PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL OHIO HISTORY
CONFERENCE,
Including the Fifty-Fourth Annual
Meeting of the Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Society,
the Ninth Annual Meeting
of the Ohio Academy of History and the
Ninth Annual Meeting
of the Columbus Genealogical Society,
Held at Columbus, April
4-6, 1940, in Cooperation with Ohio State
University, the Com-
mittee on Archives and Medical History
of the Ohio State Arch-
aeological and Historical Society, and
Local Historical Societies
throughout the State.
Columbus Genealogical Society Annual
Dinner Session,
6:30 P. M., April 4, Athletic Club,
Frank A. Livingston, Presiding
The opening session of the 1940 Ohio History
Conference
was held Thursday evening, April 4, at
the Athletic Club in
Columbus, Ohio, the occasion being the
ninth annual dinner of
the Columbus Genealogical Society. Mr.
Frank A. Livingston,
president of the society, presided at
the dinner.
After welcoming the guests, Mr.
Livingston spoke briefly of
the genealogical society, its program,
history, and activities.
He was followed by Miss Helen E.
Swisher, one of the editors
of the Ohio Genealogical Quarterly, who
identified the persons
attending the banquet and introduced
those at the speakers' table:
Harlow Lindley, Secretary, Editor and
Librarian of the Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical
Society; Mrs. Harlow Lindley;
Frank A. Livingston; Mrs. Frank A.
Livingston; Mrs. Harry B.
Longsworth, Secretary of the Allen
County Historical and Arch-
aeological Society, Lima, Ohio; Dr.
George W. Rightmire, Presi-
dent-Emeritus of the Ohio State
University. Miss Swisher led
the group in the singing of several
folk-songs.
Mr. Livingston introduced Dr. Rightmire
who spoke on
"Does Blood Tell? What's in a
Name?" He began his address
(221)
222 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
by saying that the old adage of
"Three generations from shirt
sleeves to shirt sleeves" was
particularly applicable in the United
States because the people of our country
believe that everybody
has the same right to equality of
opportunity: hence the importance
attached by us to universal education
which we value for two
reasons--individual cultivation and
preparation for citizenship.
Because of this national attitude, the
United States has become a
refuge for people of other countries
whose policies are based on
concepts entirely different from those
valued by Americans. And
thus we have in our country a diverse
group of people, to all of
whom is extended the opportunity for
education and self-better-
ment. In such a population the
development of a class system
would be difficult; individuals and
families rise and fall in im-
portance and influence with astounding
rapidity, and this constant
flux gives to the study of names in the
United States a peculiar
fascination and indicates the limits
within which it must be con-
ducted, that is, the study of individual
names.
Before speaking directly of such a study
in our country, Dr.
Rightmire traced the development of
individual names, beginning
with Biblical times when a person's name
consisted of only one
word (Samuel, Isaac, etc.). This same
custom was followed in
ancient Greece, as illustrated by such
names as Socrates, Homer,
etc. But the Roman practice was
different; every well recognized
Roman had three words in his name, a
praenomen, a family name
(nomen), and a cognomen (as for example
Caius Julius Caesar),
by any one of which he might be known
generally.
With the above exception (Roman) the practice
of using
one-word names was widespread until
about 1300 A. D. when the
names of most individuals began to be
composed of two words.
This enlargement in the number of words
used in a name, coming
as it did just after the crusades, was
doubtless occasioned by the
migratory habits of the people of that
time which had necessitated
the adoption of a better system of
distinguishing persons one from
another. People were identified
according to their place of resi-
dence, as John Atwood (John, at wood),
according to their per-
sonal relationships, as John Powell
(John, son (ap) of Howell),
according to their trades, as John
Miller, etc.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 223
About 1800 A. D. it became the fashion
to give persons names
made up of three words--a custom which
arose largely because
of the need for an improved system of
identification. It is im-
possible to say just what influences the
choice of contemporary
given names since their selection is
subject to factors which cannot
be reduced to rule. In all periods there
are, of course, exceptions
to the custom of a three-word name, as
for example in the eight-
eenth century the Marquis de Lafayette
(Marie Jean Paul Roch
Yves Gilbert Motier), in the nineteenth
the German Chancellor
Otto Eduard Leopold Bismark and in the
twentieth Edward Albert
Christian George Andrew Patrick David,
better known as Ed-
ward VIII. What the future will bring in
the development of
names we do not know, although it might
not be amiss to proph-
esy that we are near the beginning of an
era in which the use of
four-word names will be common.
The purpose of the genealogist is to
create a family tree and
his chief concern is with names. He is interested in them
wherever and whenever found. But in the
last analysis, the
genealogist is interested not in the
name itself but in the blood
for which it stands and whose
continuance he traces from gen-
eration to generation.
In support of this statement Dr.
Rightmire cited the history
of three illustrious families: the
Washington, Adams, and Pitt
families, the first two being associated
particularly with our coun-
try and the latter with England. He
traced their origins, rises,
and declines, and dwelt at length on the
gifted individuals found
within these three families.
In bringing his address to a close, the
speaker emphasized the
importance of the continuity of blood,
going from generation to
generation. In this connection he lauded
as a "meticulously articu-
lated piece of genealogical
research" that done in tracing the
descent of the British royal family from
1066 to 1940. Dr. Right-
mire concluded by saying:
"Genealogy is an humanitarian interest.
It will always be an intriguing pursuit,
both from the standpoint
of the individual and from that of the
social history of our
country. But it is to be remembered that
in the first and last
analysis we must deal with the
individual, for it is he who makes
things go and move."
224
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society Annual Business
Session, 10:00 A.
M., April 5, 1940, Ohio State Museum
The Fifty-fourth Annual Meeting of the
Ohio State Arch-
aeological and Historical Society
convened in the Auditorium of
the Museum at 10:00 A. M. on April 5, 1940.
In the absence of
the President, Arthur C. Johnson, Sr.,
the meeting was called to
order by the Vice-President, Freeman T.
Eagleson.
Mr. Eagleson spoke briefly on the
accomplishments and as-
pirations of the Society, and mentioned
some of the men who
have been responsible for its growth and
success. The meeting
was then declared in session for the
transaction of business.
The reading of the minutes of the
preceding Annual Meeting
was dispensed with. By vote of the
members the minutes were
approved. The Chairman then appointed
Mr. H. Preston Wolfe,
Reverend William H. Hannum, and Mr.
Richard G. Morgan
members of a committee to nominate
successors to Messrs. A. C.
Spetnagel, George Florence, and Arthur
C. Johnson, Sr., whose
terms as trustees expired at this time.
The annual report of the
Director followed.
REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE OHIO STATE
MUSEUM
This brief report covers, as usual, the
activities of the Director and
of the several departments in his
custody, Observing the time sequence,
we begin with the Department of
Archaeology, Richard G. Morgan, Curator.
During the past year this Department has
completely remodeled the south
archaeological room, through
rearrangement of the cases and displays and
by supplying new and adequate labels.
The Lithic Laboratory of the De-
partment, H. Holmes Ellis, technician,
has issued a voluminous report of
its activities which is just off the
press. Curator Morgan has completed
a display illustrating prehistoric
fishing and hunting. A vast amount of
work has been done by the departmental
staff in the direction of arch-
aeological bibliography, preparation of
loan collections and the making of
replicas. The usual routine has been
heavier even than normal.
The Department of History, William D.
Overman, Curator, has added
to the Museum's fine collection of early
Ohio pottery; has prepared several
special exhibits, as "Weights and
Measures"; a "Weaving Room"; a
"Watchmaker's Shop,"
exhibiting an exhaustive collection of watchmaker's
tools, clocks and watches, the last
named having been made possible
through the untiring efforts and
numerous gifts of Mr. William J. Nonnen-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 225
macher, a veteran watchmaker of
Columbus. Curator Overman has acted
as sponsor's representative for a W.P.A.
Museum Project since its inception
in September, 1939. A state-wide
project, sponsored by the Museum, for
$360,500 was approved early this year
and the unit operating in the Museum
building employs twenty-five people,
distributed in the several departments.
All displays in the Department have been
refurbished and in many in-
stances augmented during the year and
the Curator has done a gratifying
amount of research along the lines of
Ohio history.
The Department of Natural History,
Edward S. Thomas, Curator,
has much to show for the year's activities.
Among the many accomplish-
ments may be mentioned preparation of
forty Riker Mounts of Insects for
loan collections for Ohio schools;
reconstruction of nine mammal habitat
cases; construction of three new insect
cabinets; reconditioning of mammal
and bird exhibits; collecting, mounting
and cataloging of 4,922 specimens
of insects and 400 specimens of
vertebrates; research on early records of
Ohio wild life, 300 typed pages; mapping
distribution of Ohio mammals,
birds, and economic insects, 8,123 entries.
Division of State Memorials, Curator
Erwin C. Zepp, has given
special attention to the program for
adequate marking of the several State
memorials, to be effected during the
coming spring and summer. Through
the services of W.P.A. and N.Y.A. artists,
a large number of descriptive
markers now are ready for erection. Mr.
Zepp is cooperating closely with
other agencies in the preparation of a
program for the celebration of the
opening of the old National Road. He has
done much to strengthen the ad-
ministrative and maintenance setup for
state memorials and has effected a
closer working relationship with State
and Federal agencies. C.C.C. labor
has been provided by the Soil
Conservaton Service at Fort Ancient, Fort
Hill and Serpent Mound. N.Y.A. labor has
been utilized at Mound-builders,
Octagon, Schoenbrunn and Fort Ancient.
The division cooperated in the
preparation of the Ohio exhibit at the
New York World's Fair and at the
Ohio State Fair.
Mr. Starling L. Eaton, Superintendent of
Maintenance, in addition to
the heavy routine of keeping the
building and grounds in first class con-
dition, has effected numerous repairs
and has redecorated several of the
offices and exhibition halls. Some idea
of the activities incumbent on the
maintenance force may be had from the
following: Painting and caulking
of 218 windows; repainting parapet wall,
a total of almost 2,500 square feet;
repointing south wall, 2,000 square
feet; resurfacing with special prepara-
tion all display cases in the Museum and
cleaning glass in same; painting
20,000 square feet of interior walls and
ceiling.
The Museum's service to the public
schools of Ohio, which is being
administered by Winnie N. Waite, in
addition to her duties as secretary
to the Director, has increased the
demand for the Museum's circulating loan
collections and has added to their
number. This activity is destined to in-
226 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
crease in importance as rapidly as
facilities for meeting the demand can be
acquired. The Museum's service to
Columbus schools is under the super-
vision of Miss Olive Clevenger who has
given instruction to about 400
classes this year, a total of almost
13,000 pupils. Lessons are scheduled in
fourteen different subjects in history
and nature study, based upon Museum
exhibits.
Irene C. Stahl has discharged the duties
of financial secretary with
utmost satisfaction, despite a good deal
of additional work which has de-
volved on her office during the past
year.
The cabinet shop under the able
supervision of J. S. Waite, has been
the scene of constant activity during
the year. Some idea of the accom-
plishments may be had from the
following: construction of 14 new display
cases, 50 school collection boxes, 176
insect boxes and 89 storage boxes.
A total of 29 old cases have been
remodeled and 67 cases have been re-
finished.
Aside from the activities previously
noted, the Director has written
a chapter on Ohio prehistory for the
forthcoming 6-volume "History of
Ohio." He attended the Council
meeting of the American Association of
Museums in New York City, of which he is
a member, representing the
Society. As chairman of the Committee on
Publication for the forthcom-
ing semicentennial celebration of the
Ohio Academy of Science, he has given
the necessary time and attention to the
discharge of the duties involved
therein. The Museum served as host to
the Section on Anthropology on
the occasion of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science
Convention in Columbus during the
holidays. Continuing with the idea
of closer cooperation with the Ohio
State University, the Director suc-
ceeded in effecting a plan whereby
during the coming summer the Museum
and the University will sponsor a joint
project of archaeological exploration
in southern Ohio. Under this
arrangement, the University supplements
the nominal appropriation which the
Museum has for this purpose. In
furtherance of Museum-University
cooperation, arrangements were made
whereby Richard G. Morgan, Curator of
Archaeology, is teaching a course
in Ohio archaeology, in collaboration
with Dr. John P. Gillin, of the Uni-
versity's Department of Sociology and
Anthropology.
Among the more important acquisitions to
the Museum displays dur-
ing the past year is a diorama
reproducing a composite Ohio rock shelter,
with its Indian occupants engaged in
their every-day life. This group was
constructed by Earl Schenck, who has had
wide experience in this type of
work. This most valuable acquisition was
made possible through the in-
terest of the Society's President, Mr.
Arthur C. Johnson, who effected the
arrangement with Mr. Schenck. Additional
acquisitions will be cited in the
printed report for the year.
As a result of a good deal of thought
and discussion, a series of
fifteen radio dramatizations of
outstanding events in Ohio history was
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 227
planned with Ohio State University
Broadcasting station and is being of-
fered each Tuesday afternoon over WOSU.
This series, which is pro-
fessional in caliber, has attracted wide
attention and is being rebroadcast by
several additional stations. Dr. William
D. Overman, as historian, deserves
credit for the exhaustive research which
has made these broadcasts unique
up to the present time.
As of January 1, 1940, two members of
the staff--Mr. Howard R.
Goodwin, registrar and staff artist, and
Mr. Alfred Johns, day watchman,
were retired under the age limit
provision of the Society. Because of a
shortage in funds for personal service,
these two positions have not been
filled. It is hoped that this may be
done later in the year. In this con-
nection, it may be timely to mention the
fact that the State appropriation
for the present biennium is not adequate
for the satisfactory operation of
the Museum, a situation which we trust
may be corrected for the next
biennium. Incidentally, the duties of
the registrar at present are being
taken over by the several curators of
the departments, while Mr. P. F.
Mooney, a recent addition to the staff
is filling the position of day watchman
temporarily, and is rendering a
much-needed service in conducting groups
through the Museum.
This report should not be closed without
acknowledging the ines-
timable asset which W.P.A. assistance
has been to the Museum. Mr. A.
Otto Steele, as supervisor, has shown
himself to be a man of exceptional
ability and character. The services of
the W.P.A. have been as follows:
Archaeology: assistance in
bibliographical research; preparation of loan
collections and reproduction of
specimens; Ohio history: preparation of
exhibits and printing of labels; Natural
history: preparation of maps and
records; Cabinet shop: construction of
display cases, preparation of exhibit
rooms and construction of storage
cabinets, etc.
In closing, I wish to state that Dr.
Harlow Lindley, Secretary, Editor
and Librarian, and his staff, have been
uniformly helpful throughout the
year in every situation and to this I
attribute the fact that the Museum
has been able to accomplish even more
during the past year, I think, than
any preceding one. I trust that you will
feel that we have done the best we
could with what facilities we have had.
H. C. SHETRONE, Director.
List of Accessions
Accessions to the archaeological and
historical collections of the
Society herewith listed, have been
acknowledged and recorded, and placed
on exhibition or stored, as seemed most
desirable. All are gifts unless
otherwise noted.
228 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Department of
History
Item Donor Address
Collection of
daguerreotypes
and tintypes Mrs.
J. S. Harrell Indian
River City, Fla.
Homespun
linen Blanch
Tipton Rings Columbus,
Ohio
Pkg. of block
matches Dr.
E. C. Mills Columbus,
Ohio
Carpet
sweeper Mrs.
H. P. Thomas Columbus,
Ohio
Model of
cider press Prof.
E. H. Beach Columbus,
Ohio
Portrait of
John Craig and
engraving
"Men of Progress" Dean
E. A. Hitchcock Columbus,
Ohio
Wooden
spindles John
Covan Columbus,
Ohio
Prayer book
and papers Mrs.
Lillian Thompson Columbus,
Ohio
Powder flask
and shot flask Glenn
V. Wagner Columbus,
Ohio
Jig-saw Mr.
and Mrs. R. W. Magly Columbus, Ohio
Books,
earthenware, and
china Mr. and Mrs. Wm. T.
Heilman Columbus,
Ohio
Bank notes Mrs.
Raymond Shoemaker Columbus,
Ohio
Parasols,
hymn book Mary
T. Bowen Hollywood,
Cal.
Gear wheels
from old mill Dr.
A. C. Dunlap Cadiz,
Ohio
Well hook Ross
E. Hedges Cadiz,
Ohio
Elgin watch Mrs.
W. H. Kear Columbus,
Ohio
Ohio pottery Prof.
A. S. Watts Ohio
State University
Toy cook
stove* Genevieve
F. Clark Columbus,
Ohio
Election
tickets E.
Liverpool Historical
Society E.
Liverpool, Ohio
Surgical
instruments Dr.
E. C. Mills Columbus,
Ohio
Edison
phonograph and records Mr.
and Mrs. Wm. R.
Bennett Columbus,
Ohio
Token C.
L. Weaver Columbus,
Ohio
Carpet
stretcher J.
S. Waite Columbus,
Ohio
Oil painting
and photographs
of Columbus
Fire Department Columbus Fire
Dept. Columbus, Ohio
Model of
block-house and
covered wagon Amy
H. Brown Toledo,
Ohio
Surgical
instruments Dr.
R. S. Conner Des
Moines, Iowa
Photograph Margaret
B. Church Urbana,
Ohio
Historical
collection:
costumes,
china, etc. Dr.
C. E. Rice Alliance,
Ohio
Syrup jug Ella
Bowden New
Vienna, Ohio
Photograph Oberlin
College Oberlin,
Ohio
Gas iron M.
B. Binning Columbus,
Ohio
Photograph Charles
Justice Columbus,
Ohio
Civil War
flag Mrs.
Sidney Young Marion,
Ohio
French
bayonet John
Randall Columbus,
Ohio
Erie and
Kalamazoo R. R.
notes H.
S. Bissell Toledo,
Ohio
Wooden fork John
J. Carner Columbus,
Ohio
Coffee mill,
candle-mold,
steelyards Mrs.
W. A. Rubrecht Columbus,
Ohio
Cartridge box Mrs.
John S. Crabb Columbus,
Ohio
Civil War
collection F.
W. Hart Akron,
Ohio
* Indicates
loan.
OHIO HISTORY
CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 229
Item Donor Address
Steelyards John
R. Horst Lancaster,
Ohio
Cooper's
tools Margaret
E. Lautenklos Chillicothe,
Ohio
Hair jewelry Mrs.
W. H. Sawyer Columbus,
Ohio
Pewter
platter and portraits Elizabeth
Jenkins Mt.
Pleasant, Ohio
Watchmaker's
bench Mr.
and Mrs. Clarence
Oglesbee London,
Ohio
Typewriter Campus
Martius Museum Marietta,
Ohio
Surveying
instruments Chas.
A. Hochenedel Fremont,
Ohio
Sleighbells C.
H. Zipf Columbus,
Ohio
Watchmaker's
tools Wm.
J. Nonnenmacher Columbus,
Ohio
Shoemaker's
tools J.
R. Edelblute Columbus,
Ohio
Shoemaker's
tools* P.
A. Gauschemann Columbus,
Ohio
Shoemaker's
tools Greiner's
Shoe Store Columbus,
Ohio
Shoes Chas.
O. Graham Columbus,
Ohio
Scissors,
hand-made Mrs.
Helen Curry Columbus,
Ohio
Watchmaker's
lathe wheels A.
Dupps Columbus,
Ohio
Gun J.
C. Campbell Columbus,
Ohio
Watchmaker's
lathe Wm.
F. Savage Columbus,
Ohio
Vase Joseph
Slight Columbus,
Ohio
Watchmaker's
tools Geo.
Schneider Columbus,
Ohio
Rifles* Harold
Barnhart Chillicothe,
Ohio
Watchmaker's
tools J.
J. Boesch Columbus,
Ohio
Watchmaker's
tools Carl
Moehlenpah Columbus,
Ohio
Watches H.
J. Heimberger Columbus,
Ohio
Sheffield
Razor Thomas
Foster Columbus,
Ohio
Scarf-pin
removed by
tracheotomy Mrs. Charlotte Reeve
Conover Dayton,
Ohio
Cello, made
in Ohio before 1817 Mary
Scott Washington,
D. C.
Baby carriage Helen
G. Plumb Columbus,
Ohio
Civil War
flag and documents Walter
A. Stafford Oakland,
California
Department of
Archaeology
Indian
lacrosse raquette Elmer
G. Spahr Columbus,
Ohio
Indian pestle Robert
Findlay Columbus,
Ohio
Potsherds
from Greenup
County,
Kentucky A.
C. Spetnagel Chillicothe,
Ohio
Archaeological
specimens Mrs.
