1
Ink Stand
Unknown maker
Ohio
Salt-glazed stoneware
1829
Anonymous Ohio Collector

Durable and impervious to water, stoneware is among the most utilitarian types of pottery, yet potters still managed to create sophisticated and highly decorative objects.


2
Weathervane Directional
Unknown maker
Ohio
Wood and Iron
1880-1900
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Ohio's earliest settlers did not take long before they began to see themselves not as immigrants from other states, but rather as citizens of the state of Ohio. In the case of this weathervane directional, state pride inspired its owner (and likely maker) to literally proclaim it from their rooftop.


3
Fraktur
Unknown artist
Huron County, Ohio
Ink and watercolor on paper
1838
Melvin and Connie Porcher

In Ohio's Germanic communities, the traditional art of creating illuminated documents, such as birth certificates, was brought from the "old country." No doubt a sense of pride inspired them to boldly proclaim their new home on such documents.


4
Auction Broadside
Unknown printer
Summit County, Ohio
Print on paper
1872
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Auctions have been the place to buy and sell goods for over 2,000 years. Today, auctions are the most common place for the buying and selling of antiques and art, including a number of the objects in this exhibition.


5
Brick
Richland Brick Company
Mansfield, Ohio
Earthenware
20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Millions of bricks were made in Ohio and were used to literally build communities and pave their streets. Some of the earliest bricks were made on-site when a home was being built, but later on, factories produced vast quantities for use near and far.


6
Flask
J. Shepard and Company
Zanesville, Ohio
Glass
1825-1835
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family
​
Because of the ease of shipment to far-off destinations, glass was an early trade commodity. As such, makers often branded their wares to advertise themselves to end users, wherever they were. Flasks were also "recyclable" in that their owners could take them to their local tavern and have them refilled repeatedly.


7
Crock
Unknown maker
Ohio
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Cameron Kelley

Pottery was one of Ohio's earliest, largest, and most enduring industries. Pottery was produced throughout the state and sold locally and via river and rail to customers hundreds of miles away.


8-9
Pair of Console Tables
Unknown maker
Chillicothe, Ohio
Cherry, poplar
1800-1820
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

While simple in design, specialty types of tables were an indication of wealth and status. Chillicothe was a bustling frontier town at the turn of the nineteenth century, and upon Ohio's admission as the 17th state of the union, became the first state capital. As such, the town grew and attracted an affluent population, including future governor Thomas Worthington, who commissioned sophisticated furniture from local cabinetmakers.


10
Wolf Creek Mill, 1789
Unknown artist
Marietta, Ohio
Oil on panel
20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In order to utilize the seemingly endless supply of timber in early Ohio, sawmills were needed. Among the first permanent buildings built in many settlements were sawmills, which then produced the lumber to build other structures.


11
Jar
Nathaniel Clark (1786-1861)
Marietta, Ohio
Salt-glazed Stoneware
1810-1830
The Castle Museum

As one of Ohio's earliest potters, Clark had a ready supply of raw materials (clay, wood for his kiln) that allowed him to fulfill one of the basic needs of his community: food storage. Later, abundant waterways gave potters like Clark access to new customers outside of their immediate communities.


12
View of a Farm
Edward L. Ott (1871-1932)
Doylestown, Ohio
Pencil on paper
1899
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Ohio's topography, soil, and waterways allowed farmers in the nineteenth century to expand well beyond subsistence farming to large-scale agricultural production. Toward the end of the century, some prosperous farmers hired artists, such as Ott, to make "portraits" of their farms, showcasing their agricultural success.


13
Passenger Pigeon
Unknown maker Ohio
Taxidermied specimen
Prior to 1914
Fairfield County Heritage Association

Noted naturalist John James Audubon recorded a flock of passenger pigeons over the Ohio River that blocked the sun for three days. One hundred years later, the last of the species died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. Natural resources are finite resources.


14
Bald Eagle
John "Okey" Canfield (b. 1907)
Ravenna, Ohio
Carved and painted wood
2nd half-20th century 
Jane Langol Collection

​Ohio was once home to a flourishing population of our national bird, but due to the widespread use of certain pesticides, the state's population of bald eagles was reduced to fewer than ten nesting pairs by the late 1970s. Changes in public policy, along with concerted conservation efforts, have allowed the eagle population to recover, with nearly 1,000 nesting pairs today, proving that relatively small changes can have big and lasting impact.


15
Autumn: Gigantic Sycamores. An Ox Team Crossing the Ford, Owl Creek, Ohio
Williams James Bennett (1784-1844) after George Harvey (1799-1878)
London, England
Colored aquatint on paper
1841
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Legend has it that centuries ago, a squirrel could travel from the Ohio River to Lake Erie without ever touching the ground. Early travelers to the Ohio Country often noted the immense size of trees they encountered. Trees were early Ohio's most important and abundant resource.


16
Bobcat
Mounted by Dave Might
Washington County, Ohio
Taxidermized specimen
2023
Julie Zickefoose

Some animal populations have been more challenging to track. By the mid-19th century, the elusive bobcat had been extirpated from Ohio due to hunting and habitat loss. Though bobcats began returning to Ohio in the 20th century, confirmed sightings were few. In recent years, confirmed sightings have reached nearly 800 statewide.


17
Bottle
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore


18
Bottle
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore


19
Bottle
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore


20
Bottle
Unknown maker
Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore


21
Bottle
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore


22
Bottle
Unknown maker
Moscow, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore


23
Bottle
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Brian A. Moore

Glass was among Ohio's first and most important industries. In Zanesville, glasshouses produced a wide range of wares in a rich variety of colors. The swirled bottle, an icon of Zanesville glass, was produced and shipped by river in such large quantities that by the 1830s, Zanesville bottle prices appeared alongside corn and pork in the commodities section of a Cincinnati newspaper.


24
Pig
Ernest "Popeye" Reed (1919-1985)
​Jackson, Ohio
Carved sandstone
1960-1980
Perfect-Sandel Farmhouse Collection, Preservation Parks of Delaware County

From millstones to courthouses, Ohio's quarries have produced a variety of building stone for more than 200 years. Reed took advantage of this, typically using foundation stones from demolished buildings as his source for both sandstone and limestone. Recycling has always been integral to Ohio's natural resources.


25
Celt
Unknown maker
Collected in Ohio
Carved granite
1,500 BCE-1750 CE
Carol Draeger

The ancient peoples of Ohio made the tools they needed out of a variety of materials, including stone. Among the most common was the Celt, or axe, which would have been mounted in a hole at the end of a stick. The Celt remained in common usage for thousands of years across many cultures.


26
Archaic Bevel
Unknown maker
Collected in Ohio
Chalcedony/Flint
8000 BCE
Carol Draeger

What we often call "flint" is a broad term referring to a variety of crystalline stone materials (such as chalcedony, jasper, and agate) that can be easily chipped. Ohio's rich deposits of flint have been mined and used for 12,000 years.


27
Adena Cache Blade
Unknown maker
Collected in Ohio
Chalcedony/Flint
1,000 BCE-0
Carol Draeger

Adena refers not to a single group of people, but rather a culture made up of multiple, related societies. They lived from roughly 500 BCE to 100 CE during what we refer to as the Early Woodland Period of North America. The culture was named after a large mound of that period near Thomas Worthington's Chillicothe home, Adena.


28
Hopewell Point
Unknown maker
Collected in Ohio
Chalcedony/Flint
0-500 CE
Carol Draeger

Named after the Hopewell Farm in Ross County where one of the first sites was discovered, the Hopewell culture flourished from about 200 BCE to 500 CE. This culture was in the news recently as a collection of Hopewell culture earthworks were designated as Ohio's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.


29
Flint Ridge "Flint" Specimen
Hopewell, Ohio
Chalcedony/Flint
Private Collection

This specimen, dug at Nethers Farm near Hopewell, Ohio, showcases the unique colors of Flint Ridge flint. (Flint is a generic term for a variety of materials that can be easily shaped by chipping or flaking.) Flint Ridge is a nearly 8-mile long vein of a particularly high quality and distinctively colorful flint, and archaeologists have documented hundreds of quarries along the ridge, as Flint Ridge flint seems to have been particularly popular with the indigenous people of the Hopewell Culture. It was widely traded as well, with this distinctive "rainbow flint" found at archaeological sites as far west as the Rocky Mountains and as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.


30
Industrial Valley
Kinley Shogren (1924-1991)
Cleveland, Ohio
Watercolor on paper
20th century
Bob Burns

From the beginnings of European exploration, the Great Lakes have been the "highway" to get people and goods west into the upper Midwest. During industrialization in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the size of the lakes allowed for the easy and cheap transport of enormous quantities of both raw materials, such as coal, and finished goods, such as steel. Today, lake freighters can be as long as 1,000 feet and carry up to 40,000 tons. Here, the freighter J.F. Durston, a modest 452' in length, docks in Cleveland at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. J&L was founded in Pittsburgh, but they took over the Cleveland works of the Otis Iron and Steel Company in 1942. Later, J&L would merge with Republic Steel to form LTV Steel.


31
Platter
James and Ralph Clews
Staffordshire, England
Transfer-printed and glazed earthenware
1825
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Since the middle of the 18th century, Staffordshire, England has been one of the epicenters of global pottery production. There, hundreds of potteries produced millions of pieces each year, exporting a significant percentage of it. Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Paris, Staffordshire potteries began marketing their wares to their "new" American buyers. In the 1820s, James and Ralph Clews developed a line of transfer-printed wares that depicted American cities and scenes. Sandusky, Columbus, and Chillicothe are all depicted on Staffordshire pottery from that period.


32
Collection of Beach Glass
Unknown makers
Collected on Lake Erie beaches Glass
19th and 20th centuries
Private Collection

Whether from shore or over the side of boats, broken glass (usually glasses, tumblers, bottles, flasks, etc.) can get tumbled about in the sand and waves for decades, and when it does, the rough edges are worn away, and sometimes it takes on a frosted appearance. Collectors comb beaches looking for bits of lake-polished glass, sometimes brightly colored (red is often from Schlitz beer bottles, and blue can be from poison bottles or Milk of Magnesia bottles).


33
Surveyor's Compass
Benjamin Platt (1757-1833)
Columbus, Ohio
Brass, steel, glass
1820-1830
Perfect-Sandel Farmhouse Collection, Preservation Parks of Delaware County

Before he was president or even general, George Washington was a land surveyor. In fact, in 1770, he made a surveying trip to the Ohio River Valley. He firmly believed that a surveyor's compass was an essential tool for any land owner. A survey was how one established boundaries and confirmed ownership--essentially, to survey land was to control that land. Thus, as the new American nation expanded westward, claiming all the land along the way, the surveyor's compass was perhaps as important a tool as the musket.


34
Tall Case Clock
Movement: Luman Watson (1790-1834); case: unknown maker Movement: Cincinnati; case: Ohio
Movement: mixed woods, brass; case: burl veneer, poplar
1820-1830
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Luman Watson came to Cincinnati from Connecticut in 1815 and quickly established one of the most prolific clock factories west of Philadelphia. In the 1820s, his factories were producing more than a thousand tall clock movements every year. These movements were being installed in a wide variety of cases. This case is the result of the continued effort to utilize local wood to produce a case of high refinement. Burl, which is a growth deformity in a tree, has always been highly sought for turned objects as well as veneer. Burl veneer is often found in small pieces (patera, bands), but to have an entire façade of a clock veneered in burl was a rarity.


35
Ice Harvest, Seneca Fork
Earl Hastings Beymer (1890-1975)
Beymerstown (now Old Washington), Ohio
Oil on panel
1963
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Ice has been harvested and used for preservation for thousands of years. In the 19th century, Ohioans used special ice saws to cut large blocks from frozen ponds. These blocks were hauled by horses to icehouses, where they were packed with sawdust for insulation. Ice was used for regular household use but also by breweries for the production of lagers and, prior to the widespread use of embalming techniques, to preserve bodies prior to burial.


36
View of Shadyside, Ohio
"McGuire" Ohio
Panoramic photograph
1922
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Panoramic photographs like this one of Shadyside, Ohio, also called yard-long photographs, offer sweeping historical perspective on landscape changes. Note the near-complete deforestation of the hills in the background.


37
Brink of Spring Julie Zickefoose
Dalzell, Ohio
Transparent watercolor on Lanaquarelle paper
2004
Julie Zickefoose

This painting captures the natural Ohio we love - open fields, wooded hillsides, watchful deer, birds wheeling in a blue sky. It is Ohio as we know it, but it is not Ohio as it has always been. When Europeans arrived in North America, it is estimated that 95% of Ohio was old growth forest. The Northwest Territory opened for settlement in 1788, and in little more than 100 years, that number had plummeted to 10%. Today, Ohio hovers around 30% of forested land.
Deer and other wildlife were similarly impacted. In the early 19th century, large hunting parties gathered, often when creeks and rivers were frozen, and coordinated to drive game into steep ravines or onto frozen waterways, indiscriminately shooting all animals that fled before them.

One such hunt, known as the Great Hinckley Hunt of 1818, reportedly killed 17 wolves, 21 bears, more than 300 deer, and raccoons, foxes, and turkeys presumably so numerous as to be left uncounted. As a result, by the 1850s, bears and wolves were extirpated in the state, and by the early 1900s, deer and wild turkey were as well. It has been only through the dedicated efforts of naturalists, wildlife biologists, and other experts that Ohio has become what it is today, which is still a faint shadow of what it naturally once was.


38
Tilt-Top Table
Maker unknown
Ohio
Curly maple
1830-1850
Jim and Rita Krahl

By the time of colonization, wood had become scarcer in Europe, and many of the early shipments from the colonies back to England included wood for construction. In early Ohio, wood was plentiful, and settlers had access to a variety of traditional hardwoods. Curly maple, with its dramatic contrasts and elaborate graining, was a widely available


39
"A General Map of the River Ohio"
Georges Henri Victor Collot (1750-1805)
Paris, France
Engraving on paper
1826
David and Sharen Neuhardt

The Ohio River is nearly 1,000 miles long, drains portions of 14 states, and provides drinking water today for 5 million people. It is hard to overstate the river's importance to exploration, settlement, trade, and industry, and much of Ohio's early prosperity as a state is due to the access offered by the river.


40
View of Marietta, Ohio
Sala Bosworth (1805-1889)
Marietta, Ohio
Oil on canvas
1830-1840
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Marietta, as Ohio's first settlement, was advantageously positioned at the joining or confluence of the Muskingum River and the Ohio River. Easy access to such an extensive network of waterways simplified the moving of goods and people. Also, note the tree-covered hills. With a wealth of wood and water, Marietta actually made several ocean-going vessels in the earliest years of settlement that were loaded with goods and sailed down the Ohio and Mississippi, trading along the way. The ships would be loaded again in New Orleans and sailed to Philadelphia where both goods and ship were sold, and the crew returned home by way of Pittsburgh.


41
Gallipolis Island, Ohio River
James Pierce Barton (1817-1891)
Zanesville, Ohio
Oil on canvas
1850
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Gallipolis Island is one of nearly 80 named islands in the Ohio River, 24 of which are now under the protection of the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Erosion and pollution have been and continue to be consistent threats to the island systems, each of which is a unique ecosystem.


42
A Scene on the Ohio, 2 Miles Below Cincinnati
Unknown artist, after a painting by Samuel Lee (1809-1841), which was published as an engraving by W. Woodruff in The Ladies' Repository in 1841
Probably Ohio
Watercolor and ink on paper
c. 1841
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Cincinnati quickly became the crown jewel of the Ohio River, and the city's population boomed in the early 19th century. Early citizens accumulated great wealth, relying on the river and canal system to export large quantities of pork, earning the city the nickname of Porkopolis. Wealthy homeowners also took advantage of the scenic views offered by the river.


43
On the Little Scioto (Ohio)
Samuel Adams Hudson (1813-1894)
Massachusetts
Oil on canvas
1838-1848
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Glaciers once covered three-fourths of the state, resulting in a richly varied topography that includes swamps, lakes, rivers, mountains, beaches, and more. Ohio also has approximately forty natural landbridges, which are often formed when a harder layer of rock overlays a softer layer that is eroded away beneath over time.


44
Salt and Pepper Shakers
Unknown maker
America
Glass, metal
Mid-20th century

The Cohodas Vineyards began operation officially in 1938, although Morris Cohodas and his wife Bessie Pollock, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia respectively, were likely making wine much earlier. Cohodas was known both as a leading producer of kosher wines and for their figural bottles. Farming along the northeastern shore of Lake Erie was encouraged by the Back-to-the-Land Movement in the early 20th century.

This movement, which resulted in the creation of the Lake Erie Jewish Community, was an effort to help Jewish families fleeing poverty and persecution in Eastern Europe move out of urban areas to the country where, with low-cost loans and agricultural advising, they could support themselves through farming.


45
Sherry Bottle from Meier's Winery
Uhl Pottery
Huntingburg, Indiana
Glazed earthenware
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Vineyards in northeast Ohio take advantage of another natural resource: the unique microclimate created by Lake Erie and glacial soil deposits. The soil in the area drains well, while the moisture in the air and the thermal currents off the lake keep springs cool, preventing early budding that can be damaged by a late freeze, while allowing warmer temperatures into the fall, offering a longer ripening period. Many of the state's wineries, like Meier's, own vineyards along Lake Erie or on the islands.

Today, Ohio is one of the top ten wine-producing states in the country, but in the mid-19th century, Ohio was the leader in the United States. Much of that is due to the influence of Nicholas Longworth, who began growing grapes on the hills of Cincinnati. Longworth was a devoted patron of the arts, and his vineyard-related wealth helped create the city's reputation as a cultural center.


46
Patella, Mammut americanum (American Mastodon), [replica]
Licking County, Ohio
Ohio History Connection

Mastodons and other Ice Age species of megafauna roamed the land we now know as Ohio, and they were followed by Paleo-Indians who hunted them. The Burning Tree mastodon, one of more than 150 mastodons discovered in the state, shows evidence of tools used in butchering, and archaeologists have speculated that the culture that hunted it may have used the bog where it was found as a form of meat storage.


47
"Twist" Cruet
A.H. Heisey Company
Newark, Ohio
Glass
1928-1937
Private Collection

As the Wisconsian Glaciation, the last major advance of glacial ice, retreated, the meltwater carried vast quantities of clay, gravel, and sand that were left behind. Millennia later, this silica sand coupled with fuel sources for glass furnaces (first wood and later natural gas) would allow glassmaking on a nearly unprecedented scale. With the waterways as transportation, Ohio-made glass would eventually find markets around the world. Heisey was one of the companies of the second wave of Ohio glass manufacturing, which involved more industrialized production methods and use of the natural gas as a more consistent, efficient source of fuel. The company produced glass of incredible clarity, making less expensive pressed glass look like higher-quality cut glass. This, coupled with their Colonial Revival designs drawn from glass patterns in early America and their introduction of innovative, vibrant color lines, made Heisey one of the most popular glass manufacturers in America in the early 20th century.


48
Quilt
Mary Ellen Frank Collier (1835-1912)
Copley, Ohio
Cotton
1859
Perfect-Sandel Farmhouse Collection, Preservation Parks of Delaware County

Natural resources are also resources for artistic inspiration! As with other items in this space, artists, craftspeople, designers, and other makers draw on the flora and fauna around them to beautify and enhance their work.


49
Blanket
Northern Ohio Blanket Mills
Cleveland, Ohio
Wool
Early 20th century
Private Collection

While today Ohio is known more for poultry, pigs, and cattle, in the 19th century, sheep were a significant percentage of Ohio livestock. Early flocks focused heavily on Spanish Merino sheep, which produced a high quality wool. Many woolen mills operated in the state, perhaps most notably the Northern Ohio Blanket Mills, which at one time led the nation in the production of horse blankets and carriage robes and had contracts to supply a variety of early catalog retailers, including Sears.


50
Bench
Kramer Brothers Foundry
Dayton, Ohio
Cast iron
Early 20th century
Ohio History Connection

As iron production scaled up in the 19th century, large foundries began to produce volumes of cast-iron goods, both for household and industrial use. The Kramer Brothers Foundry started production to manufacture tools and parts for machines, stoves, and furnaces, but as industrialization created a growing middle class, they expanded their offerings to decorative lawn and garden items, including urns and benches like this one.


51
"Airtight" Parlor Stove Foster's Stove Company
Ironton, Ohio
Cast iron
​1885-1890
Ohio History Connection

In the early years of statehood, small iron furnaces operated throughout the state, producing iron ore for local blacksmith usage, but before long, larger furnaces began operation. By the time of the Civil War. Ohio had nearly 70 iron furnaces, many of which were located in southern Ohio, and their production contributed significantly to the war effort.

