A is for Apple

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Do you remember your kindergarten class? Did you even attend kindergarten? My first day of kindergarten was in the fall of 1990, long after kindergarten had become a permanent fixture in public schools. Even since then, kindergarten has evolved into something probably almost unrecognizable to the early embracers of the concept of kindergarten. These days, every spring, parents of preschoolers anxiously await the results of their child’s kindergarten screening, a big milestone for most four and five-year-old children.

The term kindergarten in German literally means “Garden of Children.” Historically, it was organized to teach basic foundations such as letters and numbers and also develop young children’s social skills. The man credited for inventing kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel, felt music, nature, literature, and geometry were the keys to setting young children up for success. These rudimentary kindergarten classes focused on recognizing patterns and were a loose form of art classes featuring lots of hands-on building with an array of materials. Children were expected simply to develop creativity, motor skills, and self-expression.

The first kindergarten appeared in German in 1837, just as German immigrants were starting to immigrate to the United States in large numbers. The first American kindergarten class was initiated in 1856 in Wisconsin with other states with large amounts of native Germans, like Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Ohio quickly following suit. However, since kindergarten was an extra-curricular, most often it was children from middle and upper-class families who sent their offspring to these new schools. Efforts were made in various urban areas to create free kindergartens.

By the middle of the 20th century, most schools in Seneca County had kindergarten classrooms, although it wouldn’t be required until much later. This photo is taken from “Tiffin, Ohio a Good Place to Teach-a Good Place to Live” on the Seneca County Digital Library.

By the late 1800s, kindergarten classes started to develop in Tiffin, although they were seen as somewhat separated entities to the main schools. The Ursuline Convent built a three-story school building in 1878 on the same property where Calvert High School now stands and this was the first school in Tiffin to include a kindergarten. While the rest of the classes were an all-girls boarding school, the kindergarten welcomes both boys and girls. When Tiffin’s inaugural kindergarten was only a few years old, the number of kindergarten classes on a national level had grown exponentially from a few thousands to over 20,000.

The Junior Home (now the grounds of the Tiffin Developmental Center), had started its kindergarten in 1903 which “proved a success in the training of the children of preschool age.” Tiffin Schools eventually started to produce future kindergarten teachers, such as Eva Huber, who attended Chicago Kindergarten College in 1902, and “Gertrude,” who taught kindergarten in Toledo in the 1920s and emphasized she “wouldn’t trade her position for a thousand dollars in cash”.

The development of kindergarten stalled during the Great Depression and didn’t resume morphing until well after World War II ended. It was during the 1950s and 1960s when more concrete rules were put in place for how kindergartens operated. New Jersey, for example, was one of the first states to limit class size, and the minimum age became more important.  When Risingsun built an addition onto its school in 1954, a modern kindergarten room was one of the new features. Likewise, when Green Springs consolidated with Clyde, it made sure to include a kindergarten class.

The Clinton Township Kindergarten Class of the 1962-1963 school year. Do you recognize anyone? More photos like this one can be found on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Midway through the ‘60s, at least half to three quarters of five-year-old children were enrolled in kindergarten as it continued to be optional. In Seneca County, the trend was evident as new kindergarten programs popped up seemingly overnight. New Riegel began its first kindergarten in the New Riegel American Legion in 1972 and just three years later, Rev. James Steinle, pastor at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Tiffin, incorporated kindergarten at St. Joseph Catholic Elementary.

One major game-changer was funding. Within a nine-year timespan in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, almost 20 states started funding kindergarten and at the end of the decade, only Mississippi and North Dakota had left their kindergarten population in the dust.

At the start of the 1980s, Tiffin had 23 “special elementary” teachers spread across art, music and kindergarten. At this point, kindergarten started to become more advanced with attention on what lay ahead – first grade. Across the country, close to 90 percent of five-year-old children attended kindergarten by this point as states had begun to require kindergarten.

Today, it is now a law in the state of Ohio (in addition to just 18 other states) to attend kindergarten, although parents can still opt for half-day or full-day options. Five and six-year-olds in most kindergarten classes across the country are expected to form complete sentences and do simple mathematical equations before they even begin first grade. The State of Ohio standards say by the end of kindergarten, students must be efficient in computer science, be able to read maps and name several different musical instruments, just to name a few requirements.

So, if you know a future kindergartener who has recently passed their kindergarten screening or will be experiencing kindergarten screening soon, congratulate them. Wish them ‘good luck.’ Kindergarten is certainly a big step.

Works cited:

Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Tiffin, Ohio August 31, 1893. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35431

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

Cascio, Elizabeth U. “What happened when kindergartens went universal?” Education Next. Vol. 10, No. 2. https://www.educationnext.org/what-happened-when-kindergarten-went-universal/

Constance, Mackenzie. “Kindergartens: A History (1886), Free Kindergartens.” Social Welfare History Project, Virginia Commonwealth University. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/programs/education/kindergartens-a-history-1886/#:~:text=In%201837%20Froebel%20opened%20the,kindergarten%20in%20Boston%20in%201860.

Eschner, Kat. “A Little History of American Kindergartens.” Smithsonian Magazine, May 16, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/little-history-american-kindergartens-180963263/

A History of New Riegel. Seneca County Digital Library.

Junior Home History of the National Orphans Home (Tiffin, Ohio). https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4401

Kindergartens. Ohio History Central. https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Kindergartens

Ohio Department of Education, Standards by Grade Level, Kindergarten. PDF, 34 pages. https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/OLS-Graphic-Sections/Learning-Standards/Kindergarten-Standards.pdf.aspx?lang=en-US

Risingsun, Ohio. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30057

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. Seneca County Digital Library.

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

A Survey of Local Government Tiffin, Ohio – 1972. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63667

Tiffin High School Green & Gold 1920. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29031

Tiffin-Know Your City. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27712

Tiffin Public Schools Report of the Board of Education for the School Year Ending August 31, 1902. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35573

Zoromski, Kevin and Insa Raymond. “Why is Kindergarten called Kindergarten?” Michigan State University Extension, Early Childhood Development. Dec. 20, 2019. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/why-is-kindergarten-called-kindergarten

It’s Twenty Rods to the East

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Someone looking at an old map of Tiffin may become more lost after looking at it than before. And Tiffin is by far the only city that has been transformed over the course of hundreds of years. At first glance, the map may look familiar, but upon closer inspection, someone familiar with Tiffin will see that in some cases, street names have changed, buildings have moved or are gone completely, and of course, it’s grown in size.

While maps have evolved from handwritten drawings to technological systems that show you where you are in real-time, maps help provide the person using them with a sense of ease. Maps are intended to keep someone from getting lost.

A map of the original Tiffin, which was separated as Fort Ball to the northwest and Tiffin to the south of the Sandusky River.

Each year, Tiffin-Seneca Public Library hosts a Community Read, featuring a fiction piece in the spring and a non-fiction work in the fall. This year’s Community Read has focused on the book, The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner. The title is pretty straightforward; the present-day main character uses maps of London to unearth an 18th-century apothecary that had long been forgotten, lost to time. She had to decipher these maps from how London appeared then to how it had morphed.

What one who doesn’t call Tiffin his or her hometown might not realize, is that Tiffin was once two separate towns, Tiffin on the south side of the Sandusky River, and Fort Ball on the northwest side of the river (see photo). Eventually, after much arguing and resulting resentments, Tiffin won out. Similarly, Fostoria was once known as Risdon’s Square.

It was common for villages of varying sizes, even cities, to be named after places of origin of the early settlers or nearby geographical landmarks. New Riegel was named in honor of Riegel, Germany where many immigrants had traveled from and Green Springs was named for the natural springs nearby (For a full list, Destination Seneca County gives a brief description of each town on their website; the link is listed in the “resources” section of this article).

Other towns and cities are named after notable individuals. While Tiffin was named after the first governor of Ohio, many Seneca County towns were named after major benefactors who built them up. Fostoria is named in honor of Charles Foster, McCutchenville after Joseph McCutchen, and so on. (One wonders what Mr. McCutchen would have thought of the nickname, “Scutch”?)

There are neighborhoods in both Tiffin and all of the surrounding towns, despite their size, which have “additions” listed on older maps, named after an individual who likely sold their land to the growing municipality. Many streets in these new neighborhoods are the lasting namesake of those long-gone individuals. Tiffin, for example, has Tomb’s Addition and Wentz Addition towards the northern edges of the city limits. In Fostoria, there was a Crocker’s Addition and Bettsville had a Bett’s Addition from the founder himself.

Maps of Attica, Caroline, Carrothers, Flat Rock, Lodi, Kansas and Springville were all shown on one page in the 1874 Seneca County Combination Atlas Map.

The “avenues” section of north Tiffin was possibly named in order of their accessions into the city. On a map in the Combination Atlas Map of Seneca County, they are noted as “First Highland Addition,” “Second Highland Addition,” “Third Highland Addition,” etc. These types of maps are known as plat maps.

Plat maps were a type of map approved by the Public Land Survey System and were particularly common in the Midwest because the land could easily be divided into even sections with relatively flat topography. They were often gathered into atlases, organized by townships. The Ohio History Connection has an entire collection called the Ohio Canal Plat Map Collection and atlases for almost every county in Ohio.

Speaking of the canal, the Third Annual Heritage Festival booklet shows an early proposed route for the Erie Canal, one that was eventually discarded as a huge disappointment to the locals. This particular proposed route would have gone through West Lodi, Republic, and Carey from Sandusky.

This map shows the location of “Abbott’s Island,” where several members of the Klingshirn family and debris from the 1913 flood became lodged after traveling several miles. According to this map, Albert Abbott owned the land to the west of the “island” at the time of the flood.

Further back in time, you’ll also find maps showing areas in Seneca County where Native Americans inhabited. The Big Spring Indian Reservation was located in the southwestern corner of Seneca County, where Wyandots resided in the early 1800s. Near Fort Seneca, prehistoric peoples hunted and camped in cliffs and on the edge of the river (a previous blog article from November 2021 explores this in further detail). It was also claimed that of the 8,233 prehistoric earthworks throughout Ohio, only three of them are attributed to Seneca County.

The Cincinnati Public Library’s section on Ohio Memory has maps of each county in Ohio with their respective Native American trails, village, burial sites/cemeteries, and “enclosures.” These maps indicate 23 recorded sites scattered throughout Seneca county (as of 1914), including two located slightly northwest of Bloomville, one in Eden Township along Rock Creek, several in Thompson Township, and others between Flat Rock and Reedtown, south of Melmore, east of Bascom, north of Berwick, along Beaver Creek in Adams Township north of Lowell, and in Pleasant Township south of Fort Seneca.

Maps were also presented differently than they are now. Modern society is used to measuring distance in feet, yards, and miles. However, maps of Seneca County often used measurements called furlongs and rods, which were old English units of measurement based on ancient farming practices. A history buff or a horse-racing fan may know these conversions already, but it would be hard to find a device or phone app that lets you convert our modern measurements into a rod or a furlong.

A rod is simply 16 ½ feet and an acre is 160 square rods, but the furlong takes on a much more complicated system. A livestock-led plow usually averaged so many furrows per day. A “furrow-long” was combined to create a “furlong,” or 660 feet. One mile equals eight furlongs. An Ohio auctioneer has a pretty Midwestern explanation: “Perhaps the easiest way for us Americans to envision it is as a rectangle the size of an American football field minus the two endzones. The acre was a down-to-earth estimate of the area that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen. The furlong is 10 chains long and the width of an acre just happens to be one chain.”

Works cited:

Baughman, A.J. “Seneca County History Volume 1”. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17053

Lang, William. “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/17561

Lunn, Charlie. “The History of Plat Books: Their Past, Present and Future.” Rockford Map. March 6, 2018. https://rockfordmap.com/blog/2018/03/06/the-history-of-plat-books-their-past-present-and-future/

Mills, William C. “Archeological atlas of Ohio : showing the distribution of the various classes of prehistoric remains in the state, with a map of the principal Indian trails and towns.” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. https://digital.cincinnatilibrary.org/digital/collection/p16998coll9/id/2058

Rerick Brothers. “The County of Seneca, Ohio: An Imperial Atlas and Art Folio, including Chronological Chart, Statistical Tables, and Description of Surveys.” 1896. https://www.ohiohistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Rerick_Brothers-_Atlas_and_Art_Folio_of_Seneca_County_1896.pdf

Sayger Printing. “Third Annual Heritage Festival 1817-1891.” https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27465

Stewart, D.J. “Seneca County History Combination Atlas Map 1874.” Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4517

Strischeck, Dev. “Acres, Furlongs, Chains and Rods? That’s About the Size of It.” January 17, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/acres-furlongs-chains-rods-thats-size-dev-strischek

Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Original Land Entries of Seneca County, Ohio.” Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44828

“Villages.” Destination Seneca County. https://www.destinationsenecacounty.org/things-to-do/by-type/historical/villages (accessed Feb. 22, 2022).

Would you like to attempt to cross the river?

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

If you or your children grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, a favorite memory many of us can still recall is playing the computer game, The Oregon Trail. I remember pining for bad weather leading to recess indoors so I could try (and fail) over and over to virtually arrive in Oregon. Try as I might, it seemed I always ended up with a fatal snake bite. This game, created during the big bang era of video games, was intended to teach middle-aged children the harsh realities of American pioneers traveling west in the mid-1800s.

While this may be the most popular image many of us have for a pioneer, the first settlers in Ohio were pioneers in their own right. They may have fought tamer snakes and other wild animals, smaller mountainous regions than the Rockies, and The Great Black Swamp rather than the desert climate of the West, but they trialed just the same and in very similar wagons to what was used just a couple decades later for travel into the most western states. In the early 1800s, before the Erie Canal opened making travel to Ohio much easier, Ohio was the “wild west”. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1880s that Ohio and its neighbors started to be referred to as the Midwest.

In 1820, this entire area was deemed “Congress Lands” the early pioneers set out by the hundreds. These pioneers moving into Ohio had most recently traveled through the eastern states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. In fact, the Conestoga wagon which we all conjure up in our minds when the Oregon Trail is mentioned was manufactured in the Conestoga River region of Pennsylvania (Lancaster County) by Mennonite German-Americans.

“Photograph Boy with Horse and Wagon,” has been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library. It’s description reads, “A sepia toned photograph showing a young boy sitting in a wagon with a horse and a dog. The writing on the back reads Columbus, Ohio.”

While Tiffin and its southern parts were somewhat passable, the farther north in the county you got, the worse the travel was by wagon. Before the swamp was drained, wagons would simply sink. Some pioneers created makeshift trails as they went, using axes to chop down narrow pathways for their wagons. Later, they used the National Road from Cumberland, MD to Columbus. If Seneca County was their final destination, they branched off in Zanesville to head north.

In most cases, they used already existing trails created by the inhabiting Native Americans before they were involuntarily forced to pre-determined areas out west (Oklahoma and others). These trails included the Black Swamp Trail, Fort Miami Trail, Great Trail, Huron Trail, Maumee Trail, Owl River Trail, Pickawillany Trails, Sandusky Plains Trail, Tennessee River/Great Lakes Trail, and Hull’s Trace, which later became SR 53.

