Ohio

Explore forgotten corners of local history

Northeast Ohio is awash with nearly forgotten historical events. In 1780, American scout Captain Samuel Brady leaped across the Cuyahoga River where Kent now stands to evade a party of Native Americans aiming to take his scalp. During the Civil War, Confederates tried to free their compatriots from the Johnson’s Island prisoner of war camp by capturing two ferries and attempting to poison the crew of the Union’s only gunboat in Lake Erie. The town of Kirtland was briefly the national headquarters of the Mormons and the location one of the Church of Latter-day Saints’ most revered temples.

Mark Strecker has unearthed a hidden gem of local history for each of Northeast Ohio’s twenty-two counties.

Wayne's Trace: Fort Deposit to Fort Industry is the first pictorial history to document the culmination of General "Mad Anthony" Wayne's campaign against the Indian Confederacy in 1794. The retrospective draws on a wealth of archival material and popular culture-including unique vintage engravings, photographs, postcards, and philatelic souvenirs-in tracing the U.S. Legion's march down the Maumee River Valley to Maumee Bay. A highlight is Turkey Foot Rock, an "epic of defeat" landmark the author likens to Custer's Last Stand Hill in Montana. More recent images illustrate archaeological initiatives and the evolution of the Fallen Timbers Battlefield and the site of Fort Miamis as National Park Service affiliates. Together, the local history and lore of Waterville, Maumee, and Toledo, Ohio, amplify a great watershed in our national history, the dislocation of Native American peoples, and the first opportunity for colonization by the young United States.

Author Dave Westrick shares the forgotten stories of the defenders, invaders and all the people caught in the middle. On a hot, humid August morning in 1794, an army representing fifteen quarreling states met an alliance of Native American tribes at a place called Fallen Timbers. The battle lasted less than two hours, with fewer than one hundred killed. For the United States, it was the beginning of greatness and the birth of a proud military tradition. For the Native Americans, it was the end of the life they had led for thousands of years.