While many travelers regard Holmes County as the crux of Ohio’s Amish Country, few realize that Walnut Creek is its cradle. In 1809, Amish farmer Jonas Stutzman migrated from Pennsylvania to present-day Holmes County as the area’s first white settler. More Amish folks soon followed, putting down roots that blossomed into the world’s largest Amish-Mennonite community.
Our present days are an amalgam of all of our yesterdays: the past is prelude. That adage couldn’t be more true with respect to Ohio’s geologic history. Nearly the entire state felt the cold crush of mile-deep glacial ice pushing on the land.
The evidence is all around you in the moraines, the low long ridges in southwest Ohio; the grooves etched in stone on Kelleys Island; the open, pleasant till plains seemingly laid flat as a skillet.
Springtime can only mean one thing: It’s the beginning of festival season in Ohio, a time when there’s a celebration to honor just about any hobby, haute cuisine, and historical happening in hamlets across the state. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting festivals happening this spring and summer.
Yellow Springs resident Dave Neuhardt was surprised to find that his love of history would lead him to the grave marker of his great-great grandfather, who fought for the Union during the Civil War.
Among those in the National Cemetery on the grounds of the Dayton VA Medical Center are the remains of Howard Bates, who served Ohio infantry and cavalry regiments. Why he is buried there is part of the historic narrative attached to the place.
Rudy Dalrymple leaves his room at the Ohio Veterans Home in Sandusky between 5 and 5:30 a.m. most days, and settles into a comfortable padded chair behind his sturdy worktable. Using crepe paper, wire, cloth tape, and his trusty wooden crimping tool, he forms delicate poppy blossoms, one after another, again and again, until he’s surrounded by a mound of flowers, which are destined for American Legion auxiliaries across Ohio to use in their major fundraising efforts around Memorial Day.
Location: On the east side of Cleveland in Lake View Cemetery.
Provenance: Founded in 1869, Lake View Cemetery was among the nation’s first garden-style cemeteries, and President James A. Garfield, who was born and raised near Cleveland, had expressed his desire to make its scenic grounds his final resting place. Shortly after his inauguration, Garfield was shot by a disappointed office-seeker and lingered for two months before dying on Sept. 19, 1881.
It’s a little-known fact that several Ohio agricultural cooperatives — livestock producers, dairy farmers, and crop associations — can trace their roots to the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. The same holds true for Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives (OEC) members.
Charles Young was born into slavery in Mays Lick, Kentucky, in the time just after Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation and just before the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
His parents, technically still considered runaway slaves, carried him as an infant across the Ohio River to the freedom granted them when his father enlisted in the Union Army.
