Cover: Students from Dayton’s Steele High School aboard the picnic and excursion boat Shamrock on the Miami and Erie Canal in downtown Dayton in 1898. Even then, the heyday of canals in Ohio was a distant memory. Dayton’s imposing Public Library building, opened in 1888, is at top right. See page 24.
Courtesy Dayton Metro Library
Vol. 64, No. 1
CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER
Jerry Dannemiller
EDITORS
Bill Eichenberger
Tom Wolf
CONTRIBUTORS
Randy Edwards
Gladys Turner Finney
Samantha Harden
John Mele
Greg Sanders
Betty Weibel
DESIGN
Lydia Stutzman | Lydiary Design
ADVISORY BOARD
Donna DeBlasio
Youngstown State University
Nishani Frazier
Miami University
Robert Genheimer
Cincinnati Museum Center
Stephen George Ohio History Connection
Alex Hastie Ohio v. the World
George Ironstrack
Miami University
Chester Pach Ohio University
Roger Pickenpaugh
Historian and Author
Daniel Rivers
The Ohio State University
Truda Shinker
Ohio History Connection
Echoes Magazine (ISSN 0012-933X ) is published
bimonthly and distributed by the Ohio History Connection as a benefit of Ohio History Connection membership.
Editorial Offices: Ohio History Connection, Ohio History Center, 800 E. 17th Ave., Columbus, OH 43211-2474
Phone 844.836.0012
Email echoes@ohiohistory. org
Postmaster: Please send address changes to: Echoes Magazine, Ohio History Connection, Ohio History Center, 800 E. 17th Ave., Columbus, OH 43211-2474
Canal Days—Lake Erie to the Ohio at Four Miles Per Hour
Bright Light—Scholar and Educator Joseph Carter Corbin
Canadian Rebellion Along the Border— The Patriot War and the Battle of Pelee Island
Our New Collections Care Center— A Look Inside
IN EACH ISSUE
Contents From Our Editors What’s Your Story? In the News
From Our Director
Historic Sites & Museums
At the Ohio History Center & Ohio Village
Online Events
Featured Events & Exhibits I Wish I’d Been There Young Eyes on the Past
Moving? Contact us at membership@ohiohistory.org or 800.686.1545 to share your new address. Our Ohio History Connection Strategic Partner: THANKS TO Our Ohio History Day Sponsor:
Ohio History Connection is a
us on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram and TikTok at @OhioHistory
Canal Days
LAKE ERIE TO
THE
OHIO AT FOUR MILES PER HOUR
Two hundred years ago, the Ohio General Assembly passed “An Act to provide for the Internal Improvement of the State of Ohio by Navigable Canals.” The state Canal Commission was authorized to borrow $400,000 in 1825, and not more than $600,000 a year thereafter to build waterways to link Lake Erie to the Ohio River and, in turn, the mighty Mississippi. By 1832, 308 miles of Ohio canals did just that.
Bright Light
SCHOLAR AND EDUCATOR
JOSEPH CARTER CORBIN
Born in Chillicothe to once-enslaved parents, 17-year-old Joseph Carter Corbin enrolled at Ohio University in 1850, beginning his remarkable, and in many ways heroic, journey to becoming one of the most educated and scholarly men of his day. His legacy lives on in the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, the state’s first African American institution of higher education.
Canadian Rebellion Along the Border
THE PATRIOT WAR AND THE BATTLE OF PELEE ISLAND
In Americans’ collective memory, Oliver Hazard Perry’s decisive naval battle against a British fleet during the War of 1812 marked an end to conflict between the U.S. and Canada, leading to more than two centuries of peaceful coexistence. Yet history reveals another story: a series of skirmishes between 1837 and 1840 that, while never supported by the U.S. government, became known as the Patriot War.
Our New Collections Care Center
A LOOK INSIDE
From mammoth teeth and giant beaver skulls to a chair Gen. Ulysses S. Grant appears to have used at his City Point, Virginia, headquarters during the Civil War siege of Petersburg, many of Ohio’s most historically important objects now have a new home. The new Collections Care Center in Columbus is especially designed to house many of the artifacts of Buckeye State history in the care of the Ohio History Connection.
FROM OUR EDITORS
When we were growing up, people would say to my father, “Eichenberger. Now that’s a good German name,” to which he would invariably reply, “Yes, yes it is.”
A day trip to the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh laid that bit of family myth to rest. In the archives there, we unearthed my greatgreat-grandfather’s signature from when he arrived from Europe to the Port of Philadelphia.
But great-great grandpa did not, in fact, come from Germany. Under the heading “Place of Origin” was the name of a small village in northern Switzerland. When apprised of that fact, my father said, “Um, yeah, great. We’re German.”
Flash forward to 2023 and our Christmas present, a DNA kit from Ancestry.com. (See pages 4–5.) Our mother’s maiden name was O’Connell, her grandmother’s maiden name Seeds. But we figured our ancestry would be split down the middle between Great Britain and Germany.
Rather, our swab indicated that the Eichenbergers were 38 percent Irish, 28 percent Scottish and only 19 percent Germanic European. The information has turned what we thought we knew about our family’s history on its head.
Wolf really is German. Thanks most likely to grandson Harry, who had the foresight to write it all down before Valentin Wolf died at age 97 in 1917, we know that he was born in 1819 in the Tannenfels section of Rheinpfalz, Bavaria; that he, his wife Maria Kramer and their seven children left on or about May 20, 1852, sailing from Le Havre aboard the Rome; that one child died and is buried at sea; that they reached New York July 12 and took a train to Shelby, Ohio, arriving July 18; then paid a man six dollars to take them to Windsor, between Mansfield and Ashland, where they first stayed with Christina and John Moser, Maria’s sister and brother-in-law. Family historians live for such detail, and the specificity has always seemed so Germanic.
Did you know that a quarter of a century after the War of 1812, there was a small battle on Pelee Island in Lake Erie? (See page 34.) And that the battle was part of an ill-fated insurrection of some Canadians against the British?
Did you know that Chillicothe native Joseph Carter Corbin, the third African American to attend Ohio University, went on to become a leading educator and the founder of what became the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1873? (See page 30.)
Did you know that the Ohio and Erie Canal, which ran from Cleveland in the north to Portsmouth in the south, was 308 miles long and ultimately featured 152 locks? Or that the Miami and Erie Canal Deep Cut in Allen County and the Ohio and Erie Canal Historic District in Cuyahoga County are National Historic Landmarks? (See page 24.)
A place for everything and everything in its place. That could be the motto of the Ohio History Connection’s new Collections Care Center. (See page 40.)
What ’s
In every issue of Echoes Magazine, we feature the stories of Ohio History Connection members and other Ohioans to stoke memories and shed light on our shared past.
For this issue, we asked,
“
What’s something you’ve learned about your family’s history? ”
Here are some of your responses:
ORAL HISTORIES
In 1977, the television miniseries Roots, based on the novel by Alex Haley, sparked an interest in discovering and learning about my ancestors. My journey of interviewing my paternal family members and learning about their oral history stories was exciting. As more questions were asked, I received resistance from one or two family members. One comment was to “leave the skeletons in the closet.” This was not the outcome I expected, so I stopped my research. Fast-forward, my oldest nephew developed an interest in genealogy. I shared my collection of oral histories with him. He researched written documents to continue the search for information about our paternal family. He discovered that my great-grandfather—his great-greatgrandfather—was a slave. Our family is blessed despite our starting point. This hobby developed into a profession for my nephew, who holds a master’s degree in public history.
On break in the casino cafeteria, a woman dealer approached me and said, “I understand we’re related.” The next 15 minutes would change my life forever. She related that John James Armstrong,
Your Story?
my ancestral grandfather, joined the 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Line in December 1775 and would serve for the duration as a regimental quartermaster. I found that his name appears on the muster roll at Valley Forge, again at Yorktown and in the membership of the Society of the Cincinnati, the secretive fraternity of Continental officers founded by Henry Knox. Undoubtedly, he knew Nathanael Greene, Maj. Gen. Friedrich von Steuben and George Washington, as well. With land grant in hand in 1784, he followed his commanding officer, Arthur St. Clair, to the Old Northwest Territory, establishing our family in northern Kentucky. In November 1791, a John Armstrong would become the commanding officer of Fort Hamilton when St. Clair’s ill-fated army went north to confront the Miami-Shawnee coalition. —Gene Enders, Harrison
10-MONTH-OLD IN TOW
In March 1840, my two-times greatgrandparents, Gustav Wendt and Caroline Seekman, emigrated to the United States with their 10-month-old daughter, Eliza. Gustav had been an innkeeper in Lippe-Detmold, Germany, and they seemed to have money for a more comfortable trip than many had. They arrived at Castle Garden in New York City in April 1840. From there, they took a steamship up the Hudson River to Albany and a canal boat on the Erie Canal to Buffalo. Then they boarded a lake steamer to Erie and took a stagecoach to New Haven in Huron County, Ohio. The water travel would have been faster and more comfortable than overland, but I still have trouble imagining all this with a 10-monthold. Food would not have been a problem, but how did they provide clean clothes and diapers?! They bought a farm that happened to be across the road from my great-grandfather William Seitter’s home. According to family legend, Gustav was neither a happy nor particularly successful farmer and, to make matters more difficult, had a family
FAMILY HISTORY
of seven daughters and one son. Eliza married William Seitter, the boy across the road. They moved to New Washington, established a successful brickyard and had eight children, including my grandfather. I live by the coach road from Erie and often imagine my family’s trip on it. Also in my family, my great-grandparents, August and Dorothea Elsasser, arrived at Ellis Island from Germany on July 4, 1923. They had to spend the night of the Fourth in a dormitory before traveling the next day to Bucyrus, where they would spend the rest of their lives. The Elsassers had with them that night two sons and several other relatives who had already immigrated to that area. On the night of the Fourth, there was a large and noisy fireworks display in the harbor. I don’t think fireworks were anything they would have been familiar with in their village, but war was. We were always told that when the fireworks started, Dorothea hid under the bed in terror, as she was sure they were being attacked. It was not the best start for this couple, already in their 60s, who fled the extreme inflation of the Weimar Republic. They took a train to Bucyrus the next day and adjusted well to living in the home that my grandfather had built them. During World War II, August, then in his 80s, went back to work at the Riddell Corporation because, as he told the local newspaper, he wanted to help his country beat its enemies.
—Elizabeth Brahler, Perry
FROM NEW ENGLAND TO OHIO
As part of the Puritan Great Migration, Stephen Hart left England in June 1632 with his wife and two small children and landed in the Boston area in September 1632. My branch of the family tree grew when Stephen Hart II was born in what’s now Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1634, Stephen associated with a group known as “the adventurers club” that would go out to explore the countryside. Around 1635, Stephen is credited with discovering
the natural ford on the Connecticut River that served as a safe landing spot for future hunters, trappers and settlers. Fast-forward to the Hart family’s sixth generation in America. Bliss Hart was born in Southington, Connecticut, in 1761. Bliss joined the Continental Army before his 16th birthday and was involved in many battles in the fight for American independence before being discharged in 1780. Bliss served in the Connecticut General Assembly six times and was a member of the convention to write the Connecticut Constitution. Bliss and his wife, Sylvia, had 11 children. In 1823, Bliss and Sylvia accompanied their oldest son, Orenus, and his wife, Thankful, and their four children on a move to Brookfield, Ohio. The journey was said to have been a hard six weeks in wagons pulled by teams of oxen. In 1833, Orenus had a fifth child, Henry Clay Hart, the first Ohioborn Hart on my branch of the family tree. Orenus was instrumental in forming and building the first church in Brookfield. He owned and farmed several hundred acres.
—Richard Hart, Columbiana
WHAT’S YOUR STORY?
We want to know your stories, so in every issue of Echoes Magazine we ask you a question, then run selected answers in the following issue. Here’s the question for March & April:
Joseph Carter Corbin (see page 30) had a remarkable career in education, yet few in Ohio know his name. Tell us about a historical figure from your community who deserves more attention.
Email your story responses (50 to 150 words) by Jan. 15 to echoes@ohiohistory.org or, if you follow us on Facebook, send us a Facebook message.
In the News
SITES
Lundy House Exterior Restoration Completed
The Ohio History Connection’s Benjamin Lundy House has reached an exciting milestone. Contractors who’ve been working on and off over several years to restore the exterior to its 1850s appearance have finished their work.
NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK
The Lundy House was the home of Benjamin Lundy (1789–1839), publisher of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, the nation’s first newspaper dedicated to the abolitionist cause. It is in the east central Ohio village of Mount Pleasant. Founded by Quaker abolitionists, much of the village is a National Historic Landmark historic district, a designation obtained in 2005 through the Ohio History Connection’s State Historic Preservation Office. The Lundy House has been a National Historic Landmark since 1974, the
highest designation awarded to historic properties by the federal government, reserved for places of national significance.
When the Ohio History Connection acquired the Benjamin Lundy House in 2015, it was in an advanced state of deterioration, and some of the brick walls were in danger of collapsing. Completed in phases, the work has included dismantling and rebuilding the brick walls, heavily reinforcing the structure on three levels, installing new wood-shingle roofing, restoring the windows—many of which were original—and adding new exterior doors. Also restored was the exterior of a frame addition to the east side of the Lundy House, built around 1854 to house a Free Labor Store, a retail establishment selling only goods made without slave labor.
NEAR QUAKER YEARLY MEETING HOUSE
Until the interior work has been completed in future phases, the Lundy House is not open to
visitors. However, you can see the exterior when you visit another of the Ohio History Connection’s museums and attractions, the 1815 Quaker Yearly Meeting House in Mount Pleasant, where the 1837 Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention was held. Just a short walk from the Quaker Yearly Meeting House, the Lundy House is at Union and Market streets.
