Category Archives: Cleveland and Ohio history

Oh, the calliope

Posted on September 26, 2012 | 2 comments

Reading David Yost’s “The Carousel Thief” in The Cincinnati Review‘s Summer 2012 issue (*great* story), I came across the word “calliope” again, triggering a vague memory from my research about life in Ohio in the 19th century. The reference occurs in Yost’s story thus:

She glanced around the carousel house with distaste, and for a moment I saw what she probably saw: her friends pacing the orange polyester carpet, staring out at the maples and sweetgums of Washington Park as the calliope played and they snacked on caviar and quail brains or whatever rich people serve to other rich people to impress them.

In context, you get the idea of what “calliope” signifies — not the Greek muse of epic poetry, but that flutey, jangling music that accompanies rides on historic carousels. In the 21st century, to our refined ears that sound is enough to make one cringe, but in the mid-19th century, the music of the calliope was a brand new wonder, a triumphal herald of the modern steam age.

Circa 1858, this 44-pipe Calliope announced the arrival of the Nixon & Kemp Circus in town. The instrument could be heard for ten to twelve miles, was drawn by a team of 40 horses, and cost a fortune ($18,000) to build. It also cost a fortune in upkeep (all those horses to stable and feed, for one thing) so the Calliope was not practical in the long run. But while it lasted, making its circuit through Ohio and other of the U.S.’s 31 states, it created quite a sensation.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, General, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel

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Just the facts, Ma’am

Posted on June 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

I am very impressed by the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS). Unless you’re a history buff, you might not know the term “Western Reserve” refers to the northeastern part of Ohio.

The Wikipedia entry for the Connecticut Western Reserve describes it thus: “the lands between the 41st and 42nd-and-2-minutes parallels that lay west of the Pennsylvania border. Within Ohio the claim was a 120-mile (190 km) wide strip between Lake Erie and a line just south of Youngstown, Akron, New London, and Willard …” The strip of land in Ohio included Cleveland. Hence, names like “Church of the Western Reserve” and “Case Western Reserve University.”

Among the Western Reserve Historical Society’s incredible collections, exhibits, archives and online databases, are the following: local funeral home indexes, Jewish marriage and death notices, biographical sketches, Bible records, Early Families in Cleveland Project, Allen E. Cole African American Collections and more. To see the comprehensive list of databases, click here. To search what’s available in their extensive library catalog, click here.

Each time I see something like “Bible Records Index” or “Early Families in Cleveland Project” my heart beats a little faster. Maybe I’ll find my ancestors there, I think. So far, nothing much has turned up. Why not? For one thing, they were German, so kept to their German clan. Perhaps their names appear in the German newspapers, hard copies of which are available in the WRHS archives library, but not digitized or inventoried by individual names. For another thing, these first-generation immigrants were working men. Furnace operators, barrelmakers, blacksmiths, machinists. The salt (and grit) of the earth. For instance, my great-great-great uncle Jakob Handrich, who immigrated to Cleveland in 1840, appears rarely (often with alternate spellings, Handrick, Hendricks, Henry). If at all. Here’s what I know.

Jakob Handrich Life Events
*Born circa 1822, presumably in Meckenheim
*Arrived July 29, 1840 in New York on Ship Anson, 18 years old, traveling with his parents, 2 older sisters and 1 older brother
*In 1841, Jakob settled in Cleveland, Ohio, trained as a cooper (barrelmaker) and earned $5 per week.
*In 1843, he found work as a blacksmith in a factory “where steaming kettles and machines for steamboats and railways were being built” and earned $1.50/day
*In 1848, he made a journey into the southern states, approximately 2000 miles, including Cincinnati, St. Louis, Mobile and New Orleans
*In 1849, he bought a property ($600 cash) and built a house himself (nicknamed “House Place”) and lived there with his elderly parents until their deaths in the mid-1850s.
*By 1858, Jakob had been swept up in the California Gold Rush and traveled around South America by ship to California. At first, he made a lot of money as a blacksmith in San Francisco, but then the times got bad and he traveled to Sacramento Sutte to dig for gold and try his luck.
*In 1862 he was still in California, and had amassed approx. $12,000 in the bank.
*In 1864, he was in Cincinnati and contemplated returning to California.
*In 1869, he had married, had one son, and lived again in Cleveland.
*In 1870, he went to look for work in Columbus, and traveled between Columbus and Cleveland in subsequent years.
*In 1896 he was laid to rest at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

