Preface
With the publication of Volume 96 Ohio
History marks its 100th
year of publication. The oldest ongoing
program of the Ohio Histori-
cal Society, the journal was during the
early decades of the Society's
existence synonymous with the
institution. Early issues contained
the scholarly articles, documents, and
book notes which constitute
our present fare, as well as papers and
proceedings of Society meet-
ings, and lists of notable collection
acquisitions.
Issued quarterly 1887-1981 (Volumes
1-90), annually 1982 and 1983
(Volumes 91 and 92), and biannually
since 1984 (Volumes 93-present),
the journal has had four title changes
and eleven editors during its
hundred-year history. Appearing as the Ohio
Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly (1887-1934), The Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly (1935-1954), and The Ohio Historical Quarterly
(1955-1961), the journal assumed its
present title of Ohio History in
1962.
Readers might be puzzled that while the
journal celebrates its
100th year of publication, the volume
number reads number ninety-
six. This confusion is due to the fact
that although the journal was is-
sued as a quarterly during 1887-1902,
volume numbers were not as-
signed it until enough pages (roughly
300-500 pages) had been
printed to constitute a full, bound
volume. Attempts were made to
regularize volume numbers and pagination
in 1897, but it was not until
Volume 12 (1903) that the journal
instituted a system which confined
the volume number to a single year.
Further confusing the question of
pagination and volume number in these
early volumes is the fact that
the Ohio General Assembly, recognizing
the importance of the arti-
cles printed in the journal, reprinted
special bound sets of the entire
run at least three times during the
years 1887 and 1903.
In an era of dwindling scholastic
journals, Ohio History has sur-
vived and flourished as an important
repository for those intellectual
issues which contribute to the
understanding of history. The Ohio
Historical Society was established as an
organization to preserve and
study the unusual richness of
archaeological and historical treasures
found in Ohio and the Middle West, and
the journal was a natural
outgrowth of that commitment. As an
early edition of the journal stat-
ed:
The Society can do a great work, as can
no individual or group of individuals
elsewhere, in encouraging investigators,
by affording them a hearing for the
results of their study . . . still if
these studies are worth pursuing, if their re-
4 OHIO HISTORY
suits are worth obtaining, in order to
be valuable they ought not merely to
be read before the limited audiences . .
. they must be preserved in perma-
nent form and given to the world. We
cannot rely upon newspapers and gen-
eral literary magazines to publish all
of the valuable papers presented to the
Society. It is necessary that the
Society should itself print them. For these
reasons, then, primarily, is the
publication of this QUARTERLY under-
taken .... Whatever is valuable,
pertaining to the archaeology and history
of Ohio and the Northwest Territory, and
is in fitting shape for such a publi-
cation as this, will be deemed within
the scope of its purpose.
Thus, as Ohio History enters its
100th year of publication, we hope
to continue this important task of
scholarly publication and hope-
without undue modesty-that the quality
of the articles will speak for
themselves now and in the year 2087.