The Ohio History Connection is a repository of some of the state’s most colorful stories and artifacts stretching back 300 years – and beyond.
Consider the 1885 story of when President Rutherford B. Hayes nearly died in Columbus at the Great Circle Earthworks when a speakers’ platform literally collapsed beneath him.
Hayes was at a Grand Reunion of soldiers and sailors from Ohio who served during the Civil War when disaster struck, Brad Lepper, senior archaeologist for the World Heritage Program and the Ohio History Connection, told the Mount Vernon News.
The Great Circle served as the county’s fairgrounds, he said. For the reunion, a temporary speakers’ platform was built. Hayes, Gen. James Garfield and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman were on the platform.
“Partway through the program, the speakers' platform began to collapse," Lepper said. “And an article in the Cincinnati newspaper said that President Hayes and Generals Sherman and Garfield only saved themselves by throwing themselves forward out of their chairs, while the chairs fell backward in the collapsing ruin of the speakers' platform.”
The archaeologist said he hasn’t traced a definitive source for a particular story about that event.
“But supposedly Gen. Sherman at a reception afterward said something like, ‘One drunken carpenter in New York almost accomplished what a thousand Rebel sharpshooters couldn’t’,” Lepper said.
The Ohio History Connection where Lepper works is the state’s history park and historical society, according to Neil Thompson, its media and public relations manager.
“Our mission is that we want to spark discovery of Ohio stories by embracing the present, sharing the past and transforming the future,” he said.
Vast Array of Exhibits
The nonprofit organization was chartered in 1885 to carry out historical services for Ohio and its residents by preserving and sharing the state’s history. From its Columbus campus at 800 E. 17th Ave., it houses the State Historic Preservation Office and the official state archives.
A list of the assets it oversees illustrated the scope of its work. The Ohio History Connection manages 33 historic and natural history sites, 12 museums, 5,000 acres of land, nine archaeological sites, 300 buildings built from 1788-2013, eight canal walks, four major bridges and two boats.
One of the boats is the W.P. Snyder Jr., a historic steam-powered, strong wheel towboat boarded on the Muskingum River at the site of the Ohio River Museum at 601 Front St. in Marietta, he said.
The Ohio History Center Museum devotes exhibits to the Ohio History Connection and the National Park Service’s joint application for World Heritage inscription by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The exhibit explains the history and purpose of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks that include two sites in Newark, Thompson said. Those are the Great Circle Earthworks and the Octagon Earthworks at 455 Hebron Road in Heath. UNESCO will vote on the nomination in Saudi Arabia in September.
The “Indigenous Wonders of Our World” exhibit and a steel, prefab house built by Lustron sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s in Columbus are among the displays at the museum. This house was purchased and transported from Arlington, Virginia, to the museum 10 years ago.
A more recent artifact is a Darth Vader figurine in its original packaging that was manufactured by Kenner Products, a toy company founded in Cincinnati in 1947. Thompson said its packaging announced an upcoming sequel as “Revenge of the Jedi.” The movie was titled “Return of the Jedi” for its release.
Historic Reenactments
Going further back in history than the original Star Wars movies, residents can visit the Ohio Village, which Thompson said represents the 1890s era of Ohio as a functional village. Interpreters take on the personas of people from the 1890s as another educational component by the Ohio History Connection. It opens seasonally starting in May, with limited hours starting in October for special events like its “Dickens of a Christmas” event after Thanksgiving.
The Ohio History Connection preserves 1.8 million artifacts for future generations. A Collections Care Center is under construction at its Columbus campus with temperature controls and a ventilation system, Thompson said.
More than 700,000 archival materials from all counties in Ohio can be viewed for research by anyone who makes an appointment through its website, he said.
Coming Attractions
A popular upcoming event outside of the Columbus campus will be the Earthworks Open Houses on April 16 and 17. Programs and tours will be offered between noon and 4 p.m., with the sites open from dawn until dusk.
The Hopewell culture that built the earthworks was considered to run from A.D. 1 to A.D. 400, he said.
The site took its name from Mordecai C. Hopewell, who owned the property where it was discovered.
Lepper said the earthworks sites were nominated for World Heritage recognition because the Hopewell people did something extraordinary.
Their communities were too small to consider as villages, he said. They hunted, fished, gathered wild plant foods, and grew some crops and plants, such as squash sunflower, goosefoot and maygrass.
“But for some reason, dozens, hundreds of these communities came together at the ceremonial centers to first mill these gigantic earthworks and then later to use them as places of worship,” Lepper said.
Ancient civilizations like Egypt, the Maya and Incas lived in cities with a king, queen or pharaoh at the top. The Hopewell people are unique by having monumental architecture without these other characteristics.
“How were they able to get hundreds or thousands of people gathered together working for this collective effort of building this fundamental architecture?” Lepper said. “And without a king, without somebody telling them what to do and making them do it?”
In Touch with History
The geometric shapes and alignments to the summer and winter solstices show they studied astronomy. More surprising is that they also have lunar alignments. An exhibit at the Ohio History Center enables visitors to see how those alignments work at Newark and other earthworks, Lepper said.
Another exhibit shows to scale how the earthworks compare to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Roman Colosseum, he said.
The earthworks, encompassing some 7 million cubic feet, were built using pointed sticks, clamshell hoes and baskets, he said.
The Hopewell culture had southern Ohio as its center. But its influence extended over much of North America, Lepper said. Archaeologists have found artifacts made from shells from the Gulf of Mexico, copper from the upper Great Lakes and even obsidian (black volcanic glass) from the Yellowstone National Park area.
He believes people came from the end of their world to bring items from home to Ohio to present as offerings.
Three collections of these artifacts are exhibited at the Ohio History Center as they were placed as offerings.
Lepper said Knox Countians visiting these sites will walk away with a snapshot of humanity’s history and an understanding of how it evolved from one society to the next. In that sense, they’ll learn it’s their history, too.
