Strolling Through the Last Five Years of Seneca Strolls Blog Articles

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

January 2025 marked the fifth anniversary of the Seneca Strolls blog. Little did any of us know at the time that within a few short months of its debut in January 2020 that our world would get turned upside down.

The photo booth at the old Schine’s Theater in downtown Tiffin. The sign says adult tickets cost 20 cents. Originally featured in the March 2021 article on theater.

The theme of this inaugural article was pizza, a major snack consumed in record amounts during the annual Super Bowl of the National Football League on the first Sunday in February. This American tradition is an event that brings together friends and family and makes people feel, if even for a short time, a sense of solidarity from either rooting for one of the teams or comparing notes about the much-anticipated commercials.

Who would have thought that a few months later, we’d all become isolated in our homes, and our sense of solidarity had reached the opposite end of the spectrum and was now fixated on feelings of fear, hopelessness, and loneliness?

If there’s anything that both history and the pandemic taught us, it’s that people are resilient and strive to find meaning in all aspects of life. This is part of the reason we value the past and seek to remember both the good and the ugly.

The Seneca Strolls blog, brought to you by the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, is a great way to learn the good and the ugly that happened in Seneca County since its beginning. Each month focuses on a different theme and showcases how Seneca County and its citizens fit into wider historical themes that shaped America and modern society.

We are the living proof of our ancestors’ resilience. Why not celebrate our survival? So, looking back at last five years, here’s some re-caps and statistics of the 60 Seneca Strolls blogs written thus far.

A coal truck participates in the 1976 Bicentennial Parade in Tiffin. This photo came from the 1976 Bicentennial Parade Photo Album on the SCDL and was originally featured in the December 2023 article on coal.

All of the local sources used in the Seneca Strolls blog are digitized documents on the Seneca County Digital Library (SCDL), an online database of Seneca County history featuring over 3,000 items. The SCDL can be accessed on any device regardless of your physical location.

The first set of documents that were scanned onto the SCDL were the Calvert and Columbian High School yearbooks. References to editions of Columbian’s “Blue and Gold” annuals have been made in the Seneca Strolls blogs a total of 31 times with six photos being highlighted. There were 10 references to the “Calvertana” with two photos having been shown. In addition, the former Junior Home’s “Maroon and White” from 1930 has been cited twice, as well as Hopewell-Loudon’s “Scarlet and Gray”.

The most popular items for accompanying photographs in the blog articles are currently tied between two resources that directly correspond to celebrating our history – the 1976 Bicentennial Parade Photograph Album and the 1967 Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial Program book. A combined total of eight photographs have been used from these two resources.

The most widely-used items for extracting historical references were (in order): Seneca County History & Families (17), Between the Eighties (14), Seneca County History Volume I and The What, How & Who of It: an Ohio Community (both tied at 9), and Reminiscences of the Early Day Days of Tiffin and Tiffin’s 75th Anniversary Souvenir (both tied at 8).

Gentleman from the National (Machinery) Pinochle Club are focused on their cards (and next move). Card playing has been a traditional past-time for centuries. Originally featured in the October 2020 article on card games.

Commemorative village histories from the different municipalities throughout Seneca County have also served to be valuable resources. The following have all been used in at least half a dozen different blog articles: A History of New Riegel, the Bascom Area Sesquicentennial 1987, the 1954 Fostoria Centennial Souvenir, A History of Bettsville, and Omar: A Community of Memories.

The themes of the Seneca Strolls blog articles vary from general themes like electricity (Sept. 2020), candy (Jan. 2021), music and gardening to more niche subjects such as log cabins (June 2021), apples (April 2022), or bicycles (August 2023).

Each month the current blog article is shared on the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library’s Facebook page with a little summary of the theme or an excerpt quote from the article. One of the two-four featured photos is chosen as the accompanying photograph.

We highly encourage our patrons to start discussions about the topic on these posts. Some posts have even included “ice-breaker” questions, like “what is your favorite ice cream flavor? from July 2024. Our best discussion yet from all the Seneca Strolls articles shared on Facebook featured the live auction of Louisa K. Fast’s house and contents in the fall of 1978. Louisa K. Fast was a suffragette raised in Tiffin.  

What would you like to see covered in a future blog article? There are several ways to let us know. Either comment on this Facebook and/or Instagram post, or if you are reading the article on the Seneca Strolls web page, leave a comment there. Additionally, you can contact the writer of these articles directly (Emily Rinaman) at rinamaem@tiffinsenecalibrary.org.

What a small (or big) hat this is!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

The Mad Hatter, a character from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”, was inspired by the booming hat trade in his hometown of Stockport, England. The millinery business was a booming trade across the bond, too, in Tiffin.

The word millinery is inspired by the city of Milan, Italy, where the elaborate hat designs of the Victorian era were born.

Callie Shoup was a very successful milliner in Tiffin, Ohio. She employed extra hat trimmers during busy seasons, including Easter and the fall. This photo is from the Tiffin Sesquicenntennial 1967 book.

While hats at that point had become a major fashion statement, hats were worn by everyone as part of the every-day wardrobe. Before automobiles, they served the function of protection one’s hair and face from dirt, wind, bugs and the sun.

The Willett Bowne & Co.’s Hat and Cap Store sold hats and umbrellas in tandem. Bowne additionally would re-design used hats to make them “like new” again.

Many seamstresses who owned shopfronts made hats as well. Any number of them could be found in Tiffin at one time or another. Even all the small villages throughout the county had at least one milliner, including Bettsville, Bloomville, Adrian, New Riegel, Republic, Risingsun, Melmore and Green Springs. With hats being a daily accessory, the demand was high.

The female millineries sold “fancy goods” with their hats, such as jewelry, notions, ribbons and other furnishings.

Millinery shops like Shoup Millinery were a staple for the Victorian economy since most people wore a hat as part of their standard wardrobe on a daily basis. This photo came from Myron Barnes’s “Between the Eighties” book on SCDL.

Ribbons were one way women often had their hats decorated. Martha Gibson, who wrote “Reminiscenes of the Early Days of Tiffin,” recalled that when her family moved to Ohio from Maryland, her mother wore a hat “trimmed with green satin ribbon with strings from the crown to draw it to the chin.” This style of hat of a trend during the middle 1800s when many pioneers were settling in the Midwest, but by the end of the 19th century were only worn by “middle-aged” women.

This is just one example of how hat styles, like clothes, changed with the seasons and one day a trend would be “in” and the next it would be “out.” For example, Miss Callie Shoup who had more than one millinery on Washington Street, would employ up to six extra hat trimmers during the Easter season and in the fall.

During the spring and summer women wore more airy and lightweight hats with veils over the face as natural sunscreen, which they switched out for heavier (and warmer) hats in the colder months that used velvet and felt.

An advertisement in an 1869 issue of Advertiser-Tribune announced, “the bonnet of the coming season is smaller with little trimming on the sides, no strings, and dressed in bright, flashy colors.”

Eva Auspberger’s Millinery, one of dozens that once graced Tiffin, Ohio’s streets.

The size and shape of the hats were often dictated by the size and shape of the hairstyles. Larger hairdos meant larger hats and vice versa.

Women in Seneca County would often “depend entirely upon Miss Heisser for the latest Parisian Styles,” states the 1891-1892 Historical and Business Review of Seneca County. Heisser Millinery and Fancy Goods at 64 E. Market St. carried hats, bonnets, ribbons, feathers, plumes and other trimmings.

Feathers and whole stuffed birds were the “in thing” for hats throughout the 1880s. With the upper class, the type of bird drove the cost of the hat—imported birds like ostrich and peacock were the most expensive.

Gibson also recalled one of her family members once looking “very becoming” in a gray felt hat dressed with gray ostrich plumes.

By the early 1900s when Gibson was married and wore a wedding hat “trimmed with a wreath of delicate white flowers,” floral accents had replaced aviary decorations on feminine hats.

“The popularly of large feathers and stuffed birds on the hats caused concern for the welfare and population of birds and many protective laws took effect,” notes the Vintage Dancer website. Only feathers that had naturally fallen from farm-raised ostriches could be used at this point.

Garden hats as hats trimmed with flowers were called, could have either dried or lace flowers along with twigs and leaves and were most often worn in the summer.

Men had their fair share of hat styles to choose from and be governed by as well.

One of the most well known male milliner in Seneca County was Charles Leiner, who began a hat business in 1852 with his son, Henry, joining him in business in 1890 and later, his grandson, Karl. Karl’s son, Charles, named after his great-grandfather, took over in 1950.

Earl Erastus Bowe, the grandson of the founder of Tiffin (Erastus Bowe), was head clerk of the business.

Works Cited:

Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65422

Gibson, Martha. Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin. 1967.  https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997

Howe, Barbara. Building of the Week. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28064

Iannantuono, Dawn. History of 155 Frost Parkway. Seneca County Digital Library.
https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53274

Historical and Business Review of Seneca County, 1891-1892. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15697

History of Eden Township and Melmore. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29665

Seneca County Digital Library, Tiffin City Directories.
https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search/searchterm/Directories/field/subjec/mode/exact/conn/and

Smith, Howard. The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community. 1997. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15879

Seneca County Museum Newsletter. Sept. 1998.

Terrell, Ellen. “Millinery as a Top Industry for Women.” April 5, 2023. Library of Congress blogs. https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2023/04/millinery-industry-for-women/

Vintage Dancer. “Edwardian Ladies’ Hats History 1900s-1910s.” https://vintagedancer.com/1900s/history-titanic-hats-edwardian-era/

You Can Have Your Pie -- and Eat It, Too

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

The modern slogan “a new year, a new you” typically refers to the popular resolution to be healthier, including warding off junk food like sweets. After a holiday season full of treats like the gamut of pies, many people are ready for a return to “normal”.

While pies are a staple figure at the holiday table, its not just their delicious flavors that keeps them favorable, but the traditions behind why we include them in our menus are equally important.

A Toledo Pie Company delivery truck—the company provided pies to numerous restaurants around the city. This postcard image belongs to the Toledo-Lucas Public Library and the digital copy is found on the Ohio Memory Project website.

Tastes do change, but there are a certain set of “classic” options and also regional favorites.

In Tiffin and Seneca County, these choices included pies of both the sweet and savory kind, particularly rhubarb pie, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie and chicken pot pie.

Chicken Pie was a staple at the Ideal Dairy Lunch at 40 South Washington St., an “all home-cooking” restaurant in town in the early 1900s.

Pies were such as staple food because they were extremely versatile and the crust served as a container, especially for the working class who “packed” their lunch.

Chicken (pot) pie, like many other similar “pies,” was considered a leftover dish to our ancestors. As winter wore on and the fresh and canned ingredients continually dwindled, meat pies were a way to beef up (or chicken up) an empty pantry.

A 1910 Thanksgiving menu for the Chittenden Hotel in Columbus lists mince pie and pumpkin pie as the desserts.

“If a family was poor or working class, they ate mutton from old sheep and the beef from dairy cows. Families from the higher classes who owned land and hunting rights were able to eat pies made from fresh game and fish. The wealthiest, high-class people ate their pies made from pigeons they specifically raised to provide meat during the winter,” explains the University of Wyoming.

While adding the word “pie” to the word chicken seems like a misnomer, the word mincemeat (pie) actually is one, as modern versions contain currants and apples spiced with nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. One local author claimed that Tiffinites of English (British) backgrounds enjoyed mincemeat pie at Thanksgiving and there could be some truth to this opinion as mincemeat pie was sometimes served at English kings’ coronations.

To the common folk, it became a New Year’s Eve good luck charm. It was typically made on the last Sunday of Advent, stirred clockwise only (for good fortune and health) by each member of the family while making a wish, and eaten every day from Christmas Eve through Jan. 5 (the traditional 12 Days of Christmas).

Michael Mortimer describes, “a warm mince pie would keep you happy as the storms raged outside the window”.

The more popular holiday favorite among many Americans, including Ohioans, but still a very seasoned (both old and spiced) is the classic pumpkin pie.

In the past, pumpkin pie was a favorite throughout the entire autumn season.

In the 1927 Calvertana yearbook, its mentioned that the junior class served pumpkin pie at its Hallowe’en party. Tiffin University likewise served pumpkin pie along with cider and donuts at its Halloween party in the mid-1930s.

Pumpkin pie, along with sausage, was even thought of as a staple food for teachers in Seneca County at one time as it was given as a bonus with their salaries.

A group of people pose with slices of pie (some look like they can’t wait to eat it). This photo belongs to the Columbus College of Art and Design and has been digitized on the Ohio Memory Project, to which the Seneca County Digital Library belongs.

Pumpkin is, after all, a native plant in North America. Early settlers found many ways to make it. The precursor to pumpkin pie as we know it was taking a hollowed-out pumpkin and cooking a custard inside of it directly over an open fire.

After a cold football game on Thanksgiving Day 1919, the Junior Home football team was treated by its opponent, Maumee High School, to a holiday dinner of ham sandwiches, pickles, donuts and pumpkin pie.

The best part of eating pie, though, is the company with whom you are eating it or the occasion on which it’s being served.

The Tiffin Woman’s Club proclaims in one of its annual programs digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library that “sharing a piece of pie and a cup of coffee” was one of its members most favorite activities. During the 1960s, the club’s Civic Department even had a “Coffee and Pie Chairman.”

Schools in the area made a pie social one of its main social events of the year. These were like a Christmas program on … sugar. Following the children’s “recitations, dialogues, plays and songs,” a boxed lunch was served which included a pie auction for dessert. The money raised help off-set the purchase of library books, art supplies, maps, and other materials the school needed.

Rhubarb Pie seemed to be the grand finale of the pie season, being served around graduation.

“Back in the day when they ate nothing but preserved fruits for months and then you come into spring and rhubarb is coming up out of the ground, it’s a signal of rebirth,” recounts Lindsey Hollenbaugh.

The Junior Home even made a school song called Rhubarb Pie that was sang at the Dad Kernan memorial dinner. It goes, “All we get to eat are beans and peas. But if I die, I will not cry, ‘cause all we get to eat is Rhubarb Pie. Some like it hot, some like it cold, all we get to eat is Rhubarb Pie”.

