(9-6-23) The Grand Opera House and Theater will be hosting a presentation by Greg Shipley titled “Investigating Early Military Related Sites.” This presentation is supported by the Bicentennial Committee and the St. Marys Community Public Library and will take place on October 2nd at 6:00 p.m.

Long before Ohio entered into the union in 1803, many frontier forts had been built in the Ohio Northwest Territory. Numerous military activities occurred in what is now the state of Ohio.

This program includes images and explanations about hundreds of 1790s Wayne’s Legion and War of 1812 artifact finds and about the locations where they were recovered. Information about British army buttons found on a Logan County site will be included. These buttons were from the same units that had fought at Bunker Hill. Another artifact, a pewter “USA” button, came from a coat that had been worn by one of General Washington’s Continental Army troops.

During the summer of 2021, Mr. Shipley’s group of amateur archaeologists located where one of Fort Loramie’s wooden stockade walls (which you’ll see images of) had been built in October 1795.

Shipley will explain why so many Civil War buttons and military belt buckles have been found scattered across our state and on pioneer homestead sites when no large battles ever occurred in Ohio. If you are interested in military history, you will enjoy this presentation.

For more information, contact the St. Marys Community Public Library at 140 South Chestnut Street or online at smcpl.org, via email at stmaryshelp@seolibraries.org or by phone at (419) 394-7471. Look for the library on social media.