Maud, Ohio facts for kids
Maud is a small community in West Chester Township, Ohio. It's not an official city or town, but a place where people live. You can find Maud in Butler County, right between the cities of Cincinnati and Dayton. It sits along a historic road called Dixie Highway.
Maud was not always called Maud. It used to be known as Shoemaker. Later, it was renamed after a man named Richard Maud. He was the very first postmaster there, which means he was in charge of the local mail office. For a while, Maud was also an important stop on a train line called the Dayton Short Line. This train line later became part of a bigger railroad system known as the Big Four Railroad. A well-known road in the area, Maud Hughes Road, is also named after the community.
A Curious Invention
Around the late 1860s or early 1870s, something interesting happened in Maud. A local inventor tried to build a special mill. This mill was supposed to work all by itself, forever, without needing any power from outside. People call this idea "perpetual motion."
The Big Day
A large crowd of people gathered to watch the mill start up. Everyone was excited to see if this amazing machine would actually work. But when the time came, the mill did not move. It just sat there.
What Happened Next
The crowd started to laugh when the mill failed to start. The inventor was never heard from again, and the strange mill quickly disappeared. Local newspapers at the time did not write about this event. The only way we know about it is because older people from Maud told the story to a person named William Marion Miller from Miami University.