Works cited:

Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33669

Barksdale, Nate. “The History of Pumpkin Pie.” Nov. 21, 2014. https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-pumpkin-pie

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316

Calvert High School. Calvertana 1927. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4777

Hollenbaugh, Lindsey. “Uncovering Pie’s Deep History in New England Culture.” Nov. 10, 2015. Berkshire Eagle. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_and_culture/food/uncovering-pies-deep-history-in-new-england-culture/article_d1eb5cae-d3ec-5474-9641-e9a9523a844c.html

Junior Homekid. August 1997.  Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/49575

Junior Homekid. December 1995. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48800

Iannantuono, Dawn. History of 155 Parkway. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53274

Mortimer, Michael. “The History of Mince Pies.” Dec. 14, 2016. Walker’s Shortbread. https://www.walkersshortbread.com/the-history-of-mince-pies/#:~:text=Mince%20pies%20were%20first%20served,curing%2C%20smoking%20or%20drying%20it.

Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History and Families”. 1998. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319

Tiffin University. “Tystenac 1936-1937”. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/46145

Tiffin Columbian High School. Columhi 1914. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/24858

Terrell, Ellen. “A Brief History of Pumpkin Pie in America.” Nov. 20, 2017. Library of Congress Blogs. https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2017/11/a-brief-history-of-pumpkin-pie-in-america/

University of Wyoming. “Savory Pot Pie.” https://uwyoextension.org/uwnutrition/newsletters/savory-pot-pie/

The Magic of Christmas is all around us

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

“While many people in the Western world today generally do not believe in actual magic, Christmas is the one time of the year that this word is commonly used and people entertain notions that they would usually reject, like the idea that miracles are possible,” notes Nathaniel Parry in an article on Medievalists.net.

What exactly do people mean by “the magic of Christmas”? Magic is a very open-ended word that could mean different things to different people. There’s magic done with words (spells), magic performed with objects or objects that are magical in and of themselves, and magic can be seen as simply a concept for things that happen beyond our understanding.

Folklore are stories with magical undertones that have been passed down for several generations. Like the game of telephone, the details of the story may change over time. Seneca County has its own share of magical stories and even “magicians.” At the very least, its residents have been enamored by the idea of magic.

Magic, like many things, is simply a word but also a grand concept, with people and objects used to illustrate it.

To many new immigrants in Seneca County, the word “democracy” conjured a sense of magic. Myron Barnes in “Between the Eighties,” explains that the “personal freedom” the United States offered after living under the rule of a monarchy or even socialism, was a magical concept.

There is a legend that the Indian Maid statue on Frost Parkway in Tiffin, Ohio, protects the city from severe devastation of tornadoes.

One Junior Homekid in the August 1993 edition of the Junior Homekid newspaper points out that “homecoming” is a magic word. It conjures a “mirage of feelings,” because the act of coming home is usually a pleasant one. Often at Christmas, family members who have moved away “come home” to be with parents, siblings, extended family and other loved ones.

Another Junior Homekid in the December 2007 Homekid newspaper says that Christmas “makes houses into homes, makes bright lights brighter, turns childrens’ laughter into a symphony of joy, makes the older folks become children again, turns acquaintances into friends and relatives into family.”

Oh, and how could one forget? He also illustrates that Christmas makes the snow more beautiful. Did someone say snow? Yes, snow. Because nature and its elements have been seen with a magical eye for millennia.

“The magic stillness of the snow sifting down so very slow always makes me want to know why it covers things just so,” wrote Phoebe Coleman in a poem submitted to the Young America Sings.

In Seneca County, Native Americans once viewed the “emerald water” near Green Springs as magical, a belief that carried into Victorian times when a health resort was built that promised physical healing to its visitors. The Native Americans in their own words even called it, “medicine water,” and when Europeans settled here, they went so far as to bottle and sell it.

Calvert students in the Glee Club perform in a play called “The Fortune Teller” in 1958.

Native Americans believed that spirit existed in everything from animals to plants. Many plants today continue to be used for medicinal properties, even if they are often manufactured under the disguise of science.  It was no accident that in the story of the Nativity, Jesus was brought frankincense and myrrh, two oils extracted from plants that were believed to have the magical ability to ward off evil and extend life beyond death.

Further into history, juniper, an evergreen used to decorate for Christmas, was burnt for the same purpose.

While the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) made an appearance in Seneca County as late in the spring as May 2024, it’s normally more common in the dark winter months, especially in Upper Canada closer to that magical place, the North Pole. (You know the one – where Santa Claus lives).

During long, dark days, colored lights illuminating the sky is nothing short of magical. Especially around here where Tiffinites and others get a very rare (sometimes once-in-a-lifetime) chance to see them, it’s a spectacularly magical event. In the 1947 Blue and Gold Yearbook, Edward McFerren wrote a poem about them, calling it “Magic Night.”

Works cited:

“Between the Eighties,” Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65422

Junior Homekid, August 1993. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/49013

Junior Homekid, December 2007. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/49678

Coleman, Phoebe. “Snowtime.” Young America Sings. National Poetry Association, 1958. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/50822

McFerren, Edward. “Magic Night.” Columbian Blue and Gold Yearbook 1947. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/7466

Green Springs Centennial Committee. Green Springs Centennial. 1972. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439

Parry, Nathaniel. “The Ancient Origins of Christmas Magic.” https://www.medievalists.net/2022/12/ancient-origins-christmas-magic/

Here lies Ms. Belle Bowen at Rest … or Not

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change,” reflects Mary Shelley in her classic, “Frankenstein.” Frankenstein, written in an era when diseases for which modern medicine can treat easily with antibiotics were fatal.

It was also written in an era when modern medicine was just beginning to blossom. Medical schools were rapidly cropping up around the nation, yet at the same time, bodies were disappearing from their graves.

This was the era of grave robberies, when corpses from fresh graves were stolen in the middle of the night and transported to college campuses with doctors-in-training who needed to learn human anatomy.

An era was, unlike Frankenstein, it was not the stuff of legend – it was real. In this month’s blog we are sharing a local “horror” story of our own from “Omar: A Community of Memories”, but this one is not fiction.

The Omar Cemetery where Belle Bowen, who died of consumption (tuberculosis) at age 18, is buried.

It begins, “On Sept. 8, 1886, Belle L. Bowen, daughter of John M. and Isabel Bowen, a beautiful and very popular lady of the area, died of consumption (age 18) and was buried at the little country cemetery at Omar (in Reed Township). The night following her funeral, the body of a young woman was discovered in a truck at Toledo, sent by train from the town of Bellevue. Martin E. Wilson, a medical student from Attica, was arrested for grave robbery or murder when he presented his claim check for the trunk. A second man, Dr. H.G. Blaine, also of Attica and Wilson’s mentor, was arrested on the same charges in Bellevue when he showed up there to pick up his horse and buggy, which had been borrowed and left there by Wilson. He was taken to Attica by Marshall Korner of Bellevue to consult an attorney. This case was a peculiarly reprehensible one, in that both men were acquainted with the deceased and her family. The fact that she was almost a neighbor made the offense more heinous.”

Those who succumbed to consumption (tuberculosis) were ideal candidates for grave robbers and the medical professors who claimed the stolen bodies because consumption slowly caused the victim to become thin, making their bodies easier to dissect post-mortem. Since Wilson and Blaine would have known that Belle had died from consumption shows some pre-determined planning to take her after her death.

Our story continues, “Mayor Harmon of Attica hastened to tell Mr. Silcox, brother-in-law of John Bowen and he at once hurried to the Bowen residence. Taking a half-dozen men with him to the cemetery, the bereaved father made his way and there the grave was opened. The casket was lifted out and all present were horrified to discover the body missing. Starting for Bellevue, Mr. Bowen soon met on the road two men who told him where he could find the body of his child. He and his brother, W.R. Bowen started at once for Toledo.”

Most of the cadavers supplied were bodies of convicted felons, the poor, or unclaimed individuals. There were major incentives to becoming a grave robber. The demand for bodies not yet in decay paid a high price – by the professors themselves. In today’s money, they provided a $3,000/corpse reward. In Belle’s case, this served as the main motivation for the abuse of her corpse.

A railroad map from 1898 shows the route Belle Bowen’s body would have taken from the Attica Station to Bellevue before heading on its way to the Toledo Medical College. This is a clipping from a map of the railroads in the entire state and can be found on Ohio Memory.

Our tale now turns to the courtroom … “Wilson refused to be interviewed at the same time as Blaine and would say nothing whatever. He was raised in a poorhouse and lived in the Blaine home while pursuing his medical training. He would have graduated from the Toledo Medical School the following month (following the incident). As he was entirely out of funds, it was thought that the faculty of the college offered him the balance of his tuition fee if he would furnish them with one or more bodies.”

Often, if grave robbers were caught, there weren’t major punishments. “The convicted were given a fine or imprisoned for a short term. Lawyers argued that because the previous occupant had vacated the body, its ownership was in doubt,” explains Antero Pietila in a Smithsonian article. Generally, upper society welcomed the advancement of medical discoveries, so long as it was not being done to their own class. Belle’s case is one exception to the rule since the Bowen family was a respected family in the area.

But our tale has a somewhat happy ending, depending on how you personally view the situation.

“Both men appeared before a grand jury. Dr. Blaine was acquitted on March 13, 1887 of any complicity in the case. He returned to his practice and later established the first hospital in Chicago Junction (Willard). Wilson was subsequently found guilty and served a brief prison sentence, after which he finished medical school and married his fiancé whom he had been engaged to when the crime occurred. He became a highly respected physician in Bettsville, held elective positions in the community and the Masons, and helped found the local bank. He died in 1925 at the bedside of a patient.”

To read the story of Belle Bowen in its entirety, visit the Seneca County Digital Library to find “Omar: A Community of Memories.” (A link is included in the “Works Cited” section).

From records found on Ancestry.com (free access available at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library and any library within the state of Ohio), Belle Bowen had an older brother 9 years her senior, Selwin, and an older sister 6 years her senior, Alice. Her mother died 7 years after Belle at the age of 52. Her father died in Fort Wayne, Indiana the same year as Dr. Wilson – 1925 – at the age of 88. Her sister Alice, had one son, John, with her husband and lived in Defiance until 1907 when they moved to Fort Wayne. Brother Selwin and his wife also lived in Defiance with their two sons, Glenn and Walter. By 1910 he was a traveling salesman for a baking company based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Works cited:

Lepard, Larry. Omar: A Community of Memories. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41429

Bauer Addicen. “The Long Strange History of Grave Robbing and its Modern Counterpart”. June 2023. Slate. https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/harvard-medical-school-body-stealing-history.html

Pietila, Antero. “In Need of Cadavers, 19th Century Medical Students Raided Baltimore’s Graves.” Oct. 25, 2018. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-need-cadavers-19th-century-medical-students-raided-baltimores-graves-180970629/

Rimer, Julie. “Body Snatching in the 1800s.” https://cemeteryindex.com/wordpress/featured-cemeteries/mt-washington-cemetery/julie-rimer-historical-ramblings/body-snatching-in-the-1800s/

Cornwell, Allen. “Robbing Graves in 19th Century America: Nightmares of the Past.” Jan. 2016. https://www.ourgreatamericanheritage.com/2016/01/body-snatchers-were-the-subject-of-nightmares-for-many-in-19th-century-america/

Ancestry.com

Columbus Lithograph Co. “Railroad of Ohio: 1898”. Ohio Memory. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll2/id/854

But first, let me take a selfie

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

While cell phone data plans aren’t cheap, the wide majority of individuals still have a personal phone. Today, one can snap a photo of himself or herself at any given moment of the day using his or her cell phone and social media is littered with people’s self-made photographs in all sorts of scenarios. But even just 100 years ago, getting an image of oneself made was an extravagant affair.

Only the rich could afford to hire an artist to paint portraits and those portraits were often the only image that was created of someone in his or her entire lifetime. They had to have the free time to sit still for hours as the artist painted them. The larger the painting, the more expensive it was, not just for the amount of materials needed, but for the length of time it took the artist to finish it.

A graduation portrait for Junior Home student, Dorothy, done by George Brihl Studios of Tiffin in the 1930s.

George Brihl owned Brihl Studios at 78 S. Washington, and he specialized in portraits with hand-carved frames. Other portrait options for Seneca County residences were Cooper Walter, John Stephens, Wesley Edmiston, and Jordan Norval, who also painted landscapes.

William Boehler advertised himself as a “free hand” portrait artist.

Miniatures (to be displayed in lockets) were cheaper versions of portraits. Likewise, cameos were carved portraits made into jewelry during the Victorian era. Shadow portraits (silhouetted profiles) became a trend for awhile, too, as a cheaper alternative to a detailed portrait.

C.A. Gribble, who was a photographer in Tiffin in the 1880s and 1890s, advertised that he did “all kinds of work executed from the common size photograph to a life-sized portrait in crayon, water color or India ink.

Even when cameras and photography replaced portraiture, a daguerreotype “selfie” cost close to the equivalent of three months of wages.

This extravagance did exist in Seneca County, although it was criticized. In the book Seneca County Sketches, which has been fully digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library, Myron Barnes states, “there were 2 daguerreotype studios to record pictures of brides and babies, and vain citizens who couldn’t afford to have their portrait painted.”

While Barnes may have thought getting one’s photo was vain, there was any number of photographers operating in Tiffin, including O.P. Frees on 68 South Washington, Irvin Dicken on 121 Perry, James Ball of the Biles Studio at 115 ½ S. Main St., Barclay Pennington on the top floor of the Grummel and Remmele Block Building (136-144 S. Washington), and Oscar Tuneson, “the leading photograph in Tiffin for many years,” at the corner of Madison and Washington.

Sketches of school board members for Tiffin Schools. Portraits were one of the many luxuries only those with ample amounts of money could afford, and done only sporadically, often even only once, in a person’s lifetime.

Any good photography studio would have required a sitting area with large windows to allow natural light. One way photographers circumvented shadows cast was the use of props and ways the subjects posed. Since getting one’s photograph taken was a major event, people made it and adventure and persuaded the photographer to pose in ways or use props that illustrated their personalities. People often referred a photograph of oneself as their “likeness.”

Family portraits and photographs were also extremely important events. Traveling photographers would schedule home visits to take photographs of people in front of their own homes (in the natural light). In a way this was like social media, because getting photographed with one’s treasures was one way to show off. “Whether you were a family with social climbing aspirations or a recently arrived immigrant wanting to send good news back home, a family portrait was a highly effective way to support your storyline of success”.

On the flip side, people also remembered the fickleness of life and family portraits were a sacred way to memorialize loved ones after death. “Families realized a family portrait would capture the family during the limited time they were all together. Preserving that memory seemed worth making financial sacrifices to achieve.”

A family portrait of a young boy and possibly his grandfather, taken by Mr. Pennington at his studio on Washington Street. Family portraits were a way to memorialize loved one’s short time together before death often snatched people prematurely.

