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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Lizard’s Leg Sangria, Please

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Tick of a Clock There is a Song

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s Band Together

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wishing Upon a Star

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Big Black Bug Bit a Big Black Bear

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

99 bottles of … milk (in the icebox)

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spridgeon, Dave. Interview on March 18, 2022.

“Everyone Knows Ohio Has Apples and Snakes”

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Wants a Piece of Corn-Pone?

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For fun:

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

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

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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Get Physical

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do You Hear What I Hear?

by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works cited:

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

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

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

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

Ohio Memory Project.

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

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

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

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

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

Seneca County Digital Library.

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

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

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

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

Parading through the history of Parades in Tiffin

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

A 1967 muscle car slowly creeps by, the person in the passenger seat waves. The sound of trumpets and drums fill the air followed by the backfire of an antique tractor. What is happening? It’s just the sights and sounds of your every-day American parade.

While “every day” seems like an exaggeration, it almost isn’t. Americans have been hosting parades for every holiday under the sun. Holidays almost seem like an excuse to have a parade in the American custom. The Rose Bowl Parade ushers in the New Year on Jan. 1, then a big Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on Fat Tuesday follows. Next in line is St. Patrick’s Day parades, parades commemorating Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day.

Tiffin throws in a Halloween-themed parade in mid-October, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and smaller Christmas parades round out the year, only to be circled around again. But wait, what’s missing? Oh! How could I forget? The Heritage Festival parade every September in Tiffin, which had been held annually since the early 1980s until 2020. The first Heritage Festival parades began at Westgate Shopping Center and proceeded east on Market Street before eventually turning left on Frost Parkway. Now, they are practically held on the opposite side of town.

In addition to holidays or festivals, parades have been held on special occasions like anniversaries of events or honoring military feats.

One of the earliest parades in Tiffin was on July 3, 1885, which culminated with the unveiling of a Civil War monument. On May 26, 1899, a welcome home parade was held in Fostoria for the return of Company 6th Ohio volunteer infantry from its campaign in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. When the United States entered World War II, Tiffin saw a Savings Stamp parade in 1942.

The National Machinery displays its float for a 1947 Flag Day Parade. 

The Junior Home, where Tiffin’s Halloween parade now begins and ends, hosted several parades throughout its years of existence. In 1915 when The Ohio School was completed, a parade was part of the dedication services. At the time, it was “the largest parade ever seen in Tiffin.” A few decades later in June 1936, it was hosting annual beneficiary picnics with a parade. Prizes were awarded for the groups in the parade who had traveled the farthest to attend the picnic and the largest group in the parade.

A sesquicentennial parade in celebration of the founding of Seneca County in 1817, was held in June 1967. This parade took vintage autos down Jefferson, Main, Washington, Sandusky and Market Streets, skirting through the Six’s Corners intersection on its way to Westgate Shopping Center. A separate parade of antique farm equipment took a route from St. Joseph’s Catholic Church to the Seneca County Fairgrounds.    

A Spirit of ’76 themed float travels down Washington St. in Tiffin’s 1976 Bicentennial Parade.

Many cities and villages across the United States held a 1976 Bicentennial parade, and Tiffin was included. Amidst the bands and antique cars were suffragettes. Not exactly real ones but local women who dressed as them to commemorate those who fought for women’s voting rights in the 1920s. Clad in period costume like the ones women wore in the infamous March 3, 1913 March on Washington, the League of Women Voters float won a trophy. Its guest star? Louisa K. Fast, Tiffin’s very own real suffragist (now deceased). (The 1913 “parade” in our nation’s capital included 9 bands, 4 mounted brigades, 24 floats and 5,000 marchers).

Just like the parade in Fostoria embracing soldiers returning from Cuba, “victory parades” were often held when wars ceased.  These parades were held at the end of both World War I and World War II.

No parade would be complete without a band and this feature somewhat stemmed from such military-oriented parades. At one time, Tiffin Columbian had a Drum and Bugle Corps which publicly performed (the Troy Ohio Drum and Bugle Corp had also performed in Tiffin at one time). Bugle corps first became popular when veterans of the Spanish-American War and World War I pooled together to play as a band for civilians. Civilians were enamored and started to form their own bands; many that exist today have developed out of bugle corps originally founded by American legions across the country and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Another type of band that had been seen often in parades of Seneca County was polka bands, due to the immigrants bringing this style of music with them from their home countries. Bascom once had its very own polka band, the Polkadot Band, who traveled as far as Toledo, and also performed at county fairs. Polka bands blossomed in the 1920s, and Bascom’s band was still active during the time when the popularity of Polka reached its height in the 1950s.