Little of the above info turns up in genealogy databases; it all comes from several dozen letters in my family’s possession. I have no birth record, marriage record, proof of children. Only his name on a ship manifest, and his gravestone, where his name appears as Jacob Handrick. Maybe that’s not even him, but it’s as close as I can get. Which leads me to believe there have to be thousands and thousands of others like him. Invisible souls. And he was male. Think of the invisible women–early city directories list only the men of the household, women’s names changed when they married, and so on. Without the letters, the fact that Jakob Handrich ever existed would seem a mere mirage.

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Kingsbury Run – once innocuous enough

Posted on June 1, 2012 | 1 comment

Here’s a picture of Cleveland in 1858, the meandering Cuyahoga River, the pastures and small city ambiance, the long Lake Erie shoreline to the north. Just to the right of this scene, a ravine ambles off the Cuyahoga to the south and east, named after one of Cleveland’s earliest European inhabitants, Judge Kingsbury, a gully that used to demarcate the southern border of the town.

Kingsbury Run is probably best known these days for the Kingsbury Run “torso murders” of the 1930s. I found this description of it on the trutv web site.

Kingsbury Run cuts across the east side of Cleveland like a jagged wound, ripped into the rugged terrain as if God himself had tried to disembowel the city. At some points it is nearly sixty feet deep, a barren wasteland covered with patches of wild grass, yellowed newspapers, weeds, empty tin cans and the occasional battered hull of an old car left to rust beneath the sun. Perched upon the brink of the ravine, narrow frame houses huddle close together and keep a silent watch on the area. Angling toward downtown, the Run empties out into the cold, oily waters of the Cuyahoga River.
—Crime Library, “The Kingsbury Run Murders or Cleveland Torso Murders“

Somehow, growing up, I missed the story about the Kingsbury Run Murders, but I did hear of the historic danger of Kingsbury Run dating back into the 19th century. My father used to tell this story. “Before they built the E. 55th St. bridge [completed for the first time in 1898], your great-grandfather Hoppensack had to walk through Kingsbury Run each day on his way to and from the bank, so he always carried a gun. It was a jungle down there, overgrown and full of vagrants.”

Photo courtesy of Cleveland Public Library

But it was not always so. Here’s a story found in the book “The genealogy of the descendants of Henry Kingsbury.”

In 1800, Governor St. Clair appointed Mr. Kingsbury Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Session of the County. The first session is said to have been held in the open air, between two corn-cribs, Judge Kingsbury occupying a rude bench beneath a tree, the jurors sitting about on the grass, and the prisoners looking on from between the slats of the corn-cribs. A brook running into the Cuyahoga is called Kingsbury Run, and is the only memorial which has been dedicated to the first settler. At the mouth of Kingsbury run are the works of the Standard Oil Company.

Can I visit Kingsbury Run today, you might ask? Not exactly. The Van Sweringens bought up Kingsbury Run property in the early 20th century, and installed a four-track railroad line through it. Gone (underground?) is the brook: today, Kingsbury Run is the corridor of the Rapid Transit Line between E. 30th and Shaker Blvd.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, General, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel

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Palatines to America: Ohio Chapter

Posted on May 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

In my first couple of years as a member of the Ohio Chapter of Palatines to America (Pal Am), I have become a fan (and Facebook friend). I happen to be descended from people of the Palatine region, as were the founders (in 1975) of Palatines to America, but the mission of Pal Am has broadened so much, the society might better be named “Germans to America.”

