Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

December 21, 2013

Downtown Chillicothe, Ohio

I’m cleaning up some loose ends from my Midwestern meanderings. Here is the Ross County Courthouse in Chillicothe, Ohio, built back in the day when public buildings were supposed to be imposing.

I figured it would be easy to come up with the history of the building, but Google was light on information. The courthouse was built in 1858. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Chillicothe was the first and third capital

Chillicothe was a rolling stone of a state capital. It served as the capital of Ohio from the beginning of statehood in 1803 until 1810 when Zanesville became the capital for two years as part of a state legislative compromise to get a bill passed. In 1812, the legislature moved the capital back to Chillicothe. In 1816, the state legislature voted to move the capital again, to Columbus, to have it near the geographic center of the state

Part of Underground Railroad

Wikipedia reports that migrants to Chillicothe included free blacks, who came to a place with fewer restrictions than in the slave states. They created a vibrant community and aided runaway slaves coming north. As tensions increased prior to the breakout of the American Civil War, the free black community and white abolitionists maintained stations and aid to support refugees on the Underground Railroad. Slaves escaping from the South traveled across the Ohio River to freedom, and then up the Scioto River to get more distance from their former homes and slave hunters.

Strange net on building

I never did figure out what the netting on the top two floors of this building was for. If it is designed to protected pedestrians from falling bricks or to keep birds away, it needs to be replaced.

The Carlisle Building

If newspaper stories are any indication, the community has been trying to figure out what to do with the Carlisle building for more than a decade, since arsonists caused major damage to it. The local paper has its archives behind a paywall, so I could only read a couple of paragraphs of each story.

The Columbus Dispatch reported on June 22, 2012, that city officials and developers announced plans to spend up to $7.5 million to rehabilitate the 1880s building and reopen its doors by mid-2014. They might pull it off, but it looks like they have a long way to go. Still, it’s a neat building.

A story by Pat Medert, a local historian, said the cornerstone of the Carlisle Building was put in place in April of 1885. It contains a copy of the city ordinances, a report of the Chillicothe schools, the local newspapers, a photograph of Andrew Carlisle, a picture of the old building and a list of the tenants who occupied the old building.

December 19, 2013

Boy with Bumbershoot

These photos of a boy and his bumbershoot got me thinking about clothing and customs. I don’t recall carrying an umbrella much until we moved to Florida where we can count on brief, but fierce localized thunderboomers showing up just about every afternoon in the summer.

I don’t know who this youngster is, where it was taken or even when. That storefront peeking out of the side might give someone a clue. He might have kept his head dry, but his feet clearly in the splash zone.

Ken in the rain

Here I am covering a night football game in Logan, Ohio, with nothing but a jacket and a rain hat to keep me dry. I think I stuck a towel under my jacket to wipe the camera off from time to time, but those old Nikon F bodies were pretty bulletproof. Was there a “sissiness” factor attached to umbrellas in those days? I definitely used an umbrella by the time I got to West Palm Beach.

At what age did boys stop wearing shorts?

There was a cutoff time for wearing shorts, too, wasn’t there?

I remember going to construction job sites with Dad when I was about 10 and wearing long pants. None of the guys on the crew wore shorts. In fact, they’d have been laughed off the job if they had shown up showing knee. MEN didn’t wear shorts to work.

That’s not the case these days, particularly in Florida.

How about blue jeans?

My uniform of the day is blue jeans (when I bother to put on pants to go out in public), but I don’t think I wore jeans at Central. Didn’t most of us wear chinos? Or course, there was the swish-swish sound of corduroy pants in the winter.

What other informal clothing standards did we have?

Of course, girls had a whole ‘nother’ set of official rules, including having to kneel down to make sure their skirts were long enough to touch the floor, but that’s a whole other topic.

December 18, 2013

Missourian Crime News

I’ve been working my way through the seven weeks of newspapers that stacked up while I was out in the Midwest. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting a concentrated dose of local news, but it seems like every paper has a story about multiple people being shot, stabbed, bludgeoned or poisoned. Cops shoot perps; perps shoot at cops.

The big story for several days was a woman who went missing; her body was found with her head and fingers cut off and abandoned out in the swamps. Cops, who had been staking out her doctor husband, saw some of his relatives removing something large from his house and discovered it was his body, dead from an overdose.

It was refreshing to step back in time to these photos and a crime account in The Missourian September 18, 1967, by comparison:

“A squirrel hunter, Charles H. Meyer of Gordonville, Sunday stumbled onto what was thought to be stolen goods near Gordonville. Loading the goods onto a truck are from left, Deputy Sheriff Bill Sperling, Larry Meyer, son of the hunter, Deputy Vernon Sebastian, Deputy Jon Knehans and Mr. Meyer.” The story ran on P3A, not the front page, but it was still big news.

Burglary goods in briar patch

The Cape County Sheriff’s Department Sunday recovered items estimated to be worth $500 to $600 which were taken in a burglary August 5. The items, found by Charles Myers, in a woods on his farm as he was squirrel hunting, were believed taken from the R.L. Hanning farm near Whitewater.

The Sheriff’s Department said the loot consisted mostly of electrical equipment, appliances and tools and were spotted by Mr. Myers wrapped in a tarpaulin in a briar patch.

Chief Deputy Wm. A. Sperling said the briars were 12 and 14 feet tall and it was difficult to even open a truck door after backing in to pick up the recovered items.

He said the loot was stashed not far from Route Z west of Gordonville, but could not be seen from the roadway because of the thick foliage. Mr. Myers, however, was hunting further back in the woods and spotted the tarpaulin in the briar patch, Mr. Sperling said.

Wrong AND inconsistent

There was some uncharacteristically sloppy editing in this story. The last name of the hunter and his son was spelled “Meyer” in the photo cutline, and “Myers” in the story. Chief Deputy Wm. (Missourian style, for whatever reason, was to abbreviate William) A. Sperling was referred to as “Mr. Sperling” later in the story. I’m pretty sure somebody got a crankygram from jBlue when he read the paper. Being wrong was bad, but being wrong AND inconsistent was unforgivable. The first error was probably the reporter; the second error meant both the reporter and the copy editor weren’t paying attention to detail.

December 17, 2013

Drunk Drives into Ditch

Well, at least that’s what the negative sleeve said. I figured I’d better check to see what was on the roll. Yep, there’s a drunk in a ditch on 3-Mile Creek Road, but it also contained photos from the 1967 Grad Night.

The Missourian ran this on A1 with the caption: “Central’s graduates and friends held an all-night party at the Arena Building. Looking at the school yearbook, The Girardot, are from left, John Young, 1220 Bend Road, and Miss Sally Campbell, 1100 North Henderson, both graduating seniors, and John Hirsch, 1855 Thilenius, a former graduate.”

I thought the negative had a scratch on John’s face, but it turned out to be a small bandage.

The Class of 1967 looks like Coke and Squirt drinkers. The Class of 1965 party pix had more Pepsi and 7-Ups on the tables. Here is another set of ’65 Grad Night photos.

Class of 1967 photo gallery

Click on the photos to make them larger, then click on the sides to move through the gallery. The drunk in the ditch didn’t make the paper, by the way.