Book Description

A History of Moonville, Ohio and a Collection of its Haunting Tales, Revised Edition, is an updated version of a previous work the author had published back in 2008. This revised edition contains more detailed history about Moonville and its surrounding towns, such as Zaleski, on how they came to be, most notably that Moonville was named by the railroad after a general store proprietor rather than the man who had actually founded the town; and that Zaleski was named after a Polish/French financier who never came to America to see his namesake town. This revised edition also contains more haunting tales of what had happened to some of those who had lived and worked in this remote mining town in eastern Vinton County, Ohio, mainly covering those who had been involved in train accidents surrounding the still-standing tunnel as these trains came barreling through the area; plus, there are a few tales of murder as well. There are also a few light-hearted tales most notably that of a well-known English author who had passed through Moonville on his way to tour America back in the late 1860s as well as a story about some feisty sisters, in Athens, who took on the expanding railroad. There are human interest elements in all of this, most notably to me, is the story of the Dexters who had been enslaved in Virginia, escaping in the 1860s, having made their way to Moonville in order to live out their lives in freedom. This book is about preserving the history of a mining town that began back in the 1850s, thriving for nearly fifty years, before it began its long slide into history, though not completely forgotten, for it had been, once, a vital part of Ohios history, especially in the days leading up to the American Civil War; and that is why I wrote and revised this work - for Moonvilles history is a part of Ohios history.