Everyone has his or her own favorite part of a parade, whether it’s a cleverly-decorated float, a classic car, or a musical performance, but the overall spirit of a parade never disappoints.

Works cited:

Fourth Annual Heritage Festival 1817-1982. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27555/rec/1

Seneca County Museum Newsletter Winter 1995-1996. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43132/rec/1

League of Women Voters 10 Years. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63543/rec/2

Junior Home 6th Annual Beneficiary Degree Picnic June 1936. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25238/rec/1

Bascom Then and Now. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29193/rec/1

National Orphans Home. Junior Home Dedicatory Services of Ohio Memorial Church and School 1928. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4239/rec/1

Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program and History, 1954. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31551/rec/1

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

History of Tiffin Fire Department 1843-1993. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32508

“Drum and Bugle Corps (classic)” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bugle_corps_(classic)

Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913. Library of Congress. https://guides.loc.gov/american-women-essays/marching-for-the-vote

Valencic, Joseph. “Polkas.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Case Western University. https://case.edu/ech/articles/p/polkas

Farmer’s Almanac. “Love a Parade? Here’s Why we Have them.” 25 March 2021. https://www.farmersalmanac.com/parades-35497

1940, 1973, 1927 … HIKE!

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

In 2020, the National Football League of America celebrated its 100th anniversary, but football as a sport has been around in the states, particularly Ohio, much longer. Tiffin has its very own rich history in the sport, and residents have seen it evolve from its very beginnings to what it is now.

The Tiffin “Cornell” was a semi-professional football team in Tiffin before the NFL was formed.

The very first “official” football game held by Tiffin High School was in 1901, five years after Fostoria High School began its football program. Plus, both Calvert High School’s and the Junior Home’s football teams were well-established by the time the professional league out of Canton was formed. In fact, the first high school football game in the state of Ohio (and the Midwest) was played 11 years before the sport reached Tiffin -- October 25, 1890 in Cleveland. However, the game of “American Football” looked much different back then.

American football developed and eventually diverged from its “ancestors” soccer and rugby. Different rules existed, albeit dozens, if not hundreds less than today. If one could travel back in time to an early football game, he or she would see a smaller number of players on the field wearing rudimentary protective gear and running a lot more as opposed to throwing and catching the football (one would also not hear a whistle blown or see a flash of yellow fabric tossed in the air every two seconds). Even the lines on the field would look foreign. Basically, it would have resembled more of what we call a scrimmage today. “If you wanted to watch the game you just stood along the sidelines, or pulled your horse-drawn carriage up to the edge of the field,” states Eric Lambright in an article on Dailyhistory.org.

A 1930s Junior Home football team, names unknown. Photo is part of a private collection donated to T-SPL for the SCDL.

The development (or should I say improvement) of football stadiums for its fans has been evident as the interest in the sport grew. In the late 1800s, Heidelberg University’s first football field was on a field at the “old fairgrounds” by Heilman Street. Then with donated funds Armstrong Athletic Field was built in 1904, a precursor to the current Hoernemann Stadium on Greenfield Street. Columbian played here until the school bought what is now Applejack Park. The Junior Home also had its own stadium, Redwood Stadium, on the site of Kernan Park. Memorial Stadium, home of the Fostoria Redmen, was named in honor Fostoria men who died in World War II.

Frost-Kalnow Stadium was finished in September 1940 at a cost of $167,000, a project of the Works Progress Administration. Land on First Street was donated by John H. Wiliman, Minnie B. Cunningham and Anna Flender. Ken Egbert Jr. wrote an extensive compilation of Tiffin Columbian football stats in 1988 and includes in it that the first game played at the stadium was attended by 3,000 as Columbian beat Bellevue 41-0. The additions of the locker rooms, track, scoreboard, lights, tennis courts and metal bleachers have all been added in the several decades following its initial completion.

The 1927 Calvert High School football team.

In high school, the number of players on a team often dictates to which league the team belongs, which in most cases is based on the size of the school. Other factors can be considered and local schools have seen their fair shares of league changes over the decades. The Junior Home “Maroon and White” team was technically in the Ohio Athletic Association’s “Class B” by the size of the school, but it encountered a challenge. “Most of the other Class B schools have refused to compete with us and we have been forced to compete with Class A schools,” it’s stated in their 1930 yearbook. These schools included Fremont, Upper Sandusky, Fostoria, Findlay, Oberlin, Woodward Technical School in Toledo, the State Deaf School and Wilkinsburg (in Pennsylvania).