C. S. Plumb Klamath
Falls, Oregon
Flint disks Irvin
Peithman Carbondale,
Illinois
Two stone
celts and a stone
gorget J.
B. Sanders Not
stated
Thirty-three
arrowheads William Taylor Millersport,
Ohio
Rawhide lasso Henry
F. Juerin Not
stated
Archaeological
specimens Mrs.
E. B. Thomas Columbus,
Ohio
Three casts
of petroglyphs Randall
Ragan Columbus,
Ohio
Flint from
Peoria, Oklahoma Fred
Ulrich Galena,
Kansas
Flint from
Cumberland, Md. Frank
Wisman Cumberland,
Maryland
Flint from
New York, Penn-
sylvania, and
Vermont William A. Ritchie, Ro-
chester
Museum of Arts
and
Sciences Rochester, New
York
Pottery
vessel from the South-
west Miss Florence
Murdoch Cincinnati, Ohio
* Indicates
loan.
230 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Next in the order of business came the
annual report of the
Secretary, which follows.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE OHIO
STATE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
To the Trustees and Members of the Ohio
State Archaeological and
Historical Society:
The Secretary presents to the Board of
Trustees and members of the
Society his seventh annual report for
the year ending March 31, 1940, it
being the annual report for the
fifty-fourth year of the Society.
I. Secretarial Duties
Since the Annual Meeting held April 7,
1939, the trustees have held
three regular meetings and the Executive
Committee four called meetings.
During the year the Secretary has given
more than the usual attention
to local historical society interests in
the State. He has assisted personally
in the organization of two new societies
during the year and has visited by
request and corresponded with a number
of others. We now have a record
of fifty-six regional and county
historical societies in the State. In ad-
dition to speaking in Ohio the Secretary
was on the program of the
annual meeting of the American
Historical Association which met in
Washington, D. C., December 28-30, 1939,
and is on the program of the
Pennsylvania Federation of Historical
Societies which meets at Harrisburg,
April 11, and the annual meeting of the
Mississippi Valley Historical
Association which will meet at Omaha,
Nebraska, May 2-4.
The total membership as of April 1,
1940, was 658, as compared with
734 one year ago. The members are
classified as follows: One Patron,
two sustaining members, thirteen
contributing members, 262 annual mem-
bers, and 380 life members. During the
year the Society has added one
life member, one sustaining member, four
contributing members and 45
annual members, making a total of 51 new
members. Yet with these ad-
ditions there was a net loss of 76
members. This is a situation which
should claim the attention of all our
members. While a large list of mem-
bers is not necessarily desirable yet in
a state with the population of Ohio,
there should be a minimum of 1000
members. A number of our states
with a less population and less
spectacular history have state societies with
even a larger membership. The QUARTERLY
is being mailed to 1195 persons
and institutions, and Museum Echoes to
1522.
The terms of Arthur C. Johnson, Sr.,
George Florence, and Albert C.
Spetnagel, as trustees elected by the
Society's members, expire this year.
In this connection mention should be
made of the death of Mrs. Anna
Young of Zanesville who was serving her
first term as a trustee of the
Society. While Mrs. Young had attended
only two meetings of the Board
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE; PROCEEDINGS 231
of Trustees she had shown a great
interest in the Society and her death
is felt as a distinct loss.
II. Editorial Duties
In addition to the editing of the
QUARTERLY and Museum Echoes
the Society has issued during the year a
booklet to be used in connection
with Ohio's exhibit at the New York
World's Fair, a revised edition of
Guide to Serpent Mound, and the preparation of two booklets not yet
published. The editor has also given
much attention to furthering the
preparation of the "History of
Ohio." In all this editorial work much
credit should be given to Clarence L.
Weaver, assistant editor, and Lois R.
Hiestand, editorial assistant.
III. The Library
During the year 1,158 volumes have been
added to the Library of
which number 38 were review copies, 116
were by exchange, 209 were by
purchase, and 795 were by gift. The
State appropriation for the purchase
of books for the biennium has been very
inadequate.
The Library receives regularly 300
periodicals of which 45 are gifts,
50 are subscriptions, and 205 are by
exchange.
The Library now contains 44,995 volumes,
exclusive of newspapers,
maps, pamphlets and manuscripts.
During the year the Cataloging Department
has made 28,265 cards in
cataloging and analyzing 4,775 volumes,
including a revision of the cataloging
of all serial publications from A-C and
a large number from D-G. Assist-
ing in this work at present are seven
W.P.A. workers, of whom one is a
cataloger, one a proof-reader, one a
filing clerk, and four are typists.
A new method of handling pamphlets and
other ephemera has been
devised and put in operation.
The Library's serial holdings will be
listed in the Second Edition of
the Union List of Serials. The
work of listing is complicated by the fact
that a great many volumes are unbound
and unaccessioned, but so far
schedules have been met which brings the
checking to date through letter
G. In the process of checking, a great
deal of accumulated material is
handled which made it seem desirable to
sift out the unwanted and dupli-
cate items, and schedule for binding, or
boxing, the matter to be kept.
Manuscript Division
In the Manuscript Division work has been
started on a new cataloging
system. The accessioning of all
collections is about to be completed and
a card catalog should be well under way
in another year. The following
are the more important manuscript
collections received during the past
year:
A collection of over six thousand
letters covering the period from
1853 to 1918, and over one thousand
sermons, of Washington Gladden,
232 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
pastor of the First Congregational
Church of Columbus, Ohio, from 1882
to 1918. Dr. Gladden was prominent in
educational and civic affairs in
addition to his religious work. This
collection was presented to the Society
by the Columbus School for Girls.
About two hundred letters and documents
of Thomas Worthington
and his family from 1790 to 1880.
One hundred and forty-five letters and
75 documents, maps, etc. of
General James S. Robinson of Kenton,
Ohio, relating chiefly to the Civil
War, presented by Mrs. William Kraus of
Kenton.
Thirty letters of Eli, Seth, and Dan
Thomson (1817-1857) written
from Wilkesville, Ohio, to relatives in
Bellingham, Massachusetts.
Twenty-nine letters of Robert Finley,
Robert, William, Samuel and
James McCutchan and others from Adams
County, Ohio, to their relatives
in Middlebrook, Augusta County,
Virginia, 1807-1851.
Additions to the Charles Rice Collection
of autographs of prominent
Ohioans, including records of Carmel
Monthly Meeting of Friends in
eastern Ohio, presented by Dr. Charles
Rice of Alliance, Ohio.
Additions to the collection of records
of the Columbus Presbytery,
transferred to the Society by the First Presbyterian
Church of Columbus,
Ohio.
Microfilm copies of all of the Thomas
Worthington Papers in the
Ohio State Library made in the
Photographic Laboratory of the Society
through the cooperation of Mr. Paul A.
T. Noon, State Librarian, and
Miss Bertha Krauss, in charge of
manuscripts at the State Library.
The letters and literary manuscripts of
Paul Laurence Dunbar trans-
ferred to the Manuscript Division from
the Dunbar Memorial in Dayton,
Ohio.
A 589-page manuscript volume
of historical notes on Union Neigh-
borhood, Greene County, Ohio, prepared
and presented by Harvey W.
Elam, of Xenia.
Newspaper Division
The Newspaper Division has been an
active department of the
Library during the past year.
The research facilities of any
institution become valuable only when
those facilities, so often the source of
untold wealth in scholarly material,
are properly cataloged and filed. Beyond
this, the finding of individual
items or the tracing of any particular trend
is entirely dependent upon the
time and effort of the student of
research. This becomes a very tiring
task, especially in certain types of
original historical material.
Probably the most difficult source
material to use, though the great-
est source of first hand information of
the day-by-day history of any com-
munity, is the newspaper file, covering
a period of many years and pro-
viding a mass of material through which
one must often spend endless
hours searching for the desired
information.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE;
PROCEEDINGS 233
To help solve this problem, the Society
undertook in 1938 the re-
sponsibility of sponsoring a W.P.A.
project to make a selective index
(starting with the present date and
going back through the files) of all
the local and State news and opinion in
seven Ohio newspapers, namely
the Akron Beacon Journal, Cincinnati
Enquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer,
Columbus Ohio State Journal, Dayton
Journal, Toledo Blade and the
Youngstown Vindicator. This work
has been going on for several months
and the result is the beginning of an
index which serves as a key, not
only to important proper names but also
to specific types of subjects as
well. It does not profess to be a
paraphrase or digest of the news, but
simply a guide or key to be used as a
means of finding particular news
items. The index is being reproduced by
the photo-multilith process, on
a standard reference work size page, in
six-point type. Copies of the index
will be available to any library,
newspaper, or any organization that desires
one or more of the indices. Up to date
five years of the Cleveland Plain
Dealer index have been printed and bound and approximately
four or five
years are ready for printing in each of
the other six cities.
In helping the Society with this work
the aid of local libraries, city
and county governments, historical
societies, and the newspapers themselves
was pledged. All of the rental space,
heat and light, paper and other
supplies were furnished by these
institutions as their contribution towards
making the index a reality.
Approximately two million dollars have been
appropriated to date for this project.
The sponsors and cosponsors are
contributing approximately $111,000.
Another phase of this project is to
microfilm every page of every issue
in each of the seven different files.
This will mean that a film copy of each
of the newspapers that are indexed will
be available for use by every library
in Ohio. Two positive copies are to be
made, one to remain in a public
library of each of the seven cities, and
the second to be stored with the
Society as a loan copy to be sent free
to any library upon request.
Through the existence of a negative copy
which will be in the possession
of the Library of Congress, part or all
of the newspaper files may be had
by having positive copies made. This
will not only help fill volume gaps
in existing sets but will also help to
augment the Library's completeness
by adding bibliofilm sets of the rarer
and more valuable issues. This will
not only aid documentation for research
but will also increase the permanence
of the Library's holdings. The film to
be used is 33mm. acetate pan-
chromatic high fidelity film, such as
Agfa-Ansco Mini-pan or approved equal.
The microfilming has been done under
contract by four film companies and
it is expected that the entire job will
be completed by the middle of May.
The value of having these seven
newspapers in microfilm cannot be
overemphasized. The cost to the Society
for both the indexing and the
microfilm has been negligible. However,
to preserve the film at the correct
temperature of seventy degrees and the
proper humidity of fifty degrees
234
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
will necessitate either buying or
building special steel or wood cabinets.
It is imperative that these cabinets be
available within a very short time
after receipt of all the films.
In the temporary bindery which was set
up over a year ago for the
purpose of repairing and rebinding
volumes we have bound over five
hundred volumes and repaired many more.
At the present time the Library is
receiving regularly sixty-eight Ohio
and eleven out-of-state dailies;
seventy-eight weeklies and semi-weekies;
and five foreign-language papers printed
in Ohio. It may be of interest to
note that the Society has a close
interest in another project which is being
carried on in Cleveland for the purpose
of translating and digesting opinion
articles in the Cleveland
foreign-language newspapers. This will prove to
be of inestimable value to the students
of research interested in the opinion
of nationality groups.
In the past year the Newspaper Library
has received 558 volumes and
455 miscellaneous copies of papers, most
of which are of Ohio. The
Library possesses 17,179. bound volumes,
10,096 unbound volumes, making
a total of 27,275 volumes. From April 1,
1939, to March 31, 1940, the
Library received 2,780 calls for papers.
This number is high considering
the fact that the use of the Library is
limited to research students only.
The Society's cut collection of
illustrative material has grown in the
past year to 4,290. All these cuts have
been properly cataloged and filed,
and are ready for use in any legitimate
way.
The State Archives
The classification of the Executive
Records has been almost com-
pleted during the past year. Work has
been started on the systematic ar-
rangement of the Adjutant General's
records and the documents from the
Board of Public Works. Limitations in
space for storing records has made
it impossible to transfer any additional
collections from State offices and
has seriously hampered the work of
arranging the documents already stored
in the Society's Library.
The Curator of History and Archivist has
studied developments in
American archival practice by attending
the annual meeting of the Society
of American Archivists and the sectional
meeting of the organization in
connection with the American Historical
Association. He was appointed
chairman of the Committee on Business
Archives of the Society of Amer-
ican Archivists and is on the Committee
of the American Historical Asso-
ciation on Historical Manuscripts. He
was also elected Vice-President of
the Industrial History Society which was
organized in Washington, D. C.
in December of 1939.
He reports that it is the aim of the
Archivist of this Society to keep
abreast of developments both State and
national and to continue to formulate
plans for the establishment of an Ohio
Archives as a separate department
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 235
of the State government when the proper
time comes. Ohio is far behind
other states with respect to the care
and preservation of its official records
and while the Society, under a law
passed in 1927, is serving as custodian
for approximately 1500 cubic feet of
valuable State papers, the great bulk
of them are still subject to the hazards
of loss, disarrangement, theft, and
damage by fire, water, and vermin.
W. P. A. Library Activities
W. P. A. assistance in all phases of
work in the Library has been
continued during the past year. In
October of 1939 the Library portion of
the Society's W. P. A. program was placed under the
administration of the
Library Services Project, a State-wide
project under the supervision of
Mr. James Foutts. Miss Ruth Hess, district supervisor for
this area,
has shown considerable interest in
increasing the efficiency of W. P. A.
work in the Library.
The Society has continued to sponsor the
State-wide Historical Rec-
ords Survey, the Ohio Writers' Project,
and the Ohio Newspaper Index
Project.
For the progress made in the Library
during the past year in spite of
financial and other handicaps, due credit
must be accorded to the loyalty
and efficiency of staff members.
HARLOW LINDLEY,
Secretary, Editor and Librarian.
In the absence of the Treasurer, the
Financial Secretary read
the letter of transmittal of Mr. W. D.
Wall, Certified Public Ac-
countant, to the Society's Treasurer,
Mr. Oscar F. Miller.
April 2, 1940.
MR. O. F. MILLER, TREASURER
THE OHIO STATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COLUMBUS, OHIO
DEAR SIR:
We have completed the annual audit of
the books of account of The
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical
Society for the year ended De-
cember 31, 1939. Presented herewith is
our report, which is comprised of
the exhibits enumerated in the foregoing
Table of Contents.
From the schedule of the Society's
Receipts and Disbursements (page
2) it will be noted that total receipts
collected during the year was
$3,075.59 of which $408.25 was refunds
from the state, leaving a balance
of $2,667.34 from revenue sources, as
compared with $5,153.20 for the year
1938, a decrease of $2,485.86. Expenses
for the year were in excess of
236 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
receipts, which
necessitated the transfer of $1,300.00 from the current fund
savings account. This
reduces the current fund savings account to $36.18
balance. Total
disbursements for the year were $4,632.54, of which $497.17
was from the Kline
Memorial Fund for improvements at Fort Laurens and
$408.25 advanced for
expenses, leaving a net expenditure from Society funds
of $3,727.12.
The expenditure of $497.17
from the Hamilton Kline Memorial
Fund at Fort Laurens,
reduces the checking account balance to $758.34. A
total of $1,501.53 has
been expended from the fund since the bequest was
received. The interest
of $35.00 on the certificates of deposit was credited
to the checking
account carried at the Bolivar State Bank, Bolivar, Ohio.
The balance of the
fund consists of the following:
Checking Account
balance $758.34
Certificate of Deposit
No. 5376 500.00
Certificate of Deposit
No. 5395 1500.00
Total $2758.34
The depositor's claim
(No. 574) of $435.03 against the Bolivar State
Bank is still being
held and continues unchanged.
Attention is directed
to the Statement of Receipts and Disbursements
(page 3) of commissary
operations in some of the state memorials which
produced total
receipts of $14,846.29. Direct expenditures in connection
with operations was
$10,044.28. The Society also disbursed from these re-
ceipts $4,001.00 for
equipment, improvements and betterments of the me-
morials. This fund had
a cash balance at December 31, 1939 of $1,333.65.
The fund has a balance
due it from cash advances of $128.98. Presented on
page 4 is a statement
of Receipts and Disbursements of commissaries
operation at the state
memorials and the balances from operations at the
beginning and close of
the year.
Total state
appropriation was $145,467.56, as compared with $149,340.58
for the previous year,
a decrease of $3,873.02. From the state appropriations
the society expended
$124,867.38, as compared with $141,544.32, a decrease in
expenditures of state
appropriations of $16,676.94.
During the year one
life membership was received. The receipt from
the membership was
transferred to the Permanent Fund account which in-
creased the balance to
$21,250.00 at December 31, 1939.
The books of the
Society were found to be in balance and the several
fund balances, as
stated herein, are supported by bank statements and
certificates of
deposit.
Respectfully
submitted,
W. D. WALL,
Certified Public
Accountant.
OHIO
HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 237
REPORT
OF THE TREASURER OF THE OHIO STATE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
Cash
Balance, January 1, 1939 ...................
$8,616.67
Receipts:
Society
Cash Receipts ................... $
3,075.59
State
Memorial Funds (Concessions) ...... 15,595.55
State
Appropriation:
House
Bill 674.......... $144,217.56
Emergency
Bill ......... 1,250.00
TOTAL .........$145,467.56
LESS
Balance December 31,
1939 ................... 20,600.18
---------------
NET
AMOUNT ................
$124,867.38
------------
TOTAL RECEIPTS ............................
$143,538.52
TOTAL ...........................................
$152,155.19
Disbursements:
Museum
and Library .................... $74,191.77
State
Memorials: ........................ 3,450.60
Big Bottom
......................... 204.40
Buckeye
Furnace .................... 24.00
Buffington
Island .................... 136.00
Campbell
Memorial .................. 74.68
Campus
Martius ..................... 6,002.11
Custer
Memorial .................... 78.55
Dunbar
State Memorial .............. 905.92
Fallen
Timbers ...................... 657.85
Flint
Ridge .......................... 20.00
Fort
Amanda ........................ 743.67
Fort
Ancient ........................ 7,095.52
Fort
Hill ............................ 3,130.23
Fort
Laurens ........................ 1,970.09
Fort
Recovery ....................... 1,273.71
Fort
St. Clair ........................ 2,780.88
Gnadenhutten ....................... 85.50
U. S.
Grant .......................... 2,245.39
Hanby
Memorial .................... 1,466.88
William Henry Harrison ............ 765.95
Hayes
Memorial ..................... 6,892.91
238 OHIO ARCH EOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Kelley's
Island ...................... 235.18
Logan
Elm .......................... 824.85
Miamisburg
Mound .................. 713.49
Mound
Builders' Memorial ........... 4,274.42
Mound
City ......................... 3,674.96
Octagon
State Memorial ............. 761.18
Felix
Renick ........................ 24.00
Schoenbrunn ......................... 14,113.65
Seip
Mound ......................... 86.00
Serpent
Mound ...................... 5,208.10
Tarlton
Cross ....................... 102.00
Leo Petroglyph
...................... 158.00
Transferred
to Permanent Fund ...... 100.00
TOTAL
Disbursements ....................... $144,472.44
BALANCE,
December 31, 199 ................ $ 7,682.75
Represented
by:
Klippart
Memorial Fund ............ $2,154.54
Current
Fund Checking Account ...... 1,400.04
Current
Fund Savings Account ........ 36.18
State
Memorial Fund Checking Account 1,333.65
Kline
Memorial Fund
Checking
Account ... $ 758.34
Certificates
of Deposit 2,000.00
---------
$2,758.34
----------
TOTAL,
as above ............................
$7,682.75
Respectfully
submitted,
OSCAR
F. MILLER, Treasurer.
The
Chairman, Mr. Eagleson, voiced the need of more funds
for
conducting the activities of the Society and expressed the
hope
that through the influence of its members the organization
might
be able to secure more adequate legislative appropriations
for
the next biennium. Supplementing this, Dr. J. M. Henderson
suggested
that this objective might be furthered by more adequate
publicity.
Mr. James E. Bishop expressed the opinion that a com-
prehensive
study of the needs and requirements of the Society by
the
General Assembly would prove to be a further aid, and he
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 239
moved that the members of the Society
assembled in annual busi-
ness meeting memorialize the members of
the General Assembly
and the members of the Finance Committee
in particular to make a
more careful study of the needs and
requirements of the Society
and give the biennial budget presented
more adequate considera-
tion and approval. The motion was
unanimously carried.
The Nominating Committee unanimously
recommended the
re-election of Arthur C. Johnson, Sr.,
Albert C. Spetnagel, and
George Florence to the Board of Trustees
for the regular three-year
terms from the date of election. The
Secretary was instructed
by the Chairman to cast the ballot for
each of the nominees.
Under miscellaneous business the
Secretary presented a brief
summary report concerning the activities
of local and regional
historical societies during the year.
