Category Archives: Dayton Fun Facts

Sara’s Ghost Tour & Courthouse Square

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Last Saturday, Sara hosted several ghost tours of the downtown area as part of the Dayton Housing Tour! We had a great turnout and met a lot of great people. It was a blast discussing the ghost stories and hauntings in downtown, while exploring the history of the city.

Thanks to all who came out!

Sara’s tour included:
  • Court House Square (Old Jailhouse)
  • Dayton Daily News Building (4th and Ludlow)
  • Dayton’s First Cemetery (5th and Ludlow)
  • Spaghetti Warehouse
  • The Old Courthouse
If you have any suggestions for local tours, let us know!

Downtown Housing Tour 2026

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The Downtown Housing Tour is back for 2026! The free event will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 30.

Guests can get an inside look at downtown properties, and learn why a downtown address is so in demand!

Also, sign up for various Themed Walking Tours such as Sara’s Ghost Tour!
10 am – Walking Tour and Old Courthouse
11:15 – Old Courthouse only
12 noon – Walking tour and Old Courthouse

Sign up for Ghost Tour here!

Watch the Downtown Dayton Partnership page for sign up info and details on the other tours.

How a 19th Century Story Reached a Family Today

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Sometimes, we are reminded that the stories we share here don’t just stay here on the blog.

When we started Dayton Unknown, our goal was simple: to uncover and share the forgotten, overlooked, and lesser known stories that shaped our city. Stories like Johnny Morehouse and the Morehouse Family.

Recently, we heard from a descendant of the Morehouse family.

Thank you for the respectful write up of the Morehouse family and the great article about Horace, who was my great grandfather. I never heard a reference to him when I was growing up, since my great grandmother, Kitty Gilbert, had remarried. She is buried between her second husband and my mother in Elmhurst, Illinois. She was an amazing seamstress and very nice woman. I have been to Dayton to visit the grave of my great great uncle, Johnny, and and humbled by the tokens of love left there. Thank you so much!

This email was a great reminder that history isn’t static. It lives through memories, through family legends, and sometimes, these pieces of history find their way back to the people it belongs to.

Fined for Helping a Prisoner

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In October of 1917, Richard Messler was found guilty on a charge of harboring a girl who escaped from the city workhouse. A city workhouse was a municipal institution that often functioned as a jail or a punitive “poorhouse,” where individuals convicted of minor offenses or those in extreme poverty were forced to perform manual labor.

Messler was accused of harboring Ruth Isley, aka Margaret Williams after she escaped from the workhouse on September 3. According to her testimony, she escaped by prying off a door lock, crossing a roof, and entering a window of the Antler Hotel located on 6th Street. From there she ran to Messler’s garage, where she stayed all night.

Source: Fined For Help Given Prisoner, Dayton Herald, October 9, 1917, Page 16

An Elevator Accident in 1954

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On July 31, 1954, a 31-year-old elevator operator lost her left foot in an elevator-related injury at 11 West Monument Ave. Helen Johnson forced the shaftway door open on the 8th floor, thinking she had left the elevator there. She then fell from the 8th floor all the way down to the 4th, only stopping when her foot was caught by the counterweight. She recovered at Miami Valley Hospital.

Source: Elevator Victim Reported “Fair”, Dayton Daily News, August 2, 1954, Page 4

Happy Birthday, Dayton!

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On April 1st, Dayton turned 230 years old!!!!

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Footprints in the cement at Founder’s Point at Riverscape Metropark to remember the first settlers of Dayton.

”The boat party was the first to arrive. Rounding the curve in the river, where for so many years since then it has been flowing under the Dayton View Bridge, the pioneers perceived before their eyes the swift current of Mad River emptying itself into the main channel, just as it had been described, and saying to each other (so we may imagine), ‘Yes this must be the place,’ they tied the pirogue to a tree at the head of St, Clair Street and led by Mrs. Thompson, all clambered ashore.

