Area History

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2015. It has been three or four generations since Phoebe Wise has been gone. There are very few people alive today who ever actually laid eyes on her. Yet she still has a place in the family of this town. Perhaps today her place […]

FREDERICKTOWN — A real photo postcard from Aug. 29, 1913, gives us a glimpse of the fire that wiped out a block of Fredericktown’s business district that day. The day had been a typical enough Friday, busy with shoppers coming and going from the Cassell grocery store, two meat markets, two barber shops, and even […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on May 4, 2017 by the Ohio History Connection. Richland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites. This man is Willard Lee Heckman of Williams County, Ohio. From late 1941 until April 13, 1943, Heckman served with […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2015. It was a pizza parlor that stood alone among the competition: the only one that offered a live ragtime piano player. No one remembers if the pizza was any good … no one forgets the piano player. Today the building is Planet Rock.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on May 16, 2019 by the Ohio History Connection. Richland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites. During the Spring 2019 semester, Otterbein University sponsored a class in conjuncture with the Ohio History Connection to teach students […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in 2015 at Richland Source. It has long been a rumor of local lore, echoing out of the dim past, that the Nabisco Company started in Mansfield. This is sort of true. It can also be said that Nabisco started in dozens of other cities as well because […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on April 27, 2018 by the Ohio History Connection. Richland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites. In recent weeks I’ve been working on the Ohio History Center’s White Castle Collection, going through boxes of that company’s […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2015. Easter came early in 1913, so did the April showers. Easter fell on March 23, and the sky fell shortly thereafter. Within a week of Easter the weather was being called “Our National Calamity.” The storm system officially mounted out west, and came […]

FREDERICKTOWN — This business establishment is a bit of genius ranking up there with the bar in Mount Vernon that used to be known as “The Office.” Here, at Thomas R. Huggins’ establishment in Fredericktown, a gentleman could head out of the house announcing that he was going to get a good, proper haircut … […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on May 11, 2018 by the Ohio History Connection. Richland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites. What was high school like in the 1930s? Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what life was like for teenagers […]