PALATINES TO AMERICA (Pal Am) is a national genealogical society of persons researching German-speaking ancestry, with emphasis on migration from the Germanic regions of Europe to North America (primarily the United States and Canada). Most of these immigrants were from Germany, but there was also a significant number from other areas of Europe including Switzerland, Austria, France, Poland, and other countries. … Now our membership includes people who have ancestors from all German-speaking areas. (from “About Us” at palam.org)

The organization, with over 2,000 members and chapters in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania (anyone with an interest in German-speaking immigrants can join, whether from North America or abroad), offers a wealth of German genealogy resources, newsletters, a bookstore, and more.
This year’s annual conference is coming soon:
June 14-16, 2012
“German Research: Methodology & Technology”
Indianapolis, IN
With seminars on researching, surfing the Internet, and more.

Pal Am is also offering a 74-hour search-till-you-drop genealogy research excursion to Salt Lake City September 23-30, 2012. Visit Pal Am’s web page, under Events, for details.

Pal Am also offers research and translation services.

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The early days of oil

Posted on April 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

In researching about my blacksmith great-great-grandfather, I’ve often turned to a book called Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow.

John D. Rockefeller (born 1839) was a contemporary of Michael Harm (born 1841), and both men migrated in the mid-19th century to Cleveland to build their fortunes (Rockefeller’s fortune was more substantial and enduring, but still).

Photo courtesy of Cleveland Public Library

Rockefeller set up his first oil refineries, the Excelsior Works, Chernow writes, “on the red-clay banks of a narrow waterway called Kingsbury Run.” In this tidbit, I find two startling coincidences. One, Michael Harm spent his three-year apprenticeship in Cleveland at a wagon shop situated quite near Kingsbury Run. And two, before the refineries cropped up in Kingsbury Run, another ancestor, my great-great-grandfather H.F. Hoppensack, operated his brickworks there. In the obituary of Henry F. Hoppensack, it states: “From 1848- 1851, Mr. Hoppensack manufactured brick on Broadway Hill where the Standard Oil Co. is now located.”

Here’s another coincidence–Harm & Schuster made business wagons for the Chandler & Rudd grocery. In Chernow’s account of Rockefeller’s life, he states: “[Rockefeller’s] younger sister, Mary Ann, married a genial man named William Rudd, the president of Chandler and Rudd, a Cleveland grocery concern.”

Although John D. Rockefeller and Michael Harm were about the same age and lived and worked in Cleveland during the same era, I doubt they knew one another on a first-name basis. The English, German and Irish enclaves in Cleveland in the mid-19th century did not fraternize so often. Nonetheless, it’s a six-degrees-of-separation kind of thing. In The Titans, Chernow describes those early days of oil that I am certain had a profound impact on my great-great-grandfather, and all Clevelanders, as well.

“At the time [just following the Civil War], refiners were tormented by fears that the vapors might catch fire, sparking an uncontrollable conflagration. … Mark Hanna, who later managed President McKinley’s campaign, recalled how one morning in 1867 he woke up and discovered that his Cleveland refinery had burned to the ground, wiping out his investment …’I was always ready, night and day, for a fire alarm from the direction of our works,’ said Rockefeller. ‘Then proceeded a dark cloud of smoke from the area, and then we dashed madly to the scene of the action. So we kept ourselves like the firemen, with their horses and hose carts always ready for immediate action.’

“… In those years, oil tanks weren’t hemmed in earthen banks as they later were, so if a fire started it quickly engulfed all neighboring tanks in a flaming inferno. Before the automobile, nobody knew what to do with the light fraction of crude oil known as gasoline, and many refiners, under cover of dark, let this waste product run into the river. ‘We used to burn it for fuel in distilling the oil,’ said Rockefeller, ‘and thousands and hundreds of thousands of barrels of it floated down the creeks and rivers, and the ground was saturated with it, in the constant effort to get rid of it.’ The noxious runoff made the Cuyahoga River so flammable that if steamboat captains shoveled glowing coals overboard, the water erupted in flames.”

