Established in 1818, Wellington, Ohio became known for several notable chapters in its history. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 allowed slave owners to use federal marshals to recapture runaway slaves even in free states, and on September 13, 1858, John Price, a runaway who had been living and working in Oberlin, was captured by a Kentucky bounty hunter and turned over to a federal marshal. Taken to the American House Hotel in Wellington to await a southbound train, he was rescued when Oberlin residents, joined by Wellington supporters, stormed the hotel and broke into the attic. Price was returned to Oberlin and then found refuge in Canada. Thirty-seven men from Wellington and Oberlin were charged with violating the law, and their trial drew national attention, becoming a rallying point for abolitionists and contributing to the polarization over slavery that hastened the Civil War. Wellington also became associated with Archibald M. Willard, born in Bedford in 1836, who moved there in 1855 and worked as a decorative painter before creating the painting he first called “Yankee Doodle,” inspired by a July 4 sketch of three local men in Wellington. Transformed into the patriotic work later renamed “The Spirit of ’76,” it was displayed at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and became one of the best-known images of American patriotism. In the mid-19th century Wellington stood at the center of a prosperous dairy region, and after the New York Central Railroad arrived in 1849, R. A. Horr and his brother Charles built the town’s first cheese factory to ship products to distant markets. Wellington cheese eventually reached London, and by 1875 the town was known as the “Cheese City.” In 1878 the Horr-Warner company shipped over 6,000,000 pounds of cheese and over 1,000,000 pounds of butter, though refrigeration and growing demand for whole milk later brought decline to the cheese industry. Wellington was also closely tied to Myron T. Herrick, born on a farm just south of town, who rose from humble beginnings to become a Cleveland banker, entrepreneur, council member, Governor of Ohio from 1903-1905, and United States ambassador to France in 1912 and again in 1921. During World War I he won admiration in France for organizing relief for widows and orphans of fallen soldiers and for helping save national art treasures. He later greeted Charles Lindbergh in Paris after his transatlantic flight, and Herrick’s gift to Wellington was the public library, dedicated in 1904 on the square where the American House Hotel had stood.