Remembering Forest Park

The Forgotten Gem of Genoa

This is a seldom seen aerial photo of Forest Park in its heyday. The road in the foreground is Woodville Road and off to the right is Reiman Road. The wooden roller coaster is clearly visible along Reiman Road. _{Photo Courtesy of Genoa Historical Society}

  It wasn’t the biggest amusement park in Toledo area history, but it may have been the best. And least that’s how many people from the area thought of it. It was known as Forest Park, opening on Woodville Road, near Genoa , sometime in the mid-1920’s.  The park, like many of that prohibition -roaring 20’s era was a promise of good times and fun.  One of several such parks around Toledo competing for the attention of those who wanted to a spend a few hours riding the rides, playing the games, dancing to the bands, or maybe lacing up some roller skates to take a few laps around the wooden rink. Forest Park offered a full menu of these features and much more, for several decades, from the 1920’s through the 1940’s. It was “the place to be” every summer, spring and fall, and even in the winter months. The land for the park, at Woodville and Reiman Roads, also known as Hickory Corners, was purchased by businessman Carl Uthoff in the mid-1920’s. Although the exact date of opening day has been lost to time, early Genoa Gazette articles show it was up and running by 1925.

Within a few years, it was it drawing record crowds, and on some days, those crowds were measured in the thousands. Pretty impressive for a park that was miles from the big city population of Toledo.  But one of the reasons it prospered was its convenient location along busy state highway(Woodville Road), and adjacent to that roadway, in the 1920 and 30’s, the Lakeshore Electric Interurban train ran several times a day. The stop at Forest Park made the trip from Toledo a short and easy ride for fun seekers from the city, or in the other direction from Fremont or Woodville. And once they arrived, there was a full spectrum of fun things that was boast worthy.

Below is a panel of photos from Margaret Fintel’s family photo album. They show photos of her grand parents Stephen and Peg Huntzinger and her mother, Peggy, astride the carousel animals from the historic Dentzel carousel that is now proudly operating in Burlington North Carolina.

Suprisely, there is not much written about “Bob’s Coaster” or the “Speedway” wooden coaster(below) that was a premier attraction at the park. Speculating from the aerial photo, it was a large and impressive structure and appeared to take riders as high as 50 feet or more at the top before the cars raced down the other side. The builders and the designers appear to be lost to time and the fog of the past. If anyone knows more about its construction and its eventual demise, this writer and others would be grateful to hear from you.

The Speedway Coaster

The park not only had a roller coaster,(The Speedway as it was called), but a (now historic)Dentzel carousel merry-go-round, A Hersell Carousel, dodg-em-cars, a miniature-train ride and even a Ferris wheel. For those seeking more traditional thrills, bowling alley, a movie screen, and a variety of circus acts and performers, including the dare-devils on the high wires and trapeze.

One of the high wire acts that were regularly featured at Forest Park over the decades

Conspicuous at on the highway side of the park was a popular restaurant and a large indoor large roller rink, while a few feet away there was a dance hall with a beautiful marble floor where couples could dance the night away. Owners Carl Uthoff and partner Bill Stanger always booked some top notch dance bands and singers to croon for the crowd and the young lovers.

The outdoor dance floor(right) that was built in the 1920’s. Later an indoor venue was built.

Forest Park was so popular, and packed with amusements, it was a fierce competitor with other parks in the area at the time, including Willow Beach at Point Place or Locust Point near Oak Harbor, or Walbridge Park in Toledo.

It seemed like every year, Carl Uthoff and buisness partner Bill Stanger added new and better offering for the public to enjoy. The midway offered a penny-pitch stand, a shooting gallery, an archery range and Madam Farray, the fortune teller, would tell you for a quarter what the future held. It’s not certain though if she ever foretold the future of Forest Park. If she had, she might have envisioned its eventual demise by the end of the late 1940’s. Times change, and after World War Two, Americans were seeking their entertainment in other ways. The arrival of television kept lots of folks glued to their black and white screens in the comfort of their living rooms. By the late 1940’s, the popularity of the big bands of the 20’s were falling from grace and no longer in vogue. Even the once popular Interurban trains were out of step with the times and the trains were shut down and the tracks taken out. In short, Toledo area families, like many across the nation, had found new opportunities and options for family getaways.

If that wasn’t enough, on many nights, there were fireworks to keep the crowd’s attention . If people wanted to stay the night, on the other side of Woodville road were 25 cottages that could be rented for $1 per night.

One of many game sof chance along the midway at the park

The $1 a night cottages on the other side of Woodville Road. Some remnants remain.

Forest Park, like many of these pleasure parks of that era were aging. The once popular wooden roller coaster was condemned and other buildings were also in need of repair. The crowds dwindled and Carl Uthoff, who had been struggling to make a profit during the war years started allowing slot machines and gambling on premises. As a result, the park lost its liquor license. Soon theereafter, he sold the park to new owners. The time had come and time was cruel. By the 1950’s the only remnant of the park still in use was the dance hall building which was used as a auction house for a number of years. The once busy roller rink stood in mute silence along the roadway relegated as a storage locker, eventually surrendering to a ball of flame in 1957. As the decade wore on, the remains of this mecca of fun were mostly broken and lifeless. As many baby boomers of the 50’s and 60’s will attest, a drive-by on Woodville Road revealed only a mere wistful glimpse of what once was. Weeds and nature had mostly reclaimed the property and in 1967, that last remaining building, the big dance hall, also fell to fire and memory.

