130-25 Jacobs & Son Moving and Storage Company

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Clarence H. Jacobs (October 29, 1897?October 28, 1964) began Jacobs Transfer Company in 1921 and ran it until shortly before his death. When his son joined him in 1945, the company incorporated as Jacobs & Son. While originally located at 309 South 5th Street, in downtown Columbus, the firm relocated several times prior to opening […]

100-31 James Warren Rankin / Ohio’s Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday

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James W. Rankin served four consecutive terms (1971-1978) in the Ohio House of Representatives. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he graduated from Withrow High School and The Ohio State University’s School of Social Work. While working in Cincinnati’s Seven Hills neighborhood, he ran for office to “involve the disadvantaged in the governmental processes that affected […]

78-31 Ruth Lyons

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Ruth Lyons, born in Cincinnati’s East End, was a broadcaster and businesswoman known for her radio and television show, The 50-50 Club and her charity, The Ruth Lyons Children’s Fund. Lyons was considered a creator of talk television and she was one of the first to turn the camera on her audience, now a common […]

8-36 West Settlement and Abolition Lane

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Augustus West, an African American, was born in Madison County, Virginia on March 20, 1814, and moved to Ohio in 1837. Legend has it that West was a runaway slave and worked as a farm laborer before designing a scheme to purchase his own farm. West, with abolitionist Alexander Beatty, traveled into slave territory no […]

10-44 Union Baptist Church “How Can a house be built, except God build it.”

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Union Baptist Church, established in 1819, is one of Ohio’s early Black churches. Its pastor and members were active on the Underground Railroad from that early date. Between the 1840s-1860s Black churches along the route to and from nearby Poke Patch assisted over 200 escaped slaves. Members met in their homes until able to obtain […]

15-46 Indian Lake Spillway

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Indian Lake Dam was built 1851-1860 to create a feeder lake, known as the Lewistown Reservoir, for the Miami and Erie Canal. The dam included a 700-foot long concrete ogee weir spillway that discharged water from the lake into the Great Miami River. In 1898, the Ohio General Assembly designated the lake as a public […]

69-48 The Ability Center

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The Rotary Club of Toledo founded the “Toledo Society for Crippled Children” in 1920 to care for and treat children with disabilities, primarily those with polio. After a decade of fundraising and a substantial bequest from Edward Drummond Libbey, the Society opened a convalescent home in 1931 and moved to its own state-of-the-art facility in […]

14-52 Root Homestead & A. I. Root (1839-1923)

The Root Homestead was built in 1879 by Amos Ives Root, founder of the A. I. Root Company, shortly after he moved his business from the town square. The homestead housed several generations of the Root family until 1953 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. A pioneer of the […]

34-55 Bradford

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Bradford began, in 1852, as a construction camp of the Columbus, Piqua, and Indiana Railroad. When the Richmond and Covington Railroad made a junction here in 1864, the village grew with the railroad yard. There were 60 miles of track, a 50-stall roundhouse, and jobs for 2000 men. Community life in Bradford centered at the […]