Ohio's natural resources offered a variety of materials for heating, and that is reflected both in household use, accomplished by a small stove like this one, and in iron furnace operations. Wood and charcoal, which was historically made from wood, were used early on, to eventually largely be replaced by coal. The heavy reliance on wood for early heating and the vast quantities necessary for operating iron furnaces resulted in dramatic deforestation in the 19th century.

52
Rifle
Andrew Petit Jr. (1811-1855)
Columbiana County, Ohio
Curly maple, steel, brass, nickel silver
​1841

Perfect-Sandel Farmhouse Collection, Preservation Parks of Delaware County
Rifles like this one are almost always present in stereotypical images of what we call the frontier, and hunting was necessary to the survival of both the indigenous people of the Ohio River Valley and those Europeans who settled here. When Europeans first arrived in North America, it is estimated that Ohio was heavily forested, so white-tailed deer, which tend to be most comfortable along the perimeters of forests, seeking open grassy areas, but hovering close to the dense protection of brush and trees, were not very numerous.

As settlers began to clear areas, more "edges" appeared for deer to populate, and their numbers increased rapidly. So did the hunting of them however, and by around 1905, for all practical purposes, white-tailed deer were extirpated or locally extinct in Ohio. It was not until their reintroduction in Shawnee State Forest in 1922 that a new population was established and their numbers began to recover.


53
Planter
Clay City Pipe Company
Uhrichsville, Ohio 
Sewer tile
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

As with other objects in this space, this object owes its existence in part to Ice Age glacial deposits. Beds of clay were deposited throughout the state, and East Coast potters who relocated to the Ohio River Valley found a ready supply of quality raw materials for their products.
While many people think first of the stoneware jars that were created for household use, Ohio potteries also created vast amounts of a coarser type of pottery which is known for one of its most common usages: sewer tile. Both growing towns and farmlands required drainage, and sewer tile is a rough, reddish pottery that was typically manufactured in pipe sections of varying dimensions. This sturdy clay was also perfect for decorative objects that lived a shorter life, such as penny banks, or a rougher one, such as doorstops, flowerpots, or garden planters.

​
54
Lighthouse
E. Houghton and Company
Dalton, Ohio
Glazed earthenware
1890-1920
Jim and Rita Krahl

For many Ohioans, Lake Erie just sits quietly up north, often eclipsed by our cities and the Ohio River, but the lake looms large in Ohio's past and present. There are more than a dozen 1000-foot cargo ships operating on the lake today, and it generally has the highest traffic of the Great Lakes. In one recent year, the Port of Cleveland oversaw 15 million tons of cargo.

​Lake Erie is also widely considered the most dangerous of the Great Lakes, with a suspected 2,000 shipwrecks hidden beneath its waters. Erie's deadly secret is not deeply hidden; in fact, it is the lake's shallowness that causes so many problems. With an average depth of only 62 feet (compared to Lake Superior's average of 483 feet) and waves that can reach 20 feet, ships depend on the more than 50 lighthouses that dot the lake's shores.


55
A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, Comprehending the River Ohio…
Thomas Hutchins (1730-1789)
London, England
Engraving on paper
1778
David and Sharen Neuhardt

This map is thought to be among the first complete maps of the region by someone who had actually been in the Ohio River Valley and is certainly the most accurate and clearest produced at that time. It would be instrumental in marketing the area to European investors and American settlers. Marking all the transportation routes and existing settlements, it also was an early step in claiming ownership of the land.


56
Early Methods of Navigation on the Ohio River
The Old-Fashioned Flatboat from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
Wood engraving on paper
1888
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Well before the age of mechanical transportation or industrial production, a simple flatboat was all that was necessary to move goods on the Ohio River. These rectangular boats were flat-bottomed, barely more than floating boxes, so primitive that early on, it was not uncommon for them to be deconstructed upon arrival so that the lumber could be reused. They were used to move agricultural goods and livestock, barrels of cider, and trade goods like pottery, but they were truly used to transport almost anything. Families moving from one town to another would often use a flatboat as we would today use a moving van.


57
Sunday Creek Coal Company Calendar
Strobridge Lithographing Company
Cincinnati, Ohio
Lithograph on paper
1902
Private Collection

​Coal mining began in Ohio almost at the same time as American settlement, and, as it did in other states, mining expanded as settlement and the Industrial Revolution drove demand. For more than a century, most mining in Ohio, regardless of mine size, was underground mining, and the technological advances in equipment and explosives that followed both World War I and World War II were what made surface mining or strip mining more common. Ohio did not create mining regulations until 1947. At one time, the Sunday Creek Coal Company held dozens of mines in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia, with a significant number of the company's mines located in Athens and Perry counties.

On November 5, 1930, a coal car sparked on a track in Sunday Creek Mine #6 in Millfield, Ohio, igniting a methane gas buildup. Eighty-two men died in the resulting explosion, leaving 59 widows and 154 orphans- a devastating blow to Millfield and the other small communities surrounding it. The mine resumed operation the following month and operated until 1945. The State of Ohio paid for the burial of the miners and over the following decade paid more than $700,000 in compensation to the survivors and dependents.


58
Model of the Packet Boat Cape Girardeau
Unknown maker
Wellsburg, West Virginia
Wood, metal
1960s
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The era of steam transformed the Ohio River into a superhighway, and packet boats like the one depicted in this model (the Cape Girardeau, later operating as the Gordon C. Greene) carried freight and passengers. Packet boats varied widely in size from the iconic massive sidewheelers commonly associated with the steamboat era to smaller vessels that contributed greatly to the inland river economy by plying the waters of tributary rivers. Steamboats' heyday, however, was relatively short-lived, as railroads dramatically impacted their operation by the mid-1800s, but packet boats remained an important part of daily life on the Ohio well into the 20th century.


The Cape Girardeau was built for the Eagle Packet Company for their St. Louis-Louisville operations, and she was sold in 1935 to Greene Line Steamers, where she was renamed and, like many packet boats, refitted to be more suitable as an excursion boat. She was semi-retired in 1948, when she was replaced by the Delta Queen, and in 1952, she was permanently retired. The Gordon C. Greene spent the following years under different names, including Sara Lee and River Queen, as a floating hotel in Portsmouth, Ohio, and later as a floating restaurant, before sinking in St. Louis in 1967 while at her moorings. Interestingly, she also appeared in both The Kentuckian (1955) and Gone with the Wind (1939).


59
Mounds Near Marietta, Ohio
William Cullen Bryan and Sydney Howard Gay, A Popular History of the United States...
New York
Print on paper
1881
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

When the first 48 New Englanders arrived in what is now Marietta in April of 1788, they were amazed at the enormous and complex earthworks located at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers. The complex included a conical burial mound, walled enclosures, platform mounds, and a walled path. The Ohio Company of Associates surveyed the earthworks, gave them Latin names (Conus, Capitolium, Sacra Via, Quadranaou), and offered some degree of protection. Archaeologists believe that the earthworks were built by the Hopewell culture between 100 BCE and 500 CE. Today, while many of the smaller works are gone, the larger mounds remain largely intact.


60
Portrait of Simply Grand Ernst Freigau (1879-1942)
Stark County, Ohio
Charcoal on paper
Early 20th century
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Livestock was an important part of the state's story from the earliest days, and while sheep, cows, and poultry were also filling Ohio's fields, it was the pig that arguably really put Ohio on the agricultural map. The first commercial slaughterhouse was opened in Cincinnati in 1810, and farmland for livestock and corn production along with the river for transport created a pork-based boomtown in the Queen City. Nicknamed Porkopolis, Cincinnati was processing more than a half million hogs a year by the 1850s.

Another key factor was easy access to salt, as southern West Virginia was the leading producer of salt in the United States in the early 19th century. The remnants of an ancient sea, the Iapetus Ocean, lie underneath the Appalachian Mountains, and natural salt licks in the area were well known to the indigenous people of the Ohio River Valley. American settlers began producing salt for market in the region in the 1790s, and this rock salt was crucial to preserving the quantities of pork Cincinnati produced.


61
Souvenir Vase from Idlewilde Park
Unknown maker
Germany
Transfer-printed porcelain
1896-1924
Ohio History Connection

Built by the Hopewell culture nearly 2,500 years ago, the Great Circle Earthworks in Newark is one of the largest earthen enclosures on the planet, containing some 30 acres. The land had passed through many hands over the years, and in 1897 was acquired for the purposes of creating a public amusement park: Idlewilde. It didn't last long--by the late 1920s, it had closed and the land was deeded to the Licking County Commissioners. Restoration of the earthworks began soon thereafter with the help of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Today, the Great Circle is part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, Ohio's only UNESCO World Heritage Site.


62
Marietta: The Mail Line Packet Courier Arriving at the Wharfboat on the Ohio in 1875
John Stobart (1929-2003)
Maritime Heritage Prints, Inc.
Lithograph on paper
1992
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

British-born artist John Stobart was known for his highly detailed paintings of sailing vessels. Most of his American subjects are ocean-going ships on the East Coast, but he did a series of paintings of riverboats on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. His paintings were so popular that Stobart established a company to produce limited edition prints of his works, which remain popular today.


63
Bedstead
Henry Boyd (1802-1886)
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cherry
1835-1850
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Henry Boyd was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1802. With an early talent for woodworking, Boyd worked and saved to purchase his freedom, doing whatever he could to earn additional money, including working at salt mines in what is now southern West Virginia. In 1826, he found his way to Cincinnati, but while the Ohio River would become a geographic barrier to slavery, it was no barrier to racism, and Boyd's early years in Cincinnati were a struggle. Boyd was reportedly offered a job, only to have the offer revoked when the other shop employees threatened to quit, rather than work with a black man. However, his woodworking skills were such that he began to get jobs and would save enough to purchase a shop at the corner of Eighth and Broadway in Cincinnati.

Boyd's success was largely fueled by his brilliant bed design - side rails that were threaded in opposite directions on the ends, meaning that the rails were self-tightening, both ends screwing into place and tightening at the same time. However, as a black man, Boyd was ineligible to obtain a patent, and his bed design was quickly stolen by competing shops. A white man, George Porter, obtained the patent, but his relationship with Boyd remains unclear. Boyd began to stamp his beds to reassure customers that they were getting a real Henry Boyd bed.

Boyd's life in Cincinnati became more financially comfortable. The family purchased a home on New Street, Boyd was operating an integrated shop of 20-50 workers, and, at one point, made 1,000 beds a year and operated a showroom full of furniture, shipping furniture south and west along the river. But as the nation reeled toward the Civil War, race-driven attacks increased as well. Boyd's shop was burned three times, and he retired in 1863 after the third burning, in part because he could no longer obtain fire insurance.

Positioned as he was, Boyd is also believed to have been instrumental in the Cincinnati portion of the Underground Railroad. His craftsmanship allowed him to construct clever hiding places, and his home is believed by some to have been the first stop north of the Ohio River in the Cincinnati area. After his forced retirement, Boyd continued to ply his trade on a smaller scale until his death in 1886.


64
Free to Read
Richard "Duarte" Brown (b. 1957)
Columbus, Ohio
Wood, paint
2020
Ohio History Connection

An artist since childhood, Brown's career has focused on family, community, and education. He has helped thousands of children develop an interest in art and creating in and around the city of Columbus.


65
George Washington Character Jug
Joseph Sydney Wood Starkey (1852-1938)
​East Liverpool, Ohio
Ironstone
1892
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Sydney Starkey was an English-born potter, one of many who flocked to the Ohio River Valley's booming pottery industry. He was a thrower by trade and was widely regarded as an accomplished potter. He also seems to have been an amateur inventor with several patents to his name, including the one for this jug. Judging from the date of the patent, it has been reasonably theorized that Starkey planned to produce and sell these Washington figural pitchers at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. Starkey was, according to an obituary, last employed by Knowles, Taylor and Knowles, which was in operation from 1854 to 1931 and was one of the largest potteries in the country at one point.


66
Fraktur Birth Certificate
Flowering Vine Artist (fl. 1810-1825)
Eastern Ohio
Ink and watercolor on paper
1818
Melvin and Connie Porcher

Ohio's history still has plenty of mysteries to explore, such as identifying the artist of these pieces. Nicknamed the Flowering Vine Artist, this person seems to have been working in Ohio between the years of 1800 and 1823. They painted at least a dozen surviving works, all originating in the area around Tuscarawas County. Each shares a similar composition of colorful blooming vines framing a center text medallion. Many communities had one or two individuals with artistic talents who specialized in creating memorial pieces like these, while often earning their living as teachers or art instructors.


67
Fraktur Birth Certificate
Flowering Vine Artist (fl. 1810-1825)
Eastern Ohio
Ink and watercolor on paper
1818
Melvin and Connie Porcher


68
Needlework Sampler 
Martha LePage (1833-1908)
​Guernsey County, Ohio 
Silk on linen
1846
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

This unfinished sampler does not even include the maker's name, but fortunately, a later family member noted on the back that the maker was Martha LePage in about 1846. The LePage family was one of a dozen or so families (including the Sarchets, Bichards, Ferbraches, and Marquands) who came to eastern Ohio from the Isle of Guernsey, which is one of the Channel Islands near the coast of France (but is a British crown dependency). This brief influx of Guernseymen and Guernseywomen is what inspired the local officials to name the new county Guernsey in 1810.


69
Watch Hutch
Unknown maker
Dayton, Ohio
Wood
1940
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Prior to 1924, the United States had passed very little legislation regarding immigration, and most of that had focused on Asian immigrants. World War I and labor struggles in the early 20th century increased concerns about national security, and in 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, which banned immigration from Asian countries entirely and set quotas by country based on percentages of the population in the 1890 census, which resulted in much more limited immigration from southern and eastern European countries.

This watch hutch illustrates some of the challenges in telling the history of immigrants to the United States. Osz is an Eastern European surname, and many such names were often misspelled by census takers and other record keepers, resulting in a tangled web for modern researchers. Sometimes last names were shortened or even changed, sometimes for convenience, sometimes as a response to the wave of nationalism and anti-immigration attitudes that swept through the United States in the 1920s. As a result, the challenges in connecting families and objects means that these stories often remain incomplete.


70
Maid's Apron
Unknown maker
Cleveland, Ohio
Linen
1901-1904
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

This apron was donated by the family of a woman who came from Sweden as a young woman to work as a maid. Driven by successive crop failures and the desire for less restrictive social classes, tens of thousands of young Swedish people immigrated to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the men found work as laborers, while Swedish women often worked as household servants. Along with the apron, the family donated documentation of the journey, including steerage contracts, vaccination records, and the ship's inspection cards, offering valuable historical context for the apron and its owner.


71
Mourning Dress
Emma Hoppensack Patterson (1891-1987)
Cleveland, Ohio
Silk taffeta, netting
1910
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

Michael Harm (1841-1910) was a German-born blacksmith who immigrated to the United States in 1857. He settled in Cleveland, married, and had at least four children, the second oldest of whom was Lucy Harm Hoppensack, whose daughter Emma Hoppensack Patterson (1891-1987) was an accomplished seamstress and made this dress as a mourning dress after her grandfather Michael's death in 1910.


72
Silhouettes of Joshua and Sybil Shipman
Unknown maker
Probably Connecticut
Paper
1787
Barbara Moberg

Joshua Shipman was born in Saybrook, CT, and he married Sybil Chapman there in 1787. Shipman and his family planned to migrate to Ohio in 1789 with Joseph Buell and his family, but Shipman's plans fell through, and the Shipmans did not arrive in Marietta until the following year. They resided in Campus Martius during the Northwest Indian War, during which time Shipman maintained a shop on the Muskingum River near the stockade. Later, Shipman built a house on Front Street between Washington and Sacra Via, where he had a shop behind the house.

There he worked as a contractor, carpenter, and cabinetmaker, overseeing the construction of the Marietta Academy in 1798-1799 and the Congregational Church in 1807-1808. He also engaged in the shipbuilding business between 1801 and 1808. It was during this brief window that seaworthy ships were built in Marietta, loaded with goods, taken down the Ohio, buying and trading along the way, all the way to New Orleans, where the crew would take in more goods, sail to Philadelphia, and sell both goods and ship before returning home by land and river via Pittsburgh.


73
Bust of Jane Edna Hunter
Phillis Wheatley Association

Born Jane Edna Harris to sharecroppers on a plantation six miles from Pendleton, South Carolina, on December 13, 1882, Jane had an older brother and two younger sisters. She was raised Christian and started work following her father’s death in 1892. She ironed, sewed, cooked, and washed for a variety of families until 1897 when she entered school for the first time at the age of 15. Though she could barely read or write when she entered in 1900, she graduated with an 8th grade education. She acquired her last name by a brief and unhappy marriage to a man forty years her senior. She received formal training as a nurse and domestic servant before coming to Cleveland where she had heard opportunities abounded. The young African American nurse arrived in Cleveland in 1905—homeless, almost penniless, and without friends.

Once here, she could not find decent housing or professional work due to segregation laws and practices. Her first residence turned out to be a place where prostitutes stayed. Based on these personal experiences, the focus of Jane’s life would soon become the improvement of conditions for African American women in Cleveland so they would not have to endure the same hardships she had.

In September 1911, Hunter met with seven friends, all economically struggling, African American, working women. They discussed their common difficulties with finding acceptable, affordable lodging, as well as decent, profitable employment. They decided to form what they initially called The Working Girls’ Home Association. Basing much of their organizational model on Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of self-help, vocational training, gradualism, and separate institutions for African Americans, they elected Jane as their president, each pledging to contribute a nickel each week to the organization, and agreed to recruit as many new members as possible. Hunter initially faced opposition from Blacks who favored integrated social service institutions, but she received moral support from some Black club women and considerable financial support from wealthy whites.

In return, white men and women sat on the PWA board of trustees. Meanwhile, Hunter worked with the YWCA board of trustees and other members of Cleveland’s white elite, as well as members of the city’s African American community to raise the additional funds needed to establish the organization. Finally, in 1913, the Phillis Wheatley Association (the organization was renamed to honor the Revolutionary Era slave poet who Jane said “expressed in verse the upreachings of a free soul”) opened the doors of its leased 23-room house on East 40th to residents.

The PWA quickly demonstrated how much it was needed in the African American community. Virtually always filled to capacity, the home immediately began expanding in facilities and services. An employment office was opened at the PWA to provide referrals for domestic service jobs. The organization also established a domestic science department to provide classes in areas of home economics which focused on subjects such as hygiene, cooking, laundry, housecleaning and sewing so the residents might be better prepared to perform as homemakers or domestic servants. As the Great Migration picked up steam after World War I broke out in 1914, the housing shortage in Cleveland became an even greater problem. Consequently, in 1917, the PWA Board of Trustees purchased a 3-story apartment building at the corner of East 40th and Central which tripled the PWA's capacity to 75 boarders.

By 1922, the PWA was once again bursting at the seams. Hunter spearheaded the fundraising campaign to build a new facility specifically designed for the PWA by reaching out to both African American and white communities. Hunter raised more than $700,000 and the new building's cornerstone was laid in June 1927 at Cedar Avenue and East 46th Street.
Throughout the Depression, the PWA offered an even wider variety of programs and activities, including academic courses in subjects such as Black history, politics, and economics; leisure activities, such as tennis, basketball, dancing, and drama; music lessons in piano, violin, and voice; as well as a preschool program for the children of working mothers, and a beauty school for young women.

The end of World War II coincided with Jane Edna Hunter’s retirement from the position she had held since 1911. From 1913 to the early 1960s, thousands of women were housed and trained at the PWA. In 1972, the PWA was converted from a rooming house for young women into a senior citizens apartment complex.


74
Hanging Wall Box
Unknown maker
Southeast Ohio
​Poplar
1806
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

This box is one of three that were all made and carved by the same as-yet unidentified person. One of those boxes has a long history of ownership in the Sprague family of southeast Ohio. The Spragues were early settlers in the area, arriving in Marietta in 1789. All three boxes have similar rococo-style carving, which may actually relate to the carving on gun stocks of the same period. Ten years ago, only one of these boxes was known to scholars, and now there are three, one of which has a family history. Perhaps another related box will surface in the future that will help us finally identify the maker by name.


75
Needlework Sampler
Amanda Sumner Morton Brown (1826-1892)
Summit County, Ohio
Silk on linen
1840
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Amanda Sumner (1826-1892) was born in Windham, Vermont, and married Israel Morton (1824-1852) in Cuyahoga County in 1845. They had three children before Israel's death in 1852. Amanda married John Brown (1826-1861) the following year but was widowed again in 1861, after the birth of two more children. She would marry a third time in 1867 to Vanransaler Ferguson Hill. She died in 1892 in Summit County.

