Category Archives: Cleveland and Ohio history

I was browsing Cleveland’s 1850 Federal Census Record on Ancestry.com, and figured out the jailhouse business in those days was a Root family enterprise:

Elies Root, 64, male, born in Massachusetts (jailor)
Nancy Root, 58, female, born in Ohio
E.S. Root, 32, born in NY, Sheriff, Real Estate value $6,000, born in NY
Ralph R. Root, 26, male, Merchant, NY
Charles Root, 19, Clerk, NY
Bridget Lowe, 24, Ireland
John Smith, Deputy Sheriff, Ireland

Cuyahoga County Jail residents:
Mary Munson
Jacob Herrince, farmer, murder? money counterfeiting? illegible …
Horace Fleming, farmer, g. larceny
James Brown, farmer, g. larceny
John Appel, farmer, p. larceny
Alex Maddock, tailor (sailor?), stabbing
Philip Lehr, g. larceny
Wm Donnelly, arson
Patrick Flynn, p. larceny
Orrin Cobb, boatman, p. larceny

Amos Rike, farmer, larceny
Thomas Burns, saddler, assault and battery
Conrad Phalin, butcher, horse stealing
George King, farmer, larceny
John Lynch, farmer, larceny
James Knapp, farmer, horse stealing

Places of birth for all convicts? “Unknown.” I’ll bet these folks had no idea how long their crimes would stick with them.

I’ve been living and breathing this thesis 24/7, but yesterday I found myself in the UW Law Library waiting for Dave to do some research. The Gallagher Library is brand new, not smacking of history at all in its hi-tech computer stations and movable stacks.

On the way to the drinking fountain, I pass some ancient books, the leather bindings crumbling, and it occurs to me: I’m sitting on a history gold mine. What better way to learn how things were in a different century than to explore what their arguments were?

“Do you have any books of published cases that occurred in Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century?”

My question staggers the front desk guy (the ask-for-help desk doesn’t open for fifteen minutes) but we quickly find the Western Law Journal. Western? Well, yeah, in the mid-nineteenth century Ohio was west, the Great West, the Western Reserve.

Right away I get all kinds of good stuff. For example, from a self-defense murder plea in Cincinnati in 1843:
“The English doctrine, that a party assailed must flee as he can, before resisting, is not the law in this country.”

It seems two guys wanted the same turkey at a market stall. The 45-year-old drunk McCann got incensed when the vendor said the 20-year-old bar-keep Noble had first dibs on the turkey (McCann had seen it first, then left it to look at other stalls). McCann threw the turkey in the dirt, and then threw Noble in the gutter and pounded and kicked on him until Noble cried “Enough!” several times. McCann finally desisted, but as he was leaving, Noble picked up himself, and a rock, from the gutter, which rock Noble threw at the retreating McCann. McCann was hit in the head, his skull was fractured, and he was dead within minutes.

The cases read like stories, with authentic dialogue and turns of phrase. So if you’re writing historical fiction, don’t forget the law library.

I’m writing about the year 1857, in the month of November, and I suddenly wonder — was Thanksgiving celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month?

A brief sojourn brought me to Infoplease, how Thanksgiving all began in 1621 in the Plymouth Colony. George Washington made it a state holiday in 1789, but each State set their own date for the Home Festival.

I browsed Cleveland 19th century newspapers, and discovered pre-Civil War journalists could scare up quite the cockfight, even over something as innocuous as Thanksgiving.
November 7, 1856, Issue 236, Col. B of The Daily Cleveland Herald (Cleveland, OH)
“Southern View of Thanksgiving in the Northern States”
“The Baltimore Sun, alluding to the fact that Thursday, November 20th, has been fixed upon by most of the Governors of the Northern States for the annual Thanksgiving, asks– “Where are the Governors of the States south of Maryland?” The inquiry provoked the following rather snappish reply from the Carolina Times:
“We are impressed that the Governors of the States south of Maryland are all at home and competent to decide for themselves when it will be proper to fix upon a day to offer up thanks to the Almighty for past blessings. The movement on the part of Northern Executives is no criterion for Southern men. We are subject to law, common and divine, and need

‘No bleeding bird nor bleeding beast,
Nor hysop branch, nor sprinkling priest,
Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea,
To wash a dismal stain away.’

