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Born at Oak Grove, prospected in the California goldfields in 1849. During the Civil War he raised a militia company at Racine, and was later promoted Captain of Co. K, 18th O.V.I. After the war, he served on the Racine Village council, Sheriff of Meigs County, and was a member of the Ohio General Assembly. He was Secretary-Treasurer of the Ohio Commission for the Chichamauga Battleground National Park, and served 14 years as Postmaster of the U.S. House of Representatives.
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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.
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The first Scottish Rite body of Free Masonry west of the Alleghenies was formed in Cambridge, Ohio, in 1852 by Killian H. Van Rensselaer, an honorary 33rd Degree Mason. He lived in this city from 1851 to 1867. Van Rensselaer was superintendent of construction of the present railroad tunnel west of Cambridge. He died in Cincinnati in 1881 at the age of 80.
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The Israel Evangelical Lutheran Church was organized August 23, 1812. According to available records, in 1813 the first meeting in Ohio of the “Special Conferences” called by the Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania was held at the church. Pioneer Lutheran pastors, the Reverends Heineke, Henkle, Huet, and Jacob Leist, met to further organize the Christian Witness on the Ohio frontier.
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One of Ohio’s greatest manhunts ended here on the morning of July 23, 1948. Robert M. Daniels and John C. West, parolees from the state prison in Mansfield, had gone on a killing spree that left six people dead. Driving west on U.S. Route 224 in a stolen auto transport truck, the pair approached this intersection and encountered a roadblock. It was manned by Van Wert County Sheriff Roy Shaffer, Frank Friemoth, the county game warden, and Sergeant Leonard Conn of the Van Wert city police. West was driving the truck; Daniels was asleep in a car overhead. As Sheriff Shaffer climbed onto the truck and apprehended Daniels, West leaped from the cab and shot Conn in the chest and Friemoth in the arm. Conn returned fire and killed West. The officers survived their wounds. Daniels was convicted, sentenced to die, and electrocuted at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus on January 3, 1949. This marker pays tribute to all law enforcement officers who risk their lives to protect the citizens of their communities.
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Tallmadge was established in 1807 by David Bacon as a Congregational community. In 1821 local landowners donated timber to build this church, designed and constructed by one of Ohio’s first architects, Col. Lemuel Porter. Dedicated on September 8, 1825, the structure is considered to be a perfect example of the pure Connecticut-type of Federal architecture. It is the oldest Ohio church to be continuously occupied as a place of worship.
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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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Regular and militia troops under General James Wilkinson built this supply post and defensive fortification in March 1792 in preparation for Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s campaign against the Indians of the Northwest Territory, following disastrous expeditions in 1790 and 1791. Built near a “fine spring gushing out of the bank, ” the 120-foot square palisade fort had a four-sided bastion at each corner. Future U.S. president William Henry Harrison served in the detachment that built the fort. On November 6, 1792, Miami Chief Little Turtle and approximately 200 warriors attacked a force of Kentucky militia under Maj. John Adair camped outside the fort. Six Kentuckians and an unknown number of Indians died in the skirmish. The fallen soldiers were buried fifty paces west of the fort, beneath the “Whispering Oak.”