Maumee River Farmer: J. W. King

(If you go to https://media.gettyimages.com/illustrations/ohio-flat-rock-township-maumee-river-florida-canal-henry-county-illustration-id120569587 and look at the original, you will see the King farm in the upper left hand corner.)

Maumee River Farmer: J. W. King                  by Alan Borer

Old maps show the farm straddling the Henry/Defiance county line.  The farm belonged to John Wesley King until he died in 1892. It was a lovely piece of ground. Mr. King owned land right along the Maumee River itself. His farm yielded the usual crops of corn, wheat, clover, and hay. King also had an extensive apple orchard, and in the spring he gathered maple sap for boiling into sugar. Living on the county line, he could choose between selling his crops in Napoleon or Defiance. Mr. King kept a diary for the year 1879, and using it we can recreate his world with some accuracy.

J. W. King was born in Ohio in 1830. We don’t know much about his origins; his father, Jessie A. King was born in 1797. He married Rachel Kepler in 1858 in Defiance, and the couple had one son, George, in 1860. The east half of his farm was in Flat Rock Township in Henry County, and the nearest post office was Florida, Ohio. J. W. King was only 61 when he died; his widow Rachel lived on until 1909.

King spent much time in late winter boiling maple sap which produced maple sugar. He began the work on March 5:

fixed for sugar making 

Two days later, the real work began:

hauled buckets around in camp tapped some

and

gathered & boiled sugar water

A month later, on April 8, they finished

boiled water finished hauled everything in

Country people in the nineteenth century, at least those who owned or rented land with maple trees, made their own sugar. Small pipes, or spiles, were hammered into trees in late winter. As the sap (King called it ‘water’) poured through the spile into a bucket, the buckets were in turn taken to ‘camp,’ where a wood fire kept the sap boiling day and night. Often a shelter and shed enclosed the boiling pots. When all the liquid boiled away, the residue was sugar – maple sugar. Long before sugar beets or cane sugar was available, families like the Kings relied on maple sugar for sweetener.

In addition to the usual corn, oats, and wheat grown on the farm, King had a large apple orchard. On January 16, King sold part of the previous year’s crop:

went to Napoleon Sold 28 chickens…3 turkeys….71 lbs apples

On April 15 and 16, he recorded:

trimmed apple trees & plowed in orchard and plowed & dragged orchard finished trimming

J. W. gathered other small fruits, including grapes, raspberries and cherries, but nothing as versatile as the apple. In October, he processed the apple crop:

put away apples & a load of potatoes picked up a load of apples to make cider

and

made 110 gallons of Cider

and

Made apple butter 13 gallons

The apple, whether stored, eaten, or used as a beverage, could not be bettered.

Possibly because J. W. only had one son, he was constantly on the lookout for hired help. In 1880, King had a 21-year old “laborer” named Samuel Richards. The year before, J. W. noted in his diary on March 3:

went to hunt a girl

And on May 5,

went to hunt a cow & look for a girl

Not until June 15 did he report success:

went & got a girl Ana Ostman [Ortman?]

By December, King hired another girl named Gusta Spangler, but whether that was to replace the June hire or was in addition, he does not say. The last few decades of the nineteenth century were just before the age of mechanized farming, and hired help was still a crucial need for Ohio farmers.

The work was unending. Fences needed mending, hickory nuts were gathered, cabbage picked and stored, harness to grease. Trips were taken to market for both buying and selling. Occasionally there was a bit of leisure; dinner with neighbors, sledding, grange meetings, trips to Napoleon, Defiance, and one time, to Toledo. But for every free afternoon, there was extra work: a lost horse, a barn raising, even jury duty! There was some free time, but not much.

On October 14, King wrote:

worked at cave in forenoon

I puzzled over this entry for awhile. Did King have a cave on his property? In such a flat area, it seemed unlikely. What Mr. King called a “cave” may actually have been a quarry. Geologists, described a quarry in 1874:

A short distance above Florida is the quarry of Wesley King and brother, in the left bank of the Maumee, it consists of the following succession of parts. . . . 

and in 1991

Old quarry along west bank of Maumee River a short distance SW of Florida, Flatrock Township. . . . What is interesting about this occurrence is that the depth of this "quarry" is extremely shallow. There is no evidence of this "quarry" on topographic maps. Therefore the new name of this locality should be: Wesley King Quarry, Florida, Henry Co., Ohio, USA.

