Submitted

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. MANSFIELD — The sound of music, from every ilk of amateur and professional, from every kind of instrument and noisemaker imaginable, was once a vital element of the life and education of everyone in Mansfield.  This was, in no small part, due to the […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. BELLVILLE — The summer of 1913 was hot. Comparing the daily highs and lows between then and now suggests that the Richland County of that summer showed no fewer particular tendencies toward global warming than it does today. A hundred years ago women of […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. MADISON TOWNSHIP — It is the summer of 1913, more than a century ago, and the Sunshine Club of Richland County is going out to take in some laughs and spread a little sunshine. We know they were having fun because they left behind […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. LUCAS — There isn’t much in history that comes back once it’s gone, but a painting from the past reappeared on a barn at Malabar Farm about 50 years after the original was destroyed. When the Malabar Farm Foundation took over the farm after […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. MANSFIELD — During the summer of 1913, the Sunshine Club went on a series of Trolley Picnics in Mansfield. It only cost a nickel, and the streetcars went west of town to the city parks, or north of town to the picnic grounds at […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. MANSFIELD — When the USPS selected a site for their new Post Office in the 1960s, they solved one problem for Mansfield’s city fathers … and stepped into a different one. The location chosen for the Jackson E. Betts Federal Building covered acreage between […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. MANSFIELD — The story has it, that in 1924 a young city school teacher named Frank Stewart wanted to augment his teaching salary by selling his own Root Beer during the summer. As far as American history goes, the product known as Stewart’s Root […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was previously published at Richland Source in 2013. Let’s reconsider our Richland County pioneers from 1813, in contrast to the media that made its advent during the 1920s. The forested world in which the settlers lived offered them a quiet environment that we can no longer conceive of in our time. Aside […]

By 1928 the Mansfield Public Library had been a crowning jewel of Third Street for a generation before this photo was taken. It was so beloved by the next several generation of Mansfielders as well, that when proposals were made in the 1970s to replace the old building, voters resounding refused to sanction the change. […]

By any standards, the original Mansfield Carnegie Library on Third Street is a classic jewel of American civic architecture. It is a purely 20th century synthesis of Greek and Roman designs, that was grafted into our cityscape with the intention of imbuing our city with ancient cultural sophistication. It is Old World wisdom informing present […]