Lorenzo Carter Biography

from the Ohio Historical Society

Lorenzo Carter was the first permanent white settler of Cleveland, Ohio.

Carter was born in 1767 (sometimes reported as 1766) in Rutland, Vermont. In 1797, hoping to lead a more profitable life in the Connecticut Western Reserve, Carter relocated his family, including his wife, Rebecca Fuller, to Cleveland. The Carters arrived in Cleveland on May 2. They were the only white family in Cleveland until April 1800. Several other families settled near Cleveland before this date, but they preferred the higher elevations of land around this community, rather than the swampier terrain of Cleveland.

Carter and his family did succeed on the frontier. They built a sizable log-cabin home, which also served as an inn and, for a time, as a jail. Carter eventually became a sizable landholder in the area, owning several dozen acres of land on both the east and west sides of the Cuyahoga River. Carter built the first log warehouse in Cleveland in 1810, as well as the first ship, the Zephyr, capable of trading sizable amounts of goods on Lake Erie in 1808. The Carters also owned the first frame house in Cleveland, although it burned shortly before completion. Carter also served as a constable and as a major in the Ohio Militia.

Carter died on February 7, 1814

 

George Voinovich Biography

from the Ohio Historical Society

George Victor Voinovich served as Ohio’s governor from 1991 to 1998.

Voinovich was born on July 15, 1936, in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1958, he graduated from Ohio University with a degree in political science and, in 1961, from The Ohio State University with a law degree. Voinovich then embarked upon a career in public service.

From 1963 to 1967, Voinovich served as one of Ohio’s assistant attorneys general. In 1966, he won election to the Ohio House of Representatives as a member of the Republican Party. Voinovich served in the Ohio House from 1967 to 1971, when he became the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, auditor. After six years in this position, Voinovich won election as Ohio’s lieutenant governor. He served in this capacity less than one year (1979), having won election as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Voinovich remained as Cleveland’s mayor from 1979 to 1986. As mayor, he helped return Cleveland, which had defaulted on its bills in 1977, to sound financial footing and also helped improve the financial plight of the city’s public schools, which had faced bankruptcy just a few years earlier.

In 1988, Voinovich unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate against incumbent Howard Metzenbaum. Undaunted by this loss, Voinovich won election to the Ohio governor’s office in 1990. Voinovich’s time in office marked a resurgence of the Republican Party in Ohio. The Republican Party gained firm control over the Ohio legislature, and in 1994, Voinovich received seventy-two percent of the vote in his reelection bid. As governor, Voinovich consistently cut taxes. He also increased state funding for Project Head Start dramatically. In addition to these accomplishments, Voinovich oversaw welfare reform in the state and, by the end of his time in office, the unemployment rate in Ohio was at an all-time low.

In 1998, Voinovich won election to the United States Senate. He easily won reelection in 2004. In the Senate, Voinovich occasionally has drawn the ire of fellow Republicans by crossing party lines and voting his conscience. In 2002, he opposed President George Bush’s tax plan, and in 2005, he objected to John Bolton’s nomination as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. He continues to champion programs like Head Start and had has played a major role in combating racism.

Charles Brush Biography

from the Ohio Historical Society

Charles F. Brush was the inventor of the arc lamp. He attended the University of Michigan and then resided in Cleveland, Ohio. He spent much of his life attempting to understand electricity and how to make it useful to human beings.

In 1879, Brush succeeded in creating the first arc lamp. After some more experimentation and modifications, Brush created a lamp that burned as brightly as four thousand candles. Such a bright light, obviously, could not be used inside of people’s homes. Brush decided to market his invention to cities, so that they could light their streets at night. On April 29, 1879, Brush made a presentation of his invention to Cleveland residents. He had placed twenty arc lamps in the city’s Monumental Park. Not sure of what to expect, people in attendance wore smoked glasses to protect their eyes. After the demonstration, numerous women complained that the lights would make it impossible for them to conceal imperfections on their skin. Cleveland officials, however, were impressed, and soon Cleveland had lights across the city. Cleveland was the first city to have electric street lighting in the United States.

Brush continued to experiment with electricity for the remainder of his life. He was responsible for numerous discoveries involving electricity’s uses and received several dozen patents for his inventions.

Eliot Ness Biography from the Ohio Historical Society

from the Ohio Historical Society

Eliot Ness was born on April 19, 1903, in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1927 with dual degrees in business and law. He briefly worked for the Retail Credit Company, before returning to the University of Chicago to earn a Masters degree in criminology.

In 1927, Ness accepted a position with the United States Department of the Treasury. Ness was assigned to Chicago, where he was to enforce Prohibition. Ness created an elite team of Treasury officers, nicknamed the Untouchables, to shutdown the alcohol operations of gangster Al Capone. After operating for six months, Ness claimed that he had either seized or shutdown more than one million dollars in breweries. While Ness’s actions complicated Capone’s operations, they did not end his bootlegging activities. Rather, another group of Treasury officers arrested Capone for income tax evasion. Capone was convicted of this crime in 1931.

In 1934, Ness became the chief investigator of the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Prohibition for Ohio. The next year, Prohibition ended, causing Ness to seek new employment. This same year, he became the Director of Public Safety for Cleveland, Ohio. Ness took over a police force in Cleveland that was known for its corruption. Under his leadership, the Cleveland Police Department dramatically improved and gained the respect of other departments across the United States. Ness also helped curtail illegal gambling and prostitution in the city, although his department failed to solve several prominent crimes, including finding a serial killer known as the “Cleveland Torso Murderer.”