Peaches Browning, a scandalous actress and singer from the 1920’s was a big hit with the crowd at Forest Park.

It should be mentioned that Carl Uthoff and his business partner Bill Stanger also built an entertainment park in Pico California in the 1920’s. The community, now known as Pico Rivera, was in the mid 20’s a rural community wets of Los Angeles thta was growing quickly. Stanger, who lived nearby, must have seen the opportunity, so he and Carl Uthoff of Genoa built what became known as “Danceland” in Pico on Whittier Blvd. As of this wiritng, I am still researching this venue and what ever happened to it. Below are some images and photos of the “Forest Park” of California.

I am have unable, thus far to determine whether anything remains of Danceland in Pico Rivera. Perhaps like with Forest Park, mostly in the mist of memory. There is little if anything remaining on the corner of Woodville and Reiman that would inform the casual observer as to what an exciting and storied place it once was. A place that beckoned thousands of people every year to its gates. But while the buildings may be gone, the memories remain. Mostly second hand memories recountred in family stories and grainy photos. But I find that if you fasten your eyes on the faded photos and listen ever so closely, you can still hear the echoes of laughter and joy at a place called Forest Park.

Beulah and Ellsworth Scott were said to have been married on the dance floor at Forest Park.

The once popular roller rink that was visible along Woodville Road.In later years after Forest park was sold to new owners in the 1950’s, the rink was used mostly for storage and then in the late 1950’s fell to flames. (Below) a view of the miniature train and some of its young riders, and young at heart.

The Lake Shore Electric Interurban tracks (pictured below) ran along Woodville Road, and was a convenient way for thousand to get to Forest Park. Below are the tracks just north of Reiman Road.

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  Lake Shore Electric Tracks Along Woodville Road

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  The LSE on Woodville Road

The Town of Cygnet, Ohio Taken Hostage

You may not know it now, but at one time, the small and quiet town of Cygnet in southern Wood County was a boisterous boom town of oil men and dreamers. A petroleum paradise as it enjoyed a geological location which had put it smack dab in the center of Northwest Ohio’s famous oil patch.  It was the right place at the right time. For as Pennsylania’s oil pools had begun to dwindle, oil was disovered in 1886 in Wood County and Ohio’s oil fever became red hot.  This multi-county deposit of black crude was the biggest oil patch in America.  Speculation was rampant and everybody was trying to cash in to grab a piece of the “black gold” pie.  Where farmers had grown wheat and corn, a new crop was growing. A crop of wooden oil derricks. Lots of them, by the hundreds, they towered above the fields of green and grain from Cygnet to Jerry City to other oil-rich burgs that don’t even exist anymore, except in the names of old roads and old maps.  Oil Center, Wingston, Mermill, Bays. Galatea, Hammondsburg,  and Mungen. Between 1895 and 1903, Ohio was the leading producer of crude oil in the nation, producing more than 380 million barrels of oil. It peaked in 1896 at 23.9 million barrels of oil.  Northwest Ohio’s rich output of crude brought a a steady stream of new people to the area. “Boomers” were their nicknames as they sought out the hundreds if not thousands of jobs in the oil fields, on the rigs or in the refineries that also sprung up during the era.

Cygnet which had blossomed from a community of 50 to 6,000 almost over night,  seemed to be at the epicenter of this explosion in growth. Sometimes literally. Nitroglycerin blasting accidents and tragedies were not uncommon. Several times during this era, homes were blown off their foundations and buildings reduced to rubble and splinters when the nitro shooters become a bit too aggressive, or careless. Fires were a nuisance and often deadly. The inherent dangers of pulling oil from the ground put scores of people into the ground, as fatalities in the oil patch were a commonplace fact of life.  Explosions, accidents, flames and a few fights in the 13 saloons of Cygnet sent many men and women on a trip up the so called “golden staircase” to their ultimate reward. Like the time in 1902 when Yank Robinson and George Kersey had a duel to the death on Main Street with Bowie knives over a woman. They both died.  But danger be damned, fortunes were being made and Cygnet grew into a center of commerce and industry. With several oil storage facilities in the area and control of the important “Buckeye Pipeline” which carried the crude liquid bounty to ports from Cleveland to Chicago, Cygnet was a name known far and wide, and the boomers kept coming with dreams in their heads and hope in the hearts.

But as the oil stopped flowing with abundance and sweeter crude deposits were discovered in Texas and Oklahoma, the glitter of Wood County’s “black gold” began to fade. By the 1920’s, Cygnet was sobering to reality that the best days might be behind them, although, Cygnet was still handling much of the Ohio basin crude oil that was still being extracted. Productive drilling in the region was still common through the 1930’s, although not nearly as prolific as in years prior. It was however, still the main hub for many of the pipeline companies and tank farms that took root in the region during the boom years. But the wild days were over. A once bustling community which had spread its wings wide and proud for many years, was now but a little swan, as its name implies,  settling into a much quietier future. But one day in November of 1934, it awoke from its slumber. For on Thursday morning, November 15th, the whole town was shaken and taken hostage.

