Category Archives: Archiving Wheeling

Topping the Town’s Tonsorial Trade

Seán Duffy February 15, 2021December 19, 2022 5 Comments 3688 Views

The Life and Times of Henry Boose Clemens:
Slave, Barber, Political Leader

PROLOGUE

On February 2, 2021, we presented a Lunch With Books Livestream program for the Ohio County Public Library, exploring the lives, times, and achievements of nine leaders of Wheeling’s African American community during the era of “Jim Crow” segregation, including: barber Henry Boose Clemens; police officer William Alexander Turner; firefighter Ashby Jackson; attorney Harry H. Jones; medical doctors Boswell Henson Stillyard, Julia Katherine Pronty Davis; Robert Maceo Hamlin; and Alga Wade Hamlin; and musician Will H. Dixon.

This post, about Henry Boose Clemens (1843-1923), will serve as the second supplement (after Dr. B.H. Stillyard) to our livestream video. Additional supplements will be posted soon. Read More

Archiving Wheeling Local History Researcher Ohio County Public Library Archives

A Man of More Than Usual Brilliancy

Erin Rothenbuehler February 8, 2021February 24, 2021 1 Comment 4612 Views

The Life, Career, and Fall of Dr. B.H. Stillyard

PROLOGUE

This post, about Dr. B.H. Stillyard (1847-1916), will serve as the first supplement to our livestream video. An additional supplement will be posted soon.

A Self-Taught Man

Wheeling Physician Dr. Boswell H. Stillyard, Crisis Magazine, March 1917

Boswell Henson Stillyard was born January 1, 1847, in Port Tobacco, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. The Crisis magazine, official publication of the NAACP, noted that Stillyard was “of slave parentage.” Yet, “He was an ambitious and self-taught man. He would sit up at night in a fireless room wrapped in a quilt that he might learn how to read and write.” [1]

At the age of 29, Stillyard was admitted to Howard University, an historically black college located in Washington, D.C., where he studied from 1876 through 1877. Between 1879 and 1881, he attended Union College in Albany, N.Y. studying with the medical department. He transferred back to Howard University, entering the medical college there in 1881. [2] While there, he wrote a paper published in Galliard’s Medical Journal titled, “Hydatids from disease of the chorion.” [3]

After graduating from Howard in 1882, Stillyard came to Wheeling, which at the time, was still the state capital of West Virginia. Charleston, would not become the permanent capital for another three years, in 1885. Shortly before Stillyard arrived in Wheeling, the West Virginia Board of Health had just been established by an Act pushed through state legislation by Dr. James Edmund Reeves. [4] Read More

Archiving Wheeling Local History Author Ohio County Public Library Archives

Welcome Home

Seán Duffy December 13, 2020December 13, 2020 1 Comment 4351 Views

Wheeling’s Doughboy is Back and Better than Ever

The Wheeling Doughboy as he looked on the crisp, sunny morning of December 10, 2020. The wreath, created by Wheeling's Barbara Pirhalla, included red poppies. — The Wheeling Doughboy as he looked on the crisp, sunny morning of December 10, 2020. The wreath, created by Wheeling’s Barbara Pirhalla, included red poppies.

In 1918, American soldiers – “Doughboys,” as they were known, probably because of their dusty uniforms during the war with Mexico 70 years prior – filled training facilities like Virginia’s Camp Lee in preparation for entering the European conflict that would one day be termed “World War I.”

But our Doughboys were already at war with a microscopic enemy – a deadly H1N1 virus misnamed “Spanish Flu.” These soldiers faced the prospect of war during a worldwide pandemic thought to have originated, not in Spain, but in an American military training camp. By the end of that fateful year, influenza would claim some 45,000 American soldiers (many before they completed basic training), nearly as many as the 53,000 killed in the trenches of France. Read More

Archiving Wheeling Local History Author

Haunted Ohio Valley History: A Halloween Horror Trilogy

Archiving Wheeling October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 3 Comments 15974 Views

by Laura Jackson Roberts, Christina Fisanick, and Seán Duffy with research by Erin Rothenbuehler

Introduction: History is Ghostful

The Ohio Valley is haunted. That’s an undeniable fact.