Once photography was well established, it became standard practice to have class photographs made for primary and secondary schools. An advertisement in the 1922 Blue and Gold yearbook for Miller’s Studio reads, “Be Photographed. Photography is Portraiture. The gift that has personality that is you.”

Just fifteen years later, the Boles-Dandurand Studio (Portrait and Illustrative Photography) was the hired photographer in the area for school and college photographs.

A the old saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” With photography, it’s no different. Children in schools are getting their school portraits taken throughout September. Activity portraits use the equipment (helmets, balls, band instruments) and have the athletes pose in stances reflective of that activity. Teams take group photos. And parents will purchase packages with these portraits in varying sizes and prices to give to family members.

Works cited:

75th Anniversary Souvenir. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1938. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/2967

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1922. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/993

Seneca County Digital Library, Tiffin City Directories.
https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search/searchterm/Directories/field/subjec/mode/exact/conn/and

Toriano, Catherine. “The History of Portrait Photography.” National Trust. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/art-collections/the-history-of-portrait-photography-through-national-trust-collections

Kukulski, Mike. “A Brief History of Photography, Part 11: Early Portrait Photography.” Oct. 16, 2014.  Not Quite in Focus. https://notquiteinfocus.com/2014/10/16/a-brief-history-of-photography-part-11-early-portrait-photography/

Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33669

I wanna rock!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Within the three glass cases at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library displaying historic items are two personal collections of Native American artifacts. These display cases change seasonally and T-SPL is currently providing a Native American themed display from Independence Day through Columbus Day, also known as Indigenous Peoples Day, to honor the 100th anniversary of the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

The two personal collections together contain one dozen arrowheads and other tools once used by Native Americans either residing or passing through (most likely hunting) Ohio. One set was found entirely in Morrow County and the other set has pieces found in Seneca County.

What’s significant about these pieces are that they were hand-crafted by their owners using local resources. Most often, Native Americans in and around Ohio used different types of chert and flint, including Delaware chert, Upper Mercer flint, Flint Ridge flint, tan flint, black chert, Pipe Creek flint, and white flint. These rock types are located through other parts of Ohio, excluding Seneca County, so Native Americans would have had to extract the resource elsewhere and bring it here. (Flint Ridge in Licking and Muskingum Counties was a major resource).

The most common rock types in Seneca County are sandstone and limestone, created by the sediments left behind by an ancient glacial lake called Lake Maumee (the remnants of which is Lake Erie). While these rock types may not have been popular choices for arrowheads and the like, limestone is a versatile and valuable product. 

Ohio Memorial Church on the grounds of the former Junior Home in Tiffin is one of many buildings in the area made partially from local limestone.

The eastern portion of Seneca County, which is more elevated and drained more effectively than the Great Black Swamp to the west, contains Lower Corniferous Limestone, particularly Scipio, Bloom, Eden and Adams Townships. Upper Corniferous limestone is present in Bloom and Thomas Townships.  

The Ohio Memorial Church on the Junior Home grounds used 150 tons of cut limestone. The greenhouse on the same property also used gray limestone. The old courthouse used Amherst and Berea grit sandstone.

Niagara Dolomite Limestone is particularly found in “unusually high” amounts in Jackson, Liberty, Pleasant, Hopewell and Loudon Townships. This area of the county is known as the “lacustrine region” and the soil is so rocky that the top tips of this limestone often juts out of the ground.

Liberty Township in particular is a “remarkably stony” area, according to the Seneca County Atlas Maps – surveyors had discovered one area with surface limestone that is one mile wide and three miles long.

Historically, other spots within the county where the rock jutted above the soil were three spots in Jackson Township, two spots in Hopewell Township, two spots in Pleasant Township, one being a bluish hued limestone near Fort Seneca, and numerous spots within Liberty Township (many along Wolf Creek).

Additionally, a continuous exposure has been carved along the banks of the Sandusky River in the north half of the county. In other parts of the county, the bedrock was buried about 20-30 feet below the surface. Attica is the highest point in the county and it takes up to 60 feet in its parts to reach rock.

When the first pioneers settled in these townships, they dug out limestone boulders from their new properties and built fencerows with them.

An aerial view of Basic Refractories, Inc. (also known as Maple Grove to locals), a limestone dolomite quarry situated right outside Bettsville, Ohio, which has operated for over 120 years. This photo is located inside the Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1967 book on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Ohio is one of the top producing states for limestone, which can be crushed for use in concrete, asphalt and cement or agricultural fertilizer (powdered lime). It’s also a component in many household products like carpet, vinyl, fiberglass, porcelain, chalk and more.

Many buildings throughout the county are also made from limestone or sandstone. According to the Seneca County History Volume 1, the Upper Corniferous limestone was more durable for foundations and walls of buildings.

In 1903, John Holran opened Basic Refractories, Inc. (also known as Maple Grove to locals). Employees stripped the soil, and hauled away crushed limestone on the Nickel Plate Railroad, which spread around the country for the edges of new highways and railways. In 1908 it changed hands to Howard P. Eels, owner of the Bucyrus Steam Shovel Company. He built a kiln on the property in 1917 to capitalize on the country’s shortage of dolomite, a necessity for the steel industry, during World War I (the United States had previously brought the mineral in from Austria).

On a smaller scale, the Lands in Lodi book on the Seneca County Digital Library paints the tale of John Wolf, a Seneca County resident who hand-built the first stone road in Reed Township in 1905. “He knew of a place on his farm (TR 79 near the intersection of SR 162) where the limestone was very near the surface. Stripping off the top soil after he built a stone crusher, he proceeded to blast and crush enough stone for the road that summer.” This ingenuity led him to start the John F. Wolf, Crushed Stone and Sand, business.

While the Basic quarry near Bettsville still exists, there were many more throughout Seneca County as its located within a wider area of northwest Ohio (including portions of eastern Indiana and southeast Michigan) known as the “Findlay Arch Mineral District.”

A conveyor belt at France Quarry in Bloomville. This photo was published in the Webster Manufacturing 75th Anniversary book, which can be viewed on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Tiffin once had a quarry on East Davis Street until the 1913 flood filled it. It was known as the Weott Lime Quarry and was filled in and leveled after the tragic flood took 15 lives, some of whom lived in nearby houses. Another, known as Quarry No. 1, was located on Washington Street and Quarry No. 2, the “city quarry”, was about one quarter mile away. Quarry No. 3 was in the southern section of the city.

Fostoria also had a quarry called the Pelton Quarry, which is now a small lake.

Other various -sized quarries within Seneca County at the turn of the century were the France & Son Stone Quarry (east of Bloomville), the Kohler & Geiger Stone Quarry and the Tiffin Lime, Building & Sandstone Co. A special line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran through Bloomville, was built especially for the France Quarry. Henry Creeger had a small quarry in Hopewell Township in an that was rich in both clay and limestone.

Ohio and Seneca County have areas with quartz fragments and shale (a clay-like soil), including Hamilton Shale, Huron Shale and black shale in the very southeastern corner of the county. In some cases, the clay soils of southern Seneca County contain small traces of limestone.

Sandstone (naturally cemented grains of sand), especially Oriskany Sandstone, is more common in the eastern portions of Seneca County (Adams, Clinton and Eden Townships), is found in the areas where the edge of the glacial lake held beaches. It’s been commonly seen in liners for steel furnaces, computer chips, glass, fiberglass, TV screens, and golf-course trap sand.

Additionally, within the aforementioned Basic Quarry, Calcite, Celestite, Dolomite crystals, Fluorite, Marcasite, Pyrite, Fossils have all been found.

Works cited:

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316

Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “Common Rocks and Their Uses.” https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/rock-minerals-fossils/common-rocks#:~:text=The%20geology%20of%20Ohio%20provides,or%20quarried%20throughout%20the%20state.

Durrett, John. History of Bettsville. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Georarities. “What Kind of Minerals and Crystals Can Be Found in Ohio?” Dec. 2022. https://georarities.com/2022/12/13/what-kind-of-minerals-and-crystals-can-be-found-in-ohio/

History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17928

Junior Order of United American Mechanics Home, Tiffin (Ohio). History of the National Orphans Home. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4339/rec/1

Lands in Lodi. West Lodi Historical Society, 2007. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44538/rec/2

Seneca County Digital Library, Ohio Memory Project, https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search

Seneca County Business Directory 1896, Watson & Dorman Publishers. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23204/rec/1

Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25130/rec/1

Tiffin Parks, Past to Present, League of Women Voters, https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/34925/rec/6

Village of Iler. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40807

Webster Manufacturing 75th Anniversary. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38322

More resources:

Geology of States. “Rock Hounding in America: Ohio”. Jan 2021. https://rockhound.in/rockhounding-in-ohio-what-rocks-you-can-find-and-where/

Ohio EPA Shaded Elevation Map: https://epa.ohio.gov/static/Portals/27/sip/Nonattain/F3-Shaded_Elevation_Map_of_Ohio.pdf

Ohio Department of Natural Resources Bedrock Map: https://ohiodnr.gov/static/documents/geology/MiscMap_OhioShadedBedrockTopography_2003.pdf

You Scream, I Scream. We All Scream!

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

One of the first things that may pop into someone’s mind when they hear the phrase “dog days of summer” is ice cream. At least it is in my mind.

Ice cream has been a social commodity for many Americans for the past 100+ years. While today, hundreds of new combinations have been created for our taste buds, even the “boring” traditional Neapolitan flavors had people flocking together from its very beginning.

And not only did they flock, this flocking together like birds of a feather was done in person, not on any social media. Ice cream socials were sometimes the main social event of the season. The very hot, miserable season. The season where people looked forward to that first cooling, delicious bite of something sweet because air conditioning and swimming pools would not exist for decades.

.For our post-Victorian ancestors, (you’ll find out the reason for the “post” in a bit) ice cream could serve as an encouragement to form a fundraiser or birthday party (something that has since stuck hardfast—not melted away--in our culture), or simply be used as an excuse to chill together as a group.

Sometimes they were even called “ice cream socials,” as in the case of the Old Presbyterian Church. Tables and chairs were brought out onto its lawn and ice was served for 25 cents per person, alongside refreshing lemonade.

A family in Omar, Ohio enjoys some homemade ice cream on their lawn in the summertime.

An ice cream supper (who hasn’t had ice cream for supper at least once in their life? Be honest!) was held on August 1, 1909 at the Bowen’s residence—more specifically, the front yard. Ten gallons of ice cream provided a profit of $27.25 for the local church’s Sunday School program.

St. John’s United Church of Christ wanted to honor this pastime and hosted an “old-fashioned” ice cream social for the Sesquicentennial. It may have been based off an earlier ice cream social it hosted. Tiffin resident Martha Gibson wrote in her “Reminiscenes of the Early Days of Tiffin” recollected that her very first memory as a child was sitting on her mother’s lap and eating “spoonfulls of ice cream” at an ice cream social on the lawn of the old brick St. John’s Church on Jefferson Street.

The fact that so many churches held ice cream socials outside of their services (a more somber social gathering) is hugely ironic. Why? Because the people of this era were rebelling against their strict parents and grandparents who, in the late 1800s, had declared eating ice cream sodas on Sunday as “sinful.”

Tiffin Dairy Interior in the 1950s.

Besides the fact that so many (SO many) things in Victorian times were quite arbitrary, one GOOD thing to come of this prude idea was ice cream itself. At the time, it was common for ice cream to be consumed with soda (Root beer floats—mmm), so merchants got clever. They simply replaced (or “disguised”) the soda with syrup and called the new dish, “Sundaes.” Touche and kudos if I say so myself.

Martha Gibson goes on to describe how people got smart after they realized ice cream wasn’t so bad after all, and turned to using ice cream socials during the Temperance movement to draw people in for temperance speeches and campaigns. (“This just gets curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice).

Tiffin and surrounding towns all had their share of ice cream parlors. A.R. Ayers in Attica owned an ice cream parlor/confectionary (but wait, there’s more! It sold cigars!) Perry Montgomery in Green Springs owned an ice cream emporium, purchasing local milk and cream for his homemade ice cream.

In Tiffin, some of the most widely known parlors were Stock’s Candy Kitchen and Kahler’s Candy Kitchen, which later became Marinis Candy Store across from the courthouse on Washington Street, right on the streetcar line.

Now, one must not forget that Victorians were stuffy (and picky), so once they are their kind embraced ice cream (because it’s too resistable), it of course had to be high quality, as these businesses claimed their versions were. In the late 18th century ice cream was a delicacy and only the socially elite could afford it. In Europe, it was very posh to serve ice cream in manicured gardens, for example. No wonder wanna-be Victorians turned their nose up at it (they secretly desired it!)

Zender Creamery in New Riegel, Ohio, where New Riegel Café is now. At one time, It was common for many small towns to have at least one creamery.

At one time, cheese making and dairy operations were “the chief occupations of whole neighborhoods,” especially in the Midwest where conditions were favorable for dairy cattle. Tiffin’s 75th Anniversary Souvenir marks 150,000 gallons of milk sold by and astonishing 72 local dairies in the 1800s.

It took time and effort of local farmers to milk the cows and gather the cream to be shipped. This process on a small local scale could take days. “A pound of butter could buy a pound of nails; two pounds of butter would buy a shilling hat,” to provide you with a comparison of value.

The cost of ice cream was dependent on many factors. Until ice houses and sawdusted ice blocks were available, ice cream was very delicate.

By 1901/1902, an old carriage manufacturer’s building was turned into a makeshift creamery called Anchor Brand for bottled milk and butter. Yellow horsedrawn wagons delivered the local milk. Another small operation, Springdale Creamery or Buskirk and Sons (operated by Albert Van Buskirk, a Dutch native) manufactured butter and “fine” ice cream. “Quality” ice cream was sold by the Pure Milk & Dairy Company on Monroe Street.

The Republic Creamery in Republic, Ohio, burned in 1914 and was guessed to have been arson not for insurance (because there was no existing insurance on the property) but for the butter, as the padlock on the fridge door had been sawed off.

Meadow Gold Dairy Milk & Ice Cream on Morgan Avenue once employed 23 men and two women. It eventually dropped to 13 men and one female. In 1919, after the aforementioned Temperance Movement was successful, plans soon materialized to turn the old Hubach Brewery into an ice cream manufacturing plant (wow, do things come full circle!)
There was even a dairy plant in unincorporated Caroline, Ohio called Tellings-Belle Vernon Milk Plant, whose refrigeration (in its early days of use) was able to cool 40,000 pounds of milk daily before being sent to Cleveland.
In 2008, less than 6 percent of farms in Ohio have milk cows, a number that had been steadily decreasing with time. However, Ohio still ranks within the top ten states in the nation for dairy operations. It’s no wonder we love ice cream here!