During the very wee hours of the morning, at least six bandits, perhaps eight, had slithered into town and as the 400 souls slept, the bandits set about the business of cutting all the phone lines in town. All 300. They thought.  Once contact with the outside world was cut off, the Cygnet Savings Bank became their next target and at 3:10 in the morning, the solitude was cracked by the sound of the bank’s front door being ripped from its hinges. The noise awakened Caryl Schwyn, the President of the bank, who lived in an apartment above the bank. He ran to the telephone to call for help, only to discover the line was dead. At that point, Schwyn says a blast of nitroglcyren  rocked the whole block. The first of seven nitro blasts the bandits would use to reduce the interior of the bank to shambles.   Schwyn called for his maid, Julia, whose room was right above the safe. She said she thought the explosions were going to come right through the floor. She yelled down to the men below and said “Whose there?”.  One of the bandits yelled back, “Shut up you nitwit.” Firing a shotgun at her to underscore his threat.  It would not be the last shot fired.

The men, were promiscuous in their use of the their guns. Every citizen who even dared to come running to the bank or poked their head out of their homes, was fired at by the gang. It is said at least a 100 rounds were fired through the morning as everyone was holed up inside their houses,  afraid to move.  But Carl Schwyn, at 38 years of age, was not only the bank president, but owner of thousands of oil well leases in the area;  and  he was angry. Not just with this attack on his bank, but the huge personal stake he had in the financial interests of the town. Despite his wife’s opposition, he climbed out of a window and onto the roof of the bank building. The bandits saw him and fired. With bullets flying past him, wearing only his pajamas, he was able to crawl along the rooftop to a drugstore window, and the druggist led him then to the telephone exchange building next door.  There, with the help of Miss Honor Hartigan, the operator,  they managed to find one phone line of out 300, that the bandits had missed. It was the line to Bowling Green. That careless error by the bandits allowed them to make an emergency call to Bowling Green to the sheriff’s office to summon help. All the while, Schwyn was on the phone, he could hear even more blasts coming from the bank and more gunshots. The bandits had started firing at a local resident who had just driven to the telephone exchange. He wasn’t hit, but it was a close call, as numerous shots were fired around him. Minutes later, Sheriff Bruce Pratt rolled up, with a carload of deputies and red lights flashing against the dark sky.  One the bandits yelled, ” Here comes the law”, and they fled the bank.  Within minutes, they were gone, apparently, able to exit town on foot as easily as they were able to enter.  In their wake, however they left behind  The Cygnet Saving Bank building in shattered ruins.  The  seven nitro explosions were so strong, there were no windows left intact. The interior was in splinters.  The one thing that did remain intact – was the vault. Damaged but unopened. They didn’t get inside.  A good thing for this particular day was the “payday” for most of the workers of the Ohio Oil Company and the Imperial Pipeline Company in town.  A big payroll of cash that was obviously the prize the bandits were trying to steal, but despite their best laid plans, they were forced to leave town empty handed. Toledo Police detective were brought in later in the day with fingerprint kits to see if they could identify the cuplrits, but found that they must have worn gloves because there were no prints found anywhere.

The search for the would-be safecrackers yielded few clues and a lot of theories.  Then a  month later, it appears this same  “phone line gang” struck again. This time near Chillicothe in the tiny community Adelphi, Ohio, where once again they terrorized the townspeople with gunshots and explosives and cut all the phone wires.  Once again, they pulled the same stunt, cutting phone lines and electric wires and placing their explosives on the vault at the Armstrong Bank.  Unlike their experience in Cygnet, the nitro worked. They yeggs got inside the safe and took about $2,000 in cash. Police expressed confidence that these were the same men who siezed Cygnet in November. Then, two days later, the gang hit again. This time near Willard, Ohio in the little burg of North Fairfield. Same M.O. Early morning, half dozen miscreants cut all the phone lines then headed for the local bank where they set off some powerful explosion to get inside the bank and the bank’s vault.  Another success, and from this vault,  they managed to snag about $3,000 in bonds. The town of 400 people were terrorized and  watched as the heavily armed gang piled into three cars and headed north out of town.   This would not be their last attempt at such a brazen robbery.  In Clermont County on January 10th, 1935, the bold gang of safe crackers snuck into the small town of Felicity, Ohio, population 700, and in the pre-dawn hours, severed the phone lines, took up positions around the bank and in the street to keep citizens away and then went to work. With no police department there, and no communication, they took their time blowing holes in the bank with powerful explosives. Once again, like in Cygnet, they couldn’t breach the big vault at the Citizens Bank.  It held tight and protected the $7000 cash inside.  The bandits, foiled again, were only able to grab a few hundred dollars from the smaller safes inside the bank before heading out of town. They were never heard from again. At least not using this particular style of robbery.

