Uncle Simon says “Vote!”

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

In 2026, the United States marks it’s 250th birthday, but the first American presidential elections would not happen for twelve years after the rebels pushed the British occupation out of the country at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. If you remember your American History lessons from high school or have an interest in political science, you will recall that for the first twelve years of America’s existence, it operated on a federal level by the Articles of Confederation.

In the infancy of our nation, several changes to the presidential election process took place, and as Ohio would not become a state until 1803, did not experience these modifications. Ohioans voted for the first time as Ohioans for the president in a new style of voting—the 12th Amendment, passed the same year as Ohio became a state, required electors to denote votes for president or vice president, rather than the vice president winner simply being selected based on the second highest percentage of votes after the president.

The year 1824 when Seneca County was officially established was also a presidential election year. According to “Compilation of Early Tiffin Homes,” which has been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library, only 175 Seneca County residents voted for a president (polling locations were few and far between in these days making travel to cast a vote difficult).  At this point, the federalist party was dead and the Democratic-Republican party had begun to branch off into the separate parties of the Democratic Party, National Republican Party and the Whigs.

F.A. Hinchey of Bettsville ran as the Democratic candidate  for the Ohio State Representatives in the 1918 elections. At the time he ran for election, he had been serving as the Postmaster in Bettsville for four years.

While Ohioans voted for Henry Clay of the National Republic Party, no candidate on the ballot that year received a majority vote and the final decision was made in the House of Representatives.

Earlier this same year (in April), Seneca County held its first local elections. In this first election, residents voted for their choice of sheriff, coroner, and commissioners. The municipality of Tiffin’s first elections, however, did not happen until June 1836 (it had been under the jurisdiction of Clinton Township up to this time). Soon, the City of Tiffin had its first mayor, recorder and councilmen, which, according to the author of “From Wilderness to City”, were mostly Whigs.

During these years, the small villages and townships were forming and holding their own initial elections. Thompson and Seneca Townships held their first elections in 1820, Eden Township in 1821, Clinton Township in 1822 and Reed Township in 1827.  Liberty Township would see its first election in April 1833 for trustees, clerk, constables and supervisors. These small elections were often held in private residences.

As more settlers moved into the area with large families, it soon became apparent to residents that they needed to vote on an education system. In September 1850, the majority voted in favor of initiating a school tax on property owners in the City of Tiffin, which resulted in building a high school on Monroe Street for local pupils called “Union Schools”.

Twenty years later in 1871, a special election would be held that authorized the erection of the College Hill school at the corner of Perry and Market streets and the Miami Street school, now owned by Tiffin University.  These additional structures were “constructed afterwards at intervals as the growth of the city demanded,” it explains in the 75th Anniversary Souvenir book, also digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

The Monroe Street School Centennial booklet, another resource on the SCDL interestingly includes a page describing the political nature of the nation during this period called “The Nation – 1856”. It records that Seneca County residents were divided in their choice of Democrat James Buchanan and Republican J.C. Fremont and had also pretty evenly divided their votes for the state governor.

And since the Civil was still a few years on the horizon, the compilers of the book state, “None of the rebel states was seriously considering secession from the (U.S.) Union,” and therefore Stephen Douglas, the Northern Democratic candidate on the ballot in 1860, received slightly more Seneca County votes than Abraham Lincoln.

General William Gibson, a Civil War Veteran and locally famous orator from Seneca County helped a levy pass by giving a speech in favor of the B&O Railroad route proposal in 1872.

In fact, the race was so close in Seneca County that Douglas claimed the majority of votes by only an extra 120. Surprisingly, Lincoln lost to Seneca County voters (this time to McClelland) again in the 1864 presidential election, according to the “Tiffin and the Civil War” compilation digitized on the SCDL.

As a state, however, Ohio chose Lincoln. The only states who did not vote for Lincoln in the 1864 election were Kentucky, New Jersey and Delaware (states in the proposed Confederacy did not vote in this election except for the seceded states of Louisiana and Tennessee who both voted for Lincoln).

Following the Civil War, a new era began not just in the nation, but also Ohio and Seneca County. Dirt roads were being transformed by pike roads and railroads were being rapidly connecting to one another for faster and more widespread transportation.

A tax levy in August 1872 was voted on in order to allow various parts throughout the county, especially in the area of Republic, Ohio, to provide “right-of-way” land on either side of the proposed section of the B&O Railroad. With the help of famous local orators Lawyer Warren Noble, Civil War veteran William H. Gibson, and a few others, the levy passed 334-91 (Interestingly, these two individuals had previously run against each other for City Clerk/Recorder in a previous election with Noble beating Gibson 101-97).

The railroad fever caused Seneca County residents to take a second look at their road systems and decided upgrades were “wise and necessary,” as stated in the Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches on the SCDL. In April 1880, a special election was held but this time, the residents weren’t buying the hype. The would-be pike roads in this particular election were voted down 5,156 against to only 1,578 in favor of.

Interesting decisions were being made during this time at a federal level as well through the elections. President Rutherford B. Hayes had been disputedly elected in 1876 after other candidates died during the elections (of natural causes). He had promised to only run once and in 1880, when Seneca County residents were voting against pike roads, were voting for another Ohioan for president, James Garfield.

For more recent information on local elections, the Seneca County Digital Library contains the digitized versions of its meeting minutes and other publications from the time it began in 1970 through the 2010s.

Works cited:

https://www.270towin.com/

75th Anniversary Souvenir. 1897. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2

Bacon, Frank Mrs. A Compilation of the Studies of Early Tiffin Homes. 1940. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29310

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

Dildine, Frank. Tiffin City Schools History. 1927. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35477

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

Durrett, John. History of Bettsville. 1984. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

General William H. Gibson, “Patriot Orator Statesman”.  https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36331

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

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

Sayger Printing and Publishing Co. Monroe Street School Centennial, 1856-1956. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35506

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

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

Fifteen Years/Miles on the Erie Canal

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Today Ohio has a plethora of scenic railroad trips one can take or sections of a canal where you can ride, but in the days when these modes of transportation were some of the only ways for people to access Northwest Ohio, they weren’t as sensational of rides as visitors experience today. Before the canals and railways were built, travel in the area we today call home was quite treacherous. The Seneca County Digital Library has multiple accounts of early settlers’ harrowing journeys to reach Seneca County.

