Tag Archives: History

Happy Lupercalia

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Two weeks ago, I had nothing planned for this blog and was preparing to dust off an old Groundhog Day or Imbolc post when I spotted a notice for a motorcycle show on Groundhog Day Eve. That led to Beer and Bikes, and the Imbolc and Groundhog posts were left on the shelf for another day. When I found myself in the same situation around Valentine’s Day, I got to wondering if Valentine’s Day had the same relationship with older, often pagan, holidays that days like Easter, Christmas, and Candlemas have. After all, its full name is Saint Valentine’s Day.

For me, the answer is probably. Almost all online articles about the history of Valentine’s Day mention the Roman feast of Lupercalia but most stop short of firmly linking the two with phrases like “many believe” there is a connection or that a connection “has been suggested”. Count me among the many who believe.

Lupercalia comes from the Latin word lupus which means wolf. Theories about its association with the feast include a deity that protected herds from wolves and the wolf (pictured above) that kept Romulus and Remus alive so they could get Rome started. Some descriptions of Lupercalia imply it was a one-day event held on February 15. Others say it was a three-day affair that filled the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

Regardless of how long they say it lasted, everybody describes it as a quite raucous celebration. Participants were drunk and naked. Men sacrificed goats and dogs then whipped women with strips of the animal’s skins to increase fertility. At some point — which I assume was after the slaughter, skinning, and whipping — men and women were paired up by lot for the duration of the festival. Trysting with a possibly blood-splattered random lady after trying to make her more fertile doesn’t seem all that wise or even fun, but times were different.

That the Christian Church would want to replace that with something more sedate seems natural, but the origins of Valentine’s Day are not well documented. There seems to be no shortage of saints named Valentine. Two are connected to February 14 by virtue of reportedly being executed on that date in different years. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates a different Saint Valentine on July 6 and yet another on July 30. One of those guys executed on that special day in February was sentenced to die because he persisted in marrying Christian soldiers when the Roman emperor forbade it. That could be what initially got the day associated with love and romance, but I’m betting it was the Lupercalia lotteries.

Associating romance with the day really picked up steam after Chaucer published “The Parlement of Foules” in 1375, and a few Valentine cards were sent between lovers during the next couple of centuries. Then Cadbury came up with heart-shaped boxes of candy for the day in 1868, and Hallmark started printing Valentine’s Day Cards in 1913. It is predicted that Americans will spend $2.5 billion on candy this year and $1.4 billion on cards. Throw in jewelry, flowers, and romantic dinners, and the total bill is expected to reach $27.5 billion. I’m sure goats and dogs are also celebrating, but they’re doing it very quietly.

The opening photo is of the Capitoline Wolf in Cincinnati’s Eden Park, taken June 1, 2014. The statue has been admired, denounced, stolen, and replaced. Read about it here.

St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited

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When I got the email about a preview of a new exhibit at Ohio History Connection, I quickly signed up. Only as the date approached and I started looking into the exhibit did I realize that, while I would get to preview the opening of “St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited: A New View of the Conflict,” this would not be the exhibit’s premiere. That had occurred at the Fort Recovery Museum, the actual site of St. Clair’s Defeat, in November of 2023. After spending about two months at Fort Recovery, the exhibit had appeared for nearly four months in Fort Wayne, IN, and more than six months in Miami, OK. The opening I was previewing was its fourth.

The disappointment I felt in this not being the world premiere I initially thought it was, was outweighed by my embarrassment in not knowing of the true world premiere that had happened more than a year before. Food and drink were pretty good compensation, however, and both disappointment and embarrassment were pretty much forgotten at the member’s reception. 

The member’s preview also included a panel presentation and a question and answer session. Bill, whose last name I failed to record, acted as MC, while Kim Rammel and Dr. Kristen Barry supplied the information. Rammel is president of the Fort Recovery Historical Society. Barry is a professor at  Ball State University and a member of the team responsible for the exhibit.

It has been said that history is written by the victors, but while that is generally true of wars, it isn’t always true of individual battles. The “new view” this exhibit provides comes from descendants of the nine Native American tribes that nearly annihilated the entire United States army in 1791. Specific details of the battle differ very little as related by the two sides, but there are differences in its overall assessment. Virtually every description of the battle that I have read attributes the overwhelming success of the native force to errors, poor training, and incompetence on the part of the Americans. Those certainly contributed, but the native’s brilliant plan of attack and its near-perfect execution were at the heart of their victory.

