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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 Pike County Courthouse was at Piketon from 1815-1861 when county residents voted to move the county seat to Waverly. The Waverly Public Square was donated to the county by the Meschech Downing family in September, 1861. A committee was appointed to oversee the courthouse construction and the completed structure was deeded to the county in December 1866 for $5. An addition was added to the front in 1909. Inside, the common pleas courtroom houses busts of entrepreneur-businessman and first millionaire of Pike County, James Emmitt, and his wife, Louisa, and a mural of “Blind Justice” painted by late local lawyer, W. T. Reed.
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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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A. B. Graham, superintendent of Springfield Township Rural schools in Clark County, established the Boys and Girls Agricultural Experiment Club, which revolutionized agricultural education and non-formal youth development methods. The first meeting of the club, said to be the nation’s first farm club for young people, was held at this site on January 15, 1902 in the basement of the Clark County Courthouse. This was the start of what would be called a 4-H Club a few years later. Through the years, the overall objective of A.B. Graham and 4-H has remained the same: the development of youth as individuals and as responsible and productive citizens.
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Republican congressman William M. McCulloch was one of the architects of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first of three laws to recommit the nation to the cause of civil rights in the 1960s. “Bill” McCulloch was born near Holmesville to James H. and Ida McCulloch on November 24, 1901. Raised on the family farm, he attended local public schools, the College of Wooster, and, in 1925, earned his law degree from the Ohio State University. He married his childhood sweetheart Mabel Harris McCulloch (1904-1990) in 1927, after settling in Jacksonville to start his career during the Florida land-boom of the 1920s. It was in Jacksonville that the Deep South’s racial intolerance seared him. (Continued on other side)
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Frances Rappaport Horwich was born in Ottawa on July 16, 1907, the daughter of Sam Rappaport, an Austrian immigrant who operated a general store, and Rosa Gratz Rappaport, a Russian immigrant. The youngest of six children, she attended the Ottawa elementary school and graduated from Ottawa High School in 1924. After high school, she attended the University of Chicago where she earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and taught first grade for three years. “Miss Frances,” as she was called, then earned a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1933 and a Ph.D. in 1942 from Northwestern University. From 1942 to 1952, she was involved in teaching and education development. The basic education she received in the Ottawa schools enabled her to achieve great skills and abilities. [continued on other side]
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Judge William H. West of Bellefontaine led a distinguished career in law, public service, and politics. In 1854 West helped found the Republican party in Ohio and six years later he participated in Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for the presidency. West served consecutive terms in both houses of Ohio’s General Assembly from 1857 to 1865 and was elected the state’s attorney general at the end of the Civil War. He became an Ohio Supreme Court justice in 1871 and in 1877 was his party’s nominee for governor. After losing his sight, Judge West retired from the court but continued to practice law. At the Republican party’s convention in 1884, the “Blind Man Eloquent” nominated James G. Blaine as the G.O.P.’s presidential candidate. Defining Republicans as a party for “union, freedom, humanity, and progress,” the judge’s nomination speech sparked a celebration that historian David McCullough described as “one of the most memorable events in the whole history of national political conventions.”
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Manasseh Cutler, Rufus Putnam, Winthrop Sargeant, and Benjamin Tupper of the Ohio Company conceived Ohio University, which was encouraged by the Ordinance of 1787 and the Northwest Territorial Legislature in 1799, incorporated as the American Western University in 1802, and chartered by the Ohio State Legislature on February 18, 1804. The university is the first institution of higher learning in the Northwest Territory, second west of the Allegheny Mountains, and the first in the United States to be endowed with land by the government with proceeds used to pay for its operations-revenue from two townships was set aside to support the university. Opened on June 1, 1809, as an academy with three students, Ohio University awarded its first undergraduate degrees in 1815.
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