Corning

How Corning began

Corning was laid out in 1878 by Joseph Rodgers and grew into a coal camp after 1879, when Rodgers sold over 8,000 acres along Sunday Creek to the Ohio Central Coal Company and New York investors moved in behind the Atlantic and Lake Erie Railway's new Moxahala tunnel. A post office opened in 1880 and the population exploded from 270 that year to 1,551 by 1890. The boom years produced two of the county's sharpest stories: an 1880 clash between the Ohio National Guard and white miners over newly hired Black miners, and an 1895 civil-rights case against the town's hotel. The 2020 population was 488, a fraction of the 1890 peak.

Platted 1878, by Joseph Rodgers.

Where the name comes from

No source read explains the name Corning. Wikipedia says the town was first called Ferrara and later renamed, but the 1883 county history it cites for that says Corning was laid out in 1878 by Joseph Rodgers, while Ferrara was a separate town laid out in 1871 by Nelson Rodgers and James Taylor, between Corning and Rendville.

Before the town

No source found documents a Native village, camp, or named site specifically at Corning. The place sits along Sunday Creek in the coal-mining district of southern Perry County; the 1883 county history's discussion of Native trails and settlement centers on the Monongahela and Shawnee Run trails to the west and the Moxahala Trail (Zanesville to Lancaster through Sego, Somerset, and Rushville) well to the north, neither of which is placed at this site in the sources checked. The county-wide picture includes Perry County's Shawnee, Wyandot, and Delaware context and its mound and earthwork sites.

Timeline

1. 1878 — Joseph Rodgers laid out the town of Corning on Sunday Creek.
2. 1879-1880 — By 1880 Joseph Rodgers had sold over 8,000 acres along Sunday Creek to the Ohio Central Coal Company, and New York investors were building up the coal camp.
3. 1879 — The Atlantic and Lake Erie Railway completed the Moxahala tunnel, opening rail access to the site.
4. 1880 — A post office opened at Corning; population was 270.
5. 1880 — The Ohio National Guard was called out to stop white coal miners from forcing out newly arrived African American miners, the first time the Guard shed blood defending the state.
6. 1884 — The 'Corning Church War,' a feud between Catholic priest Father Bernard O'Boylan and saloonkeeper Andy McDevitt, drew national newspaper attention.
7. 1890 — Population reached 1,551, near the town's peak.
8. 1895 — Black labor organizer Richard L. Davis was refused service at Corning's Mercer Hotel; the hotel became the first Ohio business punished under the state's new anti-discrimination law.
9. 2020 — Population was 488.

Stories

The Battle of Corning, 1880

When the Ohio Central Coal Company began hiring African American miners at Corning in 1880, white miners tried to drive them out, and the confrontation turned violent enough that Ohio's governor sent in the National Guard. Troops fired on the crowd trying to force the new miners out, and the clash is remembered locally as the first time the Ohio National Guard shed blood in defense of the state. The episode set the tone for a decade of racially mixed coal camps across the Little Cities of Black Diamonds district, of which nearby Rendville, with Ohio's first Black mayor, is the best-known example.

Richard L. Davis and the Mercer Hotel

Richard L. Davis was a Black coal miner and organizer for the United Mine Workers who traveled the Hocking Valley coalfield building interracial locals. In January 1895 he was turned away from Corning's Mercer Hotel because of his race. Ohio had passed a civil rights law barring discrimination in public accommodations, and Davis's case against the hotel went forward under it; the Mercer Hotel became the first business in the state punished under that statute. The case is a rare documented instance of Ohio's post-Reconstruction civil rights law actually being enforced, in a coalfield where Black and white, and immigrant, miners worked the same shafts.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Corning, Village Of47% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-hemlock20% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-buckingham15% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-congo10% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.6% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Oakdale Water District3% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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