It was great to see the event so well attended even though it meant space to study the exhibits was in short supply. l snapped these pictures during the reception period when the display area was not quite as crowded as it was following the presentation in the auditorium. In addition to the battle, parts of the exhibit are dedicated to Background, Aftermath, and Persistence. The victory brought only a brief respite. In just a few years, a new U.S. Army was victorious at the same site and elsewhere, and the Treaty of Greenville soon followed. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was followed by forced relocation and the systematic suppression of native culture. The tribes have survived, however. This exhibit spent those months in Oklahoma so descendants of the people who defeated St. Clair could see it.

Two smaller versions of the exhibit have been created. One is on permanent display at Fort Recovery. The other will travel and is currently at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park near Chillicothe, OH, where it will remain until April 13. The exhibit at the Ohio History Connection runs until August 17.

You Never Even Called Me by My Name

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The photo at right was taken at the very beginning of the longest night of 2024. It was supposed to show the sun setting over the Ohio River but the sun is doing its thing behind a wall of clouds. Winter Solstice is about eleven hours and thirty-eight minutes away. Sunrise is fourteen hours and twenty-three minutes away.

In four of the last five Decembers, I have published a solstice-related post. Three were versions of A Cosmic Reason for the Season which was first published in 2019. It basically tries to explain how modern-day Christmas had its beginning in celebrations of the Winter Solstice and how the two have become quite disconnected over the centuries. Last year’s Don’t Christmas My Yule post came from my realization that not everyone considers Yule to be synonymous with Christmas and that many celebrate a Yule that is just as tightly tied to the solstice as it ever was.

Those posts, along with a few others, talk about how holidays like Christmas, Easter, and Groundhog Day (Candlemas) have become so out of synch with nature that most see no connection at all. If that sort of thing interests you, I suggest reading them and I doubly suggest reading an article I’ve cited in them: The Winter Solstice and the Origins of Christmas

This article is being published during the gap between Solstice and Christmas and looks at a question I’ve had about the latter for some time. I guess the question had never bothered me enough to look for an answer because, when I did, I immediately found an article that used the question I was asking as its title and answered it quite nicely. The question — and article — is: Why is Christmas a Federal Holiday?

As I said, the article answers the question quite nicely and I won’t repeat it all here. The extremely short version is that it was declared a holiday by date rather than by name and that seems to be the primary reason it has survived First Amendment-based challenges. Some weight has also been given to the fact that three other clearly secular holidays were established at the same time. The pertinent text of the 1870 bill is: “The first day of January, commonly called New Year’s Day, the fourth day of July, the twenty-fifth day of December, commonly called Christmas, and any day appointed or recommended by the President of the United States as a day of public fast or thanksgiving shall be holidays…” The full bill is here.

Note that the bill tied three of the holidays to days of the month with no mention of days of the week and no consideration for solar or lunar positions. Thanksgiving was not tied to anything at all. It had been celebrated since the days of George Washington but its date was set by proclamation and varied considerably. Lincoln moved to tie it to the last Thursday of November with an 1863 proclamation but for some reason, the 1870 bill did not put that into law. Nonetheless, Lincoln’s proclamation held until Franklin Roosevelt tried moving the holiday to lengthen the 1939 “25th of December” shopping season. Not everyone went along and in 1941 the legislature finally stepped in to nail Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November.

I felt somewhat chagrined when I read that 1870 holiday bill. For several years I have made a conscious effort to refer to that big mid-summer holiday as Independence Day instead of the — I thought — more informal 4th of July. I stand corrected and henceforth will try to remember to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July and a Merry 25th of December.

African American History along the Cincinnati Riverfront

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I took this Harriet Beecher Stowe House walking tour last Saturday with the idea that it would be the subject of last Sunday’s blog post but it was not. I told myself there wasn’t enough time to create a post for Sunday morning, which was certainly one reason, but another reason was that I felt slightly disappointed in the tour. I should not have. The problem was my expectations were off. For no good reason, I had thought we would visit spots where historic things happened but with just a little more thought I realized how ridiculous that was—the Cincinnati riverfront of 2024 bares little resemblance to the riverfront of the past. The tour took us to places where historic things are commemorated. I enjoyed the tour as it happened and now appreciate it with the passage of a little time.

We met tour guide Zinnia Stewart by the statue of John Roebling near the south end of the bridge that bears his name. Other than a meeting point, the statue plays no role in the tour. Neither does the bridge as anything other than a walkway across the river. I chose the particular opening photo that I did because it mimics the photo that has appeared at the front of this blog since the beginning. Its purpose is to show the river of the tour’s title. Dredging, dams, and other feats of engineering have made the Ohio River consistently navigable for large barges which is something it was not in the days when it separated the free North from the slaveholding South.