Several former Seneca County residents who traveled here as children, later recalled their experiences in various publications digitized in the Seneca County Digital Library. Martha Gibson, who wrote Reminiscences of Early Days in Tiffin in 1896, described how her family used a Pennsylvania wagon for their arduous journey to her sister’s house in Tiffin. The family had to be very selective in what pieces of furniture to take with them, selling the rest (this was commonly how settlers paid for their new tracts of land in Ohio). Her older siblings and mother joined the other villages who walked alongside the wagons and mule teams pulling them. “As I was just between seven and eight years of age, I was privileged to ride in the front part of the wagon a great part of the way,” she boasts. It took the party two weeks to travel from their place of origin.

Another girl just slightly older than Gibson, Lydia (Raymond) Germond, explains in Omar: A Community of Memories, that her family of ten set out from New York in November 1822, arriving in Seneca County five weeks later. Her youngest sibling was only five weeks old and her mother carried him on a pillow while she drove the wagon. The most prized possessions they carried in their wagon were a loom, spinning wheel, sack of flour for making bread, and a churn for cow’s milk, which got naturally churned into butter with the “jolt of the wagon.”

The L. Diehl Wagon and Carriage Manufacturing is one of the Tiffin buildings featured in Art Work of Sandusky and Seneca Counties, which has been digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Conestoga wagons, among others, were also used to ship cargo between newly developed pioneer communities. With canvas covers to protect the cargo from adverse weather and curved wooden floors made of oak and poplar wood to nestle the cargo from bumpy terrain, and iron casts to hold all the parts together, these wagons could hold up to five tons of supplies.

Conestoga wagons were used mainly until the 1850s when railroads started to take over.

After the Civil War, wagons were more often used to travel much shorter distances, as wagon makers had made a name for themselves in so many rural communities. By the 1870s Tiffin had at least ten wagon makers, including (but certainly not limited to) Ferdinand Bauer and the L. Diehl Wagon and Carriage Manufacturing pictured here, along with two wagon materials suppliers.

The largest wagon manufacturer was Tiffin Wagon Works (formerly Tiffin Agricultural Works), which had been founded in 1858. This reflected a wider golden era of wagon-making through the 1880s. It was a profitable business through the early 20th century. Omar Prick, a sales manager at Tiffin Wagon Works, was able to afford to build a new house at 37 Clay Street (across from the Seneca County Museum).

The surname “Wagner,” a popular surname in Ohio and the Midwest, not only represents wagon makers, but also many individuals who drove services wagons for a living. The surname “Cartwright” also pertains to wagon-making. In Tiffin, the local ice man, George Smith, used a two-horse ice wagon to make his deliveries. A line crew for the first electric company in Tiffin also used a horsedrawn wagon to make their rounds as late as 1917.

Works cited:

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

Bellrigle & Talcot. Tiffin City Directory 1873-74. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29413

Case Western Reserve University. “Wagon and Carriage Industry.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. https://case.edu/ech/articles/w/wagon-and-carriage-industry

Gibson, Martha M. Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin. 1896. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997

Gundlach, George. Ramblin Comments on Tiffin 1891-1926. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22212

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

History Channel. “Conestoga Wagon.” Aug. 21, 2018. https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/conestoga-wagon

“Historic Trails, Roads and Migration Routes.” July 1, 2013. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~tqpeiffer/Documents/Ancestral%20Migration%20Archives/Migration%20Webpage%20Folder/Routes%20to%20North%20Central%20Lakes%20Plains.htm#_List_of_routes

Lepard, Larry A. Omar: A Community of Memories. Seneca County Digital Library. 1992. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41429

National Museum of American History. Covered Wagons and the American Frontier. Oct. 23, 2012. https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2012/10/conestoga-wagons-and-the-american-frontier.html

R.C. Bellrigle & Co. Tiffin Fremont and Fostoria City Directory 1874-5. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27790

Scipio-Republic Historical Society. History of Republic Ohio. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33668

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

Tiffin Historic Trust. Pamphlet-Sidewalks Streets and Alleys-Historic Fort Ball. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51855

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

Let There Be Light (and Paczkis)!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

In these parts, once the frenzy of the Christmas holiday has died down and the sluggishness of winter kicks into high gear, people start looking forward to the next major event on the calendar – the return of the Paczki. When you see these on the grocery store shelves, you know the season of Lent is near. Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, is celebrated in a wide variety of ways in different parts of the world, from somberness to outright celebrations, the largest being Carnival.

Carnival, like most other Christian holidays, has pagan roots and is deeply intertwined with symbolism, music, and the seasons (see trivia questions taken from Tiffin University’s TYSTENAC, March 1967).

A true Carnival (Americans very loosely use the word to describe some public parties, such as a fall carnival) is a public celebration, like a parade, ball or street party.

Street parties were particularly popular in the United States in the middle of the 20th century, but didn’t necessarily celebrate the coming of Lent and longer days of sunlight.

Taken from the Green Springs Ohio Centennial, which has been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library, the caption for this photo states “scene of corn festival, 1920.” It appears to be set up in the downtown area, an example of a street carnival, which were popular in the early 20th century.

The Elks Lodge in Tiffin put on a street carnival for several years in the early 1900s as a way to raise funds for a new lodge building. Their street carnivals, which actually took place on the streets of Tiffin (Washington Street from Perry St. to Madison Street), brought in a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round. They included “side shows” and “games of chance.” The last Elks street carnival was held in 1912 before the major flood in the spring of 1913 put a hiatus on them.

In fact, street carnivals were so popular during this time period that the students at Hopewell-Loudon performed a play in 1940 using a street carnival as its main scene. Traditionally, Carnival has contributed extensively to the theater. In Trinidad and Tobago, they actually incorporate musical corporations into their carnival celebrations.

While Europeans are the ones responsible for bringing the old-world carnival traditions to the Americas, the Native Americans held their own carnival-like celebrations during the dead of winter. In Ohio, early settlers discovered that Native Americans, particularly the Senecas and Cayahogas, from this area celebrated a dog dance. Some of the details of these mid-winter ceremonies are gruesome but what’s notable is that, like many of the natives’ ceremonies, this one involved music. “The object was to keep in time and move with the music.” (as they danced around the fire)

More modern American carnivals were simply an excuse to get together as a community for a big party, mirroring the Medevil purpose of having an outlet from daily stressor. In 1877, a carnival was held at the fairgrounds, which invited in a balloonist and offered horse races, sack races, wheelbarrow races, pig races and slippery pole climbing.

Performers look like they are having fun at a 1944 carnival hosted by National Machinery for its employees and their guests to boost morale while fellow employees and family served overseas during World War II.

Carnivals were popular among campuses and were often hosted by fraternities and sororities. The annual Girls Reserve group at Columbian High School held a yearly Carnival in February in the 1930s, but probably more to distract themselves from the hard times of the Depression Era than anything else. At their “miniature carnivals,” they would play cards, bingo, and other games. Originally, the Girls Reserve program was begun to garner enthusiasm for war efforts. After World War I, the popularity of this group skyrocketed.

At Tiffin University, in April 1947, the Kappa Delta Phi Sorority sponsored a carnival in the Social Hall. Just two years after World War II, this carnival more than likely served the same purpose. It enticed “fun seekers” to activities like darts, fortune-telling, “fishing,” and candy-bending.

National Machinery had many male employees who served in World War II and in order to keep the morale up for those back home in the states, they held a carnival in June 1944 featuring “Whiskers, the Bearded Lady,” “Ox-O the Strong Man,” “Bones the Living Skeleton,” plus a magician and wild animal show. Over 400 guests were entertained by live music from the Don Jacobs’ Orchestra of Fostoria and an area of the room was arranged for card playing.

Works cited:

Third Annual Heritage Festival, 1817-1981. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27465/rec/1

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/17560/rec/2

Yearbook Scarlet and Gray 1940. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48462/rec/1

National Servicemen’s News Bulletin, Vol. 1, Number 9. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/64293/rec/4

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1938. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/2967/rec/1

The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880 by Howard Smith. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/16074/rec/1

Tystanac May, 1947. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/45622/rec/2

National Machinery 100 Years. Seneca County Digital Library.

“The Origins and History of Carnival.” Carnivaland. https://www.carnivaland.net/origin-history-carnival-worlds-oldest-party/

Editors of Encylopedia Britannica. “Carnival: Pre-Lent Festival.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carnival-pre-Lent-festival

“A Moment in Our History: Touching the Lives of future generations: From Girl Reserves and Y-Teens to Girls’ Summit.” April 28, 2020. https://www.ywcaoahu.org/ywca-oahu-120/2020/4/28/a-moment-in-our-history-touching-the-lives-of-future-generations-from-girl-reserves-and-y-teens-to-girls-summit

Grinberg, Emanuella. “Mardi Gras: The Most You’ll Have with a History Lesson.” Feb. 21, 2020. CNN Travel. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/mardi-gras-fat-tuesday-history/index.html

Is it hot in here or is it just me?

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

SAD. It’s a basic emotion but also an acronym for a medical condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder, coined in 1984. But decades earlier, the Victorians had already experienced it and figured out how to combat it.

Their method is still going strong today and can be seen on windowsills, hanging from ceilings, and sitting on any flat surface imaginable. The health benefits of owning house plants are much deeper than what’s on the surface and rooted in a popular pastime in the form of personal greenhouses (see what I did there?).  

Victorians loved plants, especially new exotic species, so much that they wanted to enjoy them year-round, thus, giving rise to the greenhouse craze. Botanists traveled all over the world to collect unknown (at the time) species and bring them home to not only study and classify them but also to propagate and re-create them, often in hybrid forms with other plants.

In order for botanists to successfully take care of these delicate plants, they needed a suitable place, conducive to the plants’ native environments and Tiffin eventually had its own share of greenhouses at the turn of the century.

One of the more famous greenhouses of Tiffin was a greenhouse started by druggist Lewis Ulrich in 1881 in the back of his building at 49-53 S. Washington, the “Tomb Block.” It grew quickly and expanded to 183-189 Sycamore Street, where he lived next door at 181 Sycamore Street. Upon his death in 1906, his son, Edmund, who had served as a foreman at Ullrich Greenhouse, took over the family business and added a seed store at 177 S. Washington Street. At one time, it was the largest greenhouse in operation in Ohio, offering cut flowers and funeral designs.

Two women stand in the greenhouse of the Zoar garden in Zoar, Ohio, (Tuscarawas County) in 1888. This photo was taken from the Ohio Memory Project website, to which the Seneca County Digital Library belongs. The picture belongs to the Ohio History Connection’s Property Files collection.

The development of greenhouses eventually spread and divided, like a perennial from its original, to homeowners who were wealthy enough to afford their own, partially due to the high cost of glass. Once glass became more affordable after high taxes were abolished, the middle class joined the greenhouse craze and built greenhouses in their own backyards.

Nettie Lutes, one of the first female lawyers in the state of Ohio and a Tiffin resident, used a greenhouse to connect her residence and law office. She owned many exotic plants and “made it almost a full-time job tending the collection.” This would be classified as a small greenhouse or “winter garden”. Large greenhouses are often known as conservatories or hothouses.

Another type of greenhouse for shade-tolerant plants is known as ferneries. Victorians also built orangeries and even mushroom houses.

Experts agree that everyone, especially those affected by SAD, should get as much sunlight as possible by sitting next to a window, adding a skylight or using a UV light, which boosts serotonin and melatonin, chemicals in the brain responsible for mood. The Victorians intuitively knew this as they used their ornate greenhouses as their winter “family rooms” and entertainment rooms. Greenhouses included furniture, much like our modern decks and indoor porches, and sat painting, embroidering, socializing, and soaking up the sunlight amongst the many plants.

Studies have found that another benefit of house plants, especially in the winter months, is that tending to a live plant can lessen anxiety and depression and it is something suitable for all age levels. At one time, according to a student at Columbian in 1923, Creeger’s Greenhouse had “every imaginable plant on earth.” Wagner’s Florals, another family-owned greenhouse in Tiffin, began in 1847 and survives today. Students from Lincoln Schools in 1961 took a field trip to learn about how plants grow. Each student received a pansy.

An artist’s rendition of a conservatory intended for the Junior Home campus, now known as the Tiffin Developmental Center. While the greenhouse on the grounds still operates, this conservatory was never built.

The Junior Home had its own self-sufficing greenhouse, which operates today as the Norwesco Greenhouse. When it was built around 1900, the greenhouse, which was 20 feet by 50 feet, cost $1,000. It was known as the Pennsylvania Greenhouse and provided fresh fruits and vegetables to the campus’s residents. The children often were given duties of taking care of the plants in the Junior Home’s greenhouse and even grew their own flowers. One student recalls in the Junior Homekid publication, December 1995, that they had been excited to sell $13.50 worth of flowers to a group visiting from the state of Tennessee.

As the study turned from botany to biology in the 20th century, scientists started honing in on the medical benefits of plants. It has been observed that hospital patients who are given plants for their hospital rooms heal quicker with fewer medicinal drugs. (Perhaps this is why Mr. Ullrich of Tiffin switched careers from druggist to florist.

As recently as the 1980s, a greenhouse called Shumway Floral and Greenhouse, an FTD-certified greenhouse, was located across from the Ritz. FTD stands for the Florists Transworld Delivery, the first “flower-by-wire” service in the nation (1910), which now includes over 16,000 floral shops and greenhouses. So these days, flowers can be ordered despite geographical space sending healing thoughts with them.

So if you don’t already have house plants and are feeling a little blue, try going green and growing your own mini greenhouse to improve your mental health.

Works cited:

Barnes, Myron. Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library.

Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 2. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17464/rec/1

“A Brief History of the Victorian Glasshouse. May 20, 2019. https://grimsdyke.com/brief-history-victorian-glasshouse/#:~:text=The%20greenhouse%2C%20otherwise%20known%20as,and%20valuable%20plants%20did%20too.

Brookwell, Joan. “Horticulture-Victorian Style.” South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Aug. 21, 1987. https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1987-08-21-8703080852-story.html

Calvert High School. Yearbook Calvertana 1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/18133/rec/1

DerSarkissian, Carol. Nov 4, 2021. “Health Benefits of House Plants.” WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/ss/slideshow-health-benefits-houseplants

Howe, Barbara. Building of the Week. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28007/rec/1

Jr. O.U.A.M. Alumni. The Junior Homekid December 1995. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48784/rec/1

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

Lincoln Elementary. Lincoln School News May 1961. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48355/rec/1

Victoriana Magazine. “Victorian Greenhouse.” http://www.victoriana.com/Garden_Design/victoriangreenhouse.html

Wilson, Lisa F. Jan. 9, 2018. “What Does FTD stand for in the Flower Business?” Garden Guides. https://www.gardenguides.com/facts-5305561-ftd-stand-flower-business.html

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1923. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/1154/rec/1

Young, Rodney O. Junior Home Rodney O. Young speech June 2016. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48204/rec/1

Christmas countdown?! You better work on that March Madness bracket!