The Quaker Yearly Meeting House is managed for the Ohio History Connection by the Mount Pleasant Historical Society. Tours of the Quaker Yearly Meeting House are available by appointment from April to October. Learn more at ohiohistory.org/quaker
Before: Lundy House in 2015.
After: Finished exterior of the Lundy House.
During: Rebuilding the facade.
FROM OUR DIRECTOR
Happy New Year! As I write this, we’re just weeks away from opening Newark’s Octagon Earthworks as an Ohio History Connection site.
Starting Jan. 1, the Ohio History Connection will take over management of the full grounds, which will be open to visitors daily during daylight hours. To mark this transition, there will be a community open house and public tour of Octagon Earthworks on New Year’s Day at 11 a.m., followed by coffee at 1 p.m. and a second public tour at 2 p.m. You’re invited to attend. (See page 18.)
I’ve been asked what we’ll be doing to the site, which had been in use as a golf course since 1910. The transition will be a long process, and when you visit in 2025, you won’t see a dramatic difference. Initially, we’ll be developing an interpretive plan, working to convert the former clubhouse into a visitor center and offices, providing security and lighting, and working closely with neighborhood and community groups. In years to come, we look forward to developing a richer experience of these ancient earthworks.
Meanwhile, on Oct. 21, during the last of our three-times-a-year Octagon Earthworks Open Houses, a group gathered to watch the moon rise at the northernmost point in its 18.6year cycle.
If you read that last sentence and are thinking “What??,” let me explain. Octagon Earthworks is in the form of an octagon and a circle, linked by an “avenue.” The octagon is BIG— big enough to hold four Roman Colosseums, and its earthen walls are 10 feet high. Built by American Indians one basket of earth at a time about 2,000 years ago, it’s one of eight sites that constitute the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, Ohio’s only UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization) World Heritage site.
The moon has an 18.6-year cycle. For 9.3 years, it rises and sets in an ever-larger arc across the sky until reaching its northernmost point. The octagon has an alignment with that northernmost rise of the moon. When you stand in the circle and look down the “avenue” toward the octagon, the moon rises over an opening in the earthen walls of the octagon that lines up with the center of the circle.
On that crisp October night, we witnessed this phenomenon together with partners from Federally Recognized Tribes who were on hand for our annual Tribal Nations Conference. I’m heartened by the number of people who came to quietly and respectfully watch the
moon rise. I’m heartened that the future of this ancient place lies in honoring its past. And I’m heartened that we can soon begin welcoming the world to experience the full Octagon Earthworks site.
To learn more about the Octagon Earthworks and the seven other ancient sites that make up Ohio’s Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, I invite you to visit hopewellearthworks.org
Megan Wood | Executive Director & CEO, Ohio History Connection
Aerial view of the Octagon Earthworks in Newark.
ON EXHIBIT
A New View of St. Clair’s 1791 Defeat
On the evening of Nov. 3, 1791, as American general Arthur St. Clair and his army camped on the Wabash River, 60 miles southeast of Kiihkayonki (present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana), 1,400 Native troops from nine tribes assembled on a high ridge just northwest of St. Clair’s encampment. The tribes positioned themselves into a huge crescent formation, out of sight of St. Clair’s army. At dawn the next morning, the Miami, Shawnee and Delaware attacked St. Clair’s army. Simultaneously, the Wyandotte, Seneca and Cherokee on the left and Ottawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi on the right of the crescent surrounded St. Clair’s camp in less than 15 minutes.
WELL-PLANNED NATIVE VICTORY
Despite the equal number of combatants, U.S. casualties were enormous. More than 650 U.S. soldiers were killed, and several hundred camp followers were killed or taken prisoner. Fewer than 50 Native troops were killed. This well-planned Native victory, often called the greatest defeat of the U.S. Army, took place near presentday Fort Recovery, Ohio.
A new traveling exhibit opening soon at the Ohio History Center, St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited—A New View of the Conflict, introduces the complex history of the battle and its aftermath with respect to the nine Tribal Nations that orchestrated this great defeat.
The exhibit process began in 2018, funded by two grants from NEH, the National Endowment for the Humanities—one for planning and one for implementation—and a National Trust for Historic Preservation Telling the Full Story Grant. It was created by a team of scholars and designers from Ball State University together with 11 representatives of Tribal Nations descended from the coalition that defeated St. Clair in 1791. These tribal humanities scholars and the rest of the project team—through meetings, interviews and correspondence—
crafted and edited the text, honing the meaning and tone desired. Visuals and how the exhibit is organized were chosen with tribal humanities scholars deciding how best to convey their story of St. Clair’s defeat and its impact on their Nations.
The story is shared through four themes: Background, about the lead-up to the battle; Battle, about the elegant crescent strategy the coalition of Native Tribes employed to defeat St. Clair’s troops; Aftermath, examining the removal and demonization of Native peoples in the decades that followed; and Persistence, about cultural traditions that the descendant tribes practice today.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited opens with a preview for Ohio History Connection members from 4 to 7 p.m. on Thurs., Jan. 23 (watch email for details), and opens to the public on Fri., Jan. 24. It continues through Sun., Aug. 17, and is included with museum admission. Ohio History Connection members enjoy free admission. Questions? Call 800.686.6124 or visit ohiohistory. org/StClairDefeat, where you'll also find links to an online exhibit guide and the traveling exhibit website.
Fort Recovery is the site of two remarkable Northwest Indian War battles: St. Clair’s Defeat, and the 1794 victory of Gen. Anthony Wayne’s army over a larger alliance of American Indian tribes. These events were pivotal in the relationships between the Native people defending their homelands and American soldiers and settlers, setting the stage for the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, after which American Indians relinquished most of their land holdings in Ohio. Today the Fort Recovery battlefield, museum and monument are preserved by the Ohio History Connection and our managing partner, the Fort Recovery Historical Society. Closed for the season, they reopen to visitors in May. Ohio History Connection members enjoy free admission. Find hours and plan your visit at ohiohistory.org/fortrecovery or fortrecoverymuseum.com.
St. Clair's Defeat Revisited on exhibit at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College, Miami, Oklahoma.
ART OF SOUL!
Art Show Legacy Award
Honors Willis “Bing” Davis
The National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center has named Willis “Bing” Davis as the recipient of its first Art of Soul! Juried Art Show Legacy Award. The award commemorates the annual art show’s 10th anniversary and honors a master artist who’s been a driving force in the African American arts community.
Davis has been deeply involved with the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center as an artist and influencer since its opening in 1988.
A master artist, educator, curator and gallery owner, his artistic vision and teaching have inspired artists and young people for more than 40 years.
MENTOR AND TEACHER
“He’s served as a mentor and teacher to countless artists and youths who’ve stood on his shoulders to pursue their own careers as artists, mentors and teachers,” says Dr. Charles Wash, director of the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center.
Born in South Carolina, Davis grew up in Dayton. He graduated from
DePauw University in 1959, attended Dayton Art Institute and received his master’s degree in education from Miami University in 1967. He has taught in Dayton Public Schools, at DePauw and Miami universities and at Central State University, where he chaired the art department and was director of the Paul Robeson Cultural and Performing Arts Center. After retiring, he opened the Davis Art Studio and EbonNia Gallery and has coordinated community art and cultural activities through SHANGO Center for the Study of African American Art and Culture.
On exhibit at the National AfroAmerican Museum & Cultural Center in Wilberforce through March 1, Art of Soul! features work in a variety of mediums submitted in response to three themes: Social Justice, Black Joy and Black Joy within Social Justice. It’s included with museum admission. Ohio History Connection members enjoy free admission. Questions? Visit ohiohistory.org/ naamcc or call 800.752.2603
Take Your Passport!
You love the Ohio History Passport. Now we’ve made it even more fun, with rewards for completing each region!
Here’s how it works:
1. Get a stamp or rubbing from all of the Ohio History Connection sites in a region: Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast or Southwest.
2. Take your Passport to one of our Passport Checkpoint Sites for verification.
3. Our Membership Office will send you a regional pin. Visit every site in our Passport to collect all five pins!
Get full details at ohiohistory.org/ passport. Then hit the road to earn those pins!
Don’t yet have an Ohio History Passport? Members can get one for free. Contact the Ohio History Connection’s Membership Office at membership@ohiohistory.org or 800.686.1545 to request yours today!
Willis “Bing” Davis (right) with other past Art of Soul! artists Bamazi Talle (left) and Queen Brooks.
OHIO ORIGINALS: HIGHLIGHTING POINTS OF PRIDE & UNITY
Throughout 2026, Ohio will join the nation in celebrating America’s 250th birthday.
As part of this celebration, the Ohio History Connection is pleased to announce an America 250 Ohio Historical Markers Special Call.
The Ohio Historical Markers program is seeking marker applications that celebrate the 250th anniversar y of the United States.
Applications should recognize Ohioans (from first inhabitants to late-20th century individuals) who have shaped our shared identity as a state and a nation. Is there an individual who influenced or transformed your community and, in doing so, contributed to our national story? The markers program wants to help you honor and celebrate them during the semiquincentennial year
QUESTI O NS ?
Please contact Ohio Historical Markers Program by phoning 614.297.2360 or emailing historicalmarkers@ohiohistory.org.
For more information, visit
H
O W D O ES TH E P R O G R AM W O R K ?
• Members of a local community decide on an individual that they would like to commemorate with an America 250 Ohio Historical Marker
• The local sponsor researches and drafts a statement of significance and suggested text for the marker, secures a location for marker placement, raises funds for manufacture, secures a long-term maintenance commitment, and submits the completed application to the Ohio History Connection.
• the local sponsor to fact-check the suggested marker text and edits it to get it ready for production.
• As space is limited in any given application cycle, priority is given to counties with fewer than 12 markers. Our reviewers try hard to grant a wide distribution of markers throughout Ohio.
• Applications are due on May 1. Electronic submission must be received before noon.
• Markers produced in 2026 will feature Ohio’s colorful America 250 logo. r ema rk ableohio . o r g
HISTORIC PRESERVATION
Recent Ohio Additions to the National Register of Historic Places
ALLIANCE (MARLBORO) • STARK COUNTY
➊ DR. KERSEY
G. THOMAS
HOUSE AND OFFICE
12315 Marlboro Ave., N.E.
This 1840 house is linked to movements for abolition, peace, women’s rights and women’s access to medical education in the 1840s and 1850s, and to a progressive local branch of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. Dr. Thomas (1818–1869), a Quaker until disowned for marrying outside the church, was active in the Western Anti-Slavery Society and Western Peace Society and was Marlboro’s agent for the antislavery society’s newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, published in nearby Salem. From 1850 to 1854, he and his second wife, Dr. Eliza L. Smith Thomas (1830–1864), also a physician, taught courses in medicine here that, while offered to men, too, were pointedly advertised to women at a time when medical training for women was rare. Marlboro Township Historical Society is restoring the home and office.
CLEVELAND • CUYAHOGA COUNTY
➋
ERIE STREET CEMETERY
HISTORIC DISTRICT
2301 E. Ninth St.
Associated with Cleveland’s settlement and ethnic heritage, Erie Street Cemetery was established in 1826. It’s the final resting place of two Native American chiefs—Joc-OSot or “Walking Bear” and Oghema Niagara or “Thunderwater”—as well as many settlers and pioneers. Among them are surveyors of the Western Reserve, about 160 veterans of conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the Spanish-American War, and most of Cleveland’s first mayors, merchants and politicians. Municipally owned and nondenominational, the cemetery features some notable 19th-century funerary architecture, including its Victorian Gothic entrance gate. Masons for the federal Works Projects Administration added stone perimeter walls in 1939.
WADSWORTH
• MEDINA COUNTY ➌ WADSWORTH DOWNTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT
Roughly bounded by 101–161 and 102–146 High, 117–129 Broad, 111–273, 102–156 and 246–258 Main, 188 S. Lyman, 105 Garfield, 107–155 and 112–116 College Sts. and 110–122 Watrusa Ave.
A small industrial city with a 1940 population of 6,495, Wadsworth benefited from products mined or made locally and inventions associated with them, plus rail lines to regional urban centers like Akron and Cleveland. The Atlantic and Great Western, Wadsworth’s first railroad, arrived in 1863. That spurred growth of coal mining, downtown businesses and the Ohio Injector Co., Ohio Match Co. (makers of Ohio Blue Tip Matches) and Ohio Salt Co. Northern Ohio
Traction & Light Co. interurbans served Wadsworth from 1907 to 1933, and the automobile furthered its growth. The National Register historic district includes Wadsworth’s downtown commercial core, with 48 buildings and structures reflecting local history from 1863 to 1967.
YOUNGSTOWN • MAHONING COUNTY ➍ YOUNGSTOWN FOUNDRY AND MACHINE EAST BOARDMAN WORKS 365 E. Boardman St.
In this building associated with the city’s early-20th-century industrial heyday, Youngstown Foundry and Machine Co. made machinery for companies throughout the region and the world. Commissioned by Youngstown Steel Casting Corp. in 1902, it was built by Garry Iron and Steel Co. of Cleveland. In 1904, Youngstown Foundry and Machine Co. merged with Youngstown Steel Casting Corp. and became proprietor of the East Boardman Works. A 1951 brick, steel and glass addition is constructed of building products made locally by Truscon Steel Co., a subsidiary of Republic Steel. Youngstown Foundry and Machine Co. operated the East Boardman Works for 63 years before merging with Wean Engineering Co. of Warren in 1967.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION
Ohio History Connection Recognizes Preservation Achievements
Eleven outstanding historic preservation achievements in communities across Ohio were honored with the Ohio History Connection’s 2024 State Historic Preservation Office Awards on Nov. 2.
State Historic Preservation Officer
Diana Welling, who also serves as director of the State Historic Preservation Office, presented the awards during a luncheon at the Ohio History Center in Columbus.