The tour began by heading east along the river to a statue representing James Bradley. We were supplied with small wireless (Bluetooth I assume) listening devices so that we could easily hear Stewart as we walked. Bradley was abducted from Africa and worked as a slave until he was able to buy his own freedom in 1833. He then moved to Cincinnati and was the only former slave participating in the pivotal Lane Debates of 1834.

We then headed west past the Roebling Bridge to the string of Robert Dafford murals on the riverfront and stopped at The Flight of the Garner Family. In 1856, Margaret Garner escaped from slavery by crossing the frozen Ohio River with her husband and children. They were captured in Cincinnati and Margaret killed her daughter to save her from a life of slavery. She was prevented from killing herself and her other children as planned. Toni Morrison’s Beloved was inspired by these events.

It was now time to cross the river ourselves. I had taken that opening picture of the River Queen during our visit to the murals and now caught it from the middle of the Roebling Bridge after it turned and headed back. We stopped twice while crossing as Stewart shared stories and photos of people and places along both sides of the river.

On the Ohio side, I spent more time at the Black Brigade Monument than I have ever spent before, and as a result, I know I need to spend a lot more time here in the future. I simply did not realize the many facets of this monument that it seems I’ve only glanced at before. One bit of information that made the whole tour worthwhile is that William Mallory, who was instrumental in getting the monument constructed, was the model for the face of Black Brigade member Marshall P.H. Jones. I thought I knew the story of the Black Brigade but, just like the memorial, there is a lot more for me to learn.

Our last stop was at this statue of politician Marian Spencer. Spencer left her mark on the area in many ways but she is probably best remembered for her efforts to desegregate Coney Island Amusement Park.

A House Twice Storied

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I have heard it said that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written in this house. It was not. Until recently, I had not heard that it was listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book. It was.

Although the book was not written here, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, did live in the house at one time and the house has long borne her name. It has just reopened after an extensive restoration that recognizes its importance both as the Beecher family home and as a tavern and boarding house a century later.

There was a ribbon cutting for the restored Harriet Beecher Stowe House last Friday with special events continuing through the weekend. I missed the “Housewarming Weekend” but did reserve a ticket for the first regularly scheduled tour on Thursday. The site is closed Monday through Wednesday. I arrived early enough to look over the many informative panels placed around the grounds. Note the National Register of Historic Places plaque with both of the building’s claims to fame listed, beside the new entrance ramp.

Executive Director Christina Hartlieb was our guide, and, despite it being the first “regularly scheduled” tour following the reopening, it was pretty obvious that this was not her first time as conductor. I’m guessing that the “Housewarming Weekend” had given her and other guides ample experience. It is also the case that much of the information provided is about the house’s residents and unchanged by the restoration.

The house was built by Lane Seminary in 1833 as a home for its new president, Lyman Beecher.  The Seminary is a most interesting part of history in its own right. Particularly the slavery-related debates of 1834 and a related mass exodus of students that has been called the “first major academic freedom incident in America”. The tour began in the parlor where 25-year-old Harriet Elisabeth Beecher became Mrs. Calvin Stowe in 1836. The original part of the house has been restored to its 1840 appearance. A strip of original wallpaper once covered by a temporary wall has been saved and copied. In the kitchen, the original beehive oven and its surroundings have been retained.

Even though Harriet lived in Cincinnati for less than twenty years, it was here, with slavery in operation just across the river and fallout from it everywhere she looked, that the memories that became Uncle Tom’s Cabin were formed. In an upstairs hallway, beside a section of original brick wall intentionally left exposed, there is a photo of the Hartford, CT, statue of Stowe’s meeting with Lincoln. There is no recording and no proof that Lincoln actually said, “So you’re the little lady who started this big war”, but I like to think he did.

The Monfort family lived in the house from 1865 to 1930 and in 1908 they built a large addition. The addition’s exterior is currently painted white to distinguish it from the original building’s yellow. This was their formal dining room. During the 1930s and ’40s, it served as the Edgemont Tavern with a listing in The Negro Motorist Green Book. During that same period, the obviously updated second floor served as a boarding house. As a long-term residence rather than an overnight stop for tourists, only the tavern portion appeared in The Green Book. By coincidence, a traveling Green Book exhibit recently opened at the nearby National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and was the subject of a previous blog post.

So, no, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not written here but its author did live here, and a lot of other pretty darned important stuff also happened here. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is back and ready to let you peek at 1840 and a little 1940 too.