REPORT ON LOCAL HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
There seem to be fifty-six local,
regional and county historical societies
in existence in Ohio at the present
time. We have information indicating
that six local historical societies have
been organized during the year:
Alliance Historical Society; Defiance
Historical Society; Granville His-
torical Society; Lisbon Historical Society
(Columbiana County); New-
comerstown Historical Society; Bezaleel
Wells-Jefferson County Historical
Society.
In inviting all the societies to be
represented at the Annual Meeting,
a request was made that information be
given concerning outstanding ac-
tivities during the year. From reports
received the following facts are pre-
sented:
The outstanding activity of the Belmont
County Historical Society
during the year was the celebration of
the one hundredth anniversary of
the death of Benjamin Lundy with a
public meeting at St. Clairsville and
the unveiling of an historic tablet
erected on the St. Clairsville home of
Benjamin Lundy.
The Summit County Historical Society,
with headquarters at Akron,
has had a very worthwhile year. The
following is a summary of their
activities and certainly is suggestive
of what many other local historical
societies might do: more than doubled
their membership; created a me-
morial membership; sponsored an essay
contest on local history in the
history department of the University of
Akron (to be an annual award);
gave a reception for former Old Stone
School pupils at the Akron Art
Institute; sponsored a hobby and antique
show; celebrated the one hun-
240
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
dredth birthday of Summit County at a
centennial banquet; carried on a
successful campaign to raise five
hundred dollars for the Restoration Fund
for the Old Stone School; made a special
effort to educate a wider public
to realize the importance of the work of
the historical society; and started
a series of bulletins of historical
data, the following already having been
issued--Historical Spots in Summit
County, Bibliography of Material about
Summit County History, and Historical Spots in Summit County Con-
nected with the War of 1812.
The Trumbull County Historical Society
reports as its chief activity
the completion of the interior
restoration of the John Starke Edwards-
Thomas D. Webb House in Warren.
The Western Reserve Historical Society's
most outstanding project
during the year has been the moving of
the society's museum into its new
building. A few of its collections which
had never been shown before are
now on exhibit. The library of the
society remains for the present in its
building on Euclid Avenue, Cleveland.
The old Bezaleel Wells Historical
Society at Steubenville, which
has not been functioning for a number of
years, has recently been reorgan-
ized under the name of the Bezaleel
Wells-Jefferson County Historical
Society. The new organization has
already taken steps to re-erect the old
land-office which was torn down many
years ago. However, at that time
the logs were saved and the office will
be set up on the property of the
county home.
The Newcomerstown Historical Society,
organized in January of this
year, has stated its purpose as
follows: (1) promotion of study and re-
search in the history of Ohio and
Newcomerstown and vicinity; (2) col-
lection, preservation, and publication
of facts about this area; (3) dis-
semination of historical information by
means of programs, newspaper
articles, cooperation with the schools
in the teaching of local history; (4)
cooperation with local libraries in the
building up of separate Ohio and
local history sections; (5) the
establishment of a local historical museum
when feasible; and (6) the marking of
places of local historic interest.
Its immediate interest is the erection
of a marker near the spot of the de-
livery of the first Protestant sermon in
the Northwest Territory by Rev-
erend Zeisberger, March 14, 1771.
The Ross County Historical Society
reports the following activities
during the past year: sponsored a
lecture by Dr. Wallace Nutting; con-
ducted tours of the museum by the
Standard Oil Company's "Let's Ex-
plore Ohio" group, and by members
of the Cleveland branch of the Na-
tional Archaeological Institute;
published the first issue of the Society's
bi-monthly bulletin The Recorder; held
a meeting commemorating the 121st
anniversary of the birth of William T.
McClintock, first president of the
society. Their most notable accession
during the past year was the William
T. McClintock Collection of historical
papers on early Ohio history, one
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 241
item of which was a diary (1821-1826) of
Charles Willing Byrd, the last
Secretary of the Northwest Territory.
The Clark County Historical Society,
under the direction of Mr.
Arthur R. Altick, sent in a most
interesting report of the year's activities,
giving an account of additions to their
collections and a summary of ex-
ploration and field work. Mr. Altick
feels that the major accomplishment
during the past year was the inauguration
of an educational program in
connection with the public schools.
The Allen County Historical and
Archaeological Society's activities
are summarized in a very attractive and
model report submitted by the
Secretary, Mrs. Harry B. Longsworth.
Compiling historical records; com-
pleting data on Allen County's
ninety-eight cemeteries, on family records,
on Civil War diaries and Allen County's
incorporated societies have been
accomplished in addition to enlarging
and rearranging the society's mu-
seum.
A number of the local historical
societies had official representatives at
the annual meeting and it is hoped that
the representation will be in-
creased from year to year.
The next item on the program was a
paper by Dr. William
D. Overman, Curator of History.
THE RELATION OF A STATE HISTORICAL
SOCIETY TO
LOCAL HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
By WILLIAM D. OVERMAN
Fifty years ago the president of the
Western Reserve Historical
Society addressed that organization on
the subject "New Methods of His-
tory".1 He praised the work of the
Johns Hopkins graduate school for
applying the scientific method to the
writing of monographs on American
history and government, and although
history is not an exact science, this
method has been pursued by American historians for over half a
century.
Original sources have been
re-interpreted in the light of new evidence and
views cherished by former generations
have been changed in the light of
modern research. But "each age
interprets the past to suit its own pur-
poses",2 and whether we
continue to write so-called "objective history" by
the scientific method, or whether we
adopt a philosophy of history, and it
appears that we are tending in the
latter direction, we must retain the
1 Charles C. Baldwin, "New Methods
of History," Western Reserve Historical
Society, Tracts, No. 78
(Cleveland, 1891), 209-13.
2 Carl
Becker, Everyman His Own Historian (New York, 1935), 169-70.
242
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
method of the critical historian.3 That
is, "our knowledge must still be ob-
tained by the methods of bibliography,
scrutiny, authtentication, and veri-
fication",4 and it
should be the policy of a historical society, just as it is
for the historian, to be open-minded,
maintain an impartial judgment, and
welcome new truths.
Dr. Robert C. Binkley, of Western
Reserve University, read a paper5
at the annual meeting of this Society
three years ago in which he dis-
cussed the various concepts of history
from Greek and Roman times down
to those of the contemporary
dictatorships. With regard to the latter he
pointed out that such systems of
government require rigidly orthodox in-
terpretations of their history, and that
their cultures, however rugged they
may be in some aspects, are delicate in
respect to their historical digestions.
Only the most carefully prepared
history, put together according to prescrip-
tion, or according to their philosophy
of government, will nourish them.
Thus, noting that there are different
histories for different political and
social situations, Dr. Binkley marked
out a field of history to sustain certain
values which we ascribe to democracy.
Two of these are: first, our respect
for the value of individual personality,
and second, the federative structure
of our system, wherein not individuals
but groups are recognized and
given their zone of creative
activity. That is, local affairs are
left to
localities, and national affairs are
left in the hands of the whole nation.
Granting that these are two of the more
important values of democracy,
the kind of history that will preserve
our respect for individual free-
dom is a history of ourselves, a history
of individuals, family history. The
kind of history that will preserve the
federative structure of our society is
the history of our homes, our
communities, local history.
Material of value to historical research
in many communities has in
the past been partially safeguarded by
those far-sighted individuals who
were the founders and the supporting
members of the early historical
societies. But the record preserved
through this casual effort is only a
small part of what is needed to tell the
story. The documents from which
we may write the history of our
communities, our families and ourselves
is to be found in the public archives,
in newspaper files and in manuscript
collections. It is in the records of
business firms, and in the records of
social and labor organizations, or in
those to be found in the county court-
house, the town hall and churches, that
all of us, and our ancestors, have
left the evidences of our activity in
society.
The Historical Records Survey has, after
several years work, prac-
3 See Charles A. Beard and Alfred Vagts,
"Currents of Thought in Histori-
ography," American Historical
Review (New York; Lancaster, Pa., 1895- ), XLII
(1936-37), 460-83; and for opposing
theory, Harry Elmer Barnes, A History of His-
torical Writing (Norman, Okla., 1937), 393-5.
4 Beard and Vagts, "Currents of
Thought," 482.
5 Robert C. Binkley, "History for a
Democracy," in Minnesota History (St.
Paul, 1915- ) XVII (1937), 1-27. Editor's note: Dr. Robert C. Binkley died
April
11, 1940.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 243
tically completed a nation-wide
inventory of the archives in some 3,000
counties in the United States and these
inventories when published will be
of great value to those engaged in
research and writing history. Much
needs to be done, especially with regard
to the listing of manuscript col-
lections. Many collections, which would
be of great value to historical re-
search, are safely preserved in libraries
and in historical societies but they are
inaccessible because of the absence of
finding lists or catalogs. Historical
agencies can perform a great service
through cooperative effort in bringing
to light and making available for use,
the great body of "unknown" ma-
terial now in private hands or
uncataloged in depositories. The writer
does not advocate the centralization of
archives or of local manuscript
material but he does urge the necessity
of its being inventoried and eventu-
ally cataloged. A significant collection
of manuscripts of national import-
ance should go to the Manuscript
Division of the Library of Congress, like-
wise collections pertaining to specific
regions or localities, if properly housed
and made accessible, might well be
preserved in those communities where
the investigator would expect to find
them. The spirit of cooperation now
in evidence among historical societies,
respecting this effort to place material
where it belongs geographically is
laudable; however, the low cost of mak-
ing reproductions of manuscripts by
micro-photography makes it possible
for manuscript librarians or individuals
to have film copies of primary
source materials from distant
depositories delivered to them for a few cents
a page. This service is now maintained
by dozens of historical societies
and libraries and will in the future
render the problem of location of
original materials of relative small
importance as far as research is con-
cerned. Obviously, however, it makes it
all the more necessary to have
good finding lists and published
catalogs available.
Historical societies have been
performing important services in most
states of the Union for a long time,
some of them for upwards of 150 years.
This is not the place to write the
history of historical societies, although I
have no doubt that some day it may be
done, but let us consider briefly
what such an organization might consider
as its function.
The president of a newly organized
society in this State, who had
discussed his plans with several members
of our staff before the organiza-
tion meeting, wrote an editorial which
appeared in his local newspaper en-
titled, "Why a Local Historical
Society?"6 He wrote, in part ,as follows:
"Just when did Newcomerstown
officially begin? Who were
the early settlers? How
many of our present inhabitants are
descendants of these pioneers? In what
kind of work and trades
did they engage? Which is the oldest
building in town? . . . Who
were our leading educators, writers,
professional men, law-makers,
etc.?
How does this community rate today in matters of good
6 C. E. Lieser in Newcomerstown News, Feb. 1, 1940.
244 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
citizenship, health, education, industry
and other marks of a pro-
gressive people? These and hundreds of
similar questions arise in
the minds of our thinking people. . . .
As communities grow older,
it is . . . necessary to preserve the
historical landmarks to prevent
them from passing into oblivion.
Tradition is not sufficient to per-
petuate a record of memorable events. It
is necessary that they be
carefully preserved for the use of our
posterity. What organization
other than a historical society would
feel it their duty to carry on
such a task. . . ."
And so another of Ohio's fifty-seven
historical societies was born in
February of this year. Ohio has many
active organizations. The first in
order of establishment was the
Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio
founded in 1831; other early ones were
the Western Reserve Historical
Society and the Firelands Historical
Society. There were thirty-five
founded before 1875. Among the more
active at present are: the Allen
County Archaeological and Historical
Society at Lima, the Clark County
Historical Society at Springfield, the
Ross County Historical Society at
Chillicothe, the Summit County
Historical Society at Akron, and many
others.
Ohio has seventy museums. In addition to
the large institutions in
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo and
Columbus are those smaller but none
the less well-directed museums
performing valuable educational service to
their communities, such as: the
Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Co-
shocton, the Campus Martius Museum in
Marietta, and the Dayton Li-
brary Museum. Among others that should
be mentioned is the East Liver-
pool Historical Society's ceramic
collection, and several historic house
museums of which "Our House"
in Gallipolis is outstanding.
Such institutions, as the 129 historical
societies and museums in Ohio,
are as diverse in their specific aims as
the localities in which they work,
but this should be encouraging.
Decentralization means broader interpre-
tation of American history for each
section providing it does not mean
isolated effort.7 As
individual scholars find it necessary to cooperate, so
historical societies also find it
necessary, if they are to realize their aims
and fulfill their mission in the
community. The lack of an effectively or-
ganized influence or cooperation of this
kind at least partially accounts for
the unevenness in the work of some of
these organizations.
No society, state or local, is so
powerful that it may not profit by
cooperation with its fellow
organizations. Small ones need advice, assist-
ance and inspiration that comes from the
larger and more influential groups;
and the latter would attain resh vigor
by coming into contact with smaller
7 Henry C. Bourne, "The Work of
American Historical Societies," American
Historical Association, Annual Report
(Washington, D. C., 1885- ), 1904 (1905),
117ff.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 245
institutions representing smaller
geographic areas and being nearer the
people.8
In some states a measure of cooperation
between state and local
societies has been attained by one means
or another. In many there has
been a declaration of faith in the
principle of cooperation but such move-
ments have been conducted nearly always
on a casual basis.
About twenty years ago Dr. Joseph
Schafer, Secretary of the Wis-
consin Historical Society, set himself
about the task of organizing a move-
ment to gather data about that state's
population from maps, plat-books,
and other sources in each locality. This
great corpus of material will
eventually constitute a Wisconsin
Domesday Book, of which four volumes
have been published. In a movement of
this kind he had a definite pro-
gram which not only enlisted the active
cooperation of historical and other
local agencies but the interest and
assistance of school children all over the
state. The idea worked out very well and
Mr. Schafer's only regret is,
that the idea has not taken hold as
effectively as it might in other states.9
The survey was not designed primarily
for the purpose of securing coopera-
tion among local societies, but it
illustrates the fact that some common plan
will effect such a result.
In Minnesota a measure of cooperation
has been effected through
historical conferences and tours since
1921,10 but it is their present plan to
evolve an organization called a Local
History Conference, which would be
affiliated with the state society and
would be a better means of coordinating
all historical activity in that state.11
The Oklahoma Historical Society is
seeking to encourage the forma-
tion of local societies and museums and
they are working on a plan to
bring representatives of these
organizations together for an annual meeting
with a purpose of correlating historical
work.12
The Indiana Historical Society in some
respects was the pioneer in the
movement for the correlation of state
and local historical activities. It was
during the time that Dr. Harlow Lindley
was a member of the Indiana
Historical Commission, some twenty-five
years ago, that a history con-
ference became an annual event in that
state. Dr. Christopher B. Coleman,
the present Secretary of the state
society, indicates that their chief success
has come from taking advantage of the
opportunities where various groups
have solicited assistance.13 The
Indiana society has also conducted historical
pilgrimages annually since 1925.14
The Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society, as in the past,
8 Ibid., 1905, I
(1906), 268.
9 Joseph Schaefer to the author, Jan.
27, 1940.
10 Theo. C. Blegen, "State
Historical Agencies and the Public," Minnesota
History, IX (1928), 127-8.
11 Arthur J. Larsen to the author, Feb.
8, 1940.
12 James
W. Moffitt to the author, Jan. 31, 1940.
13 Christopher B. Coleman to the author,
Jan. 21, 1940.
14 Indiana History Bulletin (Indianapolis, 1923- ), X (1932-33), 484.
246 OHIO ARCH EOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
is ready to assist other organizations
in any manner possible and to make
our resources available to all. Our
program has been similar to that in
other states and if we can get a large
number of the local societies to send
representatives to this Ohio History
Conference, we will have succeeded
about as far, in the direction of
cooperation, as have most other state or-
ganizations. However, in order to effect
such a result and develop the
cooperative idea as speedily as
possible, the following suggestions are of-
fered for your consideration:
1. That this Ohio History Conference, or
if there is no desire to
organize the conference, that this
Society select a Secretary whose duty
it would be to keep in close touch with
all historical agencies in Ohio, and
serve as a clearing house for
information on problems of organization, pro-
gram and publication for historical
societies, or for more technical museum
and library problems dealing with
cataloging, repair and preservation.
2. That the editor inaugurate a new
section of the Ohio State Arch-
aeological and Historical Quarterly called "Notes and News" or "Local
History" in which the activities of
such organizations be recorded, and
that this section be reprinted and
distributed free to all organizations not
affiliated with the Society and who now
receive the publication.
3. That representatives of state and
local societies meet occasionally
during the year to exchange ideas and
discuss common problems.
4. That an annual tour or historical
pilgrimage be sponsored by this
Society in cooperation with any or all
organizations wishing to join.
This is a declaration of what this
Society may regard a part of its
obligation, but the necessity of local
societies taking a certain amount of
initiative must be emphasized. Local societies must make their needs
known--cooperation requires at least two
parties.
It was moved and carried that the
recommendations made
by Dr. Overman be referred to the Board
of Trustees for further
consideration.
Following Dr. Overman's paper,
announcement was made by
the Secretary that due to the illness of
Dr. K. C. Leebrick, Presi-
dent of Kent State University and the
speaker for the evening,
the program and the annual dinner of the
Society had been can-
celled. He presented an invitation from
the College and Univer-
sity Presidents Association, which was
meeting at the same hour
with Dr. Clarence A. Dykstra, President
of the University of
Wisconsin as speaker, to join them in
their evening program and
dinner. This invitation was accepted by
the Society.
The meeting then adjourned.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 247
MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF
TRUSTEES OF THE OHIO STATE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL SOCIETY, APRIL 5, 1940
The regular April meeting of the Board
of Trustees of the Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical
Society was held in the Ohio State
Museum, Friday noon, April 5, 1940.
Trustees present were Messrs. Eagle-
son, who presided, Florence, Rightmire,
Spencer, Spetnagel, Weygandt, and
Wolfe. Director Shetrone, Secretary Lindley,
and Miss Hiestand were also
present.
There being no objections to the minutes
of the previous meeting
which had been sent by mail to members
of the Board, they were declared
approved.
The Secretary presented a request from
Mr. Howard Baum that he
fall heir to the life membership granted
to his father (now dead) in ap-
preciation of archeological excavations
he had allowed on his farm. Mr.
Weygandt moved that the Secretary be
instructed to tell Mr. Baum that
life memberships in the Society are not
transferable. Mr. Spencer seconded
this motion which was carried.
The Secretary sketched the progress of
plans for the Maumee Valley
Historical Conference to be held next
October under the sponsorship of the
historical agencies of Ohio, Indiana,
Michigan, and the Province of On-
tario. At a previous meeting the Board
had approved of the Society's par-
ticipation in this project and had
instructed the Secretary to cooperate in
organizing the conference. . . .
The handicaps endured by the Society
because of the limitations of the
present budget were touched upon by both
the Secretary and the Director
in their presentation of the following
matters. The Secretary spoke of
the desirability of the Society's
securing three valuable collections of li-
brary and museum material: (1) The
Larwill Papers offered for sale by
Joseph S. Callery of Sandusky, Ohio,
concerned with the settlement and de-
velopment of the towns of Wooster and
Mansfield, Ohio. (2) The W. T.
Coggeshall Papers which are being
offered for sale by Ernest J. Wessen of
Mansfield, Ohio. (3) A large collection of Edisonia made by the
late
William J. Hammer who was a close
associate of Edison in all of his
enterprises. This collection would fit
in satisfactorily with an Edison
memorial at his birthplace in Milan. In
describing these collections the
Secretary stressed the advisability of
the Society's building up an adequate
endowment fund or of acquiring a group
of interested patrons who could
finance such purchases. It was suggested
by Mr. Eagleson that the possible
acquisition of these three collections
be referred immediately to the Execu-
tive Committee with power to act. This
suggestion was used in a motion
by Mr. Spetnagel, seconded by Mr.
Spencer, and carried. The Director an-
nounced the resignation of Ross W.
Shoemaker as Assistant Curator of
248
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
State Memorials and the selection of J.
Richard Lawwill as his successor. A
graduate of the University of Cincinnati
with a B. S. degree in Landscape
Architecture, Mr. Lawwill has had
extensive experience as supervisor of
work projects in state memorial areas
and with the National Park Service.
Mr. Weygandt moved that the appointment
of Mr. Lawwill be approved.
The motion was seconded by Mr. Spencer
and carried. In making this an-
nouncement the Director stressed the
importance of an increased budget in
order that the Society might secure and
retain the services of well-trained,
capable staff members.
Following expressions of opinion from
the Director and the Secretary
as to the satisfactory services rendered
by staff members, Mr. Rightmire
moved that the present staff of the
Society be re-elected for another year at
the prevailing salary schedule. This
motion was seconded by Mr. Wolfe and
carried unanimously.
