Historic Sardinia, Ohio

[Music] welcome back to another edition of history in your own backyard I'm Susie salic and today we are in Sardinia Ohio and we're gonna be talking to a couple of folks who really know their history about this great town so stay tuned I'll tell you all about it and with me now is Mary Alice Ellis Mary Alice thank you for having us today glad to be here so let's just get into it you're gonna get to talk about some of the early history here in Sardinia okay in the early 1800s Amos Pettijohn and 5 families settled north of Sardinia mm-hmm next to white oak creek the East Fork of white oak comes to and the two oldest houses are on North Main Street one is number 125 that is dr. Beck's brick home and 126 is Josiah Moore's frame home and one was started first one was finished first okay we do oldest houses Oh dr. Beck I started on him he was chosen to name the town I guess there by then they were not happy with Lily or lily post office so he was chosen to name their town he named it Serena after his favorite method favorite Methodists him after the tomb not the words okay and I have have accomplished pianist told me it is almost impossible to play and it's worse to try to sing Historical Society for a little more recent history restored the wrought iron fence along the front of the cemetery it had gotten in bad shape and with the help of the community why it's all done and it's real nice and another thing in 1976 when they had a contest in the 8th grade to design a flag yeah and this is the flag that was chosen it has the lily in the middle of a blue circle that I thought first represented the Oh for Ohio but I haven't been able to verify that the young man was Hammond McCall who designed it now joining me is sandy Purdy sandy thanks for coming in and and being able to talk some some history with us so I understand we are gonna start talking with or about Reverend mayhem yes go ahead and elaborate on that okay Reverend John Bennington Mahan was a Methodist minister okay however he threw in with the Presbyterians early on when he came to Sardinia because they were more fervent abolitionists so he worked with them an abolitionist he also threw the Reverend Robert Robbins who was a Presbyterian minister became an ardent temperance person so he had temperance and abolitionists going there in the 1830s in 1837 he built a tavern which is on the corner of North Broadway excuse me Broadway and West Main Street okay still standing Wow the first floor was the business you know the second floor living quarters for the family and the Attic ended up being hidden places for runaway slaves Wow but it was called the temperance tavern because no alcohol was served really yes so the temperance tavern there he was like I said an ardent abolitionist and he traveled and lectured and preached in the Midwest area and because of his aggressive stance he was arrested and jailed in Maysville Kentucky a very damp basement in 1838 he spent ten weeks there and it pretty much ruined his health but it didn't stop him from still preaching and lecturing and traveling and but he did die of tuberculosis in 1844 and his tombstone in our old cemetery says a victim to the slave power Wow that's pretty powerful so you tell me that dr. Beck okay dr. Beck was a colleague of Reverend may hands he in both the temperance movement and the abolitionist movement so they were very much close cohorts he was a medical doctor who started his practice here in 1829 he formed an anti-slavery society meeting whatever in 1838 to help secure the release of Reverend may han from prison so he was very much involved with that in 1863 he wrote out an exemption from military service for one named Allison Purdy who happens to be a relative of my husband's yes and I found that paper and exempting him from military service in the Civil War in the family Bible so I have it over there and that's really very cool to see I didn't see his handwritten words there oh my jumping past the Civil War dr. Beck answered the door in 1892 he lived a long time he was born in 1807 and died shortly after the 1900 so he was a long time and all of that was here in Sardinia he answered the door in 1892 and a man said that he was collecting donations mm-hmm for his college it was an African American man and he couldn't go through Serbia without stopping to thank the man who had brought him food while he waited in a field outside of town fifty years before oh stop yes oh my gosh and he asked him his name and he said his name was Rankin after the man who first sent him on his way to freedom that would be Reverend John Rankin in Ripley so great story sandy well we missed is there anybody else that knows I'm here um the hotel okay which is no longer standing but it was called the Marshall House the Rebecca and William Marshall who bought it in about 1850 they were farmers in Georgetown and they were neighbors to a family named grant so they knew general you know okay yes years ago yes yeah okay well they moved to Sardinia and opened the Marshall house and Harriet Beecher Stowe stayed there for about a week while researching the Underground Railroad we assumed for her book Uncle Tom's Cabin yeah and that's case it been about 1850 when the marshals first moved in 1863 yeah July of 1863 Morgan John Hunt Morgan I'm his radar screen through you know this name well yes came through they brought the covered bridge now here west of west of town and then they pretty much took everything there was in the livery and the stores around and then general Hobson of the Union Army was fast on his trail when he came there wasn't much left so the marshals daughter Jane made them donuts until the flour and lard run out so then she married Nathan Dunn who was the livery owner next door and it became the Dunn house then so and there he was a Civil War veteran yeah I have a foot partially amputated by a cannonball on the siege of Atlanta with Sherman earlier they got married in 1867 and took over the business so it became the Dunn house and their claim to fame sort of in our church history which is the Methodist Church they were devout Methodists and they could