bank repossessed property list

Just a reminder; I send out a list of Richland County bank repossessed properties every weekend. If you want to be on the list, send me your email address. There are currently about 150 homes on the list.

jacob barr composition book

Here's another extract from Jacob Barr's (Louis Bromfield's Great Grandfather) composition book. I'm not sure of the date, but pre-Civl War and by this poem and other clues, he was in school and in District 5.

[Composition Day]

Today again if it don’t rain

Is composition day

And I appear as usual here

With something too to say

In olden time the god of rhyme

Was wont to aid the poet

But I don’t claim a poets fame

I’m crazy and I know it

I’ve touched the lyre to please desire

But could not raise a --------

The old concern I mean to burn

And go it all alone

So one and all both great and small

I say prepare for rhyme

Im bound to write although my might

May not give aught sublime

Old Sheakspere once was but a dunce

And learned his abc

And others too but little knew

When they were brats like me

The cabbage plant though small and scant

When young if planted out

Will often grow enough you know

To make a tub of crout

Old number five is just alive

With cabbage plants like me

We’ll thrive I spose but no one know

How large we’ll get to be.

There’s Prude and Cele & Poll & Cal

Armand Liz and Dave

And John and Garn who cannot learn

They’ve tried alas in vain

But mark you I am aiming high

My name a stir creates

I’ll be tis meant next president

Of these united states.

byrd's snow cruiser

I've been working on a display of unusual historical events for our city's Bicentennial and stumbled across this today: Admiral Byrd's Snow Cruiser

The giant 55 foot long, 20 foot wide Snow Cruiser designed for Admiral Byrd’s third Antarctic expedition in 1939 was built in Chicago. It travelled through Fort Wayne, IN and eastward on Route 30, passing through Mansfield at 6 a.m. on the Morning of November 3, 1939 on its way to Boston to be loaded onto the expedition’s ship the North Star.

The cruiser reached Boston in19 days with many mishaps and breakdowns along the way, and accompanied by massive traffic jams of onlookers, but most Mansfielder’s slept through it’s passage through town on Fourth Street, and out Rte. 42 to Ashland.

Once offloaded at the Bay of Whales in the Antarctic the mishaps continued, its lack of traction being its biggest failure. The farthest distance it travelled in the Antarctic was 95 miles, backwards (it was found it had better traction going in reverse).

It served as a winter station for the expedition, buried in the snow on the Ross Ice Shelf. With the war in Europe, funding for the expedition dried up. The snow cruiser was last seen when it was rediscovered in 1962. Today it is either buried beneath the ice or, more likely, at the bottom of the Southern Ocean.

blockhouse

The blockhouse was taken down for restoration in December. The Preservation Commission has design review authority but it has taken some gentle prodding by the Commission to be put into the loop on the project. Fortunately the Chair of the Blockhouse Committee, Lou Hart, and the contractor doing the work, Rudy Christian, are both in tune with appropriateness and preservation concerns. Some of the aspects of the restoration that have surfaced to date:

• The ugly colored stain used on the logs is not removable... will have to be covered with something more suitable.
  
• The current chinking is portland cement which has prevented proper drying of the logs after rains, resulting in rot. Lime mortar will be used in the restoration.
• The interior will no longer include the metal stairs, jail, and other Boy Scout stuff.
  
• The exterior stairs will be built in a more appropriate manner for the time period. That stairs was added along with a door and window when the original blockhouse was converted to a jail and court house use.
  
• A puncheon floor will be installed on the first floor and a board floor on the second. This is consistent with the historical record of the conversion.
• A structural alteration will add hewn floor joists under the upper crib to carry the weight along the length of the two cantilevered support beams. This will allow the restoration without the ugly braces that were added when the support beams broke and sagged years ago.
• A record of each log will be produced that identifies the source and time period. The interior of the lower level will have a display that chronicles the blockhouse history and the data on the logs and restoration.
• The blockhouse will be rebuilt across the park road and on a little higher ground, giving it a better location; more visible.
• Inappropriate memorials and artifacts such as the civil war cannon, bricklayers monument, etc. will not be moved to the new location.
• The Historic Preservation Commission will exert some authority to thwart future siting of monuments and memorials, or inappropriate landscaping elements in the vicinity of the blockhouse.
  