From this writer’s research, I was unable to find any reports of similar robberies in subsquent months and years. It would appear that this bank job in January of 1935 was the gang’s last. The November robbery at Cygnet being their first. So who were they?  Police agencies in Ohio, say they were no fingerprints and that left detectives with few clues. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed, given the frequent use of nitroglycerin and bullets it’s a wonder no blood was left in their wake. What they did leave behind were four small towns in Ohio that had come mighty big stories to tell, and questions never answered.

One footnote to the Cygnet robbery that actually garnered as many national news articles as the robbery attempt itself was that when the phone lines were cut by the bandits, in the days that followed, the Cygnet telephone manager couldn’t find anyone to repair them. That’s because the day of the robbery was the first day of rabbit hunting season in Ohio, and all of the available repairmen had gone hunting.

Mystery “Death Ray” Inventor Lived in Toledo

One of the motivations I had for starting this blog ten years ago in 2010 was my passion for discovering people and events of the past that had been largely ignored, forgotten or assigned to the junk drawer of history.

Every now and then I spend some time sorting through that old junk drawer and without fail, I tend to find a few gems. Such was the case this week when I came upon the story of Maurice J. Francill. Born in Marion Ohio just before the start of the 20^th century, Maurice, whose given name at birth, was Francis Marion Cowgill,(he changed his name later in life) would spend most of life exploring the mystery and magic of radio. In fact, he was known as the Radio Wizard, and by the early 1920’s he was stunning audiences around the country with his ability to use radio waves to control mechanical devices. From toys to cars to trains, Maurice Francill had figured out the technology of “remote control”. Recall that in the 1920’s, most people were still wrapping their head around the remarkable new concept of listening to people speak from far off cities on a crystal radio in their living rooms.

This was big magic to most people at the time. It was a technology in its infancy and radio stations were just at the early stages of development. Toledo would not have a radio station until 1925. But here was Maurice Francill, already showing people how radio waves could not only travel through the invisible “ether” of air, but how those waves could make things move.

Local Audiences Awed By Francill’s Shows

In the February 10^th , 1923 Edition of the Coshocton Tribune, Francill was demonstrating a remote controlled automobile on the city streets of Coshocton as part of a radio exhibition that was touring the country.

The paper wrote: The machine he will demonstrate tonight is valued at ten thousand dollars and required a year to build. The machine is equipped with a radio selector which makes it possible to perform an operation request from any member of the audience, much in the same manner as if it had “mechanical brains”.

From that description it may be safe to conclude that Maurice Francill, who would later move his operations to Toledo, was the inventor, not just of remote control, but the first autonomous car. That was almost 100 years ago.

Francill would continue his demonstrations for curious eyes in a broad swath of cities and towns across the nation. In New Castle Pennsylvania in 1926 Radio Wizard Francill gave demonstrations at a car dealership of his invention showing the crowd how he could start the automobile, flash its lights, honk its horn or turn its wheel “without the touch of a human hand”. The newspaper writer reflected on what this “remote control” technology might mean for future. Francill even allowed people in the showroom to thoroughly inspect the car to make sure it wasn’t rigged with a hidden driver or wires. It wasn’t. The article also said Francill demonstrated how to fry an egg on a block of ice using this technology, but didn’t elaborate.

His amazing feats before thousands of people would be repeated maimes over from Newark Ohio to Reno Nevada with many stops in between. In Waterloo Iowa in 1927, thousands of onlookers jammed various points of the city to watch in awe as he drove a Hudson Essex down a city street, turned on a washing machine at a city laundry, and started up an ice factory with the press of a button on his 15 pound radio transmitter from a remote location. He was theRadio Wizard. His creativity for finding new applications was impressive. In 1929, In Newark,Ohio he was demonstrating at a local dairy, how his radio device could operate a mechanical milking machine for cows. He repeated the same stunt on stage at a theater in Lima in 1929, and the newspaper reported that the cow, “Duchess” was calmly brought onto the stage and Francill, was able to extract 40 pounds of milk which cascaded into the bucket like “Niagara Falls”. On that same trip to Lima he also showed how radio could be used to operate a street car, and he did it for all to see.

It is not apparent if Francill had succeeded in finding commercial uses for his new radio technology. However, because Francill was seen by many as an entertainer and not a scientist, his credentials and credibility may have been questioned as a serious inventor. Especially when considering that many of his shows also included spiritualism and Seance features. But it was hard to deny that he did have something tangible to provide audiences who marveled at his ability to drive a car, or a play a violin or milk a cow without the aid of a human hand.

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It was the stuff of the future and in the 1920’s and 30’s, the science of radio was the new frontier of possibility and Francill brought some of that “wonder” to hometown America.

As far back at 1926 in an interview with a Reno Nevada reporter, Francill said he had built a death ray machine that could stop a beating heart and wanted to try it our on a convicted murderer who was condemned to die. He said he was asking some state governors to let him try it. He was convinced that the death ray technology would be the technology of future wars when armies would be able to use them to “annihilate people by the hundreds”. He also predicted it would become a popular crime fighting tool, for it not only could kill people, but kill the engines of speeding getaway vehicles and could start distant fires. His discovery of the“death ray”, he said, was found by accident while doing other experiments. He held its technology as a closely guarded secret lest it fall into the wrong hands of amateurs.