Mr. Weygandt moved that the officers who
had served the Board of
Trustees during the past year (Mr.
Johnson, President; Mr. Eagleson, First
Vice-President; Mr. Wolfe, Second
Vice-President; Mr. Lindley, Secre-
tary; and Mr. Miller, Treasurer) be
re-elected for the coming year and
that the Secretary be instructed to cast
the ballot for their re-election. This
motion, seconded by Mr. Florence, was
unanimously carried.
The Director announced the holding in
May at Detroit of the annual
convention of the American Association
of Museums. . . .
On a motion of Mr. Spencer and second of
Mr. Florence the meeting
was adjourned.
HARLOW LINDLEY, Secretary.
Ohio Academy of History Sessions,
April 5, 12:45 P. M.
Faculty Club, Ohio State University;
2:30 P. M.
Ohio State Museum Auditorium
A. T. Volwiler, Presiding
The joint luncheon of the Ohio, Academy
of History and the
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical
Society was held in the
Faculty Club of the Ohio State
University. William T. Utter,
Professor of History at Denison
University, was elected President
of the Academy for the ensuing year and
William D. Overman,
Curator of History at the Ohio State
Museum, was re-elected
Secretary. After a short business
meeting H. A. De Weerd of
Denison University read the following
paper.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 249
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION FOR
WAR, 1917-1918
By H. A. DE WEERD
Admiral A. T. Mahan once described his
fellow Americans as being
"aggressive, combative, and
war-like", but he added, "they are the reverse
of military, being out of sympathy with
military tone and feeling."1 A
neglect of the study of military history
and economy in the United States
developed partly as a result of an ingrained
American distaste for and
suspicion of things military. The
frontier democracy in particular was
impatient with military institutions,
except, of course, when there were In-
dians to shoot or new lands to acquire.
The fear that liberty would perish
with the growth of military institutions
was commonly expressed. For
years the Congress of the United States
resisted the establishment of a
general staff on the Europeon model for
fear that its development might
not only lead to war, but to a loss of
freedom. These fears of military
institutions may seem a little unusual
in a people with such an impressive
record for military activity. It has
been pointed out that in 150 years of
history the American people have engaged
in 110 separate conflicts and
about 8,600 battles.2 The
extent of our military activity is attested by the
mere bulk of the papers for the War
Department which take up more space
in the National Archives than those of
any other department of the Gov-
ernment. Yet we have steadfastly refused
to concern ourselves with the
problems of military policy, preferring
to use the costly method of im-
provisation for each new military
crisis.3 Up to the year 1938 there was only
one notable study made of American
military problems and policy. That was
General Emory Upton's brilliant work, The
Military Policy of the United
States. Though Upton was a military thinker of equal rank with
the
greatest of nineteenth century Europe,
this study was allowed to languish in
manuscript form for twenty-one years in
the dusty files of the War De-
partment before it was
"discovered" and published by Secretary Elihu
Root in 1904.4 Such evidence of public
disinterest in American military
problems should be borne in mind when
considering the difficulties en-
countered in the attempt to mobilize the
industrial power of the United
States behind a gigantic trans-oceanic
military effort in the years 1917-
1918.
The term as well as the idea of an
industrial mobilization for war is
of relatively recent origin, although it
has now been grafted onto the peace-
economy of the totalitarian states and
has become commonplace. Such a
1 A. T. Mahan, From Sail to Steam (New York, 1907),
7.
2 W. A. Ganoe, History of the United
States Army (New York, 1932), 490.
3 Commenting on American military
policies Elihu Root wrote in 1880: "In the
conduct of war we have rejected the
practices of European nations and with little
variation have thus far pursued the
policy of China." Quoted in E. Upton, The Mili-
tary Policy of the United States (Washington, 1904), vii.
4 P. S. Michie, Life and Letters of
General Emory Upton (New York, 1885,
xxvii.
250 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
concept of war economy seems to have
been envisaged for the first time by
Dr. Walter Rathenau of Germany after the
Marne defeat in 1914 made a
long war inevitable.5 Modern
warfare with its mass armies and increased
mechanical equipment made demands on
industry little dreamed of in earlier
days. The scale of these demands may be
illustrated by the observation
that the French armies in the year 1918,
expended 100 times as many ar-
tillery shells as all German armies
fired away in the entire war of 1870-
1871.6 The complex requirements of
modern armies are illustrated by the
fact that the Ordnance Department of the
United States Army issued con-
tracts in 1918 for over 100,000
different items of military equipment. Such
tremendous demands for ammunition plus
the vast variety of other equip-
ment required for modern warfare made it
necessary to devote the whole
industrial resources of a state to their
manufacture. The difficulties en-
countered in procurement of these items
in a free competitive system of
economy, made it necessary for the
governments of all nations to set up a
system
of governmental control of industry, with fixing prices and the
allocating of raw materials and manufacturing facilities as an
essential part
of this control.
Among the primary conditions necessary
for the efficient and eco-
nomical accomplishment of military
activity under modern conditions are:
first, the existence of an agency for
the superior direction of the war with
lines of authority clearly laid out; and
second, that the equipment and
maintainence of the army forces be
simplified as much as possible by the
use of standardized military units,
weapons, uniforms, and equipment; and
third, that there should be an agency
powerful enough to coordinate in-
dustry to a war program.
Before discussing the latter, we should
inquire for a moment to what
extent our military establishment was
able to meet the first two conditions
set forth above: namely, did we have a
superior agency adequate for the
direction of the war in 1917, and were
our armed forces organized in such
a way as to enjoy the benefits of
standardized equipment?
Up to the year 1903 the superior
direction of the U. S. Army was
hampered by a curious division of
authority in military matters between
the Secretary of War, the Commanding
General, and the Adjutant-Gen-
eral. This relationship was almost
unworkable in peace-time and utterly
unworkable in war-time.7 When
set up, it was doubtless regarded as an-
other beneficial application of the
check-and-balance system which worked
so well in safeguarding our
constitutional rights. This system of divided
5 On
August 3, 1914, Rathenau advocated a department of the Kriegsamt to be
devoted to conservation and distribution
of raw materials. M. Swarte, Der Grosse Krieg
(Leipzig, 1922), I, 58;
W. Warlimont, "Industrial Mobilization in Germany," Army
Ordnance, XI (September-October, 1932), 115-23.
6 Report D-2-153, U. S. General Staff,
Statistics, Branch Files.
7 Major General G. H. Carter, The
Creation of the American General Staff,
U. S. Senate, Document, no. 119, 65
Cong., 1 Sess. p. 63; Report of the Chief of Staff,
1917 (Washington, 1918), 6.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 251
authority caused so much trouble in the
Spanish-American War that
Root was able to force through Congress
the Organic Act of February
14, 1903, which abolished the office of
Commanding General, and created a
general staff corps of forty-five
officers charged with the direction of all
activities of the War Department.8 But
the early fears of the sinister ac-
tivities of a general staff on the
German model were soon revived. In
1907, Congress restored the title of
Adjutant-General, and in 1916 passed
legislation designed to restore the dual
if not triple control which had
previously existed by allowing the
Secretary of War freedom to employ
the Adjutant-General as well as the
Chief of Staff as an organ of com-
mand.9 This, Secretary of War
Newton D. Baker wisely refused to do.
Balked in this attempt to undermine the
general staff, Congress enacted leg-
islation designed to weaken it by making
it illegal for more than half of
the forty-five staff officers to be
employed in or near Washington, D. C.10
The result of this Siberian exile law
was that only twenty staff officers were
on duty in Washington when the war broke
out in 1917. Nine of these
had their whole time taken up with
routine functions, leaving eleven men
to do all the military thinking, the
strategic planning, and the coordination
of all military efforts of the U. S.11
Not until one month after war was
declared on Germany, did the Congress
provide an increase of personnel for
the General Staff. At that time a
membership of ninety-two officers was set
as the limit, although to cope with the
work of this department the services
of 1,200 staff officers and 3000
civilians were ultimately required. Because
of the poor-orphan treatment accorded
the General Staff in the years be-
fore the war, only four men on the
General Staff in 1918 had enjoyed any
previous staff experience.12 In
the eyes of European critics the American
General Staff was merely a paper
organization. Since the whole matter of
mobilizing industry to a new war program
was dependent upon the directing
brain of the General Staff, this state
of affairs exerted an incalculable
effect upon that program.
Another inevitable consequence of the
lack of the military policy for
the United States and our habit of
military improvisation, was a bewilder-
ing lack of uniformity in troop
formation, weapons, and equipment. For-
eign visitors found amusement in our
system of maintaining a regular army,
state militias, and volunteer regiments,
but this amusement was attributed
to their lack of understanding of the
American Constitution. The lack of
uniformity in army units multiplied the
numbers and types of weapons, and
created fantastic problems of ammunition
supply. During the Civil War,
8 32 U. S. Statute 831.
9 Report of the Chief of Staff, 1917, p. 6, Sec. 5, National
Defense Act, Ap-
proved June 3, 1916.
10 Ibid. See also Report of the
Chief of Staff, 1917, 4.
11 Ibid., 3. All Officers below the rank of lieutenant-colonel were
required to
spend two years with the line between
successive appointments to the staff. This was
not in keeping with European practice
and interrupted the staff education of officers.
12 Ibid., 5-6.
252
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
for example, Iowa troops took the field
with at least eight different types
of muskets, and the several states
competed with the Federal Government in
the open market for the same weapons.13
The Spanish American War was
fought with four different shoulder arms
using two different types of am-
munition.14 This state of affairs was so obviously absurd that in 1903, a
single standard rifle, the Springfield
caliber .30 model 1903 rifle, was adopted
for all branches of the land and naval
forces of the U. S. Next to the
establishment of the General Staff, this
step was probably the most im-
portant single advance toward modern
practice made by the U. S. Army
prior to the outbreak of war in 1917.
Unfortunately, no such standardiza-
tion was possible at that time for
artillery materiel.
The adoption of the Springfield rifle
led to another step of great
importance in connection with the
mobilization of American resources for
war. It led to the attempt to
manufacture our military equipment on an
interchageable basis. Complete
interchangeability of all parts of weapons
had long been the dream of soldiers
charged with the maintainence and re-
pair of weapons in the field. When weapons
were made primarily by hand,
each repair required hand fitting. In
the absence of precision machine tools
it was impossible to manufacture weapons
whose parts were interchange-
able, although Eli Whitney attempted it
in 1800.15 A decision to produce
the Springfield rifle, which had been
developed and manufactured solely at
the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts,
at the Rock Island Arsenal in
Illinois, led to an effort to make all
parts of the weapon interchangeable.
This practice was taken up by the rapidly
growing automobile industry in
the United States and may be said to
have pioneered the modern chain
system of production. By the outbreak of
war in 1917, the United States
enjoyed manufacturing practices far in
advance of those of Europe. We
had developed far on the road to
standardized screw threads, standardized
taps and reamers, standardized gear
teeth, standardized spacing for rivet
holes in construction steels, and many
other similar practices.16 With these
advantages, all other things being
equal, we should have made a better
record for producing military equipment
than any other country.
We have observed that in its fundamental
organization the War De-
partment of the United States did not
possess the first two elementary req-
uisites of effective military action:
namely, we did not have an adequate
general staff, and our military forces
were not of such a kind as to enable
us to enjoy at once the advantages of
uniform equipment and organization.
There were other less vital deficiencies
of our War Department organiza-
13 F. A. Shannon, The Organization
and Administration of the Union Armies
(Cleveland, 1928), I, 125; The War of
the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies (Washington, 1881-1901, Ser.
III, Vol.
I, 418.
14 General R. A. Alger, The Spanish
American War (New York, 1901), 13.
15 C. W. Sawyer, Firearms in American
History (Boston, 1910), 25.
16 C. E. Peck, The Guage Section,
Engineering Division, Ordnance Department
U. S. A., MS in Ordnance Technical
Library, War Department.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 253
tion which should be pointed out in
order to understand fully the disap-
pointing results of our efforts to
mobilize industry. In April, 1917, the
War Department contained five separate
and semi-independent supply
bureaus which often competed against
each other for the same products.
There were nine different systems for
estimating military requirements and
ten different agencies for handling
money accounts. These were described
as "water-tight compartments,
erected by Congress, reenforced by usage,
hedged about by exclusiveness and
defended by jealousy."17 The absence
of a standard nomenclature for military
equipment, and the use of a ponder-
ous, outmoded military-legalistic
terminology defeated the efforts of the
most hardy civilian investigator to find
out what the army was talking
about. For example, the colossal
appropriations for small arms ammunition
throughout the war, amounting to nearly
one billion dollars, were made
under a bewildering heading which dated
back to 1877; it ran: "Authoriza-
tion for the manufacture or purchase of
ammunition for small arms and
hand use, for reserve supply, for
burials at the National Soldiers' Home,
and for firing the morning and evening
gun at the military posts as
prescribed in General Order No. 70,
1877."18 Said Representative John
Q.
Tilson, "One would think we are
appropriating several hundred million dol-
lars to fire the evening gun at the
soldiers' home."19
Certain congressional safeguards of
economy in peace-time proved to
be tremendous handicaps to prompt
military action in war-time. The
Ordnance Department which was most
vitally concerned with the problem
of providing weapons for the army
through the adaptation of American in-
dustry to the war program had its
personnel restricted by law to ninety-
seven officers.20 Because of the great
length of time required to train an
ordnance expert, this law restricted
very severely the number of potential
ordnance officers available for the
crisis of 1917. Congress did, of course,
increase the number of ordnance officers
after war was declared, but it
could never make up for the deficiency
of peace-trained officers. The
Ordnance Department required the
services of 6000 commissioned officers,
60,000 non-commissioned enlisted men,
and 80,000 civilians before the war
was ended.21 To build such a
tremendous organization on the nucleus of
100 officers can only be described as an
"act of faith."
The approved, indeed, the legal method
of purchase of any piece of
equipment for the Government was a
prolonged and torturous affair. The
written instructions of the Ordnance
Department for such transactions
17 Report of the Chief of Staff, 1919
(Washington, 1920), 16, 110; G. Clarkson,
Industrial America in the World War (New York, 1923), 125.
18 Acts and Resolutions, XXIII, 524.
19 Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs on the Army Appropria-
tions Bill, 1919, H. R., 65 Cong., 2 Sess. (Washington, 1919), 71.
20 The National Defense Act of June 3,
1916, increased the number of ordnance
officers to 142, but the increase was to
take place over a five-year period, and all
efforts of General W. Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, to
get the increase at an earlier
date failed. W. Crozier, Ordnance and the World War (New
York, 1920), 10-1.
21 Ibid., 11.
254
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
covered 178 printed pages.22 The vast paper work of war contracts called
for an army of new clerks, but it was
illegal to hire any clerical help for
any governmental agency, unless the
estimates for such help were in the
hands of the Secretary of the Treasury
by October 15, and unless that
Congress had passed specific
appropriations for such help. In such a case,
the clerical help thus authorized could
be legally employed on July first of
the following year. No office
space could be rented in Washington for the
increased personnel of War Department
agencies without a specific appro-
priation covering the rental. No plant
for any government work could be
constructed until funds had been
appropriated for the same, and for pur-
chase of the land on which the plant was
to be built, and until a written
opinion of the Attorney-General could be
secured on the validity of the
title to the land, and until the written
consent of the legislature of the
state in which the land was located
could be secured. Similar examples
could be multiplied, but the foregoing
will show that one handicap to
prompt mobilization of American military
strength in 1917 was the mass
of peace-time economy legislation which
was not automatically repealed
when we declared war on Germany.23
Despite the official neutral policy of
the Wilson Administration, it
became impossible to disregard the fact
that the greatest war in history
was being waged in Europe. The Chief of
Ordnance of the U. S. Army
frequently warned congressional
committees that preparation for a war
on the European scale would require at
least two years of time and un-
limited funds.24 In September, 1915, at the request of the
Secretary of
War, the Army War College made a series
of half-hearted studies on the
question of a military policy for the U.
S. and the problem of industrial
mobilization for war. In the absence of
a clearly-stated foreign policy, no
intelligent military policy could be
formulated. Extremely little was done
to study the problem of industrial
mobilization for war. Either through
ignorance of what was happening in
Europe, or reflecting the kind of work
done by the U. S. Army service schools
at that time, the War College was
able to publish a very trivial study on
industrial mobilization for war.25
Their principal recommendations were:
that the President be empowered
in war-time to force acceptance of war
orders at fair prices, and second,
that a governmental board be organized
to study and organize industrial
resources. The last recommendation was
not acted upon until late in 1916.
Meantime, the Secretary of Commerce in
October, 1915, advocated the
22 General
Order, no. 7, Ordnance Office, October 14, 1917.
23 For examples of these restrictions
see Crozier, Ordnance, 26-7; F. A. Scott,
"Plans for an Unplanned
Conflict," Army Ordnance (XVI) July-August, 1935.
24 Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs, U. S. Senate, 64
Cong.,
1 Sess. (Washington, 1916), 520; War
Department Annual Report, 1916 (Washington,
1917), I, 822.
25 A Statement of a Proper Military
Policy for the United States, Army War
College Division, U. S. General Staff
(Washington, 1916); The Mobilization of In-
dustries and the Utilization
of the Commercial Resources of the Country for War
Purposes in an Emergency, War Department, Document 517 (November 15, 1915).
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 255
preparation of standard blue-prints for
parts of military weapons so that
manufacturers could have them without
delay if war came.26 This was not
put into effect. Even had it been
adopted and carried out, it would not
have helped much; because when war came,
the lack of artillery equipment
made it necessary for us to adopt French
military materiel.27 We continued
to manufacture only our own rifles, pistols,
machine-guns, and two types
of field guns, and in none of these
classifications of weapons did any crisis
in production arise.
One factor restricting preparations for
war was to be found in the
attitude of President Woodrow Wilson
prior to the election of 1916. H.
Breckenridge, the acting Secretary of
War, tells how he was called into
Wilson's office late in the fall of 1915
to find the President trembling and
white with passion pointing indignantly
to a little paragraph on one of the
back pages of the Baltimore Sun
which said, "It is understood that the
general staff of the U. S. army is
preparing plans in event of a war with
Germany."28 As long as the
President maintained this attitude, little could
be accomplished even by way of an intellectual
preparation for war against
our most likely adversary.
A wave of defense enthusiasm, however,
swept over the country in
1916. Congress passed a mass of
legislation known as the National Defense
Act of June 3, 1916. But the steps taken
were not designed to meet the
requirements of the immediate future.
The major appropriations were for
the construction of dreadnaught
battleships, which our most intelligent
observer in Europe, Colonel Frederick
Palmer, pointed out would be of
small utility in a war against Germany.
He wisely advised the construction
of large numbers of destroyers and small
craft to meet the very real menace
of German submarine warfare, since the
Allies had dreadnaught battleships
to spare.29 By this time, Germany was the only
adversary which our
rapidly changing policy would call upon
us to meet. Japan was a member
of the allied coalition against Germany,
and bad as our relations with
Mexico were, the preparedness steps of
1916 were not required for a possi-
ble campaign against her. Thus, the
defense measures of 1916 envisaged
a possible participation in the European
war, but they did not prepare us
to take part effectively in that
struggle.
More important than the actual military
steps of the National De-
fense Act was the creation of a Council
of National Defense to act in an
advisory capacity to assist in the
mobilization of industry to a defense pro-
gram.30 When formed in June 1916, the
council consisted primarily of
cabinet officers including the
Secretaries of War and the Navy. From
June to December, 1916, the council did
practically nothing. But on De-
26 Letter,
Secretary of Commerce to the Secretary of War, October 25, 1915.
27 H. A. De Weerd, "American
Adoption of French Artillery, 1917-1918,"
American Military Institute, Journal,
III (1939), 104-17.
28 F. Palmer, Newton D. Baker:
America at War (New York, 1931), I, 40.
29 F. Palmer, Our Gallant Madness (New
York, 1937), 42-3.
30 Sec. 2, Public 242, 64 Cong., 1
Sess., H. R. 17498.
256
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
cember 6, largely through the efforts of
Samuel Gompers, an advisory com-
mittee of the council was formed to deal
with the leaders of American in-
dustry.31 The first of a
series of conferences with industrial leaders was
held on February 13, 1917, and paper
plans were made to deal with the
heavy industries of the U. S. through
one man. Late in February the ad-
visory committee began to study the
military requirements for the equip-
ment and maintenance of a force of one
million men in the field for ninety
days. The magnitude of this program
prompted the advisory committee to
set up sub-committees for the various
major items of equipment required.
