Ohio's Military Campaigns

This program will be held in Kendal at Oberlin's Heiser Auditorium on November 18, 2008 at 7:15 p.m. The program will be presented by Jeffrey Fort, a lawyer and historian who spoke in Oberlin a year ago to an enthusiastic audience about the Survey of Ohio Land. This time, Fort's research focuses on a century's worth of war in the Ohio territory, prior to attaining statehood. First, Ohio was a buffer zone for competing Indian tribes. Later, it was so for French and English claims. Finally, the colonists, first as English subjects and later as Americans, conducted a series of military campaigns in Ohio to secure the territory and start the move westward. Even today, looking carefully, one can see the mark those campaigns left on the Ohio countryside. What we know as towns now were forts and many of today's highways were cut out of the wilderness as military roads. This Oberlin Heritage Center free public presentation will put these campaigns in order and spark your memory of Ohio's military history.