Just a few years after Seneca County was established in 1824, the canals opened additional tracts and habitation by immigrants flourished. The plans for a tract that was supposed to run straight through Seneca County (which would have made travel to this location even easier back in those days) fell through after various routes for that track were considered.

A proposed canal (bold line) was scheduled to be built in eastern Seneca County and would have traveled straight through Republic, but it never materialized.

The proposal was serious enough that some of the newly granted land was purchased by the canal companies. The Miami and Dayton Canal, which planned to connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River, had bought land in section 5 of Reed Township in May 1828.

Settlers up to that point had been utilizing the existing Erie Canal, which opened in 1825, and provided access from as far as New York City via the Hudson River. Those coming from the east would be able to reach as far as Buffalo, New York, where they would ride boats on Lake Erie to Sandusky.

One resident recalls the journey, which is recounted in a Stemtown News newsletter:
“We were all children when we came to Ohio. We started the 12th of September, 1831, from our home. Came to Ithaca, took the boat at the inlet … We took the canal to Bufffalo then took the steamboat to Sandusky City. Sent the goods up to Fremont on the boat. Father hired a man to bring the family up to what is now Fort Seneca. We got here the 21st which took us 10 days to go where we can (now) go in 24 hours.”

At this point, “Ohio caught canal fever.” Besides the Miami and Dayton Canal, the Miami-Maumee Canal further west of Seneca County, used the Maumee River to connect to Cincinnati. (This is the canal system in which Grand Rapids, Ohio belongs, a popular tourist site for canal enthusiasts). Likewise, the Wabash and Erie Canal tract was an extension of the Erie Canal which allowed prospective new landowners to reach Indiana.

Seneca County residents were certainly optimistic for the plans of a canal tract running through the county. In January 1832, the Ohio Legislature passed a bill to allow land surveys to be conducted to garner the financial estimates for construction. According to the “The What, How and who of It: An Ohio Community”, a book of a collection of local newspaper articles from the 1800s,  the canal cost $7,177 per mile and from 1826-1835 until plans for the local canal fell through, residents paid a canal tax. (Records show that the amount collected reached a peak at $553.64 in 1832 which converts to $20,427 in today’s money).

Besides bringing in settlers, the canals aided business owners and tradesmen to sell their wares and product beyond the local community. Wheat farmers sent their yields through the canal systems to lake steamers at ports along Lake Erie that shipped commodities to other states. Another major commodity produced in Ohio and sent elsewhere via the canals, especially during the years when Seneca County saw major increases in settlers who needed to clear the land to build houses, was excess lumber. In the 1850s, Seneca County resident Henry Zahn sent his black walnut to as far as Germany.

The canals additionally helped transport coal, oats, wool, pork, cheese, and whiskey to eastern markets. On the flip side, major imports, which had seemed like luxuries before, were American-made cotton fabric, coffee, sugar, fine china and baking powder.

The canals also produced jobs. According to ___, over 1,000 miles of canals were built in Ohio between 1825-1847, resulting in 294 new lift locks, 44 new aqueducts, and other required functional components. The man power required to build these systems was crucial so the pay was excellent. Many Irish and German immigrants from the area took the opportunity, despite the hard working conditions. In the “History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War,” the author describes,

 “it was a sad parting when the father left his little ones in the care and charge of the pioneer mother to go sixty miles or more from home and be gone for months at a time to work on the canal and himself become subject to malarious diseases. They were even more prevalent along the canals than elsewhere because they were constructed through dense forests, along the most sluggish streams and the most level ground.”

Canal fever in Ohio was quickly replaced by railroad construction. For a short time, though, the canals and railroads helped in tandem connect immigrants to their final destinations throughout the state.

Wages for the canal-men who hollowed out the canal trenches, cleared the trees, and performed other strenuous tasks were $5 per month, plus room and board for the duration of work, and daily rations of whiskey.

When plans fell through, however, for a local canal, the attention shifted to the newly developing railroads. As early as 1825 when the Erie Canal opened, so did the building of the Sandusky and Mansfield Railroad commence. By 1832, at the same time that plans for a prospective local canal was still in the works, Seneca County residents were also buying stock in the yet-to-be finished Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad (Later on, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads would be added to the list).

The booming railroad era even had its beginnings with ties to the canals. The first locomotive used in this area, the “Sandusky,” was constructed in New Jersey and shipped to Sandusky by way of the Erie Canal.

Stay tuned for the April 2026 Seneca Strolls blog article to learn more about the subsequent “railroad fever” that eventually took over “canal fever”.

Works cited:

American Society of Civil Engineers. “The Ohio Canal System.” https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engineering/history-and-heritage/historic-landmarks/ohio-canal-system

Case Western Reserve University. “Ohio and Erie Canal.” https://case.edu/ech/articles/o/ohio-and-erie-canal

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

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

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/17928

Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad: Its history and Significance to the Sandusky Valley. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22213/rec/1

National Park Service, Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “History of the Ohio and Erie Canal.”  https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/history-of-the-ohio-erie-canal.htm

Stemtown Historical Society. “Stemtown News.” March 1993. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33995

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

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

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

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

For further information:

Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “Ohio Canal Lands Original Plat Map Drawings, 1890-1915.” https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/safety-conservation/about-ODNR/real-estate/ohio-canal-maps

Ohio History Connection. “Ohio Canal Plat Map Collection.” Ohio Memory. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll93

Kilbourn, John. “Public documents concerning the Ohio canals which are to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River.” 1828. University of Pittsburgh Library by way of Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/publicdocumentsc00kilb/page/n5/mode/2up

Canal Society of Ohio. http://www.canalsocietyohio.org/cso-documents-test.html

Back to school, pioneer style

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

It is estimated that as people moved west towards Ohio and beyond during the late 1700s and early 1800s, that the Midwestern portion of the United States eventually saw around 90,000 one-room schoolhouses. Today, the Midwest is divided into just slightly over 5,000 school districts.

School classifications are city, county, vocational or an independent community. Seneca County has either full or partial portions of three city districts (Tiffin, Clyde-Green Springs, and Fostoria), seven county districts (Old Fort, Hopewell-Loudon, New Riegel, Buckeye-Central, Mohawk, Seneca East and Lakota), one vocational school (Sentinel Career Center) and two independent schools (Calvert Catholic and North Central Academy).

