The 1795 Beedle Log Cabin will be open every Saturday, 10-12pm through the summer. Free Admission. to all visitors.

Every first Saturday, 11-1pm, kids can bring their families for fun and learning with fun frontier skills.

In honor of Memorial Day, listen to the stories of those that made it home.
In Honor & Remembrance is a collection of conversations with over 35 veterans ranging in age from 27 to 96, covering wars and conflicts from World War II to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rookwood Pottery is an American Art pottery company, located in Cincinnati, and founded in 1880. It was extremely popular until the Stock Market crash of 1929. and eventually closed in 1967. In 2004, it was revived, the new American Art pottery company taking the name and building on the old site.

The Warren County Historical Society has an extensive collection of original Rookwood Pottery on display at Harmon Museum.​

A Trailblazing Lebanon Educator
by John J. Zimkus, WCHS Historian and Education Director
 
Louisa Jurey Wright is known by many as the first and, as of this writing, the only female superintendent in the history of the Lebanon public schools. She is also known for having an elementary school in town named after her in 1960. (It has since been demolished.) For over 140 years, her name has appeared on the list of superintendents who have guided the tax supported schools of Lebanon, Ohio since the early 1850s.
 
During her lifetime Louisa Wright has been called "a woman of strong intellectual ability,” “a most excellent and highly educated lady,” and “a lady of superior culture and refinement and excellent Christian worth.” During the 1867-68 school year, however, when she was fulfilling the duties of the superintendent of schools in Lebanon, one thing she was never called was “superintendent.”
 
Louisa Jurey was born on July 18, 1842, in sparsely populated Tymochtee Township, Wyandot County, Ohio. It was in the same rustic farm house in which her mother, Anna Drake Jurey, was born in 1819, some 23 years earlier. It was also the same house in which her mother married a Virginia-born farmer named John Jurey.
 
Lou, as she was called by her family and friends, received her earliest education in a local country school. Like many successful students in the mid-1800s, once she reached the equivalent of an eighth grade education, she was hired to teach the younger children at her community school.
 
The young and attractive Lou Jurey was always said to be optimistic. “She could see the bright side in the development of the human race,” it was observed years later. This was, and still is, a desirable attribute for someone who aspires to be an educator. With that goal in mind, in 1861, she went off to receive a formal education in Lebanon, Ohio. The village was located about 130 miles southwest of her home.
 
The school she attended was the South-Western Normal School. It was founded only six years earlier in 1855 by Alfred Holbrook. In 1881, the school adopted the name by which it was best known, the National Normal University. By then it was the largest normal school, or teachers college, in Ohio.

Louisa graduated in 1863. The Eighth Annual Closing Exercises of the South-Western Normal School took place on Thursday, August 3, 1863. Although there were 304 pupils enrolled in the school that year, many of them in the preparatory department, only seven graduated — two men and five women. As part of that day’s program, each of the seven graduates delivered an oration before Alfred Holbrook conferred upon them their diplomas. Louisa’s topic was “The Utility of Mathematics.”
 
After graduation, she went off to teach in Paris, Illinois where her family had relocated. Paris is near the Indiana border, about 210 miles west of Lebanon, and about 12 miles north of the National Road, today’s US 40.
 
After one year of teaching in Illinois she returned to Ohio. Once here, she taught for two years at the one room school house in Genntown, about 2 1/2 miles northeast of the center of Lebanon on the Lebanon & Waynesville Pike.
 
In 1865, Louisa Jurey was hired to teach in the public schools of Lebanon Ohio. Besides her classroom duties, she was chosen to be the assistant to Lebanon School Superintendent Charles W. Kimball. She was paid $500 a year, which, adjusted for inflation, would be around $10,000 today.
 
It was at this time the Lebanon school board became concerned that the district had no “regular course” of study for the “advanced department,” those students in the higher grades, and the primary department. As The Western Star, Lebanon’s weekly newspaper, reported years later, “Miss Jurey was chosen by the board to prepare a course of study for every department. The system prepared by her was afterwards adopted, with some modifications.”
 
In the first decade of the 20th century, several letters from T. V. Blackman, from Pittsburg, Kansas, were published in The Western Star. He had worked at the newspaper almost 40 years earlier and was now a newspaperman in Kansas.
 
Blackman wrote about his fond recollections of growing up in Lebanon. In one he explained, "My parents named me Theodore and this they corrupted to the name of Thode. When my playmates and school fellows in the old days wanted to ‘start something,’ they called me ‘Toad.’”
 