In 1942, Ness resigned. He worked briefly in Washington, DC, before becoming the chairman of the Diebold Incorporated, a safe manufacturer in Canton, Ohio, in 1944. In 1947, he unsuccessfully ran for the Cleveland mayoral seat. This same year, the Diebold Corporation released Ness from the company. He then took a position with North Ridge Industrial, in Pennsylvania. Ness died from a heart attack on May 16, 1957.

 

Samuel M. Jones Biography

from the Ohio Historical Society

Samuel M. Jones was born on August 3, 1846, in Wales. His family immigrated to the United States in 1849. Jones’s parents struggled economically. His father found work as a stonemason and as a tenant farmer. Samuel Jones received a minimal education, primarily because his family needed him to work to survive economically. At ten years of age, Jones was employed as a laborer for a local farmer. Jones earned three dollars per month.

Jones found other employment that paid significantly better wages. At the age of fourteen, he accepted a job at a sawmill. He also spent several summers working on steamboats. In 1865, Jones found employment in the oilfields of western Pennsylvania. He gained extensive knowledge of the oil industry and was able to accumulate some modest savings. In 1870, Jones utilized these funds to form his own oil firm.

Jones remained in the oil business in Pennsylvania for the next decade. In 1885, after the death of his wife of ten years, he moved to Lima, Ohio. There, he continued to search for oil and quickly established a profitable well on the outskirts of Lima. At its peak, the well produced six hundred barrels of oil per day. Jones helped establish the Ohio Oil Company, which was eventually purchased by the Standard Oil Company, making Jones a wealthy man.

In 1892, Jones moved to Toledo, Ohio. Here he established the S.M. Jones Company, which manufactured tools for the oil industry. While Jones headed the company, unlike other businessmen of this era, he refused to pay his workers low wages. Jones determined that workers should receive a large enough salary to support their families. He asked his employees to work hard, to be honest, and to follow the golden rule. If the workers did these things, Jones promised his employees fair wages and safe working conditions. Jones became known as Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones because of his regulations.

In 1897, Jones received the Republican Party’s nomination for Toledo’s mayoral office. Workers united behind Jones’s candidacy, and he proclaimed that his “golden rule” philosophy would be the basis of his administration. Jones won the election and proceeded to implement Progressive reforms. During his time in office, Jones worked to improve conditions for the working class people of his community. The mayor opened free kindergartens, built parks, instituted an eight-hour day for city workers, and did much to reform the city government. Jones encouraged voters and politicians to renounce political parties. He believed that non-partisan politics would unite the American people together, rather than divide them as political parties seemed to do.

Jones was not very popular among businessmen and the wealthier members of Toledo society because of his views. Average citizens, however, rallied behind him. The Republican Party refused to nominate Jones for the mayor’s seat in 1899, but Jones still ran. With the support of the working class, Jones easily won reelection in 1899, having attained seventy percent of the vote. Jones died in office on July 12, 1904. His successor, Brand Whitlock, continued Jones’s reform efforts.

Marcus A. Hanna Biography

from the Ohio Historical Society

Marcus Alonzo Hanna was a prominent politician and United States Senator from Ohio during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

Hanna was born on September 24, 1837, at New Lisbon, Ohio. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, and Hanna adopted their religious beliefs, as well as their hatred of slavery. In 1852, the Hanna family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Hanna attended high school. One of his classmates was John D. Rockefeller. In 1857, Hanna enrolled in the Western Reserve College, but he was expelled the following year for participating in a prank.

After leaving college, Hanna became a salesman for his father’s wholesale grocery business. He played a minor role in the American Civil War, serving as one of Ohio’s Hundred Days Men in 1864. He saw no combat while serving on garrison duty at Washington, DC. and left the army with the rank of second lieutenant. Upon completion of his brief military service, Hanna returned to Cleveland, where he managed his father’s business. He also began to refine oil. In 1867, his oil refinery caught fire and was destroyed. Hanna transferred money from his other business ventures, causing them all to fail. Later in that same year, he took a job with Rhodes & Co. a business owned by his father-in-law. The company was involved in coal and iron mining in Ohio and nearby states.

Hanna recovered financially and invested in the Globe Shipbuilding Company, which built large steel freighters for use on the Great Lakes. During the 1880s, he also briefly owned the Cleveland Herald newspaper. Hanna established the Union National Bank in 1884, and helped create Little Consolidated, a company that specialized in street railway transportation.

After becoming a successful businessman in the 1880s, Hanna began to participate in politics. He was a life-long supporter of the Republican Party. In the first presidential election in which Hanna voted, he cast his ballot for Abraham Lincoln. Hanna utilized theHerald to endorse Republican issues. By the middle 1880s, Hanna was one of the most powerful Republicans in Ohio, although he had never served in an elected office. He was a close ally of Ohio Governor Joseph Foraker, but the two men became bitter enemies after Hanna allied himself with John Sherman and William McKinley.

During the late 1880s and 1890s, Hanna donated large amounts of money to Sherman and McKinley to assist them in their campaigns for political office. In 1891, Hanna’s efforts helped secure Sherman’s reappointment to the United States Senate and McKinley’s election as Ohio governor. In 1894, Hanna stepped down as the head of his many companies and dedicated himself to electing McKinley President of the United States. In the election of 1896, Hanna served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee and used more than 100,000 dollars of his own money to secure McKinley’s nomination.

He also established a grassroots movement to help McKinley win the presidency. He brought pressure on businessmen across the United States and warned them that the Democratic Party’s candidate, William Jennings Bryan, opposed large businesses. Hanna’s efforts won McKinley the presidency. His actions earned him a reputation as an unscrupulous person, who favored the wealthy over the poor.

Upon becoming president, McKinley offered Hanna a position in the cabinet. Hanna refused, preferring to seek an appointment to the United States Senate. McKinley appointed Senator John Sherman as Secretary of State and