One-room school houses existed in several individual townships in counties of Ohio in the 1800s but during the early 1900s, school districts were forming. They slowly but surely absorbed one-room school houses yet some of the more rural areas, like Iler, retained their one-room school houses much longer than others.

When one-room school houses were first erected in our area, they were often a multi-purpose building. Classes were held during the week, and religious ceremonies and other social gatherings were conducted when school wasn’t in session.

The first school house in Tiffin on East Market Street by the Sandusky River was the location for Methodist congregations, theatre events, and briefly served as Tiffin’s “town hall”. On the north side of the Sandusky River, once a separate town called Fort Ball, students attended school in a two-room frame building on Franklin Street. A later version of Tiffin’s main school building hosted “various religious denominations.” In Risingsun, the original school house was referred to as the “community cabin.”

Academies and preparatory schools like the Seneca County Academy were the closest equivalent to high schools in the 1800s.

There were no official school district territories for many decades throughout the 1800s. One-room school houses in rural areas were simply built about two miles apart to allow all children to be within walking distance of their school.

As early as 1826, Melmore residents, James and Laura Latham, operated Eden Township’s first school in the second room of their log cabin. One of Fostoria area’s first schools also functioned out of a settler’s home – that of Dr. Marcus Dana in Risdon.

By the 1840s, Eden Township had 11 schools (Rock Creek, Fleet, Baro, Downs, Barrick, North Bond and more) with over 200 students. Bettsville and Liberty Township of Seneca County through the latter half of the 19th century saw about the same numbers – 10 schools (Beech, Feaselburg, Cromers, Puffenberger and others) with almost 600 students. At this same time, Bloomville and Bloom Township had 400 students dispersed in nine schools.

New Riegel Rectory School, year unknown. It was much more common in the 1800s for religious education of some form in all schools, not just parochial private schools of today.

When these one-room school houses operated, children were responsible for fetching drinking water. In Fort Seneca carried water to the school in a pail from a pump by the Fort Seneca store and “everyone drank from the same long-handled ladle.” Around the turn of the century, children in Bascom collected water in buckets at Crum’s House and placed it in a six-gallon crock at the school house. Boys at Possum Hill School in Clinton Township enjoyed fetching water for their fellow classmates, venturing “40 rods distant” to a spring in a ravine near the school house.

If parents could not financially support their children attending school, households paid taxes by stocking the wood-burning, pot-bellied stove in the winter. (Before the 1850s, schools charged tuition fees). Possum School’s families were on a rotation for supplying wood and the amount was factored by the number of students in each family. Therefore, larger families were required to supply more wood than others. Families also helped maintain the school grounds, if it wasn’t already located on personal property.

Families also took turns boarding the teacher in their homes throughout the school year because teachers sometimes were brought in from other areas and could not easily make the commute (for example, Fostoria hired someone from Ashland County in the 1830s).

Union School building in eastern Seneca County after one-room school houses gave way to larger, consolidated schools.

Before more standardized districts were formed, teachers for one-room school houses had much more freedom in what his or her students learned. It is said that young adult males were often teachers in rural school houses because they were “better able to handle unruly farm boys.”

The school day often opened with reading a Bible passage as the “moral development” of children was just as important as their intellectual development. “The main purpose of these schools was to instruct in reading and literacy so that children would be able to read the Bible and participate in religious activities,” explains an article on the website of Morning Ag Clips.

Attica resident Alice Covert Martin recalled in “Lacon: A Forgotten Ohio Hamlet” that the small one-room school house she attended as a child “was only a little country place of learning but a few of the higher subjects (Beginning Latin and algebra) were taught.”

F.R. Stewart of Fostoria also recalled some of his school days at Possum Hill School, stating that beyond the normal reading, writing and arithmetic, “great stress was put on spelling and penmanship.” He explains that history lessons were student-led on topics which interested them. In fact, Fort Seneca’s teacher specified that her salary was divided by room & board, savings and a dictionary.

An academy near Green Springs was for a time the most elite school in the area. As a preparatory school, its teachers provided instruction for Greek, Latin, vocal and instrumental music, commercial math, and science.

When Ohio and the immediate area of Seneca County continued to grow in numbers with immigrants from a multitude of European nations, the need for more structured schools arose. In the 1870s, the solid eight-year school program would be established. By this point, Fostoria had already become an official district (1863). And according to “Bascom: Then and Now”, communities were divided on the benefits of consolidated school systems and stricter guidelines.

Additions were sometimes built onto existing schools to enlarge them. Green Spring’s transition from its one-room school house started with the two-room Union School with an additional two rooms being added later with “some high school subjects”.

Columbian High School’s original building was completed in 1893. Around this same time, Risingsun, a precursor to Lakota, built a new building for its 200-300 students. It continued to grow and after incorporating families living in the Bradner area, eventually became the “San-Sen-Wood Alliance” by the 1950s.

New Riegel, then known as the “Big Spring Rural District” had created a separate school district from the parochial school, but there was still some interloping between the two. Its first high school graduation for a three-year high school program was held in 1929 (the two-year high school program had started ten years prior).

Calvert began as a convent school for girls in 1963 but by 1923 had established itself as a more traditional (as we know it today) high school. The school houses in Eden Township were slowly disbanded between 1935-1956.

Works cited

https://koordinates.com/layer/97252-ohio-school-districts/

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

Calvertana 1940, Calvert Catholic High School. Seneca County Digital Library.

Durrett, John. History of Bettsville. 1984. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Fort Seneca Sesquicentennial Committee. “Fort Seneca Sesquicentennial 1936-1986. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/82516

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

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

Hall, Glenn and Edith Hemminger. “Republic High School: Memories of RHS, 1890-1970.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42311/rec/1

Hansen’s Histories series. “Back to School: The One-room Schoolhouse and American Rural Education.” Sept. 14, 2023. https://www.morningagclips.com/back-to-school-the-one-room-schoolhouse-and-american-rural-education/

Historical Sketches of the Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio. (1903). Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63795

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

Memories 1906-2006: Melmore Alumni Banquet June 3, 2006. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29761/rec/1

McIntosh, Phyllis. “One-room Schools: An American Tradition.”  English Teaching Forum. (2005). https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/05-43-2-h.pdf

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

Risingsun, Ohio Centennial Book.

