Ohio History Journal

Book Notes

 

 

For the General Welfare: Essays in Honor of Robert H. Bremner. Edited by

Frank Annunziata, Patrick D. Reagan, and Roy T. Wortman. (New York: Peter

Lang, 1989. xiv + 390p.; notes.) This is a collection of articles published by

historians who feel professionally indebted to their mentor, Bob Bremner.

Professor Bremner, while at The Ohio State University, was indeed a unique

scholar, one who could at the same time devote himself to the classroom and

teaching, research and publishing, and the professional and personal welfare of

his students. These articles by a group of his former students who earned their

Ph.D.s under his direction are an affectionate thank you to a professor who

managed to be both scholarly and humane.

 

Ohio Historical Society                        Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

The Journals of William A. Lindsay: An Ordinary Nineteenth-Century

Physician's Surgical Cases. Edited by Katherine Mandusic McDonell.

(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1989. xlix + 216p.; illustrations,

maps, chronology, glossaries, bibliographies, index.) For anyone trying to

understand life in frontier mid-America before the Civil War, the matter-of-fact

journals of Dr. William A. Lindsay should be required reading. It is not easy or

comfortable reading, for Lindsay's accounts are mainly concerned with patient

history and surgical procedures. Surgery in the 19th century was a remedy of

last resort, frequently performed in a state of emergency or when the patient

could no longer endure the pain from his disease. Operations were usually

performed on the kitchen table at the patient's home, assisted by family

members or when possible by another physician in the area. Lindsay worked

without benefit of anesthesia and knew nothing of the germ theory of disease

and asepsis. Only when a patient's suffering was considered to be extreme was

it thought important enough to be mentioned. Lindsay practiced surgery in

Ohio (Clark, Montgomery, Preble, Darke, and Butler counties) and in Indiana

(Wayne, Fayette, Union, and Dearborn counties). These journals (three out of

four known to exist) were written between the years 1836-1855, retrospectively

describing surgical cases performed between 1822-1841. Katherine Mandusic

McDonell, editor, provides an interesting introduction to the journals which

includes a summary of nineteenth century surgical practices and a biographical

sketch of Lindsay. Also helpful to the reader are a glossary of medical and

pharmaceutical terms, many no longer in use today, and a glossary of personal

and place names. Arresting illustrations depict the type of surgical cases

Lindsay describes, taken from contemporary sources which Lindsay might

have read, along with photographs of the surgical armamentarium available to

the pioneer physician.

 

Cleveland Health Sciences Library                     Glen Jenkins

 

 

The Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad: Henry Ford's Railroad. By Scott

D. Trostel. (Fletcher, Ohio: Cam-Tech Publishing, 1988. 312p.; illustrations,

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96                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

bibliography, index.) The "DT & I," as it was usually called, linked the Motor

City and mineral-rich southeastern Ohio. Trostel tells the story of the numer-

ous Ohio predecessory lines-some of them narrow gauge-which were joined

together to form the DT & I early in the twentieth century. Henry Ford's

ownership was one of the major watersheds in the history of this railroad.

Trostel's fine job of telling the story of the DT & I is enhanced by many

previously unpublished photographs and employee recollections. Today the

DT & I is but a memory: those portions not abandoned have been assimilated

into the Grand Trunk railway. Despite its having served many Ohio commu-

nities such as Toledo, Lima, Springfield, Washington Court House, Jackson,

and Ironton, little had been written about the DT & I. Therefore, this book fills

a void, and is highly recommended to railroad enthusiasts, those interested in

corporate history, and local historians in the many communities along the line.

 

Ohio Historical Society                      Richard V. Francaviglia

 

 

Balanced in the Wind: A Biography of Betsey Mix Cowles. By Linda L.

Geary. (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1989. 121p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, index.) This book provides a well-documented and

sensitive portrait of a woman who exemplified connections among the multi-

plicity of reform movements that flourished in Ohio's Western Reserve before

the Civil War. Born into a New England ministerial family in 1810, Cowles

came to Austinburg as an infant. At the age of sixteen, she began teaching in

a one-room school, launching herself into a career in education that led to

employment in infant schools, female seminaries, and public systems, culmi-

nating in her appointment to a prestigious school superintendency in Painesville.

Her professional life was inseparable from her activism in causes including

temperance, radical abolitionism, and moral reform, finally encompassing even

woman's rights. Cowles used her considerable organizational talents to assist

in social betterment, especially in the decade of the 1850s, eventually with-

drawing from tumultuous antislavery politics into concerns with women's

employment, health reform and spiritualism.

Geary effectively uses the papers of Cowles and her family, and nicely places

Cowles in the context of local history. The author appears to be aware of the

larger significance of Cowles and the forces that affected her, but focuses

primarily on a narrative reconstruction of her subject's life. Scholars special-

izing in women's history, educational history, and the history of antebellum

reform will appreciate this recovery of a fascinating character who may now

receive the attention she deserves.

 

Oberlin College                                       Carol Lasser

 

 

Benchmark Ohio 1989. Edited by by William J. Shkurti and John Bartle.

(Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1989. xiii + 204p.; tables,

figures, appendixes.) Created by the Ohio State University's School of Public

Policy and Management to help inform public and private decision makers

about important public issues, Benchmark Ohio is the first of a projected series

about the state of Ohio. Containing information such as the high school

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Book Notes                                                      97

 

dropout rate, the number of live births, the crime rate per 100,000, as well as

motor vehicle registrations and sales tax collections, the book is a wealth of

statistical information which could be of use to innumerable public officials,

teachers, and researchers.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                Laura Russell

 

 

Hudson: A Survey of Historic Buildings in an Ohio Town. Edited by Lois

Newkirk. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1989. 319p.; illustrations,

maps, bibliography, index.) This volume grew out of a historic inventory of

Hudson conducted under the auspices of the Ohio Historic Preservation Office

by the Hudson Heritage Association. Three hundred and fifty structures felt to

be vital to Hudson's "historic integrity" were selected from the almost seven

hundred inventoried properties and arranged by street address with photo-

graphs and brief descriptive and historical statements. An interpretive history

of the village by local historian Thomas L. Vince serves as an introduction.

Appendices include lists of buildings by construction date and early nineteenth

century builders active in the village.

 

Ohio Historical Society                           David A. Simmons

 

 

The Nation Builders: A Sesquicentennial History of the Corps of Topograph-

ical Engineers 1838-1863. Edited by Frank N. Schubert. (Fort Belvoir,

Virginia: Office of History United States Corps of Engineers, 1988. ix + 81p.;

illustrations, suggestions for further reading.) The Topographical Engineers

were a small group of officers who functioned as a separate branch of the U.S.

Army in the three decades preceding the Civil War. An outgrowth of the

official geographer's position created near the end of the American Revolution,

the "topogs" provided much needed surveying expertise during the nation's

internal improvement craze. Later they figured prominently in the exploration

and cartographical recording of the trans-Mississippi West. The officers were

subsequently given responsibility for the construction of a host of civil

engineering works, and Ohio readers will especially be interested in the

discussion of efforts to enhance navigation on the Ohio River and in the Great

Lakes harbors. It was also an individual from this branch that ran the disputed

Ohio-Michigan boundary in the 1830s.

 

Ohio Historical Society                           David A. Simmons

 

 

Mining America: The Industry and the Environment, 1800-1980. By Duane

A. Smith. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1987. xiii + 210p.;

illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Mining America analyses the

historical/environmental impact of mining over the last two centuries. It

represents the first attempt to synthesize collective and individual attitudes

toward the mining industry and its operators. The author provides a substan-

tive review and analysis of primary and secondary source materials that reveal

both public and private views toward the industry. Although rich in material

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98                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

from the western U.S., Mining America also sheds much light on the

mineral-producing areas of the east, including Ohio. Mining America is highly

recommended for students of mining, industry and, especially, environmental

history.

 

Ohio Historical Society                      Richard V. Francaviglia

 

 

The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, From the

Year 1775 to 1841. Edited by John C. Dann. (New York: Weidenfeld &

Nicolson, 1988. xxx + ⁴⁰²p.; illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, glossary,

illustration sources, index.) Jacob Nagle was born in Berks County,

Pennsylvania. He was 15 years old when he joined Washington's army at

Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78. After that tour of duty he joined the

Continental Navy and then, when he was 18, he shipped on board an American

privateer. He continued on several other privateers until 1781, when the ship

on which he served fell prey to the Royal Navy and he, with the other seamen,

was impressed into the British Navy. He served in the Royal Navy for the next

twenty years and later sailed for the East India Company. His travels took him

to five continents and he served under Howe and Nelson during the war with

the French.

In 1825, at the age of 64, Nagle retired from the sea and returned to the

United States. He wandered from place to place writing his memoirs and

petitioning the government unsuccessfully for a pension to compensate him for

his Revolutionary War service. Seven years later at age 71, he died penniless.

Nagle's journal is rich in details of the kind that John Dann describes as

"putting meat on the bones of history." He writes as he might have spoken

and, according to Dann, reading Nagle's journal is like reading oral history

transcribed from tape.

John Dann has furnished an introduction to each chapter that provides

historical, biographical, geographical, and navigational background for Nagle's

reminiscences. As a result, the reader approaches the chapter with a feeling for

local color and for the personalities Nagle talks about. The result is a vibrant

account of the adventures of an American seaman who, in a most unusual

career, served on both sides during the Revolution and under two great British

heroes, Howe and Nelson.