“Historic places contribute to our sense of community and give us a tangible connection to our heritage,” Welling says. “Our awards program is designed to honor the individuals and groups who go above and beyond to safeguard the irreplaceable architectural and historic treasures of their communities.”
PRESENTED SINCE 1983
The State Historic Preservation Office Awards have been presented since 1983 to recognize notable contributions to historic preservation in Ohio. The awards are presented in two categories: Public Education and Awareness, and Preservation Merit.
The Public Education and Awareness Award is for increasing interest in historic preservation. Eligible activities include, but are not limited to, digital media, newsletters, publications, interpretation, original research, educational programs and special events that have substantially increased public understanding and awareness of historic preservation at the local, regional or state level. Public Education and Awareness Award recipients are:
Cleveland: Ed Thellman and his efforts to preserve the history of the former Henry W. Longfellow Elementary School at 650 E. 140th St.
Cleveland Heights: View from The Overlook, the journal of the Cleveland Heights Historical Society. The Preservation Merit Award is for preserving Ohio’s prehistory, history, architecture or culture. Eligible activities include, but are not limited to, restoring, rehabilitating or otherwise preserving an important building or site; longtime stewardship of a property; promoting protective legislation; funding preservation projects; offering leadership,
support or service; and furthering preservation at the local, regional or state level. Preservation Merit Award recipients are:
Canal Winchester: Weister Wood LLC, Ingle-Barr Inc. and Archall Architects for the restoration of the Canal Winchester Bank building at 8 S. High St.
Cleveland: Vesta Corporation and LDA Architects for the preservation and conversion of the 1924 Henry W. Longfellow Elementary School at 650 E. 140th St. into Longfellow Senior Housing.
Columbus: Edwards Company; Meyers+Associates; Designing Local Ltd.; Urban Five Construction; Blind Eye Restoration; and Coon Restoration for the rehabilitation of the Madison’s and White-Haines buildings at 72, 78 and 80–84 N. High St.
Delaware: Ohio Wesleyan University and Schooley Caldwell for the rehabilitation of Slocum Hall at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Huntsburg: First Congregational Church of Claridon, Marous Brothers Construction, Perspectus, Creative Process Studios and Frost Architectural Preservation for rehabilitation of the 1831 First Congregational Church of Claridon at 13942 Mayfield Rd.
Award recipients at the Ohio History Center in Columbus. Ed Thellman (center), Cleveland
Lockland: Pepper Construction, Emersion Design LLC, CMTA and Sullebarger Associates for the preservation and conversion of the 1912 Stearns & Foster Building at 100 Williams St. into the regional headquarters of Pepper Construction.
Portsmouth: Portsmouth Connex, Hilltop Initiative Neighborhood Association, City of Portsmouth, Scioto County Commission and the Scioto Foundation for the protection of ancient Hopewell mounds and amenity improvements in Portsmouth’s Mound Park.
St. Clairsville: National Trail Chapter No. 348, International Questers, for the preservation and rehabilitation of the 1870 Great Western School at 45101 National Rd. W.
Toledo: 15 South Ontario LLC and Kraemer Design Group for conversion of the 1912 and 1917 Overmyer Co. grocery warehouse into apartments in what is now the Overmyer Building at 15 S. Ontario St.
The Longfellow Senior Community, Cleveland
1912 Stearns & Foster General Offices, now home of Pepper Construction, Lockland
Canal Winchester Bank Building, Canal Winchester
AROUND THE STATE
Fire Guts Troy's Overfield Tavern Museum
An early morning fire on Sat., Dec. 7, gutted the 1808 Overfield Tavern Museum in Troy, Ohio.
The two-story log structure, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is Troy’s oldest building and ranks among the earliest taverns remaining in Ohio.
Initially restored by Troy’s Hobart brothers beginning in 1948, since the 1960s it has housed a museum of local history featuring an extensive collection of artifacts associated with late-18th- and early-19th-century life in Ohio.
Although the hewed log structure remains standing, the fire damaged or destroyed most of its contents.
Troy Mayor Robin Oda and City Director Patrick Titterington have announced that the City of Troy will allocate up to $75,000 in immediate aid toward preserving and rehabilitating the landmark building and acquiring artifacts, or any other eligible expenses not covered by insurance.
To learn more about the history of the Overfield Tavern, visit overfieldtavernmuseum.com For updates, visit facebook.com/ OverfieldTavernMuseum.
Keep an eye out for our new pop-up benefits, short-term discounts at a variety of Ohio businesses when you show your Ohio History Connection membership card. Watch your Membership Monday emails for details throughout the year.
The White-Haines Building (left) and red brick Madison’s buildings rehabbed as The Madison, Columbus
Slocum Hall, Ohio Wesleyan University
Left: Mound Park, Portsmouth Right: First Congregational Church of Claridon, Huntsburg
OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION
Historic Sites & Museums
NORTHWEST OHIO
Armstrong Air & Space Museum
Cedar Bog Nature Preserve
Cooke-Dorn House
Fallen Timbers Battlefield Memorial Park
Fort Amanda Memorial Park
Fort Jefferson Memorial Park
Fort Meigs
Fort Recovery Museum & Monument
Hayes Presidential Library & Museums
Indian Mill
Inscription Rock Petroglyphs
Johnston Farm & Indian Agency
Lockington Locks
NORTHEAST OHIO
Custer Monument
Fort Laurens
McCook House
Museum of Ceramics
Quaker Yearly Meeting House (Open by Appointment) & Free Labor Store/Benjamin Lundy House (Preservation in Progress • Not Open)
Schoenbrunn Village
Shaker Historical Museum
Tallmadge Church
Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor
Zoar Village
CENTRAL OHIO
Flint Ridge Ancient Quarries & Nature Preserve
Hanby House
Logan Elm
Newark Earthworks
Ohio History Center & Ohio Village
Poindexter Village Historic Site
(Preservation in Progress • Not Open)
Shrum Mound
Wahkeena Nature Preserve
Warren G. Harding Presidential Sites
SOUTHWEST OHIO
Adena Mansion & Gardens
Davis Memorial Nature Preserve
Fort Ancient Earthworks & Nature Preserve
Fort Hill Earthworks & Nature Preserve
Harriet Beecher Stowe House
John Rankin House
Miamisburg Mound
National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center
Paul Laurence Dunbar House
Serpent Mound
Story Mound
U.S. Grant Birthplace
U.S. Grant Boyhood Home & Schoolhouse
William Henry Harrison Tomb
SOUTHEAST OHIO
Big Bottom Memorial Park
Buckeye Furnace
Buffington Island Battlefield Memorial Park
Campus Martius Museum
John & Annie Glenn Museum
Leo Petroglyphs & Nature Preserve
National Road & Zane Grey Museum
Ohio River Museum (Closed for Construction)
Our House Tavern
PROGRAMS & EXHIBITS AT THE
Ohio History Center
Museum Closed
WEDS., JAN. 1– FRI., JAN. 17 Ohio History Center, Columbus
The museum will be closed Jan. 1–17 for annual cleaning and maintenance.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day Open House ✪
MON., JAN. 20 • 11 A.M.–4 P.M. Ohio History Center, Columbus
Celebrate the life and legacy of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through visual and performing arts. Learn about the impact of Dr. King’s teachings and how his work changed the course of our country. Free. Advance registration recommended. 800.686.1541 or ohiohistory.org/mlk
Care and Preservation of Family Photographs
SAT., FEB. 8 • 11 A.M.–NOON Ohio History Center, Columbus
Get tips about caring for and preserving family photographs of 1870 to 1970 from Ohio History Connection Audiovisual Archivist Daniel Willis. $25, $20/Ohio History Connection member. Advance registration required. 800.686.1541 or ohiohistory.org/photographs
Ohio History Connection Premium-level members enjoy one free workshop in this genealogy series. To redeem your free workshop, call 800.686.1575 or email membership@ohiohistory.org
The Tea Room—A Journey Through Black Culture and Healing ✪
SAT., FEB. 15 • 11 A.M.–1:30 P.M. Ohio History Center, Columbus
This engaging program delves into the deep-rooted connection between tea and Black culture, exploring its historical significance, cultural practices and medicinal properties. Participants will learn how tea has been a symbol of resilience, community and healing within
the African diaspora, tracing its journey from African herbal traditions to its role in Black households and social gatherings. Through storytelling, demonstrations and tastings, The Tea Room celebrates the enduring legacy of tea as a bridge between heritage and health. Doors open at 11 a.m. Program starts at 11:30 a.m. Advance registration required. $25, $20/Ohio History Connection member. 800.686.1541 or ohiohistory.org/tearoom
Presidents Day at the Ohio History Center
MON., FEB. 17 • 11 A.M.–4 P.M. Ohio History Center, Columbus
We’re celebrating Presidents Day with special presidential history-themed programs and activities in the museum throughout the day, and you’re invited! Included with museum admission. Ohio History Connection members enjoy free admission. Advance registration recommended. 800.686.1541 or ohiohistory.org/presidentsday
Night at the Museum
SAT., MARCH 1 • 7–9 P.M.
MEMBERS ENJOY EARLY ACCESS
STARTING AT 6 P.M.*
Ohio History Center, Columbus
Here’s your chance to experience the Ohio History Center museum after hours and see whether our exhibits really do come to life! This family event promises to entertain children and adults alike. Dozens of figures from history will be roaming the museum. Learn all about their place in Ohio’s past. Grab a free souvenir autograph book and collect signatures of your favorites! Several hands-on activities for kids will be available. Snacks and beverages available for purchase. Advance timed tickets only. $18, $14/ages 4–12, Free/age 3 & under ($14/Ohio History Connection member, $9/Ohio History Connection member ages 4–12). 800.686.1541 or ohiohistory.org/ nightatmuseum
*Members: If you want to arrive during the early-access hour from 6 to 7 p.m., you must reserve timed tickets for either the 6 p.m. or 6:30 p.m. time slots. If you reserve tickets for a later time slot, you won’t be able to enter during the 6 to 7 p.m. early-access hour.
FEATURED EXHIBITS • • •
NEW!
St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited— A New View of the Conflict FRI., JAN. 24–SUN., AUG. 17
(Ohio History Connection Members' Preview 4–7 p.m. Thurs.., Jan. 23. Watch for details.) 4 See page 8.
Hide and Seek—Finding Young People in the Archives ONGOING
In the third-floor Library Lobby Gallery, see items from our archival and history collections that are associated with young Ohioans over time, including original documents, toys and a Cozy Coupe car.
Indigenous Wonders of Our World—The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks ONGOING
Learn about eight 2,000-year-old Hopewell Earthworks in Ohio recently named World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, including mathematical similarities among them and their alignments to the solstices and the 18.6-year lunar cycle.
Making Ohio Home—Early Ohio Immigrant Experiences ONGOING
Explore stories of seven representative immigrants who helped grow Ohio’s population from 45,365 in 1800 to more than 4.1 million in 1900.
1950s—Building the American Dream ONGOING
Peek in the closets and snoop in the drawers of a real, fully furnished Lustron steel house made right here in Ohio. From the contents of the cupboards to the news on TV and the toys in the yard, this hands-on exhibit is a fascinating journey back in time.
World War I Display ONGOING
See equipment, weapons, uniforms and memorabilia.
Museum admission is $16, $14/age 60+, $10/ages 4–12. Ohio History Connection members and ages 3 & under enjoy free admission.
Welcome Lobby Display Cases ONGOING
In the Welcome Lobby cases, see Dressing Ohio—From Workroom to Wardrobe, featuring garments from Ohio History Connection collections, and Columbus Women on the Move— Traveling the World in 1936–1937, with selected items from the Women’s Travel Collection. (See Echoes Magazine, March & April 2024, page 11.)
Ohio History Center Hours
Museum
CLOSED WEDS., JAN. 1–FRI., JAN. 17
REOPENING SAT., JAN. 18
OPEN WEDS.–SUN. 10 A.M.–5 P.M. CLOSED MON.–TUES.
CLOSING AT 4 P.M. MARCH 1 TO REOPEN AT 6 P.M. FOR NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (SEE PAGE 16.)
Ohio Village CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION REOPENS IN 2026
Archives & Library
WEDS. 12:30–3 P.M.
THURS.–FRI. 10 A.M.–3 P.M. CLOSED JAN. 1–10
CLOSED SAT.–TUES. SCHEDULE YOUR PERSONALIZED RESEARCH APPOINTMENT: ohiohistory.libcal.com
DNA-Testing Companies Help with Genealogical Research?
SAT., JAN. 18 • 10–11:30 A.M.
Online — Attend From Anywhere! Each of the five DNA-testing companies offers different advantages for your family history research. Join professional genealogist Kelli Bergheimer to learn about the information you can get from each one and how to maximize it. Advance registration required. $25, $20/Ohio History Connection member. 800.686.1541 or ohiohistory.org/dna Ohio History Connection Premium-level members enjoy one free workshop in this genealogy series. To redeem your free workshop, call 800.686.1575 or email membership@ohiohistory.org.
MEMBER VIP
Ice Age Mammals of Ohio
TUES., JAN. 21 • 3–4 P.M.
Online — Attend From Anywhere! Meet Ohio History Connection Curator of Natural History Dave Dyer and learn about the animals who lived in our state at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, when the last glacier was retreating. See fossils and casts from now-extinct Ice Age species such as the mastodon, mammoth and giant beaver in this interactive program. 800.686.1545 or ohiohistory.org/iceage
Presidential History Book Club
WEDS., JAN. 29 & FEB. 26 • NOON–1 P.M. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, Fremont, and Online—Attend from Anywhere! 4 Read and discuss books about the American presidency at this free book club open to all. JAN. 29: President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier by C.W. Goodyear. FEB. 26: A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico by Amy S. Greenberg. Attend in person or online. You’re welcome to bring your lunch. For online login information, email admin@rbhayes.org. 800.998.7737 or rbhayes.org
MEMBER VIP
Get to Know the Harriet Beecher Stowe House ✪
TUES., FEB. 25 • 3–4 P.M. Online — Attend From Anywhere! Join Christina Hartlieb, site manager for the Ohio History Connection’s Harriet Beecher Stowe House, to get the inside scoop on the recent restoration (see Echoes Magazine, September & October 2024). Learn about the two time periods represented in the restored house—1840s and 1940s—and why it’s such a special part of Cincinnati and Ohio history. 800.686.1545 or ohiohistory.org/knowstowe
Events & Exhibits
Many programs and events at Ohio History Connection museums and attractions require advance registration. To register, call the number or visit the website listed with each program.
