#TBT - Amanda, Ohio
The Village of Amanda traces it’s origins to Adam Dickey and his settlement. Dickey, who was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1767, purchased around 500 acres of land south of Middletown around 1800 and built his first log cabin in the area in 1803. Dickey’s cabin was joined by a dozen others and forty people. In 1828, the settlement officially became a village, when Dickey filed the plat. At the time, the village was made up of 11 streets, 33 plots, a turn basin for canal boats, and Amanda Mill, also referred to as the Dickey Mill.
The village’s relative prosperity was tied to the Miami and Erie Canal, specifically its importance as a travel hub. When travel along the canal waned, so did Amanda. However, the village gained a second life, when a local mill was converted into a paper company, eventually becoming the Crystal Tissue Company. This renewed development was a double edged sword though, as Crystal Tissue’s operations enveloped the village, leaving little left of the original village in its wake.
One part of Amanda that outlasted the village itself was the Amanda School at 1212 Oxford State Road. This school originally opened in 1873 as two-story brick building with four classrooms suited for 160 students. Additions and expansions to the school were made in 1925, 1930, 1937, 1941 and 1953. The 1925 expansion saw the addition of 4 classrooms and a auditorium / gymnasium. The school was in use up until the spring of 1981, when it closed. The building itself lasted another 20 years, until it was demolished in the early 2000s.