Trip Peek #136 Trip #142 Common Ground on the Hill

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This picture is from my 2017 Common Ground on the Hill trip. I had wanted to attend the Common Ground on the Hill Roots Music & Arts Festival for several years and this was the year that I finally made it. The photo shows the all-musicians-on-deck finale of the showcase concert that took place on the day I reached the festival in Westminster, MD. This was the ninth day of the trip because once I decided to attend Common Ground, I started adding items from my “someday” list to the agenda. Before I reached the pictured concert, I had been pulled to the top of West Virginia’s Bald Knob by a Shay steam-powered locomotive, toured James Madison’s Montpelier, treated to a tour of Richmond, VA, by a friend, celebrated Independence Day in Williamsburg, VA, got rear-ended at a stop light, and sideswiped in a parking lot. Those last two events led to replacing my Subaru once I got home but, despite taking a beating, the 2011 Forester took care of me on what was a very enjoyable trip.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Book Review
Tracing a T to Sebring
Denny Gibson

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This book is an odd one that probably doesn’t deserve a review in even this little corner of the internet. On the other hand, this little corner is just about the only place where its oddities can be discussed. It is identical in concept to 2021’s Tracing a T to Tampa. Both tell about retracing an Ohio-Florida trip 100 years after the Model T Ford-powered originals. There are two huge differences, however. The Model T trips were undertaken by my great-grandparents and modern knowledge of them comes from my great-grandmother’s real-time reporting. For the 1920 trip, her writing covered the drive to Florida, significant time in the state, and the drive home which included some real sightseeing in the east. Only 48 handwritten pages exist from the 1923 trip and that barely gets them to Florida, covers very little of their time in the state, and none of the drive home.  The second big difference between the two books is that Tracing a T to Tampa contains a fair amount of background on the travelers and the times in which they lived. That information does not appear in Tracing a T to Sebring.

Both “Tracing…” books have obvious personal and family connections. Among the reasons for publishing both books was a desire to preserve Granny’s letters and make them available to the family. But the story those letters tell is of interest well beyond the family. Anyone curious about early auto travel or just life in the 1920s in general can probably enjoy them. I would like to think those same people can enjoy the expansion and updates I have tacked on. Actually, I guess I really only believe that about the first of the pair. It’s not impossible for people unrelated to Frank and Gertrude to enjoy this oneway tale of their second Florida trip. Nor is it impossible for it to be enjoyed by people unfamiliar with the “…Tampa” book. But I do think it’s not very easy. It really is a sequel and one that almost requires reading the earlier work to appreciate. It also helps if you have some idea of who Frank and Gertrude were. This book is clearly in a niche more deeply than any of my others. My relatives and/or folks who read and enjoyed Tracing a T to Tampa will probably like Tracing a T to Sebring. Everyone else, not so much.

Tracing a T to Sebring, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2024, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 62 pages, ISBN 979-8875936098.

Available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon and Goodreads are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted regardless of where you purchased the book. All Trip Mouse books are described and signed copies are available here.

Mound Cold War Discovery Center

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I don’t know that rainy days were actually made for museums but the two do fit together nicely. A visit to the Mound Cold War Discovery Center was a very nice fit for this week’s rainy Friday. Before stumbling upon a reference to the Miamisburg, Ohio, museum, I had no idea of the area’s role in both the Cold War and the “hot war” that preceded it.

When I first read — or possibly heard — that there was a museum nearby dedicated to nuclear research and development, I pictured a musty warehouse-type place with some old lab equipment on display. What I found was an excellent presentation of history and science put together by Dayton History. The complex may have once contained some unattractive buildings but the museum is housed in an inviting former administration building built in the 1980s.

The Manhattan Project started in New York, but it soon involved locations throughout the entire country.

As noted in one of the photos above, the Dayton Project was responsible for the separation and purification of the plutonium used in “Gadget” and “Fat Man”. “Gadget” was the bomb exploded in the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945. “Fat Man” was the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. “Little Boy”, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, used enriched uranium rather than plutonium. That’s “Fat Man” in the photo at left. “Bockscar”, the plane that dropped “Fat Man”, is displayed at the Air Force Museum in Dayton along with a full-size replica of the bomb.

Construction of the first seventeen buildings comprising Mound Laboratory began almost immediately after World War II ended. The facility opened in early 1948 to support atomic weapons production.

One section of the museum offers some general science information without any obvious direct ties to Mound Laboratory. Perhaps its purpose is to tamp down visitors’ concerns over strolling about an area where radioactivity was once a major feature.

Yes, it does look like letting visitors know that a little radiation never hurt anybody just might be a goal.