This sampler enabled us to find Amanda Sumner because of a handwritten note on the back. We tend to call these "granny notes," the handwritten notes taped to the backs of frames or tucked inside vases, and they often offer valuable family history. Sometimes the information is slightly inaccurate, but the names offer a starting point for research.


76
Blanket Chest
Unknown maker
Summit County, Ohio
Poplar
1840
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family
This chest had a history of ownership in Portage County, but no searches turned up Israel Morton in the area. It was only after finding the sampler at an Ohio antique show and researching Amanda Sumner's sampler, that pieces began to come together. Because Amanda had children with Israel, researchers online had already pieced together her genealogy and connected him there.

The chest also hints at one significant obstacle in research - there is an informational "wall" of sorts in 1850 with regards to using census records, which are some of the most valuable and complete records available. Prior to 1850, only the head of household was named, with other residents just enumerated by age/sex categories. Israel would only have been recorded on one census before his death.


77
Portrait of Hamilton Smith
Unknown photographer
Probably Ohio
Probably a photographic copy of an earlier tintype
​1855-1870
Kenyon College Archives, Gambier, Ohio

In the 1850s, Smith was a Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. In 1856, he submitted a patent application for a photographic process that involved exposing a thin sheet of chemically coated iron, which became known as the tintype. Like earlier photographic processes (daguerreotype and ambrotype), each image was unique, but unlike these other processes, the tintype was affordable to a broader market. For the first time, middle class families could have pictures made on a regular basis, capturing the growth of children and the evolution of their families.


78
Bandbox (Hat Box)
Unknown maker
America
Pasteboard and printed wallpaper
1835
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


79
Spoon
Richard Clayton (1811-1878)
Cincinnati, Ohio
Silver
1840
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

English-born Richard Clayton was not satisfied merely selling silverware and watches in his adopted hometown of Cincinnati. He had high hopes, literally. On April 8, 1835, he lifted off in his hot air balloon, a French invention from the 1780s. On his 9.5 hour flight, he traveled 350 miles, ultimately landing in southeastern Virginia (now West Virginia), in a small town that soon renamed itself Clayton, after the balloonist.

Hot air balloons captured the public's imagination and as a result appeared on countless decorative items in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The obsession, nicknamed balloonomania, led to balloons on everything from snuffboxes to wallpaper.


80
Phonograph
National Phonograph Company
Orange, New Jersey
Wood, brass, steel
Early 20th century
Deward and Linda Watts, Bodenheimer-Mayer House Antiques & Art

The National Phonograph Company was established in New Jersey in 1896 by one of Ohio's most well-known citizens - Thomas Alva Edison. Edison, born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, left Ohio with his family in 1854 and was largely taught at home by his mother, a former schoolteacher. He developed hearing loss as a young boy and would eventually be almost completely deaf, but he took his deafness in stride, often saying he felt it allowed him to concentrate despite numerous distractions.

He had an entrepreneurial nature from a very early age, starting several businesses and tinkering in his shop. Over the course of his life, he would invent, develop, or improve on a multitude of products, eventually holding more than 1,000 patents.


81
Glass or Tumbler
Unknown maker
America
Molded glass
1880
Private Collection

Ohio claims eight presidents (all born here except for William Henry Harrison, who was born in Virginia), but it is perhaps James A. Garfield who gets the least recognition. Born in Moreland Hills, Ohio, Garfield's life was a difficult one almost from the beginning. The youngest of five, Garfield's father died when he was only two, and through sheer determination, his mother kept the family together. Garfield's escape from a difficult life was books, and he became an avid reader early on. He left home at 16, but soon returned, ill and exhausted, and after this, he was offered an opportunity to attend Geauga Seminary. After pursuing education, he became a teacher at what would become Hiram College, and in the following years, he would get married, read law, and enlist in the Civil War.

A principled and thoughtful man, devoted to his wife and children, Garfield rejected political advancement, despite being well positioned for it by his education and war service. He became the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1880 almost by accident, winning the convention crowd over while giving a speech in support of someone else. He was inaugurated on March 4, 1881, was shot on July 2 by Charles Guiteau, a mentally ill man obsessed with getting employment via presidential pardon, and died on September 19, two months before his 50th birthday.


82
Tall Case Clock
Movement: Garry Lewis (1800-1841); case: maker unknown
Warren, Ohio
Movement: wood, brass, steel; case: poplar
1825
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Garry Lewis was one of five brothers who migrated to Ohio from Connecticut. For most of his career, he functioned as a salesman for movements made by his brothers' factories, organizing the peddlers who tended to sell movements as part of their wares. Lambert Lewis, one of Garry's brothers, was, in the spring of 1821, producing the parts for 1,000 movements a month.
Peddlers would sell movements that were then put into cases built by other craftsmen. Like many Trumbull County tall clocks, this clock illustrates the continuation of eastern traditions in early Ohio.

The movement in this clock is similar to those used by Riley Whiting in Connecticut. Additionally, the case is similar in both style and decoration to Connecticut-made cases often fitted with Whiting movements.


83
General Ulysses S. Grant Presentation Armchair
Unknown maker
America
Walnut
1860
Ohio History Connection

Armchair presented by Ulysses S. Grant to Henry Warner Janes, who was a quartermaster during the Civil War. Ohio-born Grant had also served as a quartermaster during the Mexican-American War, a fact to which some of his biographers attribute his later success as a general. A quartermaster is the person responsible for managing the logistics of supplying and distributing food, clothing, and equipment for the military unit to which they are assigned, and having served as such, Grant had a valuable understanding of how to remain well-stocked with all that was necessary while also taking actions that most effectively impacted his enemy's supply lines.


84
Booklet Kenyon College
Gambier, Ohio
Paper
1967
Kenyon College Archives, Gambier, Ohio

Originally founded in 1824 as the first Episcopal seminary west of Pittsburgh, Kenyon College soon expanded into a college of higher learning. The seminary remained part of the college until 1968 when it became part of the Colgate Rochester Divinity School. About the same time, Kenyon was on the verge of breaking one of its oldest traditions: all male education. Kenyon's Ohio peer Oberlin College, founded in 1833, had been the nation's first college to educate both men and women, and 135 years later, Kenyon was ready to admit women.

Rather than simply admitting women, however, in 1969, Kenyon opted to establish a separate institution, the Kenyon Coordinate College for Women, to keep men and women in separate spaces. By 1972, however, Kenyon abandoned the separation policy, dissolved the Coordinate College, and became a fully coeducational institution.


85
Desk
Carved by Fanny Peters Pease (1867-1955)
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cherry
1890
Ohio History Connection

Fanny Peters was born in Marion, Ohio, in 1867, and was enrolled at the McMicken School of Design, later the Art Academy of Cincinnati. The school's records indicate she was only enrolled for one term, and she married Charles Pease, a lumber dealer, in 1892. They would have five children. Fanny lived in the Cincinnati area until her death in 1955.

Fanny is one of hundreds of students, many of them young women, who took lessons in carving in Cincinnati in the late 19th century. Mantels, shelves, desks, chairs, and more were adorned with intricate carvings, usually floral in nature, and homes in Cincinnati were filled with the work. Art-carving was also considered an acceptable, even desirable form of employment for single young women seeking their living in cities as the Industrial Revolution ramped up.

Henry L. Fry (1807-1895), his son William H. Fry (1830-1929), and Benn Pitman (1822-1910) all gave lessons to young women and believed that women were particularly adept at the art of carving because their mental and physical skills were better suited to the task than men's were. Pitman and the Frys rejected the rise of mechanization in woodworking and adopted the philosophies of John Ruskin and Charles Lock Eastlake, who believed in elevating craft and the production of household decorations to an art, ideas that were foundational to the Aesthetic Movement in the United States and the Art-Carved Movement in Cincinnati.


86
Spoon
Lydia Moulton (1757-1823)
Newburyport, Massachusetts or Marietta, Ohio
Silver
1780-1800
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Lydia Moulton was the daughter of William Moulton III and the brother of Edmund Moulton, who were among the first forty-eight settlers in Marietta. Lydia and the rest of the family followed shortly thereafter. William was a member of a prominent silversmithing family in Newburyport, MA, and he continued his trade in the Ohio Country.

William died in 1795, and in the following years, Lydia would marry three times. Tradition states that Lydia assisted her father in his business and made some silver. Although the details are as yet undocumented, this spoon might be evidence in the argument for the existence of an 18th-century American woman silversmith. A number of spoons and a pair of sugar tongs have been identified and share the "LM" mark.

87
Mother's Day
Leuty McGuffey Manahan (1889-1977)
Bexley, Ohio
Oil on canvas board
1965
Joni Barnhill and Kyle Wittel

Manahan’s whimsical folk paintings were inspired by the artist’s country upbringing in Hardin County. She was born in the small town of McGuffey, which was named after her ancestor, and lived there until she married and moved to Bexley (an eastern suburb of Columbus). While she dabbled in art in her younger days, she had no formal training, and did not take up painting in earnest until her forties. Over the next 30+ years, she painted more than 80 works that can best be described as folk genre pictures: depictions of daily life, in a naïve and humorous way, and all rooted in Manahan’s memory (and typically with an added hint of social satire).

​Manahan was often compared to Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860-1961), but beyond their contemporaneous lives and shared inspiration rooted in rural memory, the two artists and their works are quite different. Moses focused on the New England landscape, while Manahan’s works typically depict interior views, or perhaps exterior views, but in a much more intimate manner. She filled her paintings with so many details that it typically takes multiple viewings to fully appreciate them all.

Her style is primitive but focused, and for the keen observer, there is an edginess in both her content and her execution, and her paintings form a continuous narrative that emphasizes the importance of the role women played in rural American life.
During her life, Manahan was well-known and widely exhibited throughout Ohio and beyond, and even received a commendation from then Lt. Gov. Richard Celeste. However, she never achieved the fame that other folk artists enjoyed. Although she received regular offers, Manahan refused to sell her work. Upon her death, the exhibitions ceased and her entire body of work remained in private hands until very recently.


88
Portrait of the Right Reverend Philander Chase (1775-1852)
Probably Mathew Brady (1822-1896)
Washington, DC
Daguerreotype photograph
1850
Kenyon College Archives, Gambier, Ohio

When Philander Chase was appointed the first Episcopal bishop of Ohio, he immediately lamented that he could get no priests because there was no seminary to train them in the west. When the church refused to fund one, he began to raise the money himself...by going to England. Chase did, in fact, convince a number of English nobles to donate to his cause, including the Lord Kenyon, after whom he named his college in 1824. Chase left Kenyon in 1831, and in 1835 became the first bishop of Illinois and founded another college, Jubilee College. In 1843, he was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. It was that role that took Chase to Washington, DC, where he met photographer Matthew Brady.


89
Quilt Barbara Trick
Dayton, Ohio
Cotton
1992
Ohio History Connection

Signature quilts and album quilts became popular in the mid-1800s, with women often each contributing a single block for a quilt. Sometimes the signatures were written in ink, sometimes they were embroidered. These quilts, originally made as keepsakes, sometimes for a person who was moving away, later were made to commemorate events and gatherings, and they can offer vital genealogical links between communities.

The "Friendly Neighbor Club" seems to have been an informal social club trend that gained popularity in the Depression era. With people looking for affordable entertainment and connection, local women would form a Friendly Neighbor Club, which would function as a potluck gathering and a sewing bee, with the gathered women doing handwork for the month's hostess. Versions of Friendly Neighbor Clubs still survive in many communities today.
Barbara Quick continued the signature quilt tradition with a collection of signatures from famous people born in Ohio.

The Ohio Star pattern quilt has signatures that include: Tom Posten, Roy Rogers, Bob Hope, Neil Armstrong, Norman Vincent Peale, Howard Metzenbaum, Scott Hamilton, Roger Staubach, Tim Conway, Phyllis Diller, Gates McFadden, Maureen McGovern, Joe Nuxhall, Joel Gray, Barry Larkin, Jonathan Winters, George Voinovich, Helen O'Connell, and Jack Nicklaus.


90
Quilt
Friendly Neighbors Club
Flushing, Ohio
Cotton 
1936
Ohio History Connection


91
Harvest Jug
John Dollings (1835-1926) 
White Cottage, Ohio 
Glazed stoneware
1860-1870
Ohio History Connection

Traditionally, face jugs are of southern origin, most often from Georgia and North and South Carolina, and come out of a west African tradition, brought to this country by enslaved Africans. Face jugs were not made exclusively by enslaved potters in the south; in fact, several white potters in Ohio made face jugs.

While scholars have had great success discovering the history and meaning of face jugs, the exact way the tradition moved both north and west is still not yet entirely understood. While Dollings grew up in Virginia on a farm that utilized enslaved labor, he had no known connection to those areas in the south where the earliest face vessels were made. How he, and other Ohio potters, came to make them in late 19th-century Ohio is still unknown.


92
Bedstead
Maker: A.G. Couch Company; decorated by Archibald Willard (1836-1918)
Wellington, Ohio
Wood
1857
Ohio History Connection

Archibald Willard was born in Bedford, Ohio, and was taken with art as a very young boy, and he found work as a young man doing decorative painting on carts, wagons, and other objects, like this bedstead. Willard served in the Civil War, and afterward, he continued to paint, sometimes creating colorful, humorous scenes as gifts, and it was this work that attracted the attention of James Ryder, a photographer and printer. Ryder felt Willard's images would be popular with his customers.

Despite these humble beginnings, Willard is best known for his image The Spirit of '76, which he painted in 1875 after watching a hometown holiday parade. The artwork was not particularly well-received when displayed at the Centennial Exposition in 1876, but Ryder's marketing of the image as a colorful print helped to spread and popularize the scene.


93
Els-Kwau-Ta-Waw, The Open Door
Thomas McKenney and James Hall, History of the Indian Tribes of North America; frame: Stephen Arnold, Marietta, Ohio
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Marietta, Ohio
Hand-colored lithograph on paper; curly maple
1838-1844; 2025
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


94
Ca-Ta-He-Cas-Sa Black Hoof, Principle Chief of the Shawanoes
Thomas McKenney and James Hall, History of the Indian Tribes of North America; frame: Stephen Arnold, Marietta, Ohio
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hand-colored lithograph on paper, curly maple 
1838-1844; 2025
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


95
Kish-Kal-Wa, A Shawanoe Chief
Thomas McKenney and James Hall, History of the Indian Tribes of North America; frame: Stephen Arnold, Marietta, Ohio
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hand-colored lithograph on paper, curly maple
1838-1844; 2025
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


96
Payta-Kootha, A Shawanoe Warrior
from Thomas McKenney and James Hall, History of the Indian Tribes of North America; frame: Stephen Arnold, Marietta, Ohio
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hand-colored lithograph on paper, curly maple
1838-1844; 2025
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


97
Qua-Ta-Wa-Pea, or Col. Lewis, a Shawanee Chief
from Thomas McKenney and James Hall, History of the Indian Tribes of North America; frame: Stephen Arnold, Marietta, Ohio
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hand-colored lithograph on paper, curly maple
1838-1844; 2025
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

As Superintendent of Indian Trade and later Indian Affairs under Presidents Madison, Monroe, Adams, and Jackson, Thomas Loraine McKenney (1785-1857) had the interest and opportunity to learn firsthand the customs and beliefs of many Native American tribes, and he felt strongly about preserving details of these cultures. McKenney began planning his archive in 1816 when a delegation of natives went to Washington, D.C., to see President Monroe. It was an opportune time to record their likenesses and he commissioned prominent artists such as James Otto Lewis and Charles Bird King to produce the paintings.

Hall, who was a frontier lawyer and judge, used his skills as a newspaper editor and author to produce text based on information provided by McKenney, and, published in parts across a series of years, the two produced folio editions of History of the Indian Tribes of North America, Philadelphia: 1837-1844.

The original paintings, from which the lithographs were produced, were held in the Smithsonian. An 1865 fire at that institution destroyed almost all of these portraits, making McKenney's project even more vital in preserving and documenting these lives.

Els-Kwau-Ta-Waw, also known as Tenskwatawa or the Prophet, was Tecumseh's brother, and the leader who united the Native Nations and helped establish the headquarters of the united Indian Confederation near modern-day Prophetstown, Indiana. After William Henry Harrison led an attack that destroyed the community, Tenskwatawa retreated to Canada for a time, before returning and helping to relocate his people to a village near modern-day Kansas City, where he died in 1836.

Ca-Ta-He-Cas-Sa, also known as Black Hoof, was the head chief of the Shawnee in the Ohio Country in the late 18th century, and he lived at Wapakoneta. He was fearless in battle, participating in innumerable frontier battles and skirmishes, but he also worked tirelessly as a diplomat, trying to achieve peace. In an attempt to prevent more bloodshed, he kept many Shawnee from joining Tecumseh's War, a conflict that was folded into the War of 1812, but he also resisted removal and refused any treaties that required it. He remained in Ohio until his death in 1831.

Kish-Kal-Wa, also known as Young Tiger Tail, was a Shawnee chief. He belonged to the Chillicothe division of the Shawnee. He was born in Ohio in 1760 and died in Kansas in 1838.
Payta-Kootha, also known as Flying Clouds, was better known to Americans as Captain Reed. By 1833, he had removed west of the Mississippi. He was known as a quiet, peaceful man and a good hunter.

Qua-Ta-Wa-Pea, also known as Colonel Lewis or Captain Johnny, is thought to have been born near present-day Circleville in the 1760s. He is thought to have belonged to the Piqua division of the Shawnee and was a member of the Turtle clan. In 1768, the Iroquois ceded lands in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, including land in Kentucky that the Shawnee, who had not been consulted in the treaty, used for seasonal hunting. They attempted to resist colonial settlement, and this conflict would result in the Battle of Point Pleasant. Quatawapea would fight at Point Pleasant, and he would continue to fight through the remainder of the 18th century, as the Shawnee resisted occupation, a fight that would culminate at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville. He would later marry a white captive named Polly Baker, and they would make their home at Lewistown in Logan County.

Along with Black Hoof, Lewis would push for an accommodationist approach to living with settlers. They both felt that sharing some white cultural practices would reduce conflict, and they encouraged cooperation with Quakers who lived among the Shawnees and sought to share farming practices with them. These accommodationist views would place them in opposition to Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. The results would be the same regardless. The Treaty of Greenville would be replaced by the Treaty of Fort Meigs in 1817, leaving the Shawnee with three reservations in the state: Lewistown, Wapakoneta, and Hog Creek. The U.S. Senate did not agree with the terms and forced the Treaty of St. Mary's as a follow-up the following year, which prevented the Shawnee from selling any of the land to anyone other than the United States government.

Settlers continued to poach on their land, and the Shawnee formed a delegation and traveled to Washington, seeking to firm up their claims and to get assistance in protecting their boundaries, but they would receive neither. By now, the general attitude in Washington favored removal, and the Shawnee continued to be pressed to sell the remaining land and move westward. Lewis would do just that in 1822, establishing a village in Arkansas with some followers, where he hoped to build a community or confederacy with other tribes.

Lewis made trips back to both Ohio and Washington, attempting to secure support for the idea and to encourage Black Hoof, who had disagreed with the idea of removal, to bring the people who remained with him to Arkansas as well. In 1825, a meeting was held at Wapakoneta, and Tenskwatawa returned from Canada to help encourage removal as well, but Black Hoof still opposed the idea, and agreement could not be reached. Lewis returned to Arkansas with several hundred Shawnee and a few Seneca, saying he would not return to Ohio. He is thought to have died in Arkansas the following year. After Black Hoof's death in 1831, the remaining people of the Shawnee Nation in Ohio were forced to remove the following year.


98
Blanket Chest
John Zimmerman (1800-1890)
Smithville, Ohio
Poplar
1848
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

John Zimmerman was born in Philadelphia and learned his trade from Daniel Markley of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he was apprenticed for over two years. He then began moving west, first to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, where he helped build the state capital at Harrisburg, then to Clark County, Ohio, and finally to Smithville in Wayne County.

After purchasing this chest at auction, a secret drawer was discovered in the till with an old draft card and other identification for Joseph Henry Short of Fulton County. Short's mother was Mary Klopfenstein (1857–1934), daughter of Joseph Klopfenstein (1823-1907), who had grown up in Wayne County, Ohio, before moving west with his young family in the 1850s. His wife was Maria Anna Hirschy (1827–1883), and they married in 1848. Hirschy was born in Switzerland and both her parents were dead by 1839, so presumably she was living with relatives and then sent to the US to marry as she married only a few weeks after she arrived in the spring of 1848. It seems very likely that this chest was made for Maria Hirschy on the occasion of her marriage to Joseph Klopfenstein.