Works cited:

75th Anniversary Souvenir. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2

Athletic Association of of the Tiffin High School. “Historical Sketches of the Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio.” 1903. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22326/rec/2

Columbian Blue and Gold 1921.

“The Evolution of Ice Cream.” International Dairy Foods Assocation. https://www.idfa.org/the-history-of-ice-cream

Fort Ball Gazette, April 1981.

Gibson, Martha. Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997

Green Springs Centennial Committee. Green Springs Centennial. 1972. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439

“Ice Cream Parlors.” Restaurant-ing Through History. Aug. 19, 2012. https://restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com/2012/08/19/ice-cream-parlors/

Lands in Lodi. West Lodi Historical Society, 2007. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44538/rec/2

Clark, Jill. “Ohio’s Dairy Industry”. September 2008. The Ohio State University, Department of Human and Community Resource Development. https://aede.osu.edu/sites/aede/files/!import/imce/SRIReport2008.pdf

The Old Presbyterian Church A Short History. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35757/rec/2

Scipio-Republic History Society. History of Republic. 1989. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33668

Tiffin Area Chamber of Commerce. Directory of Industries and Utilities, Tiffin, Ohio. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36321

Tiffin Historic Trust. Tiffin Historic Homes Tour 1978. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36349

Tiffin Know Your City. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27712

Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25130/rec/1

Tiffin Street Cars and Utilities. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22390

Your Community in Review. 1944. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42310

The Acts of … Removal. Reorganization. Recognition. Reconciliation. Repetition.

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

A citizen, by definition, is a person is a “recognized subject” of a country, either by his or her native status or having been naturalized. Most Midwesterners, Ohioans, and Seneca County residents have ancestors who became naturalized citizens after emigrating.

However, the American Indians who inhabited the land that we now call the United States, had been native in every sense of the word for centuries before our ancestors’ arrival and yet, were not recognized citizens by the U.S. government until 1924.

While it didn’t provide many of the opportunities that United States earn with a citizenship, the Indian Citizenship Act passed on June 2, 1924 was at least a small step in the right direction.

Artifacts – tools from Paleo-Indian peoples – that were found in the “Sandusky Valley” area have been dated back to 10,000 B.C., a time when the area was much more densely covered with evergreen forests.

These tools, commonly referred to as “arrowheads,” were once a more common find in Seneca County – finding one these days is a treasure. Most found date from 8000-5000 B.C., or the Early Archaic Period, when the evergreen trees gave way to deciduous forests that are more recognizable to us today.

Early inhabitants of Ohio evolved into the Woodland tribes over the course of several thousand years. Woodland tribes, later referred to as the Seneca-Sandusky tribes, would have been completely free to roam this area, with no interference from European transplants. These include the Delaware, Erie, Huron, and many Iroquois and Algonquian tribes, such as the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onodaga, Seneca, and Tuscarawas (Iroquois) and the Miami, and Shawnee (Algonguian).

The Native Americans who lived in Seneca County Ohio in the early 1800s had adapted to inhabiting log cabins like this one, before they were forcibly moved west.

Additionally, other tribes who inhabited the area that is now known as Seneca County includes the Chippewa, Mingoes, Ottawa, Otchipwes, Pottawattomies, and Wyandot. Over time, especially after the War of 1812, more and more tribes were transplanting further north from the Ohio River Valley as they continued to be pushed out by arriving whites.

Because the area was very swampy, most tribes would pass through Seneca County, setting up temporary hunting camps during seasonable periods.

In 1900, a local farmer contacted the anthropology department at Heidelberg College after accidentally uncovering a burial site near Old Fort, Ohio which dated to the “Western Basin Late Woodland” period (1000-1200 A.D). Later in the 1970s, the professor’s grandson resumed excavations.

The Wyandot Mission Church, built in 1824, is near Upper Sandusky, Ohio (Wyandot County) and on the National Register of Historic Places. It depicts missionary James B. Findley and Chief Mononcue conversing with members of the Wyandot tribe. The original painting can be seen at the Wyandot County Historical Society. The digital image was taken from the Ohio Memory website with permission from the Wyandot County Historical Society.

The more recent natives of this area lived in cabins and grew their own food in gardens of corn, beans and squash. They were peaceful (maybe a few bad apples just like all other cultures) and often traded ginseng and cranberries with the early pioneers. They wore tall hats over their long, straight hair, and wrapped themselves in blankets to stay warm.

By the time Seneca County and its county seat of Tiffin were established, these people’s homes had been diminished to local reservations after a treaty was developed in 1817 between newly appointed local government officials and almost 100 tribal leaders. They gathered at Fort Meigs and several sub-treaties were signed (some sources claim “willingly” by the natives, but most contemporaries know better). Three of those sub-treaties directly affected the native residents in Seneca County.

A depiction of Native Americans leaving Ohio for Indian reservations in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas by way of the Miami/Erie Canal. This photo is owned by the Ohio Historical Connection and is taken from the Ohio Memory Project.

Through the “Treaty of Maumee Rapids,” the largest reservation in Seneca County (unsurprisingly, known as the “Seneca Reservation”) was a 40,000 acre site east of the Sandusky River covering Clinton, Scipio and Adams Townships (the south boundary closely matches what is now State Route 101 today). It stretched slightly into Sandusky County near Green Springs, Ohio. An Indian agent, Methodist preacher, James Montgomery, had been assigned to the reservation and its Six Nation Indians in 1819 and lived nearby in Fort Seneca.

Only about 500 Senecas remained by 1831 when President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act forcibly removed these remaining few west to join hundreds (if not thousands) of other disbanded tribes to a 67,000-acre reservation in the Neosha River area of southeast Missouri/northwest Arkansas.

While not a reservation, Mohawk Village was once a 1,000-acre area.

A smaller reservation of 640 acres, granted through the “Treaty of Miami”, was located near Fort Ball on the west side of the Sandusky River (“conveniently” close to the Fort Ball Military reservation as the source of this information states – sans the quotations).
The Big Spring Reservation was 12 square miles in Big Spring Township for the Wyandots under the “Treaty of McCutchenville”. This land was ceded in the early months of 1832 and the Wyandots joined the 500 Senecas being pushed out. Ironically, after either walking by foot or traveling along the Ohio River to catch the Missouri River, only 352 of the original 510 adults and children –after nine months of traveling in extremely harsh conditions and falling prey to measles and frostbite, just to name a few--arrived at their new “home” on July 4, 1832. Let that settle in.
Not surprisingly, the Indian Agent assigned to this task, Henry C. Brish, promptly turned in his resignation immediately after he returned to Ohio.

Works cited:

Klopfenstein, Carl G. Toward the Setting Sun. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39946

Dildine, Frank. From Wilderness to City. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22177

Bowen, J.E. Sandusky Site Near Old Fort. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29790

Weller, Donald Jr. Early Archaic Points of Seneca County, Ohio. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39817

Scipio-Republic History Society. History of Republic. 1989. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33668

Gibson, Martha. Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316

Durrett, John E. History of Bettsville. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Original Land Entries of Seneca County. 1992. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44916

Jett, Katherine Griffin. History of West Lodi. 1988. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30110

Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33781

Seneca County Ohio History and Families. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28803

Seneca County Digital Library.

There’s Gnome Place Like Home

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

At the October 6, 2008 meeting of the Tiffin Woman’s Club, guest speaker Master Gardener Janet Del Turco led club members on a “mental tour” of her garden. Gardening has widely been a popular hobby amongst Americans and looking through the library’s wide array of gardening books attest to its popularity.

Across the gardening spectrum, there are sources on how to make one’s garden a space to unwind from the hectic schedules modern times have made the norm. Victorians had this aspect of gardening down to a science and those in Seneca County were no exception to prioritizing their garden spaces.

The C.S. Bell Americana (also known as the Bell Company) manufactured these cast iron horse post toppers. In Victorian times, iron was used in abundance to create garden urns, sun dials, bird baths and benches.

In Victorian times, the garden was one of the many places to exuberate beauty and be immersed in it. Benches were a common feature in all Victorian gardens so people could while away the time in a beautified space within nature (That is, if they were advantaged enough—lower classes simply brought their indoor furniture outside in mild weather).

Cast iron and wrought iron benches replaced simple wooden benches for awhile in the 18th and 19th centuries and not surprisingly, was one of the many ways upper class Victorians displayed their wealth. These pieces of outdoor furniture were labor-intensive and artisans had to spend hours heating the iron to morph it into the intricate designs Victorians desired.

The C.S. Bell Americana (also known as the Bell Company) was one of the hundreds of iron foundries in the United States in the mid-1800s. It’s specialties were post toppers and lawn ornaments.

Other common fixtures in Victorian gardens were sun dials and bird baths so Victorians could enjoy the colorful aviary species native to their locations.

At one time in Watson Station (an unincorporated community in Seneca County), a married couple, John and Ruth (Stover) Heckerd, built a three-acre bird sanctuary named Greenbrier in the 1960s, complete with a heated bird bath for the winter months. Many local garden clubs toured the sanctuary over the ensuing decades.

While the Seneca County Master Gardeners and the Blossoms ‘N Butterflies are two current garden clubs in Seneca County, several more existed at one time or another including the R.F. D. Garden Club, Tiffin Garden Club, Town and Country Garden Club and the Tiffin-Seneca County Men’s Garden Club.

The Tiffin Garden Club (founded in 1927) in the 1976 Bicentennial Parade. This photo is part of a series of photographs from this monumental parade that have been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library. They can be viewed here: https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/64548

The Bascom Community Garden Club was spontaneously formed in March 1937 by three neighbors. They contacted “Mrs. Martin of Attica, State Organizer” (of garden clubs), to inquire on how to create their own and on a “stormy April evening” the club held it’s first meeting with 17 members in attendance. One of their many contributions was an urn for the Soldier’s Mount in Sand Ridge Cemetery.

By this point, molds had become the norm for iron foundries (and places who made similar items out of other materials such as terra cotta and stoneware), offering a variety of garden urns/vases with fancy handles and iron pedestals for them. Foundries heavily promoted using such pieces for cemeteries, as well as conservatories and parks. Common patterns included grapevines, ferns, lily of the valley, morning glories, and ferns.

During Del Turco’s mental tour of her garden at that 2008 meeting, she took her audience through her fairy garden. Fairy gardens might seem like a more recent development in the world of gardening, but Victorians were also fascinated by mythical creatures, including the gnome, which continues to be adored today.

It was thought that, like fairies, gnomes came out at night with the specific job of tending to plants. Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” movie (1937), was produced when most Victorians’ children and grandchildren were able to transform their own gardens, and the movie further instilled the adoration for gnomes.

Whatever one decides to place in their garden, however, is intended to turn that space into a sanctuary. The designs and pieces may have changed, but the concept remains the same.

Works Cited:

Aileen Minor Garden Antiques & Decorative Arts. “A History of American Garden Ornaments.” https://amgardenantiques.com/gardenhistory.php

Bascom Garden Club. Bascom Then and Now. 1976. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29193

“Bell’s Original Decorative Useful Americana”. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43101

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28803

Tiffin Area Chamber of Commerce. Tiffin, Ohio A Good Community in Which to Live and Work. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/34766

Trees.com. “History of Garden Gnomes – Origins, Meanings, Uses and Debates”. https://www.trees.com/gardening-and-landscaping/history-of-garden-gnomes

Uncle Sam: The Library Needs You … To Read This Article!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Art is a broad field. If you go to any art museum, you’ll find several wings representing so many styles of art – paintings from the classic artists like Picasso, Rembrandt or Monet to contemporary and modern sculptures and just about everything in between.

Like most art, billboards and comic strips are two niche forms of art that supply a message of some kind. Billboards usually involve a persuasive theme trying to sell an item or service, although sometimes they are trying to sway your opinion.

Comics are similar in nature; they often lightheartedly poke fun at an issue to which many people can relate (part of the reason why they are often referred to as “the funnies”). For example, pictured is a comic designed by a fellow college student that was placed in the January 1973 edition of Tiffin University’s student newspaper, the Tystanac. It needs no explanation, at least for folks who can recall their college orientations spent in the university bookstore scrambling to get all the required textbooks before the first day of class. It was included in a set of comics under the collective title, “What! College?”

Historically, comics have been infamous for sharing political opinions, which continues today. Tiffin’s League of Women Voters group state in their September 1971 board meeting minutes that they had gathered humorous cartoons from newspapers and magazines for a poster on state water resources and air pollution to illustrate their presentations with relatable facts and figures.

One of the ways that small business owners would share their products and services was to get an advertisement painted on the side of a building. These can often still be seen on old brick buildings and are often discovered when renovations are being done (due to the lead in the oil-based paint that helped it adhere to the building better). To historians, they are known as “ghost signs” because they remain on the buildings well after the business to which they were once attached.

Ghost signs were heavily used from the 1880s-1950s until neon signs and the modern billboard started taking over. Highly visible brick walls or walls on buildings along railroads were typical spots. When New Riegel’s depot was used, advertising posters were often framed on the walls and in 1996, some of these had been donated to the Seneca County Museum.

Besides products, billboards also sold (and still do) ideas that the artists wanted to not just share, but persuade others into believing alongside him, her, or them (if it was an organization). One such way was murals, whose popularity nestled into the tail-end of the ghost sign era but before the neon lights debuted.

A “cartoon calendar” found the Columbian Blue and Gold 1936 yearbook. (Artist unknown)

During the New Deal, the U.S. Works Progress Administration commissioned for murals that would “lift the spirits of a nation in the grips of the Great Depression.” Thousands of murals were painting showing farmers, factory workers and American icons like Abraham Lincoln. During World War II, Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” paintings “were such a patriotic inspiration and phenomenal success” that they were eventually used in a campaign to sell war bonds and stamps.

Myron Barnes recalls in “Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches” that as a child growing up in Tiffin, there were posters hanging in multiple windows of the former courthouse portrayed various aspects of the Great War, including the Victory loans from that war. In addition, a map of the Western Front was updated daily by the Advertiser Tribune with news of battles. He and his friends, who were “inspired” by the posters and map, bought war savings stamps. If enough were saved, they were turned in for hefty bonds (Byron eventually bought his first car with these stamps).

Creating posters for political propaganda was not something new, however. As far back as the Civil War, posters of political ideas were being created. General William H. Gibson (“Ohio’s Silver-Tongued Orator”) used this method to help recruit local men for the Union. He put a poster on the north wall of the Army post that said, “To ARMS! To ARMS! Rally to Our Flag! Rush to the Field! Are we cowards that we must yield to traitors? Come one, come all! Let us march, as our forefathers marched, to defend the only democratic Republic on earth!”