 

Westport, Connecticut                          William H. Guthman

 

 

Ohio's Western Reserve: A Regional Reader. Edited by Harry F. Lupold

and Gladys Haddad. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1988. xii + 277p.;

bibliography, map, index.) and The Northwest Ordinance: Essays on its

Formulation, Provisions, and Legacy. Edited by Frederick D. Williams. (East

Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989. xiv + 142p.; bibliography,

index.) Harry Lupold and Gladys Haddad's Regional Reader, aimed at a

general audience, presents a survey of Western Reserve history through

materials selected from books, journals, and some primary sources. The

editors divide their selections into four groups; each section is introduced by a

short summary of the historical context and the major themes to be developed,

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Book Notes                                                     99

 

and each ends with a short and very basic bibliography. Beginning with the

seventeenth-century destruction of the the Eries, the volume extends to 1920,

by which time the Reserve had lost its distinctiveness as a region. The editors'

selections, which are quite readable, address almost every significant theme

connected with Reserve society during those years: the displacement of

Indians and imposition of a New England-based culture, life on the Euro-

American frontier, education, economic development and industrialization,

the continuing presence and growth of diverse religious and ethnic groups

belying the apparent New England monoculture, and the region's years of

national visibility and political influence between 1850 and 1920. Not intended

for specialists, this volume collects previously-published material in an acces-

sible form for college and high school use and is a good collection for browsing

by interested general readers.

Frederick William's Northwest Ordinance presents five scholarly papers

prepared for Michigan State University's conference on the Northwest Ordi-

nance bicentennial. Jack Rakove's and Gordon Stewart's essays deal with the

Ordinance itself; Rakove discusses the political and cultural context within

which it was drawn up and adopted, while Stewart focuses on the practical

diplomacy of settler loyalty to the then-feeble United States. With Ruth

Bloch's essay on the relationship between New England missionizing and

developments outside the Northwest, the volume shifts ground to temporal

development. Paul Finkelman illuminates the gap between the Ordinance's

famous ban on slavery and the reality of slave-holding as late as 1848. Jurgen

Herbst's essay on the educational legacy of the Ordinance and the Morrill Acts

concludes the volume, which is supplemented by the text of the Northwest

Ordinance itself and a rather too selective bibliography. Readers should note

that some of this material has appeared in substance elsewhere.

Despite their difference audiences, these volumes share some notable

strengths. First, each confronts the Indian presence directly. Second, each

presents broadly-based histories concerned with the fit between these regions

and the wider world. And, finally, each explicates some of the diversity of

society in its chosen area. Both volumes represent useful contributions to the

literature of the Northwest.

 

The Ohio State University                           Marc L. Harris

 

 

Books we have received which might be of interest to our readers include:

 

The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes. By Ari Hoogenboom. (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 1988. x + 278p.; notes, bibliographical essay,

index.)

William Howard Taft: A Bibliography. By Paolo E. Coletta. (Westport:

Meckler Corporation, 1989. xxxviii + 271p.;chronology, indexes, appendix.)

An Archeological History of the Hocking Valley. REVISED EDITION. By

James L. Murphy. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989. xiii + 406p.;

illustrations, tables, appendices, bibliography, index.)

Amazing Ohio: Illuminating Moments. By Damaine Vonada. (Wilmington,

Ohio: Orange Frazer Press, 1989. 157p.; illustrations, bibliography, index.)

Pattern of Circles: An Ambassador's Story. By John E. Dolibois. (Kent: The

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100                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Kent State University Press, 1989. xvi + 314p.; illustrations, index.)

Johnson-St. Paris Schools, 1919-1957: A Pictorial History. By Bernard R.

DeRemer. (St. Paris, Ohio: Johnson-St. Paris Alumni Association, 1989.

60p.; illustrations, alumni directory.)

Shaker Furniture Makers. By Jerry V. Grant and Douglas R. Allen. (Hanover,

New Hampshire: University Press of New England for Hancock Shaker

Village, Inc., 1989. xii + 180p.; illustrations, notes, selected bibliography,

photo credits, index.)

The Pioneer Preacher: Incidents of Interest, and Experiences in the Author's

Life. By Rev. Sherlock Bristol. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

xxxv + 200p.; illustrations, notes, appendix, index.) REPRINT.

High Style & Vernacular: Ohio Furniture, Decorative Arts, and Craftsmen,

1800-1850. By Catherine McQuaid Steiner and Bruce E. Steiner. (Athens:

Ohio University and the Dairy Barn Southeastern Ohio Cultural Arts Center,

1988. 119p.; illustrations, abbreviations and citations.)

Indiana: A New Historical Guide. By Robert M. Taylor, Jr., Errol Wayne

Stevens, Mary Ann Ponder, and Paul Brockman. (Indianapolis: Indiana

Historical Society, 1989. xii + 682p.; illustrations. maps. index.)

Cervin Robinson/Cleveland, Ohio. Photographs and introduction by Cervin

Robinson. Foreword by Evan H. Turner. (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press in association with The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1989. xvii + 106p.;

photographs.)

Keepers of Culture: The Art-Thought of Kenyon Cox, Royal Cortissoz, and

Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. By H. Wayne Morgan. (Kent: The Kent State

University Press, 1989. xii + 187p.; notes, selected bibliography, index.)

The Buckeye Rovers in the Gold Rush: An Edition of Two Diaries. Revised and

enlarged edition. Edited by H. Lee Scamehorn, Edwin P. Banks, and Jamie

Lytle-Webb. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989. xxiv + 239p.; illustra-

tions, notes, index.)

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