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

There is no doubt that basketball has been a dominating force for the United States at the Olympics. American women have come away with the gold in 9 of the last 11 summer games since 1976 and American men have won 16 out of 20 games since 1936.
But everything has to start somewhere right?

New Riegel High School Girl’s Basketball team, 1929-1930. New Riegel has a long history of strength in basketball—when the Midland Athletic League disbanded after almost 30 years, the boy’s team held the best record of 206-92.

In this day and age, parents often enroll their very young children in local little leagues for a spread of sports, basketball included. The Tiffin YMCA hosts 2 separate sessions of basketball – one in the autumn and one in the spring. Basketball at the professional level is almost a year-round sport.

If you rewind the clocks (even the game clocks), to one hundred years ago, basketball was just a budding hobby, still widely unknown to most of the country. Even though it was invented by a graduate student with a theology degree in the early 1890’s, it took a demonstration at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri for it to rise in popularity and become an official winter sport in 1905.

Tiffin University’s Men’s Basketball team in 1972. To view Tiffin University yearbooks, visit the Seneca County Digital Library at https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search

It filtered into local YMCA’s often before high school programs as the rules were printed and mailed to YMCAs. Everyone flocked to join the YMCA so they could learn this new sport. It became so popular that when extra regulations were added, interested parties started looking to alternative halls.

One of these halls was the Lyceum in Bettsville, which doubled as a venue for medicine shows, chautauquas, motion pictures and other public meetings (the basketball court was ironically on the upstairs floor).

The City of Tiffin’s benefactress, Delia Watson Shawhan Laird, built “the first really adequate gymnasium in the city” in 1922 at 79 S. Monroe Street (the original YMCA which as since been demolished). YMCA’s typically have regulation-sized high school basketball courts of 84 feet long and 50 feet wide.

By 1927, Columbian High School boasted it’s first girl’s team.

Scott Kiefer, the leading rebounder of Columbian High’s 1967-1968 boy’s basketball team attempts a lay-up against Bucyrus. This photo and others are in “Instant Replay (Class of 1968) Tiffin Columbian High School Sports” on the Seneca County Digital Library.

At the two higher education institutions in Tiffin, basketball has fared decently. Heidelberg’s men’s program was incorporated in 1903 when they played three winning games without a coach. The women’s program began with the 1966-1967 season with a .500 record. Tiffin University began it’s men’s program in the fall of 1939 and finished first in their conference. On the women’s side, the 1984-1985 season was their re-debut after briefly fielding a team in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

During the next few decades, professional basketball associations were founded, starting with the first NCAA tournament in 1939 (Ohio State lost to Oregon) and the NBA just ten years later. This all preceded a federal civil law passed in 1973, prohibiting sex discrimination, known as Title IX, which had a positive impact for the future of women’s sports, including basketball.

The uniforms have also widely varied throughout the decades from knee-length trousers and “jersey tights,” to short-padded pants and knee guards. Basketball was invented based on principles of rugby, lacrosse, and soccer “without the roughness.” While that’s debatable today (a poked eye can be more dangerous than a skinned knee), basketball is enjoyed by millions all over the world, and it all started in a small town like Tiffin.

Works cited:

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1927. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/1653/rec/1

Yearbook Tiffin University Ledger 1972. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35723/rec/5

“Basketball.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/sports/basketball

Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio, 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library.

Burnsed, Brian. “A Brief History of Basketball.” NCAA Champion Magazine.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/static.ncaa.org/static/champion/a-brief-history-of-mens-college-basketball/index.html

Men’s Basketball Record Book, Heidelberg University. Updated 2022. https://bergathletics.com/documents/2020/4/3//Men_s_Basketball_Record_Book.pdf?id=925

Men’s Basketball Record Book, Tiffin University. Updated 2020. https://www.gotiffindragons.com/sports/mbkb/records/index

“Midland Athletic League.” Seneca County Sports. https://senecacountysports.wordpress.com/home/midland-athletic-league/

“Photograph NHS Girls Basketball Team 1929-1930.” Seneca County Digital Library.
 https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44998/rec/1

“Where Basketball Was Invented: The History of Basketball,” Springfield College. https://springfield.edu/where-basketball-was-invented-the-birthplace-of-basketball

Women’s Basketball Record Book. Heidelberg University. Updated 2022.
https://www.bergathletics.com/documents/2020/3/20/Women_s_Basketball_Record_Book.pdf

Women’s Basketball Record Book. Tiffin University. Updated 2022. https://www.gotiffindragons.com/sports/wbkb/record-book

“A Pumpkin Spice Latte with 15 pumps of cinnamon and whipped cream, please.”

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Since the pandemic, “virtual coffee hours” have popped up both in formal settings and informal gatherings. As social beings, humans have an innate need to bond and for centuries we have connected through sharing a hot (or cold) drink together. While there are several ways to get your morning pick-me-up, mid-day spark, or evening soother in Tiffin, all in one convenient place, the public face of coffee and tea options has changed in our community quite a bit over time.

Tea has been a beverage that has been consumed in various forms by cultures worldwide for centuries. The Chinese had been cultivating and harvesting it for centuries before it first appeared on American soil. Once they began trading with Europeans, millions of tea chests were shipped through companies like the British East India Company to Europe.

One of the defining moments in U.S. history is, of course, the Boston Tea Party, which occurred on December 16, 1773. Hundreds of chests of tea from the British East India Company were dumped into the Boston Harbor in response to a tea tax. But because tea was so important to the culture of colonial Americans, they began smuggling tea from Dutch counterparts for their continued supply.

Meanwhile, Native Americans in what would become the United States were brewing their own concoctions with wild plants found in their habitats. One native plant that is still widely used today in tea is sassafras. The indigenous peoples throughout the Northeast, including Ohio, would use smaller roots for simmering and pieces of larger roots for medicinal purposes. They used honey or maple sugar as a natural sweetener.

Today, we’ve expanded our inherent love of tea to create an endless amount of brews. Before the Great Depression, Tiffin was home to a branch of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (29 Washington St.), a chain of grocery stores in operation from 1859-2015. For sixty years it was the largest grocery retailer in the country but had started as a small chain of retail tea and coffee stores in New York City.

An ad for the Buskirk’s Tea and Coffee Store in the Columbian Blue and Gold Yearbook 1917.

Many people may prefer the milder taste of tea, but the other half of U.S. citizens crave the stronger tests (and effects) of coffee, a drink that came much later to the American palette. A poll taken in 2014 resulted with 46% choosing coffee, 24% choosing tea, 19% preferring both equally, and 10% preferring something else entirely.

In Tiffin, coffee appears to mirror this trend. Throughout old yearbooks, city directories and other publications, are advertisements for coffee for sale, coffee shops, and equipment for brewing. The Duffey & Sankey Groceries and Provisions carried Old Glory Coffee at 43 S. Washington St. The Beesh Co. sold coffee, tea, spices, extracts and more in the early 1920s. They also carried crockery, china, graniteware, glassware, silverware, aluminum-ware, lamps, vases and brass goods.

On 61 Washington St. in the 1890’s was Martin and Negele Groceries and Provisions, which roasted and packed 37,000 pounds of coffee ground per year using a two-horsepower engine, which they placed in the front window to “attract the attention of passerby”. As an added visual bonus, the steam from the engine was pumped into a giant coffee pot mounted on a post outside.

More recently, a gourmet coffee and tea shop, Village Bean Barrel on 66 East Market St., offered 25 kinds of gourmet coffee beans all the way from Colombia and Jamaica, and 44 tea options. On the “south end” was the Gibson Coffee Shop in the 1930s-1960s. Many remember the Tiffin Bake Shop, which closed it’s doors within the last few decades. Thankfully, Tiffinites still have locally-owned, small-town service shop options like Sabaidee’s and Bailiwick’s.

Former Tiffin-Seneca Public Library Director, Pat Hillmer (left), converses with a woman at a tea party sponsored by the Friends of the Library in 1994 at the now defunct Solarium of the Towne and Country Club. The guest-of-honor was actress Susan Crobaugh Willis. A photo album with other photographs from this even can be found on the Seneca County Digital Library at https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27

Although many busy American buy their coffee and tea “to-go,” coffee shops remain a gathering place. In the 1600s and 1700s, coffee and tea rooms were once a place of the elite to discuss intellectual ideas and philosophies. These rooms “catered to a specific clientele and were frequented by politicians, writers, stock brokers, sea-faring merchants, and other socialites.” The unofficial members would pay a penny to enter and, because of the atmosphere of the clientele, they became known as “penny universities.” In early America, this included members of the Whig Party, the Royal Society, and others. (Isaac Newton was known to frequent one, but hot cider will be reserved for another discussion.)

Tiffin boasted one in 1859, operated by Andrew Arndt. Jr., Marshal Bibb, H. Rogers, Louis Brown, Fred Grummel, Justin Schneider, and Michael Welter.

These coffee rooms typically only allowed men, but Tiffin’s later coffee rooms embraced women, too. Della Shawhan Laird and a Mrs. S.B. Sneath of the local Presbyterian Church installed the “Murphy Coffee Rooms” in the building at the corner of Market and Monroe Streets, which became a social center with “good music and refined entertainments.” For a short-lived time, these were sponsored by female members of the local churches and even provided a kindergarten class and light lunches. As they dwindled in popularity, Mrs. Shawhan-Laird donated funds to keep them open.

Likewise, a member of the Tiffin League of Women Voters recalls informal conversations held at Joan Groce’s helped eventually facilitate more formal discussions by this influential group in Tiffin some ten years after the fact.

For those who don’t particularly enjoy neither coffee or tea, hot chocolate has become a popular alternative, especially for children. Students at a one-room schoolhouse near Bascom would enjoy soup and hot chocolate following winter recesses in the 1920’s before electricity was installed in the building around 1930. However, hot chocolate is only recently a cheap commodity.

Chocolate is an exotic plant that requires heat and humidity. Europeans may have brought traditional teas to this continent, but it was the indigenous peoples of Central America who introduced the cocoa bean to explorers.

After watering down the pulp, Mayans flavored their chocolate drinks with cornmeal and chili peppers. Once the Spanish conquistadors introduced it in Spain and it began to catch on, Spaniards used chilies, anise seed, vanilla, almonds or hazelnuts, cinnamon, Alexandria roses, pepper and white sugar in different measurements to sweeten the natural bitterness of chocolate. Sometimes they even mixed it with beer or wine.

Whatever your drink of choice will be this Thanksgiving, remember to thank the many individuals who brought that drink to your table, from the discovery stage to the grocer who sold it to you. It takes a community of people working together to support the bonds we create over a shared drink at our family gatherings. Happy Thanksgiving!

Works cited:

American Indian Rights Association. The Pathfinder Directory. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38656/rec/1

Bascom Area Sesquicentennial 1837-1987. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41849/rec/1

Dildine, Frank. “Dildine From Wilderness to City.” 1930. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22126/rec/1

Downtown Tiffin Where History Sparkles. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43081/rec/1

Historical and Business Review Seneca County 1891-1892. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15697/rec/1

“Hot Chocolate Drink History: Rediscover True Hot Chocolate.” What’s Cooking America. https://whatscookingamerica.net/beverage/hotchocolate-history.htm

Howe, Barbara. “Building of the Week.” Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28007/rec/1

Lengeman III, William I. “A Brief History of the Tea Chest.” January 7, 2013. English Tea Shop. https://blog.englishteastore.com/2013/01/07/a-brief-history-of-the-tea-chest/

Moore, Peter. September 23, 2014. “Poll Results: Coffee and Tea.” YouGov America. https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/2014/09/23/poll-results-coffee-and-tea

Paajanen, Sean. “An Abridged History of Hot Chocolate: Its Changes over the Years.” Feb. 6, 2019. https://www.thespruceeats.com/the-history-of-hot-chocolate-764463

Rontondi, Jessica Pierce. “How Coffee Fueled Revolutions and Revolutionary Ideas.” Feb. 11, 2020. The History Channel. https://www.history.com/news/coffee-houses-revolutions

Scott. “The History of Coffee Houses.” August 20, 2015. Driftaway. https://driftaway.coffee/the-history-of-coffee-houses/

Seneca County Museum Dedication 1942. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/34958/rec/2

Seneca County Historical Society. Fort Ball Gazette March 1990. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41029/rec/1

Smith, Howard. “The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880 by Howard Smith.” Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/16074/rec/1

Tiffin League of Women Voters 10 Years. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63543/rec/2

Tiffin, Ohio City Directory 1920-1921. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40279/rec/1

Wikipedia. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26P

One Lizard’s Leg Sangria, Please

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Most know the first two lines of the “witches’ recipe” in Macbeth but could you list the ingredients it calls to be put in the bubbly cauldron? While the ‘fillet of a fenny snake’, ‘eye of newt’, ‘toe of frog’, ‘wood of bat, ‘tongue of dog, ‘adder’s fork’, ‘blind-worm’s sting’, ‘lizard’s leg’ and ‘owlet’s wing’ don’t sound too appealing, they are simply code words for common ingredients, often herbs, found in a well-stocked apothecary.

Up until just a century or so ago, pharmacists turned to nature’s gifts for cures and ailments. Many of the active ingredients in pills and other “modern” drugs are simply synthetic reproductions of the same chemicals naturally found in plants. In fact, the word apothecary means “storage for wine, spices and herbs.”

The pharmacies of today (not the “druggists” of the past) require strict safety guidelines, involving years of training and examinations for an individual desiring to be a pharmacist. This process, too, has drastically changed over the last 100-150 years. This month, through the Foundation Speaker Series, the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library is featuring a book called “Ghosts of Eden Park” about the fascinating life of a pharmacist-turned-lawyer-turned convict, George Remus, who found a loophole in the system to be able to sell liquor out of his pharmacy/drug store during Prohibition.

While I don’t want to leak any spoilers, I will say that Remus has quite an infamous role in the history of the pharmaceutical business, and in Ohio in particular (The State of Ohio committed him to an insane asylum, and was later released from a correctional facility in Lima, Ohio). You’ll have to read to book to get the full scoop, but I can introduce you to some other more, shall we say, legit pharmacists in Tiffin’s history.

Elisha B. Hubbard was one of the most successful pharmacists in Tiffin’s history, starting his Tiffin practice in 1874. He served in many other capacities in the community, warranting him a biography in the “75th Anniversary Souvenir,” which has been digitized on the SCDL and from where this photo was taken.

When Seneca County was founded in 1822, the practice of medicine was still extremely rudimentary. The United States Pharmacopeia was only two years old and the first pharmacy school, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, had only been founded the year before. Family doctors and druggists, who at that time only needed two years’ worth of courses and a 4-year apprenticeship, “compounded” their own medications and delivered them via house calls. Medicinal plants, however, had already been known to mankind for thousands of years. In Mesopotamia, clay tablets with recipes for salves and poultices have been found, which called for mustard, fig, myrrh, snakeskin, and even bat droppings, mixed with wine, beer, or milk.

