On one of my daily walks, I noticed this grave in Union Cemetery, which set me a wonderin’. “School Mate” is such a peculiar thing to put on a grave marker!  I did a bit of research, and Wendy Ritter Bayer joined me in the effort.

Here is the cluster of gravestones I was so curious about: Carrie Reid, Ellis & Nina Reid, Mary Frances Jones.  Carrie Reid’s  epitaph says “School Mate” but she shares a last name with Ellis and Nina Reid, and is their general age.  Also, she died in her 70s, so it seemed unusual to hark back to her school friends. 

Gravestones left to right are: Carrie Reid, Ellis & Nina Reid, Mary Frances Jones. Carrie Reid was Ellis’ 3rd and final wife. Nina married then was divorced from Ellis yet was buried alongside Ellis. Mary Frances is Nina’s child by a previous marriage.

(1) Ellis Harlen Reid was married 3 times: 
–Flora Ellen Rice m. 1902. In 1903 he and Flora had 1 son, Russ, who died in 1991. Ellis and Flora presumably divorced.
–Nina Jones m. 1927. For some reason Ellis’ second wife Nina owed his first wife Flora $500 for a real estate matter which was paid in full by May 1937. Ellis Reid filed for divorce from Nina in May 1947, the same year Nina died–in September 1947–after a couple month’s illness “survived by her husband Ellis.” 
–Carrie B Quinn m. 1950.  Three years after divorcing Nina, Ellis married Carrie B. Quinn, who predeceased him.

(2) Nina was married 2 times:
–Thomas W Jones in West Virginia;  he died in 1965 so presumably they divorced.  They had a daughter, Marie Frances Jones; Marie died in 1934 and her stone is next to her mother’s.
–In 1927 she married Ellis Reid, divorced him in 1947, and died later that year.  Her house at 524 Lincoln Ave was to be sold and proceeds paid “to my niece, Sylvia Cole, and my sister Ivy Robinson, share and share alike, or to the survivor of them.”

(3) Carrie was married 4 times:
–Oscar Bowman m. 1901; he died in 1954 so she must have divorced him. Carrie and Oscar had 2 living daughters:  Bertha Leola, born 1903, and Helen E., b. 1906. Their address was 1268 1/2 N. High St.  (Bertha married James Dolan in 1921 and Helen married Charles A. Taylor on 16 Aug 1927). Carrie and Oscar also had an infant daughter who died of “pre-mature birth” in 1909. Their address was 1181 Say Ave.
–Elmer Preston Buchanan m. 1918; he died in 1956 so presumably they divorced.
–Loren George Webster m. 1939; he died in 1940 from “barbital poisoning (addict).”
–Ellis Reid, m. 1950. He was 70, she was 67 when they married; she died 5 years after marrying him.  He died in 1961.

I’m surprised at the sheer number of divorces–at least 4 between them. Ellis is buried alongside his second wife, rather than his 3rd and final wife, though that’s not all that uncommon; cemeteries and monument sellers often offer a “2 for one” price, so widowers ended up with a plot they might otherwise be unable to use. Also it wouldn’t surprise me if somehow Nina was instrumental in the choice, since her daughter by previous marriage is in the same plot and style stone.

Now, back to my original inquiry.  Carrie was born and raised in Ohio, as was Ellis.  Nina was born and raised in WV.  So if Carrie was a “school mate,” it was with Ellis.  I am unable to  research whether that happened. But what kind of husband puts “school mate” on his newly deceased, current, wife’s stone?  I’m wondering whether she was a SOUL Mate and the carvers got it wrong.  If so, what a hoot.

138 East North Broadway. Ralph Taylor Van Ness (1902-1989) and his wife Norma Thorp Van Ness (1910-2000) bought this house from North Broadway Methodist Church in 1960 and remodeled it.

Their daughter Margaret Van Ness (now Margaret Nelson) is shown on the porch. 