While this particular poster was probably made in haste since it was extremely time-sensitive, comics were approached with more reverence. In the first part of the 20th century when newspapers and magazines were beginning to become a mainstay in American society, the job of an illustrator paid very well. In fact, in a time when Hollywood actors and actresses didn’t exist yet, illustrators were the main celebrities. They were always in high demand because they were talented artists who could swiftly spread ideas through their creations to the masses.

When television did come around, comics adapted into the “moving pictures.” Another edition of the T.U. Tystanac gives praise to the Pink Panther, as a segment quite often appeared before the main show at the movie theater and was also a main classic Saturday morning cartoon. Likewise, a student at Calvert in the late 1980s, Tom Batuik, drew a cartoon to illustrate an appreciation letter written by Calvert and Seneca East students thanking the Advertiser-Tribune fore reinstalling the Funky Winterbean comic (shown here).

Children and young teenagers are still often encouraged to put their illustrating and persuasive skills to the test in billboard contests. Earth Day in late April always brings with it, enlargements on billboards of cleverly displayed messages from local students on why it’s important to recycle.

Works cited:

Bigger, David Dwight. Ohio’s Silver-Tongued Orator. 1901. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39307

Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. 1976. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33781

Buckholtz, Sarah. “Walldogs—the Artists Behind Ghost Signs.” Antique Archaeology. May 11, 2017. https://www.antiquearchaeology.com/blog/tag/brick-ads/

Kruchak, Matthew. “Your City’s ‘Ghost Signs’ Have Stories to Tell.” Bloomberg. August 17, 2017. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/-light-capsules-reveal-the-history-of-cities-faded-ads

League of Women Voters of Tiffin Interim Report 1971-09-01. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/67717

MacDonald, Christine. “Street Art Used to Be the Voice of the People. Now it’s the Voice of Advertisers.” In These Times. March 11, 2019. https://inthesetimes.com/article/street-art-murals-corporations-advertising-los-angeles-muralism-graffiti

Normal Rockwell Museum. Illustration History. “Comic Strips.” https://www.illustrationhistory.org/genres/comics-comic-strips

Official Souvenir Glass Festival 1965. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36379

Seneca County Museum Newsletter Winter 1996. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43136

Library of Congress. Classroom Materials. “Political Cartoons and Public Debates.” https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/political-cartoons-and-public-debates/#:~:text=Political%20cartoons%20began%20as%20a,as%20being%20published%20in%20newspapers

Yearbook Calvertana 1989. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/19241

Tiffin University. Tystenac 1971-10. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43655

March is Deaf Awarenesss Month

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Ludwig van Beethoven and Thomas Edison. Two historical figures who made lasting contributions to society – one as a composer of music and the other as inventor of the light bulb, among many other things. But being famous in history books isn’t the only thing they share in common. Both suffered from hearing loss.

Hearing loss happens on a continuum. One can be completely deaf as Beethoven was, but one can also be hard of hearing. Hearing loss doesn’t discriminate. April (previously March until 2022) has been designated by Congress as Deaf Awareness Month to help educate the general public about the issues that those with hearing loss face on a daily basis.

Over ten percent of the American population has significant hearing loss and Seneca County has made efforts over the last several decades to help mitigate the stress individuals with hearing loss may experience.

A staff member at the Betty Jane Memorial Center works with small children wearing headphones. The Betty Jane Center was a rehab facility which offered a number of services, such as speech therapy, to residents throughout Northwest Ohio. This photo was featured in the 1965 Tiffin Glass Festival Souvenir Program, available to view on the Seneca County Digital Library.

In fact, Seneca County belongs to a state with a long history of support for the deaf or hard of hearing. In 1829, just two years after Beethoven died, the Ohio School for the Deaf was established, thus, joining only four others of its kind in the country (Connecticut, New York, Kentucky and Pennsylvania). Previously, Ohio-born children had to migrate to the Pennsylvania tuition-based school or be admitted to the Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb (it changed it’s name in 1827 to the Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb).

Only 20 years later, when the Seneca Chapter of the Royal Arch Masons (#42) was chartered, it chose to sponsor the Royal Arch Research Association, which aided the deaf or hard of hearing, as its main charity.

Another major milestone for the deaf or hard of hearing community happened less than two decades later – the founding of America’s first and only higher education institution for hard-of-hearing students, Gallaudet.

At this point, deaf or hard of hearing children learned lip reading and articulation instruction as sign language was slowly developing into a standardized language. Throughout the United States, over 20 “deaf schools” had been established yet it was a major accomplishment for the deaf or hard of hearing to be able to effectively communicate with the rest of the population and Tiffin had its own hero in that regard.

While the circumstances of his illness or accident aren’t known, it was the after-math of becoming partially deaf that circumstantially “drafted” John Lennartz to Tiffin (he was born and raised in Mercer County). Lennartz didn’t let being hard of hearing stand in his way even if it was seen as a “disadvantage” in those times. A lengthy biography of his childhood and career in the Seneca County History Volume 2 goes into detail about his “hustle to work at whatever labor he could find” that brought him to Tiffin the 1880s and subsequently resulted in him making his roots here.

Prior to his hearing loss, he had been a schoolroom teacher. After relocating to Seneca County, he began his climb through the ranks starting with a position as clerk of courts. After a decade he was promoted to deputy auditor. Finally, in 1908, he was appointed auditor by a large majority of votes – “the largest majority ever given to a county auditor in Seneca County” up to that time.

The original Betty Jane Memorial Center, a non-profit founded in 1957 to assist handicapped children and adults with “attaining their fullest physical, mental, social and vocational independence.”

Lennartz was described as being “a man of untiring energy, prompt and punctual, faithful, straightforward in all his dealings, high-principled, strictly honest, kind, thoughtful, benevolent, and conscientious and willing to lose all that he possesses rather than defraud anyone a single cent.”

By the time Lennartz reached the position of auditor, education for the deaf or hard of hearing had continued to improve. The Ohio State School for the Deaf had officially been recognized by the Ohio Department of Education. After expanding in numbers, it purchased a derelict golf course on the north side of Columbus and added the Ohio State School for the Blind and student housing onto its new campus of over 200 acres.

On a local level, another facility was in the process of blooming – the Betty Jane Memorial Center (named in honor of Betty Jane Friedman), which served not just deaf or hard of hearing children, but both children and adults with physical, speech, hearing and emotional “handicaps.” It’s main premise was to provide these services regardless of the patients’ ability to pay.

At its height, the Betty Jane Center, originally operating out of Friedman’s parents’ house, served patients throughout Northwest Ohio at several locations, with a building on St. Francis Avenue serving as headquarters. These services included the Betty Jane Rehab Center, Betty Jane Oral School for the Deaf, the Seneca County Society for Crippled Children & Adults, a preschool, speech therapy, vocational services and much more.

The center, however, was not a replacement for school. After completing a survey in 1972, the League of Women Voters of Tiffin specified that “deaf and blind children are sent to (the Ohio State Schools for the Deaf and Blind) if they cannot function in the ‘regular’ classroom.” By this point, the state schools were already being funded by state taxes, rather than being tuition-based. Those with hearing loss were eligible if their range of limited hearing exceeded 60 decibels. (For reference, “significant hearing loss due to loud noise” begins at 85 decibels).

It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that deaf or hard of hearing children became more integrated into the local classroom. Harmony Tate was the first hard of hearing student to graduate from Columbian in 1995. Tate was provided an interpreter and, much like Auditor Lennartz 100 years before, was able to do “everything that other students do.” She even talked during class – all be it in the form of sign language.

And it was sign language that spurred Deaf Awareness Month in the immediate years following Tate’s high school graduation. Two deaf employees at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington D.C. taught colleagues to sign in March 1996. One year later, the first Deaf Awareness Week was held. By 2006, the American Library Association and the National Association of the Deaf effectively lobbied for a federal proclamation of Deaf Awareness Month from mid-March through mid-April.

Works cited:

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 2. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17559

Betty Jane Center Work Connections. Insights. Winter 1997. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43094

Centennial Committee of Tiffin, Ohio. Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25130

“History of National Deaf History Month. National Today. https://nationaltoday.com/national-deaf-history-month/

Jay, Michelle. “History of American Sign Language.” July 14, 2023. Start ASL. https://www.startasl.com/history-of-american-sign-language/

League of Women Voters of Tiffin. “A Survey of Local Government Tiffin, Ohio”. May 1972. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63667

Official Souvenir Program Tiffin Glass Festival 1965. July 1965. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36379

https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35960

Ohio School for the Deaf. https://osd.ohio.gov/about/history

Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. 1998”. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28803

Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search

Sherick, Deb. “Betty Jane Memorial Rehabilitation Center 40th Anniversary Issue”. 1997.

 “The Fascinating History of Sign Language.” Nov. 16, 2016. Academy Hearing Centres. https://www.academyhearing.ca/blog/news/News/2016/11/16/50:the-fascinating-history-of-si%20gn-language

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1995. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12820

In a One Horse – or Two – or Four Open Sleigh

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Deep snow seems to be a rarity these days. The rare blizzard does still hit Seneca County every once in a great while, but its no longer an annual event.

Decades ago, however, one task involved in our forebearers’ “winterizing” routine was getting the winter sleigh out of storage and primed. The sleigh was their only method of travel, even for car-owning families, because it was equipped to drive through inches and feet of snow.

One of the first pioneer sleds to trek through the snow of our country was the sled owned by carpenter Charles Albright in 1834. He and his wife, infant son and brother-in-law migrated over the winter and settled here to be a furniture and coffin maker.  They were a party of four with personal items and probably had a decent sized sled.

A family travels by toboggan-style sled through the Southern Ohio wintery countryside. This photo is part of the Ewing Collection of the Ohio Memory Project, owned by the Ohio Historical Connection.

Sleds came in all sizes. For the children, there were many prime spots around town and beyond to while away the day on their toy sleds. One very popular spot for the Junior Home kids was a hill behind the Union Street School. Lula Davison McGrath, one of the former kids at the Home, admits that if a child didn’t have his or her own sled, he or she simply improvised (people using inter-tubes these days aren’t as original after all). “It would glide smoothly down the hill, bounce over the drop at the bottom, cross the road and onto the frozen river.” Not surprisingly, she also admits that there were many close calls on this rambunctious course, she herself suffering a concussion after one session. Other kids were no less brave; local children in the mid-19th century would “run after farmers’ sleds to catch rides on the broad runners or attach their sleds to the rear.”

Perhaps it was these kind of incidents that caused the child-sized sled to become mass produced starting in the 1860s when a Pennsylvania Quaker perfected his prototype over an almost 30-year trial period (using his own children as crash dummies). The “Flexible Flyer” remained popular for decades – in fact, sleds were one of the cheapest toys during the Great Depression.

Lovebirds and courting couples were most likely seen in two-seaters (cutters) and large families used cargo-style sleds (bobsleds). These sleds were perfect for large groups of people (carpooling—or sledpooling, rather-- was all the rage then).

There were also different types of sleds for transporting goods and chores in addition to those used by people simply for traveling. It’s similar to modern day “work trucks” or Cadillacs, family vans or convertibles. What’s the purpose of the vehicle?

A Stemtown resident said it well in the March 1993 issue of Stemtown News: “What would the young people think of today to come in the woods as we did not a soul within 4 miles. We’d make one trip a day from the river with a load on an ox sled rite through the woods.” (Note: we aren’t sure what the load consisted of).

A large group of Bascom-area residents take a ride in a large sled one wintery afternoon. When Seneca County experienced a decent snowfall, it was the prime moment for parties and dances which lasted into the wee morning hours, often held at private homes or local hotels.

Mystery aside, all sorts of merchandise was shipped with large sleds (just like modern-day semi trucks). Chopped logs were taken to the local saw mills by sled in the winter, and as time went by, people switched out the “old work sleds” for Smart Cutters with “spanking teams,” as the Bascom Area Sesquicentennial explains.

One would think, why not just wait for spring? Early pioneers, however, actually anticipated a good snowfall like kids who hate school do today. While these days, snow forces a large majority of us to stay home due to dangerous driving conditions, it did the opposite before cars. Sleds could more easily glide over a fresh coat of snow that filled in any muddy ruts left from thawing.

“We look back upon riding in a horse-drawn sleigh as romantic, but in their day, they were considered strictly utilitarian, necessary to get around on business, errands, to church and social events,” states an article on cortlandhistory.com.

All work aside, there was still plenty of time for the kind of play that triggers the often-sung tune around Christmas about dashing through the snow. Kids in Lodi, Ohio held “spelling schools” in the wintertime. Large groups of students would pile into big sleighs and travel, like modern students on school buses, to visit other schools for a friendly competition.

Tiffinites resembled a closer picture to the lyrics of “Jingle Bells.” In “Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin,” the author shares that they loaded up in a sled designed like a wagon used for hayrides with seats along each edge and proceed to glide through the snow in “merry laughter and songs, keeping time with the music of the bells.” She goes on to explain that their main destination was a hotel in McCutchenville. Hotels were often the gathering places for youngsters out and about in their sleighs; they often hosted parties, dinners and dances when the weather cooperated (that is, our idea of NOT cooperating).

“Softened hoof beats, merry shouts and the cheerful sound of bells, ever the bells,” were the sounds of winter, according to the author of “What, How and Who of It: An Ohio Community in 1856-1880.” But while people may have turned the sleigh bells into an accompanying instrument, their original purpose was the same as car horns. Because snow has a tendency to soften all sounds, the sleigh bells alerted a person before the sled could be seen, signaling for them to step aside.

A sled pulled by a Model T car pulled by a team of two horses. One wonders if the car had gotten stuck in muddy ruts and needed the horses to pull it out. (Taken from “Lands in Lodi”, which has been digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.)

Currier & Ives paintings visualize the sights and sounds of these moments and it wasn’t just the artist who added embellishments to the sleighs in these pictures for dramatization. For example, if one goes on even a quick drive, it’s nearly impossible to encounter a motor vehicle with a bumper sticker.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, little designs strategically placed on the sides of the sleighs added character. In Tiffin, the Wenner H.S. & Co. (carriage, buggies, wagon and sleigh manufacturers) on the corner of Jefferson and Coe Streets would routinely advertise “painting, trimming and repairing done neatly on short notice” in the Tiffin Business Directories.

The fabric and its stuffing and the quality of the metal and wood mattered as well. Sleighs could come in wool, velour, corduroy and even silk (would anyone today really trade electronic seat-warmers for silk, though?).

Nonetheless, these ‘extras’ added to the value (and price) of the sleighs. In some cases, the paint jobs were even customized. “The man fortunate enough to own a sleigh and a matched team of horses was much like the owners of a sports card today,” argues Mary Ellen Johnson of the Altamont Enterprise. (A luxurious sleigh cost upwards of $47 where an average sled cost $17-22). The first-class styles are the sleighs often seen today in museums.

Works cited:

Bascom Area Sesquicentennial 1837-1987. Bascom Sesquicentennial Committee. 1987. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41849

Bennett, Laura Dean. “A Sleigh Ride Through History.” Pochahontas Times. https://pocahontastimes.com/a-sleigh-ride-through-history/

Gibson, Martha M. “Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin”. 1967. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997

History Nebraska. “Sleigh Parties of the 19th Century.” May 17, 2019. Midwest Messenger. https://agupdate.com/midwestmessenger/lifestyles/rural_news/sleigh-parties-of-the-19th-century/article_196d9ed8-2fb0-11e9-837e-5f45c9602026.html

Johnson, Mary Ellen. “Sleighs Were Used for Both Chores and Revelry Before Autos Made Them Obsolete.” Altamont Enterprise. https://altamontenterprise.com/opinion/columns/glimpse-guilderland-history/12112019/sleighs-were-used-both-chores-and-revelry-autos

Jopp, Jerusha [diary]. Published in “Stemtown News,” March 1993. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33995

Junior Homekid June 1992 and February 1996. Seneca County Digital Library.

Lands in Lodi. 2007. West Lodi Historical Society. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44538

Leonard, Daniel. “The History of Sledding.” Dec. 10, 2020. Grunge. https://www.grunge.com/293350/the-history-of-sledding/

MacClain, Alexia. “Dashing Through the Snow in Vintage Sleighs.” Dec. 16, 2022. Smithsonian Voices. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-libraries-and-archives/2022/12/16/dashing-through-the-snow-in-vintage-sleighs/

Scoville, Tabitha. “Streets of Cortland – Sleighs, Sleds and Work.” Aug. 10, 2021. Cortland County Historical Society. https://cortlandhistory.org/streets-of-cortland-sleighs-sleds-and-work/

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. 1998. Seneca County Genealogical Society. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28803

Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search

“Sleighs, Cutters and Carioles.” Dec. 5, 2017. Heroes, Heroines and History. https://www.hhhistory.com/2017/12/sleighs-cutters-carioles.html

Smith, Howard. The What, How and Who of It: An Ohio Community in 1856-1880. Seneca County Digital Library. 1997. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/16074

Tiffin Business Directory 1873-1877. Seneca County Digital Library. 1873. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22773

And the Grammy Goes To …

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Through apps like Spotify and Pandora, music lovers can select their desired songs at any moment of the day with the tap of a finger. Not long ago, however, it wasn’t so simple. In most of our lifetimes it was still relatively easy if one had the compact disc, cassette tape or vinyl record to match with its partnering device. Predating those one may have needed to wait patiently for the local radio station to put the song on air.

An ad for “Victor Records,” sold at the C.J. Schmidt Piano Co. in Tiffin in the early 1920s.

The beginnings of music on demand, though, can be traced to right before the telephone (which is, ironically, the same device often used to find and play the music). Prior to perfecting his patent on the telephone, he in a round-about way practiced by developing the phonograph. A similar device, the gramophone, was invented the same year – 1877 – by Emil Berliner.

The earliest phonographs/gramophones had to be cranked, and even then the sound was spotty. “Once the purchaser had mastered trip ‘D,’ yoke ‘A,’ knob ‘B,’ and brake lever ‘E,’ the phonograph was beautifully simple. You put on a record, put in a fresh needle, gave a few turns to the crank that stuck out on the right side of the cabinet, switch off brake lever ‘E’, and carefully lowered the needle into the groove keeping a firm grip.” (Maybe modern television remotes aren’t as complicated as we make them seem?)

A record player at the library in 1957. This photo can be found with many other library photos on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Besides being heavy (almost one pound) and clunky (“the only maintenance needed—the manual said--was the occasional lubrication of the spring motor, a drop of oil now and then on 2-3 bearings and the friction leather of the brake” ), only those who could afford them bought one. Just as people gather for a live concert, or as people once gathered around the radio in the evenings, listening to a phonograph was a social affair, especially in rural Ohio.

Early residents of Seneca County had many excuses to congregate for a phonograph playing. In the summer, a phonograph would play in the background at the beach, tent revival meetings, and at homemade ice cream socials. Residents who owned phonographs would take turns hosting the socials. In Iler, Bence Riffle was the sole owner of a phonograph and “took great pride” in it. He got the floral design on it touched up every few years until World War I when an American flag was added.

In the fall when school started, students in Bascom could reminisce these summer days as they listed to the phonograph placed in the school hallway.

Once the ease of listening to music at home and private parties developed into a mainstay in society, music players became a staple in many more American homes. One junior home kid recalled “rolling back the carpets and cranking up the Victrola” at one of the cottages on the Junior Home campus. They would dance until late at night on their makeshift dance floor eating sandwiches and drinking cider.

While socializing with the sounds emitting from a contraption may have been exciting to many, not everyone was enthralled. Some old-fashioned opinions feared that music players would decimate the instruction of musical instruments to young minds. “In the 1800s, if you wanted to hear a song, you had only two options—listen while someone played it live or else you played it yourself.”

These opinions proved to be not just unfounded, but the complete opposite of what happened. “The phonograph inspired more and more people to pick up instruments and the number of music teachers per capita in the U.S. rose by 25 percent from 1890-1910,” explains the Smithsonian Magazine.

Students at Calvert in 1962 gather around a new Juke Box. Many Calvertana yearbooks, including the 1962 annual, have been digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Locally, they C.J. Schimidt Piano Company was a dealer of Victrolas (the official name for Berliner’s Victor Talking Machine Company’s product), holding a “complete stock” of Victor Records (see photo of advertisement). Different versions of their ads ran over the course of several years during the late 1910s and early 1920s in Tiffin High School’s student publication, the Tiffinian, and yearbook, the Blue and Gold. It only makes sense since the piano had been the most often used instrument for a family gathering of music before the phonograph.

The instruction of music locally continued to boom for decades afterward – the Tiffin Woman’s Club hosted a program in December 1931 with Mrs. Louis Lonsway teaching a course of selected operas, which were “illustrated by voice, piano and Victrola records.”

Eventually phonographs fizzled out as record players emerged, which came in two forms – personal record players for the home and jukeboxes placed in many public places. Either way, these new inventions continued the pastime of enjoying music together.

Juke boxes were easy – the songs and records were already loaded inside (up to ten whole songs in the beginning!), all that was needed was a coin or two and the machine would do the rest of the work.  In fact, the early juke boxes were actually known as “nickel-in-the-slot phonographs.” One of the most widely known were Wurlitzers.

A Greek club at Tiffin University caught the juke box hype in the late 1960s, raising funds to add one to the Student Union in early 1971 and purchasing another in Findlay for the Snack Bar. The juke box then became a way to in turn earn the funds back and save for future projects.

Juke boxes still exist today, although they are now completely digital. Computer chips have replaced the records and touch screens have replaced the coin slots (can you just imagine people trying to crank a lever and place a needle into a groove at a rowdy sports bar? It probably wouldn’t even pass modern codes).

The idea remains the same, though. Music brings people together. The bright side is that the digital world makes it easier for the songs of yesterday to continue to thrive, despite the mode used to play them.

Works cited:

Village of Iler. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40789

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319

Bascom Area Sesquicentennial 1837-1987. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41849

Seneca County Museum Newsletter Fall 1990. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42427

Tystanac. February 1971 and March 1974. Seneca County Digital Library.

Junior Homekid, December 1989. Seneca County Digital Library.

Tiffin Woman’s Club Program 1930-1931. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40746

Vaughn, Grace Lenehan. “The History of the Jukebox: From the 1880s to Today.” Wide Open Country. 6 May 2021. https://www.wideopencountry.com/history-of-the-jukebox/

Thompson, Clive. “How the Phonograph Changed Music Forever.” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/phonograph-changed-music-forever-180957677/

“V is for Victrola Record Players: The History of the Famous Gramophones that Entertained Millions.” Click America. https://clickamericana.com/media/music/v-is-for-victrola-record-players-the-history-of-the-gramophones-that-entertained-millions

Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search

Does Santa really still give out coal for Christmas?

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

During the holiday season, children often get teased about the possibility of getting coal from Santa Claus. While that is the last thing children are hoping for, up until recently, many adults wouldn’t have minded a lump of coal.

Coal didn’t always have a bad reputation as a Christmas gift option, however. Today, it would be the equivalent to a discount on an electricity bill.  Imagine competing in a contest with coal as the prize. That’s just what happened at a family picnic for National Machinery employees in 1923 – the winner of a horseshoe pitching contest won a ton of coal. Likewise, when the Seneca County Museum was donated to the city in 1942, “a supply of coal was placed in the bins as part of the gift.”

Taken from the National Servicemen’s News Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 5, which is digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library, the caption says, “These photos are a reminder to check your anti-freeze, storm windows and coal supply”.

For a quick period in time, coal was concerned “modern”. Between fireplaces with open flames from burning wood and the central heating systems we now use, coal was the main source of power and therefore highly valued.

Into the early 1800s, coal was a “niche fuel” used only by skilled tradesmen, such as blacksmiths. But as more and more settlers came, Ohio continued to become deforested as settlers chopped down trees for both building structures and to use as heat in fireplaces.

But since coal is a natural resource not found in Northwest Ohio, it wasn’t until after both the railroads and canal systems were built that Seneca County residents and their neighbors could begin the switch to coal. The canals helped coal mines and producers near rivers transport their loads. Likewise, the railroads allowed “land-locked” mine operations move its coal products.

In Fostoria, the Toledo & Ohio Central Railroad and Atlantic & Lake Erie hauled coal from southeastern Ohio to Toledo and around Lake Erie. Tiffin received coal from Pennsylvania through the Tiffin & Eastern Railroad.

The first coal yard in Tiffin appeared in 1865 was adjacent to the Baltimore & Ohio railroad depot.

The Junior Home also had its own coal yard, which supplied enough coal for the entire campus (for awhile, coal deliveries from the railroads were the largest cargo shipments made to the grounds). The coal was also used for two large generators to produce electricity.

Outside of Tiffin, rural residents could visit William Omwake, who operated the Iler’s Brick & Tile Factory, which dually served as a coal yard plus a lumber & cider mill.

When the infamous flood wrecked havoc on the area in March 1913, the only bridge that was spared within 16 miles had been weighted down with loaded coal cars at the time the heavy rains began.  

A heavy duty coal tipple was one of the products that Webster Manufacturing patented to help make the process of unloading coal from railroad cars easier.

Unloading the coal took an extensive system to make sure the commodity could be transferred. One Junior Home kid recalls in the Homekid December 1992 edition, “The task was to open the railcars’ chute and allow the coal to flow out of the bottom of the cars and into the big White Motor Car dump truck that had been carefully positioned between the concrete supports for that purpose. This unloading detail was especially frustrating in the winter after a freezing rain had caused the top layer of coal to stick together and required a heavy object to crush this shell to fully empty the car.”

Webster Manufacturing developed and improved upon belt conveyors originally used for grain elevators. Because of its invention of the Perkins pivoted bucket carrier, patented in 1906, which handled coal for power plants, the Tiffin plant was opened the same year due to the new demand for the product. 

Before motor vehicles, wagons would pick up coal at the stockyards and make deliveries to individual customers. In addition to being listed as a blacksmith and wagon maker in the 1896 Seneca County Business Directory, George Griffin is also listed as a dealer in hard and soft coal, coke and blacksmith coal. Other local businesses included Smith’s Coal & Ice and the Heilman Brothers, who were manufacturers and dealers of brick, drain tile, and sewer pipes in addition to both hard and soft coal.

The driver of a coal supply truck greets spectators during the U.S. Bicentennial  Parade in Tiffin in June 1976. Coal was still produced in large amounts until the federal Clean Air Act was passed in 1970.

Later, hauling trucks replaced wagons. In Bettsville in the early 1920s, the Craun Transportation Company used a Model T Ford truck with a dump box in the back to haul coal for locals.

Fireplaces may have worked well for chilly spring and fall days or mild winter days, but people still had to bundle in layers and sit close to the fire on bitterly cold days as the heat of the fire escaped through the chimney (aka Santa’s doorway). Coal stoves weren’t an easy sell, however, since wood could easily be obtained for free in one’s own backyard (in 1950, coal cost $20-$25 per ton per delivery). Salesmen had to do demonstrations to show how quickly coal could heat a room. “In a letter promoting coal, a Philadelphia publisher boasted it (the coal stove) kept his room a toasty 60 degrees Fahrenheit during chilly months.”

But once the convincing was made, residents of Seneca County took to the switch. It was convenient as people no longer had to do the hard labor of retrieving their own heat source with an ax. The Ohio Stove Company was once a successful business at 62-64 North Monroe Street in Tiffin, which operated from 1863-1913. Founder J.S. Yerk sold his stoves and other iron utensils (pots & pans) in several states.

Besides heating a home and cooking, coal was (and sometimes still is) used for electricity. The Edison Electrical Illuminating Plant opened in Tiffin in December 1883 becoming the first coal-fired power plant in Ohio. Although electricity was “around”, it wasn’t widely used in this area right away. Through the 1930s, and beyond, coal production continued to climb in Ohio. It wasn’t until the Rural Electrification Project in the 1930s that many people in the area even gave electricity a thought, so coal continued to be used for oil lamps and other light fixtures and the Tiffin Lantern Works made coal oil jugs.

Coal production reached its peak in 1970 when the Federal Clean Air Act passed. Today, Ohio still produces coal, but to a much more restricted degree. You can tell if your old home once used coal. There could be an abandoned chimney in the original kitchen or a coal bin in the basement. Who knows, Santa may have left behind some coal!

Works cited:

Seneca County Museum Newsletter Spring 1992. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42414

Third Annual Heritage Festival 1817-1981. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27513

National Machinery 100 Years. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32969

Souvenir Flood Views, Tiffin (Ohio) March 25, 1913. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/221

Junior Homekid December 1992. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47706

Webster Manufacturing 75th Anniversary. Seneca County Digital Library.

Webster Manufacturing Car Mover Bulletin 60E. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38591

Seneca County Business Directory 1896. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23248

Pamphlet-Sidewalks Streets and Alleys-Iron Horse Days. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51858

Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program and History, 1954. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31551

Historical Sketches of the Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63795

History of Bettsville, Ohio. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Village of Iler. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40807

“History of Coal Mining in Ohio.” GeoFacts no. 14. Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geological Survey.