Due mostly to the invention of the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator which uses radioactive fuel to generate electricity, Mound Laboratory made significant contributions to a variety of ventures into space. Eventually, all of its missions were ended or moved elsewhere and the complex is now an industrial park much like those in other towns.

Anyone unfamiliar with the area and wondering where the laboratory got its name can probably figure it out with a glance out the museum’s front door. Read about that here.

2024 Hollow Earth Fest

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Once upon a time, in a land very very near, there lived a man who declared that the earth was hollow. Among the man’s disciples was his son who eventually erected a tombstone topped by a 3D representation of the earth with entrances to its interior at both poles. On Saturday, April 13, that marker was the focal point of the first-ever (AFAIK) Hollow Earth Fest.

That very near land is southwest Ohio with the Hollow Earth Monument standing in the city of Hamilton. The man buried beneath it is John Cleves Symmes Jr., who served in the US Army during the War of 1812 before moving to Saint Louis, MO, then Newport, KY, and then Hamilton, OH. He was the nephew of a more famous John Cleves Symmes who fought in the Revolutionary War, served in the Continental Congress, and bought and resold a major chunk of southwest Ohio. The elder John Cleves Symmes had no male children. It was his nephew who was named after him with the “Jr.” suffix often used to distinguish the two.

John Cleves Symmes Jr. died in 1829 at the age of 48 and was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Hamilton. When that cemetery was replaced by Greenwood Cemetery in 1848, his body was left behind for some reason. His son, Americus, erected the hollow earth marker in 1873.

The marker’s original carvings have become nearly unreadable and have been reproduced on metal plaques mounted on a pedestal below. The monument was rededicated in 1991 as noted by a fourth plaque on its otherwise blank side.

Music at the festival included a fife (or maybe flute) and drum trio, native American drummers and singers with spontaneous dancing in the audience, and a father-son duo.

Food trucks and other vendors were present including Municipal Brew Works with a Belgian ale, Earth Donut, brewed especially for the occasion.

There were also some more formal ceremonies and presentations but I did not do a very good job of documenting them. I can, however, show that the Daughters of the American Revolution, Sons of the American Revolution, and Boy Scouts of America were all represented.

It goes without saying that this was absolutely the best Hollow Earth Fest that I have ever attended. It wasn’t huge but it had a blend of history, patriotism, civic pride, and debunked science that I can see leading to real growth in the future. It’s the sort of thing that people of all ages, from all walks of life, and from all over and within the globe can enjoy.

Miami Valley Veterans Museum

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It was during September’s Waco Aircraft Company centennial that I first became aware of the Miami Valley Veterans Museum sitting about a hundred yards south of Historic WACO Field. My friend Terry and I attended the centennial and have talked ever since about visiting the museum. We finally got it done on Thursday. I was surprised to see a dozen or so cars in the lot when I arrived a little ahead of Terry and a little ahead of the museum’s 10:00 opening. I initially thought I might have the opening time wrong but soon realized that the cars that beat me there belonged to volunteers taking care of things inside. This place clearly has a dedicated and energetic crew. During my brief wait, I snapped the picture at right and noted that the building’s signage included the first USSF insignia I had seen in the wild.

The museum was established in 2009 and spent its early years in the Masonic Building in downtown Troy. It moved here in 2021. One of the first things encountered on entering the museum is the History in a Box series. These are portable displays that are used in presentations at schools and such. Each box represents a different period beginning with pioneer days and currently ending with the Vietnam War. Assembling a box for the Middle East conflicts is in progress.

There are several other exhibits in the lobby area but the bulk of the displays are in a huge room behind it. Women are well represented throughout the museum but because March is Women’s History Month some items related to women in the military are displayed just outside the entrance to the main exhibit area. The 42-foot “Veterans Marching Through Time” mural is just inside the entrance. 

Exhibits in the big room are arranged chronologically beginning with the pioneer period. Marine uniforms from 1776 and 1863 can be seen in the first picture. The drum visible in both pictures is from the War of 1812.

These two photos are of more or less random items that caught my eye. The genuine “bolt action” long gun was handmade by the Viet Cong but doesn’t appear all that crude until you get close. The “ITALY SURRENDERS!” headline stood out because it is a lot more common to see headlines announcing the Japanese or German surrender. That’s quite understandable since those surrenders actually ended campaigns whereas defeating Italy was just a step on the way to victory in Europe.

Terry and  I had heard good things about the museum but it exceeded our high expectations in both the number and range of artifacts displayed. The friendliness and energy of the volunteers we met were also quite impressive. Open 10:00-2:00 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. There is no admission charge but donations are welcomed.