by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
Within the three glass cases at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library displaying historic items are two personal collections of Native American artifacts. These display cases change seasonally and T-SPL is currently providing a Native American themed display from Independence Day through Columbus Day, also known as Indigenous Peoples Day, to honor the 100th anniversary of the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
The two personal collections together contain one dozen arrowheads and other tools once used by Native Americans either residing or passing through (most likely hunting) Ohio. One set was found entirely in Morrow County and the other set has pieces found in Seneca County.
What’s significant about these pieces are that they were hand-crafted by their owners using local resources. Most often, Native Americans in and around Ohio used different types of chert and flint, including Delaware chert, Upper Mercer flint, Flint Ridge flint, tan flint, black chert, Pipe Creek flint, and white flint. These rock types are located through other parts of Ohio, excluding Seneca County, so Native Americans would have had to extract the resource elsewhere and bring it here. (Flint Ridge in Licking and Muskingum Counties was a major resource).
The most common rock types in Seneca County are sandstone and limestone, created by the sediments left behind by an ancient glacial lake called Lake Maumee (the remnants of which is Lake Erie). While these rock types may not have been popular choices for arrowheads and the like, limestone is a versatile and valuable product.
Ohio Memorial Church on the grounds of the former Junior Home in Tiffin is one of many buildings in the area made partially from local limestone.
The eastern portion of Seneca County, which is more elevated and drained more effectively than the Great Black Swamp to the west, contains Lower Corniferous Limestone, particularly Scipio, Bloom, Eden and Adams Townships. Upper Corniferous limestone is present in Bloom and Thomas Townships.
The Ohio Memorial Church on the Junior Home grounds used 150 tons of cut limestone. The greenhouse on the same property also used gray limestone. The old courthouse used Amherst and Berea grit sandstone.
Niagara Dolomite Limestone is particularly found in “unusually high” amounts in Jackson, Liberty, Pleasant, Hopewell and Loudon Townships. This area of the county is known as the “lacustrine region” and the soil is so rocky that the top tips of this limestone often juts out of the ground.
Liberty Township in particular is a “remarkably stony” area, according to the Seneca County Atlas Maps – surveyors had discovered one area with surface limestone that is one mile wide and three miles long.
Historically, other spots within the county where the rock jutted above the soil were three spots in Jackson Township, two spots in Hopewell Township, two spots in Pleasant Township, one being a bluish hued limestone near Fort Seneca, and numerous spots within Liberty Township (many along Wolf Creek).
Additionally, a continuous exposure has been carved along the banks of the Sandusky River in the north half of the county. In other parts of the county, the bedrock was buried about 20-30 feet below the surface. Attica is the highest point in the county and it takes up to 60 feet in its parts to reach rock.
When the first pioneers settled in these townships, they dug out limestone boulders from their new properties and built fencerows with them.
An aerial view of Basic Refractories, Inc. (also known as Maple Grove to locals), a limestone dolomite quarry situated right outside Bettsville, Ohio, which has operated for over 120 years. This photo is located inside the Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1967 book on the Seneca County Digital Library.
Ohio is one of the top producing states for limestone, which can be crushed for use in concrete, asphalt and cement or agricultural fertilizer (powdered lime). It’s also a component in many household products like carpet, vinyl, fiberglass, porcelain, chalk and more.
Many buildings throughout the county are also made from limestone or sandstone. According to the Seneca County History Volume 1, the Upper Corniferous limestone was more durable for foundations and walls of buildings.
In 1903, John Holran opened Basic Refractories, Inc. (also known as Maple Grove to locals). Employees stripped the soil, and hauled away crushed limestone on the Nickel Plate Railroad, which spread around the country for the edges of new highways and railways. In 1908 it changed hands to Howard P. Eels, owner of the Bucyrus Steam Shovel Company. He built a kiln on the property in 1917 to capitalize on the country’s shortage of dolomite, a necessity for the steel industry, during World War I (the United States had previously brought the mineral in from Austria).
