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In memory of William Bensinger and John R. Porter who are buried here. They joined the famous Andrews Raid to wreck the Confederate supply lines. The Raiders captured a locomotive, “The General,” at Big Shanty, Georgia on April 12, 1862. Private Porter missed the great locomotive chase which followed. Pvt. Bensinger was aboard when “The General” ran out of fuel and was captured. Both men received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
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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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In April 1830 four Dominican sisters from St. Catherine’s, Kentucky, founded St. Mary’s Academy, the first Catholic school in Perry County. Bishop Edward Fenwick, first Bishop of Ohio, donated a small brick house and attached building situated on an acre of land for the school’s use. Classes began with forty students. The following year the sisters built a three-story structure with a dormitory for boarders; by the end of the Civil War, enrollment had increased to 134 students, and St. Mary’s gained recognition as one of the finest schools in Ohio. An 1866 fire destroyed the academy, and in 1885 the Dominican sisters reestablished the academy as a parish school. The present Holy Trinity School building dates to 1968.
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The village of Albany was established in 1838 as a market center for the surrounding agricultural area, which saw its first white settlement in the early years of the nineteenth century. Education was always a major concern of Albany’s citizens. Since public schooling was minimal, private academies provided the community various levels of education from the 1840s to the 1880s. Anti-slavery sentiment also was strong in Albany, and many of its citizens participated in the “Underground Railroad.” Because of educational opportunities and sympathetic white neighbors, free African-Americans came to Albany, but most had moved away by the 1930s. After World War Two, the village lost its status as a center for commerce and business.
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Platted by educator and abolitionist Cyrus McNeely in 1849, Hopedale was the site of McNeely Normal School, later Hopedale Normal College, the first coeducational college for teachers in eastern Ohio. It operated from 1849 to 1902. Among its graduates was George Armstrong Custer in 1856. Hopedale served as an important stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing bondage in the southern states. Local tradition notes several “stations” in the village, three at private homes and one at a hotel.
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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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During the summer of 1863, General John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate cavalry leader from Kentucky, invaded southern Ohio with 2,460 mounted men. Throughout the campaign Morgan’s men plundered and looted before being captured by Union forces. On July 17, Morgan led his troops into Wilkesville stealing horses, sacking stores, and robbing private citizens. That night Morgan and some of his troops took lodging and meals with his first cousin Ruth Virginia Althar Cline and her husband Dr. William Cline. Morgan’s troops camped near the house of John and Elzia Levis where Elzia cooked for the men for fear they would harm her family. Additional soldiers of the raiding party stayed on the village square. Legend has it that while Morgan slept at the Cline Mansion, his black servant stole his looted money, and abolitionists Dr. Cline and Abraham Morris, helped him escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
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A pioneer in automotive innovation, Charles Franklin Kettering (1876-1958) was born three miles north of Loudonville. He attended local schools and graduated from Ohio State University in 1904. He organized the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) in 1909, which later became a part of General Motors (GM). “Boss Ket” served as vice-president of research for GM until 1920 and held over 140 patents (including four-wheel brakes, safety glass, and “ethyl” gasoline), achieving his greatest fame for an all-electric starting, lighting, and ignition system. The electric starter debuted on the 1912 Cadillac and was soon available on all cars, helping to popularize them with women. In 1945 he helped establish the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute in New York.
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