By Rebecca Goodman
The Cincinnati Enquirer

On Aug. 17, 1818, Sidney Edgerton - who would represent Ohio's 18th District in Congress and serve as a colonel of the Squirrel Hunters, who defended Cincinnati during the Civil War - was born in Cazenovia, N.Y.

Edgerton moved to Ohio in 1844 and taught at Tallmadge, near Akron. He graduated from Cincinnati Law School the following year. Admitted to the Ohio bar in 1846, he set up a law practice in Akron.

A founding member of the Free Soil Party in 1848, he was also a delegate to the first Republican National Convention in 1856. During the Civil War, he and the other Squirrel Hunters - Ohio militiamen said to be expert shots - rushed to Cincinnati in September 1862 when Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith threatened to march on Ohio from Lexington.

He was a congressman 1859-'63. President Lincoln appointed Edgerton chief justice of the Idaho Territory in 1863, and the president named Edgerton the first governor of the Montana Territory in 1864. He is buried in Tallmadge.

Ohio State Fair history

The most recent addition to the fair's Expo Center was the George V. Voinovich Livestock and Trade Center, completed in 1995.

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com or call (513) 768-8361.