MANSFIELD — Thomas French created worldwide impact with his textbooks on mechanical drawing and engineering, and as the architect of Ohio Stadium.
But his roots were planted in Mansfield.
Thomas Ewing French was born Nov. 7, 1871 in Mansfield. His father, Rev. Daniel Houston French, was 40 and his mother, Janette Helen Methven, was 31.
Thomas grew up in a family of ministers. His grandfather, Rev. David French, was a pastor for 44 years in Washington County, Pa., where Thomas’ father, Daniel, was born. Daniel French completed college in 1857, went on to the Theological Seminary in Xenia, and then began his ministerial duties in Canonsburg, Pa., in 1861.
In 1867 Daniel French became the pastor of the United Presbyterian Church in Mansfield, a position he held for 12.5 years. In 1870, the French family resided at Fourth and Mulberry Streets in Mansfield.
In 1879 Rev. French received a call to become the pastor of the United Presbyterian Church in Dayton. At the time, Thomas was 8 years old and in the second grade in the Mansfield Public Schools. His younger brother Edward was 4.
According to a Dayton Central High School Class of 1890 history account, Rev. French’s church, the United Presbyterian Church, was located at Fourth and Jefferson Streets in downtown Dayton.
In intermediate school (today known as middle school) Thomas French was in the same class as the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who also grew up in East Dayton. In a 1933 story in The Lantern (Ohio State’s student newspaper), French remembered sitting behind Dunbar in their eighth-grade class. He said Dunbar’s intellectual quality, which he called genius, was apparent to his classmates and teachers.
Upon entering Dayton Central High School in September 1886, French and Dunbar were joined by a young man from the West Side of town, Orville Wright. A friendship developed.
French and Wright were both mechanically minded and formed a bond in a class of about 10 students. They were both sons of ministers who were religious leaders in the community, and each had an interest in sports.
Both left after their junior year of high school; French never returned after the 1888-89 Christmas vacation. The Central High school newspaper’s January 1889 edition noted, “Ewing French has left school, accepting a position in the drafting department of Smith and Vail.”
In the fall of 1891, after advanced course study at Miami Business College, Thomas French entered Ohio State University. French helped pay his way through OSU as a patent draftsman and as a part-time assistant in the drawing department.
Midway through his studies at OSU in 1893, Thomas French took a summer job at the World’s Fair in Chicago working as a draftsman in the anthropology department. French finished a mechanical engineering degree at Ohio State in 1895. Three years later, OSU hired him to teach drafting, and that’s how he spent the rest of his life.
After settling into his position on the OSU faculty French married Ida Richards on June 29, 1898 and they had a daughter, Janet, born in May 1899. Ida passed away in April 1903. From that time on, Thomas French committed his life to raising Janet and to his career as an educator and administrator at Ohio State.
After his father Daniel passed away, his mother Janet Methven-French came to live with Thomas and Janet.
As an educator, French gained national and international renown. He wrote textbooks on engineering drawing that sold in excess of a million and a half copies, and were used in over 500 universities in America and around the world.
In 1911, French wrote a modest textbook, A Manual of Engineering Drawing. It did well. The preface to the 1918 2nd edition begins by stating that he carefully weighed the criticism that came in from 100 schools that used the first edition. People asked for more on lettering and on working drawings.
“For more than two generations, engineers the world over — hundreds of thousands of them — gained their vision of what engineering’s gift to society was to be from Thomas Ewing French,” said scholar John H. Leinhard in a story on French for the University of Houston’s College of Engineering.
In addition to Dr. French’s legacy as an educator, and because his brother Edward played football at Ohio State, he became a leader in developing and administering OSU athletics. Thomas French took on the responsibilities of hiring coaches for team sports and expanding the scope of the school’s athletic programs.
By 1906, he was involved in promoting the building of Ohio Field for football games, with a seating capacity of 5,000. In 1912, he promoted Ohio State’s entry into the Western Conference, which evolved into today’s Big Ten Conference. French was chosen as Ohio State’s faculty representative to the conference.
Also in 1912 OSU, President William Oxley Thompson created the Ohio State Athletic Board and named Thomas French its president, a post he maintained for more than 30 years. He oversaw the expansion of seating capacity of Ohio Field to 10,000 by 1916.
On Nov. 4, Chic Harley led Ohio State to a 14-13 win over Wisconsin. French saw the 12,500 fans jammed into Ohio Field for that game and decided something much larger was needed. That was the seed that sprouted into what would become Ohio Stadium.
By 1918 French had recruited OSU graduate and architect Howard Dwight Smith to take on the complete design of a stadium.
On Oct. 21, 1922 Ohio Stadium was dedicated before a crowd of 70,000 people. French’s vision earned him the title of “Father of Ohio Stadium,” and the facility is still in use today.
Between his prominence in engineering education, selling over 1.5 million textbooks, and his part in creating Ohio Stadium, French’s presence looms large in Ohio. French Fieldhouse on the Ohio State campus remains today as a testament to his years of commitment to Ohio State University athletics.
In June 1942, French was invited to Chicago to receive the Lamme Medal for achievement in engineering education from the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education.
He died on Nov. 2, 1944, at the age of 72. He is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery, in Columbus.