These committees foresaw so much delay
in the procurement of the required
equipment that on March 31, 1917, the
Council of National Defense form-
ally recommended to Congress that a
program of construction and purchase
of military materials and munitions to
cover a three-year period be under-
taken immediately.32 Unfortunately,
the U. S. was not to enjoy a three-
year period of military preparation, but
was at war within a week of the
passage of this resolution.
At the outbreak of war it was widely
felt that America's principal
contribution toward an allied victory
would take the form of manufactured
supplies, food and munitions.33
Our highly developed industrial system was
looked upon as our principal and most immediately
available weapon. We
had no immediate clear cut military
objective or plan of action. The acting
Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army in 1917
was aged General Hugh L. Scott
whose unshakeable composure gave the
impression that we were fully pre-
pared to take any necessary military
steps. Benedict Crowell, who later
became Assistant Secretary of War, tells
how he rushed back to Washington
from a fishing trip on the declaration
of war. He recalled the famous
interview of the American reporter with
General von Moltke in 1870 and
how the complete state of Prussian
preparations for war enabled Moltke
to give the American a long interview.
"All he had to do," said Moltke,
was "push the button." Crowell
knew both Baker and Scott intimately. He
asked for an interview with Scott with
some hesitation out of regard for
the general's probable overwhelming rush
of work. He knew that he would
be able to tell instantly from the
general's attitude the state of American
preparation. As in the case with Moltke
in 1870, he found the general at
leisure and in complete serenity of
mind. When Crowell rose to leave after
a few minutes, Scott insisted that he
remain, and talked for some time
in very optimistic and general terms.
When Crowell joined his waiting
friends outside he joyously told
them: "Everything is ready: there
is
31 Minutes of the Council of National Defense, I, 6. This and other page
ref-
erences are to the original minutes.
32 Ibid., I, 113.
33 Said Senator Thomas S. Martin to
Secretary of War Baker: "Good Lord!
You're not going to send soldiers over
there are you?" Quoted in Palmer, Newton
D. Baker, I, 120.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 257
nothing to do but push the button."34 Crowell came to realize later how
completely erroneous was the impression
conveyed by Scott's manner.
For some months after the outbreak of
war, no one knew just what
the U. S. intended to do to defeat
Germany, but after the visits of British
and French military missions to the U.
S., and after General John J.
Pershing had studied the situation in
France at first hand, the magnitude
of the American military program was
revealed. In July, 1917, the com-
mander of the A. E. F. cabled his
"General Organization Project" to the
War Department. It called for the
shipment to France of thirty divisions
by June, 1918.35 This
estimate soon rose to the staggering figure of eighty
divisions in France by June, 1919, and
finally to one hundred divisions in
France by June of 1920.36 Considering
that the American division of that
day had a rifle strength of two European
divisions, this was a colossal pro-
gram indeed. The sudden change from a
program of aid to the Allies in
the form of munitions, supplies, and
food, to a gigantic program of aid
through manpower, was due to the unfavorable
military position of the
Allies after the Russian revolution,
after a wave of mutiny crippled the
French armies in 1917, and after the
Caporetto disaster had overtaken Italy.
Thus, four months after war was declared
the U. S. finally had a mili-
tary program, a pattern to work by. We
were to place thirty divisions
in France by June, 1918. Just as soon as
we set ourselves to fill this
pattern, however, the military program
was doubled, then it was tripled.
Such were the inevitable consequences of
shaping a military program after
the war was upon us.
Once the military program was
undertaken, however, there could be
no complaint of the lack of zeal of any
branch of the War Administration.
Indeed, a record of those days in
Washington makes amusing reading today.
The wasted efforts of the intrepid but
uncoordinated agencies of the Gov-
ernment would have been sufficient if
properly applied, to defeat two such
antagonists as the German Empire. The
Council of National Defense saw
what was required and appointed a
General Munitions Board to assist in
the coordination of purchases by the
Army and Navy, and to establish
priority for various military and
civilian needs. This was the first real
attempt to mobilize industry and
coordinate the war effort, but unfortu-
nately the General Munitions Board, like
the Council of National Defense,
enjoyed only advisory authority and
could not compel acceptance of its
decisions or advice.37 In the
confusion of war-time Washington, this little
voluntary organization was almost lost
in the scuffle; and Mr. F. A. Scott,
its chairman, having no place to lay his
head, made his headquarters on a
sofa of the Army and Navy Club. With a
couple of tables for an office,
34 B. Crowell, "Procurement in
War". Lecture delivered at the Army War
College, December 10, 1926 (mimeograph
copy in Army Industrial College Files) 12.
35 J. J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (New
York, 1931), I, 101.
36 Report of the Chief of Staff,
1919, 10-1.
37 Annual Report of the Council of National Defense for
the Fiscal Year Ended
June 30, 1917 (Washington, 1917), 20-1.
258
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and with his hat for a filing case, he
valiantly attempted to subdue the
growing chaos.
Since the General Munitions Board did
not possess authority suf-
ficient to compel its decisions to be
accepted, the several supply bureaus of
the War Department, and the newly formed
governmental agencies such as
the Coal Board, the Shipping Board, the
Food and Railways Administra-
tions, all went their separate ways.38
Contracts were accepted and placed
by these agencies for the Government and
for the Allies without any re-
gard for the possibility of their
completion or their effect on the rest of
the war program. New manufacturing
facilities were built in the already-
overcrowded New England industrial
district with a resultant tie up of the
transport system in the winter of 1917-1918.39 This confusion led to a
paralysis of the war program in that
winter so serious that Congress in-
stituted a very searching and hostile
examination of the War Department.40
Already in July, the General Munitions
Board despaired of accomplishing
any useful purpose without a delegation
of authority sufficient to make its
weight felt. It was replaced on July 17,
by a War Industries Board with
most of the same personnel and again
with only advisory authority.41
The gallant attempt of F. A. Scott of
Cleveland to make the War Indus-
tries Board effective without the
necessary authority led to his complete
physical collapse and to the angry
resignation of his successor, Daniel
Willard.
The investigations of the Senate
Committee on Military Affairs hinted
at a movement to establish a ministry of
munitions on the British model.
But since this would have reflected so
much censure on the Wilson Admin-
istration, the Administration attempted
to forestall this by a reorganization
of the War Department in December, 1917.
The steps taken were a little
amazing. A War Council, made up
principally of retired generals, was
given a vague area of authority between
the Secretary of War and the
Chief of Staff.42 This was a
hopeless error since it restored the dual con-
trol of military affairs which the
creation of the General Staff aimed at re-
moving. One of the first steps which
General Peyton C. March took when
he arrived from France in March, 1918,
to become Chief of Staff with the
rank of general was to insist that the
War Council be abolished as a re-
striction on the power of the Chief of
Staff.43 With his own supreme powers
established Iby a special War Department
order, he consolidated all War De-
partment procurement and distribution
agencies into a single Department of
Purchase, Storage and Traffic.44 Thus
eleven months after the outbreak of
38 Minutes of the General Munitions Board, I, 186,
224, 338.
39 Clarkson, Industrial America, 126.
40 Report of the Chief of Staff,
1919, 15, 16, 112, 114.
41 Hearings before the Senate
Committee on Military Affairs, 65
Cong., 2 Sess.
(Washington, 1918).
42 Minutes of the Council of National
Defense, I, 305-6.
43 General
Order, no. 159, War Department, December 19, 1917.
44 P. C. March, America at War
(New York, 1932), 49.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 259
war, the activities of the
semi-independent bureaus of the War Department
were finally coordinated.
At about the same time, and due to the
same motives, that is, fear of
a congressionally established munitions
ministry, the question of compulsory
authority for the War Industries Board
was taken up. By this time it was
clear to many that compulsory authority
was essential. Before this was
given, other futile expedients were
tried, such as setting up E. R. Stettinius
of the House of Morgan as "Surveyor
General of Supply"--without au-
thority.45 Baker does not seem to have
approached this problem with his
customary clarity of vision. For as late
as February 8, 1918, he told a
Senate Committee that he thought
"that the difficulty with the War In-
dustries Board had not been lack of
power, but lack of facility to do all
the things which it had been gradually
and constantly preparing to do."46
Such oral fuzziness from Baker was highly
unusual. It should be added
that he had little confidence in Bernard
Baruch, the head of the War In-
dustries Board at that time, for he told
Baruch point blank in late February
that he did not have the qualifications
for the head of such an agency.47
When, however, it became a question of
the delegation of authority to
the War Industries Board or a
congressionally established munitions min-
istry, Wilson decided on March 4, 1918,
to grant Baruch sufficient authority
to compel all governmental agencies and
private industry to accept the de-
cisions of the War Industries Board.48 Thus, eleven months after the
declaration of war, the U.S. was in a
position really to mobilize industry
for the first time. Within a few months
the whole American war industry
was remolded into a compact
smoothly-running entity. Its
performance
from that time on was highly creditable.49
Large scale production of all
military needs of the forces had been
achieved at the time of the armistice
except in the matter of tanks,
airplanes, and heavy artillery. In a brilliant
post-war summary of his experience as
head of the War Industries Board
Baruch observed:
"Modern warfare requires that the
full power of the nation be
exerted in the shortest possible period
of time, not only to the
violent beating down of the enemy by
destructive material force,
but also to every process of slow and
insidious economic strangula-
tion and political isolation. Thus war
requires that, at the very
moment when productive effort is
deprived of millions of men for
military service, the country's
facilities for production must be
speeded up to disgorge unprecedented
volumes of supplies. No
such results are possible without a
sanction, control and leadership
45 General Order, no. 80, War
Department, August 26, 1918.
46 Clarkson, Industrial America, 53.
47 Hearings before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 65
Cong., 2 Sess.,
pt. III, p. 2106.
48 Clarkson, Industrial America, 54.
49 Minutes of the War Industries
Board (Washington, 1935), 226; Final
Report
of the War Industries Board (Washington, 1919), 32.
260 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in industry sufficient to organize and
deal with it as a single
unitary system instead of a highly
competitive community. Once
this unity is attained, however,
experience has shown beyond ques-
tion that the mobilized industry of
America is a weapon of offense
and defense far more potent than
anything the world has ever
seen--more terrible, I think, than the
mind of man has ever
imagined."50
Such, indeed, were the possibilities had
the mobilization of industry
been possible at an earlier stage of the
struggle with Germany. But as
the above paragraphs indicate it was
delayed until eleven months after the
war began by fundamental faults of war
department organization and by
lack of authority for the War Industries
Board. At the close of the war,
with the lessons of experience fresh in
their minds, Congress was so eager
to ensure a rapid mobilization of
industry in case of a future war, so eager,
in fact, that in the National Defense
Act of 1920 it passed two contra-
dictory provisions for bringing it
about. One section of the act gave the
Chief of Staff a supreme mandate for
mobilizing both manpower and in-
dustry, and another section of the same act
gave the Assistant Secretary of
War complete authority for all
procurement measures.51 This absurdity was
finally cleared up in 1921.52
It may be observed that a study of the
military history of Great
Britain during the years 1903-1917 would
have been of tremendous value
to those charged with the control of
military affairs in the United States.
It would have enabled us to avoid every
fundamental mistake we made.
The British suffered from the same delay
in setting up a general staff.53
They muddled along till 1916 with a
division of authority between the Chief
of the Imperial General Staff, the War
Council, and the Secretary of State
for war.54 They delayed
nearly a year before establishing an effective
agency for mobilizing British war
industry.55 The lessons of
their ex-
perience were free for us to adopt, but
we insisted on repeating their de-
plorable experience in each of the cases
listed above. Baker had studied
the history of the American Civil War,
and his conduct in office reveals that
he profited by the experience. He did
not delay in advocating compulsory
selective service for all men of
military age, and he never interfered, as
Lincoln did, with our commanders in the
field. If he had given similar
attention to British military experience
his record as Secretary of War,
50 Hearings before the War Policies
Commission, House Document, no.
163, 72
Cong., 1 Sess. (Washington, 1932), 31-2.
51 Sections 5 and 5a, National Defense
Act, Approved June 4, 1920.
52 General Order, no. 41, War
Department, August 16, 1921.
53 Report of H. M. Commissioners to
Enquire into . . . the South African War,
Command Document, no. 1789 (London,
1903); F. Maurice, The Life of Viscount
Haldane of Cloan (London, 1937); J. K. Dunlop, The Development of the
British Army,
1899-1914 (London, 1938).
54 Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Soldiers
and Statesmen (London, 1926),
I, 168-70.
55 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London, 1933), II, 649.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 261
and our record in military production,
would have been far more brilliant
than it was.
In the afternoon session held in the
Auditorium of the Ohio
State Museum and presided over by
Stanton L. Davis of the Case
School of Applied Science, the following
papers were read by
James M. Miller of Waynesburg College,
Waynesburg, Penna.,
and by Philip D. Jordan of Miami
University.
THE SPIRITUAL FORCE IN EARLY WESTERN
CULTURE
By JAMES M. MILLER
Culture, since the beginning of time,
nas been the evidence of man's
struggle upward, the measure of his
accomplishment. In the sense in which
I shall use the term, it is the effort
of groups of people to improve their
intellectual, spiritual, and esthetic
environment. By early western culture,
I mean that effort limited roughly to
the upper Ohio Valley in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, that
somewhat neglected period which
saw the settler supplant the pioneer,
and which saw the establishment of a
permanent, stable society, the parent of
our modern industrial democracy.
The importance of that period and that
culture in shaping our later
and larger culture cannot be ignored. If
such a thing exists today as an
American culture, I am sure that it must
be sought within and immediately
adjacent to the Ohio Valley. Other
sections afford established cultures, of
course, but they are likely to be
especially significant of the areas which
produced them, and to offer particular
values and characteristics not widely
representative. The significant American
culture of today is to be found,
I am sure, in spite of Boston and New
York, in spite of Miami and Holly-
wood, in our own Middle West, even in
our own Ohio Valley.
Our modern conception of history, with
its emphasis on social and
cultural aspects, makes us aware of
certain vital forces which have been
instrumental in driving our society
forward, and in making us what we are.
These forces are numerous--the forces of
heredity, of environment, of
economic necessity, of political
expediency, of intellectual capacity, of emo-
tional content, of spiritual urge. The
effects of these forces vary with time,
and their significances are always
dwarfed or magnified by the attitudes and
sympathies of the observer. If I were to
seek the dominant forces which
shape the development of a culture, I
would seek first a symbol of that
culture. I offer you, therefore, a
symbol of our fully developed mid-
western culture, a characteristic
product of the culture of the last genera-
tion.
262 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
In August of 1874, the cherished plans
of Lewis Miller, of Akron,
Ohio, and the Rev. John H. Vincent, of
New York, (bore fruit as the
Chautauqua Institute. Surprisingly successful, it quickly produced
the
Chautauqua circuit.
"Chautauqua"--what a word! What a symbol! Since
the Revivals of 1800 a provincial
society had been laboring to achieve the
Good, the True, and the Beautiful. And
here was Chautauqua! Two
generations looked upon it with delight
and gratification. Chautauqua, be-
gotten of the marriage of the New
England lyceum and the western camp-
meeting. Emerson and Peter
Cartwright--what strange
bedfellows!
Absurd? No, it was not absurd. Four of
Emerson's best-known poems
were published in James Freeman Clark's The
Western Messenger a year
previous to their first appearance in
the East. It seems a far cry from
Lorenzo Dow and his "Chain"
sermon to Russell H. Conwell and his
"Acres of Diamonds." But,
after all, is it such a far cry? The early camp-
meeting was, in a sense, a social
rendezvous; it was, in a sense, an educa-
tional effort; it was, in a sense,
esthetic; it was, in a far larger sense,
moral and religious. The Chautauqua was
a social rendezvous; it was an
educational effort; it was esthetic; it
was, in a sense, religious; and it was,
above all, moral. It was, in short, New
England; estheticism, moralism, and
intellectualism in a setting of
backwoods emotionalism and religious fervor.
So, behind the symbol of the 1880's and
1890's, we may discern its forbear,
the camp-meeting, symbol and typical
product of the earlier culture.
If we are to attempt to evaluate the
significance of this spiritual force
in our early western culture, it is
essential that we understand the society
in which it exerted itself. This early
society was an agrarian society, aug-
mented, in the towns and villages, by a
minority of small merchants, traders,
craftsmen, and adventurers. It is important to realize that all were
strangers in a strange land; that a
nostalgic yearning for an abandoned
home, forsaken friends and families must
have been a common emotion.
Imminent dangers in a world where nature
appeared none too helpful must
have called for a strong heart and a
faith which is "the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." The life begat its character-
istic tempers: optimism--one must be
optimistic, or go down; emotionalism
--the strong back was a greater asset
than an analytical mind. Lacking
keen intellectuality, life tended to
become credulous, suspicious, intolerant,
cock-sure, argumentative. And these
characteristic tempers shaped char-
acteristic ideas: arrogant democracy; a
philosophy of hard work and cer-
tain success; a faith in "a good
day coming." Predominant topics of con-
versation at church, tavern, store, and
court - house steps were politics and
religion. History has adequately
recognized the politics of the day. The
religion, culturally more important, is
not so well known.
Estimates have computed the ratio of
churchmembers to non-church-
members, in 1825 as one to six, a
proportion surprisingly great when the
conditions under which the church
labored are recognized. Reliable statis-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 263
tics are scarce, for early church
records are only occasionally available. A
few approximate figures will suggest the
rapid spread of the religious idea.
In the valley states, a Methodist
population of 2000 in 1800 became 225,000
by 1840; the Baptist population expanded
from about 5000 in 1800 to 80,000
in the same period of years; in 1840,
the Disciples of Christ, a new sect,
equalled the Baptists in numbers; the
census of western Presbyteries, noting
7,686 members in 1810, shows three times
that number by 1820. The quite
apparent advantages of church membership
in towns and villages emphasize
the importance of church affiliations.
Some of the highlights in western church
history which were respon-
sible for the widespread interest in
religious matters and the surprising
vitality of the sects have long been
recognized by historians, pseudohis-
torians, and writers of fiction. There
are the Great Revivals of 1801-2-3-4,
which flamed up from sparks set by James
McGready at Cane Ridge, Ken-
tucky, swept like a prairie fire through
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and western
Virginia, leaving smoldering embers which
were to burst into flame again
and again, even into our own day; the
great camp-meetings which grew out
of them, great assemblies of 5, 10, even
12,000 countrymen, gathered for a
week of social intercourse and religious
ecstacy, day and night, under the
trees and the stars, with relays of
exhorters to hold the gates of Hell wide
open, the barkings, the
"jerks," the "gift of tongues," and showers of grace
descending to revive souls parched and
blistered in the heat of the Pit; the
bitter quarrels of the schismatics,
which left deep and livid scars at the
hearts of many communities; the widely
publicized religious controversies,
debates, and heresy trials, as when, for
sixteen days, Alexander Campbell
and the Rev. N. L. Rice held forth
before large audiences at Danville,
Kentucky, or when the Lyman Beecher
trial of 1832 made the year a not-
able one for Cincinnatians. And, most
exciting of all, there is Mormonism,
with its persecutions, its migrations,
its sinister tales of Avenging Angels.
What is Mormonism? Is it a western
version of New England transcen-
dentalism? I give you a fairly well
authenticated story for what it is worth.
Twelve miles from my home is one of the
oldest churches in the western
country, the Lower Ten Mile Presbyterian
Church. Behind that church
is a grave whose stone bears the legend,
"In Memory of Solomon Spauld-
ing, Who Departed This Life October 22,
1816, aged 55 Years." This is
the grave of the man who probably wrote
one of the most significant books
in the history of America. Solomon
Spaulding was a Connecticut man,
a Dartmouth graduate, and a
Congregational minister. In 1809, he came to
live in Conneaut, Ohio. Here he wrote a
book in which he attempted to
account for the lost tribes of Israel by
arguing that the American Indians
were their descendants. He relates, in a style heavily freighted
with
Biblical diction and phraseology, the
journey of the leaders Nephi and Lehi
and their followers from Jerusalem to
America. Spaulding found no printer
who was interested in his work. He
removed to Pittsburgh, then to Amity,
264
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
where he died in 1816, his book still
unpublished. Sidney Rigdon, a Baptist
minister of Pittsburgh, knew Spaulding,
though he later denied ever having
heard of him. There is evidence that
Rigdon at one time possessed the
Spaulding manuscript. Spaulding's
physician and pastor at Amity, Cephas
Dodd, has testified that Spaulding
suspected Rigdon of having stolen his
book.
Rigdon left Pittsburgh, became a Campbellite, and, in 1830, a
Mormon. In 1830, the Book of Mormon appeared.