At that moment, DAYTON came on the map!” – Charlotte Reeve Conover in The Story of Dayton

The Thompson Cow

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In March of 1796, three pioneer parties left Cincinnati to head by river and land to what is now Dayton Ohio. The parties were led  by George Newcom, William Hamer, and Samuel Thompson. The Thompson party was the first to arrive in Dayton at the spot now known as Founder’s Point. The following people and their families are the original settlers of Dayton:

  1. William Hamer
  2. Soloman Hamer
  3. Thomas Hamer
  4. George Newcom
  5. William Newcom
  6. Abraham Grassmire
  7. John Davis
  8. John Dorough

    9. Continue reading →

A Fire in 1900

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In the early morning hours of February 1, 1900, fire broke out in the manufacturing district, impacting several small companies and a few larger businesses, including:

  • J.P. Wolf & Sons, Tobacco Merchants
  • E. Bimm & Sons, Grocers
  • Benedicts & Co, Cigar Manufacturers
  • The Dayton Paper Novelty Company

The Big Four Freight depot was located in the back, and had minimal damage. The office building was destroyed, but the slate roof prevented the rest of the company from more damage. There was an estimated $500,000 in damages to the district.

It took 3 hours for the flames to be under control, and there were many injuries:

  • Night Watchman Snedecker was overcome by smoke and later found unconscious by other firemen.
  • Another fireman, Louis Swaneger, was taken to his home, badly frozen.
  • Three firemen, George Coy, George Nienaber, and George Griesheimer were buried when the east wall of the J.P. Wolf & Sons building collapsed. Nienaber and Griesheimer were not badly injured.
  • Many other firefighters and volunteers were treated at a makeshift hospital located in a nearby home.

Lester Emoff

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When Lester Emhoff left work Tuesday, September 23, 1975, his employees thought nothing abnormal about his departure. But it was just three hours later that his son Robert received the following letter:


Robert Emoff,
By 12:00 noon tomorrow, you should have in your possession(sic) the sum of four-Hundred-Thousand dollars ($400,000) in bills of tens and twenties. Money will be checked for unfamiliar markings. Police will not be contacted. Money is for the ransom of Lester Emoff. If these demands are not carried out to the letter, Lester Emoff and car with tag #866-pe will be destroyed with dynamite along with all three stores and your warehouse.

At 12 noon tomorrow, you are to leave your house with the money in the green car, tag #7947-NV and proceed to the Sohio station on Riverview and Philadelphia Dr. Inside the station you will receive further instructions at exactly 12:05 by phone. You will be timed. 30 mph.

It is believed that Lester was abducted as he left the store. The ransom was paid in small bills by the victim’s family the next day, Sep 24.

Although the ransom was paid, Lester’s body was found three days later on Olt Road in Jefferson Township. He’d been shot in the back. His car was discovered in Miamisburg. Residents nearby saw men leave the car there the night Lester was abducted. Roughly $193,000 was recovered.

Albert Lee Scott, a former employee of Emoff’s, was arrested in connection to the case. Scott had been fired by Emoff when there was a question about some merchandise missing from a truck. Scott provided information leading to the discovery of the body. Two other men, Herman Lee Moore and Willis Leroy, were arrested in connection to the crime.

Albert Lee Scott was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Herman Lee Moore and Willis Leroy both received life sentences.

Dayton Fun Facts

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  • On February 25, 1879, Susan Koerner Wright, mother to Wilbur and Orville, gave birth to twins. Unfortunately, Ida and Otis were not long for this earth. Otis lived for 13 days, and Ida lived 18 days. They were buried at the Old Greencastle Cemetery. In the year 2000, an excavation of the twins’ grave searched for remains, but only found some wood fragments that could have been from a casket. Soil was collected from that part of the grave, roughly enough to fill a three pound coffee can, and buried at the Wright Family plot in Woodland. The marker from the twins’ grave was moved and placed next to the family monument.
  • Dayton’s first known murder occurred on November 20, 1806. John Aiken beat his wife, Rachel, to death. He was arrested and held at McCollum’s Tavern. John was dead before he could appear in court. It was possibly suicide, but records do not exist to confirm what happened

The fun facts below came from the book Ohio Legends Volume 1, written by our late friend Jeff Wilson

  • Eliam Barney and Ebenezer Thresher founded the Barney and Smith Car Company in 1849. Their factory in Dayton produced the finest railroad freight and passenger cars in the country. When Barney started the company, Dayton didn’t have any railroads! The first railroad cars had to be delivered by canal boat and horse drawn wagons
  • The Wright Brothers made their own printing press from buggy parts and a discarded tombstone.
  • Buckeye Bigfoot – the most recent sighting of Ohio’s Bigfoot was in 2012 in Xenia. It was described as a “shaggy beast with glowing eyes” and matched a 1995 sighting in Youngstown.
  • Dayton’s leading newspapers refused to report the story of Wilbur and Orville’s first flying machine because they thought it was a hoax.