Sketches of Bloomville and Bloom Township, Bloomville Sesquicentennial Committee. 1987. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41807/rec/1

Stewart, Francis. “Historic Sketch of Possum Hill School”. (1930). https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63796/rec/1

Tiffin City Schools History, 1927.

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

Waterfield, Marge. “Lacon: A Forgotten Ohio Hamlet.” (1981). https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29312/rec/1

The Ants Come Marching

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

When you see a white and red checkered tablecloth, do you immediately envision a picnic basket full of watermelon, sweet corn, and other delicious summer treats? Do you conger up the smells of hot dogs or hamburgers cooking over a grill?

The look and feel of picnics may have drastically changed over the years and decades but it’s still a very popular pastime among families and friends. In this month’s Seneca Strolls blog post, we look at the history of picnicking and what special picnics have been held in the county throughout its 200-year-plus history.

Picnics have been enjoyed by many, but historically, it was only the rich who could afford the leisure of them. The help staff would arduously cook the food and prepare the baskets but remained behind while their employers galivanted. The word picnic developed in the very early 1800s when a group of wealthy French friends formed the “Pic Nic Society”. “Each strove to outdo the others in luxury in expense.”

Over time, however, picnics continued to evolve and as aristocratic society crumbled, it became a popular past time for the rest of the social classes as well.

A photo from the 1956 Junior Home picnic shows these annual reunions were family affairs. This photo (and many others from the Junior Home picnic reunions, can be seen on the Seneca County Digital Library.

About a mile southwest of Melmore, there was once an area in Shooter Woods known as the Pioneer Picnic Grounds, “an important place of the people of Crawford, Seneca and Wyandot Counties.” The first recorded picnic at this area was a group of “young folks of the Honey Creek neighborhood” on September 7, 1871. It was such a success that another was held the following September. Three years later, a crowd of 250 locals gathered. It kept on growing until in 1882 they formed the Pioneer Association to organize the annual picnics. It’s reputed that by the late 1880s, upwards of 5000 people were attending from Seneca and the surrounding counties.

By this point, the railways had connected previously scattered towns. If a picnic was being held or someone who lived in town wanted to travel to a more peaceful nature setting to enjoy their picnic, the railways made it possible.

Some local street car companies actually purchased land on the outskirts of cities and developed them into parks (and prime picnic areas). In Tiffin, the Yellow Street Car Line owned 25 acres along Ohio Avenue on the north edge of town and turned it into River View Park in the 1890s. Locals had been traveling there by horse and carriage, but the street car line profited by charging five cents per ticket (and a faster trip). At its peak of glory, River View Park held a dance pavilion, band stand, tennis courts, bowling alley, playground equipment, and snack bars in addition to its picnic-friendly areas.

Myron Barnes, a noted historian from Tiffin, wrote weekly columns in the Advertiser-Tribune in the 1970s of his memories growing up in Tiffin in the early 1900s. He recalls that excursion trains from the Big Four (connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and St. Louis, Missouri) would drop off “large groups of passengers carrying picnic baskets.” These tourists would often make a pit stop for lunch in Tiffin when they look trips to Cedar Point in Sandusky.

A collage of children’s activities that were just some of the many things that made for lively annual picnics for the National Machinery employees and their families every August.

This phenomenon of picnicking as part of a mini-vacation started when Victorians desired as much time in nature as they could. National (and state) Parks were developing and people of this era believed a picnic was an “essential part of a daytrip”. Picnic baskets were an easy thing for anyone to pack and transport. “Stopping to eat and soak up the scenery during an excursion became an integral part of the experience,” describes Sam Butcher in an article about picnics from the Hampshire Cultural Trust.

It was for this reason that picnic areas were honored with landscaping to make the area attractive. In the early 1930s, the island of Pioneer Mill was developed by the Tiffin Garden Club as a Public Works Project. They built a shelter house on the foundation of old stone bins, two outhouses and four picnic tables. Now owned by the Pioneer Mill restaurant, the island continues to be a seasonal hotspot for summer gatherings (with a restaurant reservation).

While families and small groups of friends, perhaps a family reunion, often plan a picnic, picnics in modern times have again became an organized affair. Employers may host a celebration picnic like the many that both the National Machinery and Hanson Clutch & Machinery Company held at Meadowbrook Park every August for its employees and their families.

Graduates from the Junior Home in Tiffin would plan a reunion picnic every year bringing their entire families with them. Some were held in Kentucky, which was a centralized location for those who had branched out and settled in different areas of the country. Most, however, were held in Tiffin as the graduates sought to reminisce and show their families their old stomping grounds.

Works cited:

Abbott Cinema. Penthouse Club Picnic Video, 1971. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/71233

Bacon, Roger. Pioneer Mill History. 1977. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43423

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

History of Melmore. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29665

Junior Home. Homecoming 1956 Photo Album. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/74976

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

National Machinery. National Employees’ Review, Christmas 1951. Seneca County Digital Library.  https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/64354

Lee, Alexander. “The History of the Picnic.” History Today, July 2019. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-picnic

Butcher, Sam. “A Brief History of Picnics.” Hampshire Cultural Trust. June 2022. https://www.cultureoncall.com/national-picnic-week-a-brief-history-of-picnics/

“High Ho, It’s Off to the Park We Go”

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

The Boston Common was the very first park in the United States and this scenic section of the bustling east coast city is not the only model of pure Americana that it has gifted to our country (we’ll visit the other one later in this article).

If a Seneca County resident in the year 2025 wants to get some fresh air and solitude, there are several parks from which to choose. Besides the natural preserves managed by the Seneca County Park District, there are community parks in both Tiffin and several of the villages surrounding the area.
But historically, it wasn’t so easy to visit the park for a day. Slowly over time, society saw the need for designated spaces for people to take a break from both the indoors and a tight schedule. What parks we enjoy today are the outcomes of this trend.

Just a few centuries ago, beautified natural areas were one of the exclusive riches of the social elite. The poorer classes simply did not have the time or money to devote to strolling through a park. Then, around the turn of the century, the wealthy started deeding portions of their land for the purpose of developing public parks. For most of the 1800s, these public areas were designed on the edges of town.

A pavilion was one of the main elements of Riverview Park on the northeast side of Tiffin and welcomed many visitors to the park for various outdoor musical performances. This photo was published in the 75th Anniversary Souvenir of Tiffin commemorative book that has been digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

In Tiffin, the classic park that fits this description is Hedges-Boyer Park. Hedges-Boyer Park and the city of Tiffin sits on the land once owned by Josiah Hedges. In 1822, he purchased several acres through the Government Land Office in Delaware, Ohio and with his brother General James Hedges’s help, plotted the oldest streets in Tiffin (several extensions developed over time).