99
Blanket Chest
Unknown maker
Coshocton or Tuscarawas County
Poplar
1890
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

This chest is one of two that are nearly identical in construction and decoration that were reunited in 2020 after untold decades apart. Emma (1881-1970) and Flora (1883-1955) Geib were two of the children of Philip Geib (1850-1941) and Phoebe Stilgenbauer (?-1924). The family lived in White Eyes Township, which lies in the northeastern corner of Coshocton County.

Emma's chest was sold previously at auction in 1991, and the news clipping about that sale indicated that the chest was made by a “Mr. Lehman of New Bedford, Ohio” for his granddaughter. Neither of Emma’s parents had Lehman ancestry, but in 1904, Emma married John Philip Lehman (1878-1963). Lehman’s family was from very nearby Jefferson Township, Tuscarawas County, making his father, Simon, the possible maker. Simon Lehman (1851-1908), was generally listed in the census as a farmer, but much of the simple furniture made in rural Ohio was made by self-identified farmers. Simon does not appear to have lived in New Bedford or even Coshocton County, so that tidbit of family history contains an error—either the girls’ grandfather is not the maker, or he was but the location was misremembered.

Emma and John remained in Coshocton County the rest of their lives, having three children (the youngest of whom died in 2003). A nearly identical chest was up for sale 700 miles away the same week, identified as Flora Geib's. Flora’s chest came with no provenance, but was immediately related to Emma’s because of the construction and decoration, and later by genealogy. Flora married Charles Schumaker (1880-1975) in 1906. They moved to Stark County.

100
Blanket Chest
Unknown maker
Richland County
Poplar
1845
Melvin and Connie Porcher

The Kuhn family originated in Wurttemberg, Germany, immigrated to eastern Pennsylvania, and then came to Ohio in the early 1830s., settling in Plymouth Township. Friedarich Kuhn, whose name appears on the chest, along with the date of 1845, cannot yet be traced in the genealogical record. Blanket chests with landscape decoration are very uncommon. It is not known if the house depicted here is that of the original owner or simply fanciful decoration. Another blanket chest decorated with a landscape painting was made for Noah Mali in Sugarcreek Township, Tuscarawas County, and is dated 1846.


101
Blanket Chest
Unknown maker
Sonnenberg (now Kidron), Ohio
Walnut, poplar
1853
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Mennonites who had emigrated from the Jura Mountains region in northern Switzerland established the Ohio community of Sonnenberg (now Kidron) in Wayne County, Ohio. They were fleeing religious persecution because of their Anabaptist beliefs, which included the practice of adult baptism.

Mennonites in Ohio practiced something very similar to what we call "chain migration" today, where relatives who are already established sponsor the next group of relatives who want to immigrate. Initially Sonnenberg may have looked like home, but after time passed, the people who arrived there did so simply because they already had family there.
Today, Wayne and neighboring Holmes County are home to the single largest population of Amish in the world.


102
Miniature Blanket Chest
John Zimmerman (1800-1890)
Smithville, Ohio
Poplar
Mid-19th century Jim and Rita Krahl

This chest, at the top of the stack, was also made by John Zimmerman, who made the chest at the bottom. While sometimes people see smaller pieces of furniture and think they were doll furniture, play furniture for children, or samples that were scaled down to a convenient size for salesmen to carry, many times they were just miniature pieces of furniture made, like this box, to accommodate smaller items.


103
Dometop Box
Unknown maker
New Hampshire Pine
1803
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

This dometop chest is lined with newspapers from New Hampshire with dates as early as 1803 and is marked for H. Merrill, Ohio, so it seems reasonable to believe that H. Merrill was one of that early wave of New England settlers who flocked west after the opening of the Northwest Territory.


104
Liquor Jug
Unknown maker
Ohio
Glazed stoneware
​1892-1898
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Theodore (1850-1906) and Moses (1845-1924) Simon were German immigrants (likely brothers) who formed a liquor company in Dayton. Montgomery County business directories list them in business on Jefferson Street from 1892-98. They split in 1898, when Moses and his son Adolph created A. Simon & Co. Liquor Dealers, located at the former Jefferson St. address of T. & M. Simon. Moses and Theodore continued to live together until about 1900, when Moses and his family moved a few blocks down the street. Theodore became the secretary and manager at Pioneer Liquor Co. from about 1900 until (presumably) his death 6 years later. Moses and his family stayed in business until at least 1904 but likely longer. They moved to Lima, Ohio, sometime after 1920, where they are buried.

While it is not known that the Simons were Jewish, names in their family genealogy and their geographic locations certainly make it seem likely. Jewish entrepreneurs opened Dayton's first wholesale liquor business in 1859.

105
Dometop Box
Unknown maker
Probably Holmes County, Ohio
Poplar
1831
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Sometimes interesting bits of history hide in unassuming places! The interior of this trunk is lined with pages from newspapers from the Millersburg, Ohio area from 1831. Advertisements like the ones that line this chest offer researchers tremendous insights into everything from vocabulary to fashion, prices to product availability. They also complement existing genealogical records with more complete pictures of business partnerships and community interactions.


106
Mirror or Looking Glass
Unknown maker
America
Mahogany, glass
1825
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The spring and summer of 1813 had seen American troops repel the British at Fort Meigs, taking firm control of northwest Ohio, but the British Royal Navy still controlled Lake Erie. That September, the American Navy, under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, defeated the British, secured Lake Erie, and took a huge step toward ending the War of 1812. "Perry's Victory" and "Don't Give Up the Ship" (the slogan on a blue pennant presented to Perry before the battle) quickly found their way on all manner of souvenirs and decorative objects, such as this mirror. This mirror was made in the United States using imported mahogany, which was harvested by enslaved Africans in Central or South America.


107
Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War
Jim Borgman (b. 1954)
Gambier, Ohio
Pen and ink on paper
1974
Kenyon College Archives, Gambier, Ohio

​Jim Borgman was born and educated in Cincinnati, departing to attend Kenyon College, where he planned to major in English before switching to art. Already active in journalism in high school, he soon began drawing cartoons for the Kenyon Collegian, and when he graduated in 1976, he returned to Cincinnati to begin what would be a 32-year career with the Cincinnati Enquirer. He also created the popular comic strip Zits.

Edwin Stanton, depicted here by Borgman, was another Kenyon alum, class of 1834. Stanton would serve as Secretary of War for Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and he also was very involved in the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination. Borgman skewers the typical political dichotomy of hawks and doves here, showing Stanton on the verge of crushing a dove while sharing a shrewd side-eyed expression with a vulture.


108
Squirrel Hunters
Discharge Ehrgott, Forbriger and Company
Cincinnati, Ohio
Lithograph and ink on paper
1862
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Confederate troops were marching north in September of 1862 with Cincinnati as their objective. Having secured Lexington, Kentucky, they planned to take Covington, Kentucky, as well, and then move across the river to attack Cincinnati.

Lew Wallace was the Ohio general tasked with protecting that stretch of the Ohio, and he called on David Tod, Ohio's governor, for help. An urgent request for help went out, and within a matter of days, Cincinnati had a volunteer military force of more than 15,000 civilians. Many of the men had no military experience, left their farms at harvest time to offer what help they could, and as they were better known for their hunting skills than their martial ones, they were nicknamed the Squirrel Hunters.

​Local militia and regular Army soldiers combined with the new volunteers to create a solid frontline force of 70,000 defenders, which was too much for the Confederate troops. They retreated without significant conflict within weeks.

The Squirrel Hunters headed home, but in 1863, the Ohio legislature formally acknowledged their contribution with printed discharge papers, commending them for their service. The men depicted are Governor Tod and Major General Irvin McDowell - and a rough-and-ready country fellow loading a musket for an unsuspecting squirrel.


109
Quartermaster's Desk
Unknown maker
America
Pine
1861
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

This portable desk belonged to Lieutenant Luther Beman of the 173rd OVI. Luther Beman was born in Connecticut in 1827. He moved to Ohio as a young man and married in Gallia County in 1850. After his ten months of service, Beman would return to Gallia County where he worked, according to census records, as a merchant, a farmer, and a banker. He died in Thurman, Ohio, in 1901.

The 173rd was organized at Gallipolis in September of 1864 for a period of one year of service. They were sent to Nashville to participate in defending it and were involved in the Battle of Nashville that same year, after which time they guarded prisoners in Nashville for several months before moving around the state on various other assignments before they mustered out in Nashville in late June and disbanded at Camp Dennison near Cincinnati on July 5, 1865.


110
Portrait of Captain Amos Gillis
Unknown artist
Kinsman, Ohio
Oil on canvas
1870-1890
Ohio History Connection


111
US Model 1850 Foot Officer's Sword
Ames Manufacturing Company
Chicopee, Massachusetts
Brass, steel
1850-1865
Ohio History Connection

Amos Gillis was born in Trumbull County, Ohio in 1838, and he married in 1858. The 1860 census shows him living in Kinsman, Ohio, with his wife and child. He enlisted as a private in June of 1861 in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. (Future presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley would also serve in the 23rd.) They covered a tremendous amount of ground during their service, fighting in a number of battles, but also moving back and forth through the difficult terrain of West Virginia, before serving as part of the Shenandoah Valley campaign, led by General Sheridan in the fall of 1864.

The Shenandoah Valley campaign was a total war approach, directed by Grant, designed to make the region, known as the "bread basket of the Confederacy," unable to continue to supply Lee's troops and to eliminate the threat of raids on Washington, D.C.

The Battle of Berryville was a two-day conflict in early September with no decisive winner. Amos Gillis, by now Captain Gillis, was one of about 300 Union troops who died in the battle. The war would end just six months later. His family must have been able to bring him home for burial, as he is buried in Kinsman with his wife Amanda.


112
Cleveland Blues
Fred Davis, Colemine Records
Loveland, Ohio
Vinyl
​2023
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught fire, and a month later, a photo in Time caught the nation's attention. Ironically, it was not like this was the first time the river had caught fire. Oil slicks on the water's surface had ignited several times in the 20th century (and the photo published was actually of one of the earlier events). Also, by 1969, the water quality of the Cuyahoga had already been improving, in part because action was being taken to improve conditions, but also in part because the deindustrialization slowdown was already resulting in reduced pollution.

​Nonetheless, the river's burning helped build a rallying cry for the growing environmentalism movement, and the first Earth Day was held the following year.
Fred "Dave" Davis was a Missouri-born blues man working in Cleveland in the 1960s and playing his Kansas City-blues-inspired music wherever he could locally. Howard Husock, father of musician Eli

"Paperboy" Reed, recorded Davis in 1969, but Davis never found fame during his lifetime and died in an armed robbery in 1988 at the age of 49. More recently, the original tape was rediscovered and a posthumous album was pressed with colored vinyl. The color is "Cuyahoga River Fire Smoke," a nod to Dave Davis's life as an industrial worker in Cleveland.

113
Bottle 
Unknown maker
Netherlands 
Blown glass
1750
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Conflict often occurs over control of resources, and that was the case with the Maumee River. In the 1600s, French colonists in the area, working as trappers and traders, realized that the Maumee River, while just a mere 137 miles in length, was invaluable to them, just as it had been to natives in the region for centuries. The mouth of the Maumee in Lake Erie is an obvious asset, but the source of the river held the real appeal- a portage near modern-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, of six to nine miles connected it to the Wabash River, part of the Mississippi River watershed. (A portage, from the French porter, meaning to carry, is the process of moving watercraft overland from one waterway to another. Historically, paths and roads were built for this purpose, and it was this process that canal construction attempted to simplify.) As a result, the Maumee saw heavy use for centuries from the Ottawa and other native nations and then from the French and English colonists.

The Battle of Fallen Timbers was fought less than one mile from the Maumee River.
This bottle speaks to the extent of trade and contact in the region. This fragile work of glass was dug out of the ground in the area of Texas, Ohio, near the Maumee River about ten years ago, more than 250 years after being brought to the area by Europeans.


114
Pot
Unknown maker
Excavated at the Baker II Site, Sandusky County
Clay
500-1,000 CE
Tim Edwards

The shores of the Great Lakes were the homeland of a number of native nations pre-contact, and this pot is a survivor from that era. Native nations had long had conflicts between themselves, and the economic pressures of contact increasingly destabilized the area we now call Ohio long before colonists arrived in large numbers. The Beaver Wars, also known as the French and Iroquois Wars, were a series of conflicts over a century in the Great Lakes region that heavily impacted the indigenous people living in the area.

The Iroquois League was comprised of the Mohawks, Oneida, Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga, and in alliance with the French and supported and funded by the Dutch and the English, they undertook to expand their area of control, which had previously been further east, primarily along Lakes Ontario, Champlain, and George, putting them in direct and violent contact with a number of other confederacies and tribes, including the Wyandot (Wendat), Algonquin, Susquehannock, Erie, Ottawa (Odawa), and Ojibwe. The violence of the prolonged conflict was so intense and extensive that several tribes were shattered, either wiped out entirely or to such an extent that the remaining survivors were assimilated into other tribes.


115
The Indians Delivering up the English Captives to Colonel Bouquet Near His Camp at the Forks of Muskingum in North America in November 1764
After Benjamin West (1738-1820), from An historical account of the expedition against the Ohio Indians in the year 1764
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Engraving on paper
1766
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In 1763, Pontiac, an Ottawa leader, encouraged the various tribal forces that had participated in the French and Indian War to continue fighting despite the agreements between the French and British in an attempt to expel the British from their territory. They successfully took several forts before Bouquet, who was in Philadelphia, gathered a group of about 500 men to head west and retake the forts. The fighting continued throughout the summer of 1763 until Bouquet and his troops reached modern-day Coshocton on the Muskingum River, which put them within striking distance of a number of villages.

When the Shawnee, Seneca, and Delaware sent representatives to negotiate a peace, Bouquet demanded the exchange of all white captives in exchange for the promise not to seize land or destroy villages. The children in the image look tentative and distraught because many of them had been taken forcibly and raised since they were small children, and the forced separation was distressing to everyone involved.

Some captives escaped and returned to the natives who had raised them, while others were never exchanged. In all, Bouquet returned approximately 200 white captives.
Bouquet is less known for this, however, than for an infamous letter he penned earlier that same summer in June of 1763. It was Bouquet, in a series of letters exchanged with his commanding officer, General Jeffery Amherst, who proposed the now-infamous plot of presenting the natives with blankets from the smallpox hospital.

An outbreak did occur that year, although it is difficult to confirm the source, but documentary evidence from the commander at Fort Pitt indicates the plan was put into action with one reimbursement invoice submitted to General Gage reading, "To Sundries got to Replace in kind those which were taken from people in the Hospital to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians Vizt."


116
Waffle Maker
Retailed by Sears Roebuck and Company
America
Metal, plastic, Teflon
1965-1975
Private Collection

Teflon, a brand name for polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE, was discovered accidentally in 1938, but it did not take DuPont long to discover a wide range of intentional uses for it. Teflon was trademarked in 1945, and by 1948, 2,000,000 pounds of it were being manufactured each year in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on the Ohio River. By 1954, it was being used in cookware.
But the discovery of Teflon did not turn out to be a happy accident for many in the Ohio River Valley.

PTFE is produced in part with a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA or C8, one of a group of chemicals sometimes called "forever" chemicals because they are "persistent organic pollutants" that do not break down by natural means in the environment. DuPont and associated companies using PTFE, which also can release PFOAs when heated, knew as early as the 1960s how dangerous, pervasive, and persistent these compounds were, and secret internal testing was being done for decades, but no action was taken. Over a roughly 50-year period, 1951 to 2003, DuPont dumped 1,700,000 pounds of C8 directly into the Ohio River.

More than 5,000,000 people rely directly on the Ohio River as a source for their drinking water.
Cincinnati attorney Robert Bilott fought for years to uncover the extent of the damage, to draw attention to the pollution, and to hold the companies involved accountable. In addition to a large number of lawsuits that have made reparations, the United States government also set standards in 2024 for PFOAs in water and allocated $1 billion to help towns throughout the country improve and secure their water supplies.


117
The State of Ohio with Part of Upper Canada
Mathew Carey (1790-1839)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Handcolored print on paper
1814
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Although the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the law that opened the west to American settlement, guaranteed that that Americans would show "utmost good faith" towards the native inhabitants, and "their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent," seven years after the first settlers moved into the Ohio Country, the Treaty of Greenville (1795) pushed the natives into the northwest corner of the state, as identified on this map as "Indian Land." A quarter century later, the Indian Removal Act (1830) would push the natives west again, this time to Oklahoma.

 
118
Silhouettes of the Barnes Family 
Unknown artist
Canfield, Ohio
Cut paper
1833
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Jacob Barnes was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1785. He served in the War of 1812, was a farmer, and married Nancy Carroll in 1813 in Virginia. (Jacob and Nancy are at the far left and far right of the lower row.) Several children were born there, but by 1826, Jacob had acquired a license to operate a tavern in Canfield, Ohio, in Mahoning County, and it was in Canfield where they would raise their family, which eventually included at least 9 children.

The Barnes home in Canfield was located along what is now Rt. 224, and it was the main coach route for travelers going between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Jacob was a staunch abolitionist, and for years, he, his wife, and his adult children were active in the Underground Railroad operation in northern Ohio. Their home, still standing and now the Loghurst Museum, offered shelter to those traveling to freedom in Canada from 1837 until his death in 1848.

119
Chest
Unknown maker
Europe
Wood
1775-1825
Bill Reynolds


120
Beanie
Unknown maker
Kent, Ohio
Felt
1966
Bill Reynolds

Bill Reynolds was a senior at Kent State in the spring of 1970 when National Guardsmen opened fire on student protestors. This trunk stored his art supplies, and the sketchbooks, materials, and freshman beanie are from his time there. (A beanie is a small felted wool cap that was traditionally worn by college freshmen from the 1910s through the 1970s in some places. They were meant to create connection and recognition among the incoming class while also making upperclassmen aware of newcomers.) Shortly after Bill's graduation from Kent State a few weeks later, he enlisted and served a tour of duty as an Army combat medic. After his tour was over, he returned home to Ohio, where he has since been active with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group of veterans who continue to promote peace, to increase awareness of the health impact and needs of Vietnam veterans, and to protest for justice and adequate care and treatment for all veterans.


121
John I. Thompson's Navy Dog Tag
U.S Navy
Likely New York Navy Yard Melon
Metal
1917-1919
William Mahon

Soldiers have, since ancient times, tried to ensure their body would be identified in the event of their death, but it was not an official system until quite recently. After the huge number of casualties in the Civil War, by World War I, the United States government was taking a different approach, and Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy, ordered identification tags or "dog tags," as they are more commonly known, should be issued.

The first tags were made of Monel metal, which was a corrosion-resistant alloy of nickel, copper, iron, and manganese, and they were oval in form. One side was stamped "U.S.N" and etched with the individual's personal information, while the reverse had an etched print of the right index finger.

John Ignatius Thompson was born in Cleveland in 1893, and he was drafted in August of 1917. He was released from active duty the following year and was honorably discharged in 1920. He returned to Cuyahoga County, where he married Margaret Kelly, had eight daughters, and practiced as an attorney. He died in 1973.


122
Trench Art Vase
Sgt. Abram H. Hill (1874-1943)
Europe
Brass shell casing
1918
David and Sharen Neuhardt

This vase says it was made by Sergeant Abram (sometimes Abraham) Hill from a World War I brass shell casing. Trench art, the term for decorative objects made by soldiers and prisoners of war, is normally created from objects like shell casings, shrapnel, and other odd bits available to them. Hill engraved inscriptions on at least three of these vases, however it is difficult to know if they were truly made by him. Large numbers of shells were also collected in Europe during and after the war, and there were small cottage industry operations devoted to transforming them into vases and lamps.

Abram Harvey Hill was born in Texas, as was his mother, and the 1880 census records show them living with his Indiana-born father in Manchester, Indiana. In 1898, he served a short stint in the Spanish-American War, he married Margaret (sometimes listed as Maud) in 1902, and the 1910 records show him as a farmer, now with two children. He served in World War I, and the 1920 census records have him back in Dayton working as a millwright at what may be National Cash Register Works. Later he is a construction engineer and then listed as a millwright again in the final census before his death in 1943.


123
Quilt
Nancy Laughlin Miller (1865-1937)
Sarahsville, Ohio
Cotton
1865
Cari Shein

Nancy Laughlin Miller lived in Sarahsville in Noble County and her son married Dora Rich, the granddaughter of quiltmaker Sarah Jane Beatty and mother of quiltmaker Mary Miller. This quilt was exhibited in "Ohio Quilts: A Living Tradition" at the Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio, 1984, and illustrated in the exhibition catalog and featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog. A nearly identical quilt is illustrated in Stella Rubin's How to Compare and Value American Quilts, p. 125. Rubin attributes that quilt to Nancy Laughlin Miller, but Mrs. Brown's notes indicate that that quilt was made by Nancy's sister, Rachel Laughlin Rich (1853-1934).