“History of the Coal Yards”. Xenia Gazette. Nov. 14, 2015. https://www.xeniagazette.com/2015/11/14/history-of-the-coal-yards/

Kibbel, Bill. “The History of Coal Heating”. Old House Blog. Old House Web. https://www.oldhouseweb.com/blog/the-history-of-coal-heating/

Thompson, Clive. When Coal First Arrived, Americans Said ‘No Thanks.’ Smithsonian Magazine, July/Aug. 2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/americans-hated-coal-180980342/

Yale University. “Rise of Coal in 19th Century United States”. Energy History Teaching Unit. https://energyhistory.yale.edu/units/rise-coal-19th-century-united-states

Home is …

*This blog is honoring National Adoption Month (November).

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Oliver Twist, Heidi, Peter Pan, Mowgli, Snow White, Huckleberry Finn and Annie. These aren’t just the names of fictional characters in classic literature. These fictional characters are all orphans who defy the odds in each of their own stories to adapt to their situations and overcome adversity. Unfortunately, however, not every orphan has a loner grandfather living in the Alps, seven dwarves in a forest, a rich millionaire or a pack of wolves to take them in. In reality, most orphans in our society are stuck in the foster system.

Seneca County has been home to thousands (yes, thousands) of orphans within it’s 200-year tenure and has seen the tremendous changes to the system over those two centuries.

Up to the 1850s, if you found yourself an orphan you may have been taken in by family members or some other family.

Being an orphan didn’t necessarily mean your parents had passed away. Orphans were also children of families falling on hard times who couldn’t financially support a growing number of children. So, while some children may have spent the rest of their childhood in orphanages, others only spent a short period of time until their parents could “get back on their feet.”

Orphanages in the United States pre-date the nation’s independence; Ursuline Sisters founded an orphanage in Natchez, Mississippi in 1729. The first orphanage in Seneca County, the St. Michael’s Orphan Aslyum, would not appear until 1844 in New Riegel, ran by the Sisters of Charity from Switzerland. However, by 1859 it was defunct. By this point in time, the Adoption of Children Act had been passed (1851), which sought to ensure the wellbeing of orphans.

“Although the founders of the community were German, and this was a Catholic home, the Sisters willingly accepted children in need, regardless of religion and nationality,” states the Centennial of the Sisters of St. Francis, which has been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library.

Tiffin’s first orphanage, the St. Francis Orphanage opened just ten years later in 1869. From the time it began to the time it shut its doors in 1936, the orphanage was a refugee for over 1500 children. These children were from areas outside of Seneca County, particularly the Diocese of Cleveland, but some as far away as Chicago, Illinois and the state of New York.

The St. Francis Orphanage, properly known as the Citizens Hospital and Orphan Asylum, existed on 58 acres in what was then known as the town of Oakley. Elizabeth Schaefer, along with her two biological daughters, helped Father Bihn develop the orphanage. When it closed, any remaining children were sent to the St. Anthony Orphanage in Toledo.

Another area orphanage, Flat Rock Children’s Home in Thompson Township, was in operation for over 100 years. It had begun in Tiffin shortly after the Civil War and later moved to the village of Flat Rock. (The Civil War caused the number of orphanages in the United States to increase by 300 percent).

Funded by federal, state, and mission funds from the United Methodist Conference Benevolence Fund, as well as charitable gifts from both civic organizations and individuals, took in not just true orphans and “orphans” in the sense of financial family strain, but also “delinquent and maladjusted children.” Children at this orphanage would have both case workers and “house-parents” living in their quarters. While it was somewhat self-sufficient with a working farm, this group home was able to provide the children continued social opportunities in the community (public schooling, club involvement, youth sports, etc.)

Perhaps the most widely known orphanage in Seneca County is the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, affectionately called the “Junior Home” by local historians. Established in 1896 on 200 acres, it had grown to 1200 orphans (ranging in age from 6 months to 18 years) in the 1930s before ceasing in 1944. In fact, at one time, its population was larger than any single village in Seneca County.

The Junior Order of the United American Mechanics (Junior Home) had several cottages on its grounds for groups of orphaned children to live in as small units. Only a few of the cottages remain standing today. This photo is a sitting room in one of the female cottages and is taken from a book called Junior Home: Our National Home on the Seneca County Digital Library.

The Junior Home took in children from 28 states who learned farming (the Junior Home had livestock, 175 acres of tillable land and a greenhouse), religion once the Ohio Junior Home Memorial Church was built in 1928, home economics in their own cottages, and vocational trades, including furniture manufacturing, food service, auto mechanics and even movie production.

Its football stadium, Redwood Stadium, was one of the first stadiums in northwest Ohio to have electric lights. The gymnasium became an Ohio National Guard Armory in the 1940s and the orchestra often played for area dances, which were very popular at the time.

All of these local orphanages declined after social security, food stamps, and the Aid for Dependent Children legislature were enacted in the 1930s. (To learn more about the government’s steps to curb the rate of orphans, a digitized document called “League of Women Voters 10 Years” can be found on the Seneca County Digital Library, which provides an extensive summary on both the national and local level.)

Today, orphaned children or children from severely broken homes are placed in foster homes while they await adoption, which can take several years. In Ohio, adoption agencies are located in Toledo, Akron, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

To learn more about the orphanages that once operated in Ohio, especially the Junior Home, check out the library’s winter display in its Pat Hillmer display cases. In collaboration with the Seneca County Museum, who recently created a special collection about the Junior Home for public viewing during museum hours, the library is featuring memorabilia and written materials in these three cases (two are located adjacent to the biographies and one is located by the magazines and large print section).

Works cited:

Centennial of Sisters of St. Francis. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36287

Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65422

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28803

League of Women Voters 10 Years. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63567

Building of the Week. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28318

“National Adoption Month 2022.” Child Welfare Information Gateway. Children’s Bureau. https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/nam/about/

“Brief History of Adoption in the United States.” Adoption Network. https://adoptionnetwork.com/history-of-adoption/

“The Origins of Adoption in America.” American Experience. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/daughter-origins-adoption-america/

Gates, David. “History of the Orphanage.” Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/history-orphanage-185444

“It Beckons and It Baffles”

(Line 5 from Emily Dickinson’s “This World is Not Conclusion”)

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

This blog post is written in conjunction with the Christopher D. English Foundation Speakers Series

English class, also known as “Language Arts” is not a popular favorite course when asking today’s students. The thought of composing an essay doesn’t appeal to the vast majority. Many people like to succinctly write what they want to say about a matter and move on. Perhaps that’s one reason why, long before social media and photographs, it was part of society to write creatively in the form of poems, sonnets, and prose. At a time when cars and planes were not available to quickly transport people or telephones used to talk to someone, those separated from one another for lengthy periods of time wrote letters to stay in touch. Feelings were expressed more eloquently and thoughtfully, which is perhaps why it became known as the “art of language.”

There are many different forms of creative writing and dozens, if not hundreds, of examples can be found on historical items in the Seneca County Digital Library. Poems, jokes and short stories with punchlines were the norm in just about every yearbook and student newspaper. Original dedications were addressed at many social events or in publications celebrating them, such as hometown centennials.

In the “History of Bettsville,” an older resident recalls childhood memories when the town had been much different.

“There was an oil lamp on every corner, that was all we had for light.
“When some kid was good with a sling shot, then that street was dark all night.”

The Springs at Green Springs, Ohio has been a very scenic, contemplative place, a perfect setting for a descriptive poem.

This is a very straightforward poem with it’s clear rhyming scheme. However, poems can be as simple or as complex as the writer desires.

In “History of Eden Township and Melmore” the author pleads the readers to “come, taste the Melmorean springs, possess the Melmorean lands.” This poem, which describes Melmore in such a fashion that one would almost have to be out of his or her mind to care to live anywhere else, is a “pastoral poem.” These poems paint a pictures of rural life, landscapes and the natural world.

Other poems use “imagery,” or figurative language. These poems, with their vivid descriptions, make the reader feel as if he or she has been injected into the poem. A deceased Green Springs native wrote the “Poem of Springs” for the Green Springs Centennial, helping the reader tune into the senses of sight and sound to imagine themselves at the natural springs:

“In the morning how the red birds through the echoing woods are calling,
Whistling music to murmur of the cool green water falling.
How the flowers seem to listen, drooping in the drowsy noon,
 to the sleepy, sleepy rhythm of the springs’ insistent tune.”

Native American poetry was often chanted to the beat of a drum or rattle. This short poem joins others in the Pathfinder, a Native American publication on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Poems can drastically vary in length. While those poems dedicated to pockets within Seneca County are short, a former Junior Home resident wrote an epic about the Sandusky River. Epics are a type of narrative poem which tells a story with characters and adventures from the distant past. They are almost like a novel, except in measured meters. The author of “On the Sandusky”, Gertrude Umsted Gooding, walks the reader through the history of the Sandusky River valley from the time of the ice age to modern man. She pays homage in several stanzas to the native peoples who first lived in the area before Europeans arrived.

“Almost three hundred years passed by before the white man came to the banks of our little river with its historic Indian name,” Umsted states. Later, she walks the readers through the formation of Tiffin:

“The founders of these two villages,
Hedges and Spencer by name,
Each wishing the other would take himself
Back from whence he came.”

Poems not only highlight places and groups of people, but can be written in honor of particular individuals. This style of poetry is called an “elegy” and were often spoken at funerals or carved into tombstones as “epitaphs.” In a short booklet of poems by Junior Home kids, is a poem dedicated to “Dad” Kernan, who operated the home for many years. “Urging, but patient, he guided each one, each individual daughter and son; cheered us in failure, rejoiced when we won; walked with us, talked with us shared joy and sorrow; played with us, prayed with us, gave strength for tomorrow.

Not all poetry is so clean and boastful, however. When poets use something called “dissonance,” (inharmonious sounds and uneven rhythms), they are intending to catch the readers off guard. The Young America Sings National High School Poetry Association was program founded by Dennis Hartman of Los Angeles in 1937 and continued until the early 1980s. High school and junior high school faculty submitted the poetic works of their students, which were published in a book. One wonders what Mrs. R. Van Buren from Tiffin Middle School thought as she submitted student Victor Focht’s piece called “Dishwashing.”

“Dishwashing is a nice chore, that is if you like to
Stand and stand and scrub and scrub,
Until the things are clean once more.”

This is an excerpt from the “Forest Rangers,” a ballad-style poem included in the Seneca County History Volume I. Written in 1842 by Judge Andrew Coffinberry, who lived in Tiffin for many years, it chronicles the history of the area.

Where dissonance keeps a reader on his or her toes, consonance, on the other hand, is so predictable it may pacify the reader. Consonance is a repetition of sounds. General William H. Gibson, a Tiffinite who lead troops in the Civil War, had written a poem upon graduating from Ashland University. There are five stanzas to the poem that all have the same line, “Forget thee, Ashland?” followed by all the reasons he would never forget such a beloved place.

Another event garnering another local individual to write a related piece was for an annual banquet held in honor of the Seneca County Bar Association. Judge William Lang wrote a poking but tactful ode that mentioned every single lawyer in Tiffin at the time. Odes, like his piece, are written to praise someone or something in a ceremonial manner.

Before weaving all 32 surnames into his poem, Lang testifies:

“Whenever ye in business counsel need,
or need another in your cause to plead,
And ye in custody, and charged with crime,
And ye whose creditors no prose or rhyme,
Can soothe – and ye whose debtors stubborn be,
(Provided you always come with a fee.)

Poems, and any form of creative writing, can be anything the writer desires. Some poems are simple passing thoughts or observations, others reveal the inner turmoil that the writer may be experiencing. Many tell a story. It’s an art form that anyone has the ability to do, as many Seneca County residents over time have proven. Only a select few are portrayed here but several others on the Seneca County Digital Library can provide inspiration to compose one’s own.

Works cited:

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17078

Bigger, David Dwight. Ohio’s Silver-Tongued Orator. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39307

Durrett, John. History of Bettsville. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Green Springs Centennial (1972). Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439

Hartman, Dennis. Young America Sings National High School Poetry Association 1958-1959. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/50822

History of Eden Township and Melmore. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29665

Junior Homekid Poems by Kitty. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47690

Peddicord, Lura. Green Springs Ohio Centennial. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29438

“Poetry 101: Learn about Poetry and Different Types of Poems.” Master Class. Aug. 31,
2022. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-learn-about-poetry-different-types-of-poems-and-poetic-devices-with-examples

Umsted, Gertrude. “Our Own Sandusky”. Early State and Local History. 1915. Dolly Todd Madison Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/50428

Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search

Don’t fear the reaper

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

As the leaves begin to change color and chilly air begins to slowly creep its way in, especially in the crisp evenings of fall, many people begin to get into a certain spirit – a spirit for Halloween. Halloween has its share of decorations honoring the Grim Reaper, spooky haunted houses in the form of dilapidated Victorian homes, and wooden coffins. But if you dig deeper (yes, pun intended), you’ll find a lot of truth to these widely popular symbols for the October holiday.

Funeral and mourning practices have stayed relatively unchanged for a long time, at least on the surface. Modern-day funeral “homes” are usually old Victorian homes that have been refurbished and remodeled to great extents. During Victorian times when these homes functioned as houses, they were still the actual sites of funerals so the locations really haven’t changed.

An ad for Ewald & Pahl, funeral directors in Tiffin around the turn of the century. This was taken from the Historical Sketches of Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio 1903, which has been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63773

A long time ago, homes had parlors. The parlors were formal rooms in the front of the house where people entertained their visitors. But they were also the sight of more macabre events, which is why funeral homes were first called funeral parlors before that term died (yes, another pun intended).

Larger cities were the first to switch over to official funeral homes, but in smaller towns like Tiffin and its surrounding communities, the practice of using parlors continued well into the 1940s.

Once funeral homes began, they were often succeeded by the next generations of the same family. For example, Green Springs had a funeral parlor owned by the Young family from the 1940s-1960s and Harrold-Floriana Funeral Home in Fostoria is a fifth-generation funeral home.

It usually took three or four generations until forces combined. It was during the 1970s and 1980s that hyphenated names for funeral homes began appearing as two separate homes would often be consolidated. Other local funeral homes saw this same pattern. Adam Turner turned the Loomis home into a funeral home in 1946. His apprentice, Phillip Engle, took over when Turner passed away in 1965, renaming is the Turner-Engle Funeral Home. Turner-Engle is now known as Engle-Shook Funeral Home with locations in Tiffin, Bloomville and Bettsville.

