Ohio History Journal

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OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 137

OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS         137

 

of the Ohio State University, was attended by over fifty persons,

representing the various organizations cooperating in the Ohio

History Conference. H. C. Shetrone, director of the Society,

presided, introducing Mrs. Janet Wethy Foley of Akron, New

York, who gave an address on "An Adventure in Genealogy,"

in which she related her own and her husband's experiences in

adopting genealogy as their profession.

 

 

General Session, 8:00 P. M., April 7, University Hall, O. S. U.,

Arthur C. Johnson, Sr., Presiding

The general session of the Ohio History Conference, held

Friday evening, April 7, in University Hall, Ohio State Uni-

versity, consisted of an address on "Tales of the Presidents, or

Gossip of History," delivered by the editor of the Toledo Blade,

Grove Patterson, enthusiastically introduced to an audience of

approximately two hundred persons by Arthur C. Johnson, Sr.,

president of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society.

Patterson warned his audience that what he had to say would

not be of great importance, that he would deal largely with

trivialities, but, he hoped, trivialities which would prove as in-

teresting to his hearers as they had to him.

After sketching briefly the rise and growth of political parties

in the United States, he turned to a survey of American Presi-

dents from George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt. An ac-

complished raconteur, he had evidently selected his material with

care, for the anecdotes which he related were all illustrative of

the thought which served as theme to his address: "The big

doors of history swing on little hinges." This they did, he as-

serted, at the time of Lincoln's election, caused in part at least

by these three apparently unrelated things: Stephen Douglas's

dislike of the climate of Cleveland; Lincoln's fatherly concern

over his son's poor academic record at Harvard; and Horace

Greeley's hatred of William H. Seward.

Patterson dwelt at some length on the career of Grant, whom

he considers the most interesting of all the Republican Presidents,