WARREN HARDING Building at school linked to Civil War

The Sixth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry used the barracks in 1861.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Besides the 1924 building, the Warren G. Harding High School property is home to another piece of Trumbull County history.
A modest, wooden structure set on a concrete slab behind the three Quonset huts on Elm Road was used as a barracks during the Civil War.
Wendell Lauth, a Trumbull County historian, said the wooden barracks housed the Sixth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry during a training camp from October through December 1861. The Sixth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry was a horseback-mounted unit.
"The whole camp was called Camp Hutchins," Lauth said. "John Hutchins was the congressman at the time and it was named in his honor."
The Trumbull County Fairgrounds used to be at the school property, and the barracks was a horse barn for fairs.
"Warren was a key location where soldiers were trained before they were sent south to fight," said David Ambrose, Trumbull County Historical Society president.
When part of the fairgrounds was used for the camp, the military moved beds into the fair buildings to accommodate soldiers.
Little-known history
"I would say that 99 percent of the people don't even know it's still there," Lauth said.
The Harding band uses the building for storage, with props and old band photos stacked up inside. The inside of the doors bears the names and graduation classes of many former band majorettes.
Tom Namola, a member of the band boosters, agrees that most people aren't aware of this building's age.
The Sixth Ohio, whose members hailed from all over the Western Reserve, participated in pivotal battles throughout the eastern theater of the Civil War.
When they left Warren, the men went to Camp Chase in Columbus and in May 1862 were sent to Wheeling, W.Va., where they began the pursuit of Gen. Stonewall Jackson down the Shenandoah Valley, Lauth said.
They participated in the second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862, and in 1863 were involved in several actions against Gen. Robert E. Lee's movement toward Maryland.
"The Sixth Ohio Cavalry was at Gettysburg and was involved in the capture of 1,500 Confederate soldiers," Lauth said.
While encamped in the winter of 1864 in Warrenton, Va., in the Shenandoah Mountains, they were harassed by Moseby's Raiders, an organized Confederate group that targeted Union troops.
End of war
The cavalry fought in April 1865 at a battle at Appomattox Court House, Va., at the end of which Lee, commander of the Confederate forces, surrendered.
The Sixth Ohio provided an escort to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the Union forces' commander, after the end of the war and returned to Cleveland in August 1865 before heading home, Lauth said.
John Fowley, a former president of the historical society, said the barracks, which he thinks housed horses, is a post-and-beam building, meaning it was assembled without nails.
"There's very little left of the Civil War mustering-out camps in the United States, and there were hundreds of them," said Fowley.
William Kush, the school district's maintenance supervisor, said the district affixed a metal roof to the building, but that it has required little additional maintenance other than painting.
Will have to move
James Russo, school district business manager, said the structure, which sits between Elm Road and Panther Drive, will likely have to move to make way for a new high school.
As part of a districtwide building project, the district plans to build a new high school and five new kindergarten-through-eighth-grade buildings and likely demolish the old schools.
But the exact location of new buildings is still being determined.
"It would be nice if we could keep it," said Linda Metzendorf, school board president.
Russo and Metzendorf said a group concerned with historic preservation has talked of moving the building to maintain the history.
denise.dick@vindy.com