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

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March is Deaf Awarenesss Month

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the Grammy Goes To …

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

Junior Homekid, December 1989. Seneca County Digital Library.

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

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

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

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

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

Does Santa really still give out coal for Christmas?

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

Webster Manufacturing 75th Anniversary. Seneca County Digital Library.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Home is …

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

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It Beckons and It Baffles”

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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t fear the reaper

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Traffic jam? I’ll just take my bike!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that a calliope I hear?

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library.

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

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

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

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

Toto, I’ve a Feeling we’re … Still in Ohio

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

A widely known fact is that in the summer of 1988, a terrible drought affected dozens of counties throughout Ohio. A little-known fact? That same year, not one tornado touched down in the entire state of Ohio.

Seneca County has seen its share of tornadoes, some larger and more destructive than others. On average, Ohio sees about 20 tornadoes per year. Most tornadoes in Ohio (over half) strike in the late spring and early summer (May through July). In more recent history, the most deadly of our time was an anomaly--the tornado on November 10, 2002, which traveled through the county, hitting both the Tiffin and Fostoria airports, Greenlawn Cemetery, Heidelberg University, Republic, and many homes in between. It reached the F3 level and killed two people. In general, on this particular day, Ohio saw the most tornadoes in one day than it had since 1950.

This was not the first (nor the last). As early as 1825 there is documentation of tornadoes in Ohio. On May 18, 1825, known as the “Burlington Storm,” began in the afternoon in Delaware County and headed north, uprooting “gigantic forests” over several miles, along with cows, oxen, and horses. Spectators (there’s always a storm chaser somewhere) testify that, even from almost a mile away, they could feel the ground vibrate beneath their feet. A four-foot plow chain was found lodged in the top of a maple tree. Debris was carried up to 30 miles away from its original location.

The Methodist Episcopal Church in 1890 before it was decommissioned and later destroyed in a tornado in 1953.

While it’s not clear what year it was destroyed, the oldest church in Bloom Township, Primitive Baptist, was hit by a tornado, taking all of the historical records up to that date with it. It happened sometime between the time the church was founded in 1830 and when the property was transferred to Benjamin Huddle in 1856.

Sometimes tornadoes create different sorts of paths. A tornado sent a young boy to the Junior Home in Tiffin from New Albany, Indiana, but not by carrying him as debris. The boy’s father was killed by a tornado in 1917. This random act of natural disaster set the boy’s life on a completely different course. The Junior Home had such an impact on him that after attending Heidelberg College, the young man returned to the home to become a teacher to the next generation of orphans.

On the corner of SR 224 and CR 7 once stood a small frame structure used by a reverend of the Methodist Conference for his pastor circuiting in the Bascom and Bettsville area (see photo). Eventually, this building was decommissioned by a farmer and was hit by a tornado on June 8, 1953. That same year, the Omar Chapel and cemetery were damaged by a tornado.  

St. John’s United Church of Christ in Fostoria was rebuilt after a tornado struck it on May 27, 1937, damaging the pipe organ beyond repair. It was dedicated in November of that year.

Attica was a site affected by the “Palm Sunday tornadoes” on April 11, 1965, a collection of 11 tornadoes that killed 60 people. Around this time, tornadoes started to become researched and recorded in more scientific detail. Of the tornadoes tracked in Ohio since the 1960s, 9 out of 10 of them never grow past an F3 size.

In order for a tornado to be considered an F5, winds must reach at least 260 miles per hour, which is enough force to lift buildings off foundations and pick up debris as heavy as cars. An F3 produces up to 200 mile-per-hour winds and can still uproot trees and rip entire walls off buildings. It’s still best to use caution even at the F1 level. These storms have 75-mile-per-hour wind gusts and can damage roofs, and windows, flip small structures onto their sides and snap tree trunks.

You can explore an interactive map called the “Tornado Archive” on Cincinnati.com, showing the path tornadoes took from their first and last confirmed touchdown sites. The map also color codes the tornadoes specifying their grade on the Enhanced Fujita Scale (2007). These grades are based on the speed of a gust for a three-second interval. The sidebar provides a breakdown of some of the larger tornadoes in Seneca County that were at least an F1 on this map (there are several others that were rated F0).

While the strongest tornadoes, F5 on this scale, typically happen more often in the true “Tornado Belt,” Ohio has still experienced four F5 tornadoes. May 31, 1985, saw ten tornadoes around the state with an F5 killing ten people in Portage and Trumbull Counties. On April 3, 1974, sixteen tornadoes struck, and an F5 in Green, Clark, and Hamilton counties killed 39 people and injured 1,340.

Dubbed the “Palm Sunday Tornadoes,” these storms in 1965 did extensive damage to property in many parts of Seneca County. This photo was taken from the Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967 booklet on the Seneca County Digital Library.

By the 1960s and 1970s when people were more diligent about protecting themselves properly from tornadoes, Tiffin had created many official storm shelters. These included the LaSalles Department Store, Seneca County Courthouse, the gymnasium at East Junior High School, J.C. Penney Co., Masonic Temple, old post office (now the site of the American Civil War Museum of Ohio), Calvert High School, Heidelberg College’s music building and science building, National Machinery’s office building and storage building, Heidelberg University’s Krieg Hall, King Hall West, King Hall East, Ritz Theatre, Knights of Columbus, the fire department, Ohio Power Company’s office, Advertiser-Tribune, YMCA (front wing), Pease TV, Presbyterian Church, St. Francis Home, Ohio Power Service, and Seneca County Home.

If you are ever at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library when a tornado warning happens, the library does have a safety policy in place and the staff will direct you to the appropriate locations to wait out the storm.

Works cited:

Bascom Area Sesquicentennial 1837-1987. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41947

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

Junior Home The Junior Homekid April 2002. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/49644

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. “A History of Twisters: Tornadoes in Ohio since 1950.” Oct. 31, 2022. https://data.cincinnati.com/tornado-archive/

“Ohio’s Tornado History and What to Do if you Are Caught in a Twister.” Akron Beacon Journal. March 24, 2021. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/03/24/ohio-tornado-history-drill-and-what-do-if-youre-caught-storm-severe-weather-twister-high-winds/6979208002/

Omar: A Community of Memories. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41429

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

Sketches of Bloomville and Bloom Township. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41848

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

Tornado Alley States 2023. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/tornado-alley-states

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