Category: Reconstruction and Gilded Age (1866-1899)

On that day in October 1894 when Lucy A. Morse Tibbals was buried, all of Akron society – male and female – seemed to be crowded into the First Methodist Church to say goodbye to a friend and community leader.

Lucy A. Morse was born in Randolph, a small town in Portage County, Ohio, on July 9, 1835. She came to Akron in 1852 with her parents Huron and Althea. On Oct. 26, 1856, she married Newell D. Tibbals, an ambitious attorney who had just come to Akron the year before. Her husband had an eye on a political career. A Republican, he was elected the city’s prosecuting attorney in 1860, the city’s first city solicitor in 1865 and state senator in 1866. In 1875, he was elected judge of the Common Pleas Court. During the Civil War, he was a sergeant in the Ohio voluntary infantry.

Back in Akron, his wife performing her own war duty. She was an active member of the Akron Soldiers Aid Society. Affiliated with Cleveland’s Sanitary Commission, the Akron society contributed literally thousands of dollars worth of food and clothing to the hospitalized wounded and sick soldiers. These women spent evenings knitting mittens and socks for soldiers. They also packed food and other goods for the Army in a small room above a store on South Howard Street. The food and goods were shipped to Cleveland’s Sanitary Commission and then onto the hospitals that cared for the wounded and sick soldiers. In addition, the organization raised much money by holding “dime parties,” socials and dinners. Virtually every month, the Summit Beacon reported the contributions that Tibbals and the other Akron women made to the war effort through the Soldiers Aid Society. According to the Portrait and Biographical Record of Portage and Summit Counties, Ohio(1898), Tibbals “made a host of friends during the war.”

After the war, she gave up neither her friends nor her community activities. She was one of the organizers of the Dorcas society, out of which the Akron board of charities grew. She even served as superintendent of the industrial branch of that board.

Both she and her husband were active in the Buckley Post of the Grand Army of the Republic: she as a trustee of the Woman’s Relief Corps and he as commander of the Post. The Woman’s Relief Corps provided support for the Civil War veterans and their families.

Tibbals also got involved in the Ladies’ Cemetery Association, serving as president for one term. She also helped establish the Summit County Children’s Home. A member of the First Methodist Church, she remained active in its Woman’s Missionary Society.

When her death was announced at the Akron court house, Judge A.C. Voris called a meeting of the bar and its members unanimously approved a resolution to attend her funeral. The funeral must have been crowded. Not only did the attorneys in the city attend, so did the Buckley Post of the GAR and the Woman’s Relief Corps.

–Kathleen L. Endres

Adeline Myers Coburn began her long involvement in community activism during the Civil War. After the war, she dedicated her life to the cause of temperance.

Born in New York, Adeline Myers married Stephen H. Coburn, a physician, in 1839. The couple moved to Akron in 1848.

Adeline Coburn’s name first surfaces in Akron newspapers in 1861 when she was named one of the directors of the newly organized Soldiers Aid Society in the city. By 1862, she was elected vice president of the organization and in 1863 she was listed as president. The Akron Soldiers Aid Society was affiliated with the Cleveland Sanitary Commission. During the Civil War, the Akron women knitted mittens and socks for the soldiers. The Akron society contributed literally thousands of dollars worth of food and clothing to the war effort. The women packed food and other goods for the Army in a small room above a store on South Howard Street. The food and goods were shipped to the central organization located in Cleveland and then onto the hospitals that cared for the wounded soldiers. In addition, the organization raised much money by holding “dime parties,” socials and dinners. Every month, the Beacon reported the happenings in the Soldiers Aid Society and invariably the name “Mrs. Dr. Coburn” was listed as a donor.

She also led Akron women in opposing imported goods by organizing and served as president of the Akron Auxiliary of the Ladies National Covenant during the Civil War. In 1865, she helped collect clothes for Freedmen.

By 1874 she was heavily involved with the temperance cause. Indeed, her involvement predates the organization of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) itself. In March 1874, Coburn signed the call for a temperance rally at the First Methodist Church. It was the rally that kicked off Akron’s famous Temperance Crusade of 1874, where women went to the saloons of the city and prayed outside for the end of the liquor trade. By the end of the year, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was organized in Cleveland.

In 1874, Coburn was elected treasurer of the Summit County Temperance Convention; in 1877, she was Akron’s delegate to the Ohio WCTU; in 1883, she was president of the Akron WCTU.

Although temperance clearly was the focus of her post-Civil War energies, Coburn also became involved with the Dorcas Society, serving as a work director in 1875, and the Ladies Rural Cemetery Association.

When Coburn died in 1887, she left one daughter Mrs. Jacob A. Kohler.

–Janelle Baltputnis

Buchtel is a well known name throughout the Akron community. There’s Buchtel Hall, Buchtel College, Buchtel Avenue, Buchtel High School. That acclaim is due, in no small part, to the generous service of Elizabeth Davidson Buchtel.

Elizabeth Davidson was born in Union County, Pa., in 1821. She married John Richards Buchtel in 1844. The marriage represented a union of temperaments and a commitment to social improvement.

It is difficult to trace Buchtel’s involvement in antebellum reform groups. By the Civil War, however, she was involved with the Akron Soldiers Aid Society. She never held a position in the association, but in 1864 she volunteered for the small committee that solicited donations of machinery, manufactures and mechanical products for Cleveland’s giant Sanitary Fair. The appointment was an ideal one. Her husband, who raised enlistments and bounty money during the Civil War, was also the agent of the Canton Buckeye Reaper and Mower Works.

After the Civil War, she and her husband dedicated much time and energy to the founding of a new college in the city. The Buchtels, both members of the Universalist Church, lobbied to get the proposed Universalist College for the city and then donated much time and money to the enterprise. In the end, the new college (now The University of Akron) was named after John Buchtel.

After the Civil War, the Buchtel name was synonymous with temperance. In 1874, John Buchtel ran for secretary of state on the Prohibition ticket. That same year, Elizabeth Buchtel signed the call for a temperance meeting at the First Methodist Church. That meeting led to the now famous Temperance Crusade of 1874 where Akron women visited saloons and prayed in the streets in an attempt to close down the liquor traffic in the city.

At the age of 59, Elizabeth Buchtel was paralyzed. She died in Akron in 1891.

Photo courtesy of the Beacon Journal.