The department says 25-year-old Staff Sgt. Wesley Williams of New Carlisle, Ohio, was killed Monday in Kandahar province when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

The News Tribune reports Williams served with Lewis-McChord’s 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which deployed last month to replace another Stryker unit in southern Afghanistan.

Williams joined the Army in 2005. He reported to the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck, Germany, in 2006 and deployed with the unit to Iraq in 2007 as a radio telephone operator.

The Army assigned him to Lewis-McChord’s 4th Brigade in February 2009, and he deployed to Iraq later that year as a rifleman.

The newspaper says he was an infantry squad leader in this Afghan deployment.

The 13,000-acre Grand Lake St. Marys in western Ohio was sprayed with aluminum sulfate in April that was supposed to keep the blue-green algae from feeding on phosphorous in the water. A similar treatment was applied last year.

This year’s treatment was spoiled by high winds that helped stir phosphorus-rich mud from the lake bottom.

A report due in December is expected to raise questions about whether the state will fund a third treatment.

Toxic algae grow thick feeding on phosphorus in manure, sewage and fertilizers that rains wash into nearby streams. They produce liver and nerve toxins that can sicken people and kill pets.

Crossing the Ohio River from Kentucky was crossing the threshold to the new land. The pull of the unknown territory was vast fertile terrain, ownership and possibilities for the new country of America to expand and gain power. But there were several nations of Indians who were not all for these plans.

“We had two major Indian battles. One was in 1791 and the other in 1794,” says Helen LeFevre, president of the Fort Recovery Historical Society.

What is now Fort Recovery is very near the Indiana border and right on the Wabash River. A reconstructed fort is here now.

The Indians were fighting for control of the land so that they could live here peacefully and not have the white settlers coming in and claiming the land.

The new president, George Washington, had sent commander Arthur St Clair here in 1791 to wrest control from the Indians. St. Clair came here with a bit of a rag tag army, which was somewhat poorly supplied.

Here he met Little Turtle with the Miami tribe and Blue Jacket with the Shawnee, as well as many others who had joined forces in a tribal confederation.

“The soldiers were about 1,300 along with some women and children that were here. Indians, we never have had an exact number, but it was over 1,000 that were here as well,” LeFevre says.

It was a very decisive battle where the Americans were beat quite vigorously. And so word got back to President Washington and they had to rethink how they were going to handle it from here.

The defeat did not sit well with Washington – and Anthony Wayne was put in charge.

Wayne was a “no nonsense” commander and he had a reputation for discipline and exuberance and punishment for not training to his standards. He was nicknamed “mad” Anthony Wayne although “No Nonsense” Anthony Wayne might have been more accurate.

“He sent a contingent out here to build Fort Recovery since this was the site for the battle, and they did that in December of 1793,” LeFevre says.

Why is it called recovery?

From what we understand, they wanted to recover the land that had been lost.

The Indians lost the battle in 1794, but Blue Jacket made another stand against Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near present-day Toledo. Again a defeat for the Indians, which then led to the treaty of Greenville.

The Greenville treaty gave the United States all territories south and east of the line. The twelve Indian nations were given goods valued at $20,000 and a promise to deliver goods to them annually forever.

You can see a point on the treaty line today at Fort Recovery.

You can download a copy of the Ft. Recovery tour and all of the other summer driving tours by visiting www.seeohiofirst.org.

The New Ohio Guide is produced by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The churches are topped by Catholic Crosses – as they were built by a sweeping German Catholic immigration, which began back in the 1830s.

Here in Mercer county, the Convent of Maria Stein is the heart of it all, built by Father Francis de Sales Brunner in 1846.

The bishop in Cincinnati at the time was looking for a German-speaking priest to minister to the growing German Catholic population.

“The making of vestments was one of the ways we supported ourselves,” says Sister Barbara Ann Hoying. “And they designed the symbols and transferred them onto the material after they punched holes on the thin paper and transferred onto the material with that blue stuff.”

Father Brunner originally thought that support for the convents could come from begging – but Ohio wasn’t having that. So he bought land, recruited young women from Europe and built self-sufficient enclaves separately for men and women.

Maria Stein, which sits on 60 acres of land near St Johns, became the Mother House of the Sisters of the Precious Blood. The sisters farmed, made shoes and delicate lace. They supplied many churches with paper mache statues that look like stone sculpture.

Sister Barbara Ann shows us metal presses used for making the wafer like hosts used in the catholic mass during communion.

“It’s like a little waffle iron, isn’t it? That’s flour and water. That’s the formula. -Unleavened bread -Unleavened bread – flour and water.”