It is a pity that western church history
has been so often recorded
by biased and partisan interpreters. It
is a pity that the emphasis has been
so long on the grotesque and sensational
materials. Western church history
deserves sober, scholarly treatment, and
to the competent historian it offers
rich and abundant rewards. The competent
scholar will find, however, that
the true story of the spiritual force in
western culture is not told in the
vivid, exciting, spectacular incidents.
Greater values are found in more
prosaic efforts, for the story of
religion in the West is by no means all
epileptic preaching and warped and
twisted philosophic thinking.
Near the end of November, 1815, Timothy
Flint, Harvard, 1800, ar-
rived with his family in Cincinnati with
a roving commission to preach in
Ohio and Kentucky under the authority of
the Connecticut Missionary
Society. What Flint found as to the
condition of religion in Cincinnati de-
serves attention, for Cincinnati, by
that time, had become an important
center of the western cultural effort,
and Flint, at 36, was a commentator
of more than average intelligence who
was about to make his presence
felt in the religious and literary life
of the West of his day. The mis-
sionary was pleased to discover that the
moral conditions of society in
Cincinnati were, with due allowance for
the age of the town, "astonishingly
regular and correct." There were many societies for the diffusion
of
religious knowledge, instruction, and
charity. Highly respectable people
of the city showed a laudable desire to
belong to some religious group.
The press teemed with polemic religious
pamphlets. The ministers of the
region were men of considerable talent
and readiness, of enlightened zeal
and sanctity of character.
There is hardly a phase of human
endeavor which did not feel the
impact of a driving religious force. And
especially was this true in the
centers of population, where the
cultural effort was most productive. Due
to the pressure of this force, more than
to that of any other, law and order
came to the West, and no bulwark of
decency and morality was more
stanchly and steadfastly defended than
that erected by the organized church.
A history of secondary and higher
education in the West is almost entirely
a history of a religious effort. An
academy, usually under the direction
of the local minister, became the boast
of every self-respecting community;
and the college, that "temple of
science" to which Edmund Flagg looked
for the moral salvation of the valley,
remains today the monument of the
missionary zeal of the established
churches. These efforts were so ef-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 265
fective and so unique that they still
appear as one of the most remarkable
cultural accomplishments of all time. My
faith in the essential goodness of
my fellow-men leaps high when I realize
how little was the necessity for
such effort in that struggling,
practical society, and how meager its rewards.
Surely here was an effort purely of the
spirit, the product of a Divine Urge.
And Washington and Jefferson,
Transylvania, Ohio, Miami, Cincinnati,
and a score of institutions whose names
are forgotten, remain to me the
monuments of the high ideals of the
culture of a generation we are all too
prone to ridicule. In literature, too,
the spiritual effort was potent. The
western press was prolific in the
production of text - books, theological
treatises, and religious pamphlets. My
list of thirty-four religious periodicals
which came into being between 1800 and
1840 is by no means complete.
These magazines, and the books and
tracts distributed by traveling preachers
and by tract societies, supplied the
bulk of the popular reading of the day,
and were tremendously important in
shaping the thought of the period.
Then there were the social experiments.
Father Rapp's effort at Harmony,
the Trappist colony in Kentucky, the
Quaker settlements, the Zoar and
Shaker efforts in Ohio, even Mormonism,
were fundamentally religious
efforts.
But back of all these efforts stand the
men who motivated them.
What an array! What a variety! Buffoon
and nobleman! Charletan,
scientist, and saint! All men of force,
of achievement, all imbued with a
seal to mold a society for the years to
come. One characteristic they had
in common, however--an old-fashioned,
naive, almost whimsical trait--
every one of them, every one, bowed his
head publicly to a Supreme Power
and served a spiritual Master. Sons of
Thunder they were, beating about
in the bushes to save lost souls; and
simple, dignified pastors, quietly tend-
ing their flocks. Politicians might vote embargos and
compromises in
Washington, might even lead the nation
into the Valley of Death: these men
were shaping men's lives and minds, and
preparing their souls, so that
men might, if need arose, endure that
Valley.
Most spectacular of this group were the
revival preachers and itiner-
ants. Their methods were unique and
extravagant, but they were effective.
"The Rev. Mr. Blaney will preach
next Sunday in Dempsey's
Grove, at 10 A. M., and at 4 p.
M, Providence permitting. Between
the sermons the preacher will run his
sorrel mare against any nag
that can be trotted out in this region
for a purse of one hundred
dollars."
There was James McGready, kindler of the
fires of the Great Re-
vival; a raw-boned Scotch-Irishman
trained in John McMillan's log college
at Canonsburg.
"The Lord has done great things for
us in the wilderness, and
the solitary place has been made glad;
the desert has rejoiced and'
blossomed like the rose."
266 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
There was James Havens,
"Father" Havens, "Uncle Jimmy," "Old
Sorrel," illiterate, uncouth, but
tremendously vital and prolific. And "Daddy"
Turck, coarse, loud, yet tender.
"I'm after souls! I'm after souls, and
souls I must have." There was
Valentine Cook, who, on the night of the
earthquakes in December, 1811, fell out
of bed, leapt up, and made for the
door. His wife seized his night-gown and
pled with him not to leave her,
but Valentine left her the gown,
shouting, "If my Lord is coming, I can
wait for no one!" There was Peter Cartwright, best-loved of
all the
camp-meeting preachers; thick-set,
muscular, preaching a militant, intolerant
Methodism to thousands in Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Illinois. And then,
to be sure, there was Lorenzo Dow,
"Bearer of the Word," "eccentric
Cosmopolite," he called himself;
others called him "Crazy Dow."
"Oh Lord, put a stop to
Mohammedanism, Judaism, Heathen-
ism, Atheism, Deism, Universalism,
Calvinism, and all other Devil-
isms."
Dirty, bearded, picturesque, sick,
confused, pathetic, he traveled tire-
lessly with Peggy, hs "Rib,"
in England, Ireland, and through all the habita-
tions of man east of the Mississippi. He
bought 452,000 acres on the Missis-
sippi and Chippewa rivers in what is now
western Wisconsin. Here he
intended to establish his ideal city. He
had the plans drawn, and he named
it "Loren, the City of Peace."
There was to be another colony, to be called
"Beulah Ethiopia." Shades of
Blake and Coleridge and Shelley! What a
beautiful dream!
None of these men are noteworthy for
intellectual capacity or close
reasoning. We find little or nothing which they have contributed to
sound theological doctrine. Rather,
their efforts confused and beclouded
issues, and ended in violent, erratic
quarrels and schisms, the effects of
which are still apparent. But for that
very reason they deserve serious
study, for in them was nurtured the
vital flame of a living, breathing,
tempestuous religion of tremendous
importance in the shaping of habits of
thought and in molding ideals.
Then, too, there are the colorful and
interesting schismatics. Finis
Ewing, principal fly in the Presbyterian
ointment, and chiefly responsible
for the Cumberland schism of ninety
years duration. Barton W. Stone and
Alexander Campbell, of
"Stoneite", "New Light", and "Campbellite" fame,
Henry Bascomb, George Brown, the
Methodist rebel, Richard M'Nemar and
John Dunlevy, the Shaker demagogues.
Joseph Smith found the emo-
tionally overwrought western people
ready and willing to suspend all reason
and accept his myth of magic spectacles
and divine revelation. There was
the pathetic Millerite delusion of the
1840's, and the fantastic excitement
roused by Joseph Dylks, the
"Leatherwood God," in 1828. Overwrought,
imagination-haunted men bring us the
fuss and sputter of medieval disputa-
tions, and the brimstone smell of the
devil-hunts of the Dark Ages.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 267
But this is by no means all of the
picture. In the more sound and
stable portion of this religious
history, the investigator will encounter many
figures of profound significance. There
were those saints of Presbyterian-
ism who brought evangelical zeal and
Scotch philosophy and theology from
Princeton to western Pennsylvania, James
Power, Joseph Smith, Thaddeus
Dodd, and John McMillan. All left impressions
upon their portions of the
western country which endure to this
day. There are David Rice and
James Blythe, Presbyterians, and Henry
Toulmin and Horace Holley,
Unitarians, whose services to the
Lexington area and to Transylvania Uni-
versity are so significant. There is the
Lexington publisher, Thomas Skill-
man, printer and backer of a number of
religious periodicals, who es-
tablished, in 1828, the Western
Luminary "to counteract the influence of
infidelity." There are the
Episcopalians, Joseph Doddridge and Bishop
Philander Chase. There is the Quaker, Elisha Bates, and his Moral
Advocate of Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and his colleague, Benjamin
Lundy.
There are the Cincinnatians, Stephen
Gano, Joshua L. Wilson, James Free-
man Clark, the Transcendentalist. And
there are James Finley, John Mason
Peck, and James H. Perkins, and Calvin
Stowe, and Robert Hamilton
Bishop. And--but enough of names. The
roll is long. Behind these men
stood the organized churches, striving,
in their various ways, to bring
order out of disorder, striving to bring
light to dark places, striving to
prepare men for the better life which
was to come. That much of their
effort was of more worldly value than
they may have intended need not
detract from their reputations.
Here, then, in the stable, conservative
religious life of the West was
laid the foundation for western culture.
Here were the intellectual values,
imported from New England, from
Princeton, from the Scottish univer-
sities. Fused with the emotional values
roused by the Sons of Thunder,
they produced a vital, progressive,
moral, intellectually inquisitive, and,
above all, religious society which found
the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful in the pleasantly edifying Chautauqua
Assembly.
A contemporary writer has written an
important book--I might almost
say, a great book, for I do not believe
that a better portrayal of frontier
life has appeared since Edward
Eggleston's The Hoosier Schoolmaster.
I speak of Conrad Richter's The
Trees. It is a powerful book, convincing,
and, as far as it goes, true. Its
setting is the Ohio country of an earlier
period than that of which I have been
speaking. Nevertheless, I fear that
the book fails of greatness through a
serious error of omission. There is
not, in the entire book, a single hint
or suggestion of the religious Idea.
I am sure that no re-creation of
frontier society can be completely true
without it.
Of this, our modern day, such an
omission would not, of course, be
serious. We have progressed far beyond
even the dreams of our fathers.
Our modern society is so competent, so
efficient, so comfortable, that it is
268
OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
with difficulty that we refrain from
being surprised at ourselves. And our
culture dwarfs that of our fathers to
insignificance. We cannot be expected
to judge values according to the
standards of a culture which, to us, ap-
pears so naive, so childlike, so
unintelligent and emotionally unstable. But
sometimes, when our present world is a
bit too much with me, the strident
voice of the news broadcaster comes to
me from long ago and far away,
and I hear, from underneath the trees of
a firelit camp-ground, the voice
of a Son of Thunder. He is speaking to
me, and what he says makes me
ponder.
"Open the Pit of Hell, O Lord, and
show these snivelling
sinners Thy torments! Show them their
brothers and their sisters,
their mothers and their fathers,
gnashing their teeth and gnawing at
their chains. Make them believe, O Lord!
Knock them down!
Knock them down, and show them Thy wrath
to come!"
AN OHIO SURGEON IN PARIS, 1835-1836
By PHILIP D. JORDAN
In December, 1835, a
twenty-eight-year-old American naval surgeon
took rooms on a narrow Parisian street
near the great French clinics and
hospitals which then were the world's
leading teaching institutions for young
physicians.1
Dr. Louis A. Wolfley, assistant surgeon
on the U. S. S. Delaware,
had obtained leave2 to devote eight
months to furthering his medical educa-
tion begun in Cincinnati in November,
1829, at the Ohio Medical College.3
Born in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania on
February 19, 1807, Wolfley had
come to Circleville, Ohio, in 1829 with
his brother-in-law, Dr. William N.
Luckey. In Circleville, Wolfley helped
Luckey mix drugs and roll pills.
Such apprenticeship had been his only
preparation for further schooling in
Cincinnati. There, during the winter and
spring terms of 1829, this tall
young man listened attentively to the
brilliant anatomy lectures of Jedediah
Cobb, and there also, he received his
first formal introduction to nineteenth
century chemistry, pharmacy, materia
medica, surgery, and the theory and
practice of medicine.
After his graduation in June, 1830,
Wolfley did not return to Athens
where he had previously practiced by
rule of thumb, but he opened an office
in Lancaster, Ohio, a community of
fifteen hundred persons.4 There
he
successfully courted Eleanor Ann Irvin,
daughter of Judge William W.
Irvin, member of Congress. Wolfley also
became acquainted with Senator
1 This paper, dealing especially with
the Parisian phase of Dr. Wolfley's career,
is an abridgment of a more extended
article prepared by the author and by Howard
D. Kramer, of the State University of Iowa.
2 Mediterranean Cruise, October 9, 1834,
Wolfley MSS.; Woodbury to Patterson,
Washington, March 24, 1835, Wolfley MSS.
3 Registrar's office of College of
Medicine, University of Cincinnati.
4 See Wolfley's advertisements in
Lancaster Gazette, April 5-19, 1830.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 269
Thomas Ewing. Life and medical practice
in Lancaster, even in the com-
pany of such distinguished politicians,
palled upon the young physician.
"While I am content at
Lancaster," he noted in his carefully kept and
introspective diary, "I still think
of Paris. I am young, I believe I could
become a citizen of the world."5
This aspiration to become a
"citizen of the world," however, was not
the only motive behind Wolfley's
decision to join the navy. The life of a
country doctor required first of all a
good constitution, then patience in the
matter of pay. Wolfley had neither of
these qualities. At the end of his
first short voyage as a naval surgeon,
he explained that he had entered the
navy to put an end to "this riding
about through mud and rain, losing sleep
at nights and being called out of a warm
bed, to go and attend to some
worthless vagabond."6
With the political aid of Irvin and
Ewing, Wolfley received a com-
mission as an assistant naval surgeon on
June 22, 1832,7 and soon after was
ordered to duty on the sloop St.
Louis. Resigning his office as secretary of
the Thirteenth District of the Medical
Society of Ohio, Wolfley went to
Norfolk where the St. Louis was
at anchor. Later he was transferred to
the Mediterranean squadron, serving as
one of the four medical officers
aboard the U. S. S. Delaware.
But life at sea turned out to be no more
pleasant than life in Lan-
caster. "Nothing daunts a
sailor," sang Wolfley exultantly on starting his
cruise, but when he said this he had not
taken into account seasickness.
"My suffering with this salt water
malady almost induces me at times to
forswear . . . all salt water life, and
to return to terra firma."8
Graduate study in Paris seemed an ideal
solution. He could leave the
sea for a time and also he could avail
himself of the splendid clinical fa-
cilities in Paris. He had trouble
finding suitable lodgings which would fit
his meager budget of fifty-four dollars
a month, the amount of his pay
while on furlough. In his first quarters
at No. 7 Rue de Tournon, situated
but a few steps from the entrance to the
Luxembourg Gardens, he paid
fifty-five francs monthly for his rooms
and 115 francs for his board. Fire-
wood and candles were extra. A month
later he succeeded in locating
cheaper lodgings, at forty francs, where
he stayed most of the time he was
in Paris. This new address was at No. 18
on the Rue de l'Ancienne
Comedie, a narrow, cobblestoned street
lined with gabled houses whose cen-
tury-old balconies jutted out over the
thoroughfare. On the ground level
dust-covered shops hid their soiled
faces behind veils of iron grilling which
provided protection against the violence
of street riots. Across from Wolf-
ley's rooms was the Cafe Procope where
he often ate his breakfast, probably
thrilled by the thought that Voltaire
and Rousseau and Diderot and other
5 Wolfley to Leon Longuemare, Lancaster,
March 26, 1830.
6 West Indies Cruise, December 31, 1832,
Wolfley MSS.
7 For copy of original commission, see Wolfley MSS.
8 Undated note, in Wolfley MSS.
270 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
beaux esprits of the previous century who had used this famous cafe
as a
gathering place might have talked to
each other across the same table.9
Paris had been driven indoors by an
unusually severe winter when
Wolfley arrived, so it was not until
later that he made any attempt to see
the sights of the city. However, before
settling down to work he called
on a Monsieur Cutter, a tailor, to be
measured for clothes; evidently he had
discovered his mufti inadequate in style
and cloth for Paris wear. The
stylish young Parisian felt out of place
unless he sported a form-fitting
coat, sometimes laced across the front,
which descended nearly to his knees
where it flaired decidedly. His trousers had to be tailored from striped
or large-checked material and almost
skin tight until they belled at the
ankles.10 It was only natural for Wolfley to reconstruct his wardrobe ac-
cording to the dictates of this fashion.
He applied himself industriously to his
studies, oftimes attending as
many as four lectures a day and seldom
less than one. Most of the hos-
pitals and schools where the doctors
lectured to students were grouped
within a narrow compass on the left bank
of the Seine. The Hotel Dieu,
opposite the Cathedral of Notre Dame,
was one of the oldest, largest, and
most famous hospitals in the world. Here
Wolfley followed Roux,11 the
famous surgeon, as he made his rounds of
the wards, intently observing his
technique as he performed bedside
operations. The Hotel Dieu in 1836 was
probably the best kept and best managed
hospital in Europe. It was neat
and well-ventilated, and the provisions
supplied to the sick were plentiful
and wholesome. As many as twenty-seven
hundred patients could be ac-
commodated in its thirty spacious wards,
and its equipment since the cholera
epidemic of 1832 was, due to the many
voluntary contributions made at that
time, more than adequate, judged by the
standards of this day.
Leaving the Hotel Dieu, Wolfley could,
by crossing the Petite Pont
and proceeding ahead a hundred yards or
so, reach the Boulevard St.
Germain upon which the Ecole de Medecine
faced. Many mornings as early
as six-thirty he made his way to the
classrooms in this building to hear
Gabriel Andral12 talk on skin diseases
and rheumatism, and to listen to
Auguste Berard13 deliver his
brilliant lectures ridiculing phrenology, where,
on one occasion, he used the recently
guillotined head of a murderer to illus-
trate his remarks. Afterwards a two-minute walk down the
boulevard
brought Wolfley to the Hopital de la
Charite, where he more and more
9 Georges Cain, A Travers Paris (Paris,
1909), 141.
10 Frances Trollope, Paris and the
Parisians in 1835 (New York, 1836), passim.
11 Philibert-Joseph Roux (1780-1854)
became surgeon at the Hopital de la Charite
in 1810, and later at the Hotel Dieu.
After the death of Dupuytren, in 1835, he was
considered the most eminent French
surgeon. He specialized in articulate resections.
12 Gabriel Andral (1797-1876) held the
chair of hygiene until 1830, then replaced
the famous physician, Francois Joseph
Victor Broussais, in the chair of internal
pathology.
13 Auguste Berard (1802-1846) became
professor of anatomy about 1831. His
brother, Pierre-Honore, was professor of
physiology.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 271
frequently called to see Velpeau14
operate and noted down his comments on
cases. These places, as well as the
Hopital Necker, Hopital de la Pitie,
and Hopital de la Faculte, were in easy
walking distance of his quarters on
the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie.
Wolfley soon settled into a daily
routine which varied little. Awake
and through breakfast at Procope's by
seven, or even earlier, he usually
went first to the Hopital de la
Charite. Sometimes he remained here
throughout the day, but more often he
left at the end of the morning and
employed the hours from noon to three
sitting in on lectures at the Ecole de
Medecine or visiting other hospitals. In
the evening he usually accompanied
Gilliss or other American friends to the
restaurant at the Palais Royal for
dinner. For forty sous, the menu
lavishly listed innumerable dishes from
which to choose four, which undoubtedly
was for Wolfley an attractive
feature. Apparently he considered the food--although served in grim-
looking silver bowls--extremely good,
for he ate here often.15 After the meal
Wolfley customarily returned to his
rooms to read or study. On rare oc-
casions he saw an opera or attended a
party which lasted into the small
hours of the morning. On days following
these infrequent dissipations, he
seldom called at the hospitals, but
remained at home and rested.
The continental system of medical
training undoubtedly proved more
valuable and advantageous to Wolfley, an
earnest student, than the more
formal method of prescribed courses
given at the Ohio Medical College.
The practice of paying fees for only
those lessons and lectures attended
enabled Wolfley to stretch his limited
resources in the most effective way,
for he was free to select those courses
alone which would do him the most
good. He kept a detailed account of his
expenses while in Paris, and the
sum he paid for medical fees was
carefully recorded.16 To Armand Velpeau,
the surgeon at the Hopital de la
Charite, he gave twenty-seven francs for
the privilege of watching him operate,
while a private course in dissecting
cost thirty francs. His personal
expenditures were kept at a minimum. His
monthly outlay averaged about three
hundred francs, an amount well within
his budget, he noted with satisfaction
in April. "Thus far we run before
the wind," he commented.