Only one-quarter of pharmacists were compounding medicine, a process of combining multiple medicines into one liquid for patients with a multitude of health issues, by the middle of the 20th century. Historically, this would have included herbs, native plants, minerals, and more clandestine ingredients and most druggists had developed their own unique recipes and concoctions. Basically, their apothecaries served as makeshift laboratories in addition to being shops. However, not all were secret bootlegging operations like Remus’s (our pharmaceutical bandit in question).

Medical doctors often doubled as pharmacists, compounding their own medicines based on each of their patients and then delivering the concoctions on house calls. Dr. Jacob Bridinger was one of Tiffin’s traveling doctors. He started his practice in 1877, traveling as far as Michigan and Indiana while his son, Frank, managed the “headquarters” in Tiffin. By 1896, there were seven independent pharmacies in Tiffin, including M.G. Witschner on 7 S. Washington St., whose ad states their “drugs and chemicals are the best in purity and strength that we can get. We desire to keep our good reputation, hence cannot afford to sell inferior goods,” and a Morcher’s Pharmacy located across from the former Opera House, selling “Pure Drugs, Medicines, Chemicals, Toilet Articles and Fancy Goods.”

Claiming to be the “most elegant and attractive in the city,” Wagner & Maiberger’s, once located at 52 Perry Street, might be the most widely-known historic pharmacy in Tiffin. The two German immigrants were in business for a long time together and created a trusted business by many of Tiffin’s citizens.

The San-Mar Pharmacy was originally located on the corner of Sandusky and Market Street. It was opened by John Grieselding in the 1950s.

Elisha B. Hubbard was claimed to have been known throughout Northwest Ohio. He was a mentor for budding local pharmacists and trained more than one who went on to establish their own successful businesses. A native of Massachusetts, he began his career in that state before relocating first to Bellevue, Ohio, and then eventually to Tiffin in 1874. At one point in his career he served as the “President of the Local Board of Druggists.” Outside of serving as one of the city’s reputable pharmacists, he was president of the Tiffin Chamber of Commerce, secretary of the Election Board, honorary commissioner of the Ohio Centennial Expedition, a Knights Templar, member of the Order of the Elks, and vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church.

One of Hubbard’s understudies, Owen A. Ohl, became a prominent pharmacist for over a decade after the eight years he spent with Hubbard. A biography in the “Historical and Business Review Seneca County 1891-1892” describes how it was common in this era to believe that all diseases derived from “impure blood.” Ohl sold Dasynia hair tonic and Sarsaparilla with dandelion and pepsin.

Another pharmacist, remembered by a George Gundlach in “Ramblin Comments on Tiffin 1891-1926” was Albert Hayden, a “quiet, genteel druggist of the older school,” who was fluent in Latin and operated a drug store and soda fountain near the corner of Washington and Madison Streets. The author vividly recalls this building “always smelled of vanilla and chocolate.”

While soda fountains inside a drugstore had been a staple since the 1860s, the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s are known as the “soda fountain era” of pharmacy. Old-fashioned short courses, designed as supplements to apprenticeship, were falling out of favor and would soon be made obsolete, which is perhaps why Hayden was deemed “old school.” The Basic Material for a Pharmaceutical Curriculum was published in 1927 and the Accreditation Council for Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE) was founded in 1932, making a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree a four-year gig minimum. By 1941, 64 out of 67 colleges of pharmacy had adopted this four-year degree standard. Five years later, the American Council on recommended the establishment of a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy program.

Individually owned and operated pharmacies are few and far between these days, as corporations have taken over. One of the last family-owned pharmacies Tiffinites might remember was San-Mar Pharmacy, started by John Grieselding in the 1950s, who chose its name from the two corners streets where it originally resided, Sandusky and Market. It was known for its “red carpet service.” 

Once more official guidelines were instituted during this time period, the pharmaceutical field entered into the “Lick, Stick, Pour and More Era,” which lasted from the 1950s through the 1970s. By this point, George Remus, our criminal inspiration for this article, would no longer have been able to skirt through the same loopholes he once used. He passed away in 1952. For his complete story, check out the book at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library.

Works cited:

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

Barnes, Myron. “Between the Eighties.” 1982. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/1

Baughman, A.J. “Seneca County History Volume 2.” 1911. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17317/rec/2

Calvert High School. “Yearbook Calvertana 1980”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/18133/rec/1

 “George Remus: ‘King of the Bootleggers’ During Prohibition. Alcohol Problems & Solutions. https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/george-remus-king-of-the-bootleggers-during-prohibition/

Gundlach, George. “Ramblin Comments on Tiffin 1891-1926”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22212/rec/1

“History of Pharmacy: Key Moments in Pharmacy History.” Pharmacy is Right for Me. https://pharmacyforme.org/learn-about-pharmacy/history-of-pharmacy/

Historical and Business Review Seneca County 1891-1892. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15697/rec/1

Howe, Barbara. “Building of the Week.” Seneca Sentinel. 1980. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28007/rec/1

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

Tiffin Area, Ohio. Windsor Publications, 1974. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25131/rec/5

Urick, Benjamin Y. and Emily V. Meggs. “Towards a Greater Professional Standing: Evolution of Pharmacy Practice and Education, 1920-2020.” National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information. July 20, 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6789879/

Wust, MaryKate. “The Evolution of the Apothecary for the Apothe-curious.” Penn Medicine News. Oct. 13, 2017. https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2017/october/the-evolution-of-the-apothecary-for-the-apothecurious

Center for the History of Medicine at Countway Library, Boston, MA. “Who Were the Apothecaries?” https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/apothecary-jars/sequence

In the Tick of a Clock There is a Song

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

The title of this month’s blog comes from a poem written by Judy Singer, a student from Alliance High School in the late 1950s (to read the poem in it’s entirety, visit the Seneca County Digital Library).

As the years pass, humans rely more and more on technology to do the jobs that once required physical and mental effort. This includes setting the time when Daylight Saving Time begins and ends each spring and autumn. Now, smart watches, cell phones and other electronic devices are programmed to automatically switch the hour so that when you wake up the next morning, it’s as if magic happened overnight. Unless one still owns battery operated clocks, the mad dash to change the hands on them around the house before falling asleep on the nights we lose or gain an hour has become a thing of the past. Even then, however, correcting a clock’s time was still easier than when clocks and watches were in their height of glory.

The original clock tower of the 1884 Seneca County Courthouse, which remained until 1944.

In ancient times several rudimentary tools were used by cultures to keep track of the time, including sun dials, candle clocks, or even simply watching the shape of shadows change throughout the day. As society became more complex, people looked for ways to more accurately tell the time. It wasn’t until the 1300s-1500s when the more modern idea of a clock emerged.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, many churches and other buildings throughout Europe had installed a clock tower with mechanical clocks, mechanical meaning the clocks had to be re-wound (or, in other words, re-set) daily. The town clock then helped its residents keep consistent routines and function as a whole. But there was also a more “personal” reason—prayers were said at specific times and hearing the bell toll signaled prayer time. This is how clocks received their name – the English version derives from the Latin word for bell, “clocca.”

Tiffin once had a very renowned clock tower for Tiffinites to keep track on the time. When the original Seneca County Courthouse was built in 1884, this original clock would tell Tiffinites the time until 1944 when it was replaced (the cast iron tower had deteriorated). Interestingly, this new clock would prove to be testy itself. Amy Madden wrote an article called “When the Clock Strikes Twelve” in the Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1988, recapping a major New Year’s Eve celebration on the courthouse lawn. The clock apparently hadn’t been keeping the correct time for almost ten years, and it was reset just in time to ring in the new year, 1989. Another clock tower was supposed to have been built in the Tiffin Union School, but was never completed due to insufficient funds.

West Lodi residents Isaac and Christina Scothorn Tompkins display their grandfather clock (to the left of the standing couple), a prized possession.

Many cities in both Europe and the United States held at least one clock tower because clocks were once very expensive to own. It wasn’t until 1581 when Galileo discovered that pendulums could be used inside clocks that they became a household commodity. An image of a chiming grandfather clock might come to mind when many of us think of our childhood visits to our grandparents’ houses. While they still are somewhat of a statement piece, historically they were a sign of wealth. Through the 1700s, only noble and upper class families could afford them, but this gradually changed as time went on. However, they never completely stopped serving as a sign of well-being. West Lodi residents Isaac and Christina Scothorn Tompkins dragged their prized possessions onto the front porch of their home for a photograph, including a grandfather clock (see photo). If you look closely, you will see its shiny clockface to the left of the woman standing on the porch.

An ad in the Tiffinian, Columbian’s long-ago newspaper.

By the turn of the century, jewelry makers had figured out how to create wearable clocks--pocket watches became all the rage for men and wrist watches were preferred by women, as they were seen as a functional bracelet. It wasn’t until World War I when soldiers in the trenches wore watches to aid in their battle strategies that civilian men began sporting wrist watches alongside the females.

But because clocks and watches had to constantly be re-wound, the innovations for instruments with more accurate time-keeping kept emerging. Today, our smart devices are what’s called “atomic clocks” because they are calibrated by International Atomic Time. While once individual municipalities could keep their own times within their small circles, the entire world is now designed into a modern time-keeping system. The old adage, “excuse me, sir, do you have the time?” is hardly spoken. The ticking of a clock is hardly heard. Now, you can just ask Alexa or Siri!

Works cited:

Andrewes, William J.H. “A Chronicle of Timekeeping.” Scientific American. February 1, 2006. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-chronicle-of-timekeeping-2006-02/

Barnes, Myron. Between the Eighties. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/10

“A Brief History of the Grandfather Clock.” https://www.thewellmadeclock.com/brief-history-grandfather-clock/ “

“History of Men’s Watches, 1900s to 1960s.” https://vintagedancer.com/vintage/history-mens-watches/

Madden, Amy. “When the Clock Strikes Twelve.” Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1988, https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12046/rec/1

McFadden, Christopher. “The Very Long and Fascinating History of Clocks.” April 13, 2019.  https://interestingengineering.com/the-very-long-and-fascinating-history-of-clocks

Monroe Street School Centennial. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35483/rec/1

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

Seneca County Ohio History Families. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319/rec/7

Singer, Judy. “Music.” Young America Sings National High School Poetry Association 1958-1959. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/50751/rec/1

Smith, Howard. The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15811/rec/1

Let’s Band Together

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

In high school, college and even past academics, people have formed groups of various kinds. There’s the jocks who lead the sports’ teams to victory. There’s quiz bowl, foreign language clubs, and band. Bands have unique bonds that often go deeper than the music they play. Bands pump up the crowd at athletic events and soothe a wounded soul on more solemn occasions.

Steine’s Band, which consisted of Tiffin residents with German heritage, performs in a parade.

Tiffin, like so many Midwestern communities, had its own share of unique bands throughout its history. These bands have been present at football games, parades, garden concerts and business anniversaries. Small villages often had their own bands ready to gather the community together at any opportunity. Risingsun, Bascom and Green Springs all boasted their own bands at some point. Likewise, the Ladies Band of Fostoria performed for the Eden Township Centennial.

Thousands of German immigrants called Tiffin home, and one of the traditions they brought with them to America was their love of music and a strong kinship of playing music together. “The American groups served as bridges between old and new worlds, preserving ethnic traditions while shaping the culture.”
Germans were particularly known for forming bands. In the 1920s, a band (name unknown) made up of Belgian glass blowers entertained Tiffinites from time to time.

Another German band in Tiffin called the Brunderbund German band and included Henry Hubach, the owner of the Hubach brewery.

Steine’s Band was perhaps the last of its kind and performed well into the 1940s. It even had it’s own theme song, “Roll Out the Barrel,” a Czech polka composed in 1927.

The common instruments played in these types of “homegrown” bands included cornets, trombones, clarinets, bass drum and violins. They played polka tunes and “schottische” (slow polka).

The 6th Regiment Band was a military band from Tiffin.

Perhaps the most popular band in Tiffin for festive social occasions was the Boo’s Cornet Band, formed by Professor C.F. Boos, who emigrated from Germany in 1849. Shortly after arriving in America, Boos joined the military and lead the 55th Ohio V.I. band and the military band at Camp Dennison near Cincinnati.

After his discharge, he became a music teacher, organist and choir director in Tiffin. He also owned a music store which sold pianos, organs and other instruments.

The Boos band played for large dances, annual dances for specific groups, events on the court house lawn, and also with the 8th Ohio Volunteers. It also played for Tiffin’s U.S. Centennial celebration in 1876, alongside a Harmonia band.

Military or “regimental” bands became popular after the Civil War. These musicians had played specific instruments like the cornet or saxhorn during their service and tunes to tell time for meals, the start of a battle or “lights out” at night. Additional instruments often included snare and bass drums, fifes and clarinets. Similarly, fire departments and policemen formed their own bands as well.

Sometimes there were even friendly tournaments of the different bands. In Tiffin, these unofficial competitions were often held on the Fourth of July or the first week in October when Oktoberfest is generally celebrated.

“They (the bands) came by train, horse and buggies. Farmers dropped their burdensome chores for a few hours of entertainment. Doubtless to say, the saloon keepers and merchants were 100% behind their city hosting such an event!”

Another type of band similar to German bands were Moravian bands. In the Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin, the author recalls her father once playing the French horn for Tiffin’s own Moravian band, and it was a custom for the band to play music in the cemetery on Easter morning. While Moravian bands are part of German heritage, their style of music is much different. Moravian music has a classical vibe and is designed for more sacred than festive occasions.

In the Midwest and Ohio, the number of informal bands in smaller municipalities peaked around 1900 before steadily declining as marching bands replaced them. (To see some maps visualizing this shift, visit IBEW’s “History of Brass Bands” at https://ibewbrass.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/cornet-bands-of-the-usa/ ).

The Junior Home Band played for the school’s football games for several years. This photo was taken at a game in the 1940s.

By the 1920s, the Junior Home has the Orphans Home Boy’s Band which played for various ceremonies on the Junior Home grounds. This band eventually included girls and played during the Junior Home’s football games, as seen in the photo featured in this blog.

Once football took off as a major sport for high schools and colleges, it solidified a place for marching bands and most of the fight songs whose tunes we are familiar with today, shared among colleges and high schools, were composed in the early 20th century.

By the middle of the century, high school bands had become the main musical attraction for events – at the Tiffin Glass Festival in 1965, bands from Attica High School, Thompson High School, Calvert High School and Old Fort High School all performed in the court house square.

To hear a little band music from this era, you can visit the Seneca County Digital Library and search for the 13-minute video called “The Sounds of Columbian Audio – 1965”. Other local marching and concert band clips can be found on the library’s digital history YouTube channel, TSPL DigitalLib.

