By 1808Delaware
There is a rather famous gas station which stands on the north side of East William Street, just east of Sandusky Street.
Delaware residents and visitors alike know it as the site where a future President of the United States was born.
The BP station occupies a site where a two story brick house once stood, a relatively modest structure which was constructed about 1811 and which was demolished in 1926. This house was the one which Sardis Birchard, the uncle of President Rutherford B. Hayes, said was the location for the birth.
Young Hayes was the son of Rutherford and Sophia Birchard Hayes and entered this world on October 4, 1822. His father, a farmer who had founded a whiskey distillery, had passed away ten weeks before that date.
The location was marked with a plaque given by the Daughters of the American Revolution and erected the same year as the demolition. It was replaced last year by a new marker erected by the Hayes Heritage Fund, which also erected the nearby statue of the President.
The wording on the marker is as follows:
“The brick home fell into disrepair and was purchased in 1921 by Standard Oil. Learning it was a presidential birthplace, Standard Oil offered to put up the first $500 and sell the home back to the community for $8,000. Many organizations worked to obtain the funding to purchase the home but were able to raise only $4,760.”
“The home was demolished and a Standard Oil gas station was built on the location. In 1926, a memorial marker was placed in front of the gas station by the Delaware City Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to identify where Hayes’ birthplace structure once stood. In 2019, a statue of Hayes commissioned by the Rutherford B. Hayes Heritage Fund was placed at the corner of William and Sandusky Street.”
Some years ago, an article in the Ohio History Journal raised some questions about the accuracy of the East William Street site as Hayes’ birthplace. In “The Birthplace of President Hayes: A Study in Oral Tradition” by OWU Professor C.E. VanSickle and James T. May, the pair suggested that the birthplace might well have been on a different site – a lot on the northeast corner of William and Franklin Streets, now the home of William Street United Methodist Church.
In their work, they looked at real estate records of the time which show that Rutherford Hayes, the President’s father, never owned the East William location but did own the alternative lot referred to above. They also noted that the President did not himself know the location at the age of 50 but had to ask family and community members, who could have been influenced by inaccurate oral traditions.
It is important to note that no one denies that Hayes was born on William Street in downtown Delaware, and that the city is fiercely proud of its native son.
