Area History

For many decades of the 20th century, folks in Mansfield wanted to claim Red Skelton as a local boy.  In the 1930s, newspaper stories in the city paper referred to him as “Mansfield’s Red Skelton,” or sometimes “Mansfield’s contribution to stage and screen.” It’s not hard to understand the attraction: hundreds of thousands of homes […]

MANSFIELD — When “The Great War” ended with an armistice in 1918, it was known as the “War to End All Wars.” A century later, it is a war overshadowed by later events that plunged the world into an even deeper war and subsequent events that command our constant attention. A May 5 event will […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the 1860s and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. The books are available from Lintern for $25 a set, tax and shipping included. Each book is about […]

In the sunny days of 1963, kids and families and teenagers on dates had a new place to play miniature golf in Mansfield. This was during the halcyon days of the city’s expansion, when department stores all left downtown and moved to the wide open prairies of Park Avenue West, where a golden mecca of […]

The bandstand in Central Park on the Square in Mansfield witnessed more than 80 years of all the things that went on in the heart of town, and a thousand speeches with every point of view imaginable—including one by a sitting US President in 1912. After the bandstand was taken down in the 1950s, having […]

During the first decade of the 1900s, Mansfield had a new outlook on a new century: crazy optimism in a blossoming economy with brilliant industrial success. The city was goofy with hope in an unparalleled future. In the midst of all this rosy good cheer there emerged in the city a kind of unofficial mascot, […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the 1860s and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. The books are available from Lintern for $25 a set, tax and shipping included. Each book is about […]

When this photo was taken in 1912, Delaware Street was one of the main thoroughfares in Ohio: the primary route from Cleveland to Columbus. If you drive into the distance of this picture you’ll end up in Delaware, Ohio. Automobile traffic through town was becoming more significant all the time in 1912, but if you […]

At the turn of the 20th century, Mansfield was not yet a major city in Ohio, but it ranked among the top of the nation in certain industries: one of these was the manufacturing and distribution of cigars. Fortunately for us, this tremendous facility for rolling and selling cigars happened to correspond with the greatest […]