Water fountains served vital ·need Horses needed watering

keep working troughs to By Dale E. Shaffer

URING THE LA TE 1800s and early 1900s,

when horses were still the main form of transportation, Salem had a number of water fountains operating at various locations throughout the city.

All were for horses, except the one located in the middle of Broadway near Main (State) St. The horse-drinking fountains were located at the intersection of S. Broadway Ave. and E. Pershing (Dry) St.; on N. Ellsworth Ave. between Fifth and Sixth St.; and on Penn Ave. across from where the Northwest Arca County Court is now located.

This last fountain now stands in the herb <Yarden of the Salem Historicaf Museum, having been salvaged, restored and preserved. A lot of people are responsible for Salem still having the fountain.

Dr. and Mrs. Cari Lehwald purchased it from the scra­pyard of Joseph Deutsch, once located on the northwest comer of W. Second St. and Howard Ave. Chappel & Zimmerman moved it and provided the necessary cement, all free of charge. Tom Smith donated the time and services of the Pittsburgh Foundry to have it sand­blasted and painted.

Mr. and Mrs. Norman Knoedler, who had located the fountain in the scrapyard, and their son Eric did the plum,bing and excavating. The Deming Pump Co. donated a pump, Edward Rodgers donated the timer and Russell Hannay provided the spray equipment. Joe Needham and David Stratton saw to it that everything functioned proper­ly. Thanks to these and other local people, water continues to flow through the pipes of this century-old fountain.

Records dated March 31, 1875 show that the city's

annual expenditures for water were $400. A $5 tax reduc­tion was given to anyone who installed a horse trough for public use. But horse troughs and fountains had been moved and replaced so many times that there was no accurate record of them.

On Nov. 29, 1888, Mrs. Harriet Snyder, on behalf of the Woman's Christian Tem­perance Union, requested that suitable drinking fountains and horse-watering troughs be established throughout the city. Members of City Council agreed and took action on July 25, 1889.

They stated that "The foun­tain at the crossing of Broad­way and Dry St. (Pershing) will be a great convenience for people. H is not the terri­ble eyesore like the miserable boiler-plate bath pan, stuck on an iron stump, at the cor­ner of Main (State) and Lin­coln. Broadwav and Ellsworth has a nice ne,;;, one. Finally, after two years of talking, a new people-fountain was erected at the comer of Main and Broadway." Hebe - The people-fountain on Broadway

"Hebe" was the name of the statue and drinking foun­tain that once stood in the middle of Broadway Ave. near Main (State) St. Saint Hebe, in Greek mythology, was goddess of youth, and tradition invested her with the. power to make old peo­ple young again. It is said that she rejuvenated Hercules, her husband.

On July 22, 1889, the Water Committee of City Council voted in favor of erecting the fountain. Records indicate the following: "Hebe consists of an ornamented octagon pedestal, well-proportioned, surmounted. by . a statue of Hebe, holding in one hand a pitcher of water, and in the other a drinking cup. The fountain is 11 feet, 9 inches in height, and weighs about

fJ'uesday, f!l.ugu.st 24, 1993 Section of tlie Salem 'J\[jws

Two horses stop for refreshment in this late 1800s photo, taken in front of the present-day Salem Historical Museum.

3.000 pounds." . Sam'uel Buell and Samuel

Lewis built the strong found­ation and placed the statue in position. George Smith, street commissioner, supervised the work. The fountain was made by the J. L. Mott Iron Works, and cost $400 (value was $685). It was installed Aug. 22, 1889.

The fountain was for peo­ple only. There was no horse trough attached. Hebe con­sisted of four sides, with water flowing from each side. Water flowed from the mouths of dolphins into a neat and attractively con­structed basin. Hebe's tin cups were attached to the statue by chains. The name "Hebe" actually means "Cub­bearer of water from the Gods." In 1891, her tin cups were replaced with new ones.

At the same time this foun­tain was erected, City Council installed three new horse-wa tering troughs - one on the east side of N. Ellsworth Ave., between Fifth and Sixth St.; one on E. Main (State) St.; and one on S. Broadway, south of Dry (Pershing) St.

