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.]

Nancy Campbell, my historic-preservation go-to person–and the author of the Truman and Sylvia Bull Coe House and the A.B. Graham National Register of Historic Places nominations–shares a new feature on the Ohio History Connection web site. You can now search all of OHC’s archival collection (audiovisual, manuscripts, State Archives) and library (books, maps/atlases, newspapers, pamphlets, printed government documents) in one spot by following the link provided below:

https://ohiohistory.on.worldcat.org/discovery

Archival records will be indicated by an “Archival Material” note and include basic information about the collection. For more details, including locations and container inventories when available, click on the “View Record in ArchivesSpace” link toward the bottom of the record.

The “Libraries Worldwide” feature works, and is built into the system that hosts the catalog.

Of course my search in the illustration to the left, was for “Clintonville!”

Pierce Cleaners is technically in Worthington, but here’s a great photo of its sign back in the day. This neon sign is by Fred Ervin–same company that created the Jerry’s/Sisters/Tee-Jaye’s sign at Morse and N High, and created around the same time.

If you click on that photo of Pierce Cleaners to enlarge it, you may also notice the Ford dealership just north, on the east side of North High. Another of Fred Ervin’s signs! His signs are everywhere. On the left, the older Ford sign; on the right, a newer version.

And while we’re pretending to be in Worthington, here’s an old photo of the Dairy Queen sign on North High Street just south of the Orange Johnson House Museum (which is itself worth a visit).

[Photos courtesy of Amy Ervin Smithson, by way of Jim Garrison.]

If you have not yet joined the Clintonville Historical Society, well, you ought to! Mary Rodgers sends out an interesting monthly newsletter that is chock-a-block full of good articles. In the October 2017 issue, she penned an article about Clintonville’s first post office.

Celebrating 170 years: The first Post Office
by Mary Rodgers
October 2017

We celebrate Clintonville’s birthday on September 13, 1847. That is the day that a post office opened using the name “Clintonville”. We know that the small town between Columbus and Worthington existed prior to the date but because the town was never formally platted, we do not have an alternative formal start date. On September 13, 1847, James Ferguson was appointed postmaster at the Clintonville Post Office. It was the practice at the time to locate the post office in a business operated by the postmaster. The names of the offices were determined by the postmaster and were usually associated with the area that they were located, the postmaster’s name or the postmaster’s business. In 1933, The Booster printed a photo of the post office. That photo is of a rug store! Mr. Ferguson was a blacksmith. Maybe he had a side operation?

Or, maybe this photo captured the building where Clintonville’s second postmaster set up operation? Harmon “Hammer” Houck was Clintonville’s second postmaster. He reigned from November of 1852 to April of 1854. The 1850 census lists him as a peddler. That might be consistent with a rag rug dealer.

James Ferguson reclaimed the position of postmaster in April of 1854. He and family originated in Lancaster Co. Pennsylvania. He was the son of John and Susanah (Hood) Ferguson. James was married to Hannah Murray around 1824. The Fergusons, at least three generations, came to Ohio in 1843. They arrived by wagon (note: Lancaster County, Pa is the birthplace of the Conestoga wagon!). Based on area maps, James purchased his Clintonville property from Alanson Bull. A question would be: How did Ferguson become aware of Bull’s interest in building a town? Did Bull run advertisements in Eastern newspapers of the time? That is a question for another day.

According to the 1850 Census, James Ferguson owned 5 acres of land, a home, two milk cows, a beef cow, five pigs, and 100 bushels of corn. His livestock was valued a $98, his machinery at $41 and his overall estate at $950. His estate was higher in value then his neighbors with more land. Perhaps that is an indication of its geographical position “in town”? Hannah Murray Ferguson, James’s wife, was a Quaker. Quakers were known to be involved in the Underground Railroad and the Fergusons are a part of the Clintonville Underground Railroad story. The Ferguson sons Joseph, John and Samuel all served in the Civil War. His son Joseph died in action in Perryville, KY. According to K. Haefner, 3rd great granddaughter of Hannah and James Ferguson, when sons John and Samuel returned from the war, the family moved to Findlay, OH. It would seem that John and Samuel met a number of men from Hancock County while serving. Those men told stories of the land and those tales impressed these young men. In Findlay, Samuel and John pursed wagon making. The shop they opened remained in operation beyond 1911.

