Mount Vernon
From KCpedia
Mount Vernon, Ohio was founded in 1805 by Joseph Walker, Thomas B. Patterson, and Benjamin Butler. The town was named after President George Washington's home. It is the county seat of Knox County, and the town's population during the 2000 census was 14,375.
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Founding and Early Development
While the initial settlement and organization of Mount Vernon was done by Walker, Patterson and Butler, the first home in the area was built by Andy Craig. According to Knox County historian A.B. Norton, Craig "tabernacled with a white woman in a rough log hut" until he moved in 1809 due to an increasingly crowded neighborhood. By 1806, Mount Vernon had a population of fifteen residents, and included a grocery store, a few houses, and a tavern. John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed, bought two Mount Vernon lots from Joseph Walker in 1809, and became the area's first notable resident.
Knox County was founded in 1808 after Revolutionary War hero John Knox, and the County Commissioner was given the task of choosing a town as county seat. Mount Vernon, Clinton, and Fredericktown were all under consideration for the honor, and Mount Vernon founder tavern owner Benjamin Butler devised a plan to assure his town's success. Butler asked each town founder to donate ten dollars, which Butler used to purchase alcohol and send Mount Vernon residents into the other towns. The Commissioner arrived to find Clinton and Fredericktown full of "rowdies cutting up, fiddling and...cursing of the tallest kind," while Mount Vernon, with all its male residents absent, was a haven of hard-working women and children. Mount Vernon was named Knox County seat.
Establishment of Industry and Government
Mount Vernon grew continually throughout the nineteenth-century. The establishment of Kenyon College in 1824 in nearby Gambier helped draw national attention to the area. After the collapse of the first two buildings, a third county courthouse was established in 1829, which still stands today near the Mount Vernon public square. When Mount Vernon was officially established as a village in 1830, John Phifer was elected as its first village marshal. In 1848, Henry B. Curtis established the Knox County Bank of Mount Vernon.
The Woodward Opera House was built during the 1850s, a decade in which Amelia Bloomer, a women's rights activist and editor of The Lily, lived in Mount Vernon in 1854, Mount Vernon native Daniel Decatur Emmett wrote the song Dixie 1859, and a city ordinance established the Mount Vernon school board.
The first train passed through Knox County in 1851, and railroads were rapidly built throughout Ohio. Major rail lines passing through Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Columbus connected in Mount Vernon, and by 1920, eighteen passenger trains ran daily through the town. Highway and automobile growth soon lead to the decline of rail traffic, however, and passenger rail service was discontinued in Mount Vernon in 1961.
Cooper Industries
Charles and Elias Cooper established a foundry in Mount Vernon in 1833, originally financing their business with fifty dollars obtained from the sale of a horse. Another horse, named Bessie, powered the foundry until 1836, when the brothers installed a steam engine. After building carding machines, plows and machinery for the government in the 1840s, the company turned to steam locomotive and farm engines. The post-Civil War era allowed the company to begin producing efficient, industrial steam engines, in addition to mills, cotton gins, and farm machinery. By the late 1870s, the innovative development of the "bevel gear" eliminated the need for horses altogether by transforming steam tractors into self-propelled, self-steering farm tools. More than 1,000 steam tractors were in use throughout the United States by the mid-1880s.
The C. & G. Cooper Co. merged with the Bessemer Gas Engine Co. of Pennsylvania to form the Cooper-Bessemer Corporation in 1929. The production of diesel engines and military contracts helped the company survive the depression era, and in 1950, Cooper-Bessemer began designing rotating machinery to be used in engine turbochargers. After diversifying to become Cooper Industries in 1965, the company relocated to Houston, Texas and in 1995, Mount Vernon's Cooper holdings became part of Rolls-Royce, Inc.
Twentieth Century Developments
In 1911, a booklet written by the Mount Vernon Citizens Association described the Mount Vernon as having "the charm of a delightful home town" and capturing "a domestic spirit that few places can excel." In a discussion of the town's inhabitants, the booklet also mentions that "her peoples may be marked as very conservative in the opinion of the day" and that they "lend very remitting ears to any wildcat opinion."
The Kokosing River flooded in 1913, destroying several major roads and bridges in Mount Vernon and causing damage throughout the county. Fires also affected the area in the early part of the century, particularly those that destroyed the Knox Oil Refinery in 1925, and the Old Kenyon Fire of 1949.
Look Magazine named Mount Vernon an "All American City" in 1965.
The Knox County Historical Society Museum opened in Mount Vernon in 1987. The museum is home to exhibits on the town's famous residents, the development of Cooper Industries, and other memorabilia from the county's past.
Resources in the Kenyon College Archives
- Mount Vernon -- collected materials
- The Kenyon Collegian -- 3 April 1980
