Area History

Let me give you a glimpse into a different world. It was Mansfield — so there are familiar aspects to this other world — but the people in that Mansfield lived a very different life from what we know of our city in the current century. This was 1915. There was no television, no radio. […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes […]

MANSFIELD — Who could have ever guessed in 1910 that the Ohio State Reformatory would one day be a tourist attraction? Certainly not any of the thousands of men who lived in these cellblocks. For the first 100 years of its life the OSR facility was kept in pretty sound shape, but it took only […]

It was the first movie filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory. At the time one of the Hollywood producers called it “the first major motion picture ever filmed in Ohio.” He added, rather wistfully, “it may not be the last.” This was in 1975. The movie was called Harry and Walter Go To New York. […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes […]

The Clear Fork River brought the village of Newville to life, and it was also the cause of its end. A close look at the left side of this 1913 photograph shows a covered bridge that crossed the river, depicting how close to Main Street the waters flowed. Every spring the town was in peril, […]

MANSFIELD — Many publishers don’t want to take on a Then & Now project because these collections are known in the industry as “parking lot books.”  Photographers display old pictures of cool buildings from long ago, and then identify the same location today with a disappointing shot of a parking lot. But what if we […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes […]