whistle stop ~ Fried Green Tomatoes…
Wellsville was incorporated as a village in 1848.[9]
In 1852 the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad (later acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad) built a track from Hanover, Ohio to Wellsville and in 1856 it built a track from Wellsville to Rochester, Pennsylvania.
On February 14, 1861 Abraham Lincoln, on his way to his first inauguration, spoke to a large gathering in front of the Whitakre House, a hotel, in Wellsville.
On July 26, 1863 the Confederate Stares Army General officer John Hunt Morgan and several hundred of his soldiers surrendered to pursuing Union forces and were held in Wellsville before being shipped to the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio. Gen. Morgan was put up at the Whitaker House, a hotel in Wellsville. The men were treated more like criminals than prisoners of war at the Ohio Penitentiary. Morgan's raid was the northernmost advance of Confederate troops during the Civil War.
At this time Ohio State Route 45 (on the eastern border of Wellsville) was known as the Warren-Ashtabula Turnpike which ran from Wellsville, Ohio, to Ashtabula, Ohio. It was an important part of the Underground Railroad.
During the 1896 presidential campaign Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan addressed a crowd in Wellsville, Ohio from the back of a train. Bryan was the first candidate to successfully embrace "whistle stop" campaigning, harnessing the power of a young rail network to reach masses of voters.