walk across the street South Main Street to services and one morning they decided as was the custom men and women didn't sit together they split and sat one on each side and they didn't they went in and sat together and after that it's no longer segregation Wow that so it was kind of fun that's in church history but I thought that was a little story with Nathan and Jane that's a good one so and like that then it became a commercial hotel in 1898 and till it was torn down in 2013 joining us now is Patsy Alvers Patsy thank you for coming in with us today thank you for being there now I understand that you're gonna be talking about an opera house and I just want you to get into it all righty the Opera House was built on the corner of North Main and Broadway it's a big two-story building and the top floor the second floor was the Opera House and in there they had traveling shows and they did had their town meetings and they had stage plays and things like that and then they even had basketball games and then on the main floor of the building was businesses okay on the north main side there was three businesses one of them was a hardware store that was owned by mr. fakie there was also the first bank in town which was the Phi ki Marshall Bank and it had our very first vault in it which it was sort of hidden underneath the stair steps they went up to the Opera House oh cool and then also one of our first funeral directors was in their EP Calvin so since that time it has had many different hardware stores restaurants different things like that then in the front on Broad Street was a it only had two storefronts to it and it started out as a general merchandise store and also a meat market okay and as time progressed things went on several people were in there there was the Jacob Brothers and it was turned into a clothing store and in that clothing store was bins on the left side and women's clothes on the right side and in the back of the store was shoe racks and there were shelves and shelves of shoes and there was so many that they had to have this ladder that had casters on it and it ran on a rail up at the top yeah and they would climb the ladder and slide down and whatever size shoe that they was looking for since then it has closed down from a clothing store and it has been a video store it's been an exercise shop it's been an antique mall and it's also been a secondhand store I mean it's one of our businesses that is still the building is still standing and it's right in the center of town joining me now is Jim Ellis - thank you for joining thank you for having us today so can you let's just get into your part of the the history here we can start off with mr. Kennedy George Kennedy he was a entrepreneur he really was a civic man here II tried to boost a village and he had many thoughts about that he had had a traveling fair like a County Fair mostly centered here in yesterday neo-noir period of about 11 years 1902 1911 I believe it was and he had set not a first like a first airplane ever Brown County was here he had the he brought in a balloon for blenderize but they would not let people ride so he had a monkey called Bob Doolittle that rode didn't - tethered balloon and he had a very large racetrack with a very large grandstand we have some pictures could show that and he was big enough that they was train excursion Dallas that's Aneta been two hours away just to come to the fair and then also they went from portion list which is east of us and close it's north they brought on the train he had a flour mill three-story flour mill at Brown County well selling high counties was very well done he owned a lot of land across from the the bear grounds he donated land for the railroad a large railroad yards and then and place to the Depot and across the net he started a soul wheel I just come back to me some of the worst he had at the fairground was electric lights like your lighting and he extended that down to the streets to the streets of Korea Rudy had a crossroads of railroads the Cincinnati and eastern came here for Hearst in 1877 and inserted three new and it was built on to Portsmouth and it basically on the North Fork and become a North Western Railway of years during the early 1900's they was a train from here to the High River going through Georgetown Ohio down to Ripley and then it was it also from here going to Hillsboro which is north I threw more each town of the Hillsborough and it was laid out to go on to Columbus so we had a had a crossroads of real rude louis for passenger and for freight and this was a great boost to the economy of sardinia for probably a hundred years really course rail routes have faded out now a lot of places right and there's still one comes to occasionally just a little bit of freak battle we got but it really was mason they've already called me I'm here to go so Jim can you tell us a little bit about this this Houston bear person who is this well he was a landowner he owned much land around some edenia on the west side and on the north side he come into town young man he joined up a partner he's a merchant for a few years five years maybe then he moved out west to his Italian joint to town with his farm he'd started buying all he was aborted and at the time he's obviously death there's about 400 acres in that but during that time he extended the town lots of West summer on the north side of the railroad and some on the south side of the railroad which turned out to be Maple Avenue now he goes toward now door but from there he just farmed and at the time he was obviously a state was so for my riggers in the forum it's still a farm today some bead ancestry or still farming today really thank you for watching another edition of history and your own backyard today we are in Sardinia having a great time with these folks and remember ciao bye for now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: History in Your Own Backyard

Views: 7,216

Rating: 4.9629631 out of 5

Keywords: Ohio, Brown County, Sardinia, Railroad, Grant, Rankin, History, Historic

Id: RhI7Ic97VEo

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Thu May 03 2018