the greenest building is one that is already built

The latest issue of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust, is THE GREEN ISSUE, all about the myriad energy and waste factors associated with both new and old buildings. The recent green wave has tended to create a perception of a huge gulf between new green buildings and old, drafty, energy-wasters. The hype that accompanied the campaign to build Mansfield's new high school is a prime example of that perception. A more careful analysis of the energy it takes per square foot to maintain a new, LEED rated building, vs. a pre 1920s building is about the same. And the consideration of "embodied energy", the energy already bound up in preexisting buildings or used to construct a new green building, can overwhelm the energy-conservation advantages in new green construction. Wayne Curtis' article, A Cautionary Tale, quotes Mike Jackson, chief architect with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency: "if embodied energy is worked into the equation, even a new, energy-efficient office building doesn't actually start saving energy for about 40 years. And if it replaces an older building that was knocked down and hauled away, the break-even period stretches to some 65 years, since demolition and disposal consume significant amounts of energy. There's no paybacke here," Jackons said. "We're not going to build anything today that's going to last 65 years."
Architect Carl Elefante said it more simply in last summer's National Trust Forum Journal: "THE GREENEST BUILDING IS ONE THAT IS ALREADY BUILT".

jacob barr speech

I've cleaned up Jacob Barr's speech, added punctuation and made it readable. Here's the text:

Draft of a Speech on Education Written by Jacob Barr

c. 1850

Salutations and Greetings! You will not expect of me a display of oratory and eloquence equal to that of speakers who have preceded me. And were I not actuated by a sense of duty and responsibility I would shrink from the task. Yet when I gaze around me and behold the mighty achievements of man accomplished by energy and perseverance and consider the blessings we enjoy as free born sons and daughters of America, I hold it my duty and the duty of everyone to labor in any good cause that has for its object the improvement of the condition of our glorious republic. And education or knowledge being the firm and immovable rock upon which republics stand and the mighty lever by which men wield the most powerful influence, I have thought proper to adopt it as the basis of what I shall say to you this evening, for I know of no subject of more vital importance, so full of interest and beauty, or more immediately connected with the business of the school. And although it may be handled time and again by men of the highest endorsements who keep revolving the mass till every shining truth comes to the surface, it never will be worn thread-bare or cease to be the pearl of greatest price as long as we love liberty and the happy results flowing there-from.

We claim to love our country and boast to the world of our freedom as though we did not inherit it from the God of the universe. I tell you it is the slave of ignorance that is the slave to tyrants, and if we educate and liberate our minds we will burst every chain and shackle that usurpers seek to enthrall us, and walk forth like men in the world. For an enlightened and intelligent people can never be enslaved.

‘Tis true that we owe our prosperity and happiness in a great measure to the unparalleled struggles of our forefathers whose cultivated minds detected the encroachments of a haughty and oppressive nation, and with resolutions as firm as the pyramids of Egypt they hurled back the insults and chains of old England and declared themselves free and independent. And when I look back through history and behold the dense volumes of sulphrous smoke rolling into heaven mingled with the shriek and groans of the wounded and dying and see the American forces in rags and starvation marching to battle, the blood trickling from their bare feet, marking every footprint in the snow, I thank God that I am an American to walk over the graves of such true hearts and extol their mighty deeds.

And shall we the happy recipients of the priceless boon of freedom transmitted to us pure and spotless by those lion hearts and giant intellects prove ourselves unworthy of the inheritance by ignorance and licentiousness? Lock up your schoolrooms and let two successive generations grow up in utter ignorance and they would cease to be freemen and become the abject subjects and vassals of a king and perhaps be ruled with a rod of iron. The grand machinery of your government is so complicated that it requires a highly developed mind to take hold of the helm and guide the ship of state safely over the surging billows of political excitement and hand it down to our posterity perfect and sound as when it was left to us, and what have the deep thought and foresight of our noble fathers done for the cause of education in Ohio?

By and act of congress in 1803 one 36^th part of the land of the state was set apart for the support of common schools, and the money derived from the sale and lease of those lands, besides the interest on the states share of the surplus revenue of the United States and the revenue from banking insurance companies, and with a small amount raised by taxation, form the great school fund of the state of Ohio. And to each district is apportioned every year a sum from the state fund sufficient to defray the expense for 10 months school. Who would not get an education under such circumstances when all that is left for us to do is to take off our coats, roll up our sleeves and pitch in to the books?