Our online calendar offers more up-to-date information about programs and events at Ohio History Connection museums and attractions. Find it at ohiohistory.org/calendar Questions? Call 800.840.6127
Statewide
STATEWIDE
OHIO HISTORY DAY
Regional History Day Contests
SAT., FEB. 22 & MARCH 1, 8, 15, 22 & 29
8 A.M.–4 P.M.
See fourth- through 12th-graders present their history projects, competing for a chance to move on to our April 26 statewide History Day competition at Capital University in Columbus. FEB. 22: Southeast (Region 10), New Concord. MARCH 1: Northeast I (Region 3), Cleveland; East Central (Region 5), Canton; South Central (Region 9), Rio Grande. MARCH 8: Northwest (Region 1), Bowling Green; Central (Region 6), Columbus; West Central (Region 7), Dayton. MARCH 15: Southwest (Region 8), Cincinnati. MARCH 22: North Central (Region 2), Fremont. MARCH 29: Northeast II (Region 4), Youngstown. Get details at 800.686.6124, 614.297.2526 or ohiohistoryday.org
Special thanks to Ohio's 529 Plan, CollegeAdvantage, and the William K. Laidlaw Jr. Memorial Endowment Fund.
Statehood Day
WEDS., MARCH 5 • 9 A.M.–12:30 P.M. Statehouse, Columbus 4 Join advocates for preserving Ohio’s history and heritage for our annual Statehood Day event—a celebration of our state’s birthday and its history, as well as a legislative advocacy day. Free with advance registration by Feb.
19 at ohiohistory.org/statehoodday
Questions? Email statehood@ ohiohistory.org
Application Deadline for America 250 Ohio Historical Markers
THURS., MAY 1
See page 10.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION
Application Deadline for Round 2 Certified Local Government Grants
THURS., AUG. 21
Certified Local Government grants help fund historic preservation projects in 79 Ohio cities and villages eligible to apply because they have certified historic preservation programs. To find out whether your community is one of the 79 and to learn more, visit ohiohistory.org/clg or call 614.298.2000
Central Ohio
CENTRAL OHIO
Community Open House and Earthworks Tours
WEDS., JAN. 1
Octagon Earthworks, 125 N. 33rd St.,Newark 4 11 a.m.: Guided Tour (Outdoors). Immerse yourself in the history and significance of the 2,000-year-old Octagon Earthworks, led by our expert guides. 1 p.m.: Community Coffee & Welcome Remarks (Indoors). Enjoy coffee and conversation with Ohio History Connection CEO Megan Wood, who’ll share updates about the future of Octagon Earthworks. 2 p.m.: Second Guided Tour (Outdoors). 800.686.6124 or ohiohistory.org/ newark
Region 6 | Central Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 8 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Statehouse, Columbus 4 Counties: Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette, Franklin, Knox, Licking, Madison, Perry, Pickaway and Union. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Northeast Ohio
NORTHEAST OHIO
Region 10 | Southeast Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., FEB. 22 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Muskingum University, New Concord Counties: Belmont, Coshocton, Guernsey, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble and Washington. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Region 3 | Northeast I Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 1 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Cleveland History Center, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland Counties: Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Summit. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Region 5 | East Central Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 1 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M.
National First Ladies Library and Museum, Canton 4 Counties: Carroll, Columbiana, Harrison, Holmes, Jefferson, Stark, Tuscarawas and Wayne. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Region 2 | North Central Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 22 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Terra State Community College, Fremont 4 Counties: Ashland, Crawford, Erie, Huron, Marion, Morrow, Ottawa, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca and Wyandot. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Region 4 | Northeast II Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 29 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Youngstown State University, Youngstown 4 Counties: Ashtabula, Geauga, Mahoning, Portage and Trumbull. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Care and Preservation of Family Photographs
Northwest Ohio
Native Plants with David McPheron
SAT., JAN. 11 • 10:30–11:30 A.M.
Cedar Bog Nature Preserve, Urbana
Hear David McPheron, owner of Star Farms Native Plants and a great resource for native gardening, talk about Cedar Bog’s native plants. $5, Free/Ohio History Connection member. 800.860.0147 or cedarbognp.org
TALK AND TOUR
Moon Landing Hoax
THURS., JAN. 16 • 2–4 P.M.
Armstrong Air & Space Museum, Wapakoneta 4 Join our museum educator in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Inspiration Center for a deeper dive into conspiracy theories surrounding the moon landing. We’ll unpack and examine the claims against the moon landing using science and evidence to see how the history holds up. After the presentation, take a guided tour around the museum and check out some of the artifacts on display. All ages welcome. $12, $11/senior, $7.50/ages 6–12, Free/ Ohio History Connection member. 800.860.0142 or armstrongmuseum.org
Presidential History Book Club
WEDS., JAN. 29 & FEB. 26 • NOON–1 P.M.
Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, Fremont 4 See page 17.
Bobcats!
SAT., FEB. 8 • 10–11:30 A.M.
Cedar Bog Nature Preserve, Urbana
Did you know that our Cedar Bog Nature Preserve has bobcats? Hear Shauna Weyrauch, co-author of the new book The Boy and the Bobcat, talk about bobcats and their behavior. After, there will be a Meet the Author event where she will introduce her book. $5, $4/child, Free/Ohio History Connection member. 800.860.0147 or cedarbognp.org
Skunk Cabbage Walk
SUN., FEB. 16 • NOON–2 P.M.
Cedar Bog Nature Preserve, Urbana Take a self-guided tour by boardwalk through the bog to see Ohio’s earliestblooming flower, the skunk cabbage. Naturalists stationed along the way will talk about skunk cabbage and answer questions. $5, $4/child, Free/ Ohio History Connection member. 800.860.0147 or cedarbognp.org
Presidents Day Celebration
MON., FEB. 17 • 9 A.M.–5 P.M.
Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, Fremont 4 Enjoy free Presidents Day admission to the Rutherford B. Hayes Home and Museum and free activities for kids throughout the day! Half-hour Hayes Home tours (first floor only) depart every 15 minutes starting at 9:15 a.m., with the last tour at 4:30 p.m. Check in at the museum front desk to get your tour time and ticket. In the museum, vote for your favorite Ohio president and enjoy scavenger hunts, presidential trivia, crafts, a photo station, an artifact display and story time. 800.998.7737 or rbhayes.org
OHIO HISTORY CENTER, FEB. 8
NORTHWEST OHIO
Night at the Museum
Region 1 | Northwest Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 8 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M.
Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green 4 Counties: Allen, Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Lucas, Paulding, Putnam, Van Wert, Williams and Wood. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Region 2 | North Central Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 22 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M.
Terra State Community College, Fremont 4 Counties: Ashland, Crawford, Erie, Huron, Marion, Morrow, Ottawa, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca and Wyandot. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Member VIP—Ice Age Mammals of Ohio
FEATURED EXHIBITS • • •
A PRESIDENTIAL CHRISTMAS “Hayes Train Special” Model Train Display THROUGH SUN., JAN. 5
9 A.M.–5 P.M.
Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, Fremont 4 See model trains running through a Victorian holiday landscape, with interactive buttons that let visitors control some aspects of the trains’ movements through the winding, multitiered layout. Free. 800.998.7737 or rbhayes.org
Factions & Fraternalism—
A History of America’s Presidential Parties THROUGH 2025
Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, Fremont 4 See campaign materials, political memorabilia and artifacts related to voting throughout American history, including campaign pins, handkerchiefs, ribbons and medallions. Also on display is a ballot box that Rutherford B. Hayes and his regiment used to vote in the field while serving in the Civil War, and the 1880 book Conspectus of American Politics, with a fold-out chart showing the evolution of American political parties to that time. Included with Hayes Museum admission. Ohio History Connection members enjoy free admission. 800.998.7737 or rbhayes.org
Southeast Ohio
SOUTHEAST OHIO
Region 10 | Southeast Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., FEB. 22 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Muskingum University, New Concord Counties: Belmont, Coshocton, Guernsey, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble and Washington. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Region 9 | South Central Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 1 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande Counties: Athens, Gallia, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Pike, Ross, Scioto and Vinton. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Southwest Ohio
SOUTHWEST OHIO
A Gentleman’s Garden on the Frontier
SAT., JAN. 11 • 11 A.M.–NOON Adena Mansion & Gardens, Chillicothe 4 Join Adena Mansion & Gardens Executive Director Kathy Styer for a presentation on the landscape of Thomas Worthington’s hilltop estate, Adena. Free. 800.319.7248, info@adenamansion. com or adenamansion.com
membership@ohiohistory.org
OHIO HISTORY CENTER, MARCH 1
ONLINE, JAN. 21
Statehood Day
Stowe House Guided Tours ✪
JAN. 4, 7, 11 & 14 AND WEDNESDAYS THROUGH SUNDAYS IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH • TOURS BEGIN ON THE HOUR 10 A.M.–4 P.M.
Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Cincinnati 4 Encounter the history this house witnessed in the 1840s, when author Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in Cincinnati as a young teacher and mother before writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the 1940s, when African American proprietor Irene Bacon managed it as the Edgemont Inn, a boarding house and tavern listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book. $8, $7/ senior or college student, $6/ages 6–17, Free/Ohio History Connection member. 800.847.6075 or stowehousecincy.org
Ladies of the House
SAT., JAN. 18 • 11 A.M.–NOON
Adena Mansion & Gardens, Chillicothe During Adena’s 139 years as the home of early Ohio statesman Thomas Worthington and his descendants, there were four women who, each in her own time, could be called the “lady of the house.” Join local Worthington family historian Mary Anne Brown, who’ll discuss Eleanor, Julia, Martha and Clara and their years as wives, mothers and hostesses at Adena. Free. 800.319.7248, info@adenamansion. com or adenamansion.com
Many of our outdoor sites are open yearround and great for winter walks and hikes! Learn more at ohiohistory.org/winter
Poetry of Robert Hayden ✪
WEDS., FEB. 12 • 7–8 P.M.
Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Cincinnati 4 Join professor John Getz and author Kareem Simpson in an interactive discussion of the work of Robert Hayden (1913–1980), one of the most influential 20th-century American poets. Free with required advance registration. 800.847.6075 or stowehousecincy.org
Volunteer Orientation
SAT., FEB. 15 • 9–11 A.M.
Adena Mansion & Gardens, Chillicothe Discover a variety of volunteer opportunities at early Ohio statesman Thomas Worthington’s Adena Mansion & Gardens and learn how you can make a difference in preserving its rich history and natural beauty. Our friendly staff will guide you through the orientation and answer any questions. 800.319.7248, info@adenamansion. com or adenamansion.com
A Servant’s View, with Beverly Gray
SAT., FEB. 15 • 11 A.M.–NOON
Adena Mansion & Gardens, Chillicothe Hear local historian Beverly Gray share stories of servants who worked at Adena. Free. 800.319.7248, info@adenamansion.com or adenamansion.com
Advance registration required. See whether our exhibits really do come to life!
Passionate about preserving history for future generations?
Consider including the Ohio History Connection as a beneficiary in your estate plans. Our staff can help you choose options that best fit your needs.
800.647.6921 to learn more.
OHIO STATEHOUSE, MARCH 5
HAYES PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY & MUSEUMS, FREMONT
800.998.7737 • rbhayes.org
Everyone enjoys free Presidents Day admission to the Rutherford B. Hayes Home & Museum, with tours plus POTUS-themed fun for kids!
OHIO HISTORY CENTER, COLUMBUS 800.686.6124
ohiohistory.org/presidents
Ohio being the mother of presidents, the museum’s open special Presidents Day hours with family-fun POTUSthemed activities included in admission. Mon., Feb. 17
The General Speaks, with Dr. Curt Fields
SAT., FEB. 22 • 10 A.M.–4 P.M.
U.S. Grant Boyhood Home & Schoolhouse, Georgetown
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., enjoy free tours of Ulysses S. Grant’s boyhood home and his nearby schoolhouse, and view local statues plus four Grant murals. From 2 to 4 p.m., attend The General Speaks, a program at Georgetown’s historic Gaslight Theater featuring Dr. Curt Fields portraying Grant and speaking on Confederate Civil War officers. 877.372.8177 or usgrantboyhoodhome.org
Region 9 | South Central Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 1 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande Counties: Athens, Gallia, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Pike, Ross, Scioto and Vinton. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
STATEHOOD DAY CELEBRATION Yea, or Nay?
SAT., MARCH 1 • 10 A.M.–4 P.M.
Adena Mansion & Gardens, Chillicothe Ohio became a state in 1803, though not without conflict. Step back to 1802 and witness the fiery debate over whether Ohio should become a state or stay part of the Northwest Territory. Hear Gov. Arthur St. Clair’s and Rep. Thomas Worthington’s differing plans for Ohio’s path to statehood reenacted at 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. Tour Worthington’s 1807 mansion and see where “the Father of Ohio Statehood” lived and worked. Mansion tours take place every half hour starting at 10:30 a.m., with the last one at 3 p.m. Free. 800.319.7248, info@adenamansion.com or adenamansion.com
Region 7 | West Central Ohio
History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 8 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M. Carillon Park, Dayton 4 Counties: Auglaize, Champaign, Clark, Darke, Greene, Logan, Mercer, Miami, Montgomery, Preble and Shelby. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
Guided Tours, Harriet Beecher Stowe House
CINCINNATI, SELECT DAYS, JAN.–MAR.