Fabric production methods changed dramatically during the 19th-century and the Industrial Revolution, and this was, in part, what fueled the increased demand for enslaved laborers. Textile mills were cranking out volumes of a new generation of bright, sharp colors and patterns, and they wanted all the cotton they could extract from the South.


124
Plowshare
John McClay (1848-1931)
Ohio
Steel (bayonet, rifle barrel, sword)
1888
Ohio History Connection

John McClay was born in Scotland in 1848, and by the time he was 12 years old and the Civil War was brewing, his family was living in New York. He ran away and joined the 43rd Ohio Infantry regiment, serving as a drummer boy. The 43rd would be part of the campaign to take Atlanta and later part of Sherman's March to the Sea. McClay's records show he served from October of 1863 to July of 1865. In 1870, the census records show him apprenticed to a blacksmith in Franklin County. In 1872, he married Rebecca Holmes in Columbus, and they were the parents of at least six children.

John seems to have settled his family in the Sunbury Road area of Gahanna and worked as a blacksmith. He was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic or the G.A.R., a fraternal order of Union Civil War veterans that had thousands of posts throughout the country, and he would eventually serve as the state-level commander. The G.A.R. would be one of the first groups of its kind to advocate for veterans.

John McClay made this piece in 1888 to mark the Ohio Centennial from bayonets, a rifle barrel, and a sword. Isaiah 2:4 says, "And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." John McClay died at 83 in 1931.

​
125
Newark Holy Stones (replicas)
Newark, Ohio
Johnson Humrickhouse Museum

In 1860, David Wyrick, a former county surveyor with a deep interest in antiquities, allegedly discovered a series of artifacts at what is now known as the Newark Earthworks. The Newark Earthworks are associated with the Hopewell culture from roughly 100 BCE to 500 CE. It was on this site that Wyrick discovered what came to be known as the Keystone and the Decalogue, two stone artifacts with what appear to be Hebrew characters on them.

One argument put forth at the time is that these stones are evidence for a connection between the "moundbuilders" of the Hopewell culture and ancient Israelites, which is a belief held by the members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, whose teachings state that the "lost tribes of Israel" came to North America. In more recent years, other groups who support the idea that pre-Columbian trans-oceanic travel happened much earlier than what scholars currently believe to be true have cited the stones as proof of those assertions.

Archaeological evidence however seems to indicate that the stones were forged, and one suggestion, because of the timing of the discovery, that has been put forth by Ohio archaeologist Brad Lepper is that they were forged as a way to offer support for the theory of monogenism. Monogenism is the term for the belief that all of humanity is descended from a single pair of individuals. In 1860, when Wyrick made his discovery, proof of monogenism could have been used to oppose slavery.


126
Commencement Program
Antioch College
Yellow Springs, Ohio
Print on paper
1965
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Antioch College was committed to equality in education from its very conception, being both co-ed and integrated. At the time, Antioch was only the fourth college in the country to admit African-American students, and in 1943, a scholarship was created to further diversify the student body. Edythe Scott, elder sister of Coretta Scott King, was the first recipient of this honor, and two years later, Coretta would be awarded the same scholarship.

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Antioch continued to illustrate its commitment to equality, and it drew pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King would visit the college in the spring of 1965 when MLK gave the commencement address.


127
Men of Ohio
Ohio Woman Suffrage Association
Warren, Ohio
Print on paper
1910
David and Sharen Neuhardt

In Cincinnati, in September of 1869, with Susan B. Anthony in attendance, the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association was established to “advance the cause of woman suffrage and thereby to make our government in fact what it is in theory – a government of the people.” Over the next half century, they furthered the cause of women's suffrage in Ohio through meetings, conventions, marches, activism, and legislative activity. When the 19th Amendment was finally passed and ratified in 1920, the OWSA, and many other state organizations like it, were absorbed by the League of Women Voters.


128
Portraits of Alanson Pomeroy (1805-1877) and Kezia Pope Pomeroy (1809-1893)
David Brokaw (act. 1842-1872)
Strongsville, Ohio
Oil on canvas
1847
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The sitters are identified as Alanson Pomeroy (1805-1877) and Kezia Pope Pomeroy (1809-1893) of Strongsville, Ohio. Pomeroy was a prominent businessman and politician in Strongsville. The same year Brokaw painted these portraits, Pomeroy built a grand home called "The Homestead." The home became a regular stop on the Underground Railroad--Pomeroy used his nearby store as a cover to receive "deliveries," hiding runaway slaves on their way from Oberlin to Rocky River (where they could board a boat to Canada). The home still stands today.


129
Civil Defense Gas Mask
Talon Inc.
America
Metal, rubber
1942
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II, and civilians, who had seen the news of the Blitz, carried out from 1940-1941, were terrified that the same thing could happen in America. Towns and cities with heavy industry and busy ports felt like especially likely targets, and as a result, in 1941, the Office of Civilian Defense was formed. World War I had made clear that war was now a total, global act, and civilian spaces would not be spared and might even be intentionally targeted. As a result, the agency, which had a small staff of less than 100, would come to oversee millions of volunteers nationwide, many of whom were trained for firefighting and air raid preparedness duties.

Robert Lee Matthews was born in Noble County, Indiana, in 1904, and he married Edna Mae Schwartz in 1931 in Fort Wayne. By 1940, the family was in Cleveland with their first child. Robert worked as a salesman and manufacturing representative for a manufacturer of electric motors. It was in Cleveland, on East 118th, that Robert Matthews served his community for three years as an air raid warden, and this mask, which was issued to him, was donated along with related civilian defense papers by one of his daughters. He died in Cleveland in 1968, but like many rural folks who traveled to Ohio's cities for work in the early part of the 20th century, his family took him back to Noble County for burial.


130
Leg Irons
Unknown maker
​America
Iron
1885
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

In Upper Sandusky, the Wyandotte built what was long referred to locally as "the Indian Jail," a two-story log structure that was used to hold prisoners awaiting trial. The details of the purpose for the jail, who was held there, and how their crimes were addressed remains somewhat vague, but Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio includes an account from a Dr. Munson, recorded in 1891, about a series of events he witnessed in 1840, a portion of which reads:

The Murder.—One old man, a half-brother to a prominent half-breed named John BARNET, belonged to the Christian party, and although he had indulged in frequent potations, was but slightly intoxicated; the other, a young man, the son of a noted chief known as “BLACK CHIEF,” was a rude and turbulent fellow, and had become greatly intoxicated during the day. Late in the afternoon, the former having procured a jug of whiskey started to go home, when the latter joined him. Their route was along a trail through the thick woods. Soon after entering the forest the young Indian wanted the old man to give him some whiskey, and when refused became enraged and seizing a bludgeon dealt the old man a murderous blow on the head, felling him to the ground, and following up his murderous blows crushed the head of the prostrate victim, killing him on the spot.

The Arrest and Trial.—Soon thereafter a body of Indians going along the trail came upon the dead body of the victim, and passing a short distance farther found the murderer, still drunk, and lying upon the ground fast asleep, while the jug sat near by. This party seized the drunken Indian, and, binding his arms, conveyed him, together with the dead body, to Upper Sandusky, and lodged the former in the little Indian jail for safe-keeping. The news of the tragedy created great excitement in the nation, and soon the executive council ordered an examination, whereupon the prisoner was taken before that tribunal, and after examining into the particulars found him guilty of murder while in a state of intoxication, and sentenced him to perpetual banishment and the confiscation of all his property.

These irons were donated by the grandchild of Daniel Babst, Jr. (1847-1924), the son of an immigrant from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, who was born in Canal Fulton and grew up in Crestline. He would attend college at Oberlin and read law in Crestline. By 1870, he was working as a lawyer, and he would marry twice and have at least four children. He would be mayor of Crestline for several terms and then serve for a number of years as a judge in Crawford County. He had an historical interest in the Wyandotte and collected items related to them and to legal history.


131
Portrait of Warriors
Unknown Absentee Shawnee Tribal artist
Shawnee, Oklahoma
Acrylic on canvas
2024
William Mahon

The Shawnee had called Ohio home for generations before Andrew Jackson's 1830 Indian Removal Act forced them west to reservations in Oklahoma. Today, there are three federally recognized tribes that descend from the historic Shawnee people: the Shawnee Tribe, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Absentee Shawnee Tribe. Although none of these tribes have an "official" residence in Ohio, enrolled members of these tribes still live here, and to many Shawnee, Ohio remains a place they call home. Per the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federally recognized tribe is an American Indian or Alaska Native tribal entity that is recognized as having a government-to-government relationship with the United States, with the responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations attached to that designation, and is eligible for funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Furthermore, federally recognized tribes are recognized as possessing certain inherent rights of self-government (i.e., tribal sovereignty) and are entitled to receive certain federal benefits, services, and protections because of their special relationship with the United States. At present, there are 574 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages.

​
132
Wyandotte Lost Wampum
Designed by Christopher Houk; made by Ciara Cotter
Wyandotte, Oklahoma
Polymer wampum, brain-tanned leather
Wyandotte Nation

Christopher Houk offered some notes on this beadwork, explaining that:
The Wyandotte Nation does not have many belts today, either in our possession or in other locations. The reason is they were destroyed by what Percy Ladd Walker described as "Bushwhackers". The Union soldiers described by Percy were Union forces from Kansas, Company B., 3rd Kansas Artillery under the command of Captain Henry Hopkins. After being defeated by Confederate forces they were retreating and came across Chief Tauromee's cabin in the Lost Creek Valley just east of present day Wyandotte, Oklahoma. Inside they found the trunk of wampum belts and strings. These were taken outside and shredded. It is unknown if Hopkins personally did this or some of his scouts but the fact remains, he was in command and therefore responsible.

​The Wyandotte's belts were broken and scattered around the area of Tauromee's cabin. After the War what remained of the belts and the loose beads were gathered, they "nearly filled a flour sack" as B.N.O. Walker explained in his personal journal. In the mid to late 19th Century a flour sack held 100 pounds of flour. When B.N.O. Walker wrote about this in the early 20th Century a flour sack was 50 pounds. Either way, it was a lot of beads. William Walker Jr (First Provisional Governor of Nebraska Territory) came into the possession of three intact belts and several that were broken beyond repair. The intact belts were given to Irvin Patton Long and the broken ones given to John Wesley Greyeyes.

The loose beads were given to Mary Williams Walker according to her son B.N.O. Walker to "make necklaces for her children". Walker descendants have returned several strands to the Wyandotte Nation in recent years.

​The figure in the center is holding broken wampum belt remains and round the figure are pieces of wampum from the destroyed belts. The white columns represent Lost Creek, near which the belts were torn apart by Union soldiers.


133
Advertising Broadside
Times Print
Cincinnati, Ohio
Print on paper
1861-1865
Perfect-Sandel Farmhouse Collection, Preservation Parks of Delaware County

Economic uncertainty during wartimes demanded agile responses from merchants, even in rural areas, as evidenced by this broadside from the Civil War. James N. Stark was born in 1823, married Charlotte Harrison, and in 1850 was farming with a growing family of two children and two farmhands. By 1860, he was a merchant in the small village of Olive Green, and even with "prices suited to the war times," business must have been good, because the 1870 census records indicate that the family had amassed considerable wealth with real estate in excess of $100,000 ($2,400,000 in today's terms), and by 1880, Stark had moved the family to Columbus and gotten into real estate. He died in May of 1899.


134
Captain Astro Lunch Box
Ohio Art Company 
Bryan, Ohio 
Metal, plastic
1966
Private Collection

Henry Simon Winzeler was born in Ohio in 1876 and was a young dentist with a small practice in Archbold, Ohio, when, in 1908, inspired by a department store mirror, he decided to start manufacturing decorative frames and filling them with copies of photographs. (One early success was the Cupid Awake/Cupid Asleep framed image of a curly-haired child dressed as a bow-wielding cherub.) Before long, the company, which had relocated to Bryan, Ohio, was specializing in metal lithography, positioning it perfectly to meet the 20th-century demand for colorful, durable items for children. Within a decade, the Ohio Art Company was producing toys, and while much of the company's financial success may have come from bestsellers like the Etch-A-Sketch, their iconic lunchboxes are a nostalgic favorite.


135
Pitcher
Libbey Glass Company
Toledo, Ohio
Cut glass
1890-1920
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The New England Glass Company was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1818, part of a rich tradition of glass manufacturing in New England. But after the Civil War, hit hard by competitors using cheaper production methods, the business began to lag. In the last years of the 19th century, a new owner stepped in, the company was relocated to Toledo, and then renamed - Libbey Glass.

The move, along with an early partnership with Ford Motors in nearby Detroit to supply automotive glass, put the company on more stable financial footing, as did a collaboration with Michael Joseph Owens, who pioneered the automated production of light bulbs. Owens successfully adapted his methods for Libbey's production, and with the rising demand for bottled products, Libbey's production volume took off. Libbey operated from 1892 to 1935 when they became a division of Owens-Illinois, at which point the company was offered for sale independently and began to operate again in 1993 as Libbey Inc.


136
Vase
Charles W. Clewell (1876-1965)
Canton, Ohio
Copper-clad earthenware
1920-1940
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Charles Clewell was not a potter. He was a trained metalsmith in Canton and, around the turn of the century, began experimenting with coating or covering ceramic bodies with metal. Numerous art potters were producing glazes that imitated metal and Rookwood and a few others produced pieces with metal, usually silver, overlay. Clewell wanted to go beyond this and completely encase a piece of pottery with copper. He never divulged or wrote down the techniques he developed to clad and patina his pots, not even to his daughter, who ran the shop where he sold his wares.


137
Cupboard 
Unknown maker
Zoar, Ohio
Walnut, pine, poplar 
1830-1850
From the collection of Alan and Nancy Wainwright

In 1817, a group of separatists from Württemberg, Germany led by Joseph Bimeler (born 1778) established a community along the Tuscarawas River. The Society of Separatists of Zoar lived a communal life, not only remaining self-sufficient, but prosperous through much of the nineteenth century. After a gradual decline following Bimeler’s death in 1853, the Society disbanded in 1898.
As in other Germanic communities in Ohio, the Biedermeier style influenced the furniture made in Zoar. Popular in Austria and Germany in the early nineteenth century, it is characterized by a restrained classicism, which is evident on this cupboard. The use of figured walnut also reflects this cupboard’s European predecessors, where the figure of the wood, rather than carving or paint, provided the principle decoration.


138
Bottle 
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840
Karen and Jud Fults

Although the swirled bottles in Gallery 1 required an extra step to make (the dipping of the gather of molten glass into a mold prior to blowing), plain bottles such as this seem to have been made in smaller quantities, and few survive today. This bottle is about as simple as glassblowing gets, but its exceptional elegance reminds us that craft is both art and skill.


139
Pair of Potpourri Jars
Homer Laughlin China Company
East Liverpool, Ohio
Porcelain
1886-1889
Robert Hunter

During the second half of the nineteenth century, East Liverpool was one of the principal pottery centers of the Ohio River Valley. In 1872, Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin were awarded $5,000 from that city to build a pottery. They found success quickly, winning an award for their white ware at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The following year, Homer Laughlin bought his brother out of the company and renamed it Homer Laughlin, and changed the name to the Homer Laughlin China Company in 1896.

The early years of Homer Laughlin were years of great expansion, largely through highly successful lines of white wares that were popular in hotels and other institutional settings. However, in the mid-1880s, Laughlin experimented with creating true porcelain, which the company did in 1886. Local newspaper editor Jere Simms proclaimed Laughlin’s porcelain, “the finest, thinnest and most translucent of china can be produced in America.”

In the ensuing few years, the Laughlin factory took porcelain one step further and produced pâte-sur-pâte (“paste on paste”) porcelain. Developed by Marc-Louis Solon (1835-1913), who worked both at the Sèvres Pottery in France and at Mintons in England, the technique involves creating relief decoration by painting on successive layers of slip rather than using a sprig mold. This laborious process allowed the decoration to retain the translucence that was so sought after in porcelain. It is not known who brought the pâte-sur-pâte technique to Laughlin and East Liverpool, but it was not produced for very long as the company discontinued porcelain in 1889.

Homer Laughlin would then return focus solely to earthenware and continue to grow, ultimately establishing a ten-acre plant across the Ohio at Newell, West Virginia. The company would later become well known for its popular line of colorful dinnerware, called Fiesta, which it introduced in 1936.


140
Coverlet
Henry Enders (1828-1902)
Sydney, Ohio
Wool, cotton
1857
David and Sharen Neuhardt

American colonists would have been producing textiles on looms as soon as they had the materials to do so, but Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s development of the Jacquard machine was the result of nearly 300 years of gradual improvements, and the result revolutionized textile designs. The Jacquard machine, an apparatus that mounted to a hand loom, arrived in America in the early 1820s, and marked the golden age of American coverlets.

Functioning in many ways like early punch-card computer systems, the Jacquard machine used a complex series of cards, each of which corresponded to one line in the pattern. Openings in the cards either allowed or blocked hooks and threads passing through, allowing for eye-dazzling designs and customized corner blocks with details like the names of owner and manufacturer as well as the date of manufacture.

 141
Blanket Chest
Jacob Werrey (1838-1893)
German Township, Fulton County, Ohio
Poplar
1872
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The vividly decorated chests made by Jacob Werrey have become icons of Ohio furniture, yet relatively little is known about the Mennonite craftsman. He was born in Ohio to German-born Peter and Swiss-born Catherine Werrey. Peter died in 1859, and Jacob’s older brother Benedict (Benji) took over the family farm, where thirty-year-old Jacob is listed as a carpenter in 1870. The 1880 census shows the Werrey farm still run by Benji, and now without their mother, who died in 1874. Interestingly, in the same census, Jacob is recorded living as a boarder with David Hochstetter in Locke Township, Elkhart County, Indiana. However, he must have either been visiting or simply did not stay there long, as multiple 1880s blanket chests survive with traditions of ownership in Fulton County, including a chest dated 1882 and with the initials “MB,” probably for Magdalena Baer, the daughter of Fulton County gunsmith John Baer. The 1888 Atlas of Fulton County, Ohio shows Jacob Werrey owning a small parcel of land on the main road east of the village of Burlington. Almost certainly, this was his carpentry shop, and Jacob continued to live on the family farm, just a short walk away.

This chest is typical of Werrey’s blanket chests in both construction and decoration. The use of silver and gold stenciled decoration, as well as the date and the initials of the original owner, reflect a Mennonite tradition found in other settlements in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, northern Indiana, and southwestern Michigan. The makers of furniture in these German and Swiss communities continued to produce forms and styles, such as the decorated blanket chest, well after they had fallen out of fashion elsewhere.

Werrey’s earliest chests date to the 1860s, when mainstream American furniture was reveling in Victorian opulence, yet Werrey continued production of such chests up until his death in 1893.


142
Pitcher
Vance Faience Company
Tilttonsville, Ohio
Glazed earthenware
1900-1903
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Hound-handled jugs like this go back as far as the early 19th century in England, but probably came to this country in the middle of the 19th century by way of Daniel Greatbatch, an English potter who immigrated to the US, working in New Jersey, Vermont, and elsewhere. Numerous potteries in the East copied this design, as did several Ohio potters, including Harker, Taylor and Co. in East Liverpool and William Bromley in Cincinnati. Nearly all of these potters were working in the middle of the 19th century and with yellow clay (most often with a Rockingham-type glaze).
Fast forward a half century and this same pitcher design shows up in the Tiltonville, Ohio pottery of J. Nelson Vance. Made of white clay and in three sizes, most of the Vance jugs are either matte green or in an airbrushed bicolor glaze using black and various shades of brown. We have also seen these pitchers in bright cobalt blue (just once), a blue and white "delft" glaze (only twice), and in this pink (only twice).

The Vance jugs were produced at the opening of the 20th century, more than 50 years after the design first came to this country. There are loads of this type of jug around, but you won't find more distinctive glazes than on these Vance examples.


143
Sideboard
Unknown maker
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cherry, poplar
1830
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Thanks to a collection of annotated, early 20th century photographs of the interior of a Hastings, Minnesota home, we know that this sideboard was made, almost certainly in Cincinnati, for C.P. (1803-1868) and Elizabeth (1803-1866) Bronson of Mount Vernon, Ohio. It then passed to their daughter Mary (1829-1904), who took it west with her husband William Le Duc (1823-1917). It was their daughter, Alice (1868-1962) who noted, on the photograph, next to the sideboard, "It came from Mt. Vernon, the home of Grandmother Bronson." The somewhat quirky sideboard is a classic example of Cincinnati vernacular furniture of the classical era.


