Improving Ohio

The State House that was located in Columbus was only twenty years old. The General Assembly decided in 1838 that a new one would be constructed. They wanted the new building to reflect that Ohio was getting more powerful as a state. To improve Ohio, courthouses, churches, and college hall, were built to cover the landscape of Ohio. These and a multitude of other new structures were part of an effort to revise Ohio’s ragged and disconnected landscape, to seize control of its development by laying the foundations of a public culture (Cayton 46).

Public transportation played a major role in the development of Ohio. Rutherford B. Hayes comments to his fiancée how nice it was to go from Dayton to Cincinnati by train because it only took three and a half hours. Back when he was born it would have taken a couple of days to travel the 50 miles to Dayton. Most everyone in Ohio wanted easier ways of travel and transporting of goods. But they were not willing to pay taxes for roads that were not going to benefit them. Why would someone in Dayton want to help pay for a road in say Piqua.

Canals came around in the 1920s. The Miami Canal would unite Cincinnati and Dayton, and the Ohio Canal would connect the Ohio River and Lake Erie. To pay for these canals the legislature created a system of taxation. The canals would allow farmers to get crops to markets more quickly, and profitably. Because of the canals, goods including hardware, clothing, and machinery were able to be traded. Many cities grew because of the canals. The construction of the canals was not easy on the laborers. They endured long hours of back-breaking work because they were digging the canals with picks and shovels. Food and shelter were horrible and a lot of the workers caught diseases such as cholera and typhus.

Around the 1830s and 1840s railroads started to rise. This made the use of the canals not as important. The demand for railroads was high and the cost low. In 1851 three major lines had begun: the Sandusky, Mansfield, and Newark. By 1860 Ohio led the nation with about three thousand miles of railroad. For more than a century, railroads dominated the transportation industry.  People could travel to places in half the time.

Education was also a part of Ohio’s growing state. Some people didn’t like the idea of having an education system, while others thought that it would create a bond between people. The students at school read textbooks from William McGuffy, who taught at Miami and Ohio University. African American students were not allowed to attend any public schools until the 1840s. The General Assembly created separate black schools that would be supported by the taxes that their parents paid. Where there were fewer than twenty children in a school, black students could attend those schools as long as there was no objection from the local community (Cayton 61).

This chapter discussed a few of the issues that arouse with the coming of Ohio. From transportation, to education, to drinking.

Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

Frank Hale opened a grocery store in the Hoover block in 1900. For seventeen years, he sold canned goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, tea, coffee, and other goods to working men and women of the surrounding West Dayton Neighborhood. This is a picture of what the grocery store looked like back in the 1900’s. The Wright Brothers and Paul Lawrence Dunbar shopped here. It is interesting to see how many supplies were stocked back then.

 

Before the Wright Brothers became bicycle men and aviators, they started out as printers. It was Orville who showed an interest in printing that he developed into a business while he was a teenager. As the printing enterprise grew, his younger brother Wilbur joined into help him. In the late 1800’s they were publishing their own newspapers; built their own presses; and cranked out jobs for West Dayton businesses and residents.

The Wright brothers owned a Prouty job press, which they used to prepare the bulk of their job work. Although the original press has not survived, an example is shown here. The Job press was used to print work such as cards, billheads and circulars.

This printing press was used by Miami Wood Specialty (a toy company owned by Lorin Wright and other family members) to make balsa wood Wright Flyers. These airplanes were given away as cereal premiums. Children saved a specified number of cereal box tops, sent them and received the airplane.

 

The Wright Cycle Company was a bicycle repair shop that was opened in 1892 by the brothers. In this shop they began manufacturing their own brands, including the Van Cleve. Here they also started giving serious thought to the possibilities of flight. This bicycle shop is the only one that is intact and in the original location.

The first velocipede bicycle had pedals mounted directly on the front axle and wheels approximately equal in size. The high wheel, or “ordinary” bicycle, was a variation of the velocipede. Its much larger front wheel made it faster than regular velocipedes but also more difficult to ride.

 

 

Carriage Hill Living Farm

The property of Carriage Hill was originally owned by Henry Harshbarger, Catharine Arnold’s father, in 1830. The family moved into a log house that was already on the land. Eventually Daniel Arnold bought more land from his father-in-law and built a new house. The youngest Arnold son bought more land and added a brick house that would be a winter kitchen; he also added a new barn for livestock. Throughout the 1880’s the farm was prosperous and productive.