Between running as an independent team for some years, Calvert Catholic Schools has been a member of the Northern Parochial Conference, League of Six Nations, Midland Athletic League, and now the “River Division” of the Sandusky Bay Conference, which includes Danbury, Gibsonburg, Hopewell-Loudon, Lakota, Fremont Central Catholic, Sandusky St. Mary’s, New Riegel and Old Fort (the last 2 do not have football teams).

Columbian’s offensive line practices in the late 1920s.

Columbian also has a handful of leagues in its repertoire playing teams as far as Oberlin to Marion Harding. It first joined the Trolley League in 1911 (the oldest in the state), along with Elyria, Lorain, Norwalk, and Sandusky. It then joined the Little Big Seven in 1927 followed by the Buckeye League (which included the Junior Home at one time) and then finally the Northern Ohio League.

At the college level, Heidelberg, a member of the Ohio Athletic Conference, won the very last Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl’s west league division beating Fort Valley State 28-16 in 1972 before the competition was reformatted into the National Division Championships in 1973 (a title Mount Union College has claimed 8 times in the last 20 years).

Scoring has also seen its own evolution. Teams used to only play a handful of games per season, not the full spread our boys see today, where winning records help a team reach the playoffs. Public opinion usually dictated who was the winner and for a long time Fostoria was the favorite. Both the Associated Press and United Press International Polls emerged in the late 1940s, not long after Frost-Kalnow Stadium was built, and the process of ranking teams in their leagues became a little more organized.

Despite what popular opinion is or what the polls say, most Ohioans, those in Seneca County included, have their own favorite football teams, and it has definitely become a fixture in American culture for many years to come.

Works cited:

Barnes, Myron. “JOSIAH HEDGES AND HIS DESCENDENTS”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22645/rec/4

Egbert, Ken Jr. “87 Years Tiffin Columbian Football by Ken H. Egbert Jr.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51431/rec/1

Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program and History, 1954. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31551/rec/1

Hartzell, Stephen. “Tiffin Calvert Football History.” Compiled by Calvert High School. Last updated 2010. http://www.historynotebook.com/Records2.html

Lambrecht, Eric. “How Did American Football Develop?” Dec. 30, 2020. https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_American_football_develop%3F

Radio Program Script for On the Job with WPA. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33978/rec/1

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

Tiffin Ohio - Chamber of Commerce 1979 Publication. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51553/rec/1

“Who invented football?” Aug. 22, 2018 https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-football

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

The Answer is in the Numbers

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

*World Population Day is celebrated annually on July 11*

Last year around this time the United States Census Bureau was busy finishing its collection of Americans’ forms for the 2020 United States Census. The U.S. census has occurred every 10 years since 1790, and many trends and statistics are gathered, tracked, and reported based on citizens’ answers. The information received by the Census Bureau helps the government decide how to distribute funds.

While there is a margin of error – only 67 percent of citizens nationwide responded to the most recent census –both Ohioans and residents of Tiffin were slightly above average in their reporting. Seventy percent of Ohioans responded and 71.7% of Tiffin residents did. (The lowest response rate throughout the country was 35% and the highest was 75%).

There have been several organizations in Tiffin that have compiled population statistics, including the U.S. censuses, for their own purposes. The First Presbyterian Church relied heavily on population statistics to choose the best site for its new location back in the 1960s. Likewise, the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library used statistics in the 1970s to make a case for its present building (see photos for examples).

The ‘60s was an era of rapid expansion for Tiffin, and Tiffin’s population actually peaked around 1970 before steadily declining ever since. Worldwide this is a common trend in many areas of developed countries. The United Nations Population Fund reports that in the early 1970s women average 4.5 children each but by 2015 this fertility rate has been cut in half to 2.5 children per woman.

The League of Women Voters’s Population Analysis provides statistics showing the drop in the population of Tiffin and Seneca County between 1970 -1980.