Like any place on the planet with a past chock full of human triumph and folly, greed and generosity, good and evil – the Ohio Valley is haunted by the ghosts of its own, by turns, bloody, joyful, corrupt, tragic, and hilarious lived human experience – its rich, much celebrated, sometimes regretted, and often downright scary, history.

“Real” ghosts? Ghouls? Spirits? Specters? Poltergeists? Phantoms? Yeah, those too…

Maybe. Perhaps. Kind of…

So, how about a trilogy of the latter for Halloween fun? Fact or fiction? History or lore? You be the judges. But be warned: these reasonably true tales of terror are not for the faint of heart.

Turn on some lights, and read on…
Read More

Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston Archiving Wheeling

Blessed Martin ~ Patron Saint of Racial Harmony

Seán Duffy October 16, 2020March 13, 2023 9 Comments 8820 Views

Archiving Wheeling - Featured Image: Blessed Martin, Wheeling's Segregated Catholic School

A Brief History of Wheeling’s Blessed Martin School

Dedication

We are sharing this post again in honor of our beloved Sister Gabriella Wagner, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 102.

She was a lovely, kind soul who treasured her time at Blessed Martin and all of the schools at which she taught. Sister was a dedicated, generous teacher, and I was privileged to have been one of her thousands of students. I am honored to have had the opportunity to interview her for this post just after her 102nd birthday. A clip from that interview appears in the story below.

Rest easy in the light, Sister Gabriella. You shall be missed, even as your legacy lives on in all of us who benefited from your patient counsel.

Many of those with even a passing familiarity with Wheeling’s history will easily identify Lincoln School as the segregated public school in town from Reconstruction through “Jim Crow” to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court desegregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education.

But many of those same people have probably never heard of Wheeling’s segregated Catholic school, Blessed Martin. Read More

Local History Author Local History Researcher

Village of Light

Christina Fisanick October 9, 2020 18 Comments 9508 Views

The Short-Lived Mill Town of Power, West Virginia

As the Industrial Revolution roared across the United States, entire towns were built for the sole purpose of housing mill workers and their families. Like rural coal patch towns, mill towns were company towns, that is, owned lock, stock, and barrel by the mill. Workers lived, labored, played, and prayed in company-owned buildings on company-owned land. And when the mills closed, the buildings were often razed and the land was left fallow or sold to the highest bidder.

The village of Power was a mill town that sat along the Ohio River in Brooke County, West Virginia. It was formed in 1917 to house workers of the Windsor Power Plant, which would eventually provide electricity for the northern panhandle, western Pennsylvania, and as far west as Canton, Ohio. Read More

Archiving Wheeling Goldenseal Magazine

Wheeling’s 20th Man: 250 Years of Race Relations in the Northernmost Southern City of the Southernmost Northern State

Seán Duffy June 23, 2020July 30, 2021 8 Comments 10512 Views

Archiving Wheeling - Featured Image: Wheeling’s 20th Man: 250 Years of Race Relations in the Northernmost Southern City of the Southernmost Northern State

This revised edition, updated with new research, is reprinted with permission from the Fall 2019 issue of Goldenseal Magazine (for Ann Thomas)

Wheeling’s Twentieth Man

“To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” ~ James Baldwin

On February 9, 1936, Harry H. Jones, Wheeling’s only practicing African American lawyer at the time, delivered an address over WWVA Radio titled, “Wheeling’s Twentieth Man.”

“About one out of every twenty persons living in Wheeling is of African descent. This twentieth man is not a new comer nor an alien, for his ancestors were settled by force in Virginia one year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock… Justice and candor require attention to the handicaps suffered by Wheeling’s twentieth man… The group, as a whole, has been barred from employment in our local factories, mills, shops, and stores. The group generally has been restricted to personal and domestic service and coal mining…A reading of the ‘job want’ columns of our local papers will verify this complaint of discrimination. Apparently, the test is COLOR of the worker; not his or her training, experience and character…” [Read the full text of the speech] Read More

Archiving Wheeling

High Masses of Requiem

Seán Duffy May 25, 2020February 18, 2021 5 Comments 5438 Views

Wheeling Central Catholic Students and Graduates Killed in Action During WWII

The Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston houses a poignant memorial board created to honor twenty-two young men who were killed in action while serving their country in the Second World War. Ranging in age from 19 to 26, these men all had one additional thing in common: they had graduated from or were still attending Wheeling Central Catholic High School when they died.