144
Tall Case Clock
Movement: James Campbell (act. c. 1808); case: unknown maker
​Steubenville, Ohio
Mahogany, cherry, poplar
1808
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In the early 19th century, a"tall clock" such as this would have been extremely expensive, likely the most expensive piece of furniture in its owner's home. Of particular note here is that the casemaker used mahogany, which would have been imported from plantations in central and south America (where the wood was harvested by enslaved Africans). The earliest documented use of imported mahogany in Ohio was in the making of furniture for Thomas Worthington's Chillicothe home, Adena, which was built and furnished between 1806 and 1809.


145
Pair of Show Towels
Possibly Samantha Buckwalter Mellinger (1851-1919)
Wayne County, Ohio
Silk on linen
1871
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

William and Daniel Mellinger were the two eldest sons of Christian Mellinger and Elizabeth Showalter, who moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Wayne County, Ohio, early in their marriage. William (1843-1921) married Eliazbeth Buckwalter and remained in Wayne County. Probate records in Wayne County in 1913, which identify a Daniel Mellinger of the correct age (born 1845) and list a William Mellinger as brother, indicate that Daniel moved to Arkansas, where a Daniel Mellinger does appear in the 1910 census at the age of 65 as an unmarried farmer. The Wayne County probate records indicated Daniel died the following year in 1911.

146
Gazing Ball
Marietta Silver Globe Company
Marietta, Ohio
Blown glass
Mid-20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Gazing balls date back to Venice in the 1400s, and they have many names: mirror balls, lawn balls, witch balls. They are said to have captivated King Ludwig of Bavaria, and he had them made in an assortment of sizes and colors to display around his grounds, having them hung in trees and floated in ponds.

George Rigoux started making gazing balls in Marietta and selling them out of his garage in the 1930s, and in no time at all found himself running a booming business. The Marietta Silver Globe Manufacturing company operated until the late 1990s, when the descendants operating the business became embroiled in disputes, ultimately ending in the company's collapse. Some of Rigoux's descendants still make glass today.

147
Needlework Sampler
Maris (Marie) Mendenhall (1805-1872)
Clinton County, Ohio
Silk on linen
1832
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Maris Mendenhall was born on January 9, 1805 in the Springfield Monthly Meeting, Guilford County, North Carolina to Nathan (1774-1847) and Nancy (1773-1857). In various documentary sources, she appears as “Marie,” “Mariss,” and “Maris.”

She came west to Ohio with her family in 1805 or 1806 as in 1806, her sister, Elizabeth, was born in Clinton County. Elizabeth’s sampler, also dated 1832 and of a nearly identical design, is illustrated in Sue Studebaker’s landmark Ohio is My Dwelling Place (p. 76). That the samplers of Maris and Elizabeth, as well as Phebe Doan (dated 1834 and illustrated in Studebaker, p. 77) all are of the same overall design, it is likely that they all received instruction from the same teacher, probably in Wilmington. According to Sue Studebaker, Elizabeth Satterthwaite’s 1830 sampler (illustrated in Studebaker, p. 46) was stitched in Wilmington, although the Satterthwaite family lived in Waynesville.

Her sampler is a more complex version of the same design as the Mendenhall and Doan samplers.

The year after Maris worked her sampler, she married James Hartman (1/20/1795-7/17/1866) of Harrison County, Virginia (now West Virginia). The couple remained in Clinton County their entire lives, had two children (Nathan George and Jonathan Hadley), and are buried in Wilmington.
Maris appears in numerous period documents, including the 1850 and 1860 census, a probate document related to her late husband, their marriage record, and an excerpt from the 1915 History of Clinton County, Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions.


148
Drive-In Sign
Unknown maker
Canton, Ohio
Painted wood
​1950-1970
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Drive-in movies as a concept were around from the 1930s, but it was several decades before the technology would advance enough to overcome all the challenges of projecting light and sound in an outdoor space. The first patented drive-in was opened in 1933 in Camden, New Jersey, but in the years just before World War II, there would only be 15 in the entire country.
After World War II, however, everything would change – and rapidly. In 1947, there were around 150 drive-ins, and just four years later, in 1951, there would be more than 4,000. Hundreds of new drive-ins opened every year, and drive-ins flourished with the rise of cars, suburbs, and the Baby Boomers.

Drive-ins were more than just movies. Many had playgrounds, elaborate concession stands, and offered sideshow-style entertainment with events like petting shows. Parents fed their children dinner, put them in their pajamas and went to the movies, where everyone would have a snack, watch a family-friendly feature, and then children would curl up in the backseat and sleep through the more grownup second show. And because they were cheaper to maintain than indoor theaters, ticket prices were usually cheaper too.

The decline started in the 70s, due to a variety of factors. Real estate prices around suburbs began going up, as did interest rates, and suddenly there was less cheap land available close to towns. The Energy Crisis of the late 70s made Americans a little less in love with their cars, and daylight-saving time was more widely adopted as well, meaning later start times. By the late 1980s, there were fewer than 200 drive-ins in the U.S. and Canada.
In recent years though, drive-ins seem to be experiencing a modest comeback. Some found ways to make the land more profitable by operating large outdoor flea markets or swap meets during off-hours, while others are offering a more boutique experience for just 40-50 vehicles while partnering with trendy food trucks.

And then COVID happened and suddenly drive-ins were generating 85-95% of theater revenue for a period of time! Today, there are 400-500 drive-ins operating around the United States, offering Baby Boomers and Gen X a hefty dose of nostalgia.


149
Millennium Falcon
Kenner Products
Cincinnati, Ohio
Plastic
1977-1983
Private Collection

The release of Star Wars on May 4, 1977 marked the beginning of a new era of American cinematic history, and in more ways the one. While the special effects and cinematography initially captured the attention of moviegoers, it was the merchandising that held it...for 49 years and counting. 20th Century Fox was willing to fund the space movie, but did not think much of it, and because of their low opinion, they cheerfully agreed to let George Lucas take a much lower salary in exchange for all merchandise rights. Prior to Star Wars, movies did sometimes generate related merchandise, such as toys, but nothing had been attempted on the scale of what Lucas did with Star Wars. He negotiated a deal for the marketing of Star Wars-related toys with Cincinnati-based toy company Kenner (then a small subsidiary of General Foods), and after the film's release, Kenner was almost immediately unable to meet demand.
Nearly a half century and many sequels later, more than $30 BILLION of Star Wars merchandise has been sold.


150
"Midwestern Hayride" Glasses
Anchor Hocking
Lancaster, Ohio
Glass
1950-1960
Private Collection

Midwestern Hayride, sometimes just Midwest Hayride, had its beginnings as a country music radio show in Cincinnati in the 1930s. Later it made the transition to television, eventually being carried nationally for most of the 1950s. As a variety show, mostly with local musicians, and folksy humor, the show would set a model that the popular show HeeHaw would follow.
The show had broad appeal in Cincinnati and the surrounding area in part because of the Appalachian Migration, a mass movement from the 1910s through the 1970s of poor whites from the Appalachian Highlands to urban areas in search of prosperity. This movement would only pick up speed throughout the 20th century as coalmining simultaneously declined in demand while increasing in terms of mechanization.

Between 1950 and 1970, an estimated 3,000,000 Appalachians would leave home in search of something better (for context, the Great Migration, the term of a similar exodus of African-Americans from the rural South, numbered 5,000,000), and while many would head further out into the world, most would choose industrial cities that also felt relatively close to home – Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, and even Lancaster. These glasses, made by Anchor Hocking, quite possibly were produced by some of those Appalachians, who also left for work as the glass industry began to slump, closing smaller glass houses closer to home.

Appalachians would follow their own form of chain migration, moving from West Virginia or Kentucky to the “big city,” getting established, and then welcoming a cousin or a sibling from back home, who would, quite often, then be the next link in the chain for the next family member. Meanwhile, companies would actively recruit Appalachians, viewing them as unlikely to unionize, and they were also often ostracized because the standard of living in the areas they were emigrating from was so low.

As a result, like other immigrant groups, they often formed their own enclaves within cities and brought their own culture, influencing regional tastes in food and music.


151
Goblet
Unknown maker
Probably New York, New York
Silver
1851
Ohio History Connection

The genesis of the Ohio State Fair was the creation of the Board of Agriculture by the state legislature in 1846. After a couple of years of "district" fairs, the first State Fair occurred near Cincinnati in 1850, and an estimated 25,000 people attended. Since that first fair, premiums, or awards, have been given for a variety of livestock, goods, products, essays, and efforts. Today, ribbons are awarded, but in the early days, those premiums were often cash, or sometimes silver medals or cups.


152
Euclid Beach Park
Oscar T. Nelson (1891-1972)
Cleveland, Ohio
Mixed media
1960
Joni Barnhill and Kyle Wittel

​Like Paul Patton and Leuty McGuffey Manahan (both also in this exhibition), Oscar T. Nelson painted nostalgic scenes from memory. He lived his entire life in Cleveland, and when one of his works was entered into the Cleveland Museum of Art's May Show, he described himself as a retired tool and die maker "now painting amusement parks." Euclid Beach Park's design was inspired by New York's Coney Island, and included vaudeville acts, concerts, gambling, a beer garden, and sideshows as well as a few early amusement rides, with the beach also being a main attraction. It struggled early on, but as the park added more rides, it grew in popularity until the 1960s when it began to decline, closing for good in 1969. The iconic carousel has since been restored and is on view at the Western Reserve Historical Society.


153
Covered Container
Pease-Brown Families (1850-1975)
Concord Township, Lake County, Ohio
Maple
1901
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Massachusetts-born David Mills Pease (1815-1890) came west to Ohio before 1840, first appearing as a farmer in that year’s census. By 1850, he had established himself as a manufacturer of planes, chisels, and other edged tools. Pease used a lathe to turn the adjustment knobs on his planes, and that woodturning soon became the focus of his, and later, his family’s business. The Pease family, through marriage and business partnerships, became closely connected to the Brown family, and for three generations, the Pease-Brown families produced a wide variety of turned woodenware, such as jars, cups, spice containers, sewing and needle boxes, and toys. Pease occasionally labeled his work "D.M. PEASE, MANUFACTURER OF AMERICAN HOLLOW WARE, SPOOL STANDS, And all kinds of Fancy
Turned Work, Address Orders to D.M. PEASE, CONCORD, LAKE CO., O,” and he sold his wares at numerous fairs and expositions, including the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo.


154
The Ohio Statehouse
Emerson Burkhart (1905-1969)
Columbus, Ohio
Oil on canvas board
1956
Bob Burns

In early 1812, after the state capital moved from Chillicothe to Zanesville and then back to Chillicothe, the state legislature decided to make a permanent home on the "High Banks opposite Franklinton at the Forks of the Scioto most known as Wolf's Ridge," and they settled on the name Columbus. The legislature met in a two-story brick building for nearly fifty years until the new (current) statehouse was completed (despite having its cornerstone laid in 1839).


155
Laws of the Territory of the United States North-West of the Ohio...
Published by William Maxwell (1766-1809)
Cincinnati, Ohio
Print on paper
​1796
David and Sharen Neuhardt

In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which outlined the process by which the land north and west of the Ohio River would be settled. The next year, settlers began pouring into the Northwest Territory, and among the first tasks that needed accomplished was the establishment of a legal code. The Laws of the Territory of the United States North-west of the Ohio was published in 1796 in Cincinnati by William Maxwell. Believed to be the first book published in the Northwest Territory, it became known as the Maxwell Code.


156
Christmas Mug
Jerry Davis
Yellow Springs, Ohio
Glazed earthenware
1992
Ohio History Connection

Ohio-native Jerry Davis began making pottery in high school in Vandalia. From 1983 until 2000, he was commissioned to make a special mug each year for John and Annie Glenn to give out as Christmas presents to friends and colleagues in Ohio and in Washington.


157
Parade Lantern
Toledo Metal Sign Company
Toledo, Ohio
Painted tin
1902
Melvin and Connie Porcher

The Halloween we celebrate today would be little recognized by the original Celtic celebrants, from whose harvest holiday, Samhain, our modern traditions evolved, but traces of those ancient customs remain. Jack-o’-lantern was a folklore term used to describe the faint eerie lights that floated above bogs, created by decomposing material, and while costumes and trick-or-treat are much more modern notions, using a carved vegetable as a lantern has much older (pardon the pun) roots! Eighteenth-century Irish pranksters hollowed out turnips or mangelwurzels (a type of beet), carved faces into them, and used stumps of candles to illuminate their Halloween mischief.
It is that tradition which inspired this painted tin lantern in the form of a carved pumpkin or jack-o’-lantern, patented in 1902 and manufactured by the Toledo Metal Sign Company. Mounted on a pole or hung on the end of one with a hook, it was lit within by a candle.


158
Miniature or Night Lamp
Fostoria Shade and Lamp Company or the Consolidated Lamp and Glass Company
Fostoria, Ohio
Molded glass
1892-1894
Melvin and Connie Porcher

The end of the nineteenth century was the era of consolidation in the American glass industry. In addition to the giant merger of nearly twenty glass companies into the National Glass Company in 1899, a few years earlier, in 1893, two firms—Fostoria Shade and Lamp Company of Ohio and the Wallace and McAfee Company of Pennsylvania—merged to form the Consolidated Lamp and Glass Company. They began production at the Fostoria factory, but a fire forced them to move to Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.

During this period, lamps remained a key product for many glass manufacturers. Lamps came in an astounding variety of sizes, forms, and types, including “night lamps,” or miniature lamps intended for nighttime use when bright light was not needed, such as in a bedroom. Some manufacturers took advantage of technological advances to offer an even more diverse selection of lamps, including novelty and character lamps. The Santa Claus lamp was first advertised by the Fostoria Shade and Lamp Company in May of 1892, and then a few years later by the Consolidated Lamp and Glass Company.


159
Rowfant Club Candlestick
Frank Wilcox (1887-1964) for Cowan Pottery
Rocky River, Ohio
Glazed earthenware
1925
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Guy Cowan officially opened his pottery in 1912, but it had to close down during World War I, during which time he served in the Chemical Warfare Service. Shortly after his return to Cleveland, the gas well on his Lakewood property ran dry, so Cowan relocated his pottery to Rocky River.

The 1920s were the heyday of Cowan Pottery. Production included original artist works by dozens of leading artists. Cowan also began production of a line of commercial wares for broader consumption, and were sold through a network of retailers from coast to coast.

Cowan mined his Cleveland School connections for talented artists. Watercolorist Frank Wilcox was educated at, and later taught at the Cleveland School. He designed this candlestick in 1925 for the Rowfant Club, a book and literary society founded in Cleveland in 1892. The club was nearly named the Gopher Club, but the founding members ultimately settled on Rowfant, the name of the estate of Frederick Locker-Lampson, a noted English book collector. Gophers being related to, and apparently often confused with, groundhogs led to the club’s mascot, a stained glass groundhog, and the production of groundhog candlesticks, made in bronze by Tiffany and Company in New York, and in pottery by Cowan. On the book is the Rowfant motto, “Light seeking Light doth Light of Light beguile.” Each member of the Rowfant Club has a candlestick that he sets at his place at the table.


160
Devo Ensemble
Unknown maker
Tyvek (polyethylene) and Velcro
1980
Ohio History Connection

In the late 1960s, two Kent State art students, Bob Lewis and Gerald Casale, began joking of American society as regressing--a process of devolution. On May 4, 1970, their joking turned serious, and along with several other friends, they formed a band and named it Devo. With a new-age sound infused with industrial edge, Devo enjoyed success, and certainly some notoriety for their stage performances, which included the band members in yellow Tyvek jumpsuits and flower pot-type hats. 


161
Gavel
Perry Miller
Wadsworth, Ohio
Wood
1973
Ohio History Connection

On this commemorative gavel are the names of the 62 Ohio governors to that point, with the sitting governor being Democrat John J. Gilligan, who served a single term from 1971-1975.

162
Universalist Church, Leesburg, Ohio
Unknown artist
Leesburg, Ohio
Pen and ink on paper
19th century
Cameron Kelley

Universalist churches were widespread in the 19th century, and their membership was very active in the abolitionist movement. Universalist beliefs center around the idea that there will be a universal reconciliation, when everyone will have their relationship with God restored, a belief that put them at odds with much of mainstream American Protestant thought in the 19th century, which dictated a path of intentional salvation and baptism.

At one time, small Universalist churches dotted rural towns like Leesburg, but in the years after the Civil War, membership began to decline. Many would dissolve, be absorbed into other congregations, or merge with Unitarian churches. By the 1870s, there are hints in local newspapers that the Highland County Universalist churches were struggling. In March of 1883, the building, at the corner of Main and Church, was sold to A.L. Heimburger who, it was reported, hoped to use it for some business purpose.Later that fall, he was preparing it to be rented.

A.L. Heimburger was Andreas Laessle Heimburger, born in Baden around 1849. He was a cabinetmaker who sold and repaired furniture. (One period newspaper refers to him as “the furniture man.”) He married Anna Horst in 1879, and it seems that they had several children, but by 1900, he refers to himself as divorced in the census records and Anna appears later in Kansas with the children and a new husband.
A.L. Heimburger, later Andrew or Andy, died in Chillicothe in 1910.

The building appears to still be in place, but the widening of streets seems to have necessitated the removal of the front columns. We were unable to confirm but believe it to be the annex of Leesburg’s Trinity Church.


163
Seder Dish
Unknown maker
Probably Europe
​Pewter
Early 19th century
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

Simson Thorman (1811-1881) immigrated to the US from Unsleben, Bavaria in 1820. He bought land in Cleveland in 1832, went west, and then returned to Cleveland in 1837 and stayed, becoming the first permanent Jewish resident of the city. Two years later, he encouraged 19 more immigrants from Unsleben to settle in Cleveland, thereby establishing a Jewish community. This pewter dish, similar to a small porringer, was used for Passover seder by the Thorman family.


164
Psyanky Eggs
Pete Yakob
Belpre, Ohio
Eggshells, paint
21st century
Pete Yakob

Pysanky eggs are a traditional Ukrainian method of decorating Easter eggs using beeswax and dyes. Wax is applied, either by using a drop-and-drag method or a stylus-like tool called a kistka that has a tiny funnel to direct and control the wax. (Pysaty means "to write" or "to inscribe" in Ukrainian.) Traditionally, this was done using a candle as a heat source, and the kistka would be a customized, handmade tool. A design is applied, the egg is dipped in a light color of dye, yellow, for example, and then additional design elements are added, and the egg is dipped in successively darker dyes. Yellows, reds, and black were the traditional color palette. After the layers of dye have been set and dried, the egg is held near a candle to soften the wax and then wiped gently away, creating a shiny finish. A variety of other egg decoration forms are practiced, and there are regional differences to the preferences and design motifs used.

Ukrainians first arrived in Ohio in significant numbers in the 1870s, but actual numbers are difficult to arrive at, because they were often listed with a variety of origins, as the region of Ukraine had been occupied by Hungarians, Poles, Austrians, and others. Many hoped to stay only for a brief time, saving up to return home and become landowners, but World War I meant that many of them would feel compelled to remain. Later immigrants arrived in larger numbers because of the turmoil in Europe during and after the wars.

Pete Yakob was the grandchild of Polish and Ukrainian immigrants, and creating pysanky eggs was a part of his childhood in New Castle, Pennsylvania. He attended Duquesne University and moved to Belpre, Ohio, where he spent his career as a chemical engineer.

165
Hotel Sign
Unknown maker
Minerva, Ohio
Wood, metal
1930-1950
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In 1920, the Barker family bought an early farm in Minerva, Ohio. They were teachers, raised chickens, and opened their home to travelers.There were many travelers as Barker's Tourist Home was situated along the Lincoln Highway. The 3,397-mile long highway had been dedicated in 1937 and was among the first transcontinental highways designed and built for automobiles. It stretched from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, and it brought growth and prosperity to hundreds of towns along its route as thousands of travelers ventured across the country every year. Its success is believed to have been part of the inspiration for the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which established the American interstate highway system.


166
Jigsaw Puzzle
Standard Oil Company of Ohio
Ohio
Pasteboard and paper
1933
Private collection

In the 1930s, Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO) sponsored an NBC radio show starring Gene Carroll and Glenn Rowling as characters Jake and Lena. Listeners followed them on their comical adventures. Puzzle No 2, "In Dutch" follows the couple to the Netherlands.