Sources:

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

Cook, Jane Stewart. “Belgian Americans.” Countries and Their Cultures. https://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Belgian-Americans.html

“Civil War Military Bands: Their Purpose and Composition.” American Battlefield Trust. September 28, 2020. Updated May 12, 2021. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-military-bands

History of Eden Township and Melmore. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29644/rec/1

History of Tiffin Fire Department, 1843-1993. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32508/rec/1

History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17928/rec/1

Holman, Gavin. “Cornet Bands of the USA.” IBEW: The History of Brass Bands. April 11, 2011. https://ibewbrass.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/cornet-bands-of-the-usa/

Junior Home Dedicatory Services of Ohio Memorial Church and School 1928. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4239/rec/1

“Moravian Music.” The Moravian Church. https://www.moravian.org/2018/06/moravian-music/

National Machinery. “National Servicemen’s News Bulletin, Vol. 2, Number 1”. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/64292/rec/1

Official Souvenir Program Tiffin Glass Festival 1965. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36358/rec/1

Gibson, Martha. “Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin”. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12932/rec/2

Seneca County Historical Society. “Fort Ball Gazette April 1991”. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41003/rec/1

Smith, Howard. The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880 by Howard Smith. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/16074/rec/1

Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History & Families”. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319/rec/1

Terry, Joseph. History of Tiffin’s Breweries and Bottling Works. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23186/rec/1

Wishing Upon a Star

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

How often at night, when the heavens are bright,
With the lights from the glitterin' stars,
Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours?

So goes the cowboy classic, “Home on the Range.” Even for many in the 21st century, it’s still a popular past-time to sit around a campfire in the summer time gazing up at those same stars designed into the same constellations that people have admired since the beginning of time. And while the skies have their moments of extraordinary meteor showers, comets, and the like, any glance above on a clear night without all that glitz and glamor can still take one’s breath away.

Members of Tiffin Columbian’s astronomy club test the telescope they built during the 1969-1970 school year.

People have studied “the heavens” for centuries, a term now referred to as Astronomy. We now have terms and explanations for so many of space’s mysteries, but even just a few hundred years ago, these events held special meaning for most civilizations. Native Americans, including those who lived in Seneca County, studied the stars for signs of impending events. A comet in June 1861 was seen as an omen to a foreboding that the Civil War would be an ugly and bloody affair. This particular comet to scientists is known as the Great Comet of 1861 and was visible to the naked eye for three months.

T-SPL staff members view the May 1994 solar eclipse using special reflective devices.

Seneca County resident A.J. Baughman wrote in his diary about witnessing a fabulous meteor shower on November 13, 1833, as he watched in fascination for several hours. “The meteors disappeared,” he writes, “leaving long blue streaks which soon faded away. They appeared a short distance away, always disappearing before hitting the ground. They looked like stars the size of hen’s eggs and were very numerous and close together.”

Luckily, meteor showers are much more common than comets. In fact, scientists have now officially established 112 unique meteor showers. Baughman, judging by the date of his entry, most likely was witnessing the November Orionids which start in mid-November.

Another treat space provides us that’s more common than a comet, but less common than a meteor shower, is eclipses. Some are minor and some are major; some are lunar and some are solar.

Probably one of the more infamous ones for most Ohioans and residents of Seneca County is the 1994 solar eclipse. This was an annular eclipse that “culminated” in Wauseon, Ohio, so Tiffin was very close to it’s “center.” While an annular eclipse lasts hours, the peak range is only a matter of minutes.

A solar eclipse in 1806 left Ohio-born Shawnee chief and shaman, Tecumseh “The Prophet,” on edge. He had a vision of the eclipse shortly before it occurred (at a time when eclipses couldn’t be predicted with scientific technology like they are now), seeing it as “natural cleansing.” This particular eclipse is now known as “Tecumseh’s Eclipse.”

Tiffin Columbian was one of the first high schools in the state of Ohio to get a planetarium in the early 1960s. The gentleman in this photo is presumed to be Larry Casing, the founder of Columbian’s astronomy club.

While planet Earth can go years between comets, and days, weeks or months between meteor showers and eclipses, the constellations are always present on a clear night.

As far back as 1936, Tiffin had its very own “nature club” that went on night hikes to study the constellations. Out of all the recognized constellations, 42 depict animals, 29 relate to objects, and 17 are either humans or mythological characters. The stars on the United States flag are actually referred to as our national constellation.

As the Space Age developed throughout the 20th century, planetariums were built and astronomy clubs in schools were formed. Columbian High School was one of the first schools in the state of Ohio to be granted a planetarium. This planetarium was such a big deal that Lincoln Elementary students took a field trip in May 1961 to see it. By the late 1960s, when NASA was preparing to send men to the moon for the first time, Columbian’s algebra teacher, Larry Clausing, a former West Junior High teacher, had formed the school’s astronomy club which built its own telescope.

The Tiffin Boy Rangers acquired a telescope for its planetarium, the Ballreich Observatory, in 1984. The Emerson-McMillin telescope had originally been given to Heidelberg College from The Ohio State University. Many field trips of different youth groups have at one time or another viewed the sky from this planetarium.

Sources:

Astronomy Trek. https://www.astronomytrek.com/constellations-2/
Ford, Dominic. Eclipses 1950 – 2299. https://in-the-sky.org/eclipses.php

Hocken, Vigdis and Aparna Kher. “What Are Annular Solar Eclipses?” https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/annular-solar-eclipse.html

Lincoln School News May 1961. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48355/rec/1

Pathfinder Directory. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38656/rec/1

Photograph Solar Eclipse 1994. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53555/rec/1

Seneca County History Volume 1. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17053/rec/1

Seneca County Genealogical Society. Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319/rec/1

Tiffin, Ohio a Good Place to Teach-a Good Place to Live. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33808/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1970. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/10021/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1988. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12123/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue & Gold 1936. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/2717/rec/1

A Big Black Bug Bit a Big Black Bear

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

A crowd of dozens of people packed closely together watch a man on a platform. This man is pointing his fingers at specific people and speaking gibberish. The smell of hot cider and doughnuts fill the crisp fall air. It’s not a revival or a concert. It’s an auction.

Tiffin and Seneca County has held numerous auctions throughout its history with some more notable ones happening fairly recently. But the vibe of an auction has drastically changed, even in just the last few decades. Gone are the days when auctions were an anticipated social event in the community.

Before automobiles when travel was difficult, especially in rural areas like Tiffin, auctioneers enticed a crowd by offering lunch. Well into the 20th century this was a standard practice, and the Risingsun Centennial booklet mentions that auction attendees in our area often received a free head of cheese and apples.

One of the most noteworthy auctions in Tiffin was the estate sale for Tiffin’s suffragette, Louisa K. Fast. Rodney Young, a local historian, did extensive research on Fast and gathered the information into a report (T-SPL owns a copy in the local history department). He included verbiage from the newspaper advertisements for this auction, held Nov. 6 and 8, 1978, at her home on 115 N. Sandusky St., which listed Victorian furniture made from walnut, cherry, maple, pine, mahogany, and oak, some hand-carved, as well as framed oil and water color paintings, some with signatures. The house itself, one of the earliest homes on Sandusky Street, was sold a year later to a local couple who had plans to restore it.

The Louise K. Fast estate auction was held on Nov. 6, 1978. This image belongs to the Seneca County Historical Museum.

Another major auction in Tiffin was the liquidation sale of the Daughters of the American Revolution home in the fall of 1989. At this sale, items crafted by Junior Home kids, including cedar wardrobes and stone benches that had been placed throughout the property were some of the large items sold. The auction attracted over 1,000 people, with 603 registered bidders.

The trifecta rounded out on May 29, 2000 with the sale of items owned by the Tiffin Women’s Club, a community service group whose numbers had dwindled by the late 1990s. For many decades, the club’s members hosted numerous card parties, piano recitals, skits and other social events at their building on 155 Parkway before it was sold to Draperies by Dawn (which is no longer in business). At this auction, they parted with their silver service, grand piano, drop-leaf table, an 1850 plank-bottom chair, a Windsor chair, a Washington desk and a Tiffin Glass punch bowl.

As late as the 1990s the Tiffin Historic Trust was putting on similar annual antiques/collectibles auctions on a smaller scale.

While antique furniture was once a hot commodity at auctions, particularly during this time period from the 1970s-1990s, the passion has shifted to other things. Bill Jones, a Tiffin native who owns the local Remax realty and is a licensed auctioneer, said he’s noticed a major shift in the atmosphere of auctions within the last 10-15 years. Modern technology like eBay, Craig’s list, online garage sale sites on Facebook, and others are drastically changing the way people buy used items. In fact, he says most of the people he notices attending auctions now are wholesalers, retail shop owners who set up tables at flea markets or even online-only business owners.

Another reason the auction scene has changed is lifestyle. One or two generations ago, Jones explains, people weren’t as mobile as they are now. These days, people move locations more often and don’t want to drag those large and delicate items along with them. Therefore, general household and estate auctions are not well-attended like they used to be.

Taken from the Ohio Memory website, to which the Seneca County Digital Library belongs, is a photograph of a farm auction in Castalia in the 1970s. Matt McGookey of Castalia, Ohio is the photographer. The item being sold in the picture is assumed to be a sausage press.

Over half of the auctions Jones performs are simply for charity. It’s these sorts of “niche” auctions that now draw larger crowds. For many years, he has auctioned for the Seneca County Fairs’ livestock sales (4-H/FFA) and his favorite auction to date was a charity auction for the Sisters of St. Francis which he co-auctioned with Jerry Anderson, a former Northwest Ohio news anchor who also happens to have an auctioneer’s license.

Some of the “niche” auctions mentioned in various documents on the Seneca County Digital Library include a fundraiser auction at Columbian in 1957 which took bids for an organ and coin auctions hosted by the Seneca Coin Club.

According to Jones, especially around the Seneca County area, livestock sales and auctions on farm machinery and other heavy equipment still remain the most popular. These particular auctions have gone on in Seneca County for several decades. In 1967, the Sisters of St. Francis discontinued their dairy operation and auctioned any remaining cattle. In the mid-to-late 1800s, livestock in the area was often introduced by traveling Texas horse auctions, which was, according to an Advertiser-Tribune reporter summarizing a sale on June 24, 1880, “extremely risky.”

The requirements for becoming an auctioneer and maintaining a license has also gradually changed throughout the last century. Currently, Ohio is one of 27 states that require auctioneers to be licensed.

Auction schools sprung up in the early 1900s, the first being the Jones National School of Auctioneering and Oratory in Davenport, Iowa, which was founded by Carey M. Jones (no relation to our Bill Jones of Tiffin). “Back then people believed you had to be born with a natural talent for bid-calling, kind of like singing,” chuckles Jones. Case in point, in the Tiffin City Directory of 1878-1879, only one auctioneer was listed, a J.B. Dockweiler. Today, Jones joins a handful of other auctioneers in Seneca County, including Jay Feathergill from Attica, Nick Fondessy in Fostoria, Ned F. Gregg Realty in Sycamore, Bonningson & Associates from Clyde and Jones’s mentor, Mike Watson in Tiffin.

Jones attended the Ohio Auction School in Groveport in the early 2000s, which required 85 hours of in-person coursework over a 2-week period before moving onto completing a one-year apprenticeship under a licensed auctioneer, bid-calling at a minimum of 12 auctions, which Jones did under Mike Watson’s leadership.

Works cited:

Brandly, Mike. “A History of Auctions.” Auctioneer Blog. https://mikebrandlyauctioneer.wordpress.com/auction-publications/history-of-auctions/

Centennial of Sisters of St. Francis. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36274/rec/1

History of 155 Frost Parkway. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53190/rec/1

Jones, Bill, licensed auctioneer, Remax Reality, Tiffin, Ohio. Interview on March 21, 2022.

The Junior Homekid December 1989. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47925/rec/1

Ohio Auctioneers Association. “Find an Auctioneer.” https://ohioauctioneers.org/index.php/find-an-auctioneer/

Palmer, Brian. “Why do auctioneers talk like that? To put you in a trance.” http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/11/why_do_auctioneers_talk_like_that.html

Preservation Post April 1996. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39826/rec/6

Risingsun, Ohio 1874-1974. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30016/rec/1

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

Smith, Howard. “The What, How and Who of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880.” Seneca County Digital Library.

Tiffin City Directory 1878-79. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29886/rec/1

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

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1957. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/8230/rec/1

Young, Rodney. “Louisa K. Fast Research Report.” 2021.

99 bottles of … milk (in the icebox)

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

They say all things come back around, and one trend that’s returned, all be it in a different form, is home delivery. In 2021, Fortune rated Amazon as one of the fastest-growing companies with a 3-year growth rate of 66%. It has been on the top-100 list for five straight years.

While you can get just about anything delivered to your doors these days, historically there were a few main staples that were home-delivered besides the mail. Before the modern refrigerator was invented, highly perishable food items had to be purchased weekly or even daily in order to stay fresh and not spoil. “Regular staples—produce, meat, bread, and dry goods—had their own dedicated storefronts,” explains Caroline Lange in her article “The History of the Milkman”.

For meals, residents carved out a spot each day to make a short trip to one of the many butchers or grocers that seemed to line every street and corner in cities of Tiffin’s size. The Seneca County Business Directory of 1896 lists 15 meat markets loaded with fresh and salt meats, wild game, dried beef, bologna, sausage, and even oysters. One block of buildings in downtown Tiffin was even named after one of the local butchers—“Miller’s Block” honors butcher Mr. Miller (first name unknown) who operated a slaughterhouse in the back alley.

Photo was taken from the Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967 book on SCDL.

During this same time period, an astonishing 33 grocery stores (14 just on Washington Street alone) were scattered throughout Tiffin. Some grocers had their own delivery wagons, including Howard Smith, who delivered apples, cabbage and pork when they were in season. Many customers were very loyal to one preferred shop owner. Myron Barnes, a former life-long Tiffin resident describes, “when there wasn’t a delivery service, the junior members of the family would be sent to the store with a list, and this could happen twice a day. The articles would be charged and on Saturday, one of the parents would go to the store and pay the bill for the week.”

During this era, dairy products and ice were all routinely delivered to homes. Just like Amazon, residents could get “next-day delivery” of their orders. Horse-drawn wagons were the most efficient method because they “were well suited to frequent stops and starts and could negotiate poor roads better than early motorized vehicles,” states an article on the Henry Ford Museum’s website.

Ice was not that easy to transport, as the common method was to load it up in 25-100-pound blocks. There was an efficient reason for this; the larger the ice block the slower it melts. As a young boy, George Gundlach, who wrote “Ramblin Comments on Tiffin, 1891-1926” on the SCDL, notes that the ice wagons took two horses to pull. “I put ice in practically every refrigerator in Tiffin and saw the housewives in the early morning in a state of undress. I knew everyone who kept beer in the refrigerator.”

An ice delivery wagon in Green Springs, Ohio. Taken from the Green Springs Ohio Centennial on the SCDL.

