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The Cranberry Prairie, southwest of this marker, is a part of Ohio’s natural history. The place was named for the cranberries that grew in a swamp here prior to drainage of the area. The Cranberry Prairie was created by centuries of peat accumulation in a late Ice Age lake that formed at the base of St. John’s Moraine. Paleo-Indian or Early Archaic peoples probably killed the elk whose skeleton was dug up here in 1981. This elk was dated at approximately 7400 B.C. By the 1860s, immigrant German farmers had begun transforming the swamp into fertile farmland. “Wild Bill” Simison, a legendary inhabitant, lived in the swamp and settlers respected him for his knowledge of the area. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Granville Township School #7, St. Francis Catholic Church, and Bertke’s Store stood at the edge of the Cranberry Prairie.
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Near this site in October 1786 General Benjamin Logan with an army of 700 Kentucky volunteers camped on their way to destroy seven Indian towns in the Mad River Valley. During the night a renegade deserted the camp to warn the Indians. The army burned 200 cabins and 15,000 bushels of corn before returning. Later this site became an important survey point.
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One-half mile east is the site of the former BIG EAR radio telescope. Designed by Dr. John D. Kraus, pioneering radio astronomer at Ohio State University, it had a collecting area of 340 by 70 feet (104 by 21 meters). The observatory was completed in 1963. The Ohio Sky Survey recorded here between 1965 and 1972 was the most accurate, reliable, and complete mapping of cosmic radio signals (the “radio sky”) for many years. BIG EAR gained fame for its ability to detect quasi-stellar radio sources, or “quasars,” and for its discovery of some of the most distant objects known. This observatory conducted a 24-year continuous search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, during which the famous “Wow!” signal was received in 1977. BIG EAR was demolished in 1998. [“Wow!” signal graphic]
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Near this site scout Peter Navarre built in 1807 a log cabin close by an Ottawa Indian Village of 60 whitewashed cabins. Here he maintained friendly relations between white settlers and Chief Autokee. The 1833 Treaty of Maumee gave 320 acres of this region to the Indians who later sold the isle for $1,000. Presque Isle is now at the heart of Port of Toledo activity.
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The nation-wide Easter Seal movement, first major voluntary effort to provide treatment for the crippled, was founded on this site with the organization of the Ohio Society for Crippled Children by Edgar F. (Daddy) Allen, April 22, 1919.
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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.
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A group of Freemasons, inspired by the concepts of a new country, of Freedom with Responsibility, Brotherly Love, and Truth, formed Harmony Lodge near this site in 1809, the first Masonic lodge in western Ohio. Meetings were held in the log court house, located on Lot 174, East Court Street, and also in Dayton and Springfield.
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After Gen. William Hull’s surrender at Detroit early in the War of 1812, most of the Michigan Territory came under British and Indian control. To prevent a possible invasion of Ohio, Gen. William Henry Harrison, commander of the Northwestern Army, called up the Kentucky and Ohio militia. Rather than moving troops and supplies across the Black Swamp, he chose to use the Auglaize and St. Marys rivers. In November 1812 Harrison ordered Lt. Col. Robert Pogue of the Kentucky Mounted Militia to construct a supply depot at this site, previously an Ottawa village. Pogue, a veteran of the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, named the post Fort Amanda after his 12-year-old daughter, Hannah Amanda. (continued on other side)
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