167
Zoar Hotel Meal Ticket
Unknown printer
Tuscarawas County, Ohio
Print on paper
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


168
Zoar Hotel Dining Chair
Unknown maker
Tuscarawas County, Ohio
Mixed woods
Mid-19th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

While the Zoarites were a separatist community, they relied not only on trade with the "outside" world, but they opened their doors to outsiders as well. With the completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal through part of the community, the community encouraged local tourism and built the Zoar Hotel. The hotel catered to folks simply traveling through and also those who sought out Zoar as a picturesque destination.


169
Quilt
Women's Society of the Reformed Zion Congregation
Toledo, Ohio
Cotton
1897
Ohio History Connection

The Zion German Evangelical Reformed Church served the Toledo community of Lenk's Hill, a 50-square block section of the city that was known for Peter Lenk, a Bavarian immigrant who created a winery and a vineyard there in the 1850s, after he was on his way to St. Louis but fell in love with Toledo instead.

Churches were extremely important to immigrants, offering the familiar rituals of home and connection with those of similar backgrounds and beliefs. The various women's social organizations connected to churches offered fundraising support and allowed women opportunities to gather, support each other, and share domestic work and skills.


170
Quilt
Unknown maker
Columbiana County, Ohio
Cotton
1846-1847
Ohio History Connection

Women relied heavily on community to help them prepare for lives as wives and mothers. Ann Coppock was part of Columbiana County's large Quaker community when this quilt was made likely with the help of the women in that same community. Ann was born there in 1823, and she married John Butler in 1847, and it seems likely from the dates of the signatures that it was made in honor of that occasion. Ann and John would have at least nine children and live in Columbiana County until their deaths in 1903 and 1900, respectively.


171
Olympic Torch
The Coleman Company Metal
2002
Ohio History Connection

The 2002 Winter Olympics were held in February in Salt Lake City, Utah. As is tradition for all Olympic games, the ceremonial torch relay begins in Olympia, Greece, and ends with the lighting of the fire at the primary stadium in the host city. This was one of the torches carried in Ohio during that relay. It has an icicle design, and a flame contained within glass at the top of the torch. The torches were manufactured by the Coleman Lantern Company, the well-known lantern maker founded in Wichita, Kansas, in the early 20th century.


172
View of the Zanesville Statehouse
Conn Baker (1870-1944)
Columbus, Ohio
Oil on canvas
1910-1925
Ohio History Connection

When Ohio was granted statehood, the capital was set in Chillicothe, the home of Thomas Worthington, the "Father of Ohio Statehood." In 1810, as part of some legislative wrangling, the capital moved to Zanesville, and then two years later, it moved back to Chillicothe. It finally moved, in 1816, to the new city of Columbus, which was more centrally located.


173
Balloonfest T-Shirt
Unknown maker
Cotton
1986
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

In September of 1986, the United Way launched a publicity stunt fundraiser that had been planned for over six months. They were going to set the record for the most balloons released at one time, and with the help of 2,500 volunteers, many of them, like the donor of this shirt, high school students, nearly 1,500,000 balloons were filled for release. Children sold sponsorships at the price of two balloons for $1. On Saturday, September 27, with a crowd of 100,000 and bad weather approaching, organizers ordered the release just before 2:00 p.m., just as a cold front was moving in.

The cold weather and rain pushed the balloons back down almost immediately, and disaster ensued. Traffic snarled around the area as balloons were drifting across roadways, a small airport had to temporarily suspend flights, and the downed balloons clogged waterways through northeast Ohio, even complicating a search-and-rescue mission that was in progress. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes it as the largest mass balloon release with 1,429,643 balloons, but because of what is now understood to be the tremendously negative environmental impact of such events, they no longer measure balloon releases.


174
John Robinson Circus Wagon
Bob Mieffert
Cincinnati, Ohio
Carved wood
1960-1990
Loan from Patrick and Brenda Wentzel Miniature Circus Collection


175
John Robinson Circus Wagon
Bob Mieffert
Cincinnati, Ohio
Carved wood
1960-1990
Loan from Patrick and Brenda Wentzel Miniature Circus Collection


176
John Robinson Circus Wagon
Bob Mieffert
Cincinnati, Ohio
Carved wood
1960-1990
Loan from Patrick and Brenda Wentzel Miniature Circus Collection


177
John Robinson Circus Figures
Bob Mieffert
Cincinnati, Ohio
Carved wood
1960-1990
Loan from Patrick and Brenda Wentzel Miniature Circus Collection

The John Robinson Circus winter-quartered in Terrace Park just outside Cincinnati from 1882 until 1916 when the circus was sold to the American Circus Corporation. The circus featured a spectacular circus parade with animal cages designed and built using architectural elements such as domed and gabled roofs, arched openings, and bay windows on some of the larger cages. The unusually designed circus cage wagons are known among circus historians as the “cottage cage” wagons. There were approximately 30 original John Robinson Circus cottage cage wagons, and they were built between 1898 and 1904 by the George Schmidt Company of Cincinnati. The cottage cage wagons were used in street parades until around 1912.

These miniature models of the John Robinson Circus cottage cage wagons were built by Robert Miefert of Cincinnati, Ohio, from the 1960s through the 1980s, and only a small portion of the circus, which is still together, could be displayed here. The elephant group represents the John Robinson Circus elephant herd, and they were sculpted and carved by Mr. Miefert. Miefert was a long-time member of the Circus Model Builders organization, first organized in 1935 and continuing today.

The models are built using three quarters of an inch to the foot scale. When Mr. Miefert began building these models in the early 1960s, the original wagons were no longer in existence, requiring him to research the dimensions, colors, and nuances of the wagons from historical documents and period circus reviews. In the process, he accumulated one of the most extensive collections of vintage photographs of cottage cage wagons in parades and on circus lots. An expert draftsman, Miefert used the measurements and details to draft full-size scale drawings of each wagon. From the scale drawings, he used his model building skills and knowledge as a circus historian to recreate the wagons in miniature. These three wagons and others in this collection represent one of the most colorful circus parades in American circus history.


178
Doorstop or Chimney Ornament
James Hill (b. 1828)
East Liverpool, Ohio
Glazed yellow ware
1850-1880
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The potteries in Staffordshire, England have been producing figures for centuries, and one of the most common figures produced was the spaniel. As far back as King Charles II, spaniels have been highly regarded, a favorite among royalty and nobility and often depicted in portraits.
Staffordshire spaniels peaked in popularity during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). They were typically used in pairs as mantel decorations or “chimney ornaments.”
Pottery spaniels proved extremely popular in Ohio as well. First, they appeared in Rockingham-glazed yellow ware, as well as stoneware. Later pottery dogs appeared in a wide variety of clays and glazes and well into the twentieth century, potters in brick and sewer tile factories were making seated spaniels as “end of day” pieces.


179
Doorstop or Chimney Ornament
Unknown maker
Ohio
Sewer tile
1880-1920
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Sewer tile is a coarse earthenware that is primarily used, as its nickname implies, in the manufacture of pipe. Fired at a high temperature, the clay vitrifies making it impervious to water—perfect for the conveyance of water. Although sewer tile was produced in many parts of the country, Ohio, particularly Tuscarawas County, was a major center of sewer tile production.
Production at sewer tile factories was not limited to pipe alone; many factories also made garden urns, planters, and bird houses, as well as a variety of figures, such as dogs. Many workers in these factories also made whimsical “end of day” figures. This spaniel figure, like so many other Ohio pottery dogs, is based on the popular spaniels made in Staffordshire, England.


180
Doorstop or Chimney Ornament
Unknown maker
Ohio Sewer tile
1880-1930
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Also made of sewer tile, this spaniel is the most common of the Ohio sewer tile dogs. Although these dogs' English predecessors were most definitely made for fireplace mantels, the heft of this dog suggests that it was very possibly a doorstop.


181
Doorstop or Chimney Ornament
Logan Pottery
​Logan, Ohio
Glazed earthenware
1910-1930
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

It would seem that in the early twentieth century, dogs were among the most popular decorative figures made in Ohio potteries. The Logan Pottery Company was established by Frank and Charles Adcock in 1902, and though they made primarily utilitarian wares, they also produced bulldog, elephant, and possibly cat figures, some of which were based on, or possibly even using molds acquired from, other local potteries.


182
Pig
National Sewer Pipe Company
Akron, Ohio
Sewer tile
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Sewer tile factories made a menagerie of animal figures: dogs, frogs, crows, owls, and groundhogs, as well as pigs and many more. Some animal figures are less refined and probably are "end of day" pieces made by pottery workers from leftover clay, however many were made in molds and highly detailed, suggesting that they were made for sale as part of the potteries' product lines.


183
William Henry Harrison Presidential Campaign Banner
"E.W.H."
Roseville, Ohio
Paint and ink on linen
1840
Melvin and Connie Porcher

Harrison was the last president born a British subject (in the colony of Virginia in 1773) and remains the shortest-serving president, having died in 1841 after just 31 days in office. This banner was carried in the procession at the "Great Harrison Barbecue" campaign event in Zanesville on July 4, 1840. He served in a variety of territorial and federal offices, and he served as a general in the War of 1812, leading a successful campaign against Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe. When he selected John Tyler as his running mate, they became known as "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too." Their opponent, President Martin Van Buren, ridiculed Harrison as a bumpkin who would rather sit in his cabin and drink cider. The attempted insult failed when Harrison and Tyler rebranded themselves as the "log cabin and cider" campaign, which allowed them to better connect with regular folks.


184
Shaker Work Table
Unknown maker
Union Village, Ohio
Cherry, poplar
1830-1850
Perfect-Sandel Farmhouse Collection, Preservation Parks of Delaware County

Founded in England in 1747, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing were also known as the Shakers (or Shaking Quakers) for their enthusiastic movements during their worship. They came to America in the 1770s led by Mother Ann Lee. In the early 19th century, the growing movement looked west, establishing Union Village on Turtle Creek in Warren County, Ohio in 1805. It would become one of the largest Shaker communities with over 600 members in 1818, and longest running, lasting until 1912. Today, there are only three Shakers left in the last community, Sabbath Day Lake, Maine.


185
Shaker Side Chair
Unknown maker
Union Village, Ohio
Mixed woods
1830-1850
David and Sharen Neuhardt


186
Portrait of Antioch College's First Graduating Class
Unknown photographer
Yellow Springs, Ohio
Ambrotype photograph
1857
David and Sharen Neuhardt

Founded in 1850, Antioch College was opened to students in 1852 as a non-sectarian school, and its first president was noted education reformer and abolitionist Horace Mann (1796-1859). Co-educational from its inception, Antioch was the fourth American college to admit African Americans as equal students, and one of its original faculty members, Rebecca Pennell, was the first woman professor to receive pay equal to her male colleagues.


187
National Road Broadside
Unknown printer
Columbus, Ohio
Print on paper
1900
David and Sharen Neuhardt

On March 29, 1806,  President Thomas Jefferson signed "An Act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland [Maryland]… to the State of Ohio". Formally called the Cumberland Road, by the 1830s, the National Road was a stone-paved turnpike that had been extended 591 miles to Vandalia, Illinois. The later 19th century saw declining usage due to canal boats and then trains, but the advent of the automobile revitalized the road. Today, US Route 40 most closely follows the original National Road.


188
Ashtray
Rookwood Pottery
Cincinnati, Ohio
Glazed earthenware, Bakelite
1950
Private Collection

In 1880, Maria Longworth Nichols (1849-1932) founded Rookwood Pottery, which, despite her departure after less than ten years, became perhaps the most important art pottery in America. The heyday of Rookwood, and American art pottery in general, was from the 1880s through the 1930s. The Great Depression and WWII proved a one-two punch to the industry, but a few art potteries, including Rookwood, persevered, if only as a shadow of its former self. In 1960, the company moved from Cincinnati to Starkville, Mississippi, where it lingered on until finally closing in 1967.


189
Overland Circus Toy
Kenton Hardware Company
Kenton, Ohio
Cast iron
2nd quarter-20th century
Private Collection

​Founded in 1890, the Kenton Hardware Company was a prominent maker of all manner of toys, including cast iron vehicles, such as fire and circus vehicles, as well as the hugely popular Gene Autry cap gun.


​190
Ohio Sesquicentennial Plate
Walker China
Bedford, Ohio
Transfer-printed and glazed earthenware
1953
Private Collection

Just as America held big celebrations of its bicentennial in 1976 and its 250th birthday this year, the Buckeye State has celebrated a few momentous milestones, including, in 1953, the sesquicentennial of Ohio statehood. Such celebrations always inspire the manufacture of souvenirs, such as this plate which depicts the first Ohio capitol in Chillicothe, which served as Ohio's first state capital from 1803-1810, and then again from 1812-1816, when the capital moved to its permanent home in Columbus.


191
Pitcher 
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
​1820-1840
Jeff and Holly Noorsdy

While the Zanesville bottle in this gallery is simple in design and construction, this pitcher is neither, and was a true test of the glassblower's skill. It involved creating a nearly spherical belly, tooling a dramatically flared neck, rim, and spout, applying a handle, and applying and tooling a foot that has petals. The work must be done quickly, with frequent visits to the furnace to keep the glass molten and malleable.


192
Basket
The Longaberger Company
Dresden, Ohio
Wood
1999
Kirstie Craven

For 45 years, the Longaberger Company produced hundreds of thousands of handwoven baskets. Founded by Dave Longaberger in 1973, the company utilized "home consultants" to peddle baskets from coast to coast from their homebase in Dresden, Ohio. Just three years after moving their headquarters into a seven-story, basket-shaped building, the company peaked in 2000 with 45,000 home consultants, 8,200 employees, and $1 billion in sales. A variety of factors, including changing tastes in interior design, and some assert the company's use of multi-level marketing sales techniques, led to the company's rapid decline. By 2012, annual sales had fallen 90%, and the next year, the company was bought by a holding company, and then finally shuttered in 2018.


193
1933 Century of Progress Exposition Bench
Marietta Chair Company
Marietta, Ohio
Mixed woods, fabric
1933
Muskingum County Library System

The 1933 World's Fair in Chicago was dubbed The Century of Progress International Exposition. While the Ohio state exhibit celebrated Ohio industry and all things modern, it also looked back, commemorating its rich history. The Marietta Chair Company, in business since the middle of the 19th century, was commissioned to create a series of benches that highlighted moments in Ohio history. After the fair closed, the benches were then distributed to institutions throughout the state. This bench tells of Ebenezer Zane (1747-1811), the Revolutionary War veteran who traced out a road from Wheeling, West Virginia to Maysville, Kentucky. As part of his deal with the federal government, he was given the chance to purchase choice tracts of land, which included land where his road, called Zane's Trace, crossed the Muskingum River, in what is today Zanesville.


194
Hummingbird in Motion
Kimberly Garcia - Tɛ̃tsiɁtaraɁt (She puts beads in)
Seneca, Missouri
Beadwork Wyandotte Nation

“In the past there have been very few that were willing to teach, and in a few short years we have changed that. In 20 or 30 years I would love to see that the Wyandotte Nation is one of the master communities of beading and that it is thriving. I think that represents Wyandotte Nation as a whole. We were struggling and trying to survive as a people, and then once we made ourselves more self-sustaining now we are thriving. I see beadwork as a time when art was almost lost, but I want to see a time when we are considered the experts in what we are doing.” -Kimberly Garcia - Tɛ̃tsiɁtaraɁt (She puts beads in)


195
Contemporary Pink Cuff
Kimberly Garcia - Tɛ̃tsiɁtaraɁt (She puts beads in)
Seneca, Missouri
Beadwork Wyandotte Nation


196
Toy Mouse from Friendship 7
Unknown maker
Felt
1962
Ohio History Connection

In February of 1962, Ohio astronaut John Glenn became the first human to orbit the earth, but he was not alone in that capsule. In his own words: "I reached for the equipment under the hatch. It used a new invention, a system of nylon hooks and loops called Velcro. I opened the pouch and a toy mouse floated into my vision. It was gray felt, with pink ears and a long tail that was tied to keep it from floating out of reach. I laughed; the mouse was Al's joke [Alan Shepard], a reference to one of the comedian Bill Dana's characters, who always felt sorry for the experimental mice that had gone into space in rocket nose cones."


197
Greene Street Near 2nd, 1884 Flood
Unknown photographer
Marietta, Ohio
Albumen print
1884
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In early 1884, in less than two weeks, the weather changed from sub-zero temperatures and a foot of snow on the ground to 70 degrees. Between rain and the snow and ice melt, the Ohio River surged to just under 53', leaving parts of Front Street under 14 feet of water. The water slowly receded, leaving behind catastrophic damage. Even with the considerable efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers in managing the river through dozens of dams, the Ohio River still can and does overflow its banks. As recently as April 2024, the river at Marietta crested at 40 feet, leaving large sections of the city under water.


198
Three Lamps
Stark Brick Company
Canton, Ohio
Glazed sewer tile
1934
Cameron Kelley

By 1900, only a small percentage of American homes had electricity, but the next few decades saw most Americans gain access to electricity. One of the quickest and largest impacts of household electricity was lighting. Messy oil lamps were no longer needed--one need only flip a switch to enjoy brighter light at night than any previous generation. Manufacturers immediately began producing a wide range of lamps. Even pottery companies saw an opportunity to expand their line of products by making table lamps.


199
Pair of Candlesticks
Asa Flagg and Henry Homan
Cincinnati, Ohio
Pewter
1847-1854
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

English potter Asa Flagg and Prussian-born Henry Homan began manufacturing pewter in 1847. Their partnership was short-lived as Flagg died in 1854. The firm continued, even after Homan’s death in 1865, manufacturing well into the twentieth century. The company made all manner of wares, but perhaps their most popular items were candlesticks. They made the same shape in a range of sizes (from 5" to 12" high). Despite the ready availability of fluid lamps that burned cleaner and more brightly (especially with whale oil), candles remained an inexpensive and popular alternative in most American homes.


200
Pair of Candlesticks
Asa Flagg and Henry Homan
Cincinnati, Ohio
Pewter
1847-1854
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


201
Spice Tin
Unknown maker
America
Painted tin
Late 19th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

By the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's attempt to find a shortcut to the East Indies, the spices he was seeking had become almost commonplace in American kitchens, so much so that a variety of spice storage containers became available, including chests (made of wood and with small drawers) to tins of varying size and often vibrantly decorated.

202
Cooking Utensils
Fernando B. Smith
Canton, Ohio
Brass, steel
1886
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


​203
Fernando B. Smith Trade Card
Unknown printer
America
Chromolithograph on paper
1886
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Fernando B. Smith was born and raised in the small Stark County town of Wilmot, and there he learned the tinsmith trade from his Swiss-born father. Clearly not wanting to remain a country tinsmith, he established a very successful business manufacturing iron and brass cooking utensils, patenting his designs, advertising widely, and distributing chromolithograph trade cards. He later developed and patented a sprinkler and pump system that could “throw a stream 50 feet” and was sure to be “invaluable in every household for washing windows, sprinkling the lawn or street.”


204
Casserole Dish
Weller Pottery 
Zanesville, Ohio 
Glazed earthenware 
1935-1945
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

Weller Pottery was one of the earliest, largest, and most prolific makers of art pottery in America, but by the 1930s the popularity of art pottery had waned, and the industry was also disrupted by the Great Depression and then World War II. As a result, many potteries shifted their focus to more commercial wares. This casserole dish would have originally had a metal frame with handles for easy carrying between the kitchen and the dining room.


205
Flask (Repurposed as a Medicine Bottle)
Unknown maker
Zanesville, Ohio
Blown glass
1820-1840 / 1920-1930
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

When this swirled flask was made in Zanesville in the 1820s or 1830s, its owner would have regularly taken it to a local tavern to be refilled. A century later, the flask was still being refilled, but now with medicine from Hollenbeck and Green, druggists on Front Street in Marietta. They also provided medicines in their own branded bottles as well.


206
Medicine Bottle
Unknown maker
America
Molded glass
1920-1930
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


207
Medicine Bottle
Unknown maker
America
Molded glass
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The 18th and 19th centuries were a grim time for medicine. From leeches to fleams, it was not a good time to go to the doctor. Among the least useful, and sometimes most dangerous, were patent medicines--concoctions purportedly made to cure every kind of ailment. Their makers would claim that a single tonic would cure just about any disease from cancer to irritable bowels. They were free to do so as there was little regulation of the manufacture, marketing or sale of medication until a series of increasingly stringent laws were passed in the early 20th century, culminating in the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.


