, OH
This log building was constructed in 1801 by David Hoge on the west side of Third Street. It served as his home and was the first Federal land office in that part of the Northwest Territory known as the Seven Ranges. In 1809 it was moved and 12 years later encased in a brick structure where it was discovered in 1940. It has been preserved by the citizens of Jefferson County.
, OH
This monument marks the square of the village of Risdon founded 1832. The land was owned by John Gorsuch, who settled here with his family in a clearing along the Portage River in 1831. He had a plat of the area made by David Risdon, Seneca County surveyor, after who the town was named. This plat was officially recorded September 13, 1832. The village of Risdon had the first church and post office, and has the oldest house in Fostoria.
, OH
The prehistoric Erie Indians built a fortification across this neck of land sometime before 1650. A low wall is all that remains today of a stockade where earth had been piled at the base of posts. The stockade and the naturally steep embankments of the ridge provided a safe location for an Indian village.
, OH
Worthington (1773-1827), land developer as well as statesman, laid out the village of Logan, beginning on June 27, 1816, while he was Governor of Ohio. This lot was set aside by him to be used as a public market place. Worthington became a member of the Masonic Lodge in Cincinnati in 1799. He later helped to organize the first Masonic Lodge in Chillicothe. [Masonic Emblem]
, OH
Jonas Stutzman, from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, came to this site in 1809 to clear land for farming and to build a log home for his family. He was the first permanent settler in the eastern portion of what would in 1825 become Holmes County. Jonas and his wife Magdalena Gerber Stutzman were of the Amish faith–descendants from a group of strict Protestant Anabaptists with origins in Switzerland and Holland and dating from the 16th -century Protestant Reformation. Some of their beliefs, including separation of church and state, refusal to take oaths, pacifism, and believer’s baptism, were perceived as threats to the state church and government. Persecuted by both Catholics and Protestants, Anabaptists migrated and some came to the New World, many at the invitation of Pennsylvania’s William Penn. The Stutzmans and other early Amish pioneer setters-Millers, Hershbergers, Hochstetlers, Weavers, Troyers, Masts, and Schrocks-founded here what has become the largest Amish settlement in North America.
, OH
Its location and the tides of war established Gallipolis, then a town of some 3,000, as a point of strategic military importance to the Union upon the outbreak of the conflict in 1861. It was destined during the next four years to play a role without counterpart in Ohio. Here through this troop concentration area passed thousands of soldiers to the great campaigns. Here the traditional peacetime activity of the town, long a depot of supplies for the Kanawha Valley, was turned to military purposes for maintaining armies in the field. Here riverside warehouses held vast military stores to be transported by steamboat. Here newly-mustered troops set up Camp Carrington in a wheat field on the upper side of town. Here the women of Gallipolis helped minister to thousands of wounded and sick in an army hospital
, OH
The Ohio-Erie Canal, the most important development in the county’s early years, was started July 4, 1825 near Newark. The canal passed through Waverly along US 23 and portions of it can still be seen in Waverly today. Only four feet deep and bordered by tow paths with eight feet clearance, the 309 mile canal was completed in 1833 at a cost of more than $7 million.
, OH
Born at Wallingford, Connecticut. Served during the Revolutionary War. Proprietor, Agent, and Surveyor of the Connecticut Land Company. Appointed Judge of Trumbull County by Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair, 1800. State Senator, Trumbull County, 1815-1816. Poland Justice of the Peace, twenty years. Moderator of St. James Episcopal Church, Boardman, 1809. First Worshipful Master of Erie Lodge No. 47, Warren, 1803, oldest lodge in the Connecticut Western Reserve and one of six lodges to form the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ohio, 1809.