One of the most sought-after commodities in the 18th-century American colonies was land. Land ownership was the key to higher status in society. So, when the Revolutionary War started, as the colonies had no real currency or precious metals with which to recruit and pay troops, western land was used as a natural (and plentiful) incentive for young men to enlist as soldiers and to be recognized for their service. 1 In fact, land speculation was one of the root causes of the war itself. 2 Read More
A History of Upper Ohio Valley Sandlot Football
“Their sons grow suicidally beautiful At the beginning of October, And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.” ~ Excerpt from Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright (1963)
“It’s a mild form of massacre, but the victims seemingly don’t mind at all. [These young men] many of them former high school football players … can’t resist the desire to knock noggins again… That’s sandlot football!” ~Wheeling News-Register Sportswriter Arnold Lazarus (1954)
Part 1
Modern football fans are quite familiar with the risks players assume, having learned of the brain trauma that drove Mike Webster and so many others to madness and early death, and having witnessed on national television terrifying injuries to players like Darryl Stingley, Ryan Shazier, and Damar Hamlin, among others. And the efficacy of resulting equipment safety innovations will only be revealed with time.
Yet still we watch.
The Price of the Present, Paid By the Past
New Library Exhibit Honors Ohio Valley Veterans
William Leighton, Jr. (1833–1911) came to Wheeling to work as a chemist at Hobbs Glass Works. Eventually he became a managing partner and plant manager. A graduate of Harvard, he was known for writing poetry. In fact, whenever a glass formula failed, Hobbs workers joked that there was “too much poetry in the batch.” In 1883,
Leighton wrote the Soldiers and Sailors Monument Poem, titled, “THE PRICE OF THE PRESENT, PAID BY THE PAST,” that he then read at the dedication of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument at “Capitol Square” in front of the old state capitol (city building) at 16th and Chapline Streets.
This rare photo of the event is housed in the OCPL‘s Archives.
In the spirit of Leighton’s poem and the dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors monument, OCPL Archives presents this salute to Ohio Valley veterans through artifacts. Read More
A Brief History of Centre Foundry
Don’t miss the Library’s Program, Remembering Centre Foundry, Coming Up on May 6, 2025.
Like most kids who grew up in Warwood, I walked, biked, or drove by a place called Centre Foundry & Machine Company thousands of times without really knowing what went on behind its nearly transparent, sun-bleached, hospital blue-green, corrugated metal and cinder block walls. Passing the building at any hour of the night, a kid like me might hear the bone-shivering shriek of metal on metal as an orange-red glow irradiated the thin walls, piercing through the rivets and rips and broken window panes like a laser show, adding to the mystery.
What the hell were they doing in there? Read More
An Imposing Demonstration of Strength
Wheeling’s 1907 Labor Day Celebration
On Monday, September 2, 1907, even as a one-day-old Walter Phillip Reuther, future president of the United Auto Workers and arguably the most influential human ever born in his small Ohio River city, Wheeling prepared to begin its twenty-second Labor Day celebration with an enormous parade, despite the threat of soaking rain. Read More
Bloomered, Be-Whiskered, & Barnstorming
Wheeling’s Baseball Oddities
During the early twentieth century, baseball was indeed America’s game. And Wheeling loved baseball more than most American towns.
It was perhaps the most popular form of entertainment in that long ago era before the internet, before cable TV, even before motion pictures were established. Baseball was the Netflix of 1915.
And it was an immersive experience. Sure, people listened to games on the radio, but nothing beat hopping on a street car to Fulton or Wheeling Island or Martins Ferry to watch local professional semi-professional, industrial, and amateur teams play the beloved national game, while chowing down on hot dogs and peanuts, sweating profusely, cultivating a sunburn, maybe even skipping school.
There was never a shortage of fans. But opponents were sometimes hard to find, especially unfamiliar ones.
So it was not uncommon for teams to call other teams out in the newspaper to challenge them to baseball showdowns at a given place and time under penalty of being accused of cowardice. Of course, where there’s a demand, entrepreneurial creatives are bound to test out a product to satisfy it.
Such was the origin of baseball “barnstorming.”
And sometimes, weirder was better. Read More
55 Feet of Water – The 1936 Flood on March 19
The Behemoth
March 16, 1936. Wheeling, West Virginia.
The weather report in the upper left corner on the front page of the Wheeling News-Register was a little concerning, but certainly not dire. Not yet.
“HOURS OF RAIN
This city has had a five hour rain starting at eleven o’clock last night with a pourdown [sic] for several hours. Streets were given a much needed washing.”
Silver linings.
But things would get worse — hourly. Read More
The Silver-Voiced Cyclone
The Collection of Brother Cy Williams of Doc Williams & the Border Riders
By Sean Duffy, with Salli J. Barach
Note: Thanks to his niece Salli J. Barach, the Ohio County Public Library recently acquired a collection of artifacts once belonging to Cy Williams, fiddle player for the band, “Doc Williams & the Border Riders.” The artifacts are currently on display in the main exhibit area at the Library. Read Salli’s statement.
“Cy had a unique, smooth sound on the fiddle and, as brothers, we had a close harmony . . . As I look back, I was truly blessed to have him as part of my show.” – Doc Williams
Milo Smik (1918-2006) was born July 31, 1918 to Slovak immigrant parents, Andrew and Susie Smik, in Cowansville, PA, north of Pittsburgh. Young Milo learned to play the fiddle from his coal miner father, who also played the Mandolin back in Prague. Read More
Making a Way Out of No Way
Wheeling in the Green Book
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~
I first learned about the existence of “The Negro Motorist Green Book” from Ann Thomas, when I interviewed her in 2012 for the second volume of The Wheeling Family.
Both sides of Ann’s family were originally from North Carolina before joining the Great Migration and moving north for better treatment and increased opportunity. Ann’s Aunt Esther May (her mother’s sister) and Uncle Maxton “Mac” Singletary were among the first of her family to choose Wheeling as their new home. They migrated from North Carolina and opened the New Dixie Restaurant, aka “Singletary’s,” in an old Victorian residence on Chapline Street in the middle of what was, at the time, an established African American neighborhood. Read More
Wheeling’s Santas Through Time
Cooey’s vs. Stone’s!
What if we asked people on social media to submit their long ago Wheeling Santa photos? What would that look like?
Here ya go:
