How We Traveled to the Wood County Fair

by Alan Borer

The two pictures speak for themselves in some ways. Both are postcard views of the “parking” facilities at the Wood County Fair. Postcards are usually undated except for their mailing dates, which in this case were 1912 and 1923 respectively. Although we do not have the exact date of either photograph, it shows a remarkable, and remarkably sudden, change in the visual landscape of northwest Ohio. In slightly more than ten years, rural Ohio abandoned the horse in favor of the gasoline engine.

This was a national trend, with World War 1 marking the tipping point. Before the war, the car was a novelty, a toy for the rich, a noisy machine to be played with on Sunday afternoons. The horse felt no threat. Used for transport since the Neolithic, the horse was the center of a network of blacksmiths, wagon makers, livery stables and hay and feed dealers. In 1912, there were only 94,400 cars on the road in the states.

Then came Henry Ford. For better or worse, Ford pioneered the car as a machine that could be purchased and maintained by all but the poorest. Ford popularized both the car and the method of making cars, using the assembly line to build plentiful, affordable vehicles. And while Ford and his Model “T” were eventually surpassed by other companies, all of his competitors used Ford’s model to make cars.

And the world changed. By 1922, there were 1,227,400 cars on the road. The horse and his attendants were subsumed in a newly built world made for and by the car. Blacksmiths were replaced by auto mechanics; roads were rebuilt with asphalt. Downtown hotels were replaced by “tourist camps” and motels. Living downtown was replaced with suburbs, and the oil that was used for kerosene was suddenly diverted to gasoline. In time, shopping malls would replace downtown shopping, and longer and longer drives to work were becoming the norm. The two postcards illustrate this change graphically.

County fairs were among the chief holidays of a farming population. The first Wood County fair dates back to 1851. The fair moved back and forth between Bowling Green, Portage, Tontogany, and Perrysburg. The fair stayed in Bowling Green starting in 1886, until in 1927, a fire at the fairgrounds coupled with bad weather and a bad farm economy ended the run of the Wood County fair. The fair did not resume until 1950.

For many folks in Wood County, the county fair is a milestone of the year. Farm animals are shown, FFA projects are displayed, and contests are held. The fair is still fun, but the atmosphere is different. The world is noisier now, and the fragrance of manure, while still there, is mostly drowned out by diesel exhaust. Whether or not we will all visit the fair by electric vehicles, flying saucers, or teleportation remains to be seen. That it will change is bound to happen.


[The postcards are in my private collection. Statistics came from the U. S. Census Bureau. Background on the fair comes from https://bgindependentmedia.org/county-fair-history-hoochie-coochie-girls-a-hanging-and-much-more/]

Sightseeing in Ohio, First by Train, Then by Bicycle

Oil tank on fire, circa 1912

Sightseeing in Ohio, First by Train, Then by Bicycle                    by Alan Borer

            As recently as the 1980s, travelers between Toledo and Lima could spot enormous, decrepit wooden tanks of oil. Rickety and prone to burning, they were oil storage containers left over from Northwest Ohio’s oil boom.  Oil was discovered in several locations along what is now I-75, concentrated around Bowling Green, Findlay, and Lima in the late 1860s. The oil fields of southern Wood County sprouted derricks, tanks, and wildcat towns just as surely as did Oklahoma and Texas a generation later.  My hometown of Bowling Green was famous for offering free natural gas to industry.  The “black gold” did not last long, but it was a boon to the Toledo hinterland while it lasted.

            Something of the flavor of the oil rush was captured in a letter written by a young man named Fred Price.  Price journeyed from his home in Richmond, Indiana, to Toledo in September of 1897.  A letter that he wrote to his mother has been preserved and gives some idea of what oil rush Ohio looked like. 

            After some preliminaries, Price wrote:

We had a pleasant trip from Piqua up, although it was dry and warm, and the grass was on fire several places along the road.  We stopped for dinner at Lima and had quite a good lunch.  It was quite a sight when approaching Lima to see the long rows of oil well derricks, and most of them working, and then to see the long rows of oil tanks.  And you could tell when you were approaching them by the odor.  The country looks like good prosperous farming country from Piqua and the corn in some places was as large as I have ever seen.

