Two-day Barn Yard Sale slated at Myers Inn

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut Area His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety have joined forces with mem­bers of the Rose­crans Com­mand Head­quar­ters are hav­ing a Barn Yard and Bake Sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 14 and 15, in front of the new barn at the Myers Inn Museum.

“We are fea­tur­ing gen­tly used cloth­ing, fur­ni­ture and other items,” said yard sale chair­per­son Sue Comisford.

His­tor­i­cal soci­ety and Rose­crans Head­quar­ters mem­bers are donat­ing home­made goods for the Bake Sale, which will be held on Fri­day in con­junc­tion with the yard sale.

“Our mem­bers are good cooks so this will be a real treat,” bake sale chair Alice Cha­pan claimed.

Pro­ceeds from the Barn Yard and Bake Sale will ben­e­fit the Major Gen­eral William Starke Rose­crans Statue Fund.

William Starke Rose­crans was born in a dou­blewide log cabin in Kingston Town­ship on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1819. His par­ents, Cran­dall Rose­crans and his wife Jemima Hop­kins (rel­a­tive to Stephen Hop­kins who signed the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence) lived on 160 acres on Tay­lor Run.

In 1821, the Rose­crans moved to Homer where the fam­ily con­tin­ued to grow. Cran­dall man­aged a vil­lage tav­ern, gen­eral store and farmed. Although he did not belong to a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious denom­i­na­tion he was very reli­gious and a strong patriot.

William attended a log school for a few months each year. In 1833 a Lan­caster mer­chant, George Arnold, opened a gen­eral coun­try store in Utica, a few miles from Homer. William became a clerk in the store and when Arnold moved the store to Mans­field, William moved.

Rose­crans and his father began a cor­re­spon­dence with their con­gress­man and secured an appoint­ment at West Point. William spent time at Kenyon Col­lege to pre­pare for the West Point exam­i­na­tion and entered the school in 1837. When he grad­u­ated in 1842 he was fifth in gen­eral merit and third in mathematics.

Rose­crans received an unde­served neg­a­tive rep­u­ta­tion dur­ing his Civil War ser­vice years; and he is the only Civil War gen­eral not sit­ting on an eques­trian statue somewhere.

Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln appre­ci­ated Rose­crans and asked him to run on his ticket dur­ing his reelec­tion to the White House. Rose­crans delayed his deci­sion and the oppor­tu­nity to serve as vice-president (and, unknown to him at the time, become pres­i­dent fol­low­ing Lincoln’s assas­si­na­tion) was lost.

Sev­eral years ago a local effort began to place a bronze eques­trian statue of Gen­eral Rose­crans on Sun­bury Square. The vil­lage granted per­mis­sion, a fund was started, and in August the statue’s nat­ural stone base was placed on the square.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion about Major Gen­eral William Starke Rose­crans, the Rose­crans Head­quar­ters Unit, or to donate to the statue fund, go to < BigWalnutHistory.org > and click on Rose­crans Headquarters.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.