The members of Elliott Wyman Post #39 are pictured above and was taken Memorial Day 1895 in front of the Town Hall. The GAR Hall itself sits directly behind the Town Hall and is now in the process of being restored. Help preserve a part of local as well as national history by making a tax deductible donation. We have several products we are selling to raise money, please check out the product link on the menu bar.

The Gen. James B. McPherson Camp # 66 was informed in the fall of 203 that a potential GAR meeting place was still standing in Genoa, Ohio. At first it didn’t seem possible that after all these years a GAR hall like this could be some 10 miles down the road form Toledo.

We started asking more questions and people from Genoa tried to get us some answers. What building is it? What street was it on? Or was the hall upstairs in some Main St. business block. Soon the answers came back, the hall, almost imaginary in people’s minds, was located in a building that had been built as a one room schoolhouse and is on the corner of Washington and Sixth Streets. It was more commonly referred to as the WRC hall.

The camp brothers arrived one night before a monthly meeting, which was held in Genoa, to see this potential Grand Army hall. With flashlights in hand we crossed the threshold of time into a building that hadn’t seen people interested in the Civil War since 1964 when the local WRC chapter folded. We found dirt, dust, town Christmas decorations, old metal beds from World War II, and a wall-mounted gun rack for 24 Springfield muskets. Was it really a Grand Army hall? Some brothers said they had doubts, others were cautiously optimistic; still we had to have proof before announcing this to our brothers across the nation. It was at this point our camp experienced some real growth pains as to whether to proceed with this project. Somehow a vision of what was and what could be came over us and we voted to restore.

During the spring and summer of 2004 we looked for proof. This is what we have discovered with the help of Phil Wyman, a great-grandson of Frank Wyman, a post member. He came from California bearing copies of Civil War letters written to relatives in Genoa during the war.

Genoa, in Ottawa County, Ohio, was settled around 1840 and was known as Stony Ridge Station. The surrounding land was very flat with black swamp forest abounding. Many streams ran through the areas so it was decided to change the name to Venice and in the confusion of recording the name, Genoa was written down and stuck. The under layment of the land is rich with limestone deposits and quarrying has been underway since 1855. Only a couple hundred people lived in and around Clay Township, where Genoa came to be in 1868. One can’t emphasize enough the denseness of the Black Swamp forest and those mosquitoes with that dreaded fever called Ague. One family, the Wymans, came to Genoa in 1855. The parents, Albert and Miranda, had two sons, Frank and Charles Elliott, and three daughters. The father Albert and son Frank opened the first line kiln the year they arrived. According to the Wyman letters, the news of the outbreak of war was brought to the Wyman brothers the morning of April 12, 1861, as they were building a log barn. They saw an excited friend coming across country. He told them that Fort Sumter had been fired upon.

The brothers discussed who would go, knowing full well their farm wasn’t cleared and they didn’t want to leave their parents alone. They decided to quickly clear up their land and raised the debt on the farm. Brother Frank was the first to join the war by enlisting in Co. A 14th Ohio Volunteers in the fall of 1861. His brother C. Elliott later enlisted in the 100th Ohio Volunteers in 1862.

Both brothers endured the hardships and privations of the war and being away from the family. One chance meeting changed the course of their war experiences for the Wyman family. One the approach to Atlanta in the summer of 1864 at what would be called Utoy Creek, Frank wrote later to his sister Etta that: We were camping when I found that the 100th Ohio was near us, my brother’s regiment. I had not seen him for nearly three years and he came into camp soon after I heard of his regiment was near. There was near our camp a spring down in some willows in a slight hollow, and I took my coffee can and we went down there where we made our cup of coffee. The bullets were flying around now and then, nothing very serious just some sharp shooting going on. I remember how well and how handsome he had looked. He had just gotten back from recruiting and had a tailor made uniform on. He was orderly sergeant and in line for promotion to first lieutenant. We talked together as we sat drinking our coffee by the spring and I told him of having heard he had taken desperate chances storming breastworks and such. I talked seriously with him about it, and he promised me to be more careful but insisted that the only war to win the war was to rush ahead. He said “I don’t like this war fraud, I am a soldier from choice but because I must fight for my country. But if every man would follow me, we would take Atlanta in twenty minutes.” He talked on and then we both parted heavy hearted.