He also would later demonstrate the use of “light rays” which he touted as a new method to broadcast voice transmission on a,beam of light. He felt this was in many ways more effective and useful than radio waves. He was prescient on that thought, but light ray technology was not new. Hardly.

It had been invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1880. In fact the use of light ray photo-phones did become an effective stealth communication during World War Two. Today’s fiber optic technology is built on the foundation of light ray technology.

Francill’s one questionable claim was his public insistence that he had a “death ray” device. In 1940 he demonstrated it to reporters and witnesses in Toledo. In February of that year he assembled a group of reporters and witnesses to his home in North Toledo. Nine men, according to the article in the Toledo Blade, watched as Francill used a “queer machine” with port holes and coils, to deliver a death ray of sorts to a rat that rose up on its “shaky haunches, ran in a few agonized circles and died.”

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The reporter, Arthur Peterson, contended that the rat was a large brown alley rat and appeared to be in good health before it was taken out of a wire cage and put into a glass case. From 15 feet away Francill’s projector was trained on the rat inther glass case and caused its sudden death. How and why did it die? What exotic technology had this Toledo inventor uncovered? Francill told the reporter he didn’t know, but he theorized that the “ray” may have deteriorated the tissue of blood and flesh and nerves.

He also demonstrated another experiment with the strange projector by projecting a ray unto a pair of beakers in which were two unidentified chemicals. When hit by the “ray” the chemicals turned from a milky white color to blue color. Francill showed the witnesses assembled at his home other examples of his shadowy science including the projection of a ray from the secret box to a shaft of steel which became very hot. He also showed a “military” invention thathe says was a thermal compound that can be ignited by water and get so hot it can eat through the side of a battle ship.

Just how long Francill lived in Toledo I have not yet determined(still working on it). I do know that he was here in the 1930’s and through part of the 50’s before he returned to his hometown of Marion where he passed away in 1974 at the age of 77.

Was he a crackpot? A conman? Or was he the real deal? Maybe a little of all three. Not sure really, but what I can ascertain by what I’ve read in the limited research I’ve done, is that he made some of his money by selling sponsors to his shows. When he demonstrated his “remote control” automobiles, it was usually underwritten and marketed by a car dealership. Or a dairy if he was milking cows, or a street car company if he was “automating” the local street cars. His draft card and selective service application in 1943 shows he was living at 1702 N. 12^th Street in Toledo, was employed by the Massachusetts Protective Association(insurance company) and was married to his wife Josephine.

I am very curious as to what Francill’s “death ray” was. If it was not a hoax, I suspect that perhaps he had stumbled into some rudimentary microwave wave technology. The use of very high frequency radio waves to heat objects, which had been discovered in the 1930’s and even featured at the 1939 World’s fair in Chicago.

Regardless, even if Maurice Francill was just a clever huckster who could harness electronics to make a quick buck, he gave Americans of all ages and walks of life a sense of wonder of the world around them, a sense of the future wonders that would eventually come to fruition. Heat the very least a futurist, and a teacher who helped spark the imagination of the country.

Were Wild Parrot Once Native to Ohio?

Once native to Ohio, with some sightings in Northwest Ohio

The answer might surprise you. Because the answer, according to some accounts, is -yes. The bird in question was the Carolina Parrot or parakeet(Conuropsis carolinensis), a -tropical looking bird, about the size of a robin with colorful green, yellow and orange plumage and a long sweeping tail that once flourished throughout eastern North America. Sadly, this grand bird is now extinct. The very last survivor in captivity was named Incas and died in an aviary at the Cincinnati Zoo, one hundred years ago in February of 1918, just months after his mate, Lady Jane, had passed away. It was said that Incas died of loneliness. Ironically, he died in the very same aviary cage that also housed the last Passenger pigeon, Martha, which died in 1914.  Prior to the demise of the Carolina Parrot, this brightly feathered creature populated the skies of the Southern U.S. and parts of the Midwest and Northeast in numbers that were startling and loathsome to the early settlers who viewed the bird largely as a gregarious pest. The parrots were known to decimate farmers’ crops and strip orchards of fruit. The range of this parrot was wide, with sightings from Florida and Georgia, north to New England and New York, and west to Colorado and Texas. The first sightings were in the early 1600’s in the southern states where they were most dominant. The last official sightings though took place in the 1920’s, although, unconfirmed sightings also were reported in the 1930’s.

What caused these beautiful birds to die off? Kevin Burgio, a professor of Ecology with the University of Connecticut has studied the Carolina Parakeet for years. He writes that it’s a mystery. “Scientists don’t know what really drove these parakeets to extinction. Some thought it was habitat loss. Some thought it was hunting and trapping. Some thought disease. A few even thought it was competition with non-native honey bees for tree cavities, where the parakeets would roost and nest.”