Margaret writes,

Father dug out the basement and built his office downstairs. We lived next to the warden of the State Penitentiary.  One time we bought a set of golf clubs from the warden’s sister. Another time, when my parents found an old safe in the attic of the garage,  my father asked the trustees if there were any safe crackers amongst them.  The answer: “No, Doc, but maybe next week.”  My parents sent the safe to a company that could open it, so, we’ll never know if there was a treasure or a treasure map inside!  Living on the other side of us was Arch Heck, a professor at Ohio State University, in charge of the Fulbright program, bringing students from abroad to study at OSU. Thus, my parents became hosts to several students, one from Nepal who, he told them, slept on the floor rather than messing up the bed. 

The Van Nesses lived at this address until 1971. It has been significantly remodeled and expanded since the Van Ness time.

[Photos and narrative courtesy of Margaret Van Ness Nelson]

Margaret Nelson grew up in Clintonville and has kindly shared her treasure trove of pix of Clintonville with us. This is the medical office building her father, Dr. Ralph Taylor Van Ness, built in the 1950s at 25 Tibet Road.

Below is a view of the inside. You can see patients in the waiting room, the nurse, Margaret Deckard, at her desk, and Margaret’s father, Dr. Ralph Taylor Van Ness, in another room.  The photo on the right shows Mrs. Deckard in the supply room.

The Van Ness family lived next door to the medical office, at 29 Tibet Road.

Here are Margaret’s parents in their 1950s kitchen. They sold to Dr. John Gardiner in 1959 and then moved to 138 East North Broadway.

[Courtesy of Margaret Van Ness Nelson]

Margaret Van Ness Nelson has shared many family photos with us; this is the house her parents lived in, at 175 East Tibet Road, from 1942-1947.

And here’s a nice contemporaneous picture. Margaret writes, “My mother, Norma Thorp Van Ness, 10 April 1946, in our Dodge, parked across from our house at 175 Tibet, back when there was lots of room to park cars.”

[Photos Courtesy of Margaret Van Ness Nelson.]

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and so I thought I’d use this opportunity to write about my most recent “read”. It’s the book Tipping the Scales: One Man’s Freedom, by Stanley U Robinson with revisions and editing by his son David R Robinson. The book is available as an ebook and a print book.

As an historian wrote recently, heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings, choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them. Such heroes did not wake up one morning and say to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s that, when they had to, these people did what was right.

This book tells the story of some local people who were heroes. In 1954 a Columbus interracial family (Phyllis and Wilson Head and their 2 children) decided to move to an all-white neighborhood. In the racist real estate environment of the time, this was taboo. Though it was decidedly unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of race, discrimination was rampant. The Heads were represented, for the real estate transaction, by attorney Stanley U. Robinson. They were able to conceal Wilson Head’s Black identity only because the seller, banks, and insurer never bothered to ask about race. Once the sale had gone through and the Heads moved into their new house at 2166 Indianola Avenue, all hell broke loose. Attorney Robinson faced the wrath of the banking and real estate agent community (including a threat of disbarment), and his family was deluged with crank telephone calls from the bigoted new neighbors of the Heads. The Heads themselves faced bigotry, but were physically protected by prearranged police presence and local church members’ vigilance. The Heads “stuck to their principles” and refused to be intimidated or bought out.

Though this act of segregation-busting was successful, in 1959 the Head family moved to Windsor, Canada “to get [the] children away from a racist society.” Wilson Head had a PhD and was a respected sociologist and civil rights leader, and the Heads’ (understandable!) move was Columbus’ loss. You can read more about Wilson Head here.

Next up on my reading list: Wilson Head’s own book, A Life on the Edge: Experiences in Black and White in North America. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-9680066-0-3.

Margaret Nelson (née Van Ness) grew up in Clintonville, and has shared some old family photos. Her family lived at the following addresses:

139 W Dunedin, 1939-1941 or 1942
175 E Tibet, 1942-1947
310 E Weber, 1948-1950
29 and 25 Tibet, 1950-1959
138 E N Broadway, 1960-1971

I’ll be sharing these old house photos in the months to come.