The convent had 200 sisters at its height between 1910 and 1920.

Now there are four.

Most of the sisters are retired and the order has diminished to a great degree, as have many religious orders.

There is a Hall of Fame within Maria Stein. It’s a bit unsettling, slightly stunning, eerie and inspiring – the shrine of the holy relics.

“In the church family, what belonged to a holy person has value to me as sharing that faith and wanting to be where they already are,” Hoying says.

There are now 1000 relics here, the second largest collection in the country. Relics are mainly small pieces of bone from the saint, but there are also full bones and one full body is represented.

“One that I always like to point out is the relic of the true cross, which is up there behind the glass between the angels,” says Hoying. “That is a splinter-size relic of the cross on which Christ died.

The shrine of the holy relics at Maria Stein is open to the public and sister Barbara Ann Hoying says many come sit pray and leave – and are never counted among the 25,000 organized groups which visit each year.

You can download an audio tour of The Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches at seeohiofirst.org.

The New Ohio Guide is produced by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The latest well is being drilled in an area less than an hour from Columbus.

Public records at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources show the shift in drilling activity in Ohio.

“We’re starting to see leasing activity come into Central Ohio,” said ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel-Evans.

Hetzel-Evans explains that revised geological maps of Ohio indicate oil and gas rich shale stretches further west than originally thought.

“Knox county for sure Morrow, and Marion headed into western Ohio,” Hetzel-Evans said.

On farmland, near the Licking County, Knox County border is a new exploratory well. Devon Energy of Oklahoma City is drilling down nearly 4-thousand feet.

The company hopes it hits natural gas and oil in what’s known as the Utica shale. Access to the well site is restricted. Workers and supply vendors have to check in with a Knox County sheriff deputy at the entrance to the well field.

In Utica, Lanny White says he’s only heard of the new drilling activity and seen it from a distance.

“I heard that, yes, my first reaction is what are they doing in this area?” White asked.

Evidently they think there might be some oil deep underground here.

“Well, uh, Good luck with that, I guess,” White said. “Well, I mean, I don’t like anybody from out of town coming around here. If anybody reaps the benefits I’d hope it would be somebody local.”

At the Duke-Duchess gas station at Routes 62 and 13, Utica construction worker Allen Keegan waits each morning for a ride to his jobsite outside Columbus. He’s noticed a change since shale drilling began.

“I’ve seen more people coming in to get gas for work in the morning. I think it will bring more people in. Hopefully, the people we’ve got here they’ll give them jobs first instead of bringing a bunch of people from out of town in,” Keegan said.

It’s too early to tell whether the gently rolling landscapes around Utica, Mount Vernon, and Johnstown will yield sufficient amounts of oil and gas to attract major development of the shale fields deep below. ODNR’s Hetzel-Evans said Devon and other companies are still exploring the potential resource.

“We actually have only had about a dozen wells come into production in the Utica shale area. That said we’ve had over 200 wells drilled. Many of those wells may not go beyond exploration,” Hetzel-Evans said.

But, Hetzel-Evans anticipates more drilling, especially in areas that skirt the northernmost Columbus suburbs. She explains that locating oil and gas deposits thousands of feet below ground is an inexact science.

“Geology is not constant. You can cross the street and the geology thousands of feet below the surface will have changed dramatically,” Hetzel said.

As drilling activities move closer to urban populations, Hetzel-Evans said companies face stricter standards to protect underground and surface drinking water supplies.

Devon Energy has a clause in its well permit to abandon the Knox County site if the well proves unproductive. Current ODNR records show no exploratory wells in Morrow, Marion, or other counties surrounding Columbus. But, the geologic map now shows potential oil and shale gas deposits as far west as the Franklin-Madison county line.

An Ohio Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman says the water was “running orange-red.”

Fire officials say they used vacuum equipment and other methods to help remove the contaminants and contain them within a quarter-mile downstream.

Officials are investigating the exact cause of the fire at R.D. Holder Oil Co., which supplies fuel, heating oil, and heavy lubricants. They say the fire ignited while a truck was being loaded Thursday morning, and the blaze spread quickly to a warehouse.

No serious injuries were reported. More than 50 agencies responded to the scene.

25-year-old Matthew Puccio, 26-year-old Andrew Forney, and 25-year-old Kandis Forney are scheduled to appear before a judge in Champaign County. Puccio is accused of killing 21-year-old Jessica Rae Sacco in the apartment they shared. Her dismembered body was found Friday.

The Forneys, of Fenton, Mich., face several felony charges involving corpse abuse and tampering with evidence. Authorities think Sacco may have met the Forneys over the Internet.