Extra! EXTRA! Read All About It!

If you are geek like me, I have some exciting news!

The Medina Library has just purchased several Wadsworth newspapers on microfilm.

Masthead from the Wadsworth Enterprise

What?!? You're not thrilled!

Wait. You will be.

First, how can you not love using newspapers for historical and genealogical research?

In newspapers you can find information on your ancestors that you cannot find anywhere else. Sure, you can find birth, marriage and death notices. But you also find information about your ancestor's real estate sales, businesses (and the ads they put in the paper), out of town visitors, vacation plans, engagements and illnesses.

Portage Sentinel 24 February 1847, page 4.
William Tagg followed his father, James, into
the painting and glazing business.

Not too long ago, I found a notice where one of my relatives hosted the birthday party for his mother-in-law. It included a list of all the guests. A whole list of people that can now be added to my research plans.



And when I was researching my 3X great-grandfather, James Tagg, I found a notice of his attendance at a GAR reunion. It told how the gathering was entertained by his stories from his Civil War Service. Apparently, he was a storyteller. Who knew?

Excerpt from a larger article on the Reunion of the 91st O.V.I.
Gallipolis Tribune 1 August 1894, page 3.

Cleveland Plain Dealer 6 November
1929, page 7. Clara was running for
a seat on the Cleveland Board of
Education. It was a position she
held for the rest of her life.

To learn more about online sites to do newspaper searches, look at this BLOG POST from 2 September 2015.

Now, in Medina County, the type of news reported in the papers changed over time. The early papers, 1830-1866, mostly consisted of national and political news. Many of these early papers affiliated with a particular political party and their articles reflected a strong bias. But when you do find information on a ancestor or local resident, you cherish it even more.

Some, like the one below, can fill in the gaps for a period when vital records are scarce or nonexistent.

The Watchtower 1838.
The notice gives us George MCCORMICK's birthday
and his father's name. We know he was apprenticed
to Noah BRONSON, who was an early settler of
Medina and a judge from 1823-1830. We also know
that George is sprightly and active and that Noah did
not have a high opinion of George's father.

Around 1870, more articles on local events and people start creeping into the paper. This trend continued until about 1960. Papers from the 30s, 40s and 50s, are FULL of social events that list everyone who attended and often describe the food served and the clothes worn. These details help give us insight into our ancestor's lives - the best of reasons to get excited about newspapers!

And the Medina County District Library has never owned any of the Wadsworth newspapers on microfilm, until now.

Here is the list:

Medina Watch Tower – 1 reel
Sep 12, 1838-Apr 14, 1841
June 2 & 9, 1841
Aug 4, 1841-Mar 2, 1842

Wadsworth Enterprise – 3 reels
May 4, 1866 to April 25, 1877

Wadsworth News Banner – 26 reels
Feb 3, 1910- Dec 29, 1955

Wadsworth News – 6 reels
Oct 30, 1920-Oct 6, 1932
Feb 23-Sep 2828, 1933
Nov 2, 1933 –June 29, 1944

Now, besides the fact that Wadsworth is one of three cities within Medina County, what can we get out of these films?

First, the Wadsworth Library has the obituaries in the Wadsworth newspapers indexed as part of the Ohio Obituary Project on the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museum website: http://www.rbhayes.org/  Access to more obituaries? That is always a good thing!

Next, imagine how my blog on the Wadsworth Coal Mines could be impacted by having access to these Wadsworth newspapers. The post would probably contain a lot more detail than I was able to glean from The Gazette.

AND...

The 1876 editions of the Medina Gazette have always been MIA (Missing In Action). This is critical for two reasons that come immediately to mind.

1. 1876 was the American Bicentennial. As Medina is celebrating its Bicentennial, wouldn't you like to know how the county celebrated the first U.S. Centennial in 1876? Me too!
2. 1876 was the year the H.G. Blake died and for years local historians (including myself) have searched for his obituary. If you want to know who Blake was, read this POST.

The Wadsworth Enterprise has its 1876 editions:

The Wadsworth Enterprise 19 April 1876, page 4.

NOW are you excited?  Me too!

Wadsworth Coal Mines and Strike Breakers

Coal was discovered and mined in Wadsworth Township as early as 1829. With the advent of train transportation, it became more profitable to extract the coal and starting in the 1850's coal mines popped up all over the area.

One of the largest and most profitable of the mines was Silver Creek mines, owned by Erastus Loomis. Occasionally, the miners would go out on strike to pressure the owners to improve wages or working conditions. It was a common practice for the owners to bring in outside workers to take the striking miners' places. It was a cutthroat practice and it was effective.

Map from Rogues Hollow History and Legends by Russell W. Frey
showing the Silver Creek Mines (with red triangle)

In 1880, the Wadsworth mine owners decided they would only pay the miners for the coal chunks that were a certain size. So they started screening each load of coal. The miners were not paid for anything small enough that it passed through the screen. The miners were being paid 50 cents per ton and they were expected to bring a certain tonnage of coal to the surface everyday. If they didn't meet their quota they would be considered a substandard worker and subject to being fired.

Does this mean the owners threw out the smaller coal? Most certainly not! Smaller coal was still fine for home use and it would have been sold.

The miners were incensed!  They were already being paid as little as .50 to $1 per day for the back breaking and dangerous work. Now part of their labors weren't even going to be measured! And the owners were making incredible profit! So they went out on strike!