All were made bv the J.L. Mott Co. Cost o( the troughs was $55 each.

Time passed, and then in 1906, the Y&O Railroad began making plans to lay track on S. Broadway (the Y&O was not permitted. to use Salem Electric Railway track on Depot St.). That cailed for removal of the horse-watering fountain at the intersection of S. Broadway and E. Pershing St.

Salem's Board of Service decided to move it to W. Main (State) St., opposite the waterworks pumping station, but there was loud protest by horse owners .and uptown businessmen. A petition was signed by 25 people asking that the fountain be situated as near the former site as possible. W.H. Fultz pointed out that the proposed loca­tion was inconvenient ar.d unhandy, especially to the uptown businessmen op~rat­ing delivery wagons, an i to their country trade.

After considerable diE ~us­sion, Mr. Hise moved t 'lat the fountain be located on the north side of E. Di y (Per-

shing) St., east of Broadway, and near the intersection of Dry and Lundy Sts.

When the Y &O began using S. Broadway, horse owne:rs had to find some other place to hitch their teams while shopping in town; especially on Saturdays. They asked council to pro­vide a convenient uptown lot or hitching square lighted with arc lights, graveled. and equipped with ample hitching posts. S. Broadway had for many years been the primary location for hitching between Main and Dry Sts.

Salem's fountains and horse,watering troughs con­tinued serving the community until 1911. That is when a public announcement was made that public watering troughs and fountains spread diseases such as typhoid and yellow fever. Horses were forbidden from drinking from the public troughs. "Epizoo­tic" was the name of the horse disease.

The fountains and troughs

See FOUNTAINS, page 7

~

~~~~

Salem of 52 years ago Photo courtesy of the Salem Historical Society

Salem had an apple festival in the fall of 1941 that was captured in this photo by former Salem News Editor Ray Dean. He was on the roof of the now-razed Ohio Grill pointing his camera west. The moose head at the Moose Lodge on the

old Grand Theater building can be seen in the upper right. How many shops and businesses do you remember?

West Virginia tnan finds tnarbles in thetn there -hills EDITOR'S NOTE - Nostalgia,.

dreams of the past, seems to be part of America. Here's a childhood toy that once cost pennies and some would like to remember it with a museum, a memorial to the marble.

By Nancy Nussbaum Associated Press

CLARKSBURG, w.va. (AP) When Roger Hardy began digging for marbles, people thought he'd lost his.

Hardy, 43, has spent much of the past 24 years on his knees in these hills about 120 miles south of Pittsburgh, searching for marbles and glassware· discarded by the defunct Akro Agate Co.

"They all thought I was nuts doing this," says Hardy, an anti­ques dealer.

The factory and its em:i;>lQye_es

dumped many imperfect, and per­fect, marbles and glassware around town from 1914 to 1951. Many employees were allowed to take home samples.

But what was once trash is now treasure. A marble that once sold for a penny can fetch $20 or more and a single large Akro agate in its original packaging is worth $800.

Hardy's nodest, eight-room home is cramz ted with "a million" marbles, orig·nal boxes, signs, salesman's sar.1ple boxes, child­ren's dish sets, a ivertisements, his­toric photograph.; and even Akro's molds. His collection is valued at more than $200,000, he says.

Now Hardy wants to convert Akr-0's rusting factory into a museum to house his collection and chronicle the city's history in

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"I've spent a lifetime collecting it and I just don't want it to be sold," he says.

Akro opened in 1911, the brainchild of two entrepreneurs who made marbles in Akron, Ohio, and sold them in a Main Street shoe store there. Sales shot up and the business was moved in 1914 to Clarksburg, where quality sand was plentiful, natural gas was inexpensive and a railroad was more accessible.

The plant employed 130 people at its peak in the early 1940s. It produced 2 million marbles a day and held 60 percent of the world marbles market, Hardy says.

"Of all the marble compame:., Akro was the best," Hardy says. "They had everything. They had designs different than the rest. They had colors that were

different." The pattern of Akro's Corkscrew

marble has yet to be duplicated and the formula for coloring its oxblood marbles remains a secret.

"Akro did an awful lot of exper­imentation," says Albert Morin of Dracut, Mass., who prices Akro pieces for Schroeder's Antique Price Guide, a periodical. "It just seems like there's so much diffe­rent stuff and that's what people like.

"Even the same color marble is different than the next one bccau'se of the coloration that was added to the glass."

Fierc~ competition among marble companies kept Akro from patenting its processes and some of its secrets died with its employ­ees, Morin says.

Hardy's wife, Claudia, says the

'~~l~c~k.r?.J:~!a~!"~~-~-~~.$?19. ~!1:e;

for marbles. "When we first started going

over there in 1969, there were mar­bles on the ground because people didn't care," she says.

In 1992, the Hardys received city permission to use heavy equip­ment to dig beneath cement. They found broken marbles, plenty of glass shards, and misshapen glassware.

The Hardys' discovery of perfect marbles puzzled them until they talked with former employees.

"When something messed up on a run, it was easier to just dump that run than to sort and size those marbles," Hardy says.

The Hardys hit the mother lode in Anna Oliverio's back yard.

See ~A~B.4ES, g~~e 3

Oliverio, 88, daughter ot a coal miner, worked 24 years at Akro with four of i2 brothers and sis­ters. She started at 35 cents an hour packing marbles and worked her way up to secretary.

The Oliverio children brought boxes of glassware to their parents' home near the factory, where Oliverio still lives.

In what would prove to be trea-sure for the Hardys, Oliverio's father used boxes of Akro glass as fill when holes developed in his back yard due to coal mine subsidence.

Years later, Hardy unearthed boxes of Akro glass, much of it unbroken, still in its original packaging.

Gary Dolly, 50, of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., known to many as the king of marble collecting, once had the largest collection of Akro box­es, but he has since sold his Akros to Hardy.

During the Depression, when a penny would buy a handful of. marbles, they were the toy of choice for many. In the '50s, televi­sion and electronic toys knocked them out.

However, marbles is still played today at national and international competitions and in some summer recreational programs.

Hardy hopes to save Akro's for­mer factory, which is owned by the city. He has asked the city to give him the 10,000-square-foot building, now used for storage, so he can seek grants to renovate it.