This photo is 139 West Dunedin. Ralph Taylor Van Ness (1902-1989) and his wife Norma Thorp Van Ness (1910-2000) bought this house in 1939; it was their first house as a married couple. They lived here until August 1942, when they moved to 175 Tibet Road.

Here’s are some present-day photos; the house has since been screened in and added on to.

[Vintage photo Courtesy of Margaret Van Ness Nelson.]

Last month I provided a glimpse of James Chesnut, who lived at 3338 N. Wall Street. James Chesnut was involved in significant litigation with the North Broadway developers and neighbors. Though last month I said James appears to have been irascible, I’d certainly be that way too if this happened to me. From the Dispatch:

Whew!
James Chesnut Sues North Broadway Residents
Wants Big Damages and Their Sewerage System Declared a Nuisance

James Chesnut, who owns a 20-acre tract along High Street near North Broadway, this morning brought a damage and injunction suit against the owners of property and residents of North Broadway addition. The residences in the addition run their waste water into private sewers, which empty into an open ditch that runs onto the Chesnut land near the owner’s residence. Chesnut’s purpose is to have the courts declare this sewer system a nuisance and order it abated. He says the filth from the vaults, stables, and wasteways runs down near his house, polluting the water in the ditch, where he used to water his stock; that the winds carry noxious and offensive vapors and stenches into his residence, annoys his family, and is a continual menace to their life and health, besides decreasing the value of the premises. He sues for $6,000 damages, $1,000 of this amount because of the pollution of the ditch water on his land. He wants an injunction against the use of the ditch for sewer purposes…

[From Columbus Dispatch (published as Columbus Evening Dispatch) March 21, 1883 page 7.]

A couple months later, the North Broadway developers issued a rejoinder:

A Tart Answer
That Will Scarcely Turn Away Wrath
Filed by James M. Loren in the North Broadway Sewage Case

Some time ago James Chesnut, who lives on High Street north of North Columbus, filed a suit against the owners and residents of North Broadway dwellings and lots to prevent the use of an open ditch for sewer purposes, on the ground that it created a nuisance on the plaintiff’s premises. It was claimed that the suit, if successful, would compel the abandonment of the entire sewage system of North Broadway. Mr. James M. Loren this morning filed an answer, in which he claims that all the sewage from the houses on North Broadway passes into two large cisterns located at least 1,000 feet from Mr. Chesnut’s residence, and that no bad odor can come from the cisterns. About five years ago, Mr. Chesnut himself put in pipes draining his vaults and stables into the open trench. Some time ago, Mr. Loren says, Mr. Chesnut offered to sell him all his premises except the house and yard at a certain price, but he refused to take the offer, and then Mr. Chesnut for the first time objected to the North Broadway sewer system.

[From Columbus Dispatch (published as Columbus Evening Dispatch) May 20, 1883, page 6.]

Apparently Loren’s response was not accepted by the courts, for this article followed along in 1897:

North Broadway Sewage Causing Trouble

About a year ago James Chestnut, a farmer who lives between North Columbus and Clintonville, brought proceedings against property owners on North Broadway for damages on account of the sewer system which drains property along North Broadway. He sued for something over $4,000 damages. The case went to the circuit court and that tribunal issued an injunction preventing the use of the sewer system until it was remedied.

It seemed that when the sewers up there were constructed they were left in such shape that they dumped the refuse of the vaults and houses onto land either belonging to Mr. Chestnut or so close to his house that it created a nuisance. The injunction issued by the circuit court was made permanent and still stands. It now appears that the sewers are still in use and it is said that Mr. L. G. Addison, the attorney who represented Mr. Chestnut, has notified the people of North Broadway that unless they comply with the order of court he will have contempt proceedings instituted against them. One trouble which Mr. Chestnut’s attorney labors under is that the residents of North Broadway change quite often and it thus becomes necessary to notify the new comers of the […] order of court. New comers who are in ignorance of the facts, of course, cannot be held for a violation of an order of court of which they are in ignorance.