Museum Specimen Carolina Parakeet

All we know is they are gone, although we do know where they lived or were spotted over the years. And sometimes when they showed up in flocks of more than several hundreds, their presence was unsettling. In 1780, in upstate New York, a story is told that when a large flock of these aggressive, colorful and noisy birds swooped into one rural Dutch village, the townspeople reacted with fear. They had never witnessed anything like it, and thought it was a sign that the end of the world was nigh. The fear of the birds stayed with the town for years.

In Ohio, they also made people uncomfortable. In a story from a 1924 Toledo News Bee, it was conveyed as to how a flock flew over the state capital n Columbus in 1862. At least 25 of the birds swooped out of the sky across the treetops, noisy and screaming, with the brilliant colors flashing in the morning sun, they provided a rare spectacle, but also startled a group of students who took fright at the menacing flock. That Columbus sighting in July of 1862 was, according the article, the last sighting of the birds in Ohio.

The most common region where the parrots were seen in Ohio was reportedly in the thick forests around Cincinnati. Early pioneers wrote that, at times, the trees were filled with the shrieking hordes. Sycamore trees were their favorite habitat as they were fond of sycamore seeds and cockle-burr seeds as a regular diet staple. Ornithologists have speculated that the birds might have been poisonous, referencing some reports that squirrels that ate their flesh would die. There is really little known about these iconic birds. Research was limited during the time they were abundant in the United States, and it was only after they became extinct that scientist have begun a more focused investigation as to the origins, habitat, breeding, and historical accounts of what was probably the most exotic bird in our history.

So were any of these Carolina parakeets a part of Toledo’s natural history? Perhaps. James Audubon wrote of a sighting in 1806, of a flock of the parrots at the mouth of the Maumee River and Lake Erie. The source of that sighting though has not been confirmed and some scientists are unconvinced that Audubon got it right. Another sighting was reported in 1903, a few miles south of Sandusky as a resident said a parrot would come to feed in his orchard. Again, this report remains as anecdotal evidence only. There were other reports that were more convincing of the birds being seen in areas north of Cincinnati. And its speculated by some researchers that the Carolina Parakeet was probably a rare sight near Cincinnati by the 1840’s. Without more empirical data, however, the haze of time obscures the past and leaves little more than speculation. We may never know for sure if this beautiful parrot found its way to Northwest Ohio. But considering the verdant and rich landscape of heavily timbered swamps and marshes that existed here in this fertile womb of life, it is probably not wild speculation to at least imagine that those green and yellow wings once danced against the sunlight in the skies and the screaming voices of the Carolina Parakeet once echoed in the deep woods of the Great Black Swamp.

THE VALENTINE HEARD ROUND THE WORLD STOPPED IN TOLEDO

It’s Valentine’s day, and one of the largest and most enduring valentines ever received in the United States happened this week, some 63 year ago, in 1949. And you may not know it, but a piece of that once famous valentine resides in Northwest Ohio.  It was called the “Gratitude Train”, or the Merci Train.  A 49 box car train of thank you’s extended to the citizens of the United States from the citizens of France.   Each of the cars filled with hundreds of gifts, artifacts and treasures, large and small, from the French people, as a heartfelt expression of gratitude for the American’s outpouring of love in the form of the famous “Friendship Train” of 1947.

This was the train that Americans sent to help French families get back on their feet after enduring the ravages of World War Two.  The Friendship Train, first proposed by columnist Drew Pearson inspired some 20 million Americans to donate enough items of food, clothing, medicine, money, toys and books to fill 700 boxcars that traveled the nation’s breadth on its way to New York where it was shipped to France.

Overwhelmed by the generosity of the Americans, the French citizens in February of 1949 reciprocated, sending their own Merci Train to the Americans.   It arrived in New York Harbor by ship on February 2nd, 1949 and each state was designated to receive one of the boxcars. The gifts in the 49th car were to be divided between Washington D.C. and the territory of Hawaii.

The Merci Train Arrives in the U.S.

In Ohio, the small four wheeled World War I era boxcar, known as a Voiture, or a 40 and 8 car because it could either carry 40 men or eight horses , arrived in Cleveland on the 10th of February.   Thousands of residents of that city, along with a host of public officials flocked to visit the special wooden boxcar and to view the gifts packed inside. From Cleveland, the car would  make several stops in other cities around the state, including Toledo, where Mayor Michael V. Disalle (who would later become Governor),  and a welcoming committee turned out on a cold February day at Union Station to feel the warmth of the grateful French nation.  Inside the Ohio boxcar was a collection of items that included art, wine, cheeses, toys, books, clothing, needlework , French family heirlooms, war medals, and letters from individuals who personally offered their thanks for all the Americans had done.