Central Catholic's Memorial Board for Alumni serving in WWII. - Archives of The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston — Central Catholic’s Memorial Board for Alumni killed in WWII. – Archives of The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston

This evocative artifact was brought to my attention a few years ago by diocesan archivist Jon-Erik Gilot, who suggested we dig a little deeper, developing biographies for the soldiers depicted. As a 1984 graduate of Wheeling Central myself, I was intrigued. Only about four decades had passed between my own graduation and the years during which most of these men were killed. Had they survived, most would have only been in their early sixties by 1984. I was struck by how close in time we actually were, though I was fortunate enough to grow up during an era of comparative peace, when young men were not drafted or called upon to risk their lives to stop an alliance of fascist regimes bent on world domination and genocide. Yet, since then, 36 additional years have passed, thousands more young Americans have died in various conflicts around the globe, and our connection to that greatest generation has faded annually as the remaining World War II veterans die at an alarming rate.

So, for Memorial Day 2020, we honor the young men of Wheeling Central (and all of their fallen comrades from Wheeling, from across the United States, and from our WWII allies) who gave all so that we might enjoy the same freedoms they enjoyed for such a tragically brief time.

We ask you to assist us with this project. If you are a relative or friend and, if you can identify our one unidentified soldier; if you can correct any biographical information you know to be in error; or if you can provide additional information about or photographs of these soldiers or sailors, please contact us. We will continue to update this post as more information is received. Read More

Archiving Wheeling Local History Researcher WALS Foundation

Walter P. Reuther Remembered 50 Years After His Death

Archiving Wheeling May 9, 2020May 25, 2022 2 Comments 5738 Views

By Jeffrey W. Mason

In a quote that looks like it could have been lifted from the speech of any number of Democratic candidates running to unseat President Donald J. Trump in 2020, Reuther in 1967 argued that, “Profit sharing in the form of stock distributions to workers would help to democratize the ownership of America’s vast corporate wealth which is today appallingly undemocratic and unhealthy.”

One of the most notable labor leaders, human rights advocates (and participant in Civil Rights-era protests including the March on Selma in 1965), peace activists (and opponent of the Vietnam War), and anti-nuclear spokesmen of the 20th century was silenced when Walter Philip Reuther, the charismatic and forceful president of the United Auto Workers, along with his wife and a number of friends and colleagues, perished in a tragic plane crash near Pellston, Michigan, 260 miles northwest of Detroit around 9:30 p.m. on May 9, 1970 as the party was enroute to the union’s recreation and educational center at Black Lake, just 25 miles from where the accident happened. Read More

Archiving Wheeling Ohio County Public Library Archives

A Crash of Coincidences

Archiving Wheeling March 31, 2020April 1, 2020 2 Comments 6193 Views

-Written by Seán P. Duffy with research by Erin Rothenbuehler

Notre Dame and Wheeling Linked by Tragedy

Eighty-nine years ago today, on March 31, 1931, a Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10 commercial wood-frame airplane crashed in a remote cow pasture near Bazaar, Kansas. All eight people on board, including six passengers and two pilots, were killed.

The tragedy included a series of coincidences that forever united the fates of two very different men.

One was legendary Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne, who was killed on his way to Hollywood to participate in the production of the film The Spirit of Notre Dame.

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And the other was the humble son of a “truck gardener” from Wheeling, West Virginia.

Category Archives: Archiving Wheeling

The Life and Times of Henry Boose Clemens: Slave, Barber, Political Leader

PROLOGUE

The Life, Career, and Fall of Dr. B.H. Stillyard

PROLOGUE

A Self-Taught Man

Wheeling’s Doughboy is Back and Better than Ever

Introduction: History is Ghostful

A Brief History of Wheeling’s Blessed Martin School

Dedication

The Short-Lived Mill Town of Power, West Virginia

Wheeling’s Twentieth Man

Wheeling Central Catholic Students and Graduates Killed in Action During WWII

Notre Dame and Wheeling Linked by Tragedy

The Life and Times of Henry Boose Clemens:
Slave, Barber, Political Leader