Region 8 | Southwest Ohio History Day Contest
SAT., MARCH 15 • 8 A.M.–4 P.M.
Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati Counties: Adams, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Clinton, Hamilton, Highland and Warren. 800.686.6124 or ohiohistoryday.org
FEATURED EXHIBITS • • •
Art of Soul! Juried Art Show ✪ THROUGH SAT., MARCH 1 WEDS.–SAT. 9 A.M.–4 P.M.
National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center, Wilberforce See page 9.
ALSO ON EXHIBIT:
African Art—Form, Function and Fraught Histories, African Americans Fighting for a Double Victory, Rhythm of Revolution and Queens of the Heartland, all included with museum admission: $6, $5/senior, $3/ages 6–17, Free/Ohio History Connection member or age 5 & under. 800.752.2603 or ohiohistory.org/ naamcc
The General Speaks
THEATER, GEORGETOWN, FEB. 22
Have you noticed that each membership card has a different number?
No worries! Every individual in our system is assigned a unique record number.
800.686.6124 ohiohistory.org/wonders
Top: Captain Weirmeyer (right) and an unidentified man traveling by boat on the Ohio and Erie Canal south of New Philadelphia Bottom: In Circleville, a wooden aqueduct carried the Ohio and Erie Canal over the Scioto River. It was destroyed by fire in 1915. This postcard was mailed in 1908.
“A Little Short of Madness”
200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OHIO CANAL SYSTEM BY GREG SANDERS
In his book , Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861, historian Harry N. Scheiber is unequivocal.
“No single act of the Ohio General Assembly prior to the Civil War had so profound an effect upon the state’s economic development,” he wrote, “as did the bill of February 4, 1825, by which construction of the state’s canal system was first authorized.”
Two hundred years ago this February, the Ohio Legislature passed “An Act to provide for the Internal Improvement of the State of Ohio by Navigable Canals.” The state’s Canal Commission was authorized to borrow $400,000 during 1825, and not more than $600,000 per year thereafter, for construction of waterways that would link the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River.
By 1832, 308 miles of canals crisscrossed Ohio, carrying agricultural products and raw materials to distant markets while manufactured goods streamed by canal boat into local towns and villages. Travelers moved around the state inexpensively and quickly (by the standards of that time). Water-powered mills and factories sprang up along the locks and reservoirs built by Ohio laborers. For several decades, the canals drove Ohio’s economic growth, immigration and urbanization. This remarkable transformation was a long time coming to fruition. As early as 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris, wrote to George Washington:
“I remember having written to you while Congress sat at Annapolis on the water communications between ours and the Western country, and to have mentioned particularly the information I had received of the plain face of the country between the sources of Big beaver and Cayohoga [sic], which made me hope that a canal of no great expence might unite the navigations of L. Erie and the Ohio. You must since have had occasion of getting better information on this subject and, if you have, you would oblige me by a communication of it. I consider this canal, if practicable, as a very important work.”
LITTLE SHORT OF MADNESS
Yet in 1808, when the state of New York conducted a survey of the proposed Erie Canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, President Jefferson declared the project to be “little short of madness.”
James Geddes (1763–1838) was a self-trained engineer and surveyor. In 1822, the Ohio Canal Commission hired him to survey possible canal routes in the state. His routes eventually became the routes of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal. He also helped plat the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
The president’s opinion of canal building was shared by many, but not all, in the federal government.
Thomas Worthington, one of Ohio’s first two United States senators, emerged as a leading proponent of internal improvements such as national roads and canals. In February 1807, he introduced a motion that made it the duty of the U.S. secretary of the treasury (Albert Gallatin) to report on all projected roads or canals and to investigate the expediency of establishing a system of canalization and roadmaking for the whole nation.
Worthington’s motion resulted in Gallatin’s April 1808 report, which asserted that “the general utility of artificial roads and canals is, at this time, so universally admitted, as hardly to require any additional proofs.” The report further suggests that “evidence of the immense advantages to be derived from canals, is likewise furnished from almost every part of Europe, and particularly in England, where they have been extended, within the last fifty years, in every direction, supplying the demands of one place by the resources of another.” Perhaps due to Worthington’s influence, the report specifically mentions “canals to connect the waters of the Ohio, above, with those below, the falls, at Louisville; Lake Erie with the Ohio River.”
Worthington had helped to set in motion a national movement toward internal improvements, but his home state of Ohio could scarcely envision building roads or canals.
ECONOMIC OBSTACLES
“The key problem was lack of capital,” Scheiber writes in his essay “The Ohio Canal Movement.”
“The total tax revenues of the state government itself amounted to $200,000 annually during the decade before 1820; and since most of this was required to support general-purpose government, little was left to finance roads and other transport improvements,” he continues.
And the situation soon worsened: “The Ohio economy in 1820 held out little promise of rapid growth. The panic of the previous year had destroyed the flimsy banking structure of the state and virtually halted immigration from the East. ‘The failure of our merchants to meet their payments to their correspondents in the Eastern cities and New Orleans,’ one Cincinnati observer wrote, ‘[has] put an entire stop to all commercial intercourse between the Eastern and Western Countries that is not based upon a cash foundation.’”
Still, the need for better transportation grew more urgent with each passing year. Farmers and other producers brought forth an abundance of goods but could not profitably sell what they had to offer.
In History of the Ohio Canals, a book published by the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society in 1905, authors Charles Clifford Huntington and Cloys Peter McClelland describe the state’s pressing need for improved transportation.
“There were some local roads, but they were poor. Railroads and steam locomotives were not even thought of then. To move freight a long distance was almost an impossibility when it cost three dollars to haul a cord of wood twenty miles, or five dollars to transport a barrel of flour a hundred and fifty miles. Either of these rates of transportation would double the price of the commodity.
“The burden was greatest too on articles of common use. The products of the soil were bulky and thus more costly to transport. What people had to sell they could not market, and what they wished to import they had to deprive themselves of, and all because the costs of transportation were excessive.”
NEW YORK TAKES THE LEAD
In 1808, the year that Albert Gallatin’s report was published, the New York State Legislature approved funding for a survey of the canal route between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. On July 4, 1817, the canal’s construction began; two years later, commercial traffic commenced on its first completed section.
The project had been championed by New York’s governor (and future presidential candidate) DeWitt Clinton. Clinton envisioned an unbroken water route linking the Atlantic seaboard with the Great Lakes, and farther down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
Clearly, Ohio must be the next crucial link in such a waterway.
Ohio elected Thomas Worthington to be governor in 1814, as the war with Great Britain lurched toward its resolution. In Worthington’s second term, as wartime concerns receded, he sent a message to the Ohio General Assembly urging its support for New York’s canal project.
The assembly authorized the governor to correspond with Clinton concerning possible Ohio assistance to the canal project, but no tangible support was ever given. Worthington declined to seek re-election in 1818, leaving the door open for Supreme Court Justice Ethan Allen Brown’s successful bid for the
governorship.
DEBATE AND COMPROMISE
Brown would in future years be hailed as the father of Ohio’s canals, but this birth required a deep well of patience and optimism. At crucial moments, he chose compromise and conciliation, gradually removing objections and building support across Ohio.
Shortly after Brown’s inauguration, the state Senate offered a resolution authorizing the governor to employ engineers to ascertain the practicality and expense of an Ohio River and Lake Erie canal. This resolution bogged down in the House of Representatives, beginning a four-year process of back-andforth negotiations among the legislative chambers and the governor.
Finally, in January 1822, a bill was passed authorizing Gov. Brown to employ an engineer and appoint a commission to conduct surveys and estimate construction costs. A sum not to exceed $6,000 was appropriated for this purpose.
With the support of Gov. DeWitt Clinton, Ohio secured the services of James Geddes, a judgeturned-engineer who had worked on the New York project. New York’s Erie Canal was fully functional by this time, leaving Geddes and others free to seek work elsewhere. In the survey’s first eight months,
more than 900 miles of potential canal routes were examined. Within three years, surveying was complete, with elevations documented at each stage. Five river routes were examined:
• Mahoning and Grand River
• Cuyahoga and Muskingum (Tuscarawas branch)
• Black and Muskingum (Killbuck branch)
• Scioto and Sandusky
• Maumee and Great Miami.
Hand-colored map of Ohio showing its canals, roads and distances, from A New Universal Atlas by S. Augustus Mitchell (Philadelphia, 1848). Also included on the map is a profile of the Ohio Canal and mapped steamboat routes.
“The way I use (sic) to go to Cincinnati from Piqua—Cousin John,” mailed in 1907.
HISTORY CONNECTION
Two canal-related sites are among the Ohio History Connection’s 50+ museums and attractions: the Johnston Farm & Indian Agency near Piqua, and Lockington Locks nearby in Lockington. In addition to its on-site museum with a canal exhibit, Johnston Farm has an operating canal boat, the General Harrison of Piqua. Mule-drawn, it travels a stretch of the historic Miami and Erie Canal at an authentic four miles an hour, offering a chance to experience canal travel firsthand. Three miles away, Lockington Locks is another vestige of the Miami & Erie Canal, featuring five stairstep locks (now dry) built of massive stone blocks—a 19th-century civil engineering feat. Both sites are managed for the Ohio History Connection by the Johnston Farm Friends Council. Lockington Locks is open daily during daylight hours. The Johnston Farm is open April through October. Learn more and plan your visit at johnstonfarmohio.com and ohiohistory.org/ lockington.
“Dear Grandma, This is where we will take you in bathing when you come out here.”—George, mailed in 1908.
All of these routes were considered practical. Now the burden of financing the construction and operating the selected route (or routes) was passed from engineers to the canal commission. New York financiers, having witnessed the success of their state’s canals, gave assurances that loans to Ohio could be secured at moderate interest rates. The commission’s third annual report on Jan. 8, 1825, advocated for building a canal immediately. If the legislature moved quickly to secure loans, the report advised, then construction could begin by July 1, 1825.
On Feb. 4, 1825, the legislature passed “An Act to provide for the Internal Improvement of the State of Ohio by Navigable Canals.” The bill passed by a margin of 92 to 15, launching Ohio’s canal era. Many issues remained to be solved, starting with decisions about which routes would be chosen. In the end, several initial routes were chosen and others added to the list of future projects. The two selected for initial construction were Cleveland to Portsmouth via the Cuyahoga and Scioto-Muskingum rivers, and the Great Miami River from Cincinnati to Dayton.
This postcard, mailed in 1937, pictures the canal (foreground) and Muskingum River (background) in Zanesville.
Four modes of transportation: road, canal, train and river, about 1908, near New Philadelphia.
These pathways conformed more closely to existing population patterns than to the state’s natural topography. Local needs for improved transportation outweighed engineering practicality in this first phase.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER
In the 1850s, railroads replaced canals as Ohio’s primary transportation arteries. By that time, canals had already contributed greatly to the state’s economic and population growth. A historical retrospective from 1905 applauded “the effects which the canals have had upon the State in cheapening transportation, increasing the value of lands and products, influencing the settlement of thousands of inhabitants, and developing the agriculture, mining, commerce, and manufactures of Ohio, in short, in laying the foundations of Ohio’s industrial, commercial and political power.”
Greg Sanders is a freelance writer living in Brecksville.
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
To read the entire letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington written in 1787, visit ohiohistory.org/OHcanal
For more information about Thomas Jefferson’s meeting with Joshua Forman and William Kirkpatrick, during which he described the Ohio canals plan as “little short of madness,” visit ohiohistory.org/OHcanal2.
A Canal Reading List:
Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861 by Harry N. Scheiber
Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio Statehood by Alfred Byron Sears
History of the Ohio Canals: Their Construction, Cost, Use and Partial Abandonment by Charles Clifford Huntington, Cloys Peter McClelland and the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, available free online at ohiohistory. org/OHcanal3.
This postcard, mailed in 1939, pictures the old Miami and Erie canal in Cincinnati (top), today the site of Central Parkway (bottom), which opened in 1928. The former canal bed is also the route of the city’s started-though-never-finished subway under Central Parkway, a project abandoned in 1929.
EXPLORE MORE
While Ohio’s canal days are long past, many remnants of our state’s nearly 200-year-old canal system are still with us today, waiting for you to discover. Some are replete with operating canal boats, like Canal Fulton’s Canalway Center; Coshocton’s Roscoe Village; a stretch of the Miami & Erie Canal at the Johnston Farm & Indian Agency near Piqua; and another stretch in Toledo’s Providence Metropark. Elsewhere, stone locks and other canal-related structures have been preserved or restored. And some remain unrestored or in ruins. The Canal Society of Ohio, a statewide membership organization, maintains a website listing 24 places across our state where you can see remnants of Ohio’s historic canals, with links to more information about them and the many local and regional organizations devoted to preserving them. Visit canalsocietyohio.org/canal-sites-1.html to plan your trip, then set out and explore!
Above: Joseph Carter Corbin is among more than 100 African Americans profiled in the 1887 book Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising, by William J. Simmons. He is described as “State Superintendent of Public Instruction— Linguist—Master of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Hebrew and Danish—Profound Mathematician and Musician—Organist—Pianist—Flutist.”
Far Left: A painting of Joseph Carter Corbin.
Left: A circa 1908 portrait of Joseph Carter Corbin, “educator and Masonic leader, Pine Bluff.”
Bright Light
SCHOLAR
AND
EDUCATOR JOSEPH CARTER CORBIN
BY DR. GLADYS TURNER FINNEY
In the fall of 1850, when the vast majority of African Americans and so-called mulattos were enslaved and the Fugitive Slave Law had established a bounty on runaway slaves, 17-year-old Joseph Carter Corbin—the son of two former slaves—enrolled at Ohio University as a sophomore.
During this time of extraordinary peril for African Americans, Corbin had begun his remarkable, and in many ways heroic, journey to becoming one of the most educated and scholarly men of his day, of any race.
Corbin was born March 26, 1833, in Chillicothe. He was the second oldest of 11 children of formerly enslaved parents, William Corbin and Susan Mordecai Carter Corbin, who had moved to Ohio from Richmond, Virginia, after gaining their freedom.
Young Corbin was home-schooled and also attended private subscription schools, as there were no public schools for Black children in Ohio at the time. (Subscription schools differed from other schools in that rather than being funded through tax revenue or fixed tuition, parents paid only for days when their child actually attended.)
Whether it was because of home schooling or subscription classes, Corbin quickly gained mastery of his lessons, enough so that at age 15 he was sent to a boarding school in Louisville, Kentucky, where he spent two years as a student and teaching assistant to his future brother-in-law, the Rev. Henry A. Adams.
Adams was a man of no small achievement, being proficient in English, Latin and Greek and later founding the institution that eventually became Simmons College of Kentucky. His lessons were sufficiently rigorous that Corbin not only entered Ohio University a year younger than most other students, but was allowed to skip freshman year.
As a result, Corbin graduated in only three years, in the class of 1853, and gained his master’s degree in 1856. He was Ohio University’s third African American student and the second to graduate.
A HOSTILE SOCIETY
Corbin left the campus and entered a society that was far from welcoming to people of color. In 1857, the year after Corbin earned his graduate degree, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that African Americans were not and could never be U.S. citizens. The first shots of the Civil War were soon to be fired.
Carter
grave was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023 and a plaque recognizing the designation was unveiled and dedicated at this ceremony on May 2, 2024.
During this antebellum period, some African Americans who could pass as white used their light complexion as a tool to escape slavery and to gain better economic prospects. But “passing” also could mean turning their backs on their own families and communities.
It was at this moment that Corbin, whether he ever acknowledged it, faced a decision that would have profound consequences for the rest of his life. As a faircomplexioned man, Corbin could easily be perceived as white, and in fact, the 1870 Census lists him as white.
But rather than slipping away farther north, finding a job as a journalist or professor at a college in, say, New England, and spending his life quietly working and living as a white man, Corbin chose to live as a Black man and went to work as a teacher in Louisville, Kentucky.
He further embraced his African American heritage when the Civil War broke out. Moving back to Ohio, he served two terms on the Cincinnati Colored School Board as a trustee and was co-editor and publisher of the Colored Citizen Newspaper from 1863 to 1869.
DOWN TO LITTLE ROCK
In 1871, Corbin and his wife, Mary Jane (Ward) Corbin, left Ohio and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he worked as a journalist for the Little Rock Daily Republican. The newspaper was considered the official mouthpiece of Gov. Powell Clayton’s administration and supported his Reconstruction policies. Clayton, a Union general who settled in Arkansas following the Civil War, had been labeled a “radical Republican” by the state’s conservatives, who opposed the abolition of slavery as well as the education and establishment of schools for freed slaves.
And education was sorely needed for African Americans in the state. Before the war, the federal census found that in 1860 there were 111,000 enslaved African Americans in Arkansas—and only five had attended school.
Concerned about this great need for learning and aware that he could better address the situation by gaining political influence, Corbin advanced swiftly in
the Republican Party and in 1872 was elected Arkansas state superintendent of public instruction. He is believed to have been the highest African American elected official in the Republican Reconstruction government in Arkansas. As superintendent of public instruction, he was president of the Board of Trustees of Arkansas Industrial University, now the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Realizing that there was also a great need for African American teachers for freed slaves, Corbin successfully persuaded the state legislature to approve the creation in 1873 of Branch Normal College in Pine Bluff, which would be a public teachers college for the formerly enslaved—the “lower classes”—and their descendants.
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION IN ARKANSAS
But the election of 1872 that had put Corbin into a high office also marked the beginning of a controversy over the results of the state’s hotly contested governor’s election, a controversy that culminated in 1874’s “Brooks-Baxter War.” When that crisis was resolved, it marked the end of Reconstruction in Arkansas, as Democrats regained control of the state legislature and adopted a new constitution.
It also ended Corbin’s tenure as superintendent of public instruction and, seemingly, the establishment of Branch Normal College.
According to historian William J. Simmons, after Corbin lost his position in Arkansas, he left the state to teach at Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri. (In 1921, the institute changed its name to Lincoln University.) Corbin did not sell his home in Little Rock, however, and while vacationing there, he was summoned by Arkansas governor Augustus H. Garland and engaged to go to Pine Bluff and open the first African American public institution of higher education in the state.
And so it was that on Sept. 27, 1875, Corbin finally opened Branch Normal College in a rented house with seven students, ages 9 to 15, “none of whom could read beyond the third reader.”
Joseph
Corbin is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois. His
Corbin became the second Black graduate of Ohio University in 1853. This hand-colored engraving appeared on Ohio University stationery in 1838.
AN UPHILL STRUGGLE
He faced challenges and obstacles of inadequate finances, insufficiently prepared students, political harassment and investigations during his tenure. But he was determined “to build and mold the school into a classical model.”
Corbin built the college from the ground up. During the first seven years, he was the only teacher, taught all the courses and was the janitor. He maintained a preparatory department simultaneously with the collegiate department. He also offered a normal department granting the licentiate of instruction, or L.I. degree, that enabled teachers to find employment throughout the state.
Corbin produced the first African American graduates in the state of Arkansas with bachelor’s degrees in 1882. That same year, a new school facility was erected. Five years later, in 1887, a new dormitory for girls was built, under the supervision of Professor and Mrs. Corbin.
The 1890 Morrill Act Land Grant designation for the college “allowed a measure of financial stability and survival.” But the money came with a catch: The Arkansas Assembly allocated the cash for Corbin to expand the curricula in 1892 to include carpentry and mechanical arts for male students and home economics, typing and sewing for female students, courses that would be taught by Corbin’s daughter, Louisa.
While the estimable African American leader and scholar Booker T. Washington favored such “industrial education,” the new courses wouldn’t sit well with Corbin. A scholar and linguist fluent in Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Danish, as well as a “profound mathematician” and an accomplished musician on the piano, organ and wand flute, Corbin felt that a classical liberal arts education offered “the Negro” more opportunities for upward mobility.
What would be even worse for Corbin was that the Board of Trustees of the Fayetteville University of Arkansas campus had hired William S. Harris, a white man, to run the new programs. Harris’s appointment undermined the authority of Professor Corbin and destabilized the school.
A BOGUS CHARGE
A year later, in 1893, the legislature tried to fire Corbin because of “poor performance.” While that attempt failed, the legislature forced the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees to promote Harris—the white employee—to the position of superintendent and treasurer of Branch Normal, a move that took away most of Corbin’s authority.
Even so, by 1894, thanks in large part to the strenuous efforts of Corbin, the college enrollment reached 241 students.
But in June 1902, after 27 years as founder and first president of Branch Normal College, Corbin was ousted by the Board of Trustees and replaced by Isaac Fisher, a protégé of Booker T. Washington.
Rather than leave Arkansas, Corbin again decided that he would not be bullied. He remained in Pine Bluff and became principal of Merrill High School. There he also was co-founder and first president of Teachers of Negro Youth in Arkansas, the first Black state teachers organization.
In 1910, Corbin’s wife, Mary, died and a year later he followed her in death.
But his legacy at Branch Normal College lives on. Now known as the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, the Historically Black College and University is the first African American public institution of higher education in Arkansas.
Gladys Turner Finney is an heir to the legacy of Joseph Carter Corbin. Born in rural southeast Arkansas in the middle of the Great Depression, she was given the transformative gift of education. She graduated from J.C. Corbin High School, Pine Bluff, in 1953, the last graduating class. In 1957, she graduated from the college Professor Corbin founded. In 2015, she established the Joseph Carter Corbin Memorial Scholarship at Ohio University.
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
In 2017, Butler Center Books, the publishing division of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, published Joseph Carter Corbin: Educator Extraordinaire and Founder of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff by Gladys Turner Finney. The author wrote the biography because Corbin—“a man of distinction, high intellect and learning—deserves greater recognition and preservation of his legacy for current and future generations.”
Finney recommends these titles: Town and Country: Race Relations in an Urban-Rural Context, Arkansas, 1865–1905 by John William Graves; Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois; Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans by Tom Dillard; and Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 by Willard B. Gatewood.
Joseph Carter Corbin was inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2018. Learn more at civ.ohio.gov
“Up then, brave Canadians! Get ready your rifles, and make short work of it,” William Lyon Mackenzie wrote in this incendiary 1837 broadside. “Woe be to those who oppose us, for ‘In God is our trust.’”
Canadian Rebellion Along the Border
THE PATRIOT WAR AND THE BATTLE OF PELEE ISLAND
BY RANDY EDWARDS
On Feb. 26, 1838, a heavily armed band of some 400 men marched 15 miles across frozen Lake Erie, from the Ohio shore near Sandusky to Pelee Island, Canada’s southernmost habitation. The few residents of the island fled north into Upper Canada, the British colony now known as Ontario. The invading force commenced to sack the island, slaughtering livestock and stealing the lenses from the local lighthouse.
In less than a week, on March 3, British troops led by Indigenous scouts crossed the ice from the Canadian side with horse-drawn cannons, and a brief but bloody battle was fought less than a dozen miles from where Oliver Hazard Perry had won his decisive naval battle against a British fleet about 25 years before, during the War of 1812.
In the American collective memory, the hostilities of 1812–1815 marked an end to conflict between the U.S. and its northern neighbor, leading to more than two centuries of peaceful coexistence and the world’s “longest undefended border.” Yet history records a series of border skirmishes fought between 1837 and 1840 in a conflict that—while never supported by the U.S. government—became known as the Patriot War.
One of the bloodiest battles of this undeclared war occurred on Pelee Island, which lies just across the international border and is the largest island in the limestone archipelago that stretches from Ohio’s Marblehead Peninsula to Ontario’s Point Pelee peninsula. The island is about 3.5 miles wide and stretches about 10 miles from Lighthouse Point at the north to Fish Point at the southern end.
THE SON OF LOYALISTS
When members of an unsanctioned militia (they called themselves Patriots) arrived in the winter of 1838, the island was under the control of William McCormick, the son of Ohio loyalists who moved to Canada after the American Revolution. McCormick
William Lyon Mackenzie (1795–1861) was a Scottish Canadian-American who led the rebels in the Upper Canada Rebellion, or Patriot War, which included the Battle of Pelee Island. Captured by New York state authorities and put in prison for breach of the neutrality laws, he spent 11 months in jail in Rochester. He was later allowed to return to Canada. From 1851 to 1858 he was a member of the Canadian Parliament, representing the extreme radicals. He died in Toronto.
The steamer Caroline, chartered by William Lyon Mackenzie to run supplies for his rebellion against the government of Upper Canada, was caught by the British, set ablaze and run over Niagara Falls. Early in 1838, the rebellion was crushed and Mackenzie fled to the United States.
bought the island in 1823 and moved his family there in 1834. He leased a rocky promontory to the government for a lighthouse, then served as the lighthouse keeper.
Lake Erie’s ice cover was meager on the February day that I visited Pelee Island, but the passenger ferries from Ohio don’t run during the winter, so I booked a flight with Griffing Flying Service out of Port Clinton. With a 35-knot tailwind, the Piper Saratoga made the hop in 10 minutes, far faster, no doubt, than it took the men 187 years ago, who hauled sleds loaded with rifles and ammunition across the ice.
From the air you can see that the 10,000-acre island is mostly terra firma now, but when the Patriots seized Pelee it was less solid, with about 4,000 acres of dry land and the interior filled with dense woody marsh. It would be another 40 years before industrious islanders drained the marsh for crops.
Under the command of Maj. Lester Hoadley and Capt. Henry Van Rensselaer, the militia crossed Lake Erie, slowed by jagged ridges in the thick ice. They took few provisions, perhaps thinking that grateful Canadians, who they intended to free “from British thralldom,” would feed them.
NO ONE HOME
When they found the island empty, they helped themselves. “Hogs, poultry, sheep and cattle were shot, salted and dressed. Corn, hides, horses and sleighs were seized. The damages were estimated at about 1,000 pounds,” according to a local historian, Ronald Tiessen. “Even the reflectors and lamps of the new lighthouse were stolen.”
Standing along the nearly deserted perimeter road on Pelee on a wind-whipped February morning, with the temperature in single digits and the summer tourists gone, it’s hard to imagine exactly what strategic value the Patriots found in taking this island.
This was the recurring theme of the Patriot conflict: small skirmishes along the border that always ended in retreat. The invaders may have thought they could beat an easy retreat; from Fish Point you can see the Bass Islands on the Ohio side.
Indeed, the proximity of Ohio communities led to a festive air at first, according to Shaun J. McLaughlin, in his book The Patriot War Along the Michigan-Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels.
“The occupying army may have had as many as one thousand at some point. Curious spectators crossed over to the island in sleighs from Sandusky to view the invasion of Canada, often taking Patriot fighters back and forth with them.”
Although their numbers were strong, weapons were limited, due to the Patriots’ unreliable master of ordnances, Col. John Freeland, who is said to have hidden 2,800 weapons and either (some say) turned them over to American authorities or (perhaps more likely) sold them. The Patriot officers later said that by the time of the battle, only 152 men were armed.
A DUBIOUS CAUSE
What possible cause drove this poorly trained, lightly armed and unauthorized American force into combat with British troops 23 years after Andrew Jackson’s celebrated victory in the Battle of New Orleans? The answer is complex and its underlying causes a matter of debate by the handful of historians who study this remote corner of history.
