Ohio History Journal

390        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

Mr. Rickly was President. He served that institution, thoroughly

acquainting himself with the banking business until November 4, 1905,

having been Assistant cashier for many years past. On October 21,

1905, he was elected Secretary of the Ohio State Savings and Loan

Association, of which institution he had been a Director some ten or

twelve years previous, assuming the duties of his new position November

14, 1905. On January 1, 1906, Mr. Wood was elected by the members

of the Columbus Board of Education a member of that body from the

Twelfth Ward, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of the former

member from that ward. From his boyhood Mr. Wood has been an

enthusiastic and untiring worker in his church (Congregational) and

Sunday-school. Besides being one of the most efficient officers in man-

aging the financial affairs of the Society, Mr. Wood has ever taken

deepest interest in the work and progress of the Society.

In accordance with the action of the Executive Committee, the fol-

lowing Standing Committees were appointed for the ensuing year:

Big Bottom Park - Messrs. Martzolff, Prince and Bareis.

Finance--Messrs. Wood, Ryan and Bareis.

Fort Ancient--Messrs. Prince, Harper and Martzolff.

Jamestown Exposition - Messrs. Mills, Wright and Prince.

Museum and Library--Messrs. King, Wright and Mills.

Publications- Messrs. Ryan, Randall and Wood.

Serpent Mound-Messrs. Wright, Brinkerhoff and Randall.

 

 

 

 

 

THE COLLECTING OF HISTORICAL MATERIAL.

Mr. A. J. Baughman (Mansfield), Life Member of the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society and Secretary of the Richmond

County Historical Society, has given much attention to the methods of

collection of historical material. What he has to say upon this subject

we deem worthy of publication here:

The collection of material for historical purposes covering what in

Ohio is called the pioneer period has been a difficult task. That was

not an age of literature, but of work - of clearing the forest and of

building homes. The pioneers made history, but they had no time to

write it. A few of the first settlers may have kept chronicles and

annals, but after the country was somewhat improved, the same impulse

that brought them to Ohio, impelled some of them to again take their

places in the line of the march of civilization to the still farther West,

and while enroute their records were lost. And when the historian

came to write of the early settlements of the country, the information

obtained was largely of the traditional kind, and it has been difficult

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often to discriminate between facts and fiction. There were state and

county records, but the woof of events which the pioneers wove into the

warp of time had to be sought in part outside of official records to

make the web of history.

To state what I consider the best method of collecting material,

I take the liberty to give my own experience, prefaced with some per-

sonal history. My grand-parents were pioneers of Richland County,

Ohio. They settled there in 1808, the year the city of Mansfield was

founded. When a boy I heard my parents narrate pioneer tales, as we

sat winter evenings around the family hearth, in the warmth and glow

of the log fire of our cabin home. Their stories interested me, and that

interest grew with my years, and I endeavored to extend my informa-

tion upon pioneer history as opportunities were afforded. But it takes

years to get an adequate knowledge and an accurate history of any

locality.

I am a newspaper man and my vocation gave me opportunities to

visit every part of Richland County and adjoining territory, not only once

or twice but dozens of times during a series of years in the capacity of

solicitor, reporter and special writer, and upon all such occasions I made

more or less effort to become familiar, not only with the people, but

with the early history, the geography, the geology, the topography and

the pre-historic earthworks of the county. With the information thus

gained, I began the publication of historical and biographical sketches

as feature articles in the Mansfield papers, and these in turn were copied

by newspapers of other towns, and gave the people opportunities to make

corrections and additions, and these articles also aided in creating an

interest in historical matters which had never existed before, and resulted

in the formation of the Richland County Historical Society. From these

sketches I prepared a history of the county, which was published in the

centennial year, 1900.

To the "Fourth Estate," as Edmund Burke termed the press, I give

the credit of affording me the opportunities I utilized in collecting material

and for its presentation to the public in a manner open to criticisms and

corrections ere it was put into book form.

Therefore, I consider the press the best means by and through which

historical material can be collected and presented to the public; the best

experiences of former years into lessons that work for good in this

commercial age of endless hurry and needless haste.

It is in historical publications and by historical associations that

the lessons of pioneer life, with its joys and its sorrows, its trials, its

hardships and its achievements, can be preserved and inscribed, as they

should be, on the heart-tablet of every child in the land, from genera-

tion to generation.

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