We made our camp, and with our usual care had built our cabin for we learned that such care meant health to us. I was in my cabin asleep, and in my sleep I dreamed I saw the 100th storm a breastwork. I saw my brother ahead, alone, and I saw him fall between the lines. I awoke hearing the distant roar of the battle and the crack crack of musketry. It came to me it was the 100th Ohio and it was in trouble. I got up and went out into the air. I saw the captain of company G, Frank Rundell, coming towards me with tears streaming down his face. He was my brother’s dearest friend. He put his arms around me and said “Elliott is missing in between the lines and we know he must be dead for he would never be taken prisoner. The next days they found him with 7 bullets in his body. His colonel had led his men up the breastworks, perhaps for another star on his shoulder—well no one knows why. Elliott was at the head, and a volley hit him alone ahead of his men. I did not see him. I wanted to keep forever that blessed memory of the morning we drank our coffee under the willows and visited together.

Frank returned to Genoa after the war. He resumed quarrying the limestone and opened a mercantile store, with his brother in law, Leander Gregg also of the 100th Ohio. Both men knew the other veterans, many being childhood friends. They and their war comrades organized the Elliott Wyman Post sometime after 1867. The new post was meeting in the schoolhouse like many other religious and civic organizations there being a lack of substantial buildings in Genoa at the time. The school board minutes of late 1867-8 read that all organizations must be evicted from and prevented from meeting on schoolhouse property. The only exceptions were funeral and school functions. Luckily for the post three buildings were to be replaced and sold to who ever would but them.

We now find the schoolhouse being moved down to what would become Main St. to land owned and adjacent to the home of Leander Gregg on 6th St. There the Wyman Post #39 sat until 1908. With the passing of Leander development of Main St. the building again raised and moved to the end of the street now sitting on the edge of the quarries owned by Wyman and Gregg on Washington St.

In 1883 the town built a large brick town hall complete with cupola and upstairs opera house. This building was right out the front door of the hall and is to this day. It provided the veterans with a beautiful meeting room for large gatherings in the opera house. Civil War plays were preformed including Uncle Toms Cabin. The post hosted reunions in Genoa for the 14th, 100th and the 67th Ohio during the summer months of what would be the autumn of the veterans’ lives. In May of 1882 the post loaded into wagons and went up the Woodville plank road to Willow Cemetery in Oregon, Oh, attending the grand dedication of the new pedestal and statue raised by the Hyatt Ford post #14. It was an occasion veterans from all over NW Ohio came numbering several thousand people.

The Elliott Wyman post #303 Women’s Relief Corps organized in 1883 at Genoa. They shared the hall meeting every other Tuesday while the veterans met the second Saturday. With the passing of time, each year brought fewer members to the post and death removed those on the roster. In 1919 the WRC made up 168 fresh wreaths to be placed on veterans graves. Today in Genoa only the 80- 90 year old townspeople remember the hall. They speak of the pictures draped with black crepe, the flags standing about, the chairs lined against the outside walls. Phil Wyman has two chairs in California, a gift from the post to his great grandfather during a visit to Genoa. The other artifacts have vanished almost like the memory of the post itself. In the 1980’s the brick town hall was restored with a million dollar grant. It was going in the same direction as the GAR hall until Mrs. Eldo Bergman lead the charge getting the town hall, Main St. buildings and the GAR hall placed on the National Register of Historic places. The McPherson camp is now engaged in fundraising for their building to be restored. The costs are estimated at $75, 000. This will turn the lights back on Washington St. at the Elliott Wyman Post and allow the people of Ohio to see another rare glimpse of a restored GAR hall. If you would like to help us financially please send checks made out to “Preserve Our Post” c/o Mrs. Ellen Bergman, 217 E. 11th Genoa Bank. If you have any expertise in restorations or knowledge of furnishing a GAR Hall email Jeff Eversman at Miniball@aol.com or phone at 419-698-2096. The McPherson camp meets the first Tuesday of the month at 6:30 pm in the town hall of Genoa. We walk the floors the veterans did while the vision of our hall out back lives with us. Jeff Eversman Commander