The Patriot War was an outgrowth of failed Canadian rebellions in 1837 in Upper Canada and Lower Canada (now Quebec). The leaders of those rebellions escaped to the U.S. and into the ready embrace of a U.S. population mired in a recession that was blamed in part on British banks.
The expatriate rebels took their inflammatory rhetoric to taverns and town halls, where thousands, including many Ohioans, were inspired to finish the work of the American Revolution by chasing the British out of Canada.
At a rally in Cleveland, “We were informed that LIBERTY—the inestimable birthright of man—was unknown on the other side of Lake Erie, and that their political grievances were innumerable,” wrote Samuel Snow, a Strongsville, Ohio, man who joined the Patriot movement and later published a brief memoir of his adventures.
With “innumerable grievances” on the line, what’s a hot-blooded Patriot to do but leave his wife and children behind and join up with others determined to “end British thralldom” in North America?
The Patriots eventually discovered that support for their effort was tepid north of the border, where tens of thousands of Loyalists, like McCormick, had relocated during and after the Revolution. And while the Patriots enjoyed support from many local officials in the border states, U.S. President Martin Van Buren maintained U.S. neutrality and eventually sent American troops to arrest Patriots and confiscate their weapons.
READY AND ANXIOUS
At the time of the Pelee Island raid, however, antiBritish fervor ran high on the American side, and although Snow didn’t join the fray until eight months later, his memoir captures the expectations of the (mostly) young men who rallied around the Patriot cause.
Detail of J.C.H. Forster’s painting of the Battle of Pelee Island, which occurred on March 3, 1838.
The recruits were assured, Snow says, “that the Canadians were ready and anxious, with arms, amunition (sic) and provisions, to join our standard when it should be erected on their shores; but these hopes proved delusive: not a Canadian met us on our arrival save a few who joined us in Michigan, and some of those turned traitors soon after.”
Some historians have dismissed the Patriots as dissolute young men in search of treasure and glory.
“Most of the patriots seem to have been restless young men looking for money, work, land, adventure, or an escape from the law, debts, wives or boredom,” wrote Donald E. Graves, a Canadian military historian in his book, Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill, 1838, which chronicled this tumultuous period.
That perspective ignores the depth and breadth of support the Patriots enjoyed in the border states, along the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, says Andrew Bonthius, a historian from Cleveland who has published papers on the conflict.
The Patriot War was “a component of a far broader radicalism (responding to) the class tensions of the day in the American republic, resulting from the transition from an egalitarian subsistencebarter economy based on agriculture to the more unforgiving commercial market economy,” Bonthius has written.
THE GOVERNMENT RESPONDS
The festive air on Pelee Island ended on March 3, when 500 well-armed British troops crossed the ice from Fort Malden, near Amherstburg in Upper Canada. Commanded by Lt. Col. John Maitland, who had helped crush the 1837 rebellion in Lower Canada, the force included regular infantry, local militia, cavalry and two six-pound cannons.
Maitland sent two companies of infantry and cavalry to the south end of the island to cut off escape, and with the rest of his force marched toward the north shore, where he met—nothing. The Patriot officers were aware that the British forces had split up and, not wanting to face Maitland’s main force, marched south through the frozen marshes to the southern shore.
With just a few miles of ice-covered lake blocking their escape, the militia met the British troops on frozen Mosquito Bay.
“With only 152 rifles among them, the armed men took the front rank and began firing at the British troops, the unarmed men waited to pick up rifles from fallen comrades,” McLaughlin writes.
The two sides exchanged gunfire for 20 to 30 minutes, and the British were taking heavy casualties, because many of the Patriot weapons were modern rifles, more accurate and with a greater range than the muskets carried by the British infantry.
Rather than lose a slow battle of attrition, the British commanders ordered the men to fix bayonets and charge.
“The rebels held their ground until the advancing men came within 20 yards,” McLaughlin writes. “The untrained invaders had no experience at close combat. Terrified by the 17-inch, three-sided weapons rushing toward them, they let off one final volley and scattered in every direction.”
The Battle of Pelee Island was over quickly. The Patriots reported 10 dead, including their leaders, Hoadley and Van Rensselaer. Sixteen others were wounded. The British reported five dead and 25 wounded. Lt. Col. Maitland caught a cold during the attack and later died from his illness.
Battles would continue for many months, mostly fought along the Canadian borders with New York and Michigan. The conflict ended as the British beefed up their military defenses on the border and U.S. government troops continued to round up and arrest Americans who violated the Neutrality Act.
Strongsville’s Samuel Snow, captured after an attack on the British barracks at Windsor, was transported to the penal colony at Van Dieman’s Land, now Australia, and spent seven years finding his way back to Ohio.
Randy Edwards is a freelance writer who lives in Columbus.
Read The Exile’s Return: or Narrative of Samuel Snow, who was Banished to Van Dieman’s Land, for Participating in the Patriot War in Upper Canada, in 1838 at ohiohistory.org/pelee
Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill, 1838, written by Donald E. Graves and published by Robin Brass Studio with funds from the Friends of Windmill Point, is available at amazon.com and abebooks.com.
According to the Hassell Street Press, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters: Liberation of Canadian Provinces From British Thraldom by Oscar A. Kinchen “has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.” The press reissued the 1956 title in 2012.
Scholar Joshua M. Steedman wrote his doctoral dissertation, To Excite the Feelings of Noble Patriots: Emotion, Public Gatherings, and Mackenzie’s American Rebellion, 1837–1842, on the newspaper writings of William Lyon Mackenzie. You can read it by visiting ohiohistory.org/pelee2 and clicking on “Steedman, Dissertation Complete.”
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The 1833 Pelee Island Lighthouse.
RANDY EDWARDS
Left: The Ohio History Connection is the caretaker of more than 1.8 million items from Ohio’s past. The new Collections Care Center has specialized storage for a whole range of them, from mastodon bones to firearms to artwork.
Our Collections Care Center
A LOOK INSIDE
BY SAMANTHA HARDEN
From mammoth teeth and giant beaver skulls to a chair Gen. Ulysses S. Grant appears to have used at his City Point, Virginia, headquarters during the Civil War siege of Petersburg, many of Ohio’s most historically important objects have found a new home in Columbus.
The new Collections Care Center, located on the north side of the Ohio History Center campus at I-71 & 17th Avenue, is a $22 million, 29,300-square-foot building designed to house many of the artifacts in the care of the Ohio History Connection.
Construction began in October 2022 and was completed in June 2024 (see July & August 2024 Echoes Magazine, page 6). The new building augments an offsite warehouse complex a mile north of the Ohio History Center. The new facility offers better climate control, limited natural light and specialized storage for many different types of objects.
PREP WORK
Becky Odom, the curatorial department manager, says planning the project took help from a team including Ohio History Connection leadership, curators and collections managers, as well as shelving consultants and architects.
“It was a matter of having the right people with the right knowledge having those conversations and then constantly checking in with each other,” Odom says.
According to Odom, Todd Topper, senior manager for collections at the Minnesota Historical Society and a former Ohio History Connection employee who served as a consultant for two years on this project, played a key role in the success of the move.
“It was thousands of hours of pre-planning,” Topper says. “Determining what collections would come over, determining groups within those collections … Are there certain objects that need certain handling? It was a back-and-forth dance for four years.”
Topper says moving the collections was all about making sure everything had a place.
“We didn’t want to have to live out of boxes, so knowing where everything, in theory, would go in the end allowed for some immediate
unpacking,” Topper says. “The paintings all had a place, the firearms all had a place, the mastodons all had a place. And if we didn’t have places for those, they’d still be in the hallway, and it would be a jammed-up mess. When we talk about thousands of hours of pre-planning, a lot of that went into what’s coming over and where is it going to go?”
A COLLABORATION
Jonathan Cass, director of business development for Planes Commercial Services, led the move of more than 55,000 natural history specimens and nearly 37,000 items in the larger history collections.
“It was a collaborative effort to make sure we’re handling it right and to make sure they’re comfortable with how we’re handling it,” Cass says of the mover’s role in the process.
After a year of preparation and planning with Odom and Topper, Cass says the move began on June 17 last year and was completed within a month.
“Really it was just about having the right team, having people on both ends so that we could relocate a vast amount of collection items in a quick manner,” Cass says. “We had people prepping, packing and getting items ready so that we could safely transport them. And then we had drivers who were going back and forth between both sites. Communication was a big thing on this project, and that’s really what it came down to.”
GET IN THE FLOW
Odom says one of the unique things about the building is that it was designed to follow the course of an object through it, from when it’s received at the dock, cataloged and photographed, sent to processing and then put into storage.
Running through the center of the building is a 16-foot-wide hallway, which she calls “the spine of the building.”
“Our designers kept saying, ‘Are you sure? You know how big that is?’ But it gives us lots of space to bring pallets down, to be able to move large cabinets through here, should we need them,” Odom explains. “We just tried to design the building thinking about not only what we need now but what we might need in the future.”
When an item enters the center, it begins at the dock, one of the most overlooked aspects of the new space, but something Odom says is one of the most exciting to her.
Walls are equipped with a grid system that allows easy and visible storage of framed artwork in many sizes.
“We adore the dock. Not everybody loves it, but for us, it’s really important because we can actually fit a box truck in here,” Odom says. “At our old facility, we didn’t have a place to park a vehicle inside and so we would have to unload at night, in the dark, outside. This is far more secure and also great because if there is bad weather, you can just pull right in and not have to worry about wrapping things in plastic sheeting.”
After being unloaded at the dock, she says, an item is sent to the incoming and outgoing room where an Ohio History Connection registrar catalogs it before sending it to one of the two processing rooms. The first of the two processing rooms— which will be used extensively by the archaeology collections team—includes a sink and fume hood for more intense cleaning, which is often referred to as “dirty processing.”
SAND. REFINISH. REPEAT.
“You will see a lot of the tables have butcher block tops,” Odom says. “One of the things our designers helped us with was thinking through the materials. They had said that if we did butcher block, when it gets badly scratched, we can just sand it, refinish it and then it looks new again.”
Odom says the second of the two processing rooms is called “dry processing.”
“Lots of collections do not respond well to water so this has literally just tables and shelves in it,” she says. “It is completely dry so it is different than some of the other rooms, in that there’s no floor drain because we don’t ever anticipate running water in here.”
Odom says between the two processing rooms lives the file room, home to the registrars’ extensive paperwork pertaining to the organization’s donation records and deeds of gifts.
“Our registrars come in here with more paperwork than you could possibly imagine. I think they have more than HR actually,” Odom says. “We are super excited to have them here because we used to have to go back and forth from the warehouses to the Ohio History Center to look things up.”
Odom says the center was designed in a way that is unusual for collections spaces in that it also integrates workspaces and labs, which are typically housed in their own buildings. This was done, she says, because it is a more efficient use of both money and space. One such space is the natural history lab.
Dresses and other garments worn by notable Ohioans hang in specialized closets.
“Natural history does have some very specialized needs, particularly in making mounts and working with specimens,” Odom says.
In addition to the natural history lab, there are two other important spaces. The first, she says, is the freeze-dryer, which is used to create taxidermy, and the other is home to the center’s dermestid flesheating beetle colony that is utilized for its ability to clean off bones the natural history team brings in.
“The very best practice would be to build them their own separate building but that was cost-prohibitive for us, so they have their own room with special seals on it,” Odom says. “We always joke that they have a bigger office than the rest of us.”
THE BEST PART OF THE BUILDING
Next, Odom says, comes the best part of the building, the two storage spaces—a 1,448-squarefoot natural history space and a more than 15,000-square-foot space that houses history collections such as art, household textiles, clothing, military and organizational uniforms and weapons, glass, ceramics and furniture.
Odom says one of the most unique things about the storage space is how the artwork collections are stored. Rather than being stored on mobile racks that wheel in and out of a cabinet or shelf as in many museum storage facilities, she says the Ohio History Connection chose to line the walls of the 15,000-square-foot room with the artwork, hung on metal wall racks that utilize every inch of space.
“What the wall racks make really evident is the access that we can provide here that we just couldn’t in our old facility. Now if someone wants to come in and look at art, it is so much easier for me to get to it,” Odom says. “I keep saying, it’s like the art is hugging the rest of the collections.”
One of the most practical decisions made was the inclusion of high-density mobile shelving in the storage spaces, which allows the shelves to be moved using manual cranks depending on which collections need to be accessed.
“The nice thing about these shelves is they can be accessed from both sides,” Odom says. “One of the issues with access at our old building was
Left: Early Ohio statesman Thomas Worthington’s son and daughter-in-law added this Empire-style sofa to Adena’s furnishings after 1827.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant appears to have used the chair on the right below at his cabin in City Point, Virginia, Union Army headquarters during the Civil War siege of Petersburg. He presented it to Bvt. Maj. Henry W. James in 1866.
that things would be stacked two boxes high and two-deep on a shelf. So, if you need the one on the bottom in the back you had to take four boxes off to get to it. The idea was to try not to do that to ourselves.”
Odom says when designing the space, the Ohio History Connection had growth in mind, with the center being designed to account for up to 40 percent growth in collections.
“We used to joke when we were designing the building that we wanted to make sure that we saved enough storage so that our natural history curators could take in another mastodon,” Odom says. “Then in December of 2023, while the building was under construction, one of our curators called me and he said, ‘Becky, I have another mastodon.’ I was like, ‘We haven’t even built the building yet.’”
Now the casts of the Burning Tree Mastodon have found their home as well.
Samantha Harden is a fourth-year journalism student at The Ohio State University. She is the Arts & Life editor at the school’s newspaper, The Lantern
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To learn more about the Ohio History Connection’s extensive collection, and to search the Museum Collection Online Catalog, visit ohiohistory.org/ collections.
To learn more about the Ohio History Center’s resident Conway mastodon, read Natural History Curator David Dyer’s April 2022 article “How to Find a Mastodon—The Story of the Williams Mastodon” at ohiohistory.org/mastodon.
