Ohio History Journal

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UNVEILING OF THE SOLDIERS' MEMORIAL TABLET

UNVEILING OF THE SOLDIERS' MEMORIAL TABLET

ON THE HAYES MEMORIAL BUILDING

AT SPIEGEL GROVE.

 

 

BY LUCY ELLIOT KEELER.

The Ninety-eighth Anniversary of the birth of Rutherford

B. Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United States, 1877-1881,

and at the time of his death, January 17, 1893, the honored

president of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society, was celebrated with ceremonies of unusual interest on

October 4, 1920, at Spiegel Grove, Fremont, Ohio. The day was

cloudless and the people came by thousands. The exercises were

held under the auspices of the Society with its president, former

Governor James E. Campbell, presiding. It had been the original

intention to lay the corner stone of a stackroom addition to the

present Library and Museum Building, to be built in architectural

harmony with it and of a capacity sufficient to accommodate

150,000 volumes, and to double the capacity of the museum. An

interesting feature of the proposed plan was to incorporate a

reproduction of the library of Dr. Charles Richard Williams,

of Princeton, New Jersey, the biographer of President Hayes,

who has generously tendered to the Society his magnificent

library and historical papers. Incidentally it may be mentioned

Dr. Williams's library room thus to be reproduced was the room

in the house at Princeton occupied by President Woodrow Wil-

son after his resignation as president of Princeton University

and during his incumbency of the office of Governor of New

Jersey, prior to his inauguration as President of the United

States March 4, 1913.

It was also in contemplation to have the formal dedication

of the Soldiers' Memorial Parkway of Sandusky County, through

land originally presented by Colonel Hayes to the Society and by it

donated for a Parkway; as well as the dedication of the Soldiers'

Memorial Sunparlor addition to the Memorial Hospital of San-

dusky County; but the two latter projects were in an uncom-

pleted condition, and the exercises were limited to an inspection

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