J. W. King would probably not recognize his farm today. The countryside has fewer houses; farms are bigger. But if you want to see the area today, take a drive along Route 424 near Florida. If nothing else, you will see his countryside, and to a farmer, that is seeing a lot.

Jesse Taylor of Pike Township, Putnam County, Ohio

Winameg, Ohio

In 1992, I had occasion to visit Winameg, Ohio, a hamlet in Fulton County. At one time, Winameg was the home of a band of Pottawatomie Indians, whose chief gave his name to the town. Chief Winameg was a good friend of one of the settlers in western Fulton County named Dresden Howard. Howard and Winameg met under a large oak tree that became known as the Council Oak. The Council Oak saw the landscape drained of water through ditching, and was a landmark for the area for 300 years before disease struck. After the tree was cut down, a modest ceremony performed by a modern Native American drew a small crowd, including me.

Twenty five years later found me studying a letter from a man named Jesse Taylor. Written in 1856 to friends, it was postmarked Toledo but written from “Pike.” It took some digging, but I finally found the location of Pike. This is a story of Jesse Taylor, Dresden Howard, and pioneer Fulton County.

The letter started with this line:

I found Mr. Howard’s folks in Toledo and came home with them.

The writer certainly had Toledo connections, but I wasn’t sure who “Mr. Howard’s folks” were. Could “Mr. Howard” be the well known pioneer Dresden Howard? The dates were about right, Howard having lived from 1817 to 1897. Having no other clue at hand, I dug out an 1888 atlas of Fulton County and located Dresden Howard, living just south of Winameg. Across the road from Howard lived another farmer, a Mr. Jesse S. Taylor. I could not help but notice that Howard and Taylor lived in Pike Township. The mystery was solved!

Jesse Taylor was an even bigger landowner than Dresden Howard. Taylor (1828-1905) owned 347 acres of land in various parts of Pike Township in the same atlas. He was born in Massachusetts, coming west with his father and settling near Winameg. By 1880 he was married and had three children. One son became a farmer, the other became a dentist. Married twice, he was a farmer all his life.
The letter was mysterious in other ways. Further down the page, he wrote:

. . . . plenty of work to do. The ditch not finished. I have worked in [the ditch] two days with the team & hired Mr. Kirkman to ditch across Waffles. We have it finished from Waffles up within a few rods of the house. . . .

Waffles? Breakfast waffles? Again the atlas helped. Although outside of the worst of the Black Swamp, Fulton County is flat as a pancake, and even moderate rainfall has nowhere to go. Starting in 1859, the state and county began financing the construction of an enormous system of ditches. By 1888, Pike Township had sixty ditches. The county was thus transformed into a farming paradise. Jesse Taylor appeared to have anticipated the government program by three years, digging his own ditch from his property to that of his neighbor, William Waffle. This waffle was not a pastry, but a person!

Farming virgin land was not easy. Taylor wrote:

I am very much disappointed in our crops. . . .We have been husking [corn] . . . and find it very light about one third of what we expected. . . . buckwheat is a failure. Our potatoes are small.

He was also concerned about a “bird” belonging to his wife, Harriet:

I forgot to tell you the instruction which James gave me in relation of that bird – that it needed a larger dish and clean water to bathe in – the cage kept clean & so on. . . . does it sing any yet?

Not farm chickens, but a pet bird. Residents of Northwest Ohio have kept birds from the beginning. An 1835 letter from Maumee mentions a pet robin in Sylvania Township. Birdcages likewise have been around for centuries, but in frontier Ohio, the cage would likely have been home-built. While Jesse did not mention the type of bird, it was almost certainly a native species and caught locally, as there were no pet shops even in Ohio’s cities until after the Civil War and fast railway delivery.