City Manager Paul Schives says he does not know how much the building is worth.

"The only thing I've had an esti­mate on is tearing it down," Schives says. "I don't think it has any value other than to the Hardys."

AP photo

Roger Hardy and his wife, Claudia, have spent much of the past 24 years digging for marbles and glassware around the now­dejunct Akro Agate Co. in Clarksburgh, W. Va. Today his collection is valued at more than $200,000.

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Porter was insane, defense attorney insisted New Lisbon courtroom packed for 1872 trial of child murderer

By Lois Firestone Last in a series

CAPTAIN P. A. LAUBIE'S strategy in defending

37-year-old Ervin Porter was to make the jury believe that his client was insane when he murdered his two young children.

Even now, a few days short of a year later, people in Columbiana, indeed in the entire county, were still talk­ing about the brutal killings of one-year-old Adelaide and three-year-old Minda Jr. While he waited trial Ervin remained in his cell in the Warren jail where he had been taken shortly after the killings, early on Thursday morning, December 12, 1872.

Laubie's defense team included two other area attor­neys, John M. Myers of Lee­tonia and W. S. Anderson of Canfield. W. A. Nichols of New Lisbon led the corps of barristers trying the Porter case. Nichols was aided by M. E. Taggart of New Lisbon and J. B. Barnes of Leetonia.

The trial opened in Judge Frease's packed courtroom in New Lisbon on Monday, December 8, 1873. By 11 o'clock that morning an all­male jur1 had been selected and the trial was under way.

·Sitting in the jury box were Samuel Workman of Salem Township, Benjamin Stack­house of West Township, N. B. Hickman of Liverpool Township and, from Center Township, Samuel Bowman, S. E. Boughton, John C. Smith, Jacob Endly, Warner J. Peters, and William Neil.

In his opening statement, Captain Laubie said Ervin's insanity came from both sides of his family, his mother and father, Thomas and Susan Porter. From the time he was

a baby, Laubie asserted, Ervin had been "eccentric and queer." One of the reasons, he said, was that Ervin's parents were first cousins, "a fact which in numerous cases account for both physical and mental deformities." Compe­tent witnesses would prove his statements, Laubie said.

When the trial got under way at 2 p.m. in the after­noon, 18-year-old Lydia Flick­inger, Minda Porter's sister, was the first witness for Pro­secutor Nichols. Lydia had been in the Flickinger family kitchen before and after the murders of the two young­sters took place in the adja­cent sitting room. "Mr. and Mrs. Porter had been living at our house about a year prior to the murder, although Porter didn't live with us during all the year, but they were part of our family," she said, and continued. "I was at home the morning of the murder which occurred between 8 and 9 o' dock; we had breakfast, I and my brother Jacob. Charlie and John were in the kitchen cracking nuts when Porter came downstairs alone. He

·cracked nuts with a hatchet; I don't know where he got it. We sat there for about a fourth an hour. Minda came to us and Jacob filled her hands with kernels and she went to the sitting room to eat them. Porter said to Jacob that the hatchet was dull. I heard him tell Minda to go and shut the door. She did and said, 'Now it's shut, Papa.' I heard Minda utter a pitiful cry and just then Por­ter opened the door to get Adeline. I saw Minda lying on the floor in blood. Porter caught Adeline between the door and stove. The hatchet was bloody. He pulled Ade-

Photo counesy of the Salem Historical Society

The Big Snow of November, 1950 gave snow shovelers plenty of work in Salem. This view is looking east on State Street from a spot just last of North Ellsworth Ave. ·

line into the room. I heard no noise afterward. I saw him five minutes later, start­ing west toward Columbiana. He didn't have the hatchet."

"My brother Jacob went into the house with me as Mrs. Porter met us at the door. She went into the sit-. ting room first. We saw the children lying on the floor behind the door. I cannot say if they were dead or not. They were both cut in the head: the elder had three cuts and the younger two."

Twenty year old Jacob Henry Flickinger, Lydia's brother, was feeding the livestock when Ervin came down from upstairs. After the murder, Jacob said, Ervin "told his wife that 'I have done what I meant to do long ago, and now it's done and can't be helped.' " Their firsthand accounts of the events which unfolded that morning were supplemented by Lydia's pther brother Joshua and Jacob, and a near­by neighbor, Reuben Rupert.

An angry Henry Flickinger, Minda's father, talked about Ervin's excessive drinking and the verbal and physical argu­ments between the two men. "He didn't support his family after he came from the west: he said he was going to quit drinking and support his family. We had some trouble and he hit me on the head twice and kicked me in the ribs and on the leg ... I talked to Porter several times about leaving my house as I had a large family of my own to keep; I told him 3 or 4 times after he came from the west that he should go to a house of his own and he said he knew it."