In a letter published on May 7, 1908, he confessed that, while he was a student during the 1866-67 school year, he was one of a half dozen or so “young scoundrels [who] used to harass this good lady . . . Miss Lou Jurey.” In another letter published later that year, he exclaimed a “more mischievous gang never lived. I wonder if she has ever forgiven us for the many sorrows we caused her.”
 
As a student, T. V. Blackman may well have had a crush on his young Lebanon Union School teacher, Miss Lou Jurey. She was only eight years older than her admiring pupil. His fond feelings for her may have lingered for several decades after leaving her classroom, for he mentioned her in several of his letters to The Western Star.
 
Also in a 1908 published letter, Blackman recalled December 31, 1866, the day the county infirmary on S. East Street caught on fire. “I ran away from school to help haul the old side brake fire engine from the Washington Hall building to the scene,” he remembered. “We backed the engine down upon the pond by the ‘mad house’ and pumped water on the flames. The next morning I had to explain my absence to Miss Lou Jurey, my teacher.”
 
He also told how, at a school “assembling,” late in the school year, it was announced, “Miss Jurey was to marry Captain Lot Wright.” Blackman went on, “After dinner [school lunch] all of us were in our seats demurely studying our lessons. On the blackboard on the east side of the room, was the admonition, ‘Remember Lot’s Wife,’ and when Miss Jurey saw it she was somewhat startled, as might be surmised. An attempt was made to find who had written it, but nothing was ever proven.”
 
“Lot’s wife” is in reference to a passage in Genesis 19 of the Old Testament in the Bible. In it, Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back upon the destruction of the wicked city of Sodom after being warned by two angels not to do so. (The exact words, “Remember Lot’s wife” were spoken by Jesus in Luke 17:32 in the New Testament.)
 
Louisa Jurey, and her Lot, Captain Wright, were married in her mother’s home in Paris, Illinois on Wednesday evening, July 17, 1867.
 
Lot Wright was born on February 16, 1839, near the small town of New Garden, in Columbiana County, in eastern Ohio and was of Quaker heritage. He began his formal education in Alliance, Ohio. In 1860, he became a student in the South-Western Normal School. He helped pay his way through school by teaching two winters in neighboring counties, one year in Butler County, and the other in Clinton County. It was while attending school in Lebanon, that Lot Wright first met his future bride, the lovely and intelligent Lou Jurey.
 
In the summer of 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, 24-year-old Lot Wright enlisted as a private in Company I, 79th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In December 1863 he was promoted to sergeant. On June 22, 1864, he was severely wounded in the right leg in the Battle of Kolb’s Farm near Atlanta, Georgia.
 
Six days later, on June 28, while still recovering in an Army hospital, he was promoted to the rank of captain and given the command of newly organized Company D, 100th Regiment, US Colored Troops. Because of his injuries, however, he was not able to join his unit until August.
 
He commanded his men in the Battle of Nashville, where, on December 16, 1864, he was wounded again. According to an August 20, 1868 newspaper article, “a considerable portion of his right hand was shot off." He was mustered out of the army in August 1865. For the rest of his life, even though he would hold many important positions, he was often referred to as “Captain Wright.”
 
During the summer of 1867, the public schools of Lebanon were showing some growing pains. A small article in the September 5, 1867 issue of The Western Star stated,
 
“BABIES TO BE KEPT AT HOME.
The primary department of the union school is so crowded that the board is compelled to refuse admission to all children under six years of age.”
 
Another problem was that the longest serving Lebanon superintendent of schools up to that point, Charles W. Kimball, was in poor health. He had held that position for nine of the last 13 years, but could no longer continue. The school board turned to his assistant, the newly married Mrs. Louisa Wright, to take up his duties.
 
She would be paid the identical amount per year that was given to Superintendent Kimball - $800. In today's money that would be about $16,000. She would now be in charge of the recently painted five-year-old Union School, located on what is now Pleasant Square Park; the separate school for Lebanon’s African American students, which was constructed in 1861 where New Street meets North Lane today; and all the students who attended the schools.
 
The one major issue facing Louisa Wright as the superintendent of the Lebanon Public Schools was that, in the fall of 1867, there was no such position in the district as superintendent!
 
How this was possible was explained in another brief article in that same September 5, 1867 issue of The Western Star. “Although the office of superintendent has been abolished Mrs. Lou Wright, principal of the high school, has general supervision over all the departments.”
 
The official reason for not calling her “the superintendent” is not known. It may very well be that the prevailing thought among the men who made up the school board was that a woman, in the mid-19th century, should not hold such a position of authority. It might be seen as unseemly. The solution then, to them, could have been to let her act as the superintendent; pay her as if she was the superintendent; but not actually call her “the superintendent.” That way the fact that she was a “female” superintendent of schools would not draw attention.
 