Randy Newman’s “Burn On” may have been about the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969, but apparently, that river had already burned one hundred years ago.

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Games making history

Posted on April 22, 2012 | 2 comments

Yesterday, Phil Humber of the Chicago White Sox pitched the 21st perfect game in baseball history. Yes, it was here in Seattle against the Mariners, and no, I wasn’t at the game to see it happen.

In a weird synchronicity, though, this week I happened to be editing a scene in Harm’s Way where the characters are enjoying some outdoor recreation. The year is 1862. What sort of game would they have been playing? Baseball?

Often, I’ve looked for answers about the past by logging into the King County Library web site to visit their 19th Century U.S. Newspapers database. First, I searched “baseball” in 19th century Ohio newspapers between 1857 and 1865. Guess what happened? “Your search found no results. Try again.” But I knew it had to be there. I have visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, so I knew the pastime, if not the official game, extended back to the 18th century. What did they call it back then? In a moment of inspiration, I tried separating it into two words: “base ball.” That did the trick.

From The Daily Cleveland Leader, May 4, 1858
Base Ball.
        Never within the memory of that venerable old fogy, “the oldest inhabitant,” has the “base ball” epidemic raged so fircely [sic] as at present. Fields, open lots, streets, alleys, and yards, everywhere can be found a troop of boys and men with a ball and a couple of bats, working at play as earnestly as if it were the greatest business of the day. All ages and all classes have caught the infection. The toddling, unbreeched youngster crows as he hits the tiny ball with the little wand; the school boys make the streets echo with their uproar as they dispute about a “tip” or a “first bound;” out in the fields the portly men grunt as they run past the bound, and grey-bearded Nestors plant themselves firmly to await the swift coming ball. The ragged and shoeless urchin enters with heart and soul into the game he is playing on the street; the staid merchant, the cautious banker, and the millionaire are just as excited and eager over the same game a little out of town.
        Hurrah for base ball! There is no game superior to it in strengthening the muscles, expanding the chest, invigorating the frame, and enlivening the spirits. It is a thoroughly republican game. The possession of wealth or social station does not make a man hit the ball better nor run his rounds faster, nor will the mechanic who bowls shrink from hurling a swift shot after the running millionaire. Cricket is a very good game, but there is too much looking on in it. The good “bat” has all the time to himself, and the green hand loses his first chance, and has to sit on the grass for the remainder of the day. “Keep the pot boiling” is the only way for health and fun, and this “base ball” does.

From The Daily Cleveland Herald, September 20, 1865
Base Ball.–The Forest City Base Ball Club, recently organized in this city, meet twice a week on its grounds on Kinsman street for practice, and the general develpment of muscle in its members. An exciting game was played yesterday afternoon. It is rumored that match will be arranged before many days between this club and another located in a neighboring town.

In the above articles, I notice a few variances in terminology — click here for a chronology of 19th century rules of the game. But what grabs me too is a sense of nostalgia. As a child, I remember faculty picnics and family gatherings where an impromptu baseball game was the centerpiece.

Times change. The closest “all ages” romp I can think of in recent years was in 2008, the year my son graduated from high school. That spring, the high school teachers teamed up against the seniors in a pot-boiling match of Ultimate Frisbee. History in the making.

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Mosquito frets and legends

Posted on April 12, 2012 | 1 comment

ImageSomewhere, I read (at the Cleveland Natural History Museum? the Great Lakes Science Center?) that the mouth of the Cuyahoga River was a swampy, mosquito-ridden land when Moses Cleaveland first surveyed the lots for Cleveland in 1796. When it comes to that, it still is. Enter any Cleveland woods mid-summer and the mosquito whine is sure to drive you back out.

How did 19th century denizens of Cleveland cope with mosquitoes? Window screens did not come into use until after the Civil War. Research tells me they did have mosquito nets. I also found an 1862 reference to “head-bags made of crape.” Another source mentioned a practice of wrapping one’s hands in green baize–the fabric that covered billiard tables.

