Book Review: Opening Day

Opening Day: Cleveland, the Indians, and a New Beginning. By Jonathan Knight. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004.  200 pp.  Paper, $14.95, ISBN 0-87338-815-1.)

Writing a narrative about one’s favorite sports franchise can be a steep hill to climb for an author wanting to connect with a mainstream audience.  The most sincere testimony to such a love affair does not guarantee relevance, or even the interest of those outside the flock.  In Opening Day: Cleveland, the Indians, and a New Beginning, however, Jonathan Knight has navigated the recent history of “The Tribe” in an engaging manner that can enlighten, and be appreciated by even the non-baseball fan.  For this book is as much about the Indian fans of Northeast Ohio as it is about the team itself.

The core of the book surrounds the first game played at Jacob’s Field, Cleveland’s sparkling jewel of a new stadium, on Opening Day, 1994. Continue reading Book Review: Opening Day

Book Review: William McKinley and His America

William McKinley and His America, Revised Edition. By H. Wayne Morgan. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2003. vii, 488 pp. Hardcover, $55.00, ISBN 0-87338-765-1.)

History has not been kind to presidents elected from Ohio.  The Buckeye State’s native sons are remembered as less-than-stellar chief executives, responsible for sins ranging from scandal to lechery, or as colorless party hacks who left little impact on the nation.  William McKinley has often fallen into this latter category, portrayed as an indecisive and dull-witted puppet of big business.  Four decades ago, H. Wayne Morgan challenged these generalizations with the publication of William McKinley and His America.  What emerged was a refreshingly different McKinley: independent, strong-willed, and sympathetic to the working masses.  Fresh on the heels of the centennial of McKinley’s presidency, Kent State University Press has released Morgan’s revised and expanded biography of America’s twenty-fifth commander-in-chief. Continue reading Book Review: William McKinley and His America

Book Review: The Struggle for the Life of the Republic

The Struggle for the Life of the Republic: A Civil War Narrative by Brevet Major Charles Dana Miller, 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Edited by Stewart Bennett and Barbara Tillery (Kent: The Kent State University Pres, 2004. xxiii, 301 pp. $34.00, ISBN 0-87338-785 -6.)

Among the thousands of books stemming from the American Civil War, memoirs of soldiers, Union and Confederate, constitute an appreciable share.  Given the accumulation of such books, perhaps publishers considering expending print and paper on another manuscript of personalia should weigh several questions:  does it present a significant view of a battle or campaign, of leading military figures, of ordinary soldiers or of why men fight.  Though hardly remarkable on any of these counts, The Struggle for the Life of the Republic, a reminiscent narrative of Charles Dana Miller, a soldier from Ohio, deserves publication primarily because of his description of camp life.

The editors, Barbara Tillery, a descendant of Miller and a desktop publisher, and Stewart Bennett, a historian, have given order to a narrative that Miller composed sometime between 1869 and 1881. Continue reading Book Review: The Struggle for the Life of the Republic

“I Devise and Bequeath”: Property and Inheritance among the Scottish Highlanders in Scotch Settlement, Columbiana County, Ohio

By: Amanda Epperson

In the name of God Amen. I Alexander McIntosh of the County of Columbiana in the State of Ohio a farmer, being sick and weak in body, but of sound mind memory and understanding (blessed be to God for the same) do make and publish this my last will and testament in manner and form following, to wit. Principally and first of all I commend my immortal soul into the hands of God who gave it, and my body to the earth to be buried in a decent and Christian like manner at the discretion of my executors hereinafter named. And as to such worldly estate as it hath pleased God to bless me with in this life I give and dispose of in following manner to wit. . .[1. Columbiana County Probate Court, Estate Records, 1803-1900 (Salt Lake City: Filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1996), Microfilm, vol. 4, pp. 32-34.]

With these, or similar, words, thousands of people have made decisions regarding the distribution of their worldly goods and at the same time unknowingly created an amazingly rich resource for historians. Continue reading “I Devise and Bequeath”: Property and Inheritance among the Scottish Highlanders in Scotch Settlement, Columbiana County, Ohio

In This Issue: Spring 2005

This edition of the Northeast Ohio Journal of History focuses for the first time on nineteenth century Ohio. In our feature article, “’I Devise and Bequeath’: Property and Inheritance among the Scottish Highlanders in Scotch Settlement, Columbiana County, Ohio,” Amanda Epperson discusses the social and economic implications of the wills and probate records of Scottish settlers in Columbiana County.

In keeping with the nineteenth-century theme, our virtual museum tour is Kyle Liston’s exhibit on John Brown. As this interpretation was on display until very recently at the Brown House of the Summit County Historical Society, more images will appear in this feature over the summer as the museum dismantles the exhibit.