Save the date and watch for details of a special members-only tour of our new Collections Care Center coming up on March 13.
Scan the QR code to learn more about our new Collections Care Center in the newest episode of Echoes Extras.
This stuffed elk’s head is affectionately known as “Nigel” by the Collections Care Center staff.
A construction sign picturing the new Collections Care Center on the Ohio History Center campus in Columbus.
I Wish I’d Been There
CLEVELAND, CENTER OF THE HORSE WORLD BY
BETTY WEIBEL
In the early 1900s, northeast Ohio had a well-deserved favorable reputation in the horse world.
Cleveland was home to successful inventors, business leaders and titans of industries that included oil, lake shipping, steelmaking and other manufacturing. Many residents focused their leisure interests on horses, having cultivated a passion from European traditions and from visits to Maryland and Virginia, where they enjoyed horse sports like fox hunting and equestrian competition. Horse shows gave horsemen a chance to test their riding and carriage-driving skills and compete at city venues like the Cleveland Auditorium. The winter competition featured 30 to 40 sleighs racing along Euclid Avenue’s Millionaires’ Row. Thousands lined the streets to watch drivers representing the city’s first families: Rockefeller, Hanna, Perkins and Corning.
For decades Cleveland was home to an independent military cavalry, Troop A of the First Cleveland Cavalry/107th Cavalry, formed to preserve law and order. Troop A also perfected horsemanship through standard military training exercises from horse sports—jumping hurdles, playing polo, steeplechase racing and the precision riding of dressage. The Troop A Riding Academy and Armory offered public riding lessons as well, and among the instructors was Hungarian immigrant Laddie Andahazy.
As Cleveland’s population expanded, outlying suburbs developed and property in eastern Cuyahoga County began selling to wealthy Clevelanders who wanted second homes with land enough for horses, carriages and riding. In addition to fox hunting, other pursuits included horse racing, international polo and horse shows that were held at the Chagrin Valley Hunt Club and Cleveland Metroparks Polo Field.
THE FIRST SHOW
If you visit the Cleveland Metroparks Polo Field in Moreland Hills today, you’ll see an Ohio Historical Marker that recognizes the significance of the first Cleveland Grand Prix with brief text, but there is so much more to the story.
The first North American show jumping grand prix for civilian riders was held in 1965. The Cleveland Grand Prix introduced Europeanstyle show jumping at a time when the new post-cavalry United States Equestrian Team was focusing on strong teams for international competition. The domestic training ground for these athletes was limited, as was the depth of experienced horses and riders capable of challenging foreign show jumpers.
The introduction of grand prix show jumping here evolved after Laddie Andahazy witnessed the German Equestrian Team’s clean
Mary Mairs Chapot aboard Tomboy, winners of the first Cleveland Grand Prix on July 25, 1965.
Laddie G. Andahazy, “the father of grand prix show jumping,” organized the first competition in the United States in 1965 in Moreland Hills, Ohio, at the Cleveland Metroparks Polo Field.
sweep during the 1936 Olympic Games. Andahazy, a Clevelander and director of Lake Erie College’s riding program, brought back a show-jumping handbook and details and diagrams for fence construction from the Olympics. He made a presentation to equestrian leaders at the Chagrin Valley Hunt Club, and they formed a committee of the fastgrowing Chagrin Valley Professional Horsemen’s Association of America’s Horse Show to organize the first grand prix.
On Sunday afternoon July 25, 1965, the 844-yard course of 16 obstacles was set for three rounds of show jumping. Modified from the European courses, the Cleveland water jump was 10 feet wide and many of the jumps, including the final simulated “Cleveland” wall, stood 5 feet tall. In the second round of competition, the wall was raised to 6 feet 2 inches. When they saw the course, some riders threatened to withdraw because they felt it was too difficult. The $3,000 prize purse, which was put up by J. Basil Ward, provided encouragement to take the risk and compete. A field of 29 horses piloted by 20 riders negotiated the course and discovered that although the course was difficult, it wasn’t impossible.
The Cleveland Grand Prix gave equestrians a new level to aspire to, and it gave North American spectators a thrilling new sport to watch.
TWO ACCOMPLISHED VETERANS
More than 10,000 people were cheering from the sidelines. Among the riders, only two—Mary and Frank Chapot—were experienced on a course of that caliber, due to their experience riding on the U.S. Equestrian Team. Mary had earned team and individual gold medals at the Pan American Games in Brazil in 1963 aboard her mare Tomboy and made her Olympic debut at the 1964 Games in Tokyo.
At age 19, Mary was the youngest rider on the U.S. Equestrian Team and became the first winner of the Cleveland Grand Prix, with Tomboy. In a new sport where men and women competed as equals, Mary topped the field and her husband, Frank, finished in second place aboard Manon. Third place went to the great rider Rodney Jenkins aboard Sure Thing.
Many think the humble Ohio roots in show jumping laid the groundwork to create a world power. Over the years, the United States Equestrian Team evolved to dominate international competition, earning numerous Olympic medals.
Betty Weibel is the author of The Cleveland Grand Prix: An American Show Jumping First (The History Press) and her most recent title , The Ohio Literary Trail: A Guide (The History Press). She has served on the boards of the Ohio History Connection and Ohio Humanities, and is currently a trustee of the Ohioana Library Association.
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When writing the full story of The Cleveland Grand Prix: An American Show Jumping First, several books ignited Weibel’s interest in this rich period of Cleveland history when the horse was king. John Grabowski’s Sports in Cleveland: An Illustrated History paints a particularly vivid picture of the horse world’s life and times.
A trip to the Western Reserve Historical Society archive library uncovered many treasures with the help of librarian Ann Sindelar. To wit: Christopher J. Eiben’s The Red Hand Forever: The Hugh M. O’Neill Family of Cleveland, Ohio, was a fascinating account of life from one of the horse world’s movers and shakers.
Finally, a beautiful publication compiled by Laura J. Gorretta and the Chagrin Falls Historical Society, Chagrin Falls: An Ohio Village History, is a worthy read. Fun history bits include photos of the current ground of the local high school when it was a top horse racing track and the site of gambling scandals.
For information about this year’s Chagrin Hunter Jumper Classic (July 3–14), visit chagrinhunterjumperclassic.org
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In 1968, the Chagrin Valley PHA Horse Show added a new water jump obstacle to the Cleveland Grand Prix.
Young Eyes on the Past
The Manhattan Project’s achievement—the first atomic bomb—is one of the most controversial and consequential events in modern history. The project’s outcome still affects domestic and international politics today and has profoundly impacted our current energy grid.
And it all started in 1942.
Many of us think of the Manhattan Project as having been a race against the Nazi Wunderwaffe (Wonder Weapon) project known as Uranprojekt (Uranium Project), led by Werner Heisenberg, one of the world’s top physicists at the time. To some extent, this is true, but most people don’t know the truth, which is that by 1942, the Nazis had already given up on the project for a number of reasons.
The first reason was that Germany lacked the resources and funding for the project, a result of being at war with three major nations. Another factor: Nazi ideology was incompatible with nuclear research. Hitler viewed atomic science as “Jewish science” and, hence, was reluctant to allocate resources to the cause.
It is important, however, for us to know that the Allied Powers and the Comintern (Soviet Sphere) did not know this at the time. With the Soviets unable to spare any resources and manpower to an unproven theory, the Allies were left to the task of creating a weapon that no one truly knew would work.
OPPENHEIMER IN CHARGE
The Manhattan Project was led by American J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the time.
There were three main project sites: Los Alamos (New Mexico), Oak Ridge (Tennessee) and Hanford (Washington). Los Alamos was where the “Gadget,” the name for the prototype bomb, was designed and constructed. It was also the site of the testing of the Gadget, code-named the Trinity Testing. Oak Ridge was tasked with enriching uranium-235 and sending that enriched uranium to Los Alamos. Finally, Hanford was instructed to produce uranium-238, convert it into plutonium-239 and then send it along to Los Alamos.
Ohio played an important role in the development of the Gadget. Based in Dayton, the “Dayton Project” was a subset of the Manhattan Project. There, the focus was on taking bismuth-209, turning it into polonium-210 and transferring it to Los Alamos. Polonium was then used to create the detonator for the prototype bomb that would start the fusion chain reaction after being activated.
DID THE BOMB END THE WAR?
Did the bombing and destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki end the war in the Pacific?
Some argue, rather, that the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo (modern day Manchuria) forced the Japanese to surrender. The thinking behind this is that the Japanese culture, people and ideology hated communism to such an extent that they surrendered to the West rather than face Soviet occupation.
The second argument—that the atomic bombings of Japan forced them to surrender—is the more widely believed of the two arguments. The Japanese cabinet was split 50/50 on whether to surrender or fight to the bitter end. The
man who broke the tie was Emperor Hirohito, who had never spoken to the public before.
Both arguments carry weight, and the end of the war was likely a mixture of both.
The Manhattan Project had several effects that continue to shape the world today. The effects of those bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki paved the way for cooling the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. It paved the way for the justification to overthrow regimes trying to obtain these weapons. And it led to a new doctrine in geopolitics that moved away from conventional wars toward proxy wars. Nuclear energy still makes up roughly 10 percent of global energy.
The Manhattan Project affects our world in a multitude of ways. Whether it has made our world better or worse is up to you.
John Mele is looking to be an aerospace engineer or a politician as a future career choice. His main hobbies are learning history, biking, public speaking, and learning about space.
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT BY JOHN MELE
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In 1986, the historian and journalist Richard Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for his magisterial The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan described the book as “a stirring intellectual adventure, and a clear, fast-paced, and indispensable history of events on which our future depends.”
The 1981 Jon H. Else documentary The Day After Trinity is available free at the Criterion Channel and on several other streaming services for $3.99. In his review of the film for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby wrote, “The beginning of the nuclear age is not a single subject but a series of subjects that lead one to another in an unending chain reaction … That this is tacitly recognized is the most valuable aspect of The Day After Trinity.”
One of the Atomic Heritage Foundation’s missions is “to help people find out more about the 600,000 men and women who worked on the Manhattan Project. The foundation’s website, ahf.nuclearmuseum.org, features an extensive timeline broken into more than half a dozen parts, including “1895 to 1937: Early Nuclear Science,” “1938 to 1939: Discovering Fission” and “1946 to 1949: Exploring Thermonuclear Weapons.”
A mushroom cloud, the aftermath of an atomic bomb explosion.
Young Eyes on the Past highlights work by Ohio students in grades 4–12 participating in regional, state and national History Day competitions organized annually by the Ohio History Connection and local sponsoring organizations statewide.
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Robert Oppenheimer at a blackboard working on the formula for atomic fusion.
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Shop our Ohio History Store in person at the Ohio History Center or online at ohiohistorystore.com for this title and more.
Native Americans of the Cuyahoga Valley: From Early Peoples to Contemporary Issues, edited by Peg Bobel and Linda G. Whitman
Ohio’s rich legacy of Indigenous culture has shone brightly in recent years, with the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks’ designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Hopewell Earthworks are scattered around the state’s south-central region, leaving Ohio’s northerly inhabitants to ask, “What comparable cultural richness might be found in our neck of the woods?”
Happily, a new book from the University of Akron Press explores that very question . Native Americans of the Cuyahoga Valley allows us to glimpse the deep and enduring Native American presence along the Cuyahoga.
The book’s premise is summed up in Michael J. Shott’s statement that “Native American history deserves just as much respect and study as does the much shorter history of Euro-Americans here.” Since Indigenous habitation of
this region spans millennia and predates written communication, the historian and the archaeologist must work together in understanding the past.
Linda G. Whitman’s introduction to the science of archaeology is therefore fitting, as is Brian G. Redmond’s eyeopening chapter on local archaeological evidence. Redmond places northeast Ohio’s Paleoindian population squarely in the context of the earliest known North American humans, who coexisted with mastodons and other megafauna some 13,000 years ago. He then follows the archaeological evidence through the Archaic, Woodland and Late Precontact periods.
Yet archaeology is not the end of the story. Since Native Americans still reside here, the journalist and sociologist play important roles as well. Whitman and Peg Bobel illustrate the Cuyahoga Valley’s shifting relationship with Native Americans over two centuries of forced removal and subsequent return, of contributions and misunderstandings.
Like many other historical research projects, Native Americans of the Cuyahoga Valley explicitly confronts the limitations inherent in non-Native perspectives on Native American heritage. It is no easy feat to describe both “here is where we must fail” and “here is why we nonetheless believe we can create a valuable historical-cultural resource.” If this book manages the feat imperfectly, it is certainly not alone in that regard. Kevin F. Kern’s chapter shows both the difficulty and the potential value of such an undertaking.
The value lies in a thoughtfully presented, well-researched study of the immense Native American presence in the Cuyahoga Valley’s past—and of the tragic post-contact era. All of us gain by understanding that presence and that tragedy a little better.
—Greg Sanders is a freelance writer who lives in the Cuyahoga Valley.
A latex-on-tile outdoor mural in Kent, Ohio, titled Love, by American Indian artist Edward George.
PEG BOBEL
Nature photographer Julia Edwards is a member of the Shawnee tribal nation. In the summer of 2023, she was a “Fish and Feathers” intern for Environment for the Americas at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
JULIA EDWARDS
A bronze-cast sculpture created by Onondaga artist Peter Jones can be seen on the corner of Merriman Road and North Portage Path in Akron. The sculpture depicts a Native American man hoisting a canoe.
The Ohio History Connection’s State Historic Preservation Office presented a Preservation Merit Award to Ohio
and
for the rehabilitation
See more State Historic Preservation Office Awards on page 12.
Wesleyan University
Schooley Caldwell
of historic Slocum Hall at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware. Built as a library, Slocum Hall opened in 1898.
Commodore Oliver Perry featured in Perry’s Victory painted by William Powell of Cincinnati