Another area of Tiffin, only on the northeast edge, was developed primarily for the Junior Home orphans, but was open to the public as well. Riverview Park was known to the public as a “driving park”, and most residents (besides the orphans) visited it by way of a carriage. This park exemplified the common beliefs of the era, that public parks could serve as “neutral spaces” where the lower classes, like orphans, could “experience an educating influence to help them acclimate to a sophisticated society.” Around 1900, John and Jennie V. Benner bought their property on what’s now known as Benner Street. They promptly turned a portion of it into Empire Park until the 1920s. (This is now the site of the Adams Street Storage building).

A post card made around 1910 depicts how Meadowbrook Park in Bascom looked when it was considered a "resort” park. This postcard can be viewed on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Meadowbrook Park in Bascom was similarly developed through the charity of a combination of an organization and wealthy folk. This park was once owned by the Tiffin-Fostoria Electric Railway built street car lines directly into the park from the surrounding areas. They allowed a Mrs. Samuel Sneath Sr., who was active with the Women’s Conservation League, to “adopt it as her project”.  

While she is responsible for the original pavilion, the first baseball diamond and landscaping, another wealthy individual, James Garfield Haugh, continued her legacy in the 1920s by adding the shelter houses and public swimming pool after he bought additional acreage. He invited the Lions Club to add the iconic Lions statues that over 100 years later still greet people as they enter the park.

Meadowbrook was the perfect image of how parks around the country were transitioning during this time period. Public parks at the turn of the century were becoming the sites of America’s first zoos, music pavilions, formal gardens and even museums. Playgrounds were emerging and later, baseball fields, pools and other facilities.

The popularity of Meadowbrook inspired the Toledo, Fostoria and Findlay Interurban line of streetcars a park to be developed in Arcadia—Reeves Park. It was designed as a “resort park” like Meadowbrook.

In Risingsun, Ohio, which lies just northwest of Seneca County, a former teacher, left an area of land in her will to the village. Fostoria’s Board of Realtors gifted 500 trees and the Boy Scouts planted them.

A Junior Home homekid sits on top of one of the lion statues greeting people at the entrance of Meadowbrook Park. The Bascom Lions Club donated the statues to the park in the 1920s. This photo can be found on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Another company in Seneca County, the Basic (quarry) in Bettsville deeded a portion of its land for a public park, naming it Howard P. Eels Park in April 1954 and “made available to the public 40 acres of land for recreational purposes.” For many decades thereafter, the quarry, baseball diamonds and picnic areas welcomed visitors. But as the author of this article will attest, it was its annual fireworks display on Independence Day that always enticed the largest crowds.

By this point in more recent history, parks were becoming sites for recreation rather than leisurely time spent in nature. Sports facilities were being re-named as parks in the style of none other than Fenway Park in Boston (home of the Boston Red Sox). The village of Fort Seneca, Ohio, and it’s sister, Old Fort, Ohio, was caught up in this fervid baseball fever. Its baseball-filled park emerged through the combined efforts of the Old Fort Lions Club, Little League baseball coach, Robert Hersch, and the Old Fort Ex-Hi Club.

Playgrounds, baseball diamonds and picnic areas are some of the common features of modern parks. The “Kiddie Korral” at Hedges-Boyer Park in Tiffin was added to the park in the 1960s. This photo was included in “Tiffin Area, Ohio” book published in the 1970s.

Additionally, the Tiffin Garden Club and Tiffin Woman’s Club partnered with Tiffin’s Park Committee throughout the 1940s to beautify Oakley Park and Frost Parkway Park in Tiffin and add a drinking fountain in Hedges-Boyer Park. Oakley Park, which is on the north end of Tiffin, had originally been proposed as a site for a city hospital.

Republic, Ohio, also gained a park around the same time as Bettsville. When its village council originally leased the plot, it was overgrown. When it was finally ready to open, it proudly became the first park in Seneca County to have a lighted baseball diamond. The Republic Lions Club began sponsoring a baseball tournament and tractor pulls during Labor Day weekend.

Likewise, the Bloomville Lions Club has been largely responsible for the development of Beeghly Park in Bloomville, Ohio. Over the years, this park has hosted a petting zoo, horseshoe tournament and many baseball games.

As the village parks cropped up all over Seneca County, so did additional parks in Tiffin and the ones which already existed grew themselves into their more modern images we see today. The public swimming pool inside Hedges-Boyer was installed in 1953 (a video of the dedication ceremony can be viewed on the Seneca County Digital Library). The number of parks in Tiffin grew from seven parks covering 105 acres in the 1980s to 12 parks covering 142 acres in the 1990s. They collectively included playgrounds, tennis courts, shuffleboard, banquet halls, hiking trails and sidewalks, memorials, and festivals.

Works cited:

“75th Anniversary Souvenir”. 1897. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2

Barnes, Myron. “Josiah Hedges and His Descendants.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22645/rec/4

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

Durrett, John. “History of Bettsville.” 1984. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Earth Share. “Public Parks and Urban Green Spaces: A History of Accessibility (or Lack Thereof)” September 2024. https://www.earthshare.org/public-parks-and-urban-green-spaces-a-history-of-accessibility-or-lack-thereof/

Fort Seneca Sesquicentennial Committee. “Fort Seneca Sesquicentennial 1936-1986. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/82516

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

Gershon, Livia. “Uplifting the Masses with Public Parks.” JSTOR Daily. June 2021. https://daily.jstor.org/uplifting-the-masses-with-public-parks/

“History of Public Parks in America.” Trashcans Unlimited. April 2020. https://trashcansunlimited.com/blog/the-history-of-the-public-park-in-america/

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

Junior Home Program and History, 1907. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/64

Iannantuono, Dawn. History of 155 Parkway.  2017. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53274

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

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

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

Seneca County Historical Society. “Fort Ball Gazette Newsletter.” March 1997. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/73462

Tiffin Area Chamber of Commerce. “Tiffin, Ohio A Good Community in Which to Live and Work.” 1990. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/34766

Photo of Junior Home Girl at Meadowbrook Park, 1930s: https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48459

To watch the video of the dedication of the Hedges-Boyer swimming pool, visit this link: https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/71236

There’s a reason it’s called Wolf Creek

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

“Picture in your mind, if you can, a vast sea of forest when the silence of these woods is broken only by the chattering of the birds, the scream of the wildcat, and the howling of the wolves. Just a vast unbroken panorama of trees, with an occasional stream winding among them.” This quote is taken from the History of Bettsville, written in 1972, and succinctly describes what Seneca County looked like when the very first settlers arrived in the Black Swamp.