Seneca County and the smaller municipalities within it have seen similar trends historically. To mirror the national trend of immigration waves, Seneca County saw a major spike in its population in the 1830s-1840s (from 5,100 in 1830 to 18,100 in 1840) when many Europeans arrived before tapering off in the 1850s. The county grew to 27,100 residents in 1850 but reported around 30,800 in both the 1860 and 1870 censuses). It’s noted in “Tiffin’s 75th Anniversary Souvenir” that “settlers east of the Sandusky River were mostly Americans from Southern Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia, while those west of the river were largely German, Irish and French immigrants.”

To put it into perspective, the Moore’s Standard Directory Tiffin 1908-1909 notes that there were 30 “whites” living in Tiffin in 1822 and that number had risen to 600 just ten years later. Bascom and Republic both contained about that same number of residents (550 for Bascom and 425 for Republic) at that time. Bascom’s population doubled to 1300 residents by 1850 but Republic only grew to 800. Bloomville was another close contender with almost 400 residents in 1830. It grew to 1160 residents by 1840. Bettsville and Green Springs were slower to grow, as both villages still only had about 25-30 residents each in 1840. Fostoria, likewise, only had 80 residents in 1840 but less than 10 years later grew to 300 residents. Even Omar was bigger than Fostoria at one time. In 1830 there were 265 residents and built its first public school in 1837. By 1840 its population had increased by 1,000 people. Just 10 years after its first school began, it had 11 full and 4 “fractional” school districts (or sub-districts) educating 676 pupils.

The First Presbyterian Church uses population statistics from 1930-1950 when it decided where to locate its new building.

Seneca County’s townships’ numbers have also been recorded separately at times. “Lands in Lodi” reported that there were 1200 residents in Reed Township by 1840 and 80 people within 14 dwellings in West Lodi. Eden Township already had 800 residents in 1830 but grew slowly but surely until reaching the 2,000 mark at the 2000 United States Census. Big Spring Township, where New Riegel and Adrian are located, is a little more sparse with New Riegel boasting 200 residents in 1870 and 350 in 1880.

Smaller waves of immigrants both nationally and locally aided the growth of Tiffin and Seneca County in the later half of the 19th century.

Oil and railroads were two technologies which brought people to the area. In 1895, Sun Oil Company struck 2 oil wells near Risingsun and Wood County went on to dig 1700 wells. The Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad became a direct link to Northwest Ohio and its promising farmland. During the middle of the 19th century “the land between Lake Erie and the Ohio River started to develop.”

In fact, while Tiffin and Seneca County are considered quite rural in today’s terms, it was actually more “bustling” than Toledo at one point. Charts created by the Ohio Development Services Agency illustrates that in 1850 Seneca County actually had twice as many people as Lucas County and beat out all of the surrounding counties in terms of population except for Huron County. It wasn’t until 1900 when Wood, Lucas and Hancock Counties surpassed Seneca County in numbers. Sandusky County didn’t become larger than Seneca County until after well into the 20th century.

Bar charts helped illustrated the need for a new facility for the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library in the 1970s.

At this time the ratio of urban to rural dwellers was 60/40 but by 2020 it had switched to a 80/20 ratio. By the year 2050 the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs assumes the ratio will become 90/10. Charts on its website help visualize that this isn’t a reflection of people moving from rural areas to cities – the number of rural dwellers has remained steady. Rather, the discrepancy is from the number of urban dwellers drastically increasing. This is reflected by the U.S. Census – since the very first census, New York City has remained the most populated city in the United States.

Whatever the case, for now, a large majority of Tiffinites and Seneca County residents remain loyal to their little spot in the world where their ancestors settled. One out of every two people in the county choose to live and work within 15 minutes of home, according to Data USA. Perhaps the more things change the more they stay the same?

Works cited:

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

Bloomville, Ohio. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29238/rec/2

Green Springs Ohio Centennial. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439/rec/1

Data USA. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/tiffin-oh

Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program and History, 1954. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31551/rec/1

History of Republic, Ohio.

History of Bettsville, Ohio. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29509/rec/1

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

Lands in Lodi. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44538/rec/2

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

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

Ohio Development Services Agency. https://development.ohio.gov/files/research/g113_OhioPopulationHistory.pdf

Omar A Community of Memories. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41398/rec/1

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

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

Tiffin’s 75th Anniversary Souvenir. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/1

United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs. https://population.un.org/wup/Country-Profiles/

United States Census Bureau. https://2020census.gov/en/

Cabin, Sweet Cabin: The Place Ohio Pioneers Called “Home”

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

For thirty-five years, Americans have been celebrating “Annual Log Cabin Day” on June 28. While the true log cabins our ancestors built would not have been the ideal that modern families would choose in which to “shelter-in-place,” log cabins have made a resurgence as a popular form of house, albeit with modern features.

