Area History

Springmill Road has had that name for at least 150 years, and it is named for a Spring and a Mill that, amazingly enough, both still exist. It is named Springfield Township because there are innumerable places in the landscape where water just rushes out of the ground. One of the most powerful of these […]

If Thomas Jefferson had his way in 1784, Richland County would not be in the State of Ohio. Our address would be Mansfield, Saratoga 44901. The county line would border on two other US states: to the east would be the State of Washington; and to the north—just across Main Street in Plymouth—would be the […]

Bellville became the business center of southern Richland County due to the happy confluence of two factors: the B&O Railroad, and the grain elevator…both of which are pictured here. For generations farmers brought their produce to the mill and elevator on Ogle Street in Bellville to ship off on the freighters, and then invested their […]

I’ve already mentioned in these columns the bold self-promoter Lansford Hastings, who received a general’s commission in the Confederate Army mainly to encourage his long-shot scheme of raising an army in the west to take over California and make it a Confederate state. But Knox County also had the real deal: a genuine soldier who […]

Our place on the Earth, designated as Richland County for the last two centuries, has been in more or less continual habitation for the last hundred centuries. It is amazing how little we know about our predecessor neighbors, and how much of what we know about them is speculation based on evidence that has long […]

MOUNT VERNON — The woman can barely be made out, standing in front of a house with decorative trim, its two front doors suggesting that it’s a rental property. The backyard continues past a fence or trellis, and in the medium distance stands the sturdy beams of a tall railroad bridge. The two children with […]