1997 HALL OF FAME WINNER Jacob Godfrey Schmidlapp (1849 – 1919) Schmidlapp was born in Piqua, one of six children who lived above the family grocery store. He was forced to leave school to help support his family. He went to make his fortune, first in the tobacco warehouses of Kentucky and then to Cincinnati. It was in the Queen City that he was one of the founders of the Union Savings Bank and became a major investor in real estate. He continued to support his home town with donations that built the first public library, a monument to Admiral Rowan and that helped build the first hospital. He also helped victims of the 1913 Flood and established a number of local scholarships.