It wasn’t until as recently as the 1960s that these niche delivery options were fazed out when the era of supermarkets took over. You may be surprised to discover, though, that to find the origins of the modern-day food truck, we must go all the way back to the year 1866. The Civil War had just ended and people were migrating west in large droves. Covered wagons called Chuck Wagons served sandwiches, beans, biscuits, coffee and water to cowboys and loggers.

By the end of the century, push carts or “dog wagons” sold sausage links, meat pies and fruit on the side of the street in larger municipalities. It wasn’t long until corporate America caught on to the trend, and developed branded food-delivery products, such as the Wienermobile in 1936.

Tiffin and other cities tried kept up with this change. The Tiffin Wagon Works began producing delivery trucks and even wagon and carriage makers in places like Cleveland attempted to produce motor-operated vehicles. However, Detroit took over the auto-making industry by World War I forcing many of these smaller operations out of business. (Cleveland’s horse-drawn vehicle companies had dropped from 80 to 40 by 1916). 

Ice cream trucks started to make their appearance in the 1950s, about the same time a long-standing local restaurant, which has recently begun its own mobile food delivery, took off – Jolly’s. In 1947 a married couple, Roy “Jolly” and Vivian Jolivette built the original Jolly’s building that has since been demolished (Jolly’s owns a double-storefront, one of which was originally a coffee shop). Eventually, their granddaughter, Diane Hassinger, would take over the business before selling it to Dave Spridgeon in June 2021. Spridgeon, a history lover, was impressed by the success of a multi-generational business and wanted to continue the legacy. “There’s something behind a business that lasts that long,” he said.

Jolly’s still sells many of the original menu items like its famous root beer, pork sandwiches, chicken gravy (for shredded chicken sandwiches), chili, homemade catsup, and the Mac & Cheese Roy (macaroni & cheese served with sloppy joe meat) and some of these make their appearance on its food truck menu.

When Spridgeon took over Jolly’s, he inherited everything, including Hassinger’s idea for a Jolly’s food truck. By the time Jolly’s switched hands, Hassinger had sold the truck to another local business, JT’s Bagel Bar, which often attends events around Lake Erie in the summer. Luckily, Spridgeon, already had some food truck experience, when he began operating his other food truck, The Pink Lady, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once The Pink Lady passed inspection, Spridgeon drove it to places where essential workers still reported to their jobs, such as Mercy Hospital of Tiffin, Mennel Milling and Roppe Corporation in Fostoria, and even to factories in the Upper Sandusky area. He also collaborated with Smith Foods, another restaurant in Tiffin that operates a food truck on the side.

Just in the last 15 years or so, the world of food trucks has gained popularity, with unique food trucks popping up in all sorts of places. During the recession of the late 2000s, restaurants suffered and many chefs turned into food truck owner-operators. And in 2010, a television show titled “The Great Food Truck Race” premiered. Just four years later, the National Food Truck Association had formed.

The Tiffin Farmer’s Markets Association even recently shared that one of its chief requests from market-goers was to have more food trucks at future farmer’s markets, which they will execute this year. (Ironically, the very first food truck, a taco truck in Los Angeles, was converted from an old ice cream truck).

After the height of the pandemic slowed down and the ownership transfer of Jolly’s was official, Spridgeon purchased an old U.S. Postal Service truck, which he completely gutted to convert into a food truck. To meet code requirements, this truck is equipped with counter space, a hand-sink, a refrigerator, a 2-basket fryer, portable steam tables, and a smaller version of the equipment used for their homemade root beer. One menu item, called “The Original,” features gourmet grilled cheese with a bag of Ballreich’s potato chips, another long-standing family-owned Tiffin business that uses its own delivery trucks for its products.

Works cited:

Barnes, Myron. “Bicentennial Sketches by Myron Barnes.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33669/rec/10

Barnes, Myron. “Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/1

Butler, Stephanie. “From Chuck Wagons to Food Carts: The History of the Food Truck.” August 22, 2018. https://www.history.com/news/from-chuck-wagons-to-pushcarts-the-history-of-the-food-truck

Case Western Reserve University. “Wagon and carriage Industry.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. https://case.edu/ech/articles/w/wagon-and-carriage-industry

“The Complete History of American Food Trucks.” https://mobile-cuisine.com/business/history-of-american-food-trucks/

Crystal Ice Company. “How was Ice Delivered before refrigerators?” https://crystalicela.com/how-ice-delivered-before-refrigerators/

Fortune. https://fortune.com/company/amazon-com/100-fastest-growing-companies/

Fourth Annual Heritage Festival 1817-1962. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27514/rec/1

Gunlach, George. “Ramblin Comments on Tiffin 1891-1926.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22212/rec/1

Henry Ford Museum. “Horse-drawn Deliveries.” https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/expert-sets/101755/

Howe, Barbara. “Building of the Week.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28007/rec/1

Lange, Caroline. “A History of the Milkman.” Food52. Sept. 9, 2017. https://food52.com/blog/20229-milkmen-history

Prestige Food Trucks. “History of Food Trucks and How They’ve shaped America.”
March 23, 2020. https://prestigefoodtrucks.com/2020/03/history-of-food-trucks-and-how-theyve-shaped-america/

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

SENECA COUNTY BUSINESS DIRECTORY 1896. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23204/rec/1

Smith, Howard. The What, How And Who Of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/16074/rec/1

Spridgeon, Dave. Interview on March 18, 2022.

“Everyone Knows Ohio Has Apples and Snakes”

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

This month’s blog coincides with T-SPL’s 2022 Community Read, featuring “At the Edge of the Orchard” by Tracy Chevalier

There’s an old legend that Eden Township in Seneca County was named after the Garden of Eden because the land here was so beautiful, but perhaps the real reason was because our county had an abundance of apple trees and crawling critters.

When you ask someone who has grown up outside of Ohio what comes to mind when they hear the name of our state, the most popular answers are buckeyes (even if people have no clue what they are or if they are even edible or not), roller coasters, and the definitely edible (in my opinion) Skyline chili. Yet in the 1800s, early pioneers reaching the swampy territory we now call home had a completely different answer – apples and snakes.

While it’s a somewhat comical answer for us now to imagine Ohio as just a land full of apples (the imagine that crops into my mind immediately is the evil apple trees in the 1939 classic Wizard of Oz), for the early settlers, apples served a very important role in their livelihood in a number of ways.

For one, apple trees and the fruit they produce are a very hardy staple plant and food. Apples can be made into so many forms and historically have helped many communities make it through harsh winters. Materials from the Seneca County Archives states that for most of the 19th century, “It would not be uncommon for a family to purchase 10 to 35 bushels of potatoes and ten bushels of apples for the winter.”
Apples were especially needed by Ohioans in the Winter of 1915-1916, judging by the records of two pioneer residents. One of them described this particular winter as comparable to the Year Without a Summer:

“The children climbed the trees in the orchard over and over again to see if some fruit had not escaped the frost (for apples were as large as good-sized plums when they were cut off), but without success. To our great surprise, one day in August one of my sisters found a large sweet harvest apple on the ground by the kitchen door. One of the boys climbed the tree, and on one branch which hung under the eaves by the kitchen; he picked a peck of apples. They were very large and delicious. The foliage was injured by the June frost, but had grown out again usually dense, and had effectually screened them.”

Two Tiffin University Students pour cider for a fundraiser in October 1959. Photo taken from the university’s former newspaper, the Tystenac.

Another resident, John Lemuel Estep from Attica, wrote to his mother in a letter dated October 1916, that the price per bushel for both apples and potatoes had spiked during that time because of their scarcity.
Even into the Great Depression of the 1930s, apples were sought after for sustenance during hard times and were present in FDR’s Christmas relief packages.

Besides their long shelf-life, apples are also very nutritious, perhaps part of the reason they have been naturally coveted for centuries. Apples are full of fiber, potassium, Vitamin C and “good” carbohydrates (the ones that keep your blood sugar levels steady for hours). They are a very strong candidate for a healthy digestive system, so the old adage of “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” quite possibly has a lot of truth to it.

Pioneers turned many bushels of apples into apple cider, apple butter, apple jelly, apple cider vinegar and even crab apple marmalade as ways to further lengthen the fruit’s shelf life and add a variety of flavor to a bland palette.

By the late 1800s it was not uncommon for most small villages and towns throughout Ohio and Michigan to have at least one cider mill, including Iler and New Riegel. Many farms even had their own. For example, Levi Weiker, a Scipio Township farmer in the 1880s, used thousands of bushels of apples to make cider wine and apple jelly with his own personal mill. Bascom Then and Now, compiled 100 years after the height of the popularity of cider mills, describes a typical autumn day at one of these cider mills:

“It was first owned and operated by Louie Walters with the assistance of his hired hand, John King. Piles of apple pulp were lined up around the mill. Between 3 and 4 a.m. as many as 40 wagons loaded with apples would be lined up to get cider made at 1/2 cent a gallon. Over the years the price advanced to 1 cent per gallon. Today the price range is 12 to 20 cents a gallon.”

In Tiffin, there was at least two cider mills that operated simultaneously at one time. One of them, built by Josiah Hedges in 1862, stood at the northwest corner of Perry Street and Clinton Avenue. it was converted into a cider press in the late 1870s and has since been torn down.

Now one probably wonders what our ancestors’ fascination was with apple “cider,” but the cider that was made in this era is more similar to modern day cider beer and hard cider than the traditional cider found at farm markets in the fall months. Water wasn’t as clean and free of germs as ours is today so they had to get creative with how they remained hydrated.

The former C.S. Bell Company in Tiffin once made fruit presses and grinders with cast iron handles. More of their products can be seen on the SCDL by searching for the Bell's Original Decorative Useful Americana

Despite the legend, Johnny Appleseed is not the only person responsible for introducing apple trees to Ohio. While he was a real person, he was one man who represents the scores of settlers who brought grafts of apple trees with them when they settled in Ohio. The reason Ohio looked like a land of apples (and snakes) was because propagating fruit trees was part of the deal to homestead here. “Starting in 1792, the Ohio Company of Associates made a deal with potential settlers: anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on the wilderness beyond Ohio's first permanent settlement would be granted 100 acres of land. To prove their homesteads to be permanent, settlers were required to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees in three years, since an average apple tree took roughly ten years to bear fruit,” explains a Smithsonian article.

If you enjoy historical fiction or want a fictional account of this aspect of Ohio’s history, read the 2022 T-SPL Community Read’s selected title, At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier.

Many of our own ancestors from the eastern United States brought with them several varieties of apples. This was important because apple trees need variety to be able to survive. The Ohio State University extension has a wealth of information about properly growing apple trees. “You will need to plant at least two different cultivars of apple trees together in order to achieve maximum fruit yield and quality. In addition, the two cultivars selected need to have viable pollen and bloom at the same time to ensure successful pollination. Some nurseries also offer apple trees that have two or more compatible cultivars grafted on the same tree.”

So, while it’s not impossible to follow the lead of Seneca County’s first residents and grow your own personal orchard, it takes the same grit and determination they had. You may not starve without a bushel full of apples in your cellar like they might have, but apple trees today need the same care as the ones which greeted our very first residents upon their arrival in our county.

Sources:

Apples 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/apples

Bascom Garden Club. Bascom Then and Now. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29193/rec/9

Barnes, Myron. Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/1
Fort Ball Early Times March 1997. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40994/rec/1

Fort Ball Gazette February 1993. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40999/rec/1

Gao, Gary. “To Grow Your Own in Ohio: Growing Apples in the Home Orchard.” The Ohio State University. https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/hyg-1401

Geiling, Natasha. “The Real Johnny  Appleseed Brought Apples – and Booze – to the American Frontier.” November 10, 2014. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/real-johnny-appleseed-brought-applesand-booze-american-frontier-180953263/

Jones, Alex. “Cider Pressing Equipment: A History.” July 2, 2018. https://www.ciderculture.com/juicing-systems-cider-pressing-equipment-history/

McCauley, Patrick. “The Unexpected History of Cider in Washtenaw County.” Ann Arbor Observer. October 2021. https://annarborobserver.com/articles/the_unexpected_history_of_cider_in_washtenaw_county.html#.YhaX4ejMKUk

Seneca County History Volume 1. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17053/rec/4

Seneca County History Volume 2. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17317/rec/3

Wilde, David S. Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319/rec/1

Seneca County Business Directory 1896. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23204/rec/1

Seneca County Museum Newsletter 1998-09. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43145/rec/2

Smith, Howard. The What, How And Who Of It: an Ohio Community in 1856-1880.  Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15811/rec/6

Yearbook Columbian Blue & Gold 1951. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/9705/rec/1

Who Wants a Piece of Corn-Pone?

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

We have all sorts of ways to sweeten our food these days – artificial sweeteners like Equal, Stevia, Sweet ‘N Low or Splenda come in individual color-coded packets. Honey and agave “in the raw” are some popular choices for the more natural health goers. Some recipes go so far as to suggest trading applesauce and other naturally sweet foods, like coconut milk, to keep a dessert delicious but healthier. And there’s one “alternative” that many of us might agree on: maple syrup.

Maple syrup has been an American commodity for centuries, and the month of March is prime time in Ohio to harvest it. Residents in Tiffin, Seneca County and the entire state of Ohio have trekked into wooded areas in search of the best maple trees for the job. But the methods have drastically changed over the years, which has quickened the time involved and also made the end product a little safer to consume.
The Native Americans who once lived in the Northeastern and Midwestern states were the first to utilize the sap that leaked from maple trees in the late winter and early spring. Early settlers speak of sighting these “sugaring camps” set up especially for harvesting maple syrup. In the History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880, Isaac Drummond wrote about his encounters with Native Americans during a festival held by the Indians. He recalled that maple sugar was addled to kettles of soup making it a “prominent ingredient.

The early colonists followed suit and built “sugarhouses,” which served as workshops in the summer time. Maple sap must be boiled down for several hours before it turns into the syrup we are familiar with when we buy it, so a makeshift shed could serve as a respite from the long cold hours spent outside.
Maple syrup is mostly taken from three types of maple—the sugar maple, black maple and red maple, although other types of maple are also suitable. In the Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin, the author recalls a wooded area known as Gibson’s Addition near Sycamore and Monroe Streets which had “a great many sugar maples” for maple syrup harvests (pages 50-51).

This photo called “Collecting Maple Sap” was created by the Ohio Federal Writer’s Project in the 1940s and was taken with permission from the Ohio Memory website.

Extracting maple syrup from trees requires specific conditions, particularly when it begins reaching temperatures above freezing into the low 40s during the day but yet still dropping below freezing at night. In Ohio this usually starts to occur in mind-to-late February and continues throughout the month of March. This somewhat varies from year to year, such as the case of the infamous “Year Without a Summer” when temperatures stayed cooler for well into the spring and summer months. Mrs. Sarah B. Wadsworth wrote an article submitted to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle but reprinted in a Tiffin Newspaper in 1884 where she explains, “as the season advanced, we had a good yield (of maple sugar), so we were supplied with that commodity.”