[From Columbus Dispatch (published as Columbus Evening Dispatch) Monday August 23, 1897 page 6.]

Occasionally, the name of a local figure pops up with frequency, and one forms an image of, well may I say, an irascible neighbor? James Chesnut (often spelled “Chestnut”) is one of those guys; see other posts about him here.

Who was this guy, anyway? James Chesnut was born in Ireland on May 1, 1820, and he died at age 85 on May 26, 1905. Census records say James was a “machine sawyer,” “works in coal factory”, or “foreman and tool shop”. He seems to have owned 20 acres on North High Street. His wife was Christiana McEwan (b. Dec 24, 1825, d. Jul 14 1891). (One source says “Ewing” but I believe that’s wrong.) She is buried with James in Greenlawn Cemetery. Some census records say Christiana was born in England or Ireland, and there’s also a record that says her father lived in Ridgeway, PA.

James and Christiana had a daughter (one census record says “adopted daughter”), Fannie, who was born around 1854/55. She lived with her parents and seems to have remained single. She continued to live in the North High Street (now Wall Street) house through 1910, but by 1914 she’d moved to 2103 Summit Street. She lived there until her death in March 1932; she died at age 78 in University Hospital of injuries suffered when she was hit by a taxi the previous December. (Her obituary also names a sister, Jennie Reid, who lived in Bridgeport Connecticut.)

I love the Chesnut house, still in existence at 3338 N. Wall Street.

The Clintonville Community Band is one of the Clintonville’s hidden gems. Their concerts are typically free for community events, and they charge a nominal fee for other concerts. Here’s some of its history.

Glenn Williams and Greg Weber convened an organizational meeting for the band on February 27, 1986. Glenn Williams, Greg Weber, Rick Burkhart, and Les Susi, Bob Robuck, and Tom Davenport attended, and so you could credit them with being founders. At the time, the plan was to recruit musicians from any of the local high schools, and to refuse no one.

The first rehearsal was held April 15, 1986 at Whetstone High School. North Columbus Civitan funded the band’s first year. The Band had a concert that summer, as well as a Christmas concert.

On August 31, 1996, they renamed themselves The Clintonville Community Band (from the North Columbus Community Band). By then they’d decided to play at as many local events as possible, including the “Clintonville-on-High” festival, CURB Recycling Saturday, a Christmas concert, and a children’s concert; the goal was to put themselves on a firm financial footing through good community exposure and an increase in donations. At the time they had about 40 active members.

In 2004, they celebrated their 20th year by commissioning a piece by Barry Kopetz. Would you like to hear that song? Click here.

Now, if you’ve read this far, you know they depend on donations. Just do it!

[All the material here is courtesy of the Clintonville Community Band and based on a talk that Glenn Williams, Stuart Smith, and Rick Burkhart gave at the Clintonville Historical Soceity.]

Last April 2021, I posted an article by Clintonville Historical Society President Mary Rodgers, about the Clintonville Woman’s Club. The club was built on land that was once owned by a “horse trader” named E. A. Fuller.

I recently found some old advertisements for horses–bought, sold, stabled–at E.A. Fullers Farm. Here’s one of them…

[From the Columbus Dispatch (published as Columbus Evening Dispatch) October 27, 1876, page 1]

(I’m glad it was not a sale of dead stock.)

There are many more ads; here’s one for stabling horses near E.A. Fulller’s farm.

[From the Columbus Dispatch (published as Columbus Evening Dispatch) November 12, 1877 page 4]

The Dispatch has lots of other ads as well, especially from 1902, for stabling horses at the Fuller farm.

They’re great reminders of Clintonville’s agricultural past.

[Thanks to the Columbus Metropolitan Library for making the Digital Columbus Dispatch available and searchable online on CML’s web site.]