Whatever she was called, principal or superintendent, during the 1867-68 school year, Louisa Wright did have an achievement during her tenure in that role that no one had achieved before her. In 1868, under her guidance, Lebanon High School had its first three graduates, all female, - Ida Hardy, Ada Wood, and Minnie Van Harlingen. Lebanon High School would not have another graduate until 1872, four years later.
 
In a June 24, 1915 article in The Western Star entitled “Lebanon's School Past and Present,” the comment is made, “The fact that [Louisa Wright] was offered a reappointment by the Board for the second year [as principal/“superintendent”] speaks for her success, but ill health required her to decline.” This statement may not be totally accurate.
 
After going one year without technically having a superintendent, the Lebanon Board of Education decided it was time to have one once again. The Western Star on July 23, 1868 reported,
 
“SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS
The school board last week elected to the position of superintendent of the Lebanon Union School, for the ensuing year, W. H. Pabodie, for seven years Principal of one of these Cincinnati Public schools and more recently superintendent of the public schools of Peru, Ind. Mr. Pabodie is a graduate of Brown University. He was highly recommended to the board as a scholar and teacher and has had much experience in the management of graded schools. We commend the action of the board and securing for this position a classical scholar, as the superintendent will have charge of the High School, and all the branches necessary to fit a pupil for college can be pursued in that department.”
 
William H. Pabodie was paid almost twice as much as Louisa Wright, $1,500 a year. He served as the Lebanon superintendent of schools until the summer of 1870.
 
At almost the exact time in 1868 that Lebanon High School had its first graduates under Louisa Wright, Captain Lot Wright finished his education, and received a BA degree from the South-Western Normal School.
 
Also in 1868, Lot Wright, a Republican, began his long political career when he was elected Warren County treasurer. He was reelected in 1870. In 1876, the voters of Warren County selected him to be their county clerk of courts, and then reelected him twice. In 1883, he was appointed United States Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio and served over two years in that capacity. Finally, in 1894, and in 1896, he was elected probate judge of Warren County.
 
In the meantime in 1868, Louisa Jurey Wright, who left teaching after only five years in the classroom, turned her attentions to raising a family and supporting her husband. In a brief biography of “Judge Lot Wright” in the book History of the Republican Party in Ohio, published in 1898, it was said of Louisa Wright, “She has been to her husband a most able companion and helpmeet [a helpful partner] on life's journey, both in times of prosperity and adversity.”
 
Lot and Lou had two sons, Willard Jurey Wright, born in 1875; and Raymond Garfield Wright, born in 1880. Raymond was named after Lot’s friend, and soon to be US President, James A. Garfield. Both boys attended Princeton University and became lawyers. Willard eventually was elected a Warren County common pleas court judge.
 
Willard’s son, Louisa's grandson, was the famed mid-20th century industrial designer Russel Wright. His American Modern dinnerware was in production for two decades in the mid-20th century and grossed over $200 million in sales, earning it the title of the best-selling mass-produced dinnerware ever manufactured.
 
For most of her adult life Louisa Wright was a devout and active member of the First Presbyterian Church in Lebanon. Beginning in the late 1880s, she was also was a member of the W. C. T. U., the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
 
In 1882, after living on the east side of Cherry Street between Main and Mulberry in Lebanon for years, Lot and Louisa Wright bought a newly constructed house on the northwest corner of Orchard and East Street – 214 E. Orchard Ave. It was in this house, in the Floraville neighborhood on a hill south of downtown Lebanon, that Lot and Louisa raised their two boys.

Excerpt taken from:
The History of Warren County Ohio
Part III. The History of Warren County by Josiah Morrow
Chapter VIII. The Distinguished Dead

​This distinguished member of the bar was born at Lebanon December 17, 1807. His father, Enos Williams, was an early teacher of Warren County, and held several important civil offices, and among others, that of County Recorder for a period of fourteen years. John Milton received a good English education. In his boyhood, he assisted his father in the Recorder's office, and also wrote in the office of the Clerk of Court. His handwriting was legible, bold and rapid, and the training he received as a copyist at the court house was of benefit to him in his future profession. He studied law with Judge George J. Smith, and, before he had reached the age of twenty-four years, on the 7th of June, 1831, was admitted to the bar at a term of the Supreme Court held at Lebanon, with Judges Peter Hitchcock and Charles R. Sherman on the bench. Gen. Robert C. Schenck, who had completed his legal studies under Thomas Corwin, was admitted at the same time and place.