Throughout most of the 19th century, people simply drilled holes into the maple trees and placed a bucket underneath, as evidenced by the photo is this blog, taken from the Ohio Memory website (the Seneca County Digital Library is a contributor). A former Junior Home student, Reynold R. Elkins, Class of 1942, scripted his memory of one particular spring in the late 1930s when he and a group of other lads decided to harvest their own syrup. They secured 55-gallon drums to collect the sap, milk cans, a brace and bit, nails and plumbing supplies.

Plastic tubing and vacuum pumps have long since replaced the more rudimentary ways of laboring over maple syrup. Gary Gaudette, a board member of the International Maple Syrup Institute, explains that “prior to vacuum systems, the average sap yield was 10 gallons of sap per tap, which produced about 1 quart of maple syrup. Elkins from the Junior Home recalls being shocked the moment he discovered the “reduction ratio” for maple sap to maple syrup was 40:1.

What did Seneca County residents do with their maple syrup once it was ready to consume? The Seneca County Museum reprinted in its Spring 1993 newsletter an excerpt from the History of Seneca County published in 1880 by William Lang (several copies are available in the Local History Department at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library. The author makes the following inquiry: “Reader! Did you ever eat corn-pone with maple molasses?” Corn-pone is basically what we call cornbread. Residents often made a point to gather to enjoy maple syrup together (like in the case of the local Native Americans’ maple festivities). At one time, the Republic Methodist Church held “maple syrup suppers” in the spring. That sounds like a mighty fine potluck to me!

Works cited:

Collect Sap and Make Syrup. Tap My Trees. https://tapmytrees.com/collect-sap-make-syrup/

Coombs Family Farms. “The History of Maple Syrup: From Early North American Days to the Present.” Dec. 1, 2013.  https://www.coombsfamilyfarms.com/blog/the-history-of-maple-syrup-from-early-north-american-days-to-the-present/

Elkins, Reynold. “The Maple Syrup Caper. Junior Home Homekid April 1990. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47911/rec/1

History of Republic Ohio. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33590/rec/1

History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17928/rec/1

Ohio Memory Project. https://www.ohiomemory.org/

The Pathfinder Directory. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38656/rec/1

Pickert, Kate. “A Brief History of Maple Syrup.” April 16, 2009. https://time.com/3958051/history-of-maple-syrup/

Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12932/rec/1

Seneca County Museum Newsletter Spring 1993. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43113/rec/1

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

Wikipedia. “Maple Syrup.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup

For fun:

Massachusetts Maple Producers Association: this website extensively breaks down information on maple trees: https://www.massmaple.org/about-maple-syrup/make-maple-syrup/maple-tree-id/ including maps of the geographic breakdown of different maple trees suitable for extracting sap

To view some beautiful historic photos of the maple sugaring process, the Maple Valley Cooperative’s website is worth a visit: https://www.maplevalleysyrup.coop/the-history-of-maple-syrup/

In the “Handwriting” of the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

More often than not, a child in 2022 will open a birthday card from his or her grandparents with a handwritten note inside and ask his or her parents to read it to them. It’s not a matter of the child being completely illiterate, rather, children under 18 (some young adults even) simply do not know how to read in cursive. “What’s cursive?” they might even ask. Cursive, to most younger generations, is an archaic and outdated form of handwriting. Let’s be honest, handwriting itself is even a dying art where most correspondence, even official documents, are typed. But before the reign of digital devices, one was considered accomplished if he or she had good penmanship and those in Tiffin and Seneca County were no exception to the rule.

June 7th 1824 Mr. Thomas Boyd and Lowell Robinson presented a petition praying that whereas there has been a State road leading out from Mansfield in Richland County to the Town of Tiffin in this county which said real mining in a triangular direction through the county must to the damage of Public and if opened and kept in repair will be useless in [?] and burdensome. Therefore your petitioners request that your honors would take the same into consideration and appoint [five] land holders to review and annul said road through this county agreeable to the acts regulating road and highways passed 26 Feb. AD 1820 and in so doing You will much oblige your petitioners granted. Richard Saqua, Edward Southerland, John [Sitzs], Lowell Robinson, Boswell [Munsrol] and George Lewison was appointed viewers to be viewed at the expense of the petitioners.

While penmanship spans centuries, there are five periods of handwriting into which American transcripts and written works fall. The first is Colonial (1600-1800 A.D.). During this era, one’s handwriting was a status symbol and often displayed the class or occupation of the writer. The proper way to write was with no finger movement in one continuous motion. Pupils practiced perfecting their handwriting for hours during this era. The Declaration of Independence was written in this style. A local example of this style can be seen in an excerpt from the Seneca County Commissioners Journal 1824-1834. The transcription for this particular document is provided in the photo caption.

A more rudimentary example can be seen in the image of a Seneca County immigrant Michael Long’s declaration of intention, taken from the Naturalization Record 1826-1843 L-S from the Seneca County Digital Library (SCDL). The transcription for this particular document is provided in the photo caption. (Notice the ink smear, which gives this excerpt more ambiance).

The Naturalization Records and the Seneca County Commissioners Office Journals have been loaned to the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library from the Seneca County Court of Common Pleas in small batches since 2017 for digitization. Once uploaded to the SCDL, three staff and two volunteers at T-SPL must add the word-for-word transcription to each digitized page to the best of their knowledge.

The State of Ohio Seneca County, ss Supreme Court at the term of July [?] 1826 Michael Long being duly sworn upon his corporal oath declareth and saith that it is his bona fide intention to become a citizen of the United States of America and to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign service, potentate - State of Sovereign whatever and particularly to George the 4th King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland whereof he was lately a subject. Michael Long sword before me in open Court A. McGaffey, Clerk Sec.

The Civil War-era ushered in a new style of writing, fathered by a man named Platt Rogers Spencer, which became known as the Spencerian Method. This method, first published in 1848 as the Spencer and Rice System of Business and Ladies’ Pensmanship, became the main style taught in schools throughout the country from the 1850s-1880s. In Tiffin, there’s evidence in the Seventh Annual Catalogue of the Tiffin Union Schools for the Year 1867-1868 that penmanship was being taught in Senior Grammar School. The Coca-Cola and Ford logos were written in this style.

During the latter half of the 1800s, the Spencerian Method gave way to the Palmer Method, created by engrosser Austin Norman Palmer (an engrosser was someone who produced official documents like insurance policies and deeds using very fancy handwriting). This is when learning to write on horizontal lines became standard. The Palmer method is much simpler than the Spencerian Method.

While the Palmer Method did last decades (it was the most popular handwriting method taught in schools until the 1920s, eventually yet another new method formed, the Zaner-Bloser method, which is what most of our current senior citizens would have been taught. A former Junior Home student recalls in the Junior Homekid June 1989 of being taught penmanship as a child in the 1940s. Likewise, an alumnus of Melmore High School wrote in its Class of 1943 50th Class Reunion Commemorative Scrapbook that she had “learned to read any doctor’s handwriting.” (which really could be a complete digression to the topic at hand and a whole other conversation in itself!)

The above pen art was executed by A.M. Reichard, a penmanship instructor (and embosser) at Tiffin University in the 1920s. His work received national recognition. This was taken from the T.B.U. Outlook January 1928 on the SCDL.

Lastly, the D’Nealian Method emerged in 1978 (one year after National Handwriting Day was established) and was widely taught in schools until the late 1990s when cursive writing in general started to disappear with the rising popularity in computers. It appears that, if you peruse the Tystenacs (Tiffin University’s newspaper) on the SCDL, penmanship courses at Tiffin University had already been phased out by the late 1970s.

What’s interesting to note (pun intended) here is that those same children who receive a birthday card from their grandparents will at one point (if they haven’t already) become the owners of their own cell phones, a symbol of their developing maturity. In the past, men and women often received a special fountain pen as an initiation into adulthood. In different issues of the Tiffinian (Tiffin Columbian’s newspaper), there are briefs mentioning the Guest of Honor being presented with a fountain pen. An advertisement in the December 1919 issue even lists fountain pens as being an excellent gift idea.

Likewise, whereas students once received workbooks for their cursive writing practice work, they now receive a laptop (on long-term loan for the school year) to use for their classwork in multiple courses. If paired that with a new cell phone, a fountain pen looks like a baby’s toy!

Works cited:

Tiffinian December 1919. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53073/rec/1

The Junior Homekid June 1989. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47926/rec/21

T.B.U. Outlook January 1928. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/45567/rec/1

Seventh Annual Catalogue of the Tiffin Union Schools for the Year 1867-1868. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/37265/rec/1

Melmore High School Class of 1943. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29690/rec/1

The Twisted History of Cursive Writing. https://www.wordgenius.com/the-twisty-history-of-cursive-writing/Xr0yWBPAJQAG8w-1 

Cohen, Jennie. “A Brief History of Penmanship on National Handwriting Day”. https://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-penmanship-on-national-handwriting-day

Schlueter, Preston. “Writing by Hand Matters.” March 8, 2021. https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/writing-by-hand-penmanship/

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

Let's Get Physical

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

In 2020, four of the top five New Year’s resolutions among Americans were health-related. In 2019 health-related resolutions made the top three. One can’t flip through a magazine without consuming several tidbits of advice surrounding diets, “superpower” foods, homeopathic treatments and relaxation techniques, like yoga stretches. Such articles tend to increase in January issues when everyone (after the holidays) has decided to put more energy into their health.

Females in a gym class practice jumping on a trampoline. Taken from Tiffin, Ohio a Good Place to Teach-a Good Place to Live on the Seneca County Digital Library.

The Victorian era ushered in, like so many other innovations, the importance of keeping the human body in shape and the mind engaged. From the 1870s to well into the 1940s America embraced these novel ideas. Health “crazes” continue today and healthy-minded individuals continue to evolve with the ideas surrounding the proper way to take care of oneself, both physically and mentally.

Tiffinites and residents of Seneca County were no strangers to these trends, either. One such “craze” that infiltrated both Tiffin and the United States was calisthenics, or “systematic rhythmic bodily exercises performed usually without apparatus” as per its Merriam-Webster dictionary definition. At the Junior Home, summer school students performed 15 minutes of calisthenics per day. By the 1890s, calisthenics and its cousin, gymnastics, were part of the course of study. Students were expected to practice 3-5 minutes of calisthenics for 4 times each day. Calisthenics was incorporated into the Tiffin University’s basketball team’s practices by the 1930s, and into the 1940s the track team at Columbian used calisthenics as part of its conditioning.

While gymnastics movements seem to have been embraced by the local community – as early as 1867 the Tiffin Schools designated singing and gymnastics as daily exercises at school – not all Victorians looked keenly on the sport. In fact, at one time there were many who thought gymnastics was dangerous, particularly for females. “Calisthenics and gymnastics must not be confounded,” writes one British author. “In America they are a recognized portion of the education. With us, it remains an open question whether the violent exertions entailed by gymnastics are really suited to or safe for women, to whom undue strain is attended with so much danger.” The author goes on to state that, furthermore, if females absolutely must use dumb-bells, it’s highly suggested they only use 1-pound weights or “not exceeding two pounds at most.” Said a society before gymnastics became one of the premiere events of the summer Olympic ceremonies, which also includes female weightlifting where females easily lift twice their body weights!

What should be noted is that while Victorians saw the benefits of being strong and toned, instead of reaching athletic prowess as 21st century Americans do, they were focused more on how these gentle exercises could improvement the gracefulness of their movements. The British author argued that non-strenuous exercising “increased general vigour and cheerfulness.” Often, students in Tiffin were expected to sing during their exercises, particularly in the 1890s as evidenced by the Annual reports of the Tiffin Schools during that decade.

It was also during that time that Heidelberg built its first gym. Columbian’s and Bettsville’s followed in the 1920s, and the American Boy Council petitioned to have a gymnasium built in 1930 for the Junior Home, to comply with requirements of the Ohio Board of Education. Calvert’s boys basketball team first played in its original gym in 1954.

By mid-20th century, opinions on exercise and health-mindedness were quickly evolving. In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy’s administration created a physical fitness aptitude test widely distributed in gym classes throughout the country. The director of the Council on Youth Fitness during Kennedy’s administration was a University of Oklahoma football coach.

The Calvertana 1963 lists this assessment, along with learning the fundamentals of tumbling, basketball, volleyball, softball, touch football, golf, tennis, track, wrestling and weight lifting as part of its core program.

There are several activities offered under the “Physical” section of the Ranger Handbook on the Seneca County Digital Library (Boy Rangers was a similar program to Boy Scouts for males in Seneca County in the 1930s-1990s) with the President’s Physical Fitness Program being one of them. Boy Rangers could also earn their physical requirements quota by showing knowledge in calisthenics, gardening, tetherball, badminton, ice or roller skating, isometrics, handball, bicycling, ping-pong, hunting, boxing and more.

The requirements for Ohio students have only gotten more detailed and fine-tuned in modern times. In December 2007 Ohio’s State Board of Education adopted federal standards for what children are expected to learn in gym class, which include but are not limited to, how to gallop, skip, dribble/kick/throw/catch/roll a ball, jump rope, perform a sequence of dance routines, and recognize offense versus defense at the elementary level. By middle school, children are expected to be able to send an object to a target, know how to assess heart rate, identify proper warm-up and cool-down activities and how to track calories, to name a few.

Works cited:

Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Tiffin, Ohio August 31, 1893. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35374/rec/1

Course of Study and Manual for the Tiffin Public Schools for the Year 1889-90. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36289/rec/1

Hefferman, Conor. “JFK’s Fitness Programme (1961-1962).” April 3, 2018.
https://physicalculturestudy.com/2018/04/03/jfks-fitness-programme-1961-1962/

Jr OUAM National Home (Tiffin, OH). https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/68/rec/1

Ohio Department of Education. Physical Education Evaluation 2016 to Present.
http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/Physical-Education

Ranger Hand Book. Tiffin Boy Rangers, Inc.
https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33018/rec/1

Seventh Annual Catalogue of the Tiffin Union Schools for the Year 1867-1868.
https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/37265/rec/1

TYSTENAC 1937-1938. Tiffin University.
https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/46146/rec/1

Victorian London Publications. “Calisthenics for Ladies.” Etiquette and Household Advice
Manuals. Vol. 4. 1880. https://www.victorianlondon.org/cassells/cassells-13.htm

Yearbook Jr. O.U.A.M.Maroon and White 1930. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27420/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1944. Tiffin Columbian High School. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/3588/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1947. Tiffin Columbian High School. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/7480/rec/1

Yearbook Calvertana 1954. Calvert High School. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/5952/rec/1

Yearbook Calvertana 1963. Calvert High School. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/6536/rec/

Do You Hear What I Hear?

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

Over the years the people of Tiffin have heard many different types of Christmas carols. Sharing one’s favorite Christmas song is a common conversation starter (and sometimes even a common lively debate) in December. There’s some who listen to Christmas music the second it hits the airwaves, and there are others who would rather not listen to it at all. These days it seems like it’s another hot topic that divides us when singing Christmas carols was really intended to bring us all together. In fact, the word “carol” actually means a “song of joy.”