The authentic cabins which the first residents of Ohio called “home” have been a defining feature of America since the 1600s when the very first settlers began to arrive and their origins have long been contested. Many historians agree that the Scandinavian immigrants were the “inventors” of the traditional abodes which were built by the pioneers of early America. Yet other Europeans, such as the German forebearers of many people who live in Ohio and the Midwest, added their own elements which made the look and function of log cabins evolve over the centuries.

The types of axes used to cut the trees for log cabins. Taken from the Third Annual Heritage Festival 1817-1981.

Log cabins also served other purposes besides a shelter for families. Versions of cabins stood not only as residences but also as workshops, storage, barns, even hotels, taverns and churches. The first resident of Seneca County, Erastus Bowe, built a log cabin hotel on Washington Street, just yards from his residence (behind St. Mary’s Catholic Church). St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Liberty Township was one of many in Ohio which built a log cabin structure in the 1840s for its Catholic residents to use for worship.

While it’s rare to find a true “antique” cabin these days, there are some that still exist. The oldest is the Nothnagle Log House in New Jersey (1638). The second oldest, the “Swedish Cabin,” was built in 1640 in Pennsylvania and used as a trading post.

Most cabins were built from oak, a hard wood that could take the beating of harsh winters. Oak was extremely prevalent in the swampy forests of Ohio and was used to build the cabins which dotted Ohio’s landscape. So much so that the north portion of Tiffin, once called Fort Ball, had first been named Oakley. In 1833 Oakley included a collection of log cabins, along with a few brick and frame buildings.

Bowe’s cabin was located within the premises of Oakley. Tiffin’s 75th Anniversary Souvenir describes Bowe as selecting his location “in the midst of primeval forest.” Not long after Oakley was established another of Tiffin’s first residents, Josiah Hedges, built a saw mill on the banks of Rock Creek near Heidelberg University in 1822, supplying lumber for the incoming flux of immigrants. Mills such as the one owned and operated by Hedges helped issue in the switch to log homes and timber houses (a log cabin is built with logs still containing their bark. Log homes are built with more “pre-treated” logs).

Most of the time log cabins had a door on the south side “to let in light and mark the passage of time as the sun moved along the floor,” states Onieta Fisher in an article titled “Life in a Log Home.” Usually cabins were situated using compasses so this form of keeping time was accurate.

The 18x14-foot Umsted Log Cabin, was located on East CR 38, Green Springs, and used for butchering and a workshop. Photograph featured in “Building of the Week” by Barbara Howe from the SCDL.

On the opposite wall from the door would have been the fireplace, sometimes spanning the entire wall except for a space on one end for a rudimentary cupboard. The windows were not adorned with curtains but rather greased paper. One early pioneer family in Omar remembers how they briefly resided in an 18x20 foot abandoned log cabin with a “puncheon floor” (a mixture of beaten-down soil and sanded logs slabs) and a table nook made from a few logs sticking out of the wall. There was not much room for furnishings other than the basics – one bed in the corner and a few chairs.

These days, most authentic log cabins have been moved from their original locations. In June 2020 a log house from the 1800s was uncovered on Hedges Street. In an article published in the Advertiser-Tribune, local historian John Huss explained that many log houses (including the one found on Hedges Street) in Tiffin were originally located in the downtown area before it became the business district we are familiar with today. The 1847 log cabin at Garlo Nature Preserve is one of 15 that were originally built on Market Street. In 1983 the Scipio-Republic Historical Society transported an 1844 log cabin to the Republic Village Park to use it as its headquarters (and to save it from being burned to the ground).

Works cited:

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

Flanders, Judith. “Log Cabin History: The Secrets of Making a Home.” 2015, September 9.
https://www.thehistoryreader.com/world-history/the-making-of-home-secrets-of-log-cabin-history/

Classic Metal Roofing Systems. “1847 Log Home Receives Classic Metal Roof.” 2010, September 23 https://www.classicmetalroofingsystems.com/1847-log-home-receives-classic-metal-roof/

History of Bettsville. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29509/rec/1

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

Johnson, Vicki. “Hedges Street log house getting a new home.” 2020, June 24. Advertiser-Tribune.

