Miami Valley Golf Club

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History of the Club Our Club has a long and rich heritage which we can point to with pride. But our founders and current members probably have no idea how long and rich. As was said by John H. Patterson, the founder of N.C.R. and a patriarch of Dayton, who was here on our first opening day on June 3, 1919: "Posterity will give a fuller realization to this gift than will be appreciated at this time ”. How right he was. Interestingly, the history of the ground that Miami Valley Golf Club sits on begins well before seventy-five years ago. The land has connections to the Treaty of Greenville, which was signed in 1795. You may remember from your school history class that the purpose of that treaty was to stop the fighting between the American settlers and the various Indian tribes that lived in the area at that time. The treaty served to open up Ohio and the Western frontier for settlement. The Treaty of Greenville was originally signed at Fort Greenville, located about fifty miles north of the Club. This treaty was signed by General Anthony Wayne and various Indian chiefs, including Little Turtle of the Miami tribe and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee tribe. However, some tribes dissented from this treaty and refused to sign it. Several years later William Henry Harrison was appointed Governor of the Northwest Territory, and in approximately 1802 he negotiated and signed an additional peace treaty with the dissenting tribes. This took place at a big tree on the Club property, which stood between what is now our #9 and #10 fairways. Unfortunately, the tree is not there now, but it lasted at least until the early 1930 ’s when we had the Western open here at our Club. Later the land on which our Club now sits was used for farming, a gypsy camp, and a church through the mid and late 1800's. It was owned during this time by the Mumma family, and then the Sellars family. Sometime after the turn of the century, it was purchased by Mr. & Mrs. Walter and Georgeanna Kidder, who were the true founders of our Club. The Kidders lived in Dayton view in a home at Grand Avenue and Arnold Place. They originally wanted the property to build a community center and park to be a gathering spot for local residents. They then got the idea to put a golf course in to provide additional recreational opportunities for the residents, and bought additional adjacent land to bring the total size and acreage of the property to 157 acres. In addition to their strong sense of community benevolence, the Kidders were very wealthy. Mrs. Kidder was the daughter of William Hayner, who owned a distillery in Troy. Mr. Kidder first worked for Mr. Hayner and later became his business partner. Initially they sold a patent medicine called "Doctor Harter's Iron Tonic". But they really began to make money when they started a mail order whiskey business. In this business, they sold liquor by mail to people residing in areas of the country that had been voted "dry". Unfortunately, this business was killed when the 18th Amendment and Prohibition was passed in 1919. However, both of these gentlemen went on to successful other businesses.

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