Cadiz Travel Guide

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The old man drove past a variety of homes he thought Charles Manson might have once lived. The most agreed upon by the waitresses was a home across from the fairgrounds, a home widely believed to be haunted and appreciated by the community for recent renovation. The most popular idea was that Manson's mother was a whore, but in my appraisal of all these homes, I couldn't find any compelling architectural reason to believe that Manson had lived in any of them. Subsequently, my best on-line research effort could not tie any biographical connection to the town of Cadiz. Manson, was however, a native of Ohio, having been born to his 16 year old drifting mother at the Cincinnati County Hospital, and yet it's quite possible that the yard knitted by town's folk of Cadiz speak reality if the drifter Manson had stayed in town just a short while.

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Clark Gable was an icon of the 40's and 50's, particularly with his heroic role in the Civil War epoch film Gone With The Wind, and he remains well remembered by American's. Gable's childhood home has been turned into a museum. Despite the clean appearance and good maintenance, it seems that Gable was born into a triplex. We didn't have time to determine though whether he lived in one of the two ground floor domiciles, or the second floor flat. I also paused to shoot an image of the residential street in winter.

Founded in 1804, tiny Cadiz is the county seat and one of the older towns in Ohio. The commercial district that faces the courthouse on the east, south, and north sides is largely late 19th century, early 20th century brick architecture, however. The new commercial center lines the road leading back to Highway 22.

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The center of tiny Cadiz, like many small midwest towns, is the monolithic county courthouse. This structure deserves considerable respect actually for well executed architecture, but also for a rather impressive bronze statue of jurist John A Bingham, who had died in Cadiz at the ripe old age of 85. Bingham is a significant historical figure for having been congressman from Cadiz, and more famously, a judge during the trial of Lincoln's assassins, John Wilks Booth and others, and later a prosecutor during the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. He was a close friend of Steubenville native, and Lincoln Cabinet Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, as the two were both Radical Republican's during the Civil War period. Bingham was also a principal framer for the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which extends and ensures, among other things, that citizens are given due process by jury trial. Also on the courthouse grounds is a plaque memorial to Methodist Bishop Matthew Simpson, Abraham Lincoln's spiritual advisor. But in the short time available to me, the snowy statue of Bingham was a happy focus of my view finder with the impressive courthouse in the background.