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Ballard Road Covered Bridge

Bridges completed in 1883Buildings and structures in Greene County, OhioCovered bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in OhioHowe truss bridges in the United StatesNational Register of Historic Places in Greene County, Ohio
Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in OhioWooden bridges in Ohio
Ballard Road Covered Bridge, western side
Ballard Road Covered Bridge, western side

The Ballard Road Covered Bridge is a historic wooden covered bridge in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Built in the late nineteenth century and since bypassed, the bridge has been named a historic site. Following a design by H.E. Hebble, James E. Brown built the bridge across Caesar's Creek in 1883. He chose to name it for a nearby industrialist, Lyman Ballard, who had constructed a water-powered mill on the creek to grind grain approximately thirty years before. Brown chose a seven-panel Howe truss design for the bridge, which measures 80 feet (24 m) in length. Built of wood with iron elements on abutments of limestone and covered with a metal roof, the single-span bridge is covered with vertical siding and retains the original square shape of its portals. Much of Greene County is underlain by high-quality limestone (the McDonald Farm near Xenia supplied limestone for the Washington Monument) and from this limestone the bridge's abutments were taken; it appears that the quarries for the abutments were located elsewhere in the surrounding New Jasper Township.Although the Ballard Road Bridge remains in its original rural setting, its surroundings are no longer as quiet as originally; U.S. Route 35 has been constructed as a controlled-access highway immediately to the south, and Ballard Road now dead-ends at the bridge. By the 1970s, it was one of just eighteen Howe truss covered bridges remaining in Ohio, although thousands of bridges were built to this design in the 19th century throughout the United States. As such, it was deemed historically significant enough to qualify to be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The Ballard Road Bridge is one of five covered bridges in Greene County, and the only one open to road traffic.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Ballard Road Covered Bridge (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Ballard Road Covered Bridge
North Ballard Road,

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Latitude Longitude
N 39.678055555556 ° E -83.815277777778 °
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Ballard Road Covered Bridge

North Ballard Road
45385
Ohio, United States
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Ballard Road Covered Bridge, western side
Ballard Road Covered Bridge, western side
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Dean Family Farm

The Dean Family Farm, listed since 1975 as a historic site on the National Register of Historic Places, has its origins with the immigration of Daniel Dean, a native of Tobermore, County Londonderry, Ireland, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1784 when he was aged 18, according to Dean family histories. Daniel was a son of George Roger Dean, who fought in the Colonial line, and Mary Campbell who was reared with her sister by the Duke of Argyl at Inveraray Scotland, the clan Campbells' ancestral home.The National Register and an Ohio Historic Inventory, dated 11 October 1974, list the historic site at 199 N. Ballard Road, Xenia, as having five buildings dating from the 1820s on 157 acres (0.6 km2) along Caesar's Creek in Greene County, Ohio. The National Register listing was expanded by a boundary increase adding 199 Ballard in 1994, and renaming as the Dean Family Farm Historic District.Daniel Dean, born October 20, 1766, in Ireland was a son of George Roger Dean, whom DAR archival records list as a Pennsylvania sergeant and militiaman in the 1770s, along with his elder brothers James and David Dean. A weaver by trade, Daniel Dean lived briefly in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia before meeting and marrying Jannet "Jenny" Steele (1768-November 18, 1841), a Scots-Irish girl of Steele's Tavern in Augusta County, Virginia. The couple relocated near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where Dean built a mill, a house for the couple and another for his sister and mother, both named Mary, whom he brought from Ireland to Kentucky via Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1790. Daniel and Jannet had the first of their 11 children while in Kentucky. But when Ohio became a free state in 1803, Dean, an ardent abolitionist, scouted out the new lands north of the Ohio River with his brother-in-law, Henry Barnes, a skilled builder whose son later would become Greene County's wartime sheriff and treasurer. Dean, shortly thereafter, bought 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) on Caesar's Creek near the settlement of Xenia, but he spent several years litigating to perfect his title. Once his title was secure, Dean joined Barnes and their families in relocating via Fort Washington (later Cincinnati) to Greene County in September 1812. They first dined using as a table a huge, flat rock—then began a lucrative business in which Dean harvested and milled timber for lumber used by Barnes to build homes in and near Xenia, Ohio. Dean's son, Joseph (1804–83), wed Hannah Boggs (1809–88)and, according to Dean Family records, Joseph built the first substantial two-story home on the family farm in 1823, a house that still stands. Daniel Dean, descended from Covenanter Presbyterians, was a church stalwart. At least 36 of his 111 progeny enlisted and served honorably in the Union Army during the Civil War, according to records read at an 1880 Dean family picnic. The elder Dean, who died January 24, 1843, at age 77, is buried alongside his wife, Jannet, in the Dean Family Cemetery in New Jasper Township. The cemetery and farm, privately owned, were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. The historic Ballard Road Covered Bridge stands just off Route 35 nearby and spans a fork of Caesar's Creek. Greene County (Ohio) Public Library archives feature maps, from 1855, 1874 and 1896, depicting the original Dean Family Farm acreage divided among Daniel's heirs — Joseph, William, John, Levi, D. S. Dean and others. Lands lie along the Jamestown Turnpike, now U.S. Route 35.

Cedarville Opera House
Cedarville Opera House

The Cedarville Opera House is a historic theater in the village of Cedarville, Ohio, United States. Erected in 1888 on Main Street in downtown Cedarville, it has been a premier part of community life since its construction. Built of brick with elements of stone, the opera house is a Romanesque Revival structure that has served a wide range of purposes in the community. Besides its primary function as a home for the performing arts, the two-and-a-half-story building has housed the offices of Cedarville's mayor and village council, its jail, its fire and police departments, its waterworks, as well as the township trustees' office for Cedarville Township. When Cedarville's was built, the opera house as an institution was a center of social life in rural Ohio: the public sphere was nearly nonexistent except for the village opera house, which typically served as a meeting place for travelling vaudeville acts, political events, musical performances, and graduation ceremonies. Because the first floor has always been used as offices for the various organizations that used the building, public events were typically held on the second floor, which has been little modified by the years; it is one of Ohio's least changed historic performance halls. In 1984, the Cedarville Opera House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying both because of its historically significant architecture and because of its place in local history. It is one of two National Register-listed properties in Cedarville and one of two National Register-listed opera houses in Greene County, along with the Harper Mausoleum and George W. Harper Memorial Entrance and the Jamestown Opera House respectively.

Wilberforce University

Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates in the United Negro College Fund. Central State University, also in Wilberforce, Ohio, began as a department of Wilberforce University where Ohio state legislators could sponsor scholarship students. The college was founded in 1856 by a unique collaboration between the Cincinnati, Ohio, Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) to provide classical education and teacher training for black youth. It was named after William Wilberforce. The first board members were leaders both black and white. The outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–65) resulted in a decline in students from the South, who were the majority, and the college closed in 1862 because of financial losses. The AME Church purchased the institution in 1863 to ensure its survival, making it the first black-owned and operated college in the nation. AME Bishop Daniel Payne was one of the university's original founders and became its first president after re-opening; he was the first African American to become a college president in the United States. After an arson fire in 1865, the college was aided by donations from prominent white supporters and a grant from the US Congress to support rebuilding. Later it received support from the state legislature. During the 1890s, scholar W. E. B. Du Bois taught at the university. In the late 19th century, it enlarged its mission to include black students from South Africa.