S. W. Gilson was a Can­field attorney who had . known Thomas Porter, Ervin's father, well, and had done business with him. "He was at times very peculiar, and I believe at times positively insane," Gilson said. "I also knew Joseph Porter, the grandfather of the defendant. He was also very peculiar at times and as he grew older his peculiarities increased. I believe he was at times insane.

" I also knew Mary Wil­son, aunt of the defendant. She also possessed these peculiarities and at times was melancholy. I knew two brothers of the. defendant and have done business for him; they are very different from him. I have known Ervin for several years. His head was injured some years since by being struck by a falling tree. The sight of one eye and -the hearing of one ear has been

• tleficient from tha:f time."

As the trial continued, peo- -ple who had known Ervin very well and others who had known him only slightly took their places in the wit­ness box to speak for or against him. AU told, 85 peo­ple testified in the Porter trial.

Ervin's sisters and brothers didn't appear, though; his brother Joseph's wife, Susan, testified to boost the conten­tion that Ervin was insane: Ervin had come alone to her house in Columbiana the day before the murder "looking wild out of his eyes," she sai.

The brother and three sis­ters living in Illinois submit­ted written depositions which were read aloud in the cour­troom. Their statements, too, buttressed the insanity claim. James H. Porter, Ervin's 26-year-old brother, a school teacher turned physician, had seen Ervin only twice in six years, in 1868and 1872, a few months before the murders. "I was afraid to leave him with my family on account of his peculiarity," James wrote the court, "My opinion is that he was inSa.ne."

" ... My father was sick; his eyes had the appearance of an animal and we had to watch him," Minnie J. Far­rington, Ervin's 30-year-old sister, testified. "I am positive he was insane in the latter part of his life. Mother made every effort to conceal his insanity and some of the children knew nothing of it."

The elder Porters had moved to Illinois where Tho­mas died in 1865 and Susan in 1866. Minnie, who had cared for her parents for sev­eral years prior to their deaths, added in her deposi­tion that Ervin had appeared "changed" in the 1872 visit.

The oldest child of Thomas and Susan Porter, 40-year-old Isabel Aukerman explained that her father and mother were first cousins and "my father's father and mother were second cousins." Isabel pointed out that Thomas Por­ter's sister Mary and his cou­sin Walker Porter had had severe mental problems, adding that Ervin, too, was an overemotional child: "When Ervin was a child any hurt, bum or sickness would put him almost wild." •,

Over the next few days, Laubie paraded over 20 wit­nesses who corraborated the many "peculiarities" of the Porter family. These included another of Ervin's cousins, Hannah Anderson, a melancholy woman who had tried to drown herself and kill her child and who had the curious habit of ripping

off her clothes at any provo­cation. Hannah had been taken to the Newburgh asy­lum for seven weeks and had been cured, they said.

The Ohio Patriot, a New Lisbon weekly newspaper, published in its Friday, December 19 issue a detailed account of the trial and the names and statements of the witnesses.

These people included the Flickinger family members and more than 50 people who had known Ervin. The Patriot editor ended the lengthy story with talking about "the costs in the Porter case: There is a large bill of costs in the Porter case, which is to be paid by some­body. If convicted of murder in the first degree, the county pays the costs. If convicted of murder in the second degree the costs are paid by the state."

One week later, the news­paper reported the jury's ver­dict: guilty of murder in the second degree and imprison­ment for life. "The prisoner received his sentence with stoical indifference," the Pat­riot reporter wrote, "He said, 'I am an innocent man of the charges preferred against me. I know nothing:' "

Ervin was taken to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. Two years later, on November 15, 1875, the New Lisbon Journal printed the final story on the black­haired, heavily mustached "villain" likened to Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was 39 years old. "Ervin G. Porter, who murdered his two children near Columbiana on 12th December 1872, and who was tried here, convicted and sentenced to life impris­onment in the penitentiary, died in that institution on Sabbath of last week.

"Shortly after his incarcera­tion, he became a raving maniac and was confined in an iron cell. He never recov­ered his senses ... He was sick but a few days."

Minda Porter, Ervin's young wife, simply disap­peared. For a time she remained at home with her parents and brother and sis­ter. Five weeks before the trial began she moved to Col­umbiana. After that, the fami­ly lost touch with her. She refrained from taking any part in the trial and was not in the crowded courtroom when her husband's:_guilty verdict was intoned'by Judge Frease. ·,

(We're grateful to genealogist Carol Bell of Youngstown for the details of the Porter story)