Merci Boxcar Now Displayed at Camp Perry

So whatever happened to that boxcar?  Well, it’s right here in Northwest Ohio,  proudly displayed at Camp Perry near Port Clinton.  In fact,  it has been at the Camp since 1950, where it was taken after the Ohio tour in 1949. The gray wooden boxcar was parked on the grounds of the military post in Ottawa County and then largely forgotten over the years.  But  in 1986, a group of local volunteers and historians,  brought the car and its meaning back to life with a restoration effort.  In November of that year, the freshly renewed piece of history was dedicated and opened to visitors at Camp Perry.   And over the past 25 years it has been restored two more times.  In 1998, after suffering tornado damage  and again in 2006, when it got a new coat of paint and a display of plaques from the various French Provinces where the train had first traveled in France.   The “voiture” is currently parked under a partial canopy, amid a larger display of other military artifacts of tanks, guns, and aircraft and is available to visitors to behold,  however, only the exterior of the boxcar.  The interior of the car is empty.  Removed of its precious payload some 60 years ago, the whereabouts of those items are mostly lost.  The Ohio State Historical Society has about a half- dozen of the items, and even they are no longer on display, but in “storage” in Columbus.  The photos of the items, however, can be viewed  on their website. They include a bust of General Lafayette, a wedding dress, a copper kettle and an antique French doll.

Value of Train Measured In Meaning, Not In Treasure

So while the proud old “voiture” boxcar that rests at Camp Perry may now be empty, its significance is not.  For those who can appreciate what this meant to the American and French alike, it is filled with memories of how the citizens themselves  of two nations can indeed forge common bonds of friendship and can reach across the ocean to make a real difference.  Drew Pearson, the newspaper columnist, would observe later that the exchanges between the two countries had prompted millions of American and French children to begin pen pal relationships, predicting that many of these young Trans-Atlantic friendships might endure for decades in the future. I wonder if they have?  But also wonder why this Valentine’s Day story is so seldom told or taught in history books of World War Two.  The  story of not how war is waged, but how peace is waged.

Other links on this story you may enjoy.

http://www.mercitrain.org/

http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/friendship_train.htm

http://www.thefriendshiptrain1947.org/

Toledo’s Big Organs still make powerful music

(This is from a story I did recently at NBC 24)

 

TOLEDO — There is no larger musical instrument or nothing more majestic than a concert or theatre pipe organ.  In Toledo, we still have plenty of people who love to listen to their powerful music and luckily a number of people who are passionate about keeping their music alive. That passion for the big organ sound is in evidence this with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra as they continue to present special organ concerts featuring the now restored and historic Skinner organ at the Peristyle. For those who have never heard the Skinner organ or any large  theatre or concert pipe organ, it can be a thrilling experience. (Think Phantom of the Opera).  So what is it about this big music that we love so much. “It’s a combination of all the parts coming together to make a wonderful sound.” says Evan Chase, who is President of the Toledo Theatre Organ Society. Chase, who doesn’t play the organ is fascinated by them and has become an expert technician who can tune and restore them. He currently has two of the large theatre organs in his south Toledo home.  One of them is a “Mighty Wurlizter” organ, made in 1926, salvaged from the Loews’s Theatre in New Rochelle, New York.  This organ with a beautiful wooden console, he  is hoping to donate it to someone or some group that wants to give it a good home in a local theatre or concert hall.   While the Wurlitzer that takes up much of his living does not currently play,  Chase has another, set up in his basement, and it does play and is the centerpiece of his own old-time movie theatre, complete with seats, a large screen, and projector system.  The Golden Kimball organ, he says, was originally installed nearly a 100 years ago in the Capital Theater of Aberdeen South Dakota.   It was purchased by a Minnesota businessman in the early 1970’s and eventually found its way to Toledo and to Chase’s basement. The Kimball, which uses player piano rolls to key the music, belts out a huge sound from it many ranks of pipes and other mechanics which are hidden behind the interior walls of the basement theater.

Chase, 63, and now retired, says he became interested in this pipe organs many years ago when he visited a theater organ concert in suburban Detroit. ” “When I heard and saw that golden console rise up from the orchestra pit and hearing that and seeing the old movies again, I said this is it, this is my life’s work.” And the work of keeping these antique instruments in good shape is considerable. There are thousands of parts and there can be many ranks of pipes, all tuned precisely to a specific pitch, and each organ employs a system of air and mechanics to make the sounds. Without constant care and stewardship, they can become unplayable. Even the tuning can be thrown off with a change in the humidity or temperature.   At the Peristyle,  the restoration of the grand Skinner organ a few years ago was a major undertaking and required hundreds of thousands of dollars and meticulous detail in the rehab.

Evan Chase, meanwhile, hopes he can find someone in Toledo who would be willing to take the big Wurlitzer,  invest in its future well-being, and use it in a fitting venue.  So far, he hasn’t found any takers.  Historically, the large pipe organs were the primary source of music for Toledo’s many movie palaces. They were used in silent movie houses to play a musical score along with the action on the screen. But they fell silent and out of favor when the “talkies” or motion picture sound came into being, or when theatres could use recorded music.   Facing obsolescence,  many of these musical giants were left in the dusty backrooms or just found their way to junkyards or demolition yards. But not all.  Many of them were fortunately rescued. Their value was appreciated by historians and they were frequently restored and reused in other venues.  In Toledo, the “Mighty Wurlitzer” that once the throaty “voice” of the famed Paramount Theatre downtown was also headed for an uncertain future when the old theatre building was torn down in the name of “progress”.  Effiorts to save the organ locally were futile. Thanks to the efforts of those recognized its potential, the Golden Wurlitzer  found its way to California in 1986,  where it was restored is now the featured organ at the Berkeley Community Theatre near San Francisco.