And could I elevate and expand your minds so that you could see the beauty and value of it as I see it, as your parents and teacher see it, you would study assiduously. Do you suppose this fine school room was built and furnished at an expense of 8 or 9 hundred dollars merely for your amusement? Nay, verily not, and you will have to account perhaps before you end your career in this world for the manner in which you have improved these precious opportunities. Compare your condition with the condition of the poor African slaves of the south who are born into slavery and drag out a miserable existence in servitude under the lash; no heavenly rays from the gospel are allowed to penetrate the dark recesses of their benighted minds, to loom up the soul with a living hope. No books are allowed to come within their reach from which they may learn the eternal truth that all men are born free and equal. No, they are kept in ignorance. They could not be kept as slaves and they scarcely know that their condition might be better. Or compare an enlightened notion with the savage tribes of the forest if you want to see what education has done. Do you see among them the huge steam boat with two or three hundred tons burden sailing up the river or plowing the deep at the rate of 2 hundred miles in twenty four hours, or do you see large cities churches school mills manufactories canals railroads and telegraphs? No. The birch bark canoe is their steam boat. The bow and arrow, tomahawk, and scalping knife are their implements and weapons, rude wigwams their mansions, and the furs of animals their dress, and yet they can learn as fast as you can when they have the same chances. How easy is it to get an education at the present day? Look at the advantages we enjoy. We have all the inventions, discoveries, and improvements of the world for more than two thousand years past and we seldom think of the toil, energy, and deep thought it has cost intellectuals to discover and establish the shining truths that we have in our possession. How long do you suppose it took man to sail on every sea and traverse every land to discover all the islands, bays, gulfs, lakes, rivers, and measure their length, ascend all the mountains and measure their height, and horizon; have it all nicely compiled in your geography and you can learn all about the world in two or three months.

-Draft ends uncompleted-

oak hill website

The Oak Hill website is up and running again at www.oakhillcottage.org just in time for the cottage to be shut down for the winter (Dec. 30).
I've tried to broaden the information about Oak Hill a little. Up till now the emphasis has been focused on the Dr. Jones era and the late Victorian interior furnishings. You'll find a little more on the website now about John Robinson, who built the house, and the Gothic Revival architectural style. More to come.

local real estate market

The local real estate market took a significant downturn in October and November based on number of sold properties and total dollar volume...off at least 30% to 40% from the same months a year ago. If we've hit our annual low already, it isn't too bad, but typically that happens in December and January. If we go into a winter slump from this point, it will be a significant drop.
Average sold price is off about 5% from a year ago.
It's a buyer's market and there are a lot of listings, but still there are properties being held off the market because it just isn't the best time to be selling.

winter arrived this morning

The view outside my front door.

ae monthly

Another issue of Bruce McKinney's AE Monthly (Americana Exchange) is out. I highly recommend signing up for the monthly newsletter by email...one email, once a month; no spam.
Go to www.americanaexchange.com

turkey in the straw

There was a short bit of music used on NPR a couple of weeks ago that stuck in my head. I had written down what I thought was the artist's name...didn't come very close but found it this morning. Georgia Wettlin-Larsen is a Native American singer. Turkey in the Straw

moving websites

Ljbooks.com and alanwigton.com are being moved to different servers and may be down for a while, or a day.

oak hill

Oak Hill Cottage is decorated and ready for Christmas tours beginning this weekend. Regular tour hours are Sundays from 2 to 5 pm until December 30. Groups can be scheduled for any other day by calling 419 524-1765. The organ will be played during Sunday tours. After Dec. 30 the house is closed until tours resume about the first Sunday in April.

updates

Updates:
The crows are roosting in Central Park at night, so I guess winter is officially here.
We had such a lush growing season that the countryside still looks good, even with most of the leaves fallen.
The Mansfield school levy passed!
Don Culliver won the mayoral race.
I'm now on the Board at Oak Hill (Richland County Historical Society), and will be getting a website up and running again for them soon.
My year as sec/treas of MBOR is about up and I'll be sec/treas elect for 2008.
Events are over at the Appleseed amphitheater for 2007, and it's being winterized.

the black orchid of ohio...joe dush and the maxwell code

Not long after opening my bookshop in 1995 I met a book collector from Willard named Joe Dush, well known as a consummate collector of Ohio material. His reputation as an attorney and gentleman had in fact found its way into print in Jack Matthews book about the legendary Mansfield bookman, Ernie Wessen, which I had in my collection. The following article in the AE Monthly revolves around the rarest Ohio book, the Maxwell Code, owned by Dush and sold at auction after his death, and coming up for auction again this December. The Black Orchid of Ohio.