THE BIRTHPLACE OF PRESIDENT HAYES:
A STUDY IN ORAL TRADITION
by
C. E. VAN SICKLE
Professor of History, Ohio Wesleyan University
and
JAMES T. MAY
The people of Delaware, Ohio, have long pointed with
pride
to the fact that their city is the birthplace of
President Rutherford
B. Hayes. A Delaware tradition so old that no one now
living
seems to remember anything about its origin, marks as
his birth-
place a two-story brick house, which it asserts his
father had built
and which stood until 1930 on the north side of East
William
Street, a short distance from Sandusky Street. So
strong was the
confidence of the Delaware citizenry in this story
that when the
Standard Oil Company of Ohio tore down the building to
make
room for a filling station, the Daughters of the
American Revolution
erected a marker to identify the spot. Recent studies
have raised
very serious doubts about the truth of the tradition
and have thrown
considerable light on its origin.
The reliability of the legend regarding President
Hayes's birth-
place was first checked by the prosaic evidence of the
deed books
preserved in the office of the recorder of Delaware
County, which
produced some surprising data. The brick house on East
William
Street stood on a parcel of real estate known on the
early plats
of Delaware as In Lot 66, for which a complete list of
owners
is available. The Hayes family never owned it, as can
be seen
from the following table, which covers the whole
period of their
residence in Delaware:
Grantor
Grantee Price Date Deed Book
Moses Byxbe Little $
30 9-15-1808 V. I P. 58
Little Kester 1195 3-10-1813 II 290
Kester Robinson 1300 10-18-1813 II 432
Robinson B.
Tuller 1350 1- 5-1815 III 379
H. Tuller Cox
(west l/2) 500 5-24-1822 XIII 93
H. Tuller L.
Tuller (east l/2) 500 9-20-1822 XI 497
Cox Goodrich
(west l/2) 350 4- 3-1837 XV 281
167