            In 1897 there was only one long distance mode of transportation, so Fred was taking the train on his trip north.  Many railroads served the north-south traveler at the turn of the century.  Fred likely took the Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Dayton R. R. north from Piqua through Sidney, Anna, Botkins, Cridersville, and to Lima.  At Lima he may have switched to the Lake Erie and Western, which reached Findlay by way of Beaverdam, Bluffton and Rawson.  At Findlay, he could have hopped on the Toledo and Ohio Central, a straight shot from Findlay north to Toledo.[i]  Many of these lines were later consolidated into the B & O.

            Fred does not specify, but there were any number of dining opportunities in Lima.  A look at the oldest surviving Lima City Directory (1901) showed fifteen restaurants in Lima, plus roughly seventy “saloons.”  Many of these doubtless served lunches of varying sorts.  Hotels also were available for dining.  The restaurants were concentrated along Main Street, which ran parallel to the railroad.  Food could doubtless be had at the depot however, and Fred may not have even had to leave trackside.

            When Fred arrived in Toledo, he was greeted by his Aunt Ellen and heard fishing tales from local friends.  Fred was an enthusiastic bicycle rider, and brought his “wheel” along.  After almost losing it in a railroad freight mishap, he eventually set out to explore the city:

I had a nice ride about the city [Toledo] on my wheel this morning and your say [ing] the residence portion is pretty and tasty [tasteful] is no exaggeration, and everything seems to be kept up in such nice condition.  I expect to take another ride this afternoon and see more of it.  I am much pleased with everything I have seen thus far. . . .

            “Tasty” or not, Fred’s ability to see Toledo by bicycle was made possible by a bicycle “craze”  that swept the country in the Gay Nineties.  Advances in bicycle technology and in the making of pneumatic tires relegated the old high wheelers to the basement.  Suddenly, everyone needed and wanted a bicycle.  In a foretaste of the automobile, citizens finally became mobile.  Many things changed.  Women’s skirts became shorter to avoid the spokes.  Riding schools appeared overnight. Cities accelerated the paving of roads.  In Dayton, two brothers named Wright cashed in on the bicycle craze, although the bicycle factory they built came to other uses.  A journalist of the time stated: “The discovery and progressive improvement of the bicycle is of more importance to mankind than all the victories and defeats of Napoleon, with the First and Second Punic Wars … thrown in.”[ii]

            Like most crazes, the bicycle fad did not last.  In 1897, when Fred Price pedaled the streets of Toledo, bicycle mania was past its 1895 peak.  By 1900 it was over, and bicycles became children’s toys.  The railroad also is moribund, and one could not now recreate the rail journey that brought Fred to Toledo.  But the desire to see the world beyond our doors burns brightly.  Only the mode of travel has changed, and will likely keep changing.

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[i] Kayler, R. S. Railroad map of Ohio published by the state, prepared under the direction of commissioner of railroads and telegraphs. Columbus, 1898. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/98688545/.

[ii] Fred C. Kelly, “The Great Bicycle Craze,” American Heritage, 8 (December 1956) https://www.americanheritage.com/great-bicycle-craze.

 

Pennsylvania Visitor Praises Toledo Amenities

Pennsylvania Visitor Praises Toledo Amenities by Alan Borer

Old postcards are fun, not just because their views are a window to the past, but also because of the messages written on the other side. Many of them are nothing special; family news, idle speculation about travel plans, and the popular, “Please write soon.” Sometimes, however, the short notes give an interesting view of times past.

Take this card. Mailed April 2, 1911, it is a fairly standard view of Madison Avenue, looking east toward the Maumee River. On the left, the Boody House hotel can be seen, and a block beyond that the Nasby Building is visible. The Produce Exchange is in there somewhere. On the right, the building closest the viewer is the United Cigar Store as a street-level tenant. If you have sharp eyes, you can see signs for Coca Cola (bottom left), the “Caswell Club,” and Florsheim Shoes, in the shape of a shoe. Two vehicles, one horse-drawn and one automobile, can be seen. Not many people; was the photograph taken on a Sunday morning? Impossible to say.

The message, from a father to a daughter, is unsigned. Written to Mrs. W. E. Nagle, Jr in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Mrs. Nagle was probably Mary E. Nagle, a 25-year-old newlywed of German-Irish parentage. Her maiden name might have been Murray. Her husband, William E. Nagle, was three years younger and a “tool salesman.” Apparently Mary’s father was also a salesman, but of what? He was in Toledo to sell, as is hinted at toward the end of the note:

I sold 37 Bars yesterday on Commission – it would be about $100.00

Bars of what? Chocolate? No; 37 bars of chocolate would be roughly 37 cents in 1911. Gold? No, one did not sell gold bars on the streets of downtown Toledo in 1911, nor any other time, and the profit would certainly be more than $100. Perhaps some other industrial metal, but there is no way to know, even if it is fun to speculate.

