Mercer County, Ohio

This week’s guest post was written by Karen Miller Bennet of Karen’s Chatt.

Some junctions here in rural Mercer County once had names that were recognized locally. Shively’s Corner was the location of their general store. Bader’s Corner was the location of a service station. And there was the intersection once known as Wildcat Corner.

You might not find these places on a map, but the local people knew where they were. But people move and people pass away. Old buildings are torn down, and the old place names are forgotten. Today, these corner locations are now simply called the intersection of this road and that road.

Wildcat Corner Today

Decades ago, the locals knew right where Wildcat Corner was, but if you mention Wildcat Corner today, only a few people would know where it was or why it was called that.

But I am very familiar with Wildcat Corner. My parents built a house there in 1956, and they lived there the rest of their lives. I grew up there and lived on that corner for 17 years.

It wasn’t always called Wildcat Corner. How did it get that unusual name?

Wildcat Corner is a mile north of Chattanooga, Ohio, aka Chatt. It is located on the southeast corner of State Routes 49 and 707, in Black Creek Township, northwest Mercer County, Ohio, specifically, the NW corner of W ½ of NW ¼ Section 32 in Black Creek Township.

In 1850, Jacob Y. Davis owned 80 acres in the Section 32 mentioned above and on 6 November 1852, the School Board of School No. 8 leased ¾ of an acre of his NW Corner for $.10 a year. [1]

Although the 1852 lease agreement called it School No. 8, the 1853 plat map shows the school as School No.9, and all later records indicate it was School No. 9.

On 16 September 1871, Jacob Y. Davis and his wife Addeline received $5 from the Black Creek Township Board of Education for the same ¾ acre school lot. [2]

But Black Creek School No. 9 would soon get a new name.

Oil was discovered in Findlay, Ohio, in 1884, and was discovered in the Chatt area a few years later. That discovery started a 20-year oil and gas boom in the Ohio/Indiana area. There were quite a few gushing oil wells right around Chatt, including the area around Black Creek School No. 9, a mile to the north.

The population in the area grew as well, drawing in a number of oil workers.

Wildcatter: one who drills wells in the hope of finding oil in territory not known to be an oil field.

Oil pipes and equipment were stored across the road from Black Creek School No. 9, which was the only two-room school in the township. And since there were many oil wildcatters in the area, they renamed the school Wildcat School No. 9.

The name stuck, and the school was called Wildcat School No. 9 from that time on.

Most of my Miller relatives attended Wildcat School between 1880 and 1930. The Miller farm, established in 1873 by my great-grandfather Jacob Miller (1843-1918), a German immigrant, was about a mile northwest of the school, as the crow flies.

My Grandpa Carl Miller (1896-1973) and his eight siblings walked through the fields to get to the school. Cutting through the fields and over fences was shorter and quicker than taking the road.

Grandpa Carl’s older brother, Jacob Miller Jr. (1885-1913) lost his pocket watch while climbing over a fence one morning on his way to school. A few years later, his younger sister Clara found the watch, which was still in surprisingly good condition.

Wildcat School 1897-98

During Jacob Jr’s 1897-1898 school year, he received a Wildcat School Souvenir Booklet school year from his teacher, John H. Kable. Kable was a native of neighboring Liberty Township who lived and farmed south of Wildcat School.

Rumor has it that teacher John Kable had a very rowdy group of students one year. The students made teaching so difficult that one day John took his gun to school, set the gun down on his desk, and said, “This is what will happen if your disruptions continue.” Then he picked up the gun and shot through the door. It is not known if that helped the discipline problem at the school, but Kable did not make teaching his lifelong career. After teaching for a few years at Wildcat School, John took up farming and farmed for the rest of his life.   

Three children from the next Miller generation, my dad’s three older sisters, attended Wildcat School for several years, until it closed in about 1930. They walked to school with neighboring children, many of whom were relatives. After Wildcat School closed, the Miller children and all the other Wildcat School children were bussed to school in Willshire.

Wildcat School 1926

Eventually, Wildcat School was razed, and the land once again became farmland,

My parents purchased the old Wildcat School lot in the mid-1950s and built a mid-century modern ranch home there in 1956.   

My mom and dad took pride in that corner lot and spent a great deal of time tending their yard, and their many roses and other flowering plants. They even had a gazebo in their backyard.

But they have both passed away, and the property was sold in 2016. The new owners have changed the property to suit their style.

Over the years, Wildcat Corner has become a very busy and dangerous intersection, with an unusually high number of vehicle accidents, some of them fatal. Drivers would miss or run the stop sign. That was probably the worst thing about growing up on Wildcat Corner. The latest effort to decrease the number of accidents has been to make the intersection a 4-way stop. Hopefully, that will help.  

I moved from Wildcat Corner in 1973 when I got married. That was over 50 years ago, but I still think of the property as Wildcat Corner, even though few people today remember it by that name.

I hope to keep the name and history of the old school that was named after the oil wildcatters alive.  

Sources

[1] Mercer County, Ohio, Deed Book R:95, Jacob Y. Davis to Black Creek School No. 8, 6 Nov 1852.

[2] Mercer County, Ohio Deed Book 18:156, Jacob Y. Davis to Black Creek Township Board of Education, 16 Sep 1871.

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Karen Miller Bennett, CG Retired 2024
Karen’s Chatt
www.karenmillerbennett.com

Karen has enjoyed doing family history and genealogy research for over 30 years. She was credentialed as a Board-certified Genealogist by the Board for Certification of Genealogists® in 2003 and retired in 2024. Karen’s Chatt began in 2011, and Karen usually writes two blog posts a week, focused on family, local individuals, cemeteries, Chatt area history, and two area Lutheran Churches, Zion Chatt and Zion Schumm.