208
Credenza
General Fireproofing
Youngstown, Ohio
Steel
1948-1970
Ohio History Connection

Although it was founded in 1902, General Fireproofing did not begin the manufacture of furniture until 1907 when the Banker’s Panic nearly crashed the American economy. A sizable portion of U.S. industrial production ground to a halt, including building, which had been General Fireproofing’s focus. The company decided to turn its attention toward steel office furniture, introducing its first filing cabinet in 1910. While WWII interrupted production (the steel was redirected to the war effort), in 1948, they hired noted designer Raymond Loewy (1892-1986) to design a line of sleek, ultra-modern, steel office furniture: Mode Maker.


209
Covered Dish
United States Glass Company
Tiffin, Ohio
Uranium glass
1920-1940
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In 1888, the city of Tiffin convinced the A.J. Beatty Glass Company of Steubenville to build its new factory in town, and part of the negotiation was that the city offered them five years of free natural gas for their furnaces. The earliest Ohio glass furnaces were fueled with wood, but later in the 19th century, it was natural gas that kept furnaces fueled and glass factories producing.


210
Firestone Employee Appreciation Clock
Unknown maker
Wood, brass, glass
1984
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

​These days, it's not common for someone to spend their entire career in one job, as the relationship between work and life and between employer and employee has evolved. The original owner of this clock, Bob Richmond, was hired by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1964, and he worked there for nearly 40 years before retiring. Like many companies at the time, Firestone thanked long-term employees by giving them gifts on work anniversaries, such as this clock, presented to Bob to commemorate his 20th year at Firestone in 1984.


211
"Tornado Winds" Quilt
Mary Borkowski (1916-2008)
Dayton, Ohio
Cotton, polyester
1982
Ohio History Connection

Borkowsky is probably best known for her figural "thread paintings," but she also produced a rich variety of more traditional quilts. She was inspired to design this pattern by a Super Outbreak of tornadoes that ravaged parts of 13 states on April 3 and 4, 1974. On April 3 an F5 tornado destroyed much of the towns of Xenia and Wilberforce. In the two days, more than 7,000 homes were destroyed, 2,000 people were injured, and 39 were killed (most of whom were in Xenia). President Richard Nixon visited Xenia and called the devastation the worst he had seen of any natural disaster during his time in office.


212
Spring Planting 1926
Paul Patton (1921-1999)
Rix Mills, Ohio
Acrylic on canvasboard
1989
Joni Barnhill and Kyle Wittel

Paul Patton (Ohio, 1922 to 1992) grew up in Rix Mills in Muskingum County, Ohio. After a career away from his hometown, he returned in the mid-1980s to discover that the small, rural town had been practically decimated, in part due to local strip mines. He turned to painting, and executed a series entitled Rix Mills Remembered in which he portrayed his happy childhood, growing up in Rix Mills in the 1920s and 1930s. On the back of many of these scenes, Patton included a hand-drawn "key," identifying the buildings and an artist's statement describing the scene. His work was the subject of a 2003 retrospective publication Rix Mills Remembered: An Appalachian Boyhood.


213
Family Set of Covid Masks
Becky Odom
Columbus, Ohio
Mixed and repurposed fabrics
​2020
Odom Family

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the rapidly spreading Covid-19 virus had become a pandemic. Over the next two years, at least 7,000,000 people were confirmed to have died from the disease, but no doubt millions more deaths went unconfirmed. Shutdowns, remote school and work, and face masks became the norm. It was a traumatic experience for so many, especially children, many of whom simply could not comprehend what was going on, but were terrified nonetheless.
For some families, keeping young children safe was a real challenge. Mask making became a popular, if temporary, cottage industry, with makers selling custom designed masks via Etsy and on social media. Some families made their own, selecting fabrics that make mask wearing tolerable to children, and sometimes needing to repurpose other materials (such as elastic ) because factory shutdowns led to significant supply interruptions worldwide.


214
U.S.S. Airship "Akron"
Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971)
America
Gelatin silver print with Duralumin frame
1931
David and Sharen Neuhardt

The USS Akron (ZRS-4) was a US Navy rigid airship, and the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, designed to carry Sparrowhawk fighter planes. The Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation launched the craft in 1931, and that same year, commissioned noted photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) to photograph the ship emerging from its Akron airdock. A limited number of prints were set in frames made of Duralumin, the aluminum-copper alloy that made up the internal structure of most rigid airships of the era. The Akron had a short, accident-prone career, with its final accident killing 73 of 76 people on board.


215
Advertising Shot Glass
Unknown maker
America
Molded glass 
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

When the 18th Amendment passed in 1919, America began its relatively short experiment with the prohibition of alcohol. Prior to Prohibition, which lasted from 1920-1933, saloons and liquor dealers were numerous in nearly every city and town across the country. Much like today's corporate-branded products, in the pre-Prohibition years, purveyors of alcohol commissioned the production of a variety of advertising products, including bottles, jugs, flasks, and shot glasses. About this time, The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company, which had been founded in 1883, had several dozen locations and within 10-15 years would have over 5,000.


216
Diorama of the SS Merrill
John Wishart
America
Mixed materials
1872
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

For much of the 19th century, America's great rivers, such as the Hudson, Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, were heavily trafficked by steamboats, carrying goods and passengers long distances far faster than flatboats had before. But only a few decades after first plying the waters of America's rivers, the steamboat was surpassed by the railway, which could go places no rivers did. Nevertheless, river traffic continued, and continues to this day. Each year, over half a trillion tons of cargo are transported on America's rivers.


217
Advertising Jar
Unknown maker
Western Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Darren and Rosemary Satterfield


​218
Advertising Jar
Unknown maker
Western Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Darren and Rosemary Satterfield


219
Advertising Jar
Unknown maker
Western Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Darren and Rosemary Satterfield


220
Advertising Jar
Unknown maker
Western Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Darren and Rosemary Satterfield


221
Advertising Jar
Unknown maker
Western Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Darren and Rosemary Satterfield


222
Advertising Jar
Unknown maker
Western Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Darren and Rosemary Satterfield

In the decades following the Civil War, stoneware manufacturers in western Pennsylvania were producing hundreds of thousands of gallons of pottery annually. A considerable quantity of those stoneware jars, jugs, and crocks were sent down the Ohio River to merchants, who would sell them to their local customers for various food storage needs. It didn't take long for the potteries to realize that there was a market for stoneware customized for the merchants in the towns along the river. Branded stoneware quickly became popular, with merchants in seemingly every town along the river selling western Pennsylvania stoneware with their store names stenciled on the front.


223
Honda Employee Mug
Unknown maker
Glazed earthenware
21st century
On loan from Domingo Bartoli

For most of the life of the automobile, an American car was made by an American auto company in a factory in America. The globalization of manufacturing that has occurred over the past few decades has made the notion of "American made" more complex. American auto companies assemble cars in the US, but also in Mexico. Likewise, Japanese car company Honda assembles cars in the US and elsewhere.

Honda began making cars in Marysville, Ohio in 1982, and today makes more than one million cars per year in its five American factories.


224
Coverlet
Benjamin Lichty (1811-1882)
Bristol (now Marshalville), Ohio
Wool, cotton
1844
David and Sharen Neuhardt

The dawn of the golden age of the American steamboat (1850-1900) overlapped with the end of the heyday of the American coverlet (1830-1860). It is thus not surprising to see a jacquard coverlet that depicts a riverboat. What is surprising is that a coverlet with a riverboat border was not made anywhere near the Ohio River, but rather in the firmly landlocked Wayne County. We don't know for certain why Lichty included a steamboat in his coverlet design. One interesting theory is that the boat represents the USS Michigan, a sidewheel steamer commissioned in 1844 for Great Lakes service. She was outfitted to serve the Union Navy in the Civil War, and was later renamed the USS Wolverine.


225
Crock
Unknown maker
Probably Summit County, Ohio
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
David and Sharen Neuhardt

In southeastern Ohio, it was the rivers that carried stoneware from makers to users, but in northeast Ohio, it was the Ohio and Erie Canal. Hundreds of potters plied their trade in Summit and Portage Counties, and tens of thousands of pieces of pottery were loaded onto canal boats annually and sent to towns up and down the canal. To be sure, at the same time, potters were utilizing the railroad to reach markets even farther afield; after all, this was the end of the canal era. Perhaps the canal boat was brushed onto this crock as a way to honor the canal boat as it floated off into history.


226
The Wright Brothers in their Shop
Paul Riba (1912-1977)
Chagrin Falls, Ohio
Oil on Masonite
1958
Ohio History Connection

"If I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio." -Wilbur Wright, 1910. It's impossible to overstate the importance of the work of two brothers in their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop. And it's hard to believe that a person who would have been old enough to watch the Wright Brothers' first flight would probably live long enough to see Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.


227
Drinking Glass
Federal Glass Company
Columbus, Ohio
​Molded glass
1970-1980
Ohio History Connection

The 1970s was the golden age of the trucker. Truckers became celebrated characters in popular music, television, and movies. In the words of one trucking company's history, in the 1970s, "if you didn't know who “The Bandit” was, you weren’t there." One of the reasons truckers became so entwined with popular culture was the CB (citizen band) radio. The CB was how truckers could communicate with each other, especially as a way to find available fuel during the oil embargo. CBs were also how "regular" folks could participate in trucker culture. This glass is decorated with an array of CB slang used by truckers and anyone with a CB.


228
Railroad Bridge at Huron, Ohio 
Charles G. Mason (1837-1877) 
Cleveland, Ohio
Pencil on paper
Late 19th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Mason worked on the railroad his entire adult life, until it was tragically cut short in a train accident when he was 40. In perspective and detail, this drawing is similar to the farm portraits popular during this time (see the E.L. Ott drawing in Gallery 1: Resources). Here we see a range of vehicles: sailing boat, steamboat, and steam locomotive. This era was a time of great transportation technological advancement, but "old fashioned" methods and vehicles continued to see use well into the 20th century.


229
Coverlet
Unknown weaver
Miami County, Ohio
Wool, cotton
Mid-19th century
Terry and Hope Thackery

Perhaps no technological innovation to that time had a greater global impact than the steam locomotive. In a matter of a couple of decades, the country became much "smaller" and goods could now be shipped thousands of miles in a few weeks rather than the many months it had taken previously. As a result, train imagery permeated American visual culture, appearing everywhere in print and on all manner of manufactured goods, including jacquard coverlets.


230
Merino's Soda Shop
Bernadine Stetzel (1927-2016)
Fremont, Ohio
Painted wood
1990-2000
Ohio History Connection

One constant of the 20th century was change. As a result, in the late 20th century, a number of artists began painting scenes of earlier times--people, places, and ways of life that no longer existed. Often called memory painters, artists like Bernadine Stetzel often drew upon memories of their youth, in this case, a 1950s soda shop in her hometown of Tiffin, Ohio.


231
Clock from the USS Shenandoah (ZR-1)
Favre-Bulle France
Mixed materials
1923
Ohio History Connection

The first commercially successful airships began to take flight just after the turn of the 20th century. Airships, or dirigibles, came in two primary types: rigid, popularly called Zeppelins, which had an internal framework, and non-rigid, popularly called blimps, which relied solely on helium or other gas to inflate the envelope. The USS Shenandoah (ZR 1) was the US Navy's first rigid airship built at the Lakehurst, New Jersey Air Station in 1922-1923. It completed a crossing of North America in the fall of 1923. In September 1925, she ran into a squall line over Noble County, Ohio, and crashed, killing all 14 crewmembers.


232
Temporary Mural from Cafe Napolitana
Unknown artist
Columbus, Ohio
Paint on particle board
2020
Ohio History Connection

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin, and protests began almost immediately in the city before spreading to other cities nationwide. Within two days, after Columbus businesses were vandalized, Governor Mike DeWine ordered in the Ohio National Guard and city officials instituted a curfew. Before the end of the month, however, Columbus officials opened conversations about potential reforms, and more than 1,200 local businesses and organizations signed a petition declaring racism a public health issue, joining the city and Franklin County in doing so. Many businesses that had boarded up damage or to prevent damage used the particle board panels to convey messages of support for the protest efforts.

For historians, it can be tempting to live in the past, but history-focused organizations must also keep in mind the present. Ephemera that marks historical events of the last 75 years can be difficult to find, perhaps because in the moment, these events are so emotionally charged that we want to avoid discussing them further, but the preservation of objects like this artwork will be vital to the understanding of our times for future generations.


233
Fat or Grease Lamp Marble Furnace
Adams County, Ohio
Cast iron
1825
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

The most basic type of lamp is comprised of a container to hold fat or grease and a spout to hold a wick, and these have been used for thousands of years. Even once better, brighter, and cleaner lamps were developed, many homes continued to have fat lamps on hand and ready for use.


234
Easy Chair
Kroehler Manufacturing Company; retailed by Sears Roebuck and Company
Naperville, Illinois
Wood, fabric
1940
Ohio History Connection

American industrialization during the late 19th and early 20th centuries gave rise to the mass production of virtually every type of household good, as well as the railroads that allowed those goods to get to virtually any home in the country faster and cheaper than ever before. As a result, companies like Sears Roebuck and Company were able to purchase manufactured goods for resale through their catalog--everything from furniture, appliances, and even houses.


235
Flask
Ravenna Glass Works
​Ravenna, Ohio
Blown and molded glass
1860
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

From eagles to railroads to singers (such as Jenny Lind), there were nearly 400 varieties of mold-blown flasks made by American glasshouses from the 1820s through the 1870s. Many types were made by multiple houses, each time with subtle variations, and this resulted in thousands of different flasks. This may well have appealed to the innate human desire to collect. One person could have easily purchased several different flasks to use but also display as a collection.


236
"American Modern" Pitcher
Designed by Russel Wright for Steubenville Pottery Company
Steubenville, Ohio
Glazed earthenware
1939-1959
William Mahon

Legendary designer Russel Wright was born, raised, and educated in Ohio. He was already the successful designer of a variety of housewares when he partnered, in 1939, with the Steubenville Pottery Company, and introduced the American Modern line of china. During the line's twenty-year original production period, some 200 million pieces were sold, making it the most popular dinnerware in US history.


237
Cup Plate
Unknown maker
Probably Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pressed glass
1850
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In Pittsburgh in the 1820s, John Bakewell developed a machine for pressing molten glass into usable and highly decorated objects. Pressed glass was much faster and cheaper to produce than blown glass, and it allowed for a nearly endless variety of decoration, including advertisements.


238
Needlework Sampler
Probably Sarah Jane "Susan" Barnett (1823-1908)
Warren County, Ohio
Silk on linen
1838
Melvin and Connie Porcher

While we know that needlework samplers were an important part of the education of well-to-do young ladies, we don't often know the names of the teachers who instructed those young ladies. In the case of young Susan's sampler, her teacher was Ruth Parshall (1793-1880). Born Ruth Smith, she married Nathaniel Parshall in 1815 and the couple had seven children and lost three of them by 1835 when Nathaniel abandoned her and Ruth successfully divorced him. That same year, she established a school in Lebanon where she taught girls like Susan.


239
Oil Lamp
Asa Flagg and Henry Homan
Cincinnati, Ohio
Pewter
1847-1854
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Lighting manufacturers in the 19th century had to offer a wide range of lighting devices to meet the needs and desires of their customers. In the mid-19th century, the homes of the wealthy were being piped for gas fixtures, but for everyone else, the best lamp was one that used whale oil. The oil made from rendered whale blubber burned clean and bright, and the demand for it inspired New England whaling boats to travel around the world to fill their holds with barrels of whale oil (the best was from the head of the sperm whale). With the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, and the resulting development of petroleum-based kerosene as a superior (and cheaper) lighting fluid, the whaling industry declined.

​With nearly 200 whaling boats on the water in the 1850s, by the mid-1870s, the fleet had been reduced to fewer than 50 boats.


240
Portraits of the Canal Boat St. Louis
Unknown photographer
Dayton, Ohio 
Albumen print
1860-1870
David and Sharen Neuhardt

While the railroad ultimately did put an end to Ohio's canals, the canals remained in operation well into the railroad era. These photos both show the canal boat St. Louis in the 1860s. Behind them is the warehouse building of the Chambers Line (the owner of this and other boats). That building still stands today on Patterson Blvd. in downtown Dayton.

 241
Mustard Jar 
Unknown maker 
Ohio or Pennsylvania
Salt-glazed stoneware
1860-1880
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Prior to the development of modern canning, food preservation was a challenge. A long-popular storage container was the stoneware jar (or crock). Stoneware is a high-fired pottery where the clay vitrifies, or is made impervious, so it's ideal for storing liquids. It could also be decorated with cobalt oxide, allowing store owners and food manufacturers to order customized jars for them and their customers.


242
Pickle Jar
Burley Winter Pottery Company
Crooksville, Ohio
Glazed stoneware
Late 19th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family


243
Tomato Canning Labels
Unknown printer
Belpre, Ohio
Chromolithographs on paper
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

Although long believed to be unhealthy or even poisonous, tomatoes (a member of the nightshade family) experienced a boom in popularity in the mid-to-late 19th century, in part due to the influx of European immigrants, especially those from Italy and Spain. At the same time, canning technology became more effective. As a result, small local tomato canneries sprouted up wherever local farmers could grow tomatoes in quantity.


244
Telephone
North Electric Company
Cleveland, Ohio
Oak, metal
Early 20th century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

When Alexander Graham Bell debuted the telephone at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, there were few who believed that it would be very useful or that anyone would actually want to use it. Within five years, more than 50,000 Americans had phones in their homes, and by the end of World War II, nearly half of American homes had telephones. Today, many homes are once again without telephones, but 98% of Americans carry cellular phones with them wherever they go.


245
Tanktop
Unknown maker; design by Keith Haring (1958-1990)
New York, New York
Cotton
1989
William Mahon

This tanktop is from an ACT-UP fundraiser hosted by Harring at The Sound Factory in New York City in August, 1989. ACT-UP, AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, was formed in 1987 with the intent of increasing political action in the fight against AIDS/HIV. Chapters have since formed across the country and around the world, pushing for increased access to experimental treatment, coordination of national approaches to improving awareness and public help, and other efforts to improve the lives of people living with AIDS.


246
Advertising Mug
Libbey Glass Company
Toledo, Ohio
Glass
21st century
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family

In Cleveland in 1875, Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams produced the first successful, ready-mixed paint. No longer was the messy mixing of pigments and other ingredients necessary for homeowners to refresh their home's interior. This revolutionary development quickly became the industry standard, and helped paved the way for Americans' growing interest in home decorating and redecorating.


247
View of Sunny Acres Frank Jirouch (1878-1970)
Warrentsville, Ohio
Watercolor on paper
1958
Loan Courtesy of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH

Sunny Acres, or formally known as the Municipal Sanatorium of the City of Cleveland, was a hospital for the care of tuberculosis patients. The hospital opened in the early 20th century and cared for both adults and children. As sanitation improved and treatments for TB became more effective, the need for the hospital declined, and it was redeveloped as a skilled care hospital. In the 19th century, TB was a leading cause of death, but by the middle of the 20th century, it was on its way to eradication. In recent years, drug-resistant strains of the disease have caused infections to increase globally, with more than 1,000,000 deaths in 2023. Artist Frank Jirouch was born in Cleveland to Czech immigrants. He is best known for his sculptural work in Cleveland's Cultural Garden. He was a patient at Sunny Acres when he painted this scene.


248
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
Bobby Rosenstock / JustAJar
Design Press
Marietta, Ohio
Woodblock print on paper
2025
Collection of the Richmond-Davis Family
The quote is from the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. In recent years, with immigration front and center of public discourse, it is not surprising to see references to the iconic statue, which has become one of our nation's most enduring symbols for our long and complex history of immigration.


249
Radio
Crosley Radio Corporation
Cincinnati, Ohio
Metal, Bakelite
1950
Private Collection

When Powel Crosley Jr.'s (1886-1961) son asked for a radio for Christmas, he was shocked at the price tag, so he and his son purchased the components and built their own. Crosley immediately recognized the need for affordable radios and developed the Harko, a $7 radio that was among the first radios to be widely affordable by middle class families. While the Crosley Radio Corporation enjoyed 30 years of  success producing a wide range of radios, Crosley himself branched out into radio and TV production and a number of other business ventures.


250
Collection of Artifacts
Various makers
Various materials
19th and 20th centuries
Overfield Tavern Museum

For more than sixty years, the Overfield Tavern Museum has told the story of pioneer Benjamin Overfield and the tavern he built in Troy in the early 19th century. On December 7, 2024, a fire ravaged the historic structure, nearly destroying it. Happily the building could be saved and the Overfield Tavern story began a new chapter. During the restoration, everything was documented, and archaeologists were called in to excavate ground that had been covered by floorboards for generations. Their findings included early coins and bits of ceramics and glass that shed new light not only on the tavern's early days, but on its entire life. These fragments, recovered from the rubble, are humble reminders that history isn't just in the past; it continues to happen all around us. The Overfield Tavern story is still being written.