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This historic inn began serving travelers on the old Portage-Columbiana stage road (now Tallmadge Road) in 1832. Two major stage lines, one from Cleveland to Wellsville (the closest Ohio River port) and the other from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, passed through Palmyra in the early 1800s. Originally a simple two-story Greek Revival-style building, it had its third story added in 1888 when it became a lodge for the Knights of Pythias fraternal organization. It served as a private residence and store for most of the 20th century. The Palmyra Center Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
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Monroe County’s ground-water resources are valuable assets for its people and economy. Especially notable are the substantial quantities of water that can be obtained in the medium sand and gravel underground aquifers located on the eastern side of the county. The Sardis Town Pump, which taps into one of these aquifers, has been in continuous operation since the nineteenth century and has played an important role in the daily life of Sardis residents. At approximately 78 feet deep, it was originally operated with a hand pump and converted to electricity in 1951. It is the drinking choice for many in the community and throughout Monroe County. It is the last of four known public wells that have served the village of Sardis.
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The W. Pearl King Prairie Savanna is a mostly undisturbed remnant of the once expansive Darby Plains Prairies. Prior to European settlement more than two centuries ago, the Darby Plains covered an area of more than 380 square miles west of Columbus. These prairies were an eastward extension of the Great Plains Prairie that Ohio State Professor Edgar Transeau termed the Prairie Peninsula in 1935. The W. Pearl King Prairie Savanna is a 20-acre vestige of a once large and varied habitat of native tallgrass prairie and oak groves. The prairie contains bur oaks, one of Ohio’s largest stands of prairie dropseed grass, and several other native prairie plants. Named for a former landowner, William Pearl King (1891-1960), the site has been owned and managed by Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks since 2006.
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On French Ridge in Richland Township, on June 5, 1863, local citizens in defiance of conscription attacked Elias Robinson, an enrolling officer of the Union Army. When Captain James Drake, the provost marshal, imprisoned the ringleaders, armed locals released them. Colonel William Wallace of the 15th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was sent to the scene with a force of 420 soldiers from Camp Chase in Columbus. On June 17, the soldiers approached the fortified camp of nearly one thousand malcontents. After firing upon the soldiers, the “rebels” scattered with only a few captured or wounded. The next morning, local Peace Democrats, led by politician Daniel P. Leadbetter, negotiated a surrender of the ringleaders. More than forty people were indicted for involvement in the rebellion, but only Lorenzo Blanchard, owner of the farm where the camp was located, was found guilty. Once this riot at “Fort Fizzle” ended, resistance to the draft in Holmes County subsided.
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In 1798, Henry Massie, brother of General Nathaniel Massie, platted a town, the earliest permanent settlement in Highland County, covering 400 acres and named it New Market after a town in his native Virginia. New Market served as the unofficial county seat until Hillsboro assumed that title in 1807. Despite being traversed by the Cincinnati-Chillicothe Post Road with seven other roads (including one from Manchester) leading in, New Market ceased being an active trade and civic center. It is now a small hamlet with a cluster of dwellings, a church, and a few businesses.
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The great Native American Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, was born on the bank of a large spring at this site in 1768, at the very instant that a great meteor seared across the skies. The birth occurred while his parents, Shawnee war chief, Pucksinwah, and his wife, Methotasa, were en route from their village of Kispoko Town, on the Scioto River, to a major tribal council at the Shawnee tribal capital village of Chalahgawth (Chillicothe – now Oldtown), which was located “two arrow flights” northwest of this site. Though prohibited by tribal tradition from becoming chief of the Shawnees, Tecumseh rose to become one of the greatest warriors, orators, and military strategists of any tribe in America.
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Originally called the James Thompson Inn, named for its builder, the son of Middlefield’s first settler, Isaac Thompson, the Batavia House is Middlefield’s oldest remaining structure. Built in 1818, the two-story wood frame structure was operated continually as an inn by Thompson until his death in 1877. It became the private residence of his daughter, Caroline, until 1907 when again it became an inn, functioning as the Century Inn until 1951. The one-story cement block portion was added circa 1950 to accommodate the weight of the heavy printing presses of the Shetler Printing Company, which occupied the building until 1983.
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Dudley Nichols was born in Wapakoneta in 1895, the son of Dr. Grant and Mary Mean Nichols. He spent his childhood in a home on this site and graduated from Blume High School before leaving Ohio. After working as a journalist in New York City, he relocated to Hollywood to become a screenwriter for such films as Stagecoach, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Bells of St. Marys. In 1936 Nichols won an Oscar in the category Best Adapted Screenplay. He refused recognition for his work on The Informer because of strained relations with the Hollywood establishment. Nichols was the first person to ever refuse the prestigious award saying, “As one of the founders of the Screen Writers’ Guild, which was conceived in revolt against the Academy, and born out of disappointment with the way it functioned against employed talent-I deeply regret I am unable to accept the award.”