The old horse-drinking fountain that once stood on Penn Avenue is preserved in the Salem Historical Museum herb garden.

This fountain on the Salem Village Green in front of the Chamber of Commerce building was donated in 1961 in mem­ory of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Mullins.

/.!~r~-;:. &~( Fountains "lit ... ~~{ Continued from page 1 ~~r·· l-S~,,"l• ~~. ~

~ r

were soon removed because of lack of use. Hitching rails were next to leave the scene. Public school fountains were rcpiaccd at a cost of $4.75 each. The germ-spreading tin

cup was also banned. Even the old oaken bucket was looked upon with distrust.

On May 26, 1911, Mayor Carlisle, Service Director J.E. McNeelan, and Superinten­dent of Waterworks J.N. Rus­sell announced that Hebe had to go. ,They also decided to install horse-watering troughs at the comer of Ohio and McKinley Ave. (E. State), and on New Garden Ave. Two new drinking fountains for people were ordered for both sides of Broadway, out of the way of street traffic. Cost of the new fountains was $90.

On Nov. 28, 1911, old Hebe was removed. Reasons given were to lessen the , , . ,

\ - . ~·.

spread of disease, and improve the flow of traffic. The Y &O was coming to Salem and Hebe was in the way. An item in the Salem News stated that "several people wept when the statue was taken down." What hap­pened to her is not known, but quite possibly she was melted down during a war drive for metal.

Today there are no outside fountains downtown for peo­ple or horses. Salem's only decorative fountains now are on the Village Green in front of the Chamber of Commerce building, at the-Duck Pond in Memorial Park, and at Salem's Historical Museum. Only the fountain on the Vil­lage Green is adorned with an ornate statue, reminiscent of so many fountains years ago. It was donated in 1%1 in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Mullins.

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A horse drinks at the fountain along North Ellsworth Avenue, looking south from East Sixth Street. Circus animals often drank there on their way to the circus grounds on Howard Avenue.

Hebe was the name of the statue and drinking fountain that once stood in the center of Broadway Avenue near Main Street. ·

This old postcard shows the fountain that once stood at the intersection of South Broadway and East Pershing Street in the late 1800s.

Was great-grandpa in the Civil War? Hundreds of volunteers will put the answer in a computer

SHARPSBURG, Md. (AP) - An army of volunteers is mustering across the nation to work on a computer project to help Ameri­cans answer the question: "Did my great-grandfather fight in the Civil War?"

During the next two years, hun­dreds of genealogists, history buffs and others will be typing the names of 3.5 million blue and gray soldiers onto computer diskettes.

By early 1996, Americans will be able to find out their ancestors' links to the war by searching for their names and regiments on computers at the National Park Service's 28 Civil War sites.

"It's been estimated that up to 100 million people may be descen­dants from Civil War soldiers," said John F. Peterson, project man­ager for the Civil War Soldiers Sys­tem, which was to be formally announced today at a news -confer­ence at Ford's Theater in Washing­ton, D.C.

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this database what regiment and . battle their ancestors fought in, it will give them a personal connec­tion to a great, historical event like the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg."

The project is being guided by the park service and the Civil War Trust, a non-profit foundation, with help from the National Arc­hives, the Federation of Genealogi­cal Societies and the Genealogical Society of Utah, a corporation of the Mormon Church.

"So many people fought in the war in this country," said Curt B. Witcher of Fort Wayne, Ind., who is helping coordinate the project. "To someone who has relatives liv­ing in this country from 1860 to 1870, the likelihood of their involvement in the war is very, very great."

Starting this month, volunteers from Virginia to the West Coast will begin transcribing military information from copies of 5.4 mil­lion handwrittef! , ~ecords penned

after the war. The original records, on index

cards, are stored at the National Archives, which receives nearly 1,SOO inquires each week relating to Civil War records.

An estimated 3.5 million soldiers fought in the war, but because some soldiers are listed more than once, there are 5.4 million cards on file. In the interest of accuracy, the information on all the cards will be entered into the computer twice. Each card contains a soldier's name, rank, regiment and some­times his comyany's name.

Once the ful list is made, it will be easy to spot duplications. Histo­rian James McPherson of Princeton University said the project might actually help determine exactly how many people fought in the war.

"Nobody really knows exactly how many men there were," McPherson said.

Park service officials estimate that the volunteer work will save at le~t $~.5. mill~on.

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