Participate in the Memories in Hand: Veterans Project
Are you a U.S. military veteran from the Wheeling/Ohio Valley area? Do you have a relative or close friend who served?
If so, we invite you to participate in a new project of the Ohio County Public Library Archives called, “Memories in Hand,” a part of our ongoing Wheeling Memory Project. Read More
It is, perhaps, one of the most popular photographs in the W.C. Brown Collection — especially this time of year, when ghouls and goblins are rumored to roam freely on the eve of All Saints Day.
“1896 — These iron coffins, resembling Egyptian mummy cases were found in the old Catholic cemetery near the old Reyman brewery. As Wheeling was an iron city, it is likely that they were made here. They were used in England and Germany during the 19th century.”
-W.C. Brown
Standing sentinel, high on a high hill, a mummified iron casket keeps watch over a fallen friend in the abandoned cemetery. Propped stiffly against empty burial vault walls, all that remains of what was once entombed inside is an empty black face that peers eerily out towards East Wheeling. Read More
Can you imagine more than 3,500 cheering people crammed into the intersection of 17th and Eoff Streets in East Wheeling?
That’s how many showed up 63 years ago today on the morning of October 23, 1952, when President Harry S. Truman rolled into town on his special 15-car campaign train, arriving at the Baltimore and Ohio Passenger station during a Whistle-Stop campaign, stumping for Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee to replace Truman as president. Read More
“WHOOWOOOOOOOOO…WHOWOO…WHOWOO…WHOWOO! A hoot whistle cuts through the hazy shimmering heat of a steamy Ohio River Valley mid-July morning in Wheeling, West Virginia. Hey! Listen. A Humper’s just whistled out the th’ flag. He’s gonna take water at Bridgeport. Let’s go get ’em! (a ‘Humper’ is local slang for a B&O lake coal train working ‘over the hump’ from Wheeling to Holloway, Ohio). You grab camera and film and take off running. Down 14th Street, up Eoff Street, cut thru the Yellow Cab’s back lot, up Chapline Street past the post office, over 10th Street and across Market, attacking auto and pedestrian traffic like a Kamikaze trainee.” -J.J. Young
No, this headline is not meant to be a tribute to the late great Yogi Berra, though it sounds like something he might have said. In fact, this is federal law.
Indeed, by federal law, for a stogie to be called a “Wheeling Stogie” it must be made in Wheeling.
Boston, July 6, 1899, in the United States Circuit Court, Judge Colt handed down a decision holding that, “stogies bearing the name of ‘Wheeling’ or ‘Wheeling Stogies’, could not be manufactured in Boston or elsewhere other than Wheeling and sold as ‘Wheeling Stogies’.”
by Kate Quinn and Seán Duffy
An Archiving Wheeling Partnership with Weelunk.
For more great Wheeling stories visit www.weelunk.com.
“Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready.”― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
What if I told you that you could see camels, ride a roller coaster, visit a German beer garden, fly to the North Pole in an airship, roller skate, dance, travel to Damascus, and take in Vaudeville shows all in the middle of the Ohio River near Warwood? Would you believe me? Well, during a long ago summer, you could do all of those things and more, on a magical little island dubbed “Coney.”
In the opening scenes of the 1971 motion picture Fools’ Parade (based on the Davis Grubb novel of the same name), as the stars of the film leave Moundsville prison and climb into a car with the credits still rolling, a young man dressed in overalls can be seen peering at the coming attractions in front of the Strand Theatre. He turns around and looks at the car as it stops at a stop sign.
That young man is 18-year-old Jeff Kirk of Martins Ferry, Ohio. His family once owned and operated Kirk’s Art Studio on Market Street in Wheeling. How did young Jeff end up appearing, even briefly, in a major Hollywood motion picture? It was all about a vintage car.
A historically important glass manufacturing center, around the turn of the 20th century, Wheeling and the surrounding Ohio Valley was teeming with active firms like Central Glass Works in East Wheeling, Northwood Glass in South Wheeling, Crystal Glass Company in Bridgeport, Imperial Glass in Bellaire, Fostoria in Moundsville, and Riverside Glass Works in Wellsburg, just to name a few.
But perhaps the most unusual glass manufacturer of the period was the lesser-known North Wheeling Glass Company. Read More
For a small city, Wheeling can boast a veritable pantheon of legendary figures, from frontier folk like Betty Zane and Samuel McColloch, to modern notables like Eleanor Steber and Walter Reuther. But there was a man from Wheeling whose name and deeds, while deserving of similar legendary status, remain relatively obscure and unknown.
That man’s name was John Joliffe Yarnall (1786-1815), and his heroic deeds helped win the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. Read More
OUR CITY HAS A NEW HISTORICAL HIGHWAY MARKER
Riverboat historians consider Wheeling the “Birthplace of the American Steamboat”, and this new West Virginia Historical Highway Marker recently installed at Sixteenth and Main Streets commemorates that fact. The marker is provided by John Bowman with support from the Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation. Read More