June marks the Great Outdoors Month as the weather finally turns, and remains, more pleasant. But the stories that are told in several sources that have been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library make the outdoors of Seneca County sound like a nightmare, an “unbroken wilderness and realm of malaria,” describes the History of the First Presbyterian Church, 1830-1962.

Before Ohio became a state, only indigenous people roamed the swampy forests of its northwest corner. A few archaeological sites have been carbon-dated to the Paleo-Indian period when this area was mainly an evergreen forest and, besides these ancient tribes, was home to elk, giant beaver, panthers, even mammoths and mastodons. During the Early Archaic to Late Archaic periods, it transitioned into a deciduous forest containing most of the trees we still see today – oak, beech, maple, elm, ash, hickory, beech, poplar and black walnut.

When Europeans began arriving, they had to fight off the smallest but deadliest of creatures, the mosquito, to larger wild animals including ferocious timber wolves, wild hogs, wild cats, black bears, snakes, fox and wolverines. According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, as much as 95 percent of Ohio was covered in forest in the early 1800s. Audubon points out that it would have been an excellent habitat not just for the previously mentioned animals, but also woodland bison, elk and mountain lions.

A drawing depicting the Erastus Bowe cabin, which served as a tavern in the wilderness and attracted Josiah Hedges to build Tiffin across from the Sandusky River from Fort Ball.

The very first Europeans stuck close to Fort Ball on the west bank of the Sandusky River, which had been established by the War of 1812, and the near-by tavern owned by Erastus Bowe. The east side of the river was still wilderness until after the early 1820s. In fact, the entire county largely “a foreboding place; primitive to the last degree,” states the 75th Anniversary Souvenir of Tiffin. It’s claimed that the forest was so dense that in certain areas the sunshine never touched the ground, leading to soggy areas year-round. The mosquitos that bred in the standing water gave people such illnesses that they were described to be bundled up and shivering in the middle of July. Some early pioneers gave up and left, but the brave ones who stayed decided the land needed to be cleared. About 10 acres per year was able to be cleared by stripping the bark from the base off the tree, a process called “girdling”. The trees died quickly, were chopped for lumber, and the stumps were eventually removed, turning the area into potential farmland once the sunlight could finally peak through. Another technique called “blazing” was attempted when building make-shift roads (or trails, rather) through the forests, whereby pioneers hewed a piece of bark from the side of a tree as a way of marking it.

The Hunter House across from the Pioneer Mill was one of the very first houses built in Tiffin after it was established. At that time (1820s) it would have been nestled deep in the wilderness.

All of these changes made Ohio eventually look like a very different place just 100 years later. The amount of stripped land reached a peak in the early 1900s before conservation efforts began in the 1920s to reverse the damage. There are a few places in the area where one can see what the original forests looked like before the damage was done. Crall Woods in Greenwich on SR 224 east of Attica in neighboring Huron County is a 146-acre forest containing 44 acres of “old growth” forest once owned by the Sutherland family who never grazed it. The Crall family “continued this tradition” from 1924-2005 when it handed the land over to the park district. It is full of sugar maple, yellow poplar, American basswood and Northern red oak.

Those who might prefer to travel west can visit St. John’s Nature Preserve in Bowling Green, which includes pioneer woods, old-growth forest, wetlands, and prairies all within its 103 acres and trees up to 300 years old. For a longer day trip, some may want to consider Clear Fork Gorge, a National Natural Landmark since 1967. This 29-acre site has been declared “one of the best remaining woodlands in the state,” with its white pine and eastern hemlock.

Old-growth forests are ones with the majority of its trees having almost reached their life expectancy. Another defining feature includes the presence of healthy heat-sensitive plants (protected by the canopy of leaves from these mature trees). We shouldn’t blame our ancestors, though, for stripping the land. They were simply trying to survive in a new, unfamiliar environment very far from their places of origin. A History of New Riegel explains that once people built their homes and added a church to the center of their communities, Seneca County started to have the resemblance of medieval Europe, where most of these pioneers once called home. Knowing one had neighbors in a bleak and desolate place would have been comforting.

As Bettsville’s author stresses, “the loneliness would have been terrible. But they came, stayed, and conquered, and it’s only fitting that we should pause in their memory and hopefully revive an appreciation of the legacy they left us.”

Works cited:

“75th Anniversary Souvenir.” 1897. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2

Audubon Ohio. “Audubon Adventures: Ohio’s Forests, Then and Now.” 2010. https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/epa.ohio.gov/Portals/42/documents/AA-Forests.pdf

Bowen, J.E. Sandusky Site Near Old Fort. 1983. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29790

Durrett, John. “History of Bettsville.” 1984. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643

Fast, Louisa K. “Early 1800s Homes of Tiffin.” 1975. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32917

Garn, Lynn Edwin, Ph.D. “The Garn Family”, 2nd ed. 2014. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65251

Gottsacker, Erin. “Ohio Now Has More ‘Old-Growth’ Forests Than Any Other State. Here’s Why That Matters.” The Ohio Statehouse News Bureau. October 2023. https://www.statenews.org/news/2023-10-18/ohio-now-has-more-old-growth-forests-than-any-other-state-heres-why-that-matters

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

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

McConnell, Eric, Ph.D. “Ohio’s Forest Economy.” The Ohio State University Extension. https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/F-80

Moore, R. Braden, Rev. and Thornton, Cecil A., Rev. History of the First Presbyterian Church, 1830-1962. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35799

Nature Conservancy. “Seeing the Forest for the Trees.” https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/ohio/stories-in-ohio/forestry/

Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Division of Forestry. “State Forest Management”. https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/safety-conservation/about-ODNR/forestry/state-forest-management

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

Old Growth Forests Network. “Ohio Forests”. https://www.oldgrowthforest.net/ohio

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.” 1983. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32008

They Don’t Call Us Snow Birds for Nothing

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

“Snowbirds” has become the popular term to call individuals who winter in the warm southern states before returning home to the Midwest once winter has ended. The term has caught on because while native mammals typically hibernate, non-native birds migrate.