In Paris he studied under some of the
world's outstanding doctors.
To his vexation, however, he found that
Surgeon Philibert Roux at the
Hotel Dieu was a chronic mumbler, so
much so that Wolfley, his ear as yet
not perfectly tuned to French, had
trouble following his discourse. He
liked Velpeau better, who, in a
distinct, well-enunciated tone, took care to
inform his listeners of the reasons for
every motion in his operations.
14 Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau
(1795-1867), "not a scientific thinker, but
a strong, capable, hard-working teacher
and operator." Surgeon to Hopital
St.
Antoine, 1828-30; at La Pitie, 1830-34;
at La Charite, 1834-67, and for the same time
professor of clinical surgery at the
Paris Faculty. Author of Treatise on Surgical
Anatomy (1823), and Diseases of the Breast (1854).
15 Trollope, Paris and the Parisians,
194.
16 Expense
account while in Paris, Wolfley MSS.
272 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
In the clinics Wolfley saw countless
surgical operations, the majority
confined to amputations, fistulas,
cataracts, dropsy, and hernia.17 He learned
from Velpeau himself how to apply the
famous bandage for fracture of the
clavicle which that surgeon invented.
The hand of the injured arm was
placed on the opposite shoulder, with
the elbow brought across the front
of the body, tight bandages maintaining it
in this position. Wolfley also
witnessed a great number of amputations
performed by Roux at the Hotel
Dieu. After sawing through the bone and
severing the limb, adhesive tape
was applied over the face of the stump.
Infection, as a result, was ex-
tremely common, for in that day
antiseptic was unknown.
Because of the many deaths which
followed amputations, Wolfley
criticized both Roux and Velpeau for
operating so frequently. Another
thing which astonished him was the
opinion expressed by both men that an
amputation of a finger was as dangerous
as severing a limb near the trunk
of the body. Wolfley's experience
apparently had been just the reverse.
Velpeau in addition held the view that
amputations were less likely to be
fatal to the sickly than to the strong
and healthy. "In the former," this
physician told Wolfley, "the
removal of a limb acts like the lopping off [of]
super-numerary branches of a tree, the
life of the whole becomes more
robust." As Velpeau continued to
lose patient after patient from infection
following minor operations, he became
visibly annoyed, finally blaming his
bad luck on the unfavorable weather
conditions for operating.
Wolfley did not agree with Velpeau's
weather hypothesis. He noticed
that in deaths which resulted after the
removal of a finger there was seldom
any sign of inflammation around the
wound and the bone usually seemed
sound, but post mortems showed abscesses
on the cerebellum and liver.
Also, an extensive suppuration often
appeared in and around the arm joints.
Velpeau, attributed death "to the fluids
of the body, to absorption of pus, or
to some unknown cause." Wolfley
inclined toward the unknown cause as
the responsible reason, saying:
"There is something very strange in
this, to me something unac-
countable. Lately there have been no
less than three or four
deaths consecutive to operations of
fingers [amputated] in this
hospital. And but a few days ago I saw a
man who came into
the Hotel Dieu in the morning, having
received an injury which
caused the amputation of three of his
fingers. He was a healthy
robust-looking man. In a day or two he
was seized with shivering
followed by fever and is now in a state
of raging delirium, tied
down in bed. What can be the cause of
these unfortunate sym-
toms from simple amputations?"
He would have given much to know the
answer, for it puzzled him
considerably. Yet he speculated--and
very soundly--on the eventual solution
17 Much of the following is taken from
the medical notes and clinical ob-
servations, in Wolfley MSS.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 273
of this mystery. The original cause of
many diseases, he felt, was some
foreign matter carried in the blood
stream. "Even in acute diseases I be-
lieve there is foreign matter introduced
into the blood vessels," he wrote in
his notes. Were not fevers and coated
tongues and cloudy urine but efforts
of the body to eliminate or set free
this contaminating substance?
Six weeks passed after his arrival in
Paris before Wolfley signed up
for any formal course of
instruction. Then he took up the study
of
stethoscope technique under Adan
Raciborski,18 and a little later operative
surgery under Cesar Robert.19 His
career as a naval surgeon doubtlessly
influenced this choice. Tuberculosis and
other pulmonary diseases were
chronic ailments of the seaman in the
navy,20 and a surgeon who availed
himself of a furlough to advance his
professional knowledge was expected
by the navy department to take a course
in surgery.
Wolfley devoted little time to anything
outside his work. Even his
sight-seeing verged on the
"postman's holiday," for his walks usually ended
at the Cluny Museum, where he examined
Guillaume Dupuytren's medical
collection, or at the cemetery of Pere
Lachaise or the Morgue. This last
place, located behind Notre Dame on the
south tip of the Ile de la Cite, was
a low white-colored building where each
day were displayed for public view
the bodies of suicides or murder victims
caught in the net stretched across
the Seine at St. Cloud for that very
purpose. As many as eight or ten
during a day's time were hauled out of
the muddy water.21 Wolfley on
entering the Morgue walked down the bare
straight corridor until he came
to a lighted window on a side wall
behind which the bodies lay on display
as if they were merchandise in a shop
window. The corpses were tilted at
an angle on their biers so that the
onlooker could see all the features. Due
to a bronze coloration spread over the
skin, many of them often appeared
as if still alive.22 Wolfley
may have stood here for long periods, watching
the parade of anxious faces which came
hesitantly to the large window in
search of a missing friend or child or
lover.
Wolfley seemed to find the Chamber of
Deputies far less interesting
than the Morgue; certainly he observed
little more signs of life there than
at the Morgue on the occasions he
attended the debates. However, he fol-
lowed the political developments in
France closely, for the dispute between
this nation and his own over payments
owed the United States was coming
to a head. The French were preparing for
a naval war, he wrote home,
a struggle which they evidently expected
to make "short and glorious" by
18 Adan Raciborski (1809-1871) was a
Polish surgeon who fled to Paris for
refuge when the revolution of 1830 was
put down by Russian troops. In 1834, he
was named chief of the clinic of the
Hopital de la Charite. He wrote a treatise on
respiratory diseases in 1841, but mainly
he specialized in gynecology.
19 Cesar Alphonse Robert (1801-1862), gave his name to a flattened pelvic
con-
dition upon which he made many reports. Unable for many
years to obtain a pro-
fessorship, despite his recognized ability, he earned
his living by private tutoring.
20 "The Founders of Naval
Hygiene," United States Naval Medical Bulletin,
XIV (1920), 619.
21 Trollope, Paris and the Parisians,
194.
22 Ibid., 195.
274 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
striking "a death blow to our small
force."23 He blamed the late Minister
to France, Edward Livingston, who had
crossed on the Delaware with him
and whom he had doctored for a cold on
that trip, for the critical situation
of the differences with France. His
language had not been very diplomatic
in handling these people, "always
sensitive on the score of honor."
The news from America which reached Wolfley
through the columns
of the newspapers distressed him even
more than the strained relations
between France and the United States. He
shook his head sorrowfully as
he glanced through the papers which
appeared to contain nothing but ac-
counts "of mobs, riots, election
murders . . . even lynchings!" What sad
changes must have taken place since he
left home. This preyed heavily on
his mind, and doubtlessly as he sat
sipping his coffee at a sidewalk table in
the spring his reflections frequently
spanned the Atlantic. To his recol-
lection, he could recall in his time no
such lack of respect for law and
order, no such want of political
honesty, as was registered daily in the
American papers which fell into his
hands. The increase of depravity had
been frightfully rapid within the few
years he had been abroad, it seemed to
him. Wolfley loved his country and its
institutions too deeply not to be
vitally concerned by what was occurring
there; all these "horrible" ac-
counts of disorder made him want to see
for himself what had happened
in his absence.
By this time, also, he wished for
nothing better than to reach home.
His work was nearly finished. As spring
advanced and the date for his
departure approached, he became more and
more pleased. Yet it was
with a certain regret that he said
good-by to Paris, this city where he had
worked so hard, learned so much and
whose hospitality he had so enjoyed.
He left Paris on July 11, arriving at
London a week later. In the
short period he was here he did and saw
almost as much as during the pre-
ceding months in France. He lodged at
101 Regent Street. Some of his
Paris friends were in London;
consequently he lacked no companionship for
his strolls about the city or his excursions
into the surrounding countryside.
In early August he traveled to
Liverpool, where he engaged a cabin
on the packet Susquehanna, Captain
Cropper in command. Sailing on
August 9, he arrived home in September.
As the boat came into harbor,
he undoubtedly had never experienced a
more contented feeling than this
one of being home again.
Wolfley, upon his return to active duty,
found much use for the
surgical knowledge learned in Paris. He
did a tour of duty at the Naval
Asylum in Philadelphia in 1839, and the
following year was ordered to sea
on the U. S. S. Dale of the
Pacific Squadron. In March, 1843, he was rank-
ing surgeon of the U. S. S. Decatur and
sailed to join the Africian Squad-
ron. By this time, he was ill both
physically and mentally. Before his
23 Wolfley to unknown addressee, written
a month after his arrival in Paris,
Wolfley MSS.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 275
mind gave way completely, Wolfley begged
his superiors to grant him leave
and return him to Ohio. Two days later,
on May 7, 1844, the surgeon was
admitted to the sick list as mentally
deranged.24 When the Decatur put in
at Porto Praya, Wolfley's commander
determined to leave him in the hands
of the United States Agent for the Cape
Verde Islands.
The town of Porto Praya rests on a
table-land, high above the harbor
of St. Jago Island. At the eastern and
western limits of the village, the
ground falls off sharply into deep
ravines. Near the town, and looking down
upon the ocean, stands a fort.25
Wolfley was lodged in the guard-house of
this fort, and keepers were
detailed to watch over him. Early on the
morning of July 21, 1844, he
succeeded in escaping from his prison
and his guards.26 After making his
escape, Wolfley rushed to the edge of a
cliff near the guard-house and hurled
his body into space. His life was
crushed out on the rocks, eighty feet
below.
He was buried with full honors in the
fort at Porto Praya.27 Many
friends of his in the navy joined with
Captain Abbot in regretting the death
of this "excellent and worthy
surgeon."28
Public Session of the Committee on
Archives and Medical
History, 1:00 P. M., April 5, Ohio
State Museum Library,
Jonathan Forman, M. D., Presiding
The second annual meeting of the
Committee on Archives and
Medical History of the Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical
Society was called to order by Dr.
Jonathan Forman, its chairman,
at 1:00 P. M. on April 5, 1940, in the Library
of the Museum. The
program was concerned with "Ohio
Medical History of the Period,
1835-1858," and was made up of
eight papers which will be pub-
lished in full in the October, 1940, issue of the
QUARTERLY.
General Session, 10:00 A. M., April
6, Ohio State Museum
Frank A. Livingston, Presiding
The final session of the Ohio History
Conference was the
Saturday morning one sponsored by the
Columbus Genealogical
Society and the Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Society.
24 U. S. Navy Department to Howard D.
Kramer, January 6, 1938.
25 U. S. Hydrographic Office, East
Atlantic Pilot, H. O., no. 134 (Washington,
1918), 331.
26 U. S. Navy Department to Howard D.
Kramer, January 6, 1938.
27 U. S. Senate, Documents, 28 Cong., 2 Sess.,
1844-1845, IX Doc. 150, p. 129.
28 Ibid., 146.
276 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Mr. Frank A. Livingston, President of
the first-named organiza-
tion, presided. Dr. Harold J. Grimm of
the Ohio State University
presented a paper on "The
Genealogist as Historian," and Dr.
Harlow Lindley of the Ohio State Museum
read a paper prepared
by Mr. Delbert L. Gratz of Bluffton,
Ohio, on "The Swiss Men-
nonites of Alien and Putnam
Counties."
THE GENEALOGIST AS HISTORIAN
By HAROLD J. GRIMM
The genealogist, gathering information
concerning his family tree, is
engaged in a fascinating activity. The
pleasure which he derives from
making new discoveries amply repays him
for hours of painstaking research,
and corresponds to the gratification
experienced by the historian who has
succeeded in throwing new light upon a
perplexing problem. As a matter of
fact, the genealogist is a historian in
his own right, for he handles historical
data, applies historical methods, and
draws historical conclusions.
The personal satisfaction which the
genealogist obtains from gather-
ing biographical data is supplemented by
a number of valuable by-products
which deserve mention. In the first
place, the facts which he accumulates
may be of inestimable value to the
biographer and general historian.1
Moreover, he is brought into contact and
gains a familiarity with the past,
a knowledge of which is indispensable
for a proper understanding of the
present. His preoccupation with the
lives of his ancestors also serves to
give him a better conception of the time
element in history than that of the
casual observer. In the perspective of
many people, the events of the last
century lie in the remote and nebulous
past. But the fact that my maternal
grandfather gave me first-hand
information concerning the Germany which
he left after the failure of the
Revolution of 1848, impressed me with the
tardy struggle for political democracy
in Germany. And when he recalled
the conditions in Europe at the time of
the French Revolution and Napoleon,
as narrated to him by his grandfather, I
became aware of the relatively
short span of history between the period
which witnessed the creation of our
own United States and the present day.
The awareness of our proximity to such
events and the feeling that
our ancestors either helped create our
democratic institutions or came
to this country to enjoy the advantages
which they offered, should arouse
in us a profound respect for them. We
should at least make an earnest
1 For an excellent evaluation of the
genealogist's contribution to biography and
history, see Francis P. Weisenburger, "The
Personal Element in History," Ohio
State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly (Columbus,
1887- ), XLVIII (1939),
153-63.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 277
attempt to understand these institutions
and adapt them to our contemporary
needs, especially since there is a
widespread disposition to substitute ideol-
ogies and methods unfamiliar to our
ancestors and incompatible with our
democratic way of life.
In times of relative peace and security,
the gathering of geneaological
and historical facts as a hobby or pure
cultural activity may proceed un-
disturbed or unchallenged. But when our democratic institutions are
threatened, as they are today, it
becomes obligatory upon the genealogist and
historian to aid in the solution of
pressing political, economic, and social
problems.
To make his activities pertinent to these
problems, a genealogist should
go beyond the mere enumeration of family
data and probe into the environ-
ment of his ancestors. He should attempt
to ascertain those factors which
influenced them in creating and
preserving the basic institutions of our
country; to discover the elan vital, or
driving force, which impelled them
to face hardships and overcome serious
obstacles; and to apply their ideals
and methods in seeking a solution for
our contemporary difficulties.
A study of the lives of our ancestors,
no matter how insignificant
their contributions may appear on the
surface, will reveal the fact that they
were vitally concerned with the
development and perpetuation of two basic
institutions, Christianity and
democracy. A faith in God and man was
fundamental in their thought and action
and remained, as a whole, unshaken
despite the political, economic, and
social vicissitudes of the nineteenth
century.
The persistence and expansion of
Christianity in the face of our in-
creasing self-reliance and the
development of natural science after the middle
of the nineteenth century is nothing
short of phenomenal. The great ma-
jority of the first American colonists
had fled from unbearable religious
conditions in Europe and appreciated the
privilege of worshiping as their
consciences dictated. These religious
refugees had in common a mystic
consolation in the belief that they
stood in a direct, personal relationship to
God, a belief which was stimulated by
their contact with the virgin forest.
The Great Awakening of the middle of the
eighteenth century, says Na-
thaniel Wright Stephenson, "infused
into all the denominations that were
caring for the spiritual needs of the
back country . . . a free individualistic,
forward-looking, buoyant, expansive
temper, that planted the spiritual life
of the frontier, no matter what its
theology, firm on a faith in the truth of
Luther's hymn, 'A Mighty Fortress is our
God.'"2
The spread of the philosophy of the
Enlightenment, which found wide
acceptance among the political leaders
of the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, served to increase the
religious toleration and humanitarianism
bred on the frontier and to soften the
sternness of Calvinism. The spread
of nineteenth century evangelical
Protestantism, or romantic Christianity,
2 N. W. Stephenson, History of the
American People (New York, 1934), I, 158.
278 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
as preached primarily by the Methodists
and Baptists, intensified man's belief
in the free individual and encouraged
the hope in a millenium, the belief in
a steady progress toward that perfect
day when universal peace and order
would reign.
The religious faith of evangelicalism,
evident in the worn pages of the
family Bibles which went westward with
our ancestors, was closely related
to the political faith in democracy. The
political necessity of our original
colonists for setting up local
instruments of government for want of an
adequate government by the mother
country, was supplemented by the re-
ligious faith of the Protestant groups
with their emphasis upon a personal
accountability to God. To the century
and a half of practical experience
in ruling themselves, were added the
stimulating ideas of the men of
the Enlightenment, which were
crystallized in our conflict with Great Britain
and found expression in our Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution,
and the Bill of Rights.
Two factors made possible the
continuation and growth of the political
philosophy of our founding fathers:
first, the predominance of the free
farmer, who owned his own plot of
ground; and, second, the presence of a
western frontier until the close of the
nineteenth century. The frontier,
as Ralph Henry Gabriel has so forcefully
pointed out,3 kept alive the funda-
mental American belief in the supreme
value of the individual and the belief
in progress as a normal tendency in
history. To this must be added the
pioneer's recognition of the need for
cooperation among individuals.
The attitude of our ancestors toward
Christianity and democracy, both
of which are closely related and
mutually interdependent, gives us a clue
to the elan vital which impelled
them to march out into the unknown.
The driving forces which made possible
the greatest wave of migration in
history, which filled much of a large
continent in one century, and which
created a set of local and national
institutions that have aroused the confi-
dence of millions of people here and
abroad in the democratic processes,
were the "faith, hope, and love,"
concerning which Paul wrote to the
Christians at Corinth centuries ago.
Our ancestors had faith in God, faith in
man, and faith in the institu-
tions which they themselves had created.
They had the hope that their
labors, however arduous they might appear
for the moment, would be
crowned with success; that they, or at
least their children, would eventually
be able to live a richer and fuller life
than had previously been known to
man. Moreover, they were actuated by
love to think in terms of their
community. Nowhere, perhaps, has a
nation or people as a whole felt
the same desire to help the unfortunate
which was evinced by the Americans
on the frontier. Professor Charles A.
Beard has pointed out that the
frontier did not create "rugged
individualism," but rather a spirit of helpful
3 R. H. Gabriel, The Course of
American Democratic Thought (New York, 1940),
3-11.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 279
cooperation. This attitude of love and
helpfulness was beautifully ex-
pressed by Whittier:
"O brother man, fold to thy heart
thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is
there;
To worship rightly is to love each
other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a
prayer."
The faith and hope of our ancestors was
destined, however, for a rude
shock at the beginning of our own
century. The rapid industralization of
America, as well as of all western
Europe, created a predominantly urban
out of a rural population and made
necessary important adjustments. The
World War, with its mass murder, and
recurrent industrial unemployment
shattered man's faith in progress and in
the basic institutions of our
civilization, Christianity and
democracy. Countries where Christian and
democratic standards had not taken deep
root, sought salvation in new
principles of authority.
In our attempt to meet the challenge of
the new conditions created by
our rapid industrialization, to increase
cooperation without treading the
dangerous paths of totalitarianism, it
is well to assess our democratic
heritage. What liabilities and what
assets have we inherited from our an-
cestors?
One of the weaknesses inherited by the
present generation is the
heterogeneity of our population. To the religious, national, and racial
differences have been added sectional
and class differences, which militate
against such unity of democratic purpose
as can be found, for example,
in the smaller, more compact, and more
homogeneous Scandinavian coun-
tries. The prejudices, fears, hates, and
jealousies of these various groups
are liable to flare up at the slightest
provocation.
Furthermore, the complexity of our
economic and social, domestic
and foreign problems makes it difficult
for us to arouse the interest and
concern of the average citizen. There is
a growing tendency here, as there
has been in Europe, to leave such
matters to the few and to devote one's
increasing leisure time to the countless
diversions, which George Counts
calls our "spectacles and
circuses."4
Probably the greatest liability is the
general tendency to rest on the
laurels of the past, to take the
institutions of the past for granted, to meet
our problems with a negative attitude,
and to seek escape by a policy of
inaction. Apathy is a far greater danger
to our democratic way of life
than Communist or Nazi propaganda. If
American democracy fails, it will
fail because of our indifference.
Nevertheless, we have inherited
important assets from our ancestors,
assets which should give us courage. In
the first place, our people have
4 George Counts, The Prospects of
American Democracy (New York, 1938).
234-7.
280
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
had a long experience with democratic
institutions and are accustomed to
meeting serious obstacles. They have
learned to be patient with the in-
evitable slowness of our legislative
system, and will probably not be willing
to sacrifice personal freedom for
totalitarian efficiency.