A search through 19th century newspapers elicited the following:

9/8/1858 – Newark Advocate

Where Mosquitoes Come From

These pests of summer proceed from the animalculas commonly called ‘wiggle tails.’ … If a bowl of water be placed in the summer’s sun for a few days, a number of ‘wiggle tails’ will be visible, and they will increase in size till they reach three-sixteenths of an inch in length,–remaining longer at the surface as they approach maturity. … In a short time a fly will be hatched and escape leaving its tiny house upon the surface of the water. … In fact, standing by a shallow, half-stagnant pool on a midsummers day, the full development of any number of ‘wiggle tails’ to the mosquito state can be witnessed, and the origin of these disturbers of night’s slumbers thus fully ascertained. — Scientific American

8/8/1870 Daily Cleveland Herald

Sparrows and Mosquitoes

… Four years ago, 20 pairs [of English sparrows] were imported [into New York City], and provision was made for their accommodation. Now it is estimated that there are five thousand pair in the New York parks and gardens; and their active and industrious habits are believed to have materially diminished the swarms of mosquitoes which have heretofore made New York a byword and a hissing among all light sleepers who have sensitive skins. This theory is stengthened (sic) by the fact that the same experience has marked the introduction of sparrows into Jersey City–the mosquitoes having greatly diminished there even, which is mosquito land itself. If there is anything to this … then we [of Boston] go for importing one thousand, or five thousand pair at once, to be domesticated in Boston and immediate neighborhood, as a matter of more importance to the peace and comfort of our citizens than would be the addition of a hundred extra policemen. — Boston Traveler

9/3/1881 Cleveland Herald

A 15c box of ‘Rough on Rats’ will keep a house free from flies, mosquitoes, rats and mice the entire season. — Druggists

Finally, I found a reprint of this legend in the 9/7/1872 Cleveland Morning Daily Herald:

Origin of Mosquitoes

We take the following legend from the Minneapolis Tribune:

The Red River Indians have a legend respecting the origin of mosquitoes. They say that once upon a time there was a famine, and the Indians could get no game. Hundreds had died from hunger, and desolation filled their country. All kinds of offerings were made to the Great Spirit without avail, till one day two hunters came upon a white wolverine, a very rare animal. Upon shooting the white wolverine, an old woman sprang out of the skin, and saying that she was a “Manito,” promised to go and live with the Indians, promising them plenty of game as long as they treated her well and gave her the first choice of all the game that should be brought in.

The two Indians assented to this and took the old woman home with them–which event was immediately succeeded by an abundance of game. When the sharpness of the famine had passed the Indians became dainty in their appetites, and complained of the manner in which the old woman took to herself all the choice bits; and this feeling became so intense that, notwithstanding her warnings that if they violated their promises a terrible calamity would come upon the Indians, they one day killed her as she seized upon her share of a fat reindeer which the hunters had brought in.

Great consternation immediately struck the witnesses of the deed, and the Indians, to escape the predicted calamity, boldly struck their tents and moved away to a great distance.

Time passed on without any catastrophe occurring, and game becoming even more plentiful, the Indians again began to laugh at their being deceived by the old woman. Finally, a hunting party on a long chase of reindeer, which had led them back to the spot where the old woman was killed, came upon her skeleton, and one of them, in derision, kicked the skull with his foot. In an instant a small, spiral-like body arose from the eyes and ears of the skull, which proved to be insects. They attacked the hunters with great fury and drove them to the river for protection. The skull continued to pour out its little stream, and the air became full of avengers of the old woman’s death. The hunters, upon returning to camp, found all the Indians suffering terribly from the plague, and ever since that time the red men have been punished by the mosquitoes for their wickedness to their preserver, the Manito.

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Leafing through old books

Posted on February 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

When my father downsized from his house into a retirement center, he sent my brother and me a list of books, and from afar, we chose which ones we wanted.

Years have passed, and I hardly remember what I picked out, except that I had an eye for old books. The other day I came across an especially old one, dated 1867. I know it came from my childhood home due to the bright orange bookmark tucked inside, Dad’s code for “Claire.”