In her book, Medina County Coming of Age 1810-1900,  historian Joann King says that the strike started on April 14th of 1880. Curiously, I could not find any newspaper articles from that date about the strike. The Medina Gazette was silent on the topic, until later in the year.

But as during past strikes, Erastus Loomis was looking for workers to take the place of the striking miners. However, he couldn't find enough workers locally. So he combed the black communities of the south. Soon, 200 Black men were unloaded from the train cars to work at the mine. Most were from Virginia.

As they would have with any strike breakers, the miners threatened the Black men. Loomis responded by housing the men, and their families, behind a stockade.

14 May 1880, page 7, Medina Gazette

The county Sheriff called for help and Cleveland sent 25 deputies. When the threats continued, the Ohio Militia was sent to protect the strike breakers.

14 May 1880  Medina Gazette, page 7

In June, the strike was still on,  and the Black miners appreciated the presence of the Militia, believing their very lives depended on the soldiers.

Medina Gazette 4 June 1880, page 7.

Within two weeks the strike was settled and the miners went back to work. The militia was sent home.

Medina Gazette  18 June 1880 page 7

True to their word, after the militia left, a number of the Black miners also left. But a number stayed and settled in the Wadsworth area. Over the years, more strikes occurred and and more strike breakers were imported. And so more Black people settled in the Wadsworth area.

A survey of the 1900 Federal Census for Wadsworth Township, shows of the 57 Black males living in the township, 35 were of working age. 27, or 3/4 of those men were miners.

Around this same time, the children of the Silver Creek Black miners, were being taught by a "A colored woman from Massillon." (Joann King, Medina County Coming of Age, page 407).

Soon after the families settled in, a Baptist Church was organized. Now known as the First Baptist Church, they hold annual reunions.

Descendants of the Black coal miners first gathered in 1993.
Sun Banner Pride, 2 September 1993.

Sun Banner Pride 10 August 2000

SOURCES:
Medina County Coming of Age 1810-1900 by Joann King
Medina Gazette:
      16 April 1880, page 7
      14 May 1880, page 7
      28 May 1880, page 2 and 7
      18 June 1880, page 7
 Remembering Wadsworth  by Caesar Carrino
Rogues Hollow History and Legends  by Russel W. Frey
Sun Banner Pride
     2 Sep 1993
    10 August 2000
Wadsworth Center to City Eleanor Shapiro, editor
U.S. Federal Census through Ancestry LE

Missing...

During the pioneer times, there were no roads, few paths, nor any other markers that would assist travelers as they made their way through the dense forests and marshy swamps of southern Medina County. If they were lucky, they had a guide to lead them through.

Occasionally, pioneers would lose their way and end up far from where they intended. (How Christopher Columbus of them!) Children could easily wander away from their parents. Sometimes, they were never seen again. Medina had just such an instance.

By the early 1820's when Abel Beach and his family moved into Wadsworth Township, the trails weren't much better. Abel brought his wife, Roxey, and three children with him, sons George, and Orlando, and daughter Sylvia, from their home in Torrington, Connecticut. Son George helped Abel build Wadsworth's first sawmill in 1824. When a bear went after the family's pigs, Roxy shot it dead.These were not faint hearted pioneers!

Sylvia had contracted scarlet fever as a child. It left her deaf and mute and also caused her to sometimes get confused easily. Accounts fluctuate as to how old Sylvia was; anywhere from 12 to 26. As her brothers were both born around 1800, it is likely that she was close to them in age, in her early twenties.

One day in March of 1823, she just disappeared from their cabin. Reports varied as to how that happened. Some reports say that she just slipped out of the cabin. Other say that she was traveling behind her mother and vanished without a trace. As soon as the family discovered that Sylvia was missing, they started the frantic search.

There had been a light snow that yielded some faint tracks, but as the snow melted those tracks faded away. The next day, a search party formed drawing on citizens from miles around. They searched for days with no luck. A week later, an even larger search party was formed with over 400 men. By now, they were no longer looking for a live Sylvia, but were hoping to bring some measure of peace to her parents by finding her body. No trace was ever found.

We will never know what happened to Sylvia. Did she fall down a coal shaft in a region that was later known for its coal mines? Did she become the victim of a ravenous wolf pack or hungry bear? Did she simply fall exhausted to the ground and freeze to death? We just don't know.

But Wadsworth has not forgotten about Sylvia. In 2014, Jeff Nicholas and Roger Havens wrote a children's book The Story of Sylvia Beach. And as part of their Bicentennial celebration, children participated in a morbid scavenger hunt "to find Sylvia Beach or her grizzly bear."

Her original tombstone in Woodlawn Cemetery in Wadsworth became unreadable so it has been replaced. The epitaph still reads: Sylvia Daughter of A & R Beach Lost in the Woods 17 April 1824 And Never Found

Photo provided by "essay" on FindAGrave.com

Sources:

Wadsworth Memorial by Edward Brown, 1875.

The History of Medina County and Ohio by Baskin & Beatty, 1881.

Remembering Wadsworth from Pioneers to Streetcars by Caesar A. Carrino, 2009

"Deaf Woman's Disappearance a Big Mystery" by Mark J. Price Akron Beacon Journal, 14 March 2016, p. B-1
"Tombstone, But No Grave There" Evening Independent (Massillon, OH), 2 June 1911, p. 1.