The Fourth of July provides us an opportunity to celebrate our independence as the United States of America. Our national holiday also provides an opportunity to reflect on the courage and strength of will demonstrated by the colonial leaders who drafted and signed our famous Declaration of Independence.
While the first few lines are more famous, the closing sentence provides a clear view of their understanding of what it takes to be truly independent.
The greatest exhibition shooter of all time — male or female — was a young woman from Darke County, Ohio: Annie Oakley (1860–1926).
“The museum has the largest display of Annie Oakley photographs, firearms, and memorabilia anywhere in the world,” says Katie Gabbard, marketing director at the Garst. “An entire wing is dedicated to her, chronicling Annie’s many shooting accomplishments as well as her lesser-known philanthropic endeavors.”
In fact, very few of Annie’s medals and awards survive today, as she had most of them melted down near the end of her life so she could raise money for charity.
When Jerry Swank married his wife, Carolyn, in 2003, he wore a rancher-style felt hat, boots with spurs, and three replicas of the legendary Colt .45 single-action Army revolver that helped tame the American West.
Swank and his wife are South Central Power Company members who reside on 81 acres of farmland in the Hocking Hills. His interest in guns began when he was growing up in the Middletown area. He was introduced to shooting sports as a member of the Boy Scouts and while hunting with his father, and learned Western riding because his parents and grandparents kept horses.
As an adult, he worked in sales, but he also parlayed his knack for riding and training horses into a carriage ride business in downtown Columbus.
Ohio is known for producing more United States presidents than any other state in the Union — eight in all, including several who were veterans of the Civil War. First among the veterans, and perhaps appropriately so, was General Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant descended on his father’s side from a family long-established in America, dating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony circa 1630. His great-grandfather served the British in the French and Indian War, and his grandfather aided the colonists’ cause at the famed American victory at Bunker Hill in the American Revolution. Perhaps, then, it was no surprise that the 5-foot, 2-inch 17-year-old Grant would accept an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1839.
The story of electric cooperatives is one of the great American success stories: Neighbors across the country banding together to extend electric service to homes and farms too far from population centers to be profitable for traditional electric companies. Today, the nearly 900 electric cooperatives operating across the United States, including the 24 headquartered here in Ohio, continue to be a model of public-private partnership and an essential part of the communities we serve.
Producing electricity for the benefit of the communities we serve requires a continual balancing act among cost, reliability, and environmental impact. We take those often-competing objectives into account as we make decisions and take action.
Electric cooperatives’ decisions regarding the best way to meet your needs for electricity supply are tempered by thoughtful consideration of our responsibility to the nearly 1 million Ohioans whose lives and livelihoods depend upon both a healthy environment and the provision of affordable, reliable electricity. It’s a charge that we don’t take lightly.
At the Tiffin Police and Fire All Patriots Memorial, a daylong observance occurs on each anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
The Tiffin memorial’s centerpiece is a 17.5-foot-long steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center. It weighs more than 3 tons and rests on a pentagon-shaped piece of granite that alludes to the strike on America’s military headquarters. Positioned at an angle of 9.11 degrees, the beam sits low to the ground so people can touch it. “When rust particles drop off that beam, they almost seem like tears,” observes Gosche.
Of the many paintings hanging in the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, the largest by far measures 22 feet long by 16 feet high and is titled The Signing of the Treaty of Green Ville.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, England ceded to the fledgling USA ownership of the Northwest Territory — an immense area north and west of the Ohio River that would one day become five states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as part of Minnesota.
The major problem with the agreement was that it completely ignored tens of thousands of indigenous people who were already living on that land — from dozens of major tribes — who were not about to give up their claims on the land without a fight.
Ask Artie Schaller how many stars the American flag had in 1869, and he instantaneously answers, “Thirty-seven.” The question would stump most people, but Schaller has a distinct advantage: He grew up in a family business that’s one of the nation’s oldest flag manufacturers
Although National Flag produces more than a million flags and banners annually, it remains a small, customer-oriented business, with 21 employees. “They’ve been here an average of 17 years, and six have been with us more than 30 years,” says Schaller. Phone calls to the company are answered by a real person, and the public is welcome to walk into its factory building in Cincinnati’s West End and purchase flags at the front office’s service counter.
We all know that Ohio is full of treasures. From Cincinnati chili to Cedar Point to the hollows of Hocking Hills, the gems gleam. Legends abound, however, of treasure in the more traditional sense — buried or stashed around the Ohio countryside.
It was 1755, and the French had been trying desperately to repel attacks by the British on Fort Duquesne, France’s outpost in Pittsburgh. Fearing the fort’s imminent fall (it actually held out until 1758), some French soldiers started to evacuate valuables from Fort Duquesne — including a hoard of gold and silver used for military payroll.