The farm family raised food for the family and crops to be sold for cash. They sold large wagon loads of grain, hay, gravel, and other farm products. Small quantities of more labor intensive items like butter and smoked sausage were also sold. Every Friday a wagon load was taken into Dayton to sell to customers.

The Bank Barn was built in 1878. The lower level contains stalls and pens for the farm animals. The top level of the barn contains feed bins, hay and straw mowers, and a large threshing floor where equipment was stored.

The Bank Barn

This picture is just playing around in the visitor center since it started to rain.

Delphos Museum

A visit to the Delphos Canal Museum was not what I expected. People have told me that it is a nice museum to visit. Maybe it’s because they are remodeling. I don’t know that I would recommend it.

Delphos, named after the Greek word “adelphos” meaning brother, was founded in1844 on the Southern edge of the Great Black Swamp. The museum Center offers a visit to the past. It showcases memorabilia including remnants from the canal boat Marguerite.

The original Marguerite was built around 1850. It caught fire and sank in the canal at Delphos in the early 1900s. In 1987, the side rails, bottom ribs, and keel were discovered when the canal was drained for repair work.

There is a huge Catholic Church in Delphos called St. Johns. This is a picture of an old clock that used to be in the church. The clock was dated pre-1900. Before it was electrified about 1947, it had to be hand wound every eight days. The process of winding it by hand took an hour.

This model of a canal lock was made by an art teacher from Delphos. A canal lock was used for raising and lowering boats from one level to another on canals and rivers. The main feature of a lock is a fixed chamber whose water level can be varied. It is the chamber itself that rises and falls. Locks were used to make more direct routes for canal boats, and are used to make rivers more navigational. There are many types of locks. There is the staircase lock, the paired or twin locks, stop locks, drop locks, flood locks and many more.

A popular business in Delphos from 1900 to 1980 was The Delphos Bending Company. It was started by Louis Justice. It was first named the Delphos Hoop Company and they manufactured barrel hoops. In 1912 the name was changed to The Delphos Bending Company. The company started making children’s furniture in 1934. Its growth was such that by 1951 it was the largest such company in the world. The products are bent and straight wood parts, juvenile furniture, and toys. The “Teetertot Shoofly” is one example of the type of children’s furniture they produced. The “Teetertot” has various different styles and they were made from 1945 to 1979. They made many other pieces of toy furniture. In 1980 Orbritron Corporation bought the company and in 1993 the company closed their doors.

The original Lincoln Highway Route (US 30) followed much of the Main Market Route Number Three. It connected several county seats in the northern central part of Ohio. It was one of the best roadways. The main cities that it went through included Canton, Mansfield, Marion, Kenton, Lima and Van Wert. Three weeks later the county seats of Marion and Kenton were removed and Bucyrus and Upper Sandusky were added. This didn’t make some people very happy because they were bypassed. This is what led to the creation of Harding Highway. Throughout the years many changes occurred along the Lincoln Highway. Cities were added and cities were taken off. The old Lincoln Highway has since been replaced by the new four lane 30. What a much faster route than old 30.

Ohio in Black and White

In the middle of the twentieth century there was an influx of Southerners to Ohio. They had heard that it was a better life up in Ohio. Many of them had new hopes for their lives in Ohio. They settled in the Columbus and Toledo areas and the Akron and Cleveland areas. Unlike the German and Hungarian immigrants, the blacks were able to travel back and forth to the south to see their families. This was made possible because of trains and cars. The blacks had to compete for their jobs in Ohio. Most white people segregated the blacks from their activities and buildings. While there were not nearly as many lynchings in Ohio as there was in the south, Ohio still had at least six black men lynched. The Smith Law was passed in 1896, which allowed survivors or relatives of victims of mob violence to sue the county for five hundred to a thousand dollars for victims and up to five thousand dollars for their kin (Cayton 272). In the beginning of the twentieth century, many blacks lived in urban neighborhoods. They had low standards of living, and could only find manual labor. The black children didn’t receive the same education as white children. Education for blacks was much more inferior. Blacks were often denied entrance into public places. Not only did the blacks face racial prejudice, but also class prejudice. Middle- class blacks did not approve of the lower-class blacks that were immigrating in. Northern blacks thought that southern blacks were different from them. They had grown up in rural areas and were not real concerned with self-discipline, social respectability, and moral improvement. They had their own music, clothes, language, and customs.

Blacks were not the only people discriminated against in Ohio. White Southern migrants from Appalachia were also discriminated against. They were called “hillbillies” or “briarhoppers”. They had a hard time finding jobs like the blacks because they were unskilled. Many Ohioans saw the white Appalachians as a threat to their self-image. Appalachians were more likely to be less educated, poorer, and in trouble with the law than the average Ohioan (Cayton 293). Although many middle-class Ohioans looked down on the white Appalachians, the whites didn’t know their way of life. Family was one of the most important aspects of Appalachian life. They did return home quite often to see their families. The improved roads made the trip less expensive and relatively easy. The close connections that the Appalachians had allowed them to maintain a way of life that really mattered to them. Not all the Appalachians preferred their southern life to Ohio life. There was much more to learn once you got up to Ohio. One woman had a shock when she moved here. She went from country living to a more urban life. Appalachians were culturally different not culturally inferior.

Hillbilly and country music grew more popular in that later part of the twentieth century.

This was an interesting chapter because of the explanation of the diversity of people. I didn’t know too much about the Appalachians. It was an informative chapter.

Cayton, Andrew. “Ohio: A History of a People.” The Ohio State University, 2002

Strangers in Canaan

A young Quaker from Pennsylvania had to decide if he wanted to leave his homeland and come to Ohio with his family. He knew that the best land was taken and that it might be harder for him to sell a crop. The best land was close to the Ohio River. The land closest to the river made it easier for transporting goods. The land away from the river was rough and uneven. The decision was made that he would move to Ohio. The state’s constitution was tolerable, except for the fact that it did not exempt Quakers from military service or marriage requirements, which he thought could safely be ignored (Cayton 13). The road to get to Ohio was not an easy one. The roads were impassable, and there was much disorientation. New people to Ohio encountered new foods, customs, and languages. The population in Ohio went up tremendously in the first have of the nineteenth century. From 45,365 in 1800 to 1,980,329 in 1850. This made Ohio the third largest state in the Union by 1850. There was much diversity in the people of the Ohio region, but in 1830 Ohio was a white person’s world. By 1830 there was little land left in Ohio to be farmed. The growth of Ohio happened so fast.

Many people worked the land with their families. If a person could afford it they could have someone work for them. With the help from family farming tasks were done quickly.

The Federal Land Act of 1800 made it possible to buy land on credit. This lasted only about twenty years. Buying land was easy compared to getting it ready to plant. Settlement patterns varied depending on the land. Most southerners tended to move into the river valleys in northeast where the settlers from Pennsylvania dominated eastern and central Ohio as well as the Ohio Valley.

While Ohio grew rapidly in the early 1800s, the Miami Valley region grew the fastest. The Ohio River and Cincinnati were major resting areas for travelers. The Ohio River was the main access to the markets of the world for the farmers of the Ohio Valley before canals were built.

Cincinnati gained its first pork packing house in 1818, and had forty-eight of them by the 1840s. The sights and sound and smells of live and butchered hogs were everywhere in Cincinnati (Cayton 22). That is why people started calling it Porkopolis.  Cincinnati had more than just corn and pork. There were also breweries, hotels, tavern, and shops. It was becoming quite the city.

About 200 miles north of the Miami Valley, was the land known as the Western Reserve. It was opposite of the Miami Valley. Most people in the Western Reserve were New Englanders. The Western Reserve was isolated and its social and economic development was stunted. It was a place of unfulfilled dreams.

This chapter was informative on how and why the settlers came to settle on the land that they did. The different regions of Ohio that were explained give you an idea of what it was like in the nineteenth century.

Cayton, Andrew. Ohio: The History of a People. Ohio State University Press, 2002

Northwest Ordinance

The Northwest Ordinance created a government for the Northwest Territory. It also set the rules for how a territory could become a state. Thomas Jefferson is one of the men that receives credit for the idea of the ordinance. A territory would have to pass through three separate stages of government before it could become a state. In the first stage, it was the responsibility of the Congress to select the territory’s leaders. The leaders would consist of a secretary, governor, and three judges. The second stage was setting up the two houses by allowing the residents to elect who they wanted. The final stage was actually becoming a state. Once there were sixty thousand people resided in a territory, they could apply for statehood. The people could form a constitutional convention to draft a state constitution and then submit it to Congress for approval.

The Northwest Ordinance paved the way for Ohio to become the seventeenth state.

Ohio’s first state constitution was drafted at the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1802. Before Ohio could become a state, representatives had to submit a constitution to the United States Congress for approval. Once this requirement was fulfilled then Ohio could become a state.

The Ohio Constitution of 1803 provided all white men with the right to vote, as long as they had paid taxes or helped to build or maintain roads and it prohibited slavery. In this constitution it was written that the governor’s tem was for two years. The legislature was called the General Assembly and consisted of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Representatives could only serve a year and the Senate was able to serve two years.

