January 4-7, 1808, the six Masonic lodges then existent in the state met and formed the Grand Lodge of Ohio. General Rufus Putnam of Marietta was elected the first Grand Master. Because of advanced age and failing health, he declined the honor and Governor Samuel Huntington was named in his stead.
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On a stormy autumn morning in 1925, the giant Navy airship, christened Shenandoah, crashed near this site. Initially, the Shenandoah was commissioned to perform scouting missions for the Navy; however, she would soon be flying promotional missions. The Shenandoah had recently begun a six-day publicity tour across the Midwest when she crashed. The turbulent weather of late summer created strong winds, which ripped the 680-feet long Shenandoah in two and tore the control car from the keel. A majority of the 14 crewmen who died in the crash, including the captain, Lt. Commander Zachary Lansdowne of Greenville, Ohio, were killed when the control car plummeted to the ground. The stern section fell in a valley near Ava and the bow was carried southwest nearly twelve miles before landing near Sharon, Ohio. The Ohio National Guard was called in to control the crowds of spectators who traveled to the crash sites.
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Ervin George Bailey, who was born in Damascus, Ohio, invented the revolutionary “Bailey Boiler Meter,” a major contribution to the science of automation and the efficient burning of fuels. In 1916, he founded the Bailey Meter Company of Wickliffe, Ohio – a world supplier of industrial instrumentation and controls. Considered the “Dean of Combustion Engineers,” Mr. Bailey held more than 100 patents in the fields of meters, automatic controls, furnaces, boilers, and fuel burning equipment.
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One of Ohio’s most influential politicians in the early 20th century, Washington Court House native Harry Daugherty (1860-1941) was widely known as a “President-maker” and served instrumental roles in President Warren G. Harding’s administration, culminating a long career in state and national politics. As Attorney General from 1921 to 1924, Daugherty established the first federal women’s penitentiary, recommended former president William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court, and ended a controversial 1922 railroad strike. Implicated in scandals complicated by the suicide of his assistant and fellow Fayette County native Jess Smith, Daugherty was eventually cleared in congressional investigations and two bribery trials, and subsequently published an insider’s account of the Harding Administration. Both Daugherty and Smith are buried in Washington Cemetery.
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At this spot on July 26, 1863 General John Hunt Morgan with 336 of his Confederate raiders surrendered to Major George W. Rue after spreading panic across southern Ohio for twenty-three days.
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The Devola Lock was one of eleven built on the Muskingum River from Marietta to Ellis, north of Zanesville, from 1836 to 1841. The locks are approximately thirty-five feet wide and 160 feet long. The State of Ohio funded the project as part of the Ohio Canal System. The improvements made the shallow river navigable by steamboats. Travelers ascended over 100 feet from Marietta to Dresden on ninety miles of river. Farmers shipped corn, wheat, eggs, and wool, while manufacturers shipped goods, staples such as sugar, the mail, news, and entertainment. After 1880, competition from railroads caused a gradual decline in the river traffic. Today the locks remain in operation for the enjoyment of pleasure boaters.
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Described as a Columbus “institution” when he died in 1969, Emerson C. Burkhart was born on a farm in Union Township, Putnam County in 1905. The son of Albert and Nora Burkhart, Emerson graduated from Kalida High School in 1924 and from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1927. After studying art in Provincetown, Massachusetts and in New York City, he settled in Columbus and, in 1937, married Mary Ann Martin, an artists’ model who devoted herself to his career. Burkhart was a prolific painter and completed an estimated 3,000 pictures during his 40-year career, including street scenes, rural landscapes, and more than 250 self-portraits, once noting his face was “cheaper than a model’s and always there.”
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At this site on July 4, 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, a Master Mason, turned the first shovelful of earth for the Ohio Canal. The ceremony was attended by area citizens and Master Masons. In the early 1840s James A. Garfield, who was to become 20th President of the United States and a Master Mason, led tow horses on the canal.