Area History

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Feb. 12, 2016 by Ohio Memory, a collaborative program of the Ohio History Connection and the State Library of Ohio. Richland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites. Ohio’s history with the anti-slavery movement is a […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on July 1, 2020 by the Ohio History Connection. Richland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites. The coronavirus has limited where people can go and what they can do. Outdoor recreation, consequently, has been as popular as […]

LOUDONVILLE — As early as the 1920s, inventor and philanthropist Charles Kettering had advocated for a hospital to be built in Loudonville. At the time, the area was only serviced by general physicians that doubled as surgeons in emergencies, but otherwise patients required long, arduous journeys to surrounding cities for hospitalization. In the 1950s, Kettering […]

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2014. Friends and family from the Village of Lucas set out on an adventure one day in 1912 and they took a camera with them. T he album of photos they left behind tells the story of their visit to a riverside hollow up […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This storyw as originally published at Richland Source in 2014. Part I of this essay was republished last week on June 20, 2020. During the 19teens, the number of silent picture theaters in downtown Mansfield took a quantum leap. After spending generations of life confined to one’s own mundane experience — seeing only […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally published on Richland Source in 2014. Bright photographs made of light — photographs that moved — suspended in the dark like dreams that had been captured in the night and put on display.  It was a totally new kind of theater in the first decade of the 20th century, where the […]

ASHLAND — If you’ve ever walked around in Ashland’s older areas, you may have noticed the words “Keep Sweet” stamped on the concrete. I recall seeing it as a child, but never knew the significance until later. Those words were the life motto of local cement maker, Ard Blackford. But Ard was much more than […]

LOUDONVILLE — In the 1950s the Flxible Company began manufacturing an 11-column cigarette vending machine for the Mercury Vending Company of Cleveland. With over 50% of adults, and 75% of men, admitting to smoking tobacco at the time, cigarettes were always in high demand. With no ID required to purchase tobacco, the vending machines were […]