Young Williams was poor, and was compelled to rely wholly on his own exertions. In after years, he wrote: "When I went out into the wide, wide world in business, on my own hook, I had two dilapidated shirts and a poor suit of clothes to match them. I opened my office in a cellar, with three musty old Ohio statutes, given me by my old father, which he had held as a public officer. This was my entire stock in trade." He soon acquired distinction at the bar. Not long after he began practice, he became Prosecuting Attorney —a position he held for twelve consecutive years. He was candid with his clients, and never misrepresented a case in consultation to encourage litigation. He charged lower fees for his services than other lawyers of the same rank. His popularity and personal influence with the masses were very great. For several years, he had a larger number of cases on the dockets of the courts than any other lawyer of the county, and was the attorney on one side of almost every important case. He could readily sway the minds of jurymen, and in the examination of witnesses he exhibited consummate skill. In 1850, he was elected a member of the convention which framed the second constitution of Ohio, and in 1857 he was elected Representative in the General Assembly of Ohio as an independent candidate over the regular Republican nominee. He was Major of the militia, and was uniformly known as Maj. Williams. In politics, he was a Whig, and afterward a Republican.

The last years of the life of Maj. Williams are a sad history, over the details of which it is best that the mantle of oblivion should be drawn. Habits of intemperance separated him from his wife and family, and brought him to misery and want before he was yet old. He saw the extremes of life. He rose from poverty and obscurity to wealth and distinction; he sank again to obscurity and poverty. When possessed of considerable means, accumulated by his own energy and ability, he erected for his residence one of the finest mansions which had, up to that time, been constructed in the county; he died without a home. When the legal proceedings were commenced which took from him the ownership and control of his property, he wrote and read in the court in which he had practiced with eminent success: "God help me! I am a miserable and ruined man! Let the curtains of oblivion rest over the whole affair until that great day when all things shall be brought into judgment." He died July 21, 1871, aged sixty-four years, and was buried in the Lebanon Cemetery.

A portion of this article was published in the November, 2021 issue of the Medallion, our membership newsletter. If you'd like to receive the Medallion and many other  perks  (including discounts to events and free admission to all our properties) you can become a member here.

WARREN COUNTY’S OLYMPIC GOLD
 
 by John Zimkus, WCHS Historian/Education Director
 
Warren County, Ohio made it's first mark in Olympics history with three gold medals in the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. The Modern day Olympics were eight years old at the time, and this was only the third time the revised international competition was held. The winner of the gold medals was Matilda Howell. Her sport was archery.
 
Matilda Flora Scott was born on August 28, 1859, in Lebanon, Ohio. Called Lida by her family, she was the only daughter of Thomas and Amelia Scott. Her father was a merchant who grew up in Union Township, where his father had a successful wagon making business. Lida's mother was a member of the locally prominent Sausser family who were mostly merchants in Lebanon. Lida attended the Lebanon Union School, where Pleasant Square Park is today. By 1880, her family had move to Cincinnati.
 
Lida became interested in archery around 1878 as a result of her reading a compilation of witty essays called The Witchery of Archery by Indiana-born poet, essayist, naturalist and archer, Maurice Thompson.
 
It did not take Lida long to become extraordinarily proficient in archery. She won the Ohio State Archery Championship in 1881 and 1882. Also getting very involved in competitive archery at this time was her father, Thomas Scott.
 
In the spring of 1883, Lida married Millard Cecil Howell a Norwood Ohio native. By trade he was a coffee broker. Together they would have three children. Millard Howell was also a competitive archer.
 
It has been said that Lida Scott Howell “had one of the most incredible records ever to be recorded in archery (or for that matter in any other sport.)” Between 1883 and 1907, Lida shot in 20 National Championships, winning 17 of them. Her scores in the 1895 championship set records which were not broken until 1931 – 36 years later.
 
Lida and Millard, won the National Archery Association's National Championships in 1899, the only time in the history of the association that husband and wife won both titles in the same year.
 
Out of the nearly 100 sports at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis Missouri, archery was the only event in which women were allowed to compete. The competition took place on September 19 and 20 and involved six contestants, five of whom were part of Ohio’s
Cincinnati Archers Club. Lida Howell, at 45 years of age, was the nation’s undisputed top lady archer, and coasted to the gold medal in both the Double Columbia and Double National rounds. She also received a gold medal as part of the winning United States archery team.
 
Also competing in the St. Louis Olympics in archery was her father, Thomas Foster Scott. He competed in the men's double American round and the men's double York round, but did not medal. He was 71 years and 260 days at the time, making him the oldest person known to compete in an archery event at the Olympics.  Born in 1833, Scott was also the 3rd-born known Olympian of the modern era, and the 1st-born known US Olympian.
 