Josiah Hedges And His Descendents. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22648/rec/2

Omar A Community of Memories. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41398/rec/1

The Oldest Log Cabins in America . https://www.logcabinhub.com/olds-cabins/

Seneca County History Volume 1. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316/rec/1

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

Smith, Doug. “An Illustrated History of Log Cabins.” https://www.homestead.org/homesteading-construction/an-illustrated-history-of-log-cabins/

Tiffin's 75th Anniversary Souvenir. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23012/rec/1

I Heard It On The Radio

By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian

In March, readers reminisced about the early days of television. Many residents may remember when their household gained its first television. Likewise, they remember television’s predecessor, the radio, and its status as a key feature in the average American home. Before television, radios were the main electronic device people used (besides the telephone) for entertainment and receiving important information.
In 1910, a very rudimentary performance of the opera singer Enrico Caruso was played over airwaves. Because of its poor quality, “many older people thought that all radio would ever be was a fad,” states the Economic History Association. But after a large boom in the 1920s when the fabrication of radios was heavily improved, over 60 percent of US homes owned a radio just ten years later. During the Great Depression it was a cheap way for Americans to entertain themselves.

Despite television largely taking over with its visual appeal, radio continues to remain a viable mode of communication in the 21st century, and one major entity within the “radio world” celebrates a milestone this month. On May 3, the National Public Radio (NPR) celebrated its 50th anniversary of its first broadcast.
In true 21st century fashion, NPR has found ways to continue to reach a wide audience by creating podcasts, smart phone apps and a presence on social media.

According to its website, NPR boasts millions of listeners in 98% of the United States (Tiffinites and Seneca County residents included) through over 1,000 local member stations like Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Kent, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh (the closest for Seneca County is WGTE/FM 91 out of Toledo).

Locally, our FM91 station hosts programs and podcasts centered around Northwest Ohio like Women of Northwest Ohio Spotlights, the Cleveland Orchestra and Toledo Symphony.

Besides music, some of the very first forms of entertainment that were broadcast on the radio were boxing and major league baseball. Today, radios regularly hold contests and cash giveaways, and advice like “Intelligence for your Life” with John Tesh. Locally, baseball is still a traditional sport aired, but stations also provide listeners a means to “attend” football, basketball and hockey games at all levels of competition from high school to professional.

An advertisement for WTTF in the 1982 Calvertana Yearbook (pg. 108).

While breaking news is also still announced on the radio, the television and social media is usually where Americans hear it first. But until the last few decades, radio was how many people stayed informed (besides daily newspapers). A Junior Home kid recalls the interruption of his favorite radio programs for the news of the Hindenberg and on another occasion, the death of Will Rogers in a plane crash. One of the very first “live on-air” coverage that NPR provided was Senate hearings regarding the Vietnam War. Radios were much like people’s modern cell phones—it was their connection to the world at large. A member of Melmore’s Class of 1943 stated in his biography for the class’s 50th reunion, “my radio goes with me everywhere.”

Before radio, morse code was the main form of quick communication when time was of the essence. It was used in telegraphs when important messages had to be wired immediately (not everyone had telephones). At the turn of the century Tiffin had at least two telegraph companies, both on Perry Street.

As recently as the early 2000s, knowing morse code was a requirement for obtaining an amateur radio license. The Seneca Radio Club W8ID was formed in the early 1950s and is affiliated with the American Radio Relay League (ARRL).  The some 200+ individuals in Seneca County who have an active amateur radio license and/or are active in the club provide communication at local events like parades and cross country meets, and help local youth groups with projects like the Boy Scouts’s Radio Merit badge. Many of these have an additional license to operate through the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (under the auspices of FEMA) in the case of a public emergency.

When the Blizzard of 1978 hit Ohio, Seneca County resident Mark Griffin was still active in the National Guard. The Army contacted Griffin to let him know they were activated and needed to use the National Armory as a home base for communications with rescue officials. After National Machinery closed early, where Griffin was employed, he and a group of about 10 people gathered at the Armory and went on to help rescue several people in the county using CB radios. He became one of several individuals throughout Ohio who received a federal humanitarian award for his efforts.
After Griffin’s own experience with using CB radios during the blizzard he saw the value and potential of amateur radios and signed up for the course at the local police station (unlike CB radios, amateur radios are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission).

The course spans about 10 weeks (broken up into 3-hour sessions once a week) and covers such things as ITU Phonetic Alphabet, the RST system (readability, signal strength and tone), the Universal Coordinated Time system, ARRL ending signals and more. There are three main levels of an amateur radio licenses—beginner technician, general class, and extra.