The Constitution of 1803 would be in effect until 1851, when a new one was drawn up.

Educational opportunities were limited in Ohio once it became a state. Most of the time children were educated at home by their mothers, even though there were some schools in towns and villages. There were no public schools and parents had to pay tuition for their children to attend school. The first school was built in Marietta and many communities saw how important education was and built their own schools. Students were taught reading, writing, and mathematics. Women teachers were paid less than male teachers and often didn’t return to teaching once they were married. The schools during this time were open only a few months usually in the summer so that boys could help the family with farming. Many students only made it to the eighth grade level and never graduated. Some children would stay home on some days to help with the daily chores. This was possible because there were no laws that made the children go to school.

With the establishment of public education, communities formed school districts as we have today.

Property tax is a tax on privately-owned property. It was the Ohio Constitution of 1803 that gave the state government the power to tax the citizens. In order to help support public schools, the government implemented a tax on real estate in 1825. Some things never change with time.

Ohio Indians

Week 2

This week started out with a discussion on Ohio Indians. After discussion of Indians we talked a little bit about our research projects. Karen Kimber, a Social Sciences and Humanities Team Leader came to the class to explain to us how to use the library and Ohio Link to retrieve books, articles, and journal writings for our research project. She passed out a useful handout that we can use as a reference. It has on there the different ways to cite your references depending on what kind of writing style that you use. We also watched a video this week on Indian Mounds in Ohio. Students and teachers were doing research on the items that were found in these burial grounds. They were curious as to how long it took them to build one, so they got a group together and started working on their own mound. Also shown to us was a powerpoint that discussed the different Indians. I think that one of the most interesting slides was that of how the tools changed for the Indians as time went on. We went over religion, warfare, and the environment.

I have been doing some more thinking on the topic that I have chosen for my research project. I am going to do how the changing transportation system has had an effect on how Ohio runs. I will start out by talking about the very first form of transportation that they had and progress it up until the present day. It will reflect how industry changed because of transportation. I hope to visit the museum here in Spencerville since we have the canal that goes right through our town. From seeing pictures it looks like Spencerville was once a booming canal industry. Now a lot of the canal has dried up. There are still a few parts that have a quite a bit of water in them but it looks totally disgusting. People like to go and fish in the canal. I wait to see someone pull out some sort of mutated fish. I can’t understand why some young kids like to swim in it. I also plan on looking into the part of the canal that is in St. Marys since it is close by. There is a lot of history to that town also. They have on display at their park one of the first canal boats. I think that it will be interesting to see the progression from horse and buggy to canals to trains to old time cars and so on. I have been to the canal locks up in Michigan years ago and saw how they worked.

Starting Out

Tuesday March 31

This was the first day of classes and to be honest it is overwhelming. I am already stressed and it is just the first day. I think that it is going to be a long quarter and I just need to get through it so that I can graduate in June. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time. I have a lot of busy work this quarter with research papers, online classes and reading. One thing that keeps me going is that I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am hoping that as the quarter goes on, I understand more about what is expected in this class and the others. I live in Spencerville so I am going to try to get the visits to the museums done as soon as I can. On the days that I am not in class I am working so I am going to have to plan accordingly to get all the museums in. I think I will map out a Saturday and visit two or three depending on the hours that they are open. Darn budget cuts making hours reduced. My attitude towards museums has changed dramatically since I was younger. I used to hate the though of going to museums but now I think that they are fun. I still haven’t come to appreciate art museums though. My dad says it is because I haven’t had anyone explain the art to me. I see a painting and think that’s pretty cool, bet it took a lot of work. Maybe one of these days my tastes will change for art museums. I did go to the Ann Arbor art show in the summer. I didn’t see why people would pay so much for a painting. Maybe it’s because I don’t care much for them. I recently went on my own to the Allen County museum here in Lima. I hadn’t been there for years and decided on my Christmas break that I was going to go. One of my co-workers set me up with a guy who gave me my own personal tour. He took me to rooms where the public is not allowed to go. There I saw many artifacts that they didn’t have room for out on the main floor. It helps to know people who know people. They just recently added on a children’s museum that is really nice. It was the first time that I saw it. It was a very enjoyable visit. I don’t think that I have been to the Ohio Museum since an elementary school fieldtrip. That was a long time ago. I am actually looking forward to going back there. When we were there last they had the outside village open and there was a lot going on. It is too bad that that isn’t the way it used to be. The last outdoor museum that I went to was Sauders Village in Archbold. That is a really good museum also. I have been there a couple of times and it seems like something changed every time I have been there.