Lida Scott Howell retired from national competition in 1907. She died on December 20, 1938, and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. Lida was inducted into the Archery Hall of Fame & Museum in 1975.
 
In 1904 a reporter from the Cincinnati Times Star interviewed Lida Howell. When asked why she preferred archery over other sports, she replied, "Archery is a picturesque game, the range with its smooth green and distant glowing target with its gold and radiating red, blue, black, and white, the white-garbed players, with graceful big bows and flying arrows, makes a beautiful picture.”
 
Adding to that beauty, no doubt, would be the privilege of watching the grace, form and extraordinary skill of an Olympic Champion archer like Warren County’s Lida Scott Howell.

The very popular Jeff Wilson once again paid us a visit to discuss material covered in his books Ohio Legends and Ohio Legends Volume 2. Every page in his books has a short story with an original, expressive illustration drawn by Jeff that brings to life a bit of Buckeye trivia or an oddity about an Ohio inventor, ghost, visionary, hero, crackpot or criminal. Jeff will be showcasing a special “Librarian’s Edition” of his Ohio Legends series that features a “perfect bound” cover and includes many stories never published before.

Ohio Legends Volume 1 & 2 are available in the Museum Shop.

Jeff Wilson is a free-lance cartoonist, writer and illustrator. A life-long resident of the Buckeye State, he lives in Vandalia, Ohio with his wife Patti and enjoys any good, goofy story about Ohio.  ​

- Sylvia Outland, Art Curator
 
March 14th marked the return of the portrait, featured on Antiques Roadshow, of John Milton Charters and William Morris Charters (1846 - 1848) twin sons of Dr. William Morris Charters (1806 - 1883) and Cynthia Dutton Seely (1809 - 1860).  Both portraits were painted,  circa 1849, by Marcus Mote a Quaker artist living and working in Warren County. The Betsy H. Maple Trust, represented by Karri Hamilton daughter of Betsy Maple, (second wife of William Chester “Chet” Maple) personally delivered the painting the family gifted to the Harmon Museum. Both paintings descended in the family of Charters Dyche Maple (1899 - 1958) to his sons William Chester Maple (1935 - 2009) and Dixon Charters Maple (1929 - 2001).

Joyce Lovins Browning is a native of Ohio growing up in the Harrison and Okeana areas.  She has been performing Living History for over 19 years.  She retired after 20 years as the Naturalist Coordinator from Great Parks of Hamilton County in 2018, and now enjoys working as a part-time Tour Coordinator for Ohio Travel Treasures, sending groups on wonderful bus tour adventures.  She'll be portraying Annie Oakley in our April Lunch and Learn.

Elizabeth Kimberlin (1917-1987) was a leader in community and statewide service programs as well as a local civil rights trailblazer. A graduate of Lebanon High School in 1935, she was denied the opportunity to apply for a college scholarship because of her race. Instead, she became a typist at the air force base in Dayton, and eventually working 21 years at Defense Electronic Supply Center (DESC) as provisioner traveling all over the U.S. visiting plants and purchasing of airplane parts, while at the same time overcoming prejudice against Blacks and women. Elizabeth was President of non-profit Lebanon Community Services, Coordinator of the Lebanon Food Pantry, and involved in many other organizations including being a trustee of the Ohio Division of the American Cancer Society, as it’s the only black member. In 1943, she organized the first Black Girl Scout Troop in Lebanon, and that year her troop became the first to integrate Girl Scout Camp Butterworth in Warren County. Elizabeth remembered, “Both colored and white girls were there together, and everything went fine. That was quite something for those days.”

​- John Zimkus

​James Richard Mills (1932-2013) James Mills was Lebanon, Ohio’s first African-American mayor. He was born in Lebanon on August 8, 1932. A 1950 graduate of Lebanon High School, he served in the U.S. Army in Korea. He and his wife Loretta had three children. An avid musician, he was active in the Bethel AME Church, where he sang in the choir and acted as church treasurer. He was also a member of the Lebanon Kiwanis Club and the Lebanon Softball Association. For 39 years he worked for the Ohio Department of Transportation. After serving on the planning commission and community development committee, he was elected to the Lebanon City Council in 1993, and became Lebanon’s mayor in 1997, serving in that role until 2001. Mr. Mills died on October 12, 2013. James Mills once said, “Having been born and raised in this city, I have grown to really care about it and all the things that make it what it is today. . . I really want . . . to serve all the citizens of this lovely city.”

- written by John Zimkus