On a smaller scale, the Lands in Lodi book on the Seneca County Digital Library paints the tale of John Wolf, a Seneca County resident who hand-built the first stone road in Reed Township in 1905. “He knew of a place on his farm (TR 79 near the intersection of SR 162) where the limestone was very near the surface. Stripping off the top soil after he built a stone crusher, he proceeded to blast and crush enough stone for the road that summer.” This ingenuity led him to start the John F. Wolf, Crushed Stone and Sand, business.
While the Basic quarry near Bettsville still exists, there were many more throughout Seneca County as its located within a wider area of northwest Ohio (including portions of eastern Indiana and southeast Michigan) known as the “Findlay Arch Mineral District.”
A conveyor belt at France Quarry in Bloomville. This photo was published in the Webster Manufacturing 75th Anniversary book, which can be viewed on the Seneca County Digital Library.
Tiffin once had a quarry on East Davis Street until the 1913 flood filled it. It was known as the Weott Lime Quarry and was filled in and leveled after the tragic flood took 15 lives, some of whom lived in nearby houses. Another, known as Quarry No. 1, was located on Washington Street and Quarry No. 2, the “city quarry”, was about one quarter mile away. Quarry No. 3 was in the southern section of the city.
Fostoria also had a quarry called the Pelton Quarry, which is now a small lake.
Other various -sized quarries within Seneca County at the turn of the century were the France & Son Stone Quarry (east of Bloomville), the Kohler & Geiger Stone Quarry and the Tiffin Lime, Building & Sandstone Co. A special line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran through Bloomville, was built especially for the France Quarry. Henry Creeger had a small quarry in Hopewell Township in an that was rich in both clay and limestone.
Ohio and Seneca County have areas with quartz fragments and shale (a clay-like soil), including Hamilton Shale, Huron Shale and black shale in the very southeastern corner of the county. In some cases, the clay soils of southern Seneca County contain small traces of limestone.
Sandstone (naturally cemented grains of sand), especially Oriskany Sandstone, is more common in the eastern portions of Seneca County (Adams, Clinton and Eden Townships), is found in the areas where the edge of the glacial lake held beaches. It’s been commonly seen in liners for steel furnaces, computer chips, glass, fiberglass, TV screens, and golf-course trap sand.
Additionally, within the aforementioned Basic Quarry, Calcite, Celestite, Dolomite crystals, Fluorite, Marcasite, Pyrite, Fossils have all been found.
Works cited:
Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316
Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “Common Rocks and Their Uses.” https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/rock-minerals-fossils/common-rocks#:~:text=The%20geology%20of%20Ohio%20provides,or%20quarried%20throughout%20the%20state.
Durrett, John. History of Bettsville. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643
Georarities. “What Kind of Minerals and Crystals Can Be Found in Ohio?” Dec. 2022. https://georarities.com/2022/12/13/what-kind-of-minerals-and-crystals-can-be-found-in-ohio/
History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17928
Junior Order of United American Mechanics Home, Tiffin (Ohio). History of the National Orphans Home. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4339/rec/1
Lands in Lodi. West Lodi Historical Society, 2007. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44538/rec/2
Seneca County Digital Library, Ohio Memory Project, https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search
Seneca County Business Directory 1896, Watson & Dorman Publishers. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23204/rec/1
Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25130/rec/1
Tiffin Parks, Past to Present, League of Women Voters, https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/34925/rec/6
Village of Iler. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40807
Webster Manufacturing 75th Anniversary. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38322
More resources:
Geology of States. “Rock Hounding in America: Ohio”. Jan 2021. https://rockhound.in/rockhounding-in-ohio-what-rocks-you-can-find-and-where/
Ohio EPA Shaded Elevation Map: https://epa.ohio.gov/static/Portals/27/sip/Nonattain/F3-Shaded_Elevation_Map_of_Ohio.pdf
Ohio Department of Natural Resources Bedrock Map: https://ohiodnr.gov/static/documents/geology/MiscMap_OhioShadedBedrockTopography_2003.pdf