Initially the letter was a mystery surrounding a dateline ended up being interesting after all. Ditches, pet birds, and frontier Fulton County do not often appear in the same article. Reading old letters can be that way, and learning in a roundabout way is still learning. Just ask Jesse Taylor.
by Alan Borer

Orlando Evans, Defiance, Ohio, Postmaster

Until the 1870s, the postmaster of any town could send and receive mail free of charge. Despite what we moderns see as seemingly endless changes in the mail rate, postage on the frontier was higher. When the first United States postage stamp was issued in 1847, it cost 5 cents to send a letter four hundred miles, ten cents if further. When you realize that the average worker earned less than a dollar a day, mail rates were comparatively high. Thus the postmaster’s franking privilege was a much sought after plum. Not so in the case of Orlando Evans. Evans was served postmaster of Defiance, Ohio, from March 18, 1842 until March 13, 1845, but got that job early. The lifetime of hard work in politics and other occupations came later, and ended in California!

Orlando Evans was a son of pioneer parents. His father, Pierce Evans, had been a soldier during the War of 1812. Posted to Fort Defiance, at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers, he noted how beautiful the surrounding country was. He returned to the Maumee Valley in 1822. He started a general store where the town of Defiance now stands. Doing well in business, he became an associate judge of the Common Pleas Court. Long lived, Pierce Evans died in 1862.

Pierce Evans’s oldest son was Orlando Evans, our postmaster. Orlando was born around 1820. The village of Defiance was then in Williams County; Defiance County would not be carved out until 1845. If the records are correct, Orlando Evans was a very young man as postmaster. He filled several other minor offices in Defiance County. Booted out of the postmastership when James K. Polk became President in 1845, his next position was as Clerk of Courts, which he held until 1852. He also served as Recorder, Trustee, “Director” of education, and Cemetery Trustee, several of which he held concurrently.

In the Census of 1850, Orlando Evans was listed as a “merchant,” living comfortably with his wife Louisa, daughter and two servants, one of whom was African-American. By 1860, he had vanished from Ohio, while his family lived on in Defiance. What happened? Although the details are sketchy, legend has it that Orlando Evans moved to California to join the Gold Rush. We do know that by 1870, Orlando and Louisa were living in Bridgeport Township, Nevada County, California and that his occupation was listed as “miner.”

In the end, we do not know what became of Orlando Evans. His name appears in California voter registration files until 1876. After that, the trail goes cold. He may have moved back to Ohio, or moved somewhere else in California. We cannot be sure given available records. One thing is sure: Orlando Evans lived through exciting times. Not bad for the young postmaster of Defiance.

Halloween Party in Perrysburg, Ohio, 1905

John Amon’s Halloween Party

Halloween was not celebrated nationally until the early twentieth century. As it gained in popularity, the holiday moved from being an underground, back-alley, prank-filled occasion for mischief to a safe, well-supervised holiday that respectable children could enjoy. The change was such that even the “society” pages featured Halloween-themed news.

One example of the “better” sort of celebration was a Halloween party given by the family of John J. Amon (1863-1933) in Perrysburg on Monday evening, October 29, 1905. “The house was artistically decorated with Jack-o-lanterns and autumn foliage, plants and fruits.” The large group (24 children!) played games such as “feeding the ghost” and other holiday favorites followed by a four course supper. A “fortune cake” was presented for dessert. The partygoer who was served a slice containing a thimble was doomed never to marry. However, this was not taken very seriously. The guest who found the thimble was one Harry Fuller of Toledo. Fulton, the Perrysburg Journal pointed out, was a football player, and “not without feminine admirers.”

“At an early hour the guests dispersed all with the hope that again in the future they might be ‘counted in’ ‘At the Sign of the Black Cat.’” Whether the Amon house was actually decorated with a poster or sign of a black cat, or the family had a pet cat, is a little hard to tell from a hundred years later. Either is possible. or the phrase might have been the fantasy of a journalist.

