MOUNT VERNON — The story is the thing. I suppose I’ve always liked stories, ever since I was a kid, and somewhere along the way, I figured out the key to telling good stories: you have to develop a sense of what pieces of information are essential, and which one — and there can only be one — is the turning point.
Everything else you do can be fun texture and local color, as long as you remember the way the key points shape the story. Once you have that down, you can tell most any story effectively.
But I’d like to think that the best stories I’ve told over the last five years of History Knox have offered just a little bit more. And that is the deepening of understanding that comes when the surrounding context of the story is considered.
Indeed, with many stories of the past, they only make sense when the customs and controversies of the time are considered. Once the context makes the past comprehensible, we can find those relatable human moments that make decades, even centuries, just melt away.
Granted, that doesn’t happen with every column. I do this aside from a full-time day job in retail, and aside from my work as a music critic, artist, poet, storyteller, and actor. Some weeks are brief, allowing me the extra time to take other stories deeper.
To celebrate our anniversary, I thought I’d post links to some of my favorite deep dives from the first five years of History Knox:
One of my absolute favorites was in successfully tracking down the truth behind one of Knox County’s legendary ghost stories, Susie’s Grave, on Beckley Road.
Turns out that there was a death which seems to have fueled a haunting, but a persistent deep dive into research sources allowed us to restore the original young woman’s name to modern memory.
I still love an early column I did that tells the astonishing story of the ill-fated 1846 wagon train heading to California that took a shortcut advised to them by Knox County native Lansford Hastings. You may have heard of them. They were known as the Donner Party.
Hastings later continued to honor his home county by talking his way into a political appointment as a Confederate general during the Civil War. At least Daniel Harris Reynolds came by his Confederate generalship honestly, as a genuine military leader, albeit one notorious for his intense support of the South in general, and of slavery specifically.
A brighter note is sounded with memories of John Glenn’s youthful Model T supply runs for Camp Nelson Dodd, long one of the most popular 4H camps in Ohio.
Maybe the funniest story I’ve ever covered is the neighborhood gossip from Brandon contained in an 1861 letter from a young woman to her former schoolteacher. She spills the beans about “stinky Aunt Louisa” and the young doctor who does double duty as the town drunk. Little could the girl ever have dreamed that someday her letter would be sold as a historical artifact on eBay and end up being discussed as a delightful piece of local history.
We had a great series in 2020 following the diary of Ankenytown farmer Harvey Devoe through each month of the year 1861, giving us a glimpse of the daily life of a farmer as the clouds of Civil War were beginning to pile up and thunder. The link is to the article about Harvey’s December, and that article contains links to all the previous months.
I love rediscovering mostly forgotten things, which was certainly the case for the good-sized academy which once stood in Waterford, of all places. It was an ambitious project, albeit one that failed after only a few years, though Rev. Morrison is still remembered for his later church work elsewhere.
Good proof of how the good old days were not always so good came with the tale of how the Foster Gang terrorized Centerburg for a number of years in the late 1800s.
Another was the story of two rogue young men who prompted a gun battle on U.S. 36 during the Great Depression.
An amazing discovery came when I looked into the history of the once-famous fortune teller Old Gorum. After that article ran, I was contacted by a local person who had actually ended up with the life-sized portrait of William Gorham. It was stunning to come face-to-face with this strange and wonderful figure from local history.
But if I had to select one favorite column in five years of sifting the history of this wonderful place, it would have to be a story I’d never heard of before I stumbled across it in an old newspaper: the initially confusing story of shy Eddie Berger.
The confusion of the story turned to poignant tragedy after I traced the route of the doomed boy on the ground, finding the context of the landscape which finally explained how the boy was able to get so lost, even before the sun set. That story, which seemed inexplicable on paper, became frighteningly real when I put feet to the ground and eyes on the same horizon that Eddie had confronted.
These are some of my favorites. Let us know about your favorites, too.
I’ll be working on more in the future, as well as trying to follow up some tips readers have already given me.
Anyone who would like to support this endeavor, Thank you for reading and remembering that science can tell us what we are, religion and philosophy can tell us why we are, but only art and stories can tell us who we are.
