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"The Ridge" Community of Warren County, Ohio

"The Ridge" pages are a project of Katherine Lollar Rowland which are based on her Oct. 20th, 2004 presentation to the Warren County Genealogical Society.



What was the Ridge? It was a 3-mile long Ohio farming community along old St. Rt. 48 in Turtlecreek and Union Townships stretching between Lebanon and South Lebanon.

The Ridge was the name given to that community and the families that farmed those farms for almost 200 years, centering around the one-room school, also called The Ridge.
Rather surprisingly, in the early days, there was no church

It was , still is, of course, geologically, a ridge, although that is not really obvious when you are on top of it, what in The West would be called a high plain. But the U.S. Geodetic Survey map shows a small "peak" of 900 feet right at the point where Turtlecreek and Union Townships meet, with elevations sloping down into the 800s in different directions. It was the center of the Symmes purchase, the center of the land between the Miami Rivers, a divide, as it were..

When I go to The Ridge from Otterbein, four miles to the west of Lebanon, I drive east, all the way on Main or Silver Street, to East Street, turn right (south) and that takes me past Harmon Park and the Golf Course and Justice Drive and bring me to the bottom of the hill now covered with an apartment complex called Deerfield Crossing As you go up the hill you pass Cook Road and what used to be the Snook/Foley homestead on the left and you come to a little white house on the right at the top of the hill. That is the old toll house from days when that road was the turnpike leading northeast from Cincinnati..

In my definition, that Toll House is the beginning of The Ridge. You go past the YMCA to the south edge of the Wal-Mart shopping plaza. All of this time you have been on old Rt. 48, From that point on, old 48 is fragmented by the new 4-lane Rt. 48, but the fragments of old 48 to the east and west of the new highway make very interesting side trips. Anyway, at the south edge of the Wal-Mart/Home Depot parking lot you come to the south line of Turtlecreek Township and go over into Union Township. Continuing on in Union township you come to the interchange of new Rt. 48 and Interstate 71, the point at which this talk about the families of The Ridge ends.

Union Township is the smallest of Warren County townships, some say of all of Ohio townships. Section 3, Township 4, East, Range 3 North. This is the heading of a Conveyance sheet in the property offices of the Warren County Court house which begins with the name of George Washington with the sale of 248,540 acres to John C. Symmes on September 30, 1794. The official version is that George Washington was selling government land. This was almost surely the case since Washington 's second term as president ended in 1797. However, I have read other sources which said this was part of the land Washington acquired when he was a surveyor of the Northwest Territories in his early manhood.

Whichever the case, pieces of the land were acquired by various developers until the first name in our list appears in 1827 when John N. Snook bought land from David Reynolds. As the years went by his name was followed by Joseph Brandenburgh, Samuel French, Robert Wilson, Joseph Jameson, Eliza French Lollar, among others.

So this brings us to the families of The Ridge, and we'll take them up starting at the south end of what we are considering The Ridge, the intersection of State Rt. 48 and Interstate 71, alternating from side to side as we move northward. As a way of keeping it all to a manageable size, I've chosen to use the Centennial Atlas and History of Warren County published in 1903 as a guide. Also to simplify, I have not tried to include everyone in the different families, but only those that carry the story forward.


Families of the Ridge

Stories from the Ridge

Coming Attractions......

  • The Traction Line
  • The Ridge Community Club
  • The Ridge Literary Club
  • Incorporation into Lebanon

Maps, Photos & Clippings


FOOTNOTES:
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This page created 27 October 2004 and last updated 17 May, 2005
© 2004-2005 Katherine Lollar Rowland & Arne H Trelvik  All rights reserved