John Amon, whose family hosted the party, could afford to do a party well. The son of immigrants from Bavaria, Amon conducted a hardware shop at 117 Louisiana Avenue, and was in business there from 1891 to 1926. Amon and his wife had a large family; eight children at the time of the Halloween party. Three of his daughters, Eva, Myra and Marie (ages 19, 15 and 13 respectively) were on the party guest list. Whether they had urged their father to throw the party or it was their father’s idea is unknown. The family lived on Front Street near Elm in Perrysburg.

The Amon family contributed much to Perrysburg. John Amon Sr (1823-1889) was one of a group of Bavarian Catholics from the same parish that migrated together and settled in and around northern Wood County in 1872. Not surprisingly, Amon Sr. was an active member of St. Rose parish in Perrysburg. He also held minor offices in Perrysburg Township. Whether the father built the stylish, narrow store at 117 Louisiana and passed it on to his son, or the son acquired it in another way is not known for certain, but the structure is still known as the Amon Building.

John Amon Jr. died in 1933. Two daughters at the Halloween party lived in Perrysburg all their lives. Myra became a teacher, and married a man named Frank Kaltenmark. In his old age, John Amon came to live with his daughter and son-in-law at their home on Louisiana Avenue. Marie Amon married John Hayes, an electrician. They lived on Front Street. Eva married an immigrant named Vetel Leterman, and disappeared from the record.

In a country made up of immigrants, identity mixes and thins out depending on who married who. John Amon Jr, a staunch German Catholic, saw one of his daughters marry a fellow German and one marry a man of Irish blood. Halloween has Scottish roots, but has come to be celebrated universally. Like many a family, the old stock has mixed with new, and melded a new reality - not unlike the holiday.

[Quotes are from Perrysburg Journal, November 3, 1905.]

Helena, Toledo, and H. G. Harter

Helena, Toledo, and H. G. Harter                      by Alan Borer

Helena, a village in Sandusky County Ohio on Route 6, is a pleasant-appearing hamlet. We used to go through it on the drive between Bowling Green and Fremont to see relatives. We rarely stopped in Helena. It is a very small town; by the time you passed the post office, a barber shop, and a lumber yard, you missed it. With a population (2010) of 224 people, you much watch closely to see Helena in any detail.

Looking back, however, a sizeable business with a Toledo connection was born there. Around 1885, a New York native named Helon Gepman Harter set himself up as a druggist in Helena. For fifteen years, Harter pedaled his trade in Helena. Slowly and steadily, Harter built up a business in patent medicines. The remnants of the Black Swamp, although being quickly drained, were in the area, and Hartman knew that the very term “black swamp” brought to mind cholera, malaria, and dysentery to his Helena customers. So it was no surprise that in 1893, when Harter trademarked his now-popular medicine, he called it “Black Swamp Remedy.”

As H. G. Harter’s concoction grew in popularity, it came time for him to relocate to a larger city. Settling in Toledo’s East Side in 1900, he opened for business at 629 Main Street. After a few years, he switched to new headquarters to 609 South St. Clair Downtown. At his new plant he diversified, selling oddly named pills for people and livestock such as “Crewso Poultry Powder,” “Noxit Quinine,” “Protolene”(for sheep), “Louse Snuff,” and my favorite, “Fatmore,” apparently a supplement to help hogs gain weight.

The “Black Swamp Remedy,” Harter’s primary product, was not necessarily a piece of quackery. Sometimes called “Black Swamp Blackberry,” the mixture’s main ingredient was in fact blackberry root. Pharmacists of the time understood the astringent properties of blackberry needed to treat dysentery, a major complaint in the days before sanitation. Harter’s Black Swamp medicine was not just hokum. Others, however, were more questionable. The company made “Lung Balsam,” which was 15% alcohol and also contained chloroform!

A good businessman, Harter advertised widely. Newspaper ads proclaimed the virtues of the Black Swamp Blackberry as being “Better than Gold.” One ad suggested that the remedy would help “Save the Children” from summertime, and thus mosquito-spread, cramped stomachs. Knowing that potential customers were swayed by free handouts, Harter produced a “Black Swamp Cash Book” for use as a token gift. Produced cheaply, it was only a few pages for keeping track of one’s purchases, but helped customers keep the name in mind.