At the Ohio Theatre on Lagrange Street, which is currently under renovation,  the pipe organ still remains on premises, and Evan Chase and others involved in the renovation of the theatre, hope it can be restored to its former sound and power.   Chase is also looking at other various old movie theatres around the Toledo area to see if he might be able to place his Mighty Wurlitzer there and re-create a classic movie palace, but the choices are limited.  In downtown Toledo, the only  large movie palace left is the now restored Valentine Theatre, but they have reportedly declined the offer to take the Wurlitzer and use it there.   At one time, in downtown Toledo, there were over 20 big movie and live performance theatres, but those days have faded, and most fell to the fate of a wrecking ball.  Chase, who is also a classic movie buff and promoter is currently offering special classic film series nights at the renovated Maumee Indoor Theatre on Conant Street. In a future writing, we’ll talk more about his efforts and the desire of others (including this authors), to recall with great fondness, those days when downtown Toledo in the evenings was ablaze with marquee lights and a full spectrum of entertainment choices.

The Toledo Trunk Mystery, A Grave Robbing Tale

 

 

It was known as “Toledo’s Trunk Mystery”  and for a while in 1886, it was probably the most talked about story of the day. Not  just in Toledo, but around the world as it made headlines in many major newspapers. And no doubt it would be just as attention grabbing today, for this story was not only sensational, but  laid bare the grisly truth of grave robbing by medical schools. A story that began in a Toledo train station where the lifeless body of a young woman was found in a large trunk. As the New York Times relates the story on September 11, 1886, the trunk had been put on the Wheeling and Lake Erie train earlier in the day in Bellevue, about 40 miles east of Toledo.

  

“Among the assortment of trunks that arrived this forenoon was one from which there came a terrible odor. It was placed in an isolated spot and the authorities were notified. When the detectives broke open the trunk it appeared to be filled with straw, but on pulling out a quantity, the officers found the body of a young woman. She was of medium height with blue eyes and brown hair. The clothing was of fine quality, indicating that the victim was of a family in good circumstances. In the mouth, a lot of tissue paper had been stuffed.”

Police stayed with the trunk and waited for someone to claim it and and finally a man did. He was promptly arrested and identified as Martin.E. Wilson. He told police he lived near Bellevue, Ohio and didn’t know the contents of the trunk but had been given money by “certain parties” to take the trunk to Toledo where he was to turn it over to a Dr. Hill from the Toledo Medical College on Lagrange Street. Dr. Hill, however, later said he knew nothing about it. A subsequent investigation by the Lucas County Coroner’s Office concluded that the woman had died of consumption a day or two earlier and without any foul play, but for some reason this woman’s body had been spirited away before her burial. The coroner even noted there had been puncture marks under the arms for embalming. By the next day, however, more information was forthcoming and it was revealed that the body was that of Belle Bowen, the 17-year old daughter of a well-known and “prosperous farmer” John.M. Bowen. She had died of consumption(tuberculosis) and had been buried in a small cemetery near Attica, but her grave, still fresh from the Friday burial, was exhumed that same evening. It latercame out at trial that Wilson had worked under the light of a full moon that September night to pull her body from the grave and then put it into a large trunk before loading it on the train to Toledo with a final destination at the Toledo Medical College. When news of what appeared to be a “grave robbing” surfaced, indignation grew rapidly. And it was widely speculated that this might have been part of a regular system of grave robbing that had been taking place to help medical schools obtain cadavers for research and training. The Bowen family doctor, an H.G. Blaine was arrested. It was alleged that the man who took the trunk to Toledo, Martin Wilson was his assistant and the two of them had conspired to steal the body of young Belle. Wilson also faced charges, along with several staff members of the Toledo Medical College. Back in the Attica and Bellevue area, neighbors and townspeople were irate. A number of men threatened to lynch the two medical men if they returned to the area. Meanwhile, farmer John Bowen traveled to Toledo, with the empty coffin of his daguhter to reclaim his beloved Belle.

In the ensuing trial, it was learned that the 35-year old Wilson was a medical student who had been offered free tuition by the Toledo Medical College to bring them cadavers which were rare in those days since there was no lawful way to obtain them. Wilson was eventually convicted and sent to prison, while Dr. Blaine was cleared of charges, claiming that he didn’t know Wilson had stolen the body and had merely helped him buy the large trunk.  Blaine eventually returned to practice and moved to Willard Ohio. The staff members at the college were also cleared of wrong doing.

Today, Belle Bowen’s body lies undisturbed, and otherwise undistinguished in her grave at the tiny Omar cemetery near Attica, alongside her parents and other family members. There is no notation of how famous she was in death in 1886 when much of the world knew her name and her macabre story.

The practice of grave robbing was apparently in vogue for a number of years in the Toledo area, for only ten years later after this case made Toledo famous, another Toledo doctor was arrested for stealing corpses from the Toledo Infirmary cemetery. Dr. F.O. Hunt was charged with stealing the body of Edwin Cartwright from his grave. The New York Times reported that the coroner at the time, said he was believed to be “part of a gang of professional ghouls operating here for several months and reaping a rich harvest”.