Seán Patrick Duffy is the programming coordinator at the Ohio County Public Library and the Executive Director of the Wheeling Academy of Law and Science (WALS) Foundation at the First State Capitol in Wheeling, where he manages the Reuther-Wheeling Library and Labor History Archive. He earned a BA in History and an MBA from Wheeling Jesuit University, and a JD from the American University. He is the author of three books on local history: The Wheeling Family: A Celebration of Immigrants & Their Neighborhoods (2008), Wheeling: Then & Now with Paul Rinkes (2010), and The Wheeling Family, Volume 2: More Immigrants, Migrants & Neighborhoods (2012). He also edited and co-authored Legendary Locals of Wheeling (2013) with Brent Carney and numerous local contributors. Seán was named a History Hero by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History in 2010 and is a member of the West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation Board.
October 24, 1944. 5 o’clock p.m. South China Sea.
Arisan Maru. Public domain image.
The nearly 7,000-ton Japanese freighter, Arisan Maru, is churning toward Formosa. Packed in the stifling heat of the ship’s holds are 1,782 mostly American and some Allied war prisoners of the Empire of Japan. The men are destined for forced labor camps.
Seeing only an unmarked enemy vessel, a U.S. Navy submarine, the USS Shark, fires three torpedoes. Direct hit. Split in two, the Arisan Maru slips beneath the waves in less than two hours. While most of the POWs escape the sinking ship, they are left to die on the open sea. The Japanese navy attempts no rescue. Only nine men survive. It is the largest loss of life at sea in American history.
Among the dead is 42 year-old Private First Class Frederick William Elkes, a 17-year veteran of the U.S. Army Air Force, 17th Pursuit Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group. Stationed in the Philippines, the South Wheeling boy who grew up on McColloch Street, was captured during the fall of Bataan. Read More
“A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.” -Jean Giraudoux
The “rough” at Cedar Rocks these days seems rather daunting.
One of the best things about doing local history research and exploring local archival collections is learning about the wonders of old Wheeling that are now lost to time. And some of the most interesting stories about “Lost Wheeling” are often the unlikely ones—the ones that stretch the imagination, like the amusement park on the Lower Sisters Island, the beer garden at Wheeling Park, the town’s old German singing societies, and the Mozart Incline.
Another one of those wonders was a short-lived, championship caliber golf course located “out the crick” on Big Wheeling Creek Road—a place called Cedar Rocks Country Club—where one of the greatest golfers of all time won a tournament 78 years ago today, on September 17, 1938.
And if you’re like me, you’ve probably driven right through this long gone golf course hundreds of times without even realizing it. Read More
Boss Tweed circa 1869, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-90688
The notorious William Magear “Boss” Tweed visited Wheeling 143 years ago today on September 6, 1873, but the reason for his visit was then, and remains today, a mystery.
Who’s the Boss?
Tweed was a Democratic politician and the “Boss” (circa 1858-1871) of New York City’s infamous Tammany Hall, one of the most overtly corrupt political machines in the nation’s history. Tweed used a system of cronyism to make sure members of his inner circle, the “Tweed Ring,” were appointed to positions of power in city government; he essentially controlled city elections by awarding jobs to mostly Irish immigrant constituents in return for votes, as well as through outright fraud; and he used inflated building contracts, bribery, and kickbacks to embezzle tens of millions (hundreds of millions in today’s money) of taxpayer dollars. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast launched a relentless crusade against Tweed, principally in the pages of Harper’s Weekly.
One of many caricatures of Tweed by Thomas Nast that appeared in Harper’s Weekly.
According to legend, the power of Nast’s satirical depictions of Tweed caused the latter to despair, “I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles, my constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures.”
His corruption fully exposed, and his support badly eroded, Tweed was arrested in 1871. The jury at his first trial deadlocked in January 1873, but Tweed would be tried again in November of that same year, and this time, he was convicted.
It was during the period between trials, in September of 1873, that Tweed, for some still unknown reason, visited Wheeling. Read More
The Case for Moving Wheeling’s Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Monument
“So may the future days
Come nobly to our State:
When, prosperous and great,
Her citizens shall praise
Those who gave life and all to consecrate
Their land to liberty;
And bade their watchword be
These words in granite here,
To freemen ever dear,
Montani Semper Liberi.” -From Soldiers’ Monument Poem by William Leighton
In case you haven’t heard, a campaign has been launched to move the Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Monument from Wheeling Park to the empty lot beside West Virginia Independence Hall. Read More
If we’ve learned anything from watching movies, surely we’ve learned that no good can come from unearthing duly interred bodies from sacred ground and moving them (or not) for the sake of development. You don’t build things over an old graveyard. You. Just. Do. Not.