Traditionally in several European countries, especially England where many of our well-known carols originate, caroling was not just a seasonal pastime; carols were a form of folk music created for many occasions. For example, Coventry Carol’s melody is derived from the Medieval Coventry Mystery Plays which were performed on the feast of Corpus Christi, which falls in June. There were other carols celebrating May Day. Many small towns in Europe had their own unique carols or mix of selections. Even certain occupations like blacksmiths and miners boasted individual tunes.

A nice quote about Christmas caroling written by a student for the Tiffin University newspaper, TYSTENAC, in December 1966.

One such tune that was sung by Tiffin City Schools’ students in 1966 was “The Boar’s Head Carol.” It is one of the oldest carols on record, dating from the 15th century. This carol honors the medieval tradition of sacrificing a boar as part of a Yuletide feast. It was traditionally sung at Queen’s College in Oxford during Christmas lunch, complete with eggnog and wassail.

Often, carols were sung in pubs up until the Victorian era, which is why the word “caroling” might bring up an image of men and women in top hats, lacy bonnets and muffs singing at the top of their lungs. Tiffin’s first community Christmas tree came about during this era. In 1914, residents decorated a tree near the Gibson Monument and all the area church choirs joined together to sing. A piano had even been delivered just for the event.

Many traditional Christmas carols have been kept alive from places where our ancestors once lived, like Germany, France and Italy. They have either been translated entirely or contain a mix of English with the native language like the chorus of “Angels We Have Heard on High” (“Gloria in excelsis Deo”) or the song “Jesu Bambino,” which was sung during a December 1940 Sunday worship at the Junior Home’s Ohio Memorial Church.

A group of children from the Kinder Keys perform Christmas carols in front of the Columbus City Hall in December 1969. The Kinder Keys raised money for Columbus Children’s Hospital. This photo was taken from the Ohio Memory’s Wonderful World of Ohio online collection and was created by the Ohio Department of Development.

Different groups in Tiffin have mastered these carols throughout the years. In 1939, the Laeti Latini (or Happy Latins club) from Columbian and the Latin Club at Hopewell-Loudon sang carols in Latin at the homes of faculty members. In 1969, Columbian students same German carols during a December concert. And a few years later the students in the Spanish and German classes paraded in the school hallways singing carols in those languages.

Other carols contain a range of harmonious melodies like the song “Echo Carol” that the mixed chorus at Tiffin University performed in the 1940s. During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, members of “antiphonal choirs” dispersed throughout a cathedral when singing this song to create the echo that gave the song it’s title. Sometimes, instruments were added. Today, Heidelberg University’s various choirs continue the tradition of performing Handel’s Messiah (2019 marked the 129th year). Even the audience is invited to join in during the performing of “Hallelujah!” A perfect example of the joy that Christmas brings.

Works cited:

Cooper, James. “The History of Christmas Carols.” https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/carols_history.shtml

Junior Home Sunday Worship Ohio Memorial Church December 22, 1940. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/49779/rec/1

Oloffson, Krisi. “Christmas Caroling.” Published Dec. 21, 2009. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1949049,00.html

Pentreath, Rosie. Oxford Dictionaries. “A Dive into the Surprising History of the Christmas Carol.” Dec. 2, 2020. https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/carol-history-origins/

Scott, Jenny. “UK Christmas Carols: Where Do They Come From?” BBC Online. Dec. 28, 2013. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25419506

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

Seneca County Museum Newsletter Winter 1991. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42418/rec/1

Tiffinian 1966-12-16. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33831/rec/1

TYSTENAC 1944-1945. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/46270/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1939. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/2968

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1969. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/9403/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1973. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/10469/rec/1

We’re Going on an Arrowhead Hunt … We’re Going to Find a Good One!

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

It’s almost a given in the state of Ohio, maybe even in the entire Midwest, that if you visit a local museum, you will come across at least one arrowhead on display. Many rural property owners throughout the county have arrowhead collections. I have a distinct childhood memory of my father showing me a couple of arrowheads he had found on strolls or while farming. I also recall holding those arrowheads hoping I would someday find my own. (Sadly, that goal hasn’t been reached yet, but I also haven’t actively pursued it, either).
Collecting arrowheads is a popular hobby for several residents in our neck of the woods, if one has patience and determination. Because finding one is such a treasure, coming across one is becoming a harder task as the years pass. Slowly but surely our modern era is wiping out the scant traces of Native American history that once prevailed in Seneca County and Ohio. In fact, the octogenarians and nonagenarians have contested that before mechanical tractors took over, you could still make out the edge of Indian villages along Honey Creek in Bloom Township.
Most of the arrowheads that Seneca County residents find came from the Woodland Indian tribes that once inhabited the Sandusky Bay area and along the Sandusky River. The “Sandusky” People and Whittlesey People tended to settle on flood plains and river beds where the soil was more fertile. They were semi-nomadic and lived in small villages of about 3-4 dozen people.

Archaeological terms used to describe the parts of an arrowhead. This illustration taken from the document “Early Archaic Points of Seneca County Ohio” on the Seneca County Digital Library.

One such settlement in Pleasant Township is discussed in detail in the “Sandusky Site near Old Fort” on the Seneca County Digital Library. This village dates from 1020-1190 A.D., which puts it in the time period when the bow and arrow was first used by Native Americans in our area. There, arrowheads made from Flint harvested in Erie and Coshocton Counties were found in the riverbed. The site is a classic example of a Woodland camp site. It was found on a bluff 30 feet above the Sandusky River. The bluffs gave these hunter-gatherers an advantageous “vantage point and observational area” to seek out food and dangers.

To the naked eye, arrowheads on display at a museum may look very similar, but to arrowhead enthusiasts, there are subtle clues that map big differences in the types of arrowheads, like the shape and sharpness of the tips, angles, and edges of the arrowhead, the brittleness and hardness of the rock, and of course, the color of the rock. Arrowheads vary in size depending on the game being sought, including fish, deer, or small game. The base of arrowheads can be classified as either bifurcated, concave, straight or convex. The stem of an arrowhead can be classified as either expanded, expanding, straight or contracting. The shoulder of arrowheads are either horizontal, barbed or upward angles.
The type of rock used for arrowhead was important and Native Americans travelled to other places to obtain the correct material for the job (just like we travel to our shops of choice if we prefer to sample what we intend to purchase …. or don’t have an Amazon Prime account). Arrowheads found in Seneca County have been made from rocks like jasper, agate and flint/chert, from not just Erie and Coshocton Counties but also Licking and Mercer Counties and even as far as Saginaw, Michigan. Different types of “flint” arrowheads that have been recorded in Seneca County include Pipe Creek, Delaware, Upper Mercer, Bayport, and Flint Ridge.
The most popular place where Native Americans residing in Seneca County went for arrowhead amterials was Flint Ridge in Licking County, which spans 2,000 acres. This was the “top knotch” flint, where its “customers” could choose between green, blue, yellow, pink or red shades (depending on the amounts of mineral deposits embedded in the rock). There was plenty to go around and “the quality of stone superseded that of any other in the state.”
Arrowheads are also named after the type of points present. All of the following have been found in Seneca County: Netling points, Kirk Corner Notched Points, Thebes Points, St. Charles Points, MacCorkle Points, Kirk Stemmed Points, St. Albans Points, and LeCroy Points (a chronological breakdown of these arrowheads and others is featured in the sidebar).

Before you go out hunting for arrowheads there are a few things you must keep in mind. First, it’s illegal to hunt for them on state and federally-owned land. Ask private property owners for permission before you peruse. The best time to search for arrowheads is right after a good rainfall when the soil is soft and may have pushed a buried arrowhead closer to the surface. Look near rivers or creeks. Once you find one, gently wash (don’t scrub) it with mild dish soap and an old toothbrush. Store it away from sun and heat.

Works cited:

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

Bloomville Sesquicentennial Committee. “Sketches of Bloomville and Bloom Township”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41807/rec/2

Bowen, J.E. “Prehistoric Peoples of the Greater Sandusky Valley.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44685/rec/1

Bowen, J.E. “Sandusky Site Near Old Fort”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29762/rec/2

Brose, David S. “Prehistoric Inhabitants.” Case Western Reserve University. https://case.edu/ech/articles/p/prehistoric-inhabitants

Guide to the North Ridge Scenic Byway. “Prehistoric Archaeology: Native American Occupation.” Pages 36-51.

Hothem, Paul. “Native American Artifacts: Arrowheads.” Ohio State University Extension. http://www.ohioarch.org/pdfs/4H%20Arrowhead%20Artifacts.pdf

Ohio History Connection. “Virtual First Ohioans.” https://resources.ohiohistory.org/omeka/exhibits/show/firstohioans

Ohio History Connection. Ohio History Central. “Arrowheads.” https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Arrowheads

Projectile Points of Ohio. 2008. http://www.projectilepoints.net/Search/Ohio_Search.html

Welch, Sara. “How to Hunt for Arrowheads in Ohio.” Published July 16, 2019. https://www.farmanddairy.com/top-stories/how-to-hunt-for-arrowheads-in-ohio/564152.html#:~:text=Looking%20for%20arrowheads%20in%20Ohio,for%20them%20on%20private%20property.

Weller, Donald Jr. “Early Archaic Points of Seneca County Ohio”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39803

Trick or Treat! Here’s some … bread and tires?

In March of 2020, a global pandemic created an image in the local grocery stores that the nation as a whole has not seen since the Great Depression and World War II – empty shelves and shortages. For most Americans, this is something we had never seen in our lifetimes. Suddenly, we all realized that the stories our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents told us about standing in line to receive their family’s ration of sugar and bread were all too real, and they were now happening to us in a different set of circumstances.

Sadly, food shortages have existed many times throughout history and are still prevalent in many third-world countries, which is why the annual World Food Day (October 16) was created in 1992. Many businesses and individuals have started incorporating food and supply drives for such organizations as Salvation Army, Red Cross, and local charities/pantries into a holiday tradition as Thanksgiving and Christmas approaches.

A man delivers sugar rations to a Kroger in Toledo during World War II. This photo was submitted to the Ohio Memory Project by the Toledo-Lucas Public Library.

The Salvation Army has been collecting and distributing food and other basic items to the poor in Seneca County since at least the early 1900s. Founded in 1865 in the East End of London, it was brought to America by Eliza Shirley and has had a presence in Ohio since 1879. The local Salvation Army began after a Captain Wilkinson raised $1500 to incorporate Tiffin’s branch. The Moore’s Standard Directory of Tiffin, 1908-1909, lists its Salvation Army Barracks on the corner of East Market and Monroe, overseen by Captain John Kissel. Likewise, Fostoria’s Salvation Army shows up in the Broekhoven’s Tiffin City and Seneca County Directory, 1902-1903.

The Red Cross is another major charitable entity with historic roots in Seneca County. While Red Cross was founded only 2 years after the Salvation Army arrived in the United States, it didn’t become a “staple” in the minds of Americans until World War I. According to its website, the number of local Red Cross chapters jumped from 107 to almost 4,000 from 1914-1918. Then the 1918 influenza epidemic happened, followed by the Great Depression about a decade later.

Once the United States entered World War I, drives were held in Tiffin for Red Cross, Knights of Columbus, and the YMCA to gather war chest funds for soldiers serving overseas in the Great War. These could have included corned beef, biscuits, cheese, “tinned butter” and jam or marmalade. For a soldier in the trenches, tea and stew were extra special treats.

During the early 1930s, local Red Cross chapters received “government cotton,” “chambray” shirting, and gingham prints to turn into basic garments for the needy, particularly underclothes.  “It was not uncommon to see long lines of people waiting for rations of both food and clothing,” says a recap of Tiffin history in the Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1964. For a few years, hundreds of families in Tiffin received relief packages at Christmas with luxuries like potatoes and other vegetables, cornmeal, apples, beef roasts, canned goods, sugar, and coffee.

The Junior Home even pitched in to help. Since its premises had a large canning facility, it took in crops from area farms in September 1931 and turned them into over 2000 canned items which were given to the mayor to distribute.

When the “shelter-in-place” government order was announced by the federal and state governments in March and April 2020, we still have the peace of mind that if we got bored in our homes we could safely venture out for a car ride to get out of the house. But during World War II, Americans didn’t even have that luxury as rubber, fuel, fabric, and other supplies, including stamps, were rationed in addition to food. People carpooled whenever possible to avoid unnecessarily wasting precious fuel.

Even civilian automobile and bicycle production slowed almost to a halt. Switching gears, much like during the COVID-19 crisis when there was a high demand for personal protection equipment and cleaning supplies, factories scrambled to make Jeeps, ambulances and tanks. “Doctors nurses and fire and police personnel could purchase new tires, as could the owner of buses, certain delivery trucks, and some farm tractors, but they had to apply at their local rationing board for approval,” states an article on the National World War II Museum’s website. Since Seneca County is in close proximity to Detroit, one would often witness this “defense material” being shipped out of Motor City to its destinations for transport to troops.

A War Ration book from World War II – digitized by the Ohio History Connection. For more images like this, visit the Ohio Memory Project website and type “rationing” in the search bar.

To get one’s rations, special rations books were distributed – and each family had multiples, ones for food and ones for transportation (gas & tires). In Old Fort, Harry Hade was one of the thousands of citizen volunteers appointed by the Office of Price Administration to grant tire certificates and gas ration books in his hometown.
Food ration books were known as “Sugar Books,” because sugar was the first consumable item to be rationed at the start of World War II. Other foods widely rationed were meat, dairy, coffee, dried fruit, jams/jellies, and lard/shortening.

While the United States has fortunately not experienced a rationing system of this scale since (the coronavirus was but a hiccup in comparison), statistics show that one in seven Americans suffer from hunger, due to both small and large events. If anything, the empty bread shelves that we briefly experienced for a few weeks made us realize throughout time the ones who came before us can teach us a thing or two about resiliency and gratitude. I’ll certainly try to remember that when I hear those bells ringing in front of the stores this holiday season.

Works cited:

Barnes, Myron. Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/10

Broekhoven's Tiffin City and Seneca County Directory 1902-1903. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33178

Fort Ball Gazette April 1991. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41003/rec/1

Moore's Standard Directory Tiffin 1908-1909. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38285/rec/1

Ohio Memory Project.

Risingsun, Ohio. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30016/rec/6

Red Cross. https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/National/history-full-history.pdf

“Rationing.” National World War 2 Museum. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/rationing

Salvation Army USA. https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/about/

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319/rec/5

Seneca County Digital Library.

“Sacrificing for the Common Good: Rationing in WWII.”
National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/rationing-in-wwii.htm#:~:text=During%20the%20Second%20World%20War,contributed%20to%20the%20war%20effort.&text=Supplies%20such%20as%20gasoline%2C%20butter,diverted%20to%20the%20war%20effort.

Tiffinian 1918-01. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/24944/rec/1

“Today in history: National Food Bank Week and World Food Day.” October 14, 2015. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/today-in-history-national-food-bank-week-and-world-food-day/

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1964. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/8967/rec/