Ghost Towns and Graveyards
Scavenger Hunt Clue:
“I’ve Got You Babe”
Head to the village that shares a name with the performers of this song. Find the Baptist Church along Main Street and take a picture of your group in front of a small pile of leaves that your group makes.
Want to Know More?
Est. 1870, Shepherdsville, KNA Bono, OH
Jerusalem Road out towards Bono Curve
There once was a Cherokee Indian Chief named, Francis Bunno, who was born in the early 1800’s. He was known as a Medicine Man. Bunno lived with a tribe of Ottawa Indians just north of Sherpherdsville. Due to a peace treaty, US Government forced the Ottawa tribe to give up their land and move to Walpole Island near Ontario, Canada. Chief Bunno, just a young man at the time, refused to go and escaped by hiding under a pile of leaves. He became an active, well-respected citizen of Shepherdsville, having two sons and two daughters. Chief Bunno worked mostly as a trapper and he was skilled in the use of herbs, roots and other natural ingredients to help treat illnesses and ailments. During the flu epidemic of the 1800’s, Chief Bunno used several home-remedies to help his neighbors. The most drastic was to kill a skunk and nail the carcass to the door of the cabin of the infected person until they were non-contagious. Pee-U! Talk about social distancing! Chief Bunno’s methods seemed to work so well that word spread of his medicine man healing powers. To honor Chief Bunno, Shepherdsville was renamed Bono in 1898 when the Federal Government added a US Post Office. In the renaming, a spelling mistake was made on the official documents and the newly named village has been Bono, not Bunno ever since. Family members followed suit and changed their name to Bono as well.
History Fun Fact
Chief Bunno’s son, Louis Bono and his granddaughter Lillian (Bono) Dantzer are both buried in the St. Ignatius Cemetery off Stadium Road in Oregon Ohio. It was very important to the family that they be remembered as proud Cherokee Indians and it is inscribed on Lillian’s tombstone.