But the fact is, the ground on which the Ohio County Public Library now stands was deeded to the town of Wheeling from Noah and Mary Zane in 1816 for use as “a burying ground.” And, as a burying ground, it was most certainly used.
The Freedom Train Brings the Spirit of 1776 to Wheeling
“Here comes the Freedom Train You better hurry down Just like a Paul Revere It’s comin’ into your hometown Inside the freedom train You’ll find a precious freight Those words of liberty The documents that made us great…”
–fromThe Freedom Train(1948) by Irving Berlin
Freedom Train postcard, OCPL Archives.
On September 14, 1948, a glossy white, seven-car train with bold, red, white and blue striping and a golden eagle on its Alco PA-1 diesel-electric locomotive, pulled into Wheeling’s Pennsylvania Railroad depot at the Wharf, just above what is now Heritage Port, for a twelve hour visit. On board the were “127 of the nation’s most priceless historical documents,” including Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence with corrections, Washington’s copy of the original printed draft of the Constitution, a manuscript copy of the Gettysburg Address held by Abraham Lincoln, and Francis Scott Key’s handwritten copy of The Star Spangled Banner, among many others.
Evidence of German Wheeling can still be found when you look up.
The Wheeling of one hundred ten years ago was a robust German town, with a German language newspaper, mandatory German language classes in many schools, and German language services in many churches.
It was also home to numerous German choral singing societies, including the Arion, Harmonie, Maennerchor, Beethoven, Germania, Liedertafel, Mozart, Concordia, Liederkranz, and Teutonia. The Turner (or Turnverein) Society emphasized gymnastics and operated Turner’s Hall. The singers were mostly male, accompanied, when needed, by female singers from the women’s auxiliaries. The societies often had their own musicians. Read More
Nothing says spring quite so clearly as an April day at the old ballpark, with the sun shining warmly on your face and tiny, cool bubbles bursting on the tip of your nose as you raise an ice cold bottle of sweet soda pop to your lips for a refreshing drink. Well, that’s our theory anyway, as we celebrate spring with a new exhibit of baseball artifacts combined with Thad Podratsky’s amazing collection of early Wheeling pop bottles — on display now at the Ohio County Public Library. As a complement to this display, we present a two-part post on the history of baseball and pop bottling in old Wheeling.
▶ Read Part 1: “A Social Game of Ball”
Part 2: The Pop-Post
An assortment of Painted Pops. Thad Podratsky Collection.
“I do Sierra Mist commercials not because they pay me a lot of money or because it only takes a couple of days. I do it because I have a respect for all sodas and I like to communicate that. Some people say soda, some people say pop. Where I’m from in Indiana they called it breakfast.” -Comedian Jim Gaffigan
“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.” -Lord Byron
Nothing says spring quite so clearly as an April day at the old ballpark, with the sun shining warmly on your face and tiny, cool bubbles bursting on the tip of your nose as you raise an ice cold bottle of sweet soda pop to your lips for a refreshing drink. Well, that’s our theory anyway, as we celebrate spring with a new exhibit of baseball artifacts combined with Thad Podratsky’s amazing collection of early Wheeling pop bottles — on display now at the Ohio County Public Library. As a complement to this display, we present a two-part post on the history of baseball and pop bottling in old Wheeling.
Part 1: “A Social Game of Ball”
“Ray, people will come Ray … They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past … And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.” -Terence Mann [James Earl Jones] in Field of Dreams
“Wheeling’s a swell town to play [baseball] in. The fans here like a good game an’ don’t care who wins. The kids are bad, though!”
–from The Short Stop (1909) by Zane Grey, writer and baseball player
The Wheeling Nailers playing Kalamazoo on Wheeling Island, May 19, 1887. Brown Collection, OCPL Archives.
During the Civil War, Wheeling served as the birthplace of the new state of West Virginia. In the years immediately after the war ended, Wheeling would serve as the birthplace, in the new state, of a new game called “base ball.”
If we’ve learned anything from watching movies, surely we’ve learned that no good can come from unearthing duly interred bodies from sacred ground and moving them (or not) for the sake of development. You don’t build things over an old graveyard. You. Just. Do. Not.