While Ohio can claim select species of birds as full-time residents, the month of May is typically when the migration of birds to our area reaches its peak. Some stay for the summer and start heading back south in the fall, and others only visit Ohio while passing through farther north into Canada.

Modern apps on smart phones have made it much easier for newbie bird watchers to identify these birds, but bird-watching has been a popular hobby for decades, if not centuries.

Blue Herons spotted along the Sandusky River by Naturalist Ray Grob. This photo was one of many he included in his book, “Down the Sandusky,” which has been digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

The timing of specific species and the order in which they arrive is pretty standard, but the exact dates will depend on a lot of factors and that’s what makes bird watching so thrilling – the anticipation of seeing that first hummingbird, for example.

We can tell early residents to Ohio knew their birds, or at least strived to study them, from several accounts all digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

When Colonel William Crawford and his troops where parading through northwest Ohio in the late 1700s, they noted that they encountered sand-hill cranes with their “shrill pipes”, prairie owls with their “cumbrous wings”, noisy bitterns, wild geese and the “occasional” bald or gray eagle.

For many years, Dr. A.C. Shuman, who organized the first Boy Scout troop in Tiffin in 1914, collected stuffed birds that were later dedicated to the Seneca County Museum when it opened in 1942 (as well as insects and flowers). Many can still be seen in its “Natural History” exhibits.

Other clubs also were highly interested in studying birds. In April 1922, the Tiffin Woman’s Club hosted a program at the Jr. O.U.A.M. Home called “Our Native Birds,” having invited the President of the American Audubon Society to present. Bird Study was also of the Mental Badges that a Tiffin Boy Ranger could earn, according to its handbook.

Members of the 1937-1938 Columbian High Nature Club, which formed in 1932.

A Nature Club at Tiffin Columbian High School was formed just ten years later. Judge Wagner even gave the club a strip of land along the Sandusky River from his house to Bacon’s Mill for the express use by the club. The 1934 Blue and Gold Yearbook states that the students and their adviser, C. W. Lutz, “immediately transformed this strip of land into a bird sanctuary and they built bird houses and supplied food for the birds.” Meetings continued to be held every Thursday for several years thereafter. In 1938, the club members planted shrubs and built a bird bath for the school grounds so they could more easily study and classify birds and plants.

Individuals in the area took on similar projects of their own, creating sanctuaries on their own personal properties, like Mr. Gammeter from Green Springs. He was known as the “Beautifier of Green Springs” and with permission kept areas surrounding the village as preserved as possible for the birds (and squirrels, according to the Green Springs Centennial).

A married couple from Watson Station, John and Ruth (Stover) Heckerd, developed a three-acre sanctuary on their property in 1960 and called it “Greenbrier.” In 1981, Ruth added another seven acres to it. This sanctuary included several water fountains, feeders and heated bird baths for the winter and for many years was a tourist destination for local gardening clubs. Ruth loved animals so much, she was instrumental in re-activating the Seneca County Humane Society around the same time she and her husband built their sanctuary.

In Tiffin in 1876, a pair of brothers Billy and John E. Benner, developed “Empire Park,” which included a zoological garden on one acre on Railroad Street. Visitors could see a pair of American Eagles, white crane and blue heron (plus “squirrels of every kind”). Stuffed birds were set up in an exhibit made to look like the Swiss Alps.

Works cited:

Butterfield, Consul Willshire. An Historical Account of the Expedition against Sandusky Under Col. William Crawford in 1782. 1873. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/16475

Grob, Ray. “Down the Sandusky with Ray Grob.” 1971. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30654

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

Historical and Business Review Seneca County 1891-1892. Union Publishing Co., 1891. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15697

Ranger Hand Book. Tiffin Boy Rangers, Inc.

https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33018/rec/1

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

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

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

Tiffin Woman’s Club Program 1922. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40635

Fun resources to check out for more information on migratory birds in Ohio:

Black Swamp Bird Observatory. “Timing of Spring Migration” and “Timing of Fall Migration” https://www.bsbo.org/timing-of-spring-migration.html

Nature Conservancy. “Top Five Must-see Migrations in Ohio.” https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/ohio/stories-in-ohio/top-five-must-see-migrations-in-ohio/

And They’re Off!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

Windlord, First Resort, Dapper Moon … these are the names of some of the fastest horses in the horse racing world in 2024. Horse racing is one of the oldest sports known to mankind. From chariots in Rome to friendly backwoods rivalries to placing monetary bets on specific predicted outcomes, it’s been a major way for humans to satisfy their competitive sides.

With the annual coveted Kentucky Derby quickly approaching, here’s a look at some of the horse races and “behind-the-scenes” aspects of horse racing that have been recorded in Seneca County history.

Before any horse can race in an official race, it must be trained properly. It is reputed that General Tiffinite Frank Callahan, raised future race horses according to a 1914 Tiffin city directory. At one time trotters and pacers raised in the rural countryside of Sycamore, Melmore and McCutchenville were well-renowned. Horses races near Lake Mohawk reached such a fervor during this era that the Tiffin Matinee Club organized them on a weekly basis.

An aerial view of the race track at the Seneca County Fairgrounds. The photo was included in the 1967 Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial Booklet that has been digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

Racing tracks for the horses to practice were important as these more official races became common and they could be seen (and visited) in many places by the mid-1800s. William Gibson, a Civil War veteran from Tiffin, had a circuit track for training race horses on his property, “Springdale” on Sycamore Street. Omar had a one-mile track for saddle races in the late 1800s. County fairs, though, is where horse racing really took off.

“By the time the (Seneca County) fair had become well established, horse racing became one of the principle attractions,” its claimed in an article that ran in the Seneca Sentinel. Perhaps locals hoped for a chance to see “Arlington,” which was reputed to be “Ohio’s Best Race Horse” in the early 1900s, according to the Broekhoven’s Tiffin/Seneca Co. 1900-1901 directory.

There are a few different types of racing horses. The difference between pacers and trotters are in the way they run. A pacer horse’s legs on the same side of its body move in unison (a lateral gait) to prevent it from breaking out in an unsightly gallop. With trotter horses, on the other hand, the diagonally opposite legs move in union (more natural for both humans and animals when running). Because the gait of a pacer must take more training to learn, pacers require more training equipment.