As the Black Swamp faded into memory, and the medicinal use of blackberry gave way to modern medicine, H. G. Harter saw sales of his formulas begin to dwindle. Harter, who lived above the St. Clair St. factory, died in 1937. The firm was listed in the Toledo City Directory until 1939, and was finally closed in 1946. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

The “quack” patent medicine salesman shows up in many comedies and melodramas. I remember W. C. Fields and “The Three Stooges” playing fraudulent medicine hucksters. But H. G. Harter appeared to believe in the “Black Swamp” medicine he sold. And it probably did help people who contracted swamp diseases, although not as well as modern medicine.

Latchie or Latcha?

Latchie or Latcha?                                                By Alan Borer

We used to take the back way from Bowling Green to the Woodville Mall every once and awhile. Pemberville Road to the Woodville Road, then northwest toward Toledo. In the forty five years since I last went that way, the scenery has likely changed. We were always fascinated by a village we passed on that trip called Latcha, partly because it was just about the smallest place we had ever seen. A recent satellite map shows about fifteen dwellings, plus some miscellaneous outbuildings. There were probably fewer back in the mid 1970s, as the eastern exurbs of Toledo have brought in a few newer residents. A new motel has been built nearby, as well as a tavern. A small place, however, it still is.

The main issue I wish to examine is the name of this hamlet. Modern maps clearly label it as “Latcha.” Highway signs and the county engineer use that spelling for Latcha Road, an east-west roadway that runs under I-280 in Wood County’s Lake Township. But the village has an alternative spelling, “Latchie,” which was used by the post office, which closed in 1953. Records do not tell us quite where the confusion arose. It might be worth looking back over this tiny town and see if we can find an answer.

Latcha (we will use this form unless describing specifically postal matters) originated as a lumber town. In the 1870s, the forested land of the shrinking Black Swamp was still providing work for many. The first land was formally platted in 1876. A few years before, in 1871, the Toledo and Woodville Railroad acquired a right of way through what would become Latcha. The forests disappeared, but farmers followed. Farmers needed stores, churches, doctors, and rail access, and these all came to Latcha. And in those pre-Internet days, the farmers needed a post office.

The Latchie post office replaced an even smaller office called Webb. The first postmaster of Latchie was appointed January 13, 1873. His name was James J. Brim, a family prominent enough to give its name to a county road in Wood County. Like many small town offices, Latchie’s post office moved with whichever shopkeeper received the postmaster’s job. One postmaster, Thomas Rowe (1889-1893, 1897-1901), kept the post office in his home east of the village. Mr. Rowe must have been a Republican; his two terms of office match almost exactly the Presidential terms of Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley.

Over the years, several members of the Bahnsen family were postmasters, including Henry M. Bahnsen. Henry Bahnsen served from 1918 to 1953, at which time the Latchie office closed. Latchie was never big enough to have Rural Free Delivery, although when the office closed, it still had about fifty box holders who called daily for their mail. In deciding to close the Latchie office, the government cited the cost of keeping such a small post office alive. [Figure 1]

But the question remains – Latchie or Latcha? Printed maps in the 1870s and 80s clearly spelled it Latcha, as does the most recent history of Lake Township (1998). But the 1897 history and atlas of Wood County used Latchie. The last postmaster, Henry Bahnsen, said the correct version was Latchie. A report filed with the federal Postal Topographer in 1898 spelled it both ways; Latcha for the town and Latchie for the post office. Who is right?
The answer possibly lies in how the name was pronounced. I have made no formal study, but local speech patterns do sometimes switch the “a” sound at the end of a place name for an “e” pronunciation, if the word ends with a vowel. A resident of the next county to the east, for example, lived in “Senekey” (Seneca) County, and sometimes went to “Fostorie” (Fostoria). Most place names do not lend themselves to this, but “Latcha” could become “Latchie,” just as “Attica” could be “Attikey.” In the case of Latcha, the post office may have picked a dialect form, rather than a “standard” form.