According to its website, The Hoffmann-Gottfried-Mack Funeral Home began as simple the Hoffmanm Memorial Funeral Home in 1914. In 1937 it bought the Sewalt Mansion (its current location). It combined with the Gottfried Memorial Funeral Home in 1986 and to its current name in 2004.

While funeral homes serve these functions now, in the 1800s and early 1900s, family members, their friends and sometimes their wait staff/servants, were the first people who handled a deceased body of a loved one. There was no call to these funeral homes for a body to be taken away for preparations. Bodies were laid out in the parlors and people came to the house for both the visitation and funeral service. In between, the family kept constant vigil over the body.

An ad for A. Niebel, undertaker, in Tiffin. This was taken from the Tiffin Fremont and Fostoria City Directory 1874-1875, which has been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27713

The only call made was to the undertaker for a coffin. In the early years of our country, coffins were typically made by cabinet makers. Tiffin had four cabinet makers and by the 1860s, there was only one official undertaker. In the What How and Who of It: An Ohio Community, it states Dick Rogers operated the “coffin-making shop.”

While walnut was the most common material used, upscale coffins could be double the price as the plainer ones. Bascom’s cabinet/coffin maker, William Dewald had a wife, “Bessie,” who designed the padded liners for his coffins, often adding embroidery (probably for an extra charge). Oak and pine woods were used until the 1870s, eventually being replaced by rarer woods and metals, like silver, bronze, copper and stainless steel.

Eventually undertakers started offering hearses along with the coffin as a package deal, which often used handmade artwork to create similar tiered pricing. Hearses would park next to the “coffin window” of the parlor (these are extra large windows that can still often be seen in older homes today).

Policeman Patrick Sweeney was killed on duty in 1909. Before embalming became a widespread practice with state laws, funeral flowers were placed near the decaying body to mask the odor.

Last, but certainly not least, are the flowers. While sending flowers to a funeral visitation is a form of condolence, flowers were originally included in funeral practices simply to mask the smell of the decaying corpse (candles were often also used). “Depending on many factors, such as the environment and the condition of the body, flowers were used in varying quantities as a way of tolerating the smell for those who came to pay their final respects.” So, in essence the flowers were to console the visitors until embalming became the norm and laws were created.

Often, the floral display included a wreath. In the Bascom Area Sesquicentennial, there are photos of funeral flowers displayed around a clock. Policeman Patrick Sweeney, who was killed in action, has flowers surrounding a photographer of him at his funeral in 1909 (see photo). In Tiffin, Edmund Ulrich and later his son, Lewis Ulrich, were an early supplier of funeral flowers in the early 1900s for area families. Their greenhouse was located on Sycamore Street. Wagner’s Florals, however, was the first having been founded in 1847. Rodger’s Flowers followed 100 years later (1947).

Works cited:

Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33669

Bascom Garden Club. Bascom Then and Now. 1976. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29193

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 2. 1911. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17468

Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. “Funeral Homes and Funeral Practices.” Case Western Reserve University. https://case.edu/ech/articles/f/funeral-homes-and-funeral-practices

Green Springs Centennial Committee. Green Springs Centennial. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439

Howe, Barbara. Building of the Week. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28064

Petal Talk. “History of Funeral Flowers.” https://www.1800flowers.com/blog/flower-facts/history-of-funeral-flowers/

Scent & Violet Flowers & Gifts. “The Fascinating History of Funeral Wreaths.” Oct. 9, 2018. https://www.scentandviolet.com/info/blog/fascinating-history-funeral-wreaths/#.ZAdy7HbMKUl

Schmitt, Elizabeth Schlageter. “The History of Home Funerals: From Family Tradition and Back Again.” National Funeral Home Alliance. https://www.homefuneralalliance.org/home-funeral-history.html

Smith, Howard. The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community. 1997. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15879

Weber, Austin. “The History of Caskets.” Assembly Magazine. Oct. 2, 2009. https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/87043-the-history-of-caskets

 “Where Did Funeral Parlors Originate?” Glicker Funeral Home & Cremation Service. https://www.glicklerfuneralhome.com/blog/where-did-funeral-parlors-originate/

Traffic jam? I’ll just take my bike!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

The horse has been completely replaced by the automobile for human travel, but there is one other mode of transportation that has only gained popularity over the decades – the bicycle.

Unicyclists ride down Washington Street during the 1976 Bicentennial Parade in Tiffin.

Just within the past year, Tiffin has officially marked its bicycle routes through town. And over the years it has seen its share of bicycle “parades” that have made a one-day stop in town before continuing on their trek.

During the “Golden Age of Bicycles,” which started in the 1900s and lasted through the 1950s, Tiffin boasted a number of bicycle repair shops and dealers, proving as a testimony of the global hype these new vehicles created.

While Leonardo Da Vinci has been credited has having drawn a blueprint of a bicycle, it never came to fruition until the early 1800s as several men in Germany, England and France all came up with different versions of the bicycle, which developed over time.

Junior Home students Jerri Francis and friend have fun riding a bike around campus in the early 1940s.

The first “hobby horses,” as they were dubbed, were made out of wood. With no pedals, one had to get a running start and then hop onto the contraption. He or she then simply rode it until the momentum slowed. Pretty anticlimactic and really didn’t get anyone anywhere, if they were going to use it as an alternative to a horse (or even simply walking). Then came the “boneshakers” in the 1860s, which had pedals and were made with iron, but were as their name implied – bumpy.

The 1870s saw an explosion of bicycle types, and ones we are more familiar with, notably the large-wheeled bicycles called “penny-farthings” and the first prototypes of the modern-day motorcycle.

Once the bicycle had reached this stage of its development, the bicycle became more widespread and by that point had been introduced to Seneca County.

D.M. Eastman was a dealer of “Giant Bicycles” in his stop at 141 Washington St. where he also sold sewing machines. Just down the street, the A.L. Flack & Co. at 157-161 Washington St. added bicycles to their repertoire of buggies and harnesses, even going so far as to also rent bicycles like we often see today. Later, there would be additional shops at 421 Washington St., 145 Market Street, 118 Melmore and 134 Sycamore.

By the 1890s, bicycle clubs had developed (Fostoria’s was called Fostoria Bicycle Club No. 226). These societies did more than just leisurely travel in groups (much like today’s poker runs for charity). They lobbied for the government to build better infrastructure and safer, paved roads.  Today, there are several bicycle clubs in the area including: Toledo Area Bicyclists (Whitehouse), Maumee Valley Adventurers (Toledo), Flatland Bicycle Club (Lindsey), Maumee Valley Wheelman (Bowling Green), Team Roadrunners (Lima), Mid-Ohio Bikers (Mansfield), Heart of Ohio Tailwinds (Marion) and Silver Wheels (Vermillion).

Two girls ride their bikes past the old Seneca County Courthouse building. This photo was produced in the Tiffin Area, Ohio booklet that’s been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25131

At the same time that the Penny-Farthings were appearing, the motorcycle was developing. The first several versions used coal burners and alcohol steam chambers. Then, once a couple of German inventors figured out how to attach a gasoline combustion engine to the frame, the “riding wagon” was on the market.

After that, the motorcycle could be massed produced. Both Webster Industries and National Machinery made parts contributing to the bicycle industry. Among many trades, bicycle manufacturers were one of the customers of Webster. In National Machinery’s 100th Anniversary booklet from 1974, it states over the course of a century, the factory had produced “metal parts that go into almost any mechanical device from a bicycle to a transcontinental jet liner.”

Bicycles also helped employers perform their jobs and business owners effectively run their businesses. The lamplighter in New Riegel in the 1920s, Louis Seifert, was granted permission to ride his bicycle along the street while lighting lamps (probably getting the job done much faster). Ballreich’s Potato Chips owner and founder, Fred Ballreich, used his bicycle to deliver their product to customers.

But what started out as a fun diversion and a practical solution for travel, started to become competitive. In the 1950s, it had become an intramural outdoor sport of the Girls Athletic Association with Columbian High School having a team during the 1953 season. (Further west, today’s high schoolers can participate in bicycling as an official high school sport through the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, founded in 2009).

When the Heritage Festival began in Tiffin in the 1980s, it featured both canoe races and an eight-mile bicycle race. And it’s no secret that this competitiveness has reached a worldwide stage with bicycling and triathalons, which feature a bicycling component in between swimming and running, being Summer Olympic sports. Not to mention, BMX racing for motorcycles (talk about “boneshaking!”)

An experiment that started a few hundred years ago has since evolved into a cultural phenomenon. There’s hardly anyone who will hear the words “Harley-Davidson” and not be able to drum up a picture in their mind of a loud two-wheeled vehicle. Bike racks grace the sides of city buildings, and in larger cities have dozens to rent.

Perfecting the Penny Farthing, though, will always be a feat.

Works cited:

1974 National Machinery 100th Anniversary. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32930

Andrews, Evan. “The Bicycle’s Bumpy History. History Channel. Feb. 18, 2021. https://www.history.com/news/bicycle-history-invention

Bicycle History. “History of Bicycles.” And “History of Motorcycles.” http://www.bicyclehistory.net/motorcycle-history/history-of-motorcycle/

Bures, Frank. “How High School Mountain Biking is Transforming the Sport.” May 3, 2017. https://www.bicycling.com/racing/a20036423/how-high-school-mountain-biking-is-transforming-the-sport/

Fourth Annual Heritage Festival 1982. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27514

History Cooperative. “The History of Bicycles.” July 1, 2019. https://historycooperative.org/the-history-of-bicycles/

Ohio Bicycle Federation. “Ohio’s Bicycle Clubs.” https://ohio.bike/ohios-bicycle-clubs-listed/ Accessed March 7, 2023.

Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History and Families”. 1998. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319

Wagner, Elaine. “A History of New Riegel.” Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32008

Webster Manufacturing Belt Conveyor Equipment. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38325

Wiggins Directory for 1897-8. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31003

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1953. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/7703

Is that a calliope I hear?

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

In 2017, the circus as we knew it, reached extinction when Ringling, Barnum and Bailey threw in the towel. While one can still find small homegrown versions of circuses that still travel to county fairs or state fairs in the summer, there will never again be a circus quite like the ones our ancestors were fondly enraptured by.

Beginning this fall, however, spectators can see a resurrected and modern form of the circus (sans animals) as Ringling has re-branded itself.

For decades, the classic circus was a mainstay for many Midwestern towns, including Tiffin. Seneca County saw the iconic brands of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey plus everything in between.

Before the railroads improved travel, circus caravans traveled by way of horses and wagons mostly during the summer months from May to October. Once circuses switched over to using railcars, it was much easier to travel farther distances for the circus troops, sometimes numbering in the hundreds (a combined count of humans and animals).

After they rolled into town with their special circus trains, they would gather an audience as they unloaded and pitched their tents, and then an official parade welcomed the visitors before they began their performances.

A girl pets a circus elephant’s truck in the 1950s. In the background is a pull car with the name Mills Bros. (Circus). This photo is being used with permission from the Ashtabula County District Library and is featured on the Ohio Memory Project at https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll82/id/8499.

In the early days of Tiffin, the circuses set up camp on the north side of the tracks near Franklin and North Monroe Streets (formerly known as La Fayette Street). The tents were pitched along Hudson Street. While the streets are no longer connected today, the circus parade route took Adams Street up to Frost Parkway (then known as Water Street). It turned left onto Water Street before heading onto the Washington Street bridge to arrive at Monument Square (where the Courthouse stands).

Eventually, the later circuses made camp in the Highlands section of town (what Tiffinites call “the Avenues”) near Wall and Davis Streets, particularly where the Ohio Lantern Company was once located.

One of the dead giveaways that the circus was in town and the parade had commenced was the unmistakable sound of the steam calliope. This instrument on wheels is undeniably one of the icons of the circus. They could be heard several miles away.

The variety of animals was a favorite among the children. One “menagerie” that came to Tiffin in the 1850s, Herr Driesbach’s “Grand Consolidated Circus,” featured lions, tigers, a giraffe, panthers, “every denomination of the bear species,” and, of course, elephants. In 1871, The Great Pacific Menagerie and Mammoth Circus featured the classic elephants, camels and 150 draft horses. The National Circus of Philadelphia and New York Circus brought ten cream-haired horses.

One local man, Ed Everest, began a winter circus featuring five lions, plus seals, ponies, dogs and pigs, which he debuted in Tiffin in September 1915. His 16-act show also included acrobats.

The stunts and fantastic, jaw-dropping feats by these athletic, flexible, and fit humans, is usually the main focus of today’s circuses. The tricks may be more advanced now, but audiences were no less enthralled by what the original acrobats were able to accomplish during their time. These included “Miss Castella,” a wire-walker in 1859; Helen Smidutz, a bareback horse rider; and muscle builders Glick and Yundt.

Not everyone was pleased with the variety of human art, however. One child was so embarrassed by the dancers’ scant clothing, she vowed never to attend a circus again. In Fostoria after the turn of the century, residents were afraid of witnessing the “can-can” dance when Pawnee Bill’s traveling show visited. A botched stunt during the Grady’s American Circus in 1871 had people from the area gasping in fear. A trapeze artist hanging from an ascending balloon when the stunt “faltered” in front of a crowd of 3,000 people (the details of what happened were not included in the source, only that the circus manager offered half-price tickets to the following year’s circus).

Bands and singers were also often part of a regular circus performance. Mabies’ Circus, once the largest circus company in the United States before Barnum and Bailey and The Ringling Brothers, had a singing clown named Tony Pastor, “the Great Yankee Clown.” Other circus companies offered performances by concert bands, brass bands, reed bands or cornet bands. Besides the circus bands, vaudeville, variety shows and thespians would entertain crowds with their talents.

Whatever each particular circus train brought with it, the event was highly anticipated. “When the circus rolled into town, daily life abruptly stopped.”

Works cited:

Seneca County Historical Society. Fort Ball Gazette, December 1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40448/rec/1

Smith, Howard. The What, How and Who of It: An Ohio Community. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15811

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1925. Seneca County Digital Library.

Barnes, Myron. Between the Eighties, 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65422

Gibson, Martha M. Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12932

Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library.

Tiffin Historic Trust. Pamphlet-Sidewalks Streets and Alleys-Iron Horse Days. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51857

Fostoria Centennial Committee. Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program 1954. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31504

Ringling. https://www.ringling.com/news/ Accessed March 6, 2023.

Davis, Janet M. “America’s Big Circus Spectacular Has a Long and Cherished History.” Smithsonian Magazine, March 22, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-big-circus-spectacular-has-long-and-cherished-history-180962621/