Month: September 2021
New Concord, Ohio
Day 1768
New Concord, Ohio is a village laid out in 1828 when the National Road reached this point. The National Road was the first major improved highway built by the federal government. The 620 mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main transport path to the West at that time.
John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born on July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio, at home. The result of John Herschel Glenn, a plumber, and Clara Teresa a teacher, fooling around.
While Glenn was still an infant, the family moved to nearby New Concord, Ohio, He was the third American in space, and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years, until January 1999. At age 77, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery‘s STS-95 mission, making him the oldest person to enter Earth’s orbit, and the only person to fly in both the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs.
We toured his childhood home guided by living history actor portraying John’s mother Clara Teresa.
She showed us John’a room, and some of his prized possessions, like his sled.
She described to us how it was living through the Great Depression. You remember collecting S&H green stamps.
Perhaps the second most famous resident of New Concord is William Rainey Harper, born July 24, 1856 in this log cabin.
He was a child prodigy, a polymath of prodigious energy and scope of learning who graduated from college at age 14, earned his Ph.d at Yale at age 19. At age 35 was chosen by John D. Rockefeller to help create the University of Chicago, where he was the university’s first president.
Cambridge Glass Company
Day 1767
Cambridge, Ohio, is well known among glass collectors as being the location for the Cambridge Glass, and Mosser Glass plants.
The Cambridge Glass Company was chartered in 1873 by a group of Cambridge, Ohio businessmen. But it was not until 1899, when the site was purchased by the newly formed National Glass Company, that funds became available to start the construction of this new glass factory.
Fifty years later, the demand for fine handmade glassware began to decrease, and the competition of foreign and machine-made glass began taking its toll. In 1954, it was decided to close the plant, ending one of the best and most prosperous glass companies the world has ever known. Imperial Glass Company purchased the Cambridge Glass molds two years later, and would use them for another three decades until that company went bankrupt in 1984.
Due to its prolific production of glass over 80 years, there is now The National Museum of Cambridge Glass to show off its wares.
We had a private tour through the ages of making glass by Anna, one of the curators.
I enjoyed the display showing the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog of the glassware
and then showing the item.
Tidbit of Information: Their names were Richard W. Sears and Alva Curtis Roebuck. Sears was white and Roebuck Black. Sears initially hired Roebuck as a watch repairman. They formed a partnership as a mail order business and incorporated as Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1893.
The origins of Mosser Glass go back to the time when Orie Mosser was the plant manager of the Cambridge Glass Company. His son, Thomas, began working there as a teenager. When Cambridge Glass closed in 1954, Tom decided to continue in the glass business building a company of his own.
Employing 30 craftsmen, Mosser Glass is a family owned and run business.
We were able to take a tour of the plant and observe the various stages of making glass.
With each piece individually hand crafted, no two are exactly alike. Barbara was able to picked the one she liked best from this 4 cardinals.
Cambridge, Ohio
Day 1766
In 1796, Col. Ebenezer Zane received funds to blaze a road suitable for travel by horse through the Ohio wilderness. For some unknown reason he named the first settlements in honor of Cambridge, Maryland.
Where this road, known as Zane’s Trace, crossed Wills Creek, a ferry was established in 1798. The land on which Cambridge stands was granted to Zaccheus Biggs and Zaccheus Beatty by the government in 1801. (What are the odds that both men had the same unique first name?) A settlement grew up at the creek crossing. A bridge was built here in 1803, and the town of Cambridge was platted in 1806.
Like many old towns we have visited, Cambridge had its share of old buildings, like this eye catching odd building built in 1896.
Built in 1881 the Guernsey County Courthouse is an impressive. building.
Interesting though is the civil war monument to Northern soldiers. There is an engraved inscription on one side, but you cannot read it because they put a soldier in front.
William Lawrence Boyd was born June 5, 1895 in Hendrysburg, Ohio, but reared in Cambridge, Ohio. A six-foot-tall, prematurely white-haired, handsome, rugged young man who easily attracted women, he decided to go to Hollywood in 1919 to be an actor. In Hollywood he accepted bit parts and became a favorite of Cecil B. DeMille. Boyd starred in 1918 in Old Wives for New, possibly a prophetic movie, for he married and divorced actresses Ruth Miller, Elinor Fair, and Dorothy Sebastian. Let’s face it, it is hard to find a good woman. In 1938 he wed singer-dancer Grace Bradley; the marriage lasted thirty-five years, until his death.
Although Boyd starred in many movies, he is best known to you as Hopalong Cassidy.
In 1935 he was offered the lead role in Hop-a-Long Cassidy (named because of a limp caused by an earlier bullet wound). That Western hero had been created by Clarence Mulford, a Brooklyn, New York clerk. Mulford’s Cassidy was a rough, red-haired cowboy who limped from a bullet wound, drank, cursed, smoked, and gambled but had strong ethics and values. The studio officials conceded that Mulford’s Cassidy could not be portrayed to young people as a hero. Boyd supported that belief and developed the role of a cowboy who epitomized clean living. With this philosophy adopted in Boyd’s personal life, he lost his old identity and became Hopalong Cassidy.
From 1935 to 1943 he and his horse Topper made fifty-four Hopalong Cassidy movies for Sherman; he then produced twelve more on his own, for a total of sixty-six. In the late 1940s as television became popular, Hopalong Cassidy became its first cowboy hero series. Boyd made 106 television shows and 104 radio shows.
To honor Boyd, the Hopalong Cassidy trail meanders through Cambridge.
Technical Stuff:
Rising Sun, Kentucky to Cambridge, Ohio: 220.2 miles
4 hours 28 minutes
11.7 MPG
Diesel: $2.70
Lawrenceburg, Kentucky
Day 1765
All these “main” streets now look alike.
The site of Lawrenceburg was settled in the early 1780s by a German immigrant named Jacob Kaufman and was first called Kaufman’s or Coffman’s Station. The post office was established as Lawrenceburgh on January 22, 1817, for William Lawrence, a local tavern owner. The community was incorporated as Lawrence in 1820 but renamed Lawrenceburg in 1827.
The reason we came to Lawrenceburg was to eat at the River Watch Restaurant, a floating restaurant on the Ohio River.
While eating dinner
we were able to observe the activity on the Ohio River.
We walked the Lawrenceburg Levee Walk, built April 26, 1999 and came across this tribute to First Responders:
The 5th Wheel - Now on 4 Wheels 