Catherine Fay Ewing, born on July 12, 1822, in Westboro, Massachusetts, moved with her family to Marietta in 1835 and at sixteen studied to be a teacher while attending Marietta Female Seminary. In 1840 she went to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma to teach orphaned Indian children, an experience that shaped the rest of her life. After returning home and seeing the poor conditions of orphans in the county infirmary, she resolved to create a home for homeless children. She bought property at Moss Run ten miles from Marietta, built a two-room cabin, and on April 1, 1858, took custody of nine children. Eight years later she married Archibald Ewing, and that same year the Ohio Legislature authorized County Commissioners to use county taxes for the first public children’s home in the United States. Frances Dana Gage, born Frances Dana Barker on October 12, 1808, in Marietta, married James L. Gage in 1829 and raised eight children, including four sons who served with Union forces during the Civil War. She was deeply involved in the Temperance and Anti-Slavery movements and in Women’s Rights issues. While presiding over the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron in 1851, she invited Sojourner Truth to deliver her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. After the family moved in 1853 to St Louis, the western extension of the Mason-Dixon Line, she faced threats to her life whenever she spoke against slavery. During the Civil War, she traveled south to aid Union soldiers and teach freed slaves, and despite being crippled and permanently disabled by a stroke, she continued lecturing on social issues until 1867. She died on November 10, 1884, in Greenwich, Connecticut.