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Photograph of St. Paul's Catholic Church
Photograph by Nyttend, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

St. Paul's Catholic Church and Rectory

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.

From the record

“The southern and western part of Gibson township was largely settled by people from Southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, who originally came from Virginia and North and South Carollina, although a few came from Delaware. Denney, who came from Gallia County, Ohio ; the Clarks, who came from England ; Wateman Hastings and Solomon Collins, who came from the State of Delaware ; and Robert Hunter, James Alexander and David Hays who came from Fairfield County, Ohio - all of these settled in Gibson township about the same time.”

History of Mercer County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens (1907). Machine-read text.

one of 28 National Register listings in Mercer County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.

Sources: the county history on the Internet Archive · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

  • What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
  • Address. R.R. 1, Ft. Recovery, Sharpsburg, 45846
  • When was it listed? 1979-07-26
  • Category. building
  • Also known as. Cross-Tipped Churches of Ohio TR
  • Township. Gibson township
  • National Register reference number. 79002827 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

8,829 words

The chapter on Gibson Township in History of Mercer County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, published 1907 names Sharpsburg. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

The southern and western part of Gibson township was largely settled by people from Southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, who originally came from Virginia and North and South Carollina, although a few came from Delaware. Among the early settlers in this section were the families of James -Cummins, Henry Denney, Benjamin Clark and William F. Denney, who came from Gallia County, Ohio ; the Clarks, who came from England ; Wateman Hastings and Solomon Collins, who came from the State of Delaware ; and Robert Hunter, James Alexander and David Hays who came from Fairfield County, Ohio - all of these settled in Gibson township about the same time. Nathan S. Scranton settled on a farm in Gibson township in 1849; the Scranton family, who were originally from the State of Connecticut, came to Mercer County from Medina County, Ohio. Near the town of Fort Recovery and north of the first neighborhood, Robert Travis, Edward Jones, Sylvester Schutt, Jacob Schaffer, Jacob Stuber and Joseph Clark and their families settled. In the eastern part of the township, around Sharpsburg, Aaron Rood and wife and' his sons, L. B. Rood and Alpha Rood, who were Yankees in every sense of the word; the Jones and Hall families and the families of Thomas Rockwell, Jacob and George Meyers and William Snyder - all of whom came from Butler County, Ohio - settled at an early date. In the same section of the township also settled John L. Fox, David Johnson, John Hedrick and Abraham Mott, Sr. - Abraham and James Z. Mott, sons of the lastnamed pioneer, still live in the township. The Lowry family came in at a later date and its representatives are still living in the township. Samuel Briner, Samuel Keller, David F. Blake (who went to Missouri in 1857), George Sigler, M. W. Diggs and George Painter were early settlers in the southern part of the township. Other early settlers were James Watkins, Daniel Broclc and John McDaniel.

Passage source: History of Mercer County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, published 1907.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Gibson Township - 8,829 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Specimens collected near this property

12 of 85 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 85 specimens collected within 10 miles of St. Paul's Catholic Church and Rectory between 1888 and 1959: 60 Animalia, 24 Fungi, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. D. Selby, Clark, C. (Clarence), Clark, C. F. (Clarence F.) and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Image SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
Specimen of unnamed1934P. P. PironeColdwater
A photograph of the species Piranga olivacea, not of this specimenPiranga olivacea (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)1888J. R. SlonakerFort Recovery
A photograph of the species Podosphaera leucotricha, not of this specimenPodosphaera leucotricha (Ellis & Everh.) E.S.Salmon1906Selby A. D.Sharpsburg
A photograph of the species Colletotrichum cereale, not of this specimenColletotrichum cereale Manns1908Selby A. D.Sharpsburg
A photograph of the species Colletotrichum graminicola, not of this specimenColletotrichum graminicola (Ces.) G.W.Wilson1908Selby A. D.Sharpsburg
Glomerella graminicola D.J.Politis1908A. D. SelbySharpsburg.
A photograph of the species Didelphis virginiana, not of this specimenDidelphis virginiana virginiana Kerr, 17921911L. L. WaltersFt Recovery, 4 mi SE
A photograph of the species Alasmidonta viridis, not of this specimenAlasmidonta viridis (Rafinesque, 1820)1913Goodrich, CalvinMonterey
A photograph of the species Pyganodon grandis, not of this specimenPyganodon grandis (Say, 1829)1913Goodrich, CalvinFort Recovery(3 mi E)
A photograph of the species Strophitus undulatus, not of this specimenStrophitus undulatus (Say, 1817)1913Goodrich, CalvinSt Henry
A photograph of the species Lepomis megalotis, not of this specimenLepomis megalotis (Rafinesque, 1820)1928Trautman, M. B. (Milton Bernard) & Foster, R. (Robert)Wabash River, within Mercer Co, Mercer County, township n/a
A photograph of the species Campostoma anomalum, not of this specimenCampostoma anomalum anomalum1929Trautman, M. B. (Milton Bernard)Wabash River, within Ex southeast Granville township, near Burkettsville, Granville township

All 85 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this property

3 since 2000

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Sharpsburg, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 2000 and 2020: 3 thunderstorm wind. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
August 2000Thunderstorm WindSharpsburg$5,000Large limbs were knocked down due to thunderstorm winds.
August 2020Thunderstorm WindSharpsburg$2,000Trees were reported knocked down across the road.
June 2010Thunderstorm WindSharpsburg$1,000Large tree limbs were reported down due to damaging thunderstorm winds.

Every storm recorded in Mercer County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

From the nomination file

1,166 words on record

When this property was proposed for the National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is, and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain. It is reproduced in full on its own page, word for word and never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s typewriter's.

The whole case file for this property - 1,166 words, 7 pages, reproduced complete.

Quoted from the National Register nomination for reference 79002827, 7 pages, held by the National Archives in Record Group 79. See the catalogue record.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph PropertyDistance Listed
St. Bernard Catholic Church and Rectory3.6 miles1979
St. Bernard Catholic Church and Rectory3.6 miles1979
St. Joseph Catholic Church and Rectory4.4 miles1979
St. Joseph Catholic Church and Rectory4.5 miles1979
Fort Recovery Site4.9 miles1970
St. Peter Catholic Church and Rectory6.1 miles1979

Sources for this property

National Archives recordThe nomination case file for reference 79002827 in Record Group 79.
Mercer CountyAll 28 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

  • Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
  • Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
  • How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
  • Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
  • Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.