It has been many years since I was last in Latcha. I would be interested to hear from life-long residents of Wood County’s Lake Township if they call the village Latcha or Latchie. Like many questions, there may or may not be a “right” answer. And while nobody asked, I am happy with either spelling!
[More on Latcha can be found in Robert L. Blake, A History of Lake Township Wood County, Ohio (1998). Thanks to Michele Raine, Wood County District Public Library, for help!]

1911 Theater Fire Made for Big Show

1911 Toledo Theater Fire Made for Big Show           by Alan Borer

Nothing brings a crowd like a disaster. Anytime there is a car crash, a fire truck, or a police siren, people come out to see what the cause is. The bigger the disaster, the bigger the crowd. Where were you when the Fassett Street bridge was ruined? Or when the Tiedke’s building burned? When a piece of our collective memory is destroyed, the destruction itself becomes a memory.

The post card above is of a fire in Toledo in 1911. I was surprised that something as fleeting as a fire would appear on a post card, but there it was. The card was mailed on November 14, 1912, and illustrated a theater fire in downtown Toledo that occurred on April 11 of the year before. A post card does not travel with the speed of email, but it was impressive in 1912, and the color that was added to what was originally a black-and-white photograph was unavailable in newspapers of that time.

What was going on in this scene? The caption tells us that this was the American Theatre on Jefferson Street, and notes that the Pythian Castle is in the background. Interestingly, both of these buildings still stand. The Pythian Castle, standing on the corner of Jefferson and Ontario, was built in 1890 for the Knights of Pythias fraternal organization. The building changed hands a number of times since the Knights sold it in 1951. A fire in 1978 left the building abandoned. Just last summer, the building was bought by developer David Ball, and at last report the building was in the midst of a three year remodeling project.

The theater has a somewhat more complicated story. When it was built in 1897-98, the theater was called Burt’s Theater. Burt’s Theater was built by Frank Burt, a showman and owner of several Toledo-area theaters. The new theater was designed “as a copy of a 15th century Venetian palace complete with a row of ornate gothic columns and balconies. The 1565 seat theater also featured an extra wide row called a "fat man's row". Patrons were offered a variety of daily shows of early vaudeville performances and melodramas. . . .”

Mr. Burt sold the theater in 1910, after surviving being shot by his jealous wife! “The Toledo City Directory lists it as the American Music Hall. From 1911 to 1915, the city directory lists the building as the American Theatre.” But in 1911, a fire broke out and nearly destroyed the building. On the afternoon of April 11 a fire started in the “gallery” of the theater, started by electrical wires leading to a “newfangled” motion picture projector. Very quickly, flames could be seen shooting the second and third story windows (as seen in the post card).

Two pieces of luck kept he fire from being a total disaster. The fire occurred well before scheduled evening performances of the Paycen Stock Company, an acting troupe scheduled to perform that night, which prevented any casualties. Even more fortunately, the theater stood right across the street from Toledo Fire Engine Company #3, and the firemen were able to fight the fire with no delay at all. Fire Chief William F. Mayo was on the scene, and the fire fighters were able to pour water the building from three sides. In about 45 minutes, the fire was out.

The fire was quite a show. “The streets on both sides of the burning theatre were thronged with men, women, and children and the police had their hands full to keep venturesome spectators back of the fire lines.” One of the fire hoses burst during the affair, and the crowd fled in a “mad stampede” to avoid getting soaked. At least one spectator believed the spray had been a joke of the fire fighters, and complained about such frivolity.

The building, while damaged to the tune of $10,000, was saved. The theater went on to other uses. “The Burt Theater went through many iterations through the years; the Peppermint Lounge, the Country Palace, the Club and Caesar's Showbar are businesses that people might remember. The building sits empty today and its ornate architectural features were most recently saved from demolition when it became a part of the Lucas County Land Bank in 2013.”

We moderns are lucky to have this post card view of an early twentieth century Toledo fire. If only the photographer had thought to record the crowd that watched this fire, surely as interesting a scene as any that appeared on the floorboards of the old Burt’s Theater.