Born Drusilla Petticord on March 4, 1865 on a West Liberty farm, she grew up to become Mrs. Drusilla “Drucie” Petticord Bauer-Turner, a respected baseball “authority” and Wheeling’s most formidable and perhaps West Virginia’s only female baseball “magnate.” Read More
From Irish Row to Corktown
The Wheeling Irish
How did so many Irish immigrants end up in the United States and in Wheeling?
There were many waves of immigration. But the biggest one related to the Gaelic -mostly Catholic- Irish, was caused by starvation.
In oversimplified terms: by the mid-19th century, the tenant farmers and working poor of Ireland had become dependent on the potato crop for survival. Starting in 1845, an insidious potato blight resulted in crop failure after crop failure. People starved. Read More
Serene Dignity: Marian Anderson’s True First Wheeling Performance
“Sometimes racial prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can’t see it, you can’t find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing it because the feel of it is irritating.”-
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was one of the world’s greatest contralto singers. She toured the planet as a musical ambassador, the toast of monarchs, musical heavyweights, and citizens of every race, while in her own country, she remained a second class citizen. But did you know that before the critical incident that guaranteed her immortality, she visited “Jim Crow” Wheeling as a guest of the Blue Triangle branch of the Y.W.C.A. and Madison School?
Before we get to that, let’s go back to the future. Read More
Celebrating Freedom: Wheeling’s “Juneteenth” in Context
In recent years, Wheeling has joined the national celebration of Juneteenth, with the 2022 version featuring events at the Ohio County Public Library, YWCA, Market Plaza, and Heritage Port. See details.
Juneteenth is a celebration of the liberation of Texas slaves in execution of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which applied only to slaves held in states in rebellion—that is, Confederate states. On June 19, 1865, roughly 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas and announced that “the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as ‘Juneteenth,’ by the newly freed people in Texas.” Source.
Juneteenth was made a federal holiday on June 19, 2021. Wheeling had already begun marking the day a few years prior.
But historically, the African American population in the Wheeling area had celebrated “Emancipation Day,” despite the fact that no slaves were freed in West Virginia (which had joined the Union in 1863), by Lincoln’s executive order. The date chosen (probably in hopes of fairer weather) was actually that of the so-called preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, announced on September 22, 1862. The official order would come on January 1, 1863. Read More
Angels of the Wards: All-Star Nurses of Wheeling
“Nurses are there when the last breath is taken, and nurses are there when the first breath is taken. Although it is more enjoyable to celebrate the birth, it is just as important to comfort in death.” —Christine Belle
Throughout its storied history, Wheeling has been blessed with the dedicated service of numerous brave and caring nurses.
Most were trained locally at the nursing schools associated with Wheeling Hospital, and the City Hospital (later Ohio Valley General Hospital and still later Ohio Valley Medical Center), as well as the lesser known and short-lived Haskins Hospital.
In recognition of National Nurses Month and Week, what follows is a sampling of just a few notables among these front line “Angels of the Wards.”
Archiving Wheeling Presents
Lesser Known Legends of Wheeling: African American Leaders
by Seán Duffy and Erin Rothenbuehler
On February 2, 2021, we presented a Lunch With Books Livestream program exploring the lives, times, and achievements of nine leaders of Wheeling’s African American community during the era of “Jim Crow” segregation, including: barber Henry Boose Clemens; police officer William Alexander Turner; firefighter Ashby Jackson; attorney Harry H. Jones; medical doctors Boswell Henson Stillyard, Julia Katherine Pronty Davis; Robert Maceo Hamlin; and Alga Wade Hamlin; and musician Will H. Dixon.
This post will serve as the penultimate supplement to our livestream video. A profile of Will H. Dixon will follow. Read More
Topping the Town’s Tonsorial Trade
The Life and Times of Henry Boose Clemens:
Slave, Barber, Political Leader
PROLOGUE
On February 2, 2021, we presented a Lunch With Books Livestream program for the Ohio County Public Library, exploring the lives, times, and achievements of nine leaders of Wheeling’s African American community during the era of “Jim Crow” segregation, including: barber Henry Boose Clemens; police officer William Alexander Turner; firefighter Ashby Jackson; attorney Harry H. Jones; medical doctors Boswell Henson Stillyard, Julia Katherine Pronty Davis; Robert Maceo Hamlin; and Alga Wade Hamlin; and musician Will H. Dixon.
This post, about Henry Boose Clemens (1843-1923), will serve as the second supplement (after Dr. B.H. Stillyard) to our livestream video. Additional supplements will be posted soon. Read More
Welcome Home
Wheeling’s Doughboy is Back and Better than Ever
In 1918, American soldiers – “Doughboys,” as they were known, probably because of their dusty uniforms during the war with Mexico 70 years prior – filled training facilities like Virginia’s Camp Lee in preparation for entering the European conflict that would one day be termed “World War I.”
But our Doughboys were already at war with a microscopic enemy – a deadly H1N1 virus misnamed “Spanish Flu.” These soldiers faced the prospect of war during a worldwide pandemic thought to have originated, not in Spain, but in an American military training camp. By the end of that fateful year, influenza would claim some 45,000 American soldiers (many before they completed basic training), nearly as many as the 53,000 killed in the trenches of France. Read More
Haunted Ohio Valley History: A Halloween Horror Trilogy
by Laura Jackson Roberts, Christina Fisanick, and Seán Duffy with research by Erin Rothenbuehler
Introduction: History is Ghostful
The Ohio Valley is haunted. That’s an undeniable fact.
Like any place on the planet with a past chock full of human triumph and folly, greed and generosity, good and evil – the Ohio Valley is haunted by the ghosts of its own, by turns, bloody, joyful, corrupt, tragic, and hilarious lived human experience – its rich, much celebrated, sometimes regretted, and often downright scary, history.
“Real” ghosts? Ghouls? Spirits? Specters? Poltergeists? Phantoms? Yeah, those too…
Maybe. Perhaps. Kind of…
So, how about a trilogy of the latter for Halloween fun? Fact or fiction? History or lore? You be the judges. But be warned: these reasonably true tales of terror are not for the faint of heart.
Turn on some lights, and read on…
Read More
Blessed Martin ~ Patron Saint of Racial Harmony
A Brief History of Wheeling’s Blessed Martin School
Dedication
We are sharing this post again in honor of our beloved Sister Gabriella Wagner, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 102.
She was a lovely, kind soul who treasured her time at Blessed Martin and all of the schools at which she taught. Sister was a dedicated, generous teacher, and I was privileged to have been one of her thousands of students. I am honored to have had the opportunity to interview her for this post just after her 102nd birthday. A clip from that interview appears in the story below.
Rest easy in the light, Sister Gabriella. You shall be missed, even as your legacy lives on in all of us who benefited from your patient counsel.
Many of those with even a passing familiarity with Wheeling’s history will easily identify Lincoln School as the segregated public school in town from Reconstruction through “Jim Crow” to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court desegregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education.
But many of those same people have probably never heard of Wheeling’s segregated Catholic school, Blessed Martin. Read More