“It is meet and proper that the miserable sin-stricken, polluted, and ungodly population of the North should beg pardon for their black sins recorded, committed against God, their country and fellow-men. As a generation of vipers they ought to be warned to flee the wrath to come; yet we believe that the waters of Jordan, Abana, and Pharper, would fail to wash them and heal their leprosy, even though they were to dip seventy times seven. They have much to be forgiven for, and we would advise them to pray often–pray long and pray loud. Baltimore, especially, ought to be covered with sackcloth and ashes.”
Yikes!
-In 1857, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire and Maryland all celebrated the “Home Festival of Thanksgiving” on the 26th of November. Maine celebrated it on the 19th of November (and I’m not sure what the southern States did).
– In 1863 in a Thanksgiving Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln named the fourth Thursday of November as the official national day.
Perhaps the writers of the Carolina Times had more to say on the subject, but I’ve got to stop researching trivia and get back to writing …

My first post in 2011 finds me rummaging through my past on the precipice of my future.

2011 is the year I hope to graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing through the Whidbey Writers Workshop, a low-residency program on Whidbey Island.

I’ve written my way through two-thirds of my thesis, based on the life of my great-great-grandfather Michael Harm. Up until now, my protagonist has roamed the mid-nineteenth century Rhineland-Palatinate, a smidgeon of France, sailed the Atlantic Ocean, and arrived in the U.S. at New York City’s Castle Garden.

Now in 1857, as Michael prepares to arrive in Cleveland, Ohio, I’m revisiting my research from the two weeks I spent in Cleveland last April. One incredibly helpful resource is on-line, so I’m able to hop over there whenever I need to. It’s the Cleveland State University’s special collection about Cleveland history called The Cleveland Memory Project. The resources, especially the digital photos, are fabulous.

From a family album, my brother also recently sent me a photo I’d never seen before, of the employees of Michael’s Harm & Schuster carriage shop, circa the late 1870’s.

Pictured here, bottom row, left to right: Adam Crolly, Wm Walker, Fred Schuster, Michael Harm, W Paplotzki, Herman Butter (Butler?)
Only two of the men in the back row are identified: 4th from left: Anton Strom, 5th from left: Chas Schuster

Michael Harm and Fred Schuster were the business partners who owned Harm & Schuster Fine Carriages. But I’m also delighted to find my great-great-great-grandfather in the picture–Michael’s father-in-law Adam Crolly. A barrel maker (cooper) by trade, it seems in his 1870’s he went into carriage-making. Believe me, it’s all in the family. Fred Schuster was his other son-in-law. Chas Schuster must be a brother, or a cousin …

2011 is here. And so is 1857. Time to get busy writing.

My approach may be tangential, but for some reason, in writing about the 19th century I’ve felt compelled to read Charles Dickens. Maybe because I have two complete sets of Dickens novels, handed down from my ancestors, their spines staring me down from my bookshelves. Or perhaps because Charles Dickens visited the U.S. in 1842, travelled through Ohio no less, and wrote accounts about his visit, published as “American Notes,” in 1843.

So I’m reading David Copperfield, and recently stumbled across another clue in the ever expanding treasure hunt through the 19th century. I was wondering, for purposes of literary exposition, how people lit their hearth fires and pipes back then. In my reading of Ohio history, I’d found that the Diamond Match Co. was a significant part of history in Akron, Ohio, beginning in 1881. But when did matches first enter the scene? The right terminology in Dickens helped me delve further into my search. It turned up on pp. 90-91:

But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there being one boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed this when it was stated, and said that he should like to begin to see him do it. On being asked by a mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see him do it, he dipped a match into his phosphorus box on purpose to shed a glare over his reply, and said he would commence by knocking him down with a blow on the forehead from the seven-and-sixpenny ink-bottle that was always on the mantelpiece. We sat in the dark for sometime breathless.

That was it: nineteenth century phosphorus matches. I found all kinds of leads, here’s just one, at the Ideafinder.