Page 27 - Leisure Living Magazine: May 2021 Edition

And Notes
Bicentennial Walking Tours In Fremont
Celebrate Sandusky County’s 200th birthday with a walk- ing tour of historically significant places in Fremont led by local historians on Saturday, May 22. Learn about Sandusky County’s first courthouse, the cemetery under Arch Street, businesses that used to be downtown and much more.
Tours will be limited to 10 people. Participants must wear a face covering unless they have an accepted exemption to the state of Ohio’s mask mandate. Guides are local historians Larry Michaels and Mike Gilbert, and they will give separate tours in order to accommodate more people.
Tours will be offered at 10 a.m. and noon and last one hour. Tours begin and end in front of the Sandusky County Historical Society, 514 Birchard Ave., Fremont. The walking tour is about a half mile to three-quarters of a mile.
Tickets are $5 per person and can be purchased online only at https://www.bicentennial2020. org/. Advanced reservations are required. The bicentennial committee is planning numerous events throughout the year around the county. A schedule of events and details are
available at www.bicentennial2020.org.
Union Chapel Selected For National Register
When Samuel and Louise Armstrong donated property at the north end of Catawba Island for the 1887/1888 construction of a “Sabbath School” for area children, they could not have known the building would still be standing more than 130 years later. Let alone would they have imagined that it would be selected for inclusion on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places. But it is. And it has.
Barb Powers, Department Head, Inventory and Registration of the Ohio State Preservation Office provided notice that Union Chapel was added to the Registry on March 8, 2021. Application for being listed was submitted jointly by the Catawba Island Township Trustees and the Catawba Island Historical Society in late September 2020.
In 2017 the Catawba Island Historical Society was formed to help preserve and protect local heritage. Island residents Don and JoAnn Rhodes offered to donate a variety of representative artifacts if a suitable home for their collection could be secured. The Township put $50,000 into renovating Union Chapel and leased it to the Historical Society for opening a museum there to curate and display such antiquities.
The Chapel itself is as historically significant as the antiquities it houses. There are now
3 Catawba Island properties on the National Register of Historic Places. In addition to Union Chapel they are the Gideon Owen Winery building and the Betsy Mo-John cabin.
An “introduction” and a “comprehensive” video tour are available at the “Events” tab on the Historical Society’s website which is www.catawbaislandhistoricalsociety.com. Additional information about becoming a member is also on the website or can be obtained by calling the Museum at 419.967.5363.
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