Paul-Henri Bourguignon was a talented visual artist, a prolific writer and journalist, a skillful photographer, and an avid observer of the human condition. His wife Erika was a world-renowned anthropologist. They lived at 193 East North Broadway until their deaths in 1988 and 2015 respectively.

Here’s a terrific house tour of their Clintonville home, showcasing their life and collections at 193 East North Broadway before the house was sold.

And here are some links to additional information about each of them:
About Paul-Henri Bourguignon
About Erika Bourguignon

[Courtesy of Jane Hoffelt, who has worked indefatigably to keep the Bourguignon’s legacy alive and appreciated.]

Two nice photos of the Olentangy River in the 1950s.

From Bill Pegues:

During 1954 my parents moved to Columbus, where my father taught history at Ohio State until 1997. A couple years ago my brother scanned my dad’s slide collection into digital format. My father had documented the location of the scenes in many of them but a fair number lacked any identity. Among these were two shots from an identical point on the Olentangy River in the late ’50s. I spent some time with these and on Google Earth trying to determine where exactly they were taken. Ultimately, I concluded with certainty (based on zooming in on the line of houses visible in the early 1958 photo, and comparing them with the Google Street View of the houses there today, as well as noting the curvature of the river) that they were shot on the west side of the Olentangy just downstream of the old Henderson Road bridge looking north. At the time my parents were renting a house on East Selby Blvd just over the Worthington-Columbus boundary. The preceding photos in the 1957 set were taken at an Ohio State football game that fall, and of the old Lane Avenue bridge as the leaves were beginning to turn. My parents would likely have driven up Olentangy River Road after these games and taken Henderson up to High before driving north to Selby.

The first feature in the 1957 photo that interested me is the parking lot at center-left, indicating that this was a popular spot for people to visit, and probably picnic and stroll around. At the time, SR-315 didn’t yet exist this far north (it wasn’t completed from Ackerman Road north to 270, if I recall correctly, until I was entering high school in 1980) so the only road running along the west side of the river was Olentangy River Road. The second feature of note is that the land on the east side of the river is, accordingly, the open field that would be the location of Whetstone High School (from which my brothers and I graduated in the late ’70s and early ’80s), constructed in 1960-61.

[These photos were taken by Frank Pegues and digitized by Jim Pegues, and came to us courtesy of Bill Pegues.]

Scott Jones, a professor in the OSU School of Music, kindly shared some terrific photos of the 1947 construction of his house at 528 Acton Road.

The photos came to Scott from Sally Schock (Moore) who grew up in the house and whose father’s brother built the home in 1947.

The house looks today very much like it did when finished in 1947.

[Photos are courtesy of Sally Schock (Moore), via Scott Jones.]

Last month I mentioned the new Clintonville store, Re-Wash, owned by Samantha White. While Sam was renovating the space, she uncovered this wonderful sign from a previous era. It was on the wall–undoubtedly the exterior wall–of 3131 North High (now “Lucky 13 Salon”). In 1926, 3131 North High Street was occupied by Wilke’s Quality Market.

Here’s an ad from the Columbus Evening Dispatch on April 22, 1926. The Wilke family business–which eventually became Ohio Packing Company–lasted for some 107 years in Columbus. (The Wilke’s Quality Market in Clintonville seems to have been one of the Wilke family’s more minor locations.) The business was established in 1907 by Fritz Wilke as a neighborhood butcher shop in Columbus, eventually focusing on meat cutting and packing. Different aspects of the business were run by various family members–finally by 3rd and 4th generations of the family. Ohio Packing Company closed in April, 2014. You can read a little history of that business here.

In case you are wondering: that other Clintonville market mentioned in the Shredded Wheat ad, Quality Market at 3496 North High Street, was located where Seitan’s Realm is today.

And about that Dispatch ad: Yes, I would LOVE to see them making Shredded Wheat, back in the day; wouldn’t you? You can read more about Henry Perky, the inventor of Shredded Wheat, Triscuits, and the machine that made them, here.

[The ad was provided to me by Loraine of the Columbus Metropolitan Library–Local History and Genealogy Desk; it’s from the Columbus Dispatch published as Columbus Evening Dispatch, April 22, 1926, p14.]