Platted by educator and abolitionist Cyrus NcNeely in 1849, Hopedale was the site of McNeely Normal School, later Hopedale Normal College, the first coeducational college for teachers in eastern Ohio, which operated from 1849 to 1902. Among its graduates was George Armstrong Custer in 1856. Hopedale also served as an important stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing bondage in the southern states, and local tradition notes several stations in the village, three at private homes and one at a hotel. Born in Cadiz, Ohio, on February 1, 1901, William Clark Gable lived and attended school in Hopedale from 1903 to 1917. After several years as a stage actor, he went to Hollywood, where he made sixty-seven movies in a career that spanned four decades. He won an Academy Award for It Happened One Night in 1934 but is best known for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind. Gable joined the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War Two and fought in Europe, and he died in Los Angeles in 1960.