In the second place, we Americans are
blessed with a sense of "fair
play" over against our minorities
and those less fortunate than ourselves,
which will probably prevent us from
desiring to liquidate all who do not
measure up to any established political,
religious, or racial orthodoxy.
Congressman T. V. Smith of Illinois
attributes the American sense of jus-
tice and "fair play" to the
friendliness, humility, and humor bred on the
frontier.5
A third important asset is our security
against foreign attack.
Democracy is a tender plant which can
flourish and grow in times of
peace, but which easily withers and dies
in times of war. Protected by
two oceans and bounded by friendly
neighbors, our democracy should out-
live the present era of storm and stress
and constitute a brilliant example
of democratic living to millions of people
nauseated by war and the ex-
cesses of totalitarianism.
Finally, our people have been blessed
with the opportunity of seeing
the totalitarian ideologies in
operation. They are able to see the cost in-
volved in sacrificing freedom for a
doubtful mess of pottage. There is rea-
son to hope for a growing respect for
our own inherited institutions and
for an increasing determination to save
them by putting them to use.
Such a state of affairs, as has been
briefly surveyed here, should
constitute a direct challenge to those
of us who have our roots deep in
the American struggles of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. We
shall do our ancestors, their
institutions, and their way of life a grave
injustice if we treat them as mere
genealogical and historical curiosities.
It is incumbent upon us to catch the
spark that kindled the ardor of those
who have gone before us, to live
democracy, and to develop a devoted lead-
ership among our young people.
Democracy is a way of life, not an end
in itself. The danger of mak-
ing a system more important than its
aims can readily be seen in the history
of Stalin and Hitler, both of whom set
out to cure real ills. Contrary to
the contention of the dictators,
democracy is a government of the strong,
not the weak. Therefore it requires
eternal vigilance and self discipline.
We must constantly bear in mind that our
institutions are but means to an
end; that we can have "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" only
if we incessantly endeavor to attain
them. Goethe gave striking expression
to this fact more than a century ago
when he said, "He alone deserves
freedom, or even life, who struggles for
it daily."
Living according to democratic
principles implies a constant adjust-
5 T. V. Smith and Robert A. Taft, Foundations
of Democracy (New York,
1939), 7-10.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 281
ment. When we tire of the struggle, we
may wish time to stand still, to
maintain a comfortable status quo. But
time moves on, and institutions
which fail to make their adjustments,
atrophy and are replaced by those
which more adequately serve the needs of
the day. To revitalize democracy,
it is necessary to re-create the spirit
and methods of our forefathers on
the frontier, to adapt them to modern
conditions, and to use every possible
organization for the purpose of teaching
democracy and training for re-
sponsible leadership.
If we are enthusiastic over the
democratic way of life, we will impart
this enthusiasm to others, particularly
to our young people.6 To develop a
devoted leadership, we must instil,
primarily by example, a respect for our
institutions, symbols, and ideals, and
show that they offer a better solution
for our contemporary ills than the new
ideologies of Europe.
Moreover, faith is as important today as
it ever was in the past. No
leader has ever accomplished
far-reaching results whose cause was not
higher than himself, who has not said
with Luther, "Here I stand; I can-
not do otherwise." Faith in a
program, in symbols, in ideas explains the
success of the totalitarian states of
Europe. If the dictator needs faith to
bolster his power, how much more
imperative it is that we have faith in
democracy.
But we must also hold out hope to our
young people. They are as
self-denying and loyal as those of any
other country and of any previous
period in our American history; and I
firmly believe that their greatest
desire is not a life of ease and luxury,
but one of service. Surely there is
among us enough resourcefulness and ingenuity
to devise a democratic pro-
gram of action for our young people and
to provide opportunities for
their creative energy. If we fail to
cooperate with them in this respect, if
we remain negative and apathetic, there
is a real danger that they may turn
to demagogues who have no respect for
our institutions or our democratic
way of life.
I am confident that our work as
genealogists and historians will tend
to dispel the vices of fear, hate, and
jealousy which constitute such fertile
soil for totalitarianism, and will impel
us to follow the positive Christian,
democratic virtues of faith, hope, and
love. Such optimism, which may be
called wishful thinking by many, and
such a faith in the value of living
democracy was forcefully expressed by
Lincoln at a time when there was
less reason for optimism and hope than
there is today: "With malice to-
ward none, with charity for all; with
firmness in the right as God gives us
to see the right, let us strive to
finish the work we are in."
6 A realistic discussion of education
and democracy is contained in Ordway
Tead, New Adventures in Democracy
(New York, 1939), 3-70.
282
OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL SKETCH OF
THE SWISS
MENNONITES OF ALLEN AND PUTNAM COUNTIES,
OHIO
By DELBERT L. GRATZ
To write a precise history of any
certain group of people, one must
know the individual history of each
family which goes to make up the
group. This was especially true in the
case of the Swiss Mennonites, since
their faith was chiefly a family
religion, and in no way a matter of cults
and ceremonies. The church and home were
to coincide and marriages were
consecrated to become the "holy
cell" of the Holy Community. One of the
most devastating methods of persecution
used by the Swiss authorities in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was that of tearing apart Mennon-
ite family relationships and nullifying
marriages whenever other methods
failed in destroying Mennonitism.
Marriage of any member to someone
outside its own ranks was strictly
forbidden and is even now looked upon
with some scorn.
Therefore, in order to write a correct
and complete history of the
Swiss Mennonites, the first thing that
must be done is to gather together all
the data and information possible
concerning the family history and gene-
alogy of the individual families of
which they are composed.
Mennonite family histories differ from
most others in that they do not
record stories of princes and generals
or of picturesque marches over battle-
fields or of ancient coats of arms. They
rather present to the world a
record of the attempt to live a life of
peace and simplicity as taught in the
Bible.
But before we look into individual
family histories, let us give the
general background of the Swiss
Mennonites a hurried glance.
In 1520 several of Zwingli's associates
broke away from his reforma-
tion group when he allowed the state to
enforce church decrees. Besides
opposing a church-state relationship
they refused to bear arms, swear oaths
or baptize infants. Some years later
they became affiliated with another
group of peaceful Anabaptists led by
Menno Simons in Holland. For their
beliefs, many of them suffered martydom,
others were sold as galley slaves
into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,
many were thrown into filthy prisons,
but the great majority were banished
from their beloved Switzerland.
Those of the Emmenthal region of Canton
Berne were never completely
annihilated but during the years 1671 to
1710 some 500 families were exiled.
They found a refuge in the Rhenish
Palatinate, Alsace and Holland. From
1710 to 1760 a large number of these Swiss
Palatinate Mennonites accepted
William Penn's invitation to settle in
Pennsylvania. About the same time
a large group of the Emmenthal
Mennonites found a refuge under severe
restrictions in the Jura Mountains
located in the northern part of Canton
Berne. The largest group here was the
Sonnenberg congregation. Each
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 283
family was allowed to rent only a few
acres of poor, stony upland soil.
They usually carried on a trade besides
their farming. Since they weren't
allowed to worship openly, they held
their meetings in the various homes of
members. A number of this same group of
Emmenthalers were allowed to
settle just across the Swiss-French
border in Canton Delle, Territory of
Belfort, Department of Haut Rhine, Southern
Alsace, France.
A famine during the years 1816 and 1817
climaxed the severe hard-
ships for them which followed the
Napoleonic wars. As a result the ma-
jority of the Sonnenberg congregation in
the Jura Mountains and a large
number from southern Alsace migrated to
Holmes and Wayne counties,
Ohio, during the years 1818 to 1837. As
the Chippewa and Sonnenberg
settlements in Wayne County continued to
grow, some looked for cheaper
lands farther west. In 1833, Michael
Neuenschwander and his family, who
had come from Alsace, France, ten years
before, bought some land in
Putnam County. Lured by Mr.
Neuenschwander's good reports, several of
the brethren from Wayne and Holmes
counties came to visit him, and be-
ing favorably impressed with the new
territory, each purchased a tract of
land before returning. In the fall of
1834, Christian Bucher, Christian
Suter, John Moser and Ursus Amstutz and
their families moved here. In
the following spring, the brothers, John
and Ulrich Bosiger and their
father, Deacon Christian Bosiger and
John Lugenbuhl followed. When
Rev. Christian Steiner and family
arrived in the fall of 1835 the church
started to hold services in the various
homes. Peter and John F. Steiner
who were sons of Christian Steiner came
at the same time with their fam-
ilies. Peter and Christian
Neuenschwander and John Schumacher also
came in the fall of 1835. During the
following year together with their
respective families arrived: Christian
Schumacher, Christian Bosiger (son
of Deacon Christian Bosiger who had
arrived two years previous), John
C. Lugenbuhl, John Neuenschwander,
Christian Bosiger (from Colum-
biana County, Ohio), John Steiner, John
Diller, Christian Amstutz and
Simon Bosiger.
At the close of 1836, the Swiss Mennonite
colony consisted of the
above twenty-five families. Nearly all of the Swiss members of the
several Mennonite churches in this
vicinity today can rightfully claim direct
descent from one or several of these
families.
During the years immediately following,
many more friends and
relatives of these earlier settlers came
from Alsatian France and the
Swiss Mennonite congregations by way of
New York City, Wayne or
Holmes counties, Ohio, or by way of
Alexandria, District of Columbia
(now Virginia), Rockingham County,
Virginia, Holmes or Columbiana
counties, Ohio, and thence to Putnam and
Allen counties, Ohio.
The story of these early settlers'
hardships and pleasures in carving
a home of religious freedom from the
swamp and primeval forest, is full
of joys and sorrows. Plagues of
sickness, high infant mortality, great dif-
284 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ficulty in traveling to the distant
mills and stores, and the difficulties in
draining the swamp lands, were but a few
of their pioneer hardships which
they were forced to meet. Only because
of their sturdy and rugged nature
together with their great faith and hope
was it possible for them to carry on.
Now let us look into the family history
and genealogy of the above-
named twenty-five settlers' households.
It is interesting to note that twenty of
the twenty-five families named
are descended from the Steiner family,
as will be brought out in the various
sketches below.
Michael Neuenschwander, the first
settler, was the grandson of one,
Peter Neuenschwander, who was a school
and singing teacher in the church
in Langnau, Canton Berne, Switzerland.
While engaged in this work he
became convinced that the members of his
church were too worldly-minded.
They also practiced infant baptism and
believed in wielding the sword.
"Those things," he said,
"hinder rather than help one to lead a righteous
life." He therefore severed his
connections with the state church and to-
gether with his wife and two children,
Peter and John Ulrich, moved to
Friebergen, Alsace, France, in 1732,
where they joined the Mennonite
church. Besides the above-named two
sons, they were the parents of six
more sons and two daughters. The
youngest son, Michael, became the
father of the first settler in this
community. When Michael was twenty-
two years old he married Barbara
Steiner. She was the daughter of John
and Verena (Habegger) Steiner who lived
near Florimont, Canton Delle,
Alsace, France. Michael and Barbara
(Steiner) Neuenschwander had a
family of ten children; eight sons and
two daughters. The mother and
father together with four children died
before the migration to America
started. Four sons and another son's
wife and children came to settle in
the Swiss Mennonite settlement between
Bluffton and Pandora, Ohio. Now
let us look into the story of Michael,
the first settler.
Michael, the second child, was born in
1778 at Florimont, Canton Delle,
Alsace, France. With the exception of
three years' time, which he spent
in Switzerland, he lived in this same
region before migrating to America.
In 1809 he married Anna Ernst in a small
town near-by. Here they lived
for fourteen years, and at this place
four children were born to them: John,
Daniel, Barbara and Peter. Barbara died
in infancy. Unsettled conditions
in Europe and favorable reports from
America induced them to emigrate
to the New World. On May 15, 1823 they
left their home for America.
After fifteen days of traveling they
arrived in Paris where they remained
overnight. On May 31 they started for
Havre-de-Grace, arriving there on
June 5. While waiting on their ship to
sail, Michael, their fifth child, was
born on board the Eolus, on June
11. The next day they set sail and after
forty-three days' voyage in a sailing
vessel they arrived safely at New Lon-
don, Connecticut. The next day they
left, and passed New York, reaching
Amboy, New Jersey, on July 29. Here they
stayed for about a week. They
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 285
then resumed their westward journey,
first going to Easton, Pennsylvania
and then to Bethlehem, Reading,
Harrisburg, Shippensburg, Bedford, Greens-
burg and Pittsburgh. This route is now
U. S. 22 to Harrisburg and 30 on
to Pittsburgh. When they arrived at
Pittsburgh their four children were
very sick. Their son Peter died. A week
later they started to travel again.
First to Beavertown then to Canton they
finally arrived at their destination
on the Little Chippewa Creek in Green
Township, Wayne County, Ohio, on
October 4, 1823. Their entire journey
had taken them nearly six months.
The following spring they bought
seventy-four acres of land which
they built into a good farm. Here they
lived for nearly ten years. Upon
hearing reports of good land farther
west, Michael and his son, John,
started westward through the forests for
the purpose of finding a new
home. They found a suitable location in
Putnam County, Ohio, and entered
a half section of land at the land
office at Wapakoneta on May 6, 1833.
They returned to Wayne County and made
preparations to move to their new
home. They loaded a large covered wagon
with implements and other
necessary things. After a journey of
eleven days through dense forests,
Neuenschwander, his wife, and sons,
John, Daniel and Michael, arrived
safely at their new home. It was very dry when they reached their
destination and, not having any water on
their land, they looked around
and found some land near Riley Creek on
which there was a good spring
of running water. They entered a
forty-acre strip of land on which the
spring was found together with another
quarter section, at this time. At
once they began to clear a space on
which to erect a log cabin, in the mean
time living in the wagon and under the
protecting arms of an oak tree.
After much hard labor they erected a log
cabin a month later. This was
the first Swiss Mennonite home in this
territory. The sons, Michael and
Daniel, farmed their father's lands the
rest of their lives. John, the oldest
son, moved to Iowa in 1849 and later to
Missouri.
The rather detailed family history of
the Michael Neuenschwander
family has been given here as an example
of that of a typical Swiss Men-
nonite family who came to settle here in
the earlier years.
John Neuenschwander, the older brother
of the first settler, became
the twentieth to settle here. He came
two years after his brother. To-
gether with his wife, the former
Catherine Furriman, and his three sons,
John, Christian and Isaac, and two
daughters, Elizabeth and Catherine,
he made the same long journey that his
brother did several years before.
A son, David, stayed in Wayne County.
The father died only a year
after arriving here.
Peter Neuenschwander, the second
youngest of the first settler's
brothers, became the fourteenth to
settle here. He, together with his wife,
whose maiden name was Maria Kammeter,
and several small children came
to this community by way of Virginia and
Holmes County.
A brother named Daniel married Barbara
Schumacher. He died
286
OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
several years before the migration of
his brothers to America started. How-
ever, his wife, son, Christian, and
daughters, Catherine and Della, came
to this settlement with her brother,
John Schumacher and his wife. So it
was that these two families became the
fifteenth and sixteenth families to
settle here.
The youngest brother of the first
settler whose name was Ulrich
came several years later.
Christian Suter, the second settler,
came in 1834. He had married
Magdalena Steiner who was the daughter
of John and Elizabeth (Leeman)
Steiner, of Florimont, Alsace,
France. They, together with their six
children, emigrated from Alsace, France,
to this place in 1834.
Christian Bucher, the third settler, was
born near Langnau, Canton
Berne, Switzerland, in 1778. Here he
married Christina Brechbuhl. They
together with their five children came
to America and settled here in 1834.
In 1835 his wife died, hers being the
first death in the settlement. As there
was no church or public cemetery, she
was buried under an apple tree in
their orchard. He lived to be over 100
years old.
John Moser and his wife, who was the
former Elizabeth Muller,
came from Langnau. They brought along
their three children, John, Eliza-
beth and Magdalena. A few years after
settling here, the parents and two
children moved to Lucas County, Ohio,
where there came to be a Men-
nonite settlement. Elizabeth married
John D. Bosiger. They lived near
Pandora, Ohio.
The fifth family to settle here was that
of Ursus Amstutz, his wife,
whose maiden name was Elizabeth
Neuenschwander, and two infant sons.
Christian, a younger brother of Ursus
Amstutz, became the twenty-
fourth settler. He married Anna
Burkholder.
Deacon Christian Bosiger came to this
place from a settlement of
Mennonites in Ontario. He arrived in the
United States from Alsace
with his wife and children in 1824. His
wife, who was the former Elisa-
beth Steiner, died shortly after. He
became the sixth settler here. His
sons, John and Ulrich, were the seventh
and eighth and his son Christian
was the eighteenth.
John Lugenbuhl, whose mother's maiden
name was Anna Steiner,
was the ninth settler. He married
Catherine Stauffer soon after arriving
here.
The tenth settler was Christian Steiner
who organized the church here
and became its first bishop. His sons,
John F. and Peter, became the
eleventh and twelfth heads of families
to settle here.
John Schumacher's wife, whose maiden
name was Maria Steiner, was
a sister of Christian Steiner. Their
parents were John and Elizabeth
(Leeman) Steiner. Catherine Steiner, the
wife of Christian Lugenbuhl and
mother of John C. Lugenbuhl, who was the
nineteenth settler, was also
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 287
a sister. Another sister was Verena who
married Simon Bosiger. They
were the twenty-fifth family.
John Geiger, whose parents were David
and Verena (Steiner) Geiger,
was the thirteenth to settle in this
community. He married Barbara Welty.
The seventeenth, Christian Schumacher,
was a brother to the afore-
mentioned John Schumacher. He married
Barbara Lugenbuhl. A sister
Verena, married Christian Bosiger who
had come here from Virginia and
Columbiana County, Ohio.
John Steiner, who had been compelled to
join Napoleon's army, was
the twenty-second to settle here. He had
a family of twenty-one children.
His first wife was Elizabeth Stauffer
and his second was Anna Burkholder.
The twenty-third family to settle in
this Swiss Mennonite community
was that of John Diller. He had married
Elizabeth Zimmerly, the daughter
of Peter and Elizabeth (Steiner)
Zimmerly, in Holmes County shortly be-
fore coming to this place.
For the first five years they held their
worship services in the various
homes, barns, or even under some large
tree, if the weather would permit.
The complete organization of the church
took place in 1837, two years
after Rev. Christian Steiner had started
to conduct services here. Christian
Bosiger was elected as deacon and
Christian Suter was chosen as minister
to assist Christian Steiner who was
getting quite old. Since the congre-
gation was rapidly increasing, a church
was built of hewn logs on the
farm of Daniel Neuenschwander who came
here with his father, the first
settler. Services usually lasted for
about two hours and consisted of the
singing of psalms, the reading of the
Scriptures and prayers, besides a ser-
mon of an hour or more in length by one
of the ministers. The ministers
were chosen by lot from the brethren and
received no remuneration for
their services. A strict church
discipline was maintained by the elders and
differences arising between members were
settled by the ministers, as it
was contrary to their beliefs to go to
court. Holding public office was also
forbidden. In general, these settlers
were sober, Godfearing, industrious,
frugal and peaceloving people, as their
forefathers were before them. They
lived simply and dressed plainly.
The Swiss Mennonite settlement has grown
until now there are ap-
proximately 1800 members of the six
Mennonite churches in this commun-
ity. Services no longer last two hours,
ministers are no longer chosen by
lot, nor are they unpaid for their
services. They no longer dress plainly nor
are they forbidden to have part in the
civil government. In outward ap-
pearances they are similar to those of
other creeds. There is one group,
however, which does adhere to most all
of the strict discipline of the early
church. They are the small Reformed
Mennonite group.
Their peculiar Swiss dialect which they
have kept is now slowly dying
out.
In education, too, they have
progressed. Several years after Rev.
288
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Christian Steiner arrived here, he
organized a private school in his home.
Here the bare essentials of knowledge
were taught. In 1900 the Central
Mennonite College was founded at
Bluffton. Several years later the name
was changed to Bluffton College. Today
it is one of the three Mennonite
institutions for higher learning in the
world. It is supported by three
conferences of Mennonites from the eastern
and middle western parts of
the United States. Over one hundred
students from this Swiss Mennonite
community have received the A.B. degree
here.
Through their keen agricultural
knowledge they have been able to
retain to a high degree the fertility in
the good soil which they own. The
progressive agricultural methods and the
thrift of the Swiss Mennonite
farmers is quite universally known.
Through their long and difficult
struggles to retain their ideals by living
a simple and frugal life, these Swiss
Mennonites have added a peaceful
chapter to pioneer history.