Old books can be like treasure hunts. In The Psalms of David In Metre I was captivated by the subtitle: With Annotations explaining the Sense, and Animating the Devotion, By John Brown, late minister of the Gospel at Haddington. This John Brown was an Anglican minister who lived from 1722 to 1787. It turns out he was a self-made man, a shepherd in Scotland who taught himself to read Greek, Latin and Hebrew. In the songbook in my possession, each Psalm of David begins with Brown’s notes about content and meaning.

But there’s more. Tucked in the pages was also a postcard from 1911 advertising the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, founded in 1811.








In the heat of a big move, or at the end of a parent’s life, we might find ourselves in a hurry to get things squared away, to shuttle boxes off to the donation center without a second glance, oblivious to the treasures inside. Moral of the story: leaf through those books, including the ones you hang onto. You just never can tell what you’ll find inside.

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Celebrities of the 1848 Revolution

Posted on January 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

The “1848 Revolution” in Europe was a formative political event of the mid-19th century century. Beginning in late February, 1848 with an uprising in Paris, the foment of peasants against rulers played out across the many countries, duchies, and principalities of the day. It took over a year for all of the different revolutions to be crushed, the rebels scattered in exile. Here are a few persons who went on to make a name for themselves, who were active in some part of the 1848 struggles:

Richard Wagner was active in the rebellion in Dresden
Robert Schumann and his wife Clara were witnesses to the Dresden violence, and Schumann fled the scene rather than be conscripted in the city’s civil guard
Karl Marx was especially active in France in 1848; the failure of the rebellion convinced him of the need for a more radical society
Frederick Engels wrote about his role in the Palatinate in 1849, in a document called “The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution”
Otto von Bismarck was a young landowner who rose to power and influence on the monarchist side
Carl Schurz was a leader in the rebellious provisional governments army, who escaped from the Prussian troops through a sewer from a village under siege, sailed to America, and later became an active advocate of the newly formed Republican party and an attorney and friend of Abraham Lincoln
Jacob Müller was a provisional government civil commissioner of Kirchheimbolanden who immigrated to Cleveland, eventually becoming the tenth Lieutenant Governor of Ohio from 1872-1874.

Perhaps you know of others? If so, do tell.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, Freinsheim and Palatinate history, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel

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A good tome on religion in America

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 4 comments

I admit I’m a history geek: Snowbound in Seattle, I can’t think of a better way to spend the day than curling up by the hearth fire with a just-discovered tome: Religion in American Life: A Short History, by Butler, Wacker and Balmer (2003).

Intended as an overview, the book begins with native religions and extends all the way into the Reagan and Bush eras of American conservativism.

Right now I’m buried in the chapter called “Reformers and Visionaries.” For example, William Miller’s numerology (mentioned in an earlier post: Is 2012 the end of the line?) led him to calculate the return of the Lord would occur in 1843. “[Miller’s] views reached a broad audience in Horace Greeley’s New York Herald, complete with illustrations. Comets and meteor showers at the time added to the excitement. Some said that Miller attracted thirty thousand to one hundred thousand followers.”

Another end-times religion began in the mid-18th century, due to the visionary zeal of Mother Ann Lee. Her sect came to be known as the Shakers. One of nineteen Shaker communities, the North Union Shaker Community was organized in 1822 on land just outside Cleveland, on property along Doan Brook.

Better known as Shakers, members of the sect called themselves “Believers,” a shortened version of “the United Society of Believers in the Second Appearing of Christ.” Suffering persecution in England, a small band led by their founder, “Mother” Ann Lee, came to America in 1774. Ann Lee symbolized the second coming of Christ in female form, establishing the Shaker concept of sexual equality and of the deity as a father-mother God. Shaker colonies were founded in New York and the New England states, and later, on the frontier. (from The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History)

Today, the North Union Shaker Community is the neighborhood of Cleveland called Shaker Heights.

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