When an individual passes the test for his or her amateur radio license, he or she receives a “call sign,” a unique name, so to speak. For example, Seneca County resident Mark Griffin, who has had his amateur radio license since 1978, is N8OHO. Ohio is in region 8, along with Michigan and West Virginia, so anyone living in those states will have an 8 in their sign.

Griffin graduated in a group of about a dozen people. Some are still living but have relocated to other states. One individual in his group was Bob King, a man who owned a business which supplied parts for boats that sailed on Lake Erie. King decided to get licensed so he could communicate with the boats’ operators off-site.

Amateur radio is given a certain amount of bandwidth, so they don’t interfere with the radio stations one hears on a regular stereo. Seneca County has several AM and FM radio stations, among them WTTF 1600 AM/Eagle 99, WFOB 1430 AM/Classic Hits 96.7, and WMVO Oldies. WTTF, an American Broadcasting Company station, hosts “Voice of Seneca County” and covers sporting events for several area high schools. In fact, the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library has its very own regular segment with Anna Ocreto interviewing T-SPL’s marketing manager, Kayleigh Tschanen-Feasel, for important updates and events regarding the library’s services.

Former Hopewell-Loudon Superintendent L.B. Summer makes announcements over the school’s R.C.A. system. Photo is taken from the Yearbook Scarlet and Gray 1940.

Heidelberg University’s student radio station, WHEI 88.9 (formerly known as WHCR) was among them. WHEI is a station of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting Association and has been managed by the university’s Communication and Theatre Department since 1958. In addition to the musical tastes of the students operating the system, there are live broadcasts of Heidelberg’s sporting events on WHEI. Heidelberg University even produced a semi-professional radio actor, William Perry Adams. According to his 1972 obituary from the New York Times, Adams was born in Tiffin and eventually became a radio drama actor in Shakesperean plays and a radio narrator for others. His most famous stunt was acting as a President Roosevelt impersonator. The author of Ramblin Comments even suggests the FBI forced Adams to discontinue this act because he was too accurate.

Another Tiffinite, Tom Zoller, settled in New York and was an announcer on the Lucky Strike program, which could be compared to Casey Casum’s Top 40, now hosted by Ryan Seacrest. Every Saturday evening, Lucky Strike program offered the most popular and bestselling songs of the week.

Columbian High School even boasted a radio club for several years. The Tiffin Radio Club was established in 1914 with John Grossman as the first president, Harold Buck as the first secretary-treasurer and Paul Frederick as the first vice president and six student members. The president of Columbian’s Board of Education at the time sponsored the club, and it held its first annual banquet in 1916. By 1919, it had doubled its membership, even after a hiatus during World War I.

While radio is an ever-changing entity with modern feats such as 5G and IHeart radio, 100 years from now it will probably look completely different, just as it does now from its widespread emergence in the 1920s.

Works cited:

Bicentennial Sketches by Myron Barnes. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33781/rec/2

Griffin, Mark. Interview on April 5, 2021.

“The History of the Radio Industry in the United States to 1940.” Scott, Carole. E. Economic History Association https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-history-of-the-radio-industry-in-the-united-states-to-1940/

The Junior Homekid, December 1991. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47768/rec/1

“Your Hit Parade.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Hit_Parade#:~:text=Your%20Hit%20Parade%20is%20an,and%2052%20singers%20or%20groups.

Melmore High School Class of 1943 50th Class Reunion Commemorative Scrapbook. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29728/rec/1

“Morse Code.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Morse-Code

National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/192827079/overview-and-history 

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

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

Seneca Radio Club W8ID http://w8id.org/

Seneca County, Ohio History & Families. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28326/rec/5

Tiffinian 1919-06-05. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53144/rec/1

Webster Manufacturing Belt Conveyor Equipment. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38323/rec/3

WHEI Radio, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio. https://inside.heidelberg.edu/departments-offices/gem-center/whei-radio 

Williams, Adam. “Obituary,” New York Times Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/30/archives/william-p-adams-actor-here-was-85.html

World Radio History. https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Business/Stations/IDX/Station-Miscellaneous-IDX/Radio-Personalities-1935-OCR-Page-0230.pdf

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1919. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/721/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1932. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/2382/rec/1

Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1982. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/11155/rec/1

Yearbook Calvertana 1964. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/6617/rec/1