Intro to STAC

In class this week, Will Davis, gave us an introduction on how to use STAC and Podcasts. It was informative because I am not a technology person so I will need all the help that I can get to meet all the requirements of the research project. After he was done filling us in on how to do things in the library we had a discussion and powerpoint presentation about the Ohio frontier and some of the groups of Indians. We learned that George Washington worked for the Ohio Company as a surveyor. Other things that we went over were the different Indian tribes. Each tribe was different and while some fought each other, others helped each other out. The Delaware Indians were allies with the Shawnee so that they could get away from the Iroquois dominance.  The Wyandot sided with the French in the French and Indian war, but sided with Britain during the Revolutionary War. Some of the Indians had a split alliance. One thing that the Indians did to get goods was to trade with the English. It was the Shawnee Indians that did most of the trading with the English. Trading was one of the most important things back in that day.

On Thursday we went over some websites that would help us with citing sources for our research project. We learned about Firefox, ZOTERO, Flickr, Google Docs, wordpress, and  Creative Commons. Most of these sites are non-profit. I knew that the internet had a lot of information out there but I am not familiar with any of these. I stick with the basic MSN and my facebook. They are easy enough to maneuver around. As mentioned before I am not the greatest when it comes to computers. I will try to use these sources while working on my research project.

Another thing that we have done in class to help us with our projects is to work on finding out what primary sources are, and how to read something and pick out certain topics for that reading. We got into groups and split up a story. For part of the class we discussed what we read with the other members of our group. We then had to put ourselves in the position of the author who wrote the story and the person who did the interview. I was the interviewer but I can’t remember the name of the student that I interviewed. It was actually sort of fun. It got us up and moving. The other groups did the same presentation only with different stories. There were many groups so there were two groups that would have to go the next class time.

I am planning on starting the research project here very shortly. I am going to work on it so that I don’t procrastinate and wait till the last minute. Transportation is still my topic of choice. I went to the Ohio Historic museum and got some good information on the early canal systems. The pictures that I took should be beneficial to my project.

Ohio Historical Museum

This past weekend I went to the Ohio Historical Museum in Columbus. I picked a good day to go because they where having volunteers doing  demonstrations of how people lived back in the olden days.

The first thing that we looked at was the Hopewell mounds. These mounds appeared in the Ohio River vally’s in 100 B.C-A.D.600. The burial mounds of the Hopewell culture are much larger and more complex than the ones that of the Adena culture. Included with these burial mounds was the fine pottery that was made.

Another object that we were able to see that goes along with the Hopewell culture were reproductions of  Tremper Effigy Pipes. The pipes are samples from more than 500 Ohio pepestone pipes recovered fro the Tremper Mound in southern Ohio. Sixty of the pipes were animal effgies. The animals may represent the spirit guides of shamans who smoked the pipes to induce a trance state to assist with rituals of healing. If you look at the pipe that animal is facing the shaman. After researching them on the internet, I found that there are many designs of pipes.

Rosie the Riveter was another part of the museum. There was a volunteer dressed up like her that I was able to get my picture with. Rosie is an American icon that represents how the women went into the factories and worked during WWII. They continued to make munitions and  materials for the war. Once the men returned home from war, the women were expected to return to home and contiue on with house work. Some women returned to their housework while others found jobs as secretaries, and operators.

A unique item that was at the museum was a two-headed calf. It was born in Tipp City. According to the family, the mother was a Hereford cow and the father was a Jersey Bull. The calf died at birth and a local taxidermist prepared the animal shortly after the death. The calf was donated to the museum by the family in the 1970s.

The Stationary Engine was installed in factories to provide the source of power the factories would need to run equipment for the growing industry. These engines, hooked to belts allowed power to be transferred to a variety of machines. Prior to the introduction of the steam engine, water wheels were the primary source of mechanical power in manufacturing. The problems with water power was that the factory had to be located by a river in order to get the power of water. With the steam engine it was not necessary to be by a river. Steam power was also portable and reliable. Steam powered boats on the Ohio River and Erie Canal made the transporting of farm goods and supplied materials to other parts of the state. The steam engine became the a symbol of the new Industrial America.

The picture of the stone is included because it was a distance marker from the Miami and Erie Canal in Auglaize County indicating the 133-mile distance to Cincinnati. Auglaize County starts only about 3 miles north of my house.

It was a nice time at the museum but it was not like I remembered it years ago. I know that things change over time and with the budget cuts they couldn’t keep some of it up.