Most of the message is taken up with the writer singing the praises of Toledo:

This is a great town. Everything open on Sunday. Maw could get Milk of Bread any time – in fact, meat or anything. Not alone Bake Shops, but Barber Shops & Booze Shops. The Picture Shows, Vaudeville Houses & Theaters.

Mrs. Nagle’s father does not specify which of these shops and places of entertainment he visited, or whether he participated or window shopped. But his impression of the city was certainly favorable.

Yet there are signs of change between the lines. Vaudeville was eventually driven out of favor by the movies/“picture shows.” Many of the vaudeville theaters changed format to keep up with changing tastes. The Empire Theater on St. Clair changed from vaudeville to movies in 1919. “The Paramount [opened 1929] handled both movies and live stage shows (vaudeville being not quite dead yet).”And the writer’s mention of “booze shops?” Only eight years later, national Prohibition came into effect, and Toledo, at least above ground, would be a ‘dry” town.

The writer of the postcard to Mrs. Nagle probably had no conception that his message would one day serve as a view into early twentieth century Toledo, It was a city on the brink of change, a city of many wonders with many more to come that we take for granted. As always, it is good to know where we have been while moving into the future. Change is the only constant.

A Welsh Christmas in Toledo - Maybe

A Welsh Christmas in Toledo - Maybe by Alan Borer

Of the four kingdoms that make up the “United Kingdom of Great Britain,” the smallest and perhaps least known is Wales. A bump on the west side of the main British island, it is sometimes thought of as poor and backward. That, of course, depends on your perspective; one person’s “backward” is another’s “traditional:”

The Welsh people maintain most of the traditional customs associated with England such as holly, mistletoe, pudding, carols, Christmas stockings, oranges, crackers and lots of snow.

Christmas traditions did not always survive for many generations when they crossed the Atlantic. In one Toledo family, they may have.

The Christmas card shown here was sent on December 23, 1912 from Delta in Fulton County from Mrs. Charles Watkins, whose given first name we do not know. Her husband was a farmer and later a railroad inspector. Mrs. Watkins lived near the Michigan border, but we know nothing of how they became friends.

The card was sent to Mrs. George Groff. In 1912, the Groffs lived at 905 West Woodruff, near the intersection with Lawrence Avenue. The husband, George Groff, was an electrician, who owned his own small electric shop. George’s wife, Mary, was a homemaker. Like the Watkins, the Groffs had no children. Neither of the Groffs were lifelong Toledoans. The couple lived in Toledo from at least 1900 to 1920. By 1930, they had relocated to Delaware County, which was George’s home. Born and raised on a farm, George Groff worked as a young man in dairying, and may have returned to his native place as the Great Depression took hold. In any event, he went back to farming, on land that is now covered by the Columbus suburb of Lewis Center.

Mary Groff was Welsh. Born Mary Christian in Wales in 1873, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, with her family the next year. Her father, John Christian, may have been a coal miner; the majority of Welsh immigrants followed that trade. We do not know if the young Miss Christian lived in a particularly “ethnic” community. “Though never a prominent ethnic group in Michigan, many Welshman settled . . .in Detroit. . . . A Welsh community later developed near Grand River and Chicago avenues, and in 1919 the Welsh United Presbyterian Church organized in Detroit.” Mary Christian married George Groff, an Ohio boy two years younger than she, in Port Huron, Michigan, September 7, 1899. A few months later, on June 1, 1900, the census taker found them living in Toledo on Dorr Street. Mary died in 1947 and is buried at Worthington, Ohio.

We have no idea whether Mary Groff kept up any Welsh traditions in the Delaware County countryside. And while Christmas in Wales mostly followed the English pattern, some traditions were decidedly unusual:

In some rural areas a villager is chosen to be the Mari llwyd. This person travels around the town draped in white and carrying a horse's skull on a long pole. Anyone given the "bite" by the horse's jaws must pay a fine.

There is little evidence that this custom was carried to America. Germans brought Santa Claus and the Christmas tree; the English gave us Christmas cards and holy and ivy. Each culture has its own Christmas traditions, but whether Mrs. Groff celebrated any Welsh ways in the new world, we cannot say. I am sure she appreciated the Christmas card from her friend in Delta.