The temperament of a horse also matters: racing horses should not be easily spooked. This could be what happened in what’s been rumored to be “the first horse race in Seneca County.” Josiah Hedges, one of the very first settlers in Seneca County, and a Doctor Dresbach “and their riders” met up at the Spicer Reservation (north of Tiffin near Fort Seneca). It is said they chose the spot because “they could find no other place so free from (tree) stumps.”

Racing on a somewhat straight path from the bank of the river to a house on Tomb Street, Dr. Dresbach’s rider, “McNeal,” rode a small gray mare. Hedges borrowed a bay belonging to a friend for his relative, Albert Hedges, to ride. After racing through corn fields, it’s unclear what happened, but right before the destination, the horse Hedges was riding ran into a “spectator” horse along the way. This no doubt agitated the horse and it abruptly stopped, causing Hedges to fall off, resulting in a dislocated ankle.

The temperament of a horse was also important for fire departments, who used fast horses before motorized vehicles. “Not every horse could serve as a fire horse,” states ___. “The horse needed to be strong, swift, agile, obedient and fearless. They needed to remain calm in the midst of a multitude of distractions, therefore, the fire departments carefully selected their horses.”

The first fire horses in Tiffin were purchased in 1866, and the local fire department used horse teams to pull their equipment until 1914 when it was noted in city council notes that the horses, “Jerry,” “Tom,” and “Frank,” had all been sold. A commemorative book on the Tiffin Fire Department in 1993 explains that, unfortunately, there are very few references to its horses in its recorded history.

Works cited:

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

Seneca County Digital Library, Tiffin City Directories.

https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search/searchterm/Directories/field/subjec/mode/exact/conn/and

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

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

Directory of the City of Tiffin 1914, W.M. Lawrence & Company, 1914. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39479/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/17928

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

Peters, Marty. “A History of Horses in the Fire Service.” Fire History. https://firehistory.weebly.com/a-history-of-horses-in-the-fire-service.html

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

US Trotting. https://fanguide.ustrotting.com/

Shipping Costs Included

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

These days one cannot go a day without seeing either an Amazon van or UPS or Fed Ex truck at least once, if not multiple times. The internet has made the movement of commerce extremely rapid. But just a few decades ago, catalogs served as the interface for placing orders for things people needed delivered to their homes.
Items that could be ordered from catalogs ranged from simple household items to the entire house itself. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, building kit homes from mail-order catalogs was a huge trend, especially in the Midwest and Seneca County was no exception.

The main three companies contributing to growing neighborhoods were Aladdin Readi-Cut Houses, Montgomery & Ward, and Sears & Roebuck Co.

Because kit homes flooded the market at the turn of the century, many of the models one could select from the catalog had features of the Neo-Classical style that was popular at the time. Other popular styles were Queen Anne and bungalows.

216 Jefferson Street was originally built as a parsonage home for First English Lutheran Church in 1912. It’s one of the many houses that were researched for “Building of the Week,” a document digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.

The Seneca Sentinel: Building of the Week has a section of articles written by former Heidelberg College students describing wood frame houses built during this era. Each article includes who built the home and architectural features of the houses. and they note the similarities between houses chunked together on the same street.

The student who was assigned to research 167 North Sandusky Street, built in 1902 by Standard Pottery executive George Brian, exclaimed, “The verandah … is very similar to that on 175 North Sandusky St., immediately to the north. The similarity is even more interesting when one realizes that Brian’s employer, Fred Conradt, lived at 175!” The North Sandusky Street Historic District was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.

Another house, 216 Jefferson St., was built as a parsonage for the First English Lutheran Church and remained a parsonage until 1979. The student who researched this house compared it to the Methodist parsonage diagonally across the street.

Another rectory in Seneca County is also rumored to be a Sears kit home – that of the former St. Peter’s Catholic Parish in Alvada, built in 1914.

Kit homes were desired during this time as for their affordability and the onset of World War I ensured their continued popularity. “They provided housing for the thousands of workers and their families who moved to cities to work in war-related industries. To meet the demands of the war effort, these houses were made of wood and designed to be quickly and easily assembled. After the war, many of them were sold to returning veterans,” Built PreFab’s website states.

154 S. Monroe St. was a kit home designed by George Franklin Butler. The design was ordered through his “New Model Dwellings” publication in the late 1890s.

Once the war was over, the kit home market began shifting. While one could still order one via catalog, local lumber yards and hardware stores also provided the catalogs and assistance.

In the 1920s, Montgomery & Ward signed a 20-year lease on three store rooms in the Gottlieb block on Washington Street in Tiffin. Sears & Roebuck Mail Order Office occupied 78 S. Washington in the 1940s and 1950s (after Tiffin Hardware).

While both existed at one time in Tiffin, the city has a few unique mail-ordered houses from a much more niche company. George Franklin Butler, who “succeeded in one of the nation’s earliest mail-order house plan businesses,” was the architect behind 154 S. Monroe St. and 81 Main St., featured in his “New Model Dwellings” published in 1895.

To do your own kit home sleuthing in your own neighborhood, visit the section called “Identifying Sears Homes” on https://searshomes.org/.

Works cited:

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

Built Prefab. “History of Prefab Housing in North America.” Jan. 23, 2023. https://builtprefab.com/the-history-of-prefab-housing-in-north-america/

Howe, Barbara. “Building of the Week.” Seneca Sentinel.  https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28318

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

Huss, John. “Works of Nationally Known Architect Discovered in Tiffin.” Tiffin Historic Trust. Preservation Post. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/74354

Wikipedia. “Prefabricated Home.”

Strolling Through the Last Five Years of Seneca Strolls Blog Articles

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a small (or big) hat this is!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works Cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seneca County Museum Newsletter. Sept. 1998.

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

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

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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Magic of Christmas is all around us

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here lies Ms. Belle Bowen at Rest … or Not

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

Ancestry.com

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

But first, let me take a selfie

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wanna rock!

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More resources:

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

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

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

You Scream, I Scream. We All Scream!

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiffin Dairy Interior in the 1950s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

Columbian Blue and Gold 1921.

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

Fort Ball Gazette, April 1981.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seneca County Digital Library.

There’s Gnome Place Like Home

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works Cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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