For access to other images and artifacts from Northeast Ohio’s nineteenth-century past, be sure to read William Barrow’s overview of “The Cleveland Memory Project: an On-line Database for Research and Education” in our “Notes and Comments” section. An award-winning history site with over 17,000 images, documents, sound and film clips from Ohio ‘s past, the Cleveland Memory Project is an invaluable resource for researchers and students of Northeast Ohio History.

While you are visiting the journal, please take the time to drop by our new discussion board. Taking advantage of the technology available to us as an electronic journal, we believe this new feature will make our journal more interactive and serve to engender substantive debate, discussion, and exchange of information for all people interested in the history of Northeast Ohio.

In addition to the usual book reviews, we also encourage the reader to explore the other features of our site. For those who missed earlier issues, please visit our “Archives” link, which contains the entire contents of our first volume. We have expanded our “Research Links” feature, adding not only more primary sources but also more links to local historical agencies. We strongly encourage the reader to suggest or send new links for this page. The same is true for items in “Current History,” which is a clearinghouse for information on events of a historical nature in Northeast Ohio. Because we update this section constantly, please feel free to send announcements for it at any time.

We would also like to remind our readers that printer-friendly versions accompany each item. These PDF files are not only easier on the eyes when printed, but also contain basic issue data and page numbers for convenience in citation.

As always, please address any inquiries about this project (or about any other aspect of the journal) to the editor at kkern @ uakron. edu. We welcome all comments and suggestions.

Kevin Kern

Continue reading In This Issue: Spring 2005

In This Issue: Summer 2004

In The Current Issue:

Our regular readers have probably been wondering what became of the spring issue of the Northeast Ohio Journal of History. Whereas we had the content for this edition months ago, we met with unanticipated (and lengthy) technical challenges in endeavoring to upgrade the website. Thus, in the interests of accuracy, we have decided to call this the “Summer 2004” issue. This is a one-time adjustment, however, and the fall issue will still come out as scheduled. We apologize for the delay, and hope it has not caused too much inconvenience to our subscribers.

We also trust that our readers will forgive the wait for this issue once they see what awaits them inside. For example, our feature article takes us for a trip out to the bars. In “Tavernocracy: Tavern Culture on Ohio’s Western Reserve,” Adam Criblez argues that the humble local tavern had oft-neglected but vital social, cultural, and political influences on the residents of early nineteenth century Northeast Ohio. Absent other social institutions on the frontier, Criblez notes, the tavern provided an important forum for people of all classes to meet and discuss the issues of the day.

For those of our readers who wish to meet and discuss issues of the day without threat of hangovers, we are very pleased to introduce our new discussion board. Taking advantage of the technology available to us as an electronic journal, we believe this new feature will make our journal more interactive and serve to engender substantive debate, discussion, and exchange of information for all people interested in the history of Northeast Ohio.

To get the ball rolling in this new “virtual tavern,” we have reprised Gregory Wilson’s item “Thinking About Regions” in our “Notes and Comments” section. The Northeast Ohio Journal of History is by definition a regional history publication, but how should that region be defined? Politically? Geographically? Culturally? Environmentally? Wilson, NOJH’s Publication Director and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Akron, means to provoke discussion and debate with this piece. To add your part to this debate, please post your thoughts on the discussion board.

For this issue’s virtual museum exhibit, we are extremely fortunate to feature Jack Geick’s photographic tour of Cascade Locks Park in Akron, Ohio. One of Northeast Ohio’s most important local historians, Geick takes the reader through the nearly forgotten landmarks of the old Ohio and Erie Canal lock system near downtown Akron, deftly illustrating the history that is often literally right under our feet.

In addition to the usual book reviews, we also encourage the reader to explore the other features of our site. For those who missed earlier issues, please visit our “Archives” link, which contains the entire contents of our first volume. We have expanded our “Research Links” feature, adding not only more primary sources but also more links to local historical agencies. We strongly encourage the reader to suggest or send new links for this page. The same is true for items in “Current History,” which is a clearinghouse for information on events of a historical nature in Northeast Ohio. Because we update this section constantly, please feel free to send announcements for it at any time.

We would also like to remind our readers that printer-friendly versions accompany each item. These PDF files are not only easier on the eyes when printed, but also contain basic issue data and page numbers for convenience in citation.

As always, please address any inquiries about this project (or about any other aspect of the journal) to the editor at kkern @ uakron. edu. We welcome all comments and suggestions.

Kevin Kern

Continue reading In This Issue: Summer 2004

Notes & Comments: Thinking About Regions

By: Gregory Wilson, University of Akron
Publication Director, Northeast Ohio Journal of History

The Northeast Ohio Journal of History bills itself as a regional enterprise. However, this masks the many complexities involved in defining a region. Of course, the concept of a region is a human creation, an effort to simplify discussions of disparate events, or to generalize about certain trends, issues, and events noticed in various local or state locations. Within the history of the United States, writers have made great and frequent use of regions: the West, the Great Lakes, Appalachia, the Northwest, the Great Plains, the South and so on. By its nature, defining a region means creating an entity that is unique in some fashion, different from other places around it according to some combination of cultural, economic, environmental, political, or social attributes. Regional boundaries are fluid, flexible, and porous and thus it is a matter of debate as to what is or is not part of a region. For example, the South usually refers to the 11 states that seceded in 1861; yet at times, historians have expanded this to include West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Oklahoma. Including 11 makes the South a region defined politically by secession, but including 4 others means historians must go beyond political categories and search for other attributes that bind together people and places. In the case of the South, what makes the 4 others “southern”? The former presence of slavery? Accents and words in the language? Food and folkways?  Geographic features? Economic data? Again, there are multiple factors at work in defining places as regions. Continue reading Notes & Comments: Thinking About Regions

Book Review: A Politician Turned General

A Politician Turned General: The Civil War Career of Stephen Augustus Hurlbut. By Jeffrey N. Lash. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2003. xii, 300 pp. Cloth, $49.00, ISBN 0-87338-766-x.)

In recent years, readers of Civil War history have enjoyed a spate of works detailing the lives and contributions of so-called “political generals,” those elected officials, North and South, who received important military positions in recognition of partisan service to their respective sections. Books by James Hollandsworth and Richard Kiper have, for example, presented nuanced looks at Nathaniel P. Banks and John A McClernand respectively, two of the more notable politician-soldiers employed by the Union. As a practice, the awarding of general’s stars to rank amateurs strikes most modern students as at best cynical politicking, and at worst as a monstrous roll of the dice—many soldiers paid dearly for these battlefield neophytes’ lack of military acumen. Yet it must be remembered that military professionalism, now accepted as an article of faith in Western culture, was a nascent phenomenon during the middle nineteenth century. Early American society generally held career officers at arms length, preferring, in a paean to republican simplicity, the presumed talents of the virtuous citizen-soldier, one who dutifully left his civilian post to provide sagacious leadership in a military setting. Moreover, political generals, as Thomas J. Goss cogently argues in his important study The War within the Union High Command, played a vital role in garnering and maintaining national backing for war. To the growing list of quality volumes on such figures as Banks and McClernand we now include the work of Jeffrey N. Lash, whose A Politician Turned General examines the lesser-known (but no less controversial) Stephen A. Hurlbut.

The author’s chief contribution to the literature is one that, on the surface, appears to be purely semantic, but is in fact essential to understanding Hurlbut’s long and tumultuous Civil War career. Continue reading Book Review: A Politician Turned General

Book Review: The 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue

The 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue: A Reappraisal. By Roland M. Baumann. (Oberlin, Ohio: The Oberlin College Archives, 2003.  52  pp. Paper, $9.95.)

On September 13, 1858, thirty-seven ardent abolitionists rescued fugitive slave John Price before Kentucky slave catchers could return him to bondage. The rescue was completed without violence, and within days, Price was removed to Canada. To scholars of the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War, the Oberlin Wellington Rescue is an event of incredible importance. Some declare that dedicated abolitionists made Oberlin the town that started the Civil War. While Roland Baumann would not go as far as to give Oberlin this title, he does recognize the importance and unique character of the people of Oberlin, the rescue, and the subsequent trial of those involved and how these events effect the local and national discussion of slavery. The 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue: A Reappraisal written by Roland M. Baumann, Archivist and Adjunct Professor of History at Oberlin College, provides a basic narrative of the events of 1858-1859, while focusing on the underlying theme he sees as essential to the incident and the town’s reaction. In addition, Baumann addresses the motivations of the participants, the degree of organization that existed among the rescuers, and the significance of the event. While his attention to these points feeds the traditional historiography of the rescue, his main thesis looks at Oberlin’s unique character and brand of abolitionism. He argues that Oberlin’s evangelical based beliefs in the abolitionist movement created an environment and people that were unique in their worldview. Continue reading Book Review: The 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue

Book Review: Confronting the Odds

Confronting the Odds: African-American Entrepreneurship in Cleveland, Ohio.  By Bessie House-Soremekun. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2002. xxvi, 202 pp. Paper, $21.00, ISBN 0873387341.)

In the book Confronting the Odds: African American Entrepreneurship in Cleveland, Ohio Bessie House-Soremekun looks at the African American experience in developing a business foundation in Cleveland, Ohio. Using a variety of sources including interviews, newspapers, and books, Soremekun paints both an optimistic and troubling picture of Cleveland’s African American experience in business development. The book traces the many successes and failures of African American entrepreneurs in Cleveland, while analyzing the many difficulties they faced. Soremekun relies heavily on Jesse Jackson’s analysis of the underserved economy of African Americans, Hispanics and urbanites who encompass more than sixty million people and more than $600 billion in annual earnings. The books talks about the untapped potential of those undeserved communities and how they could serve as a powerful engine for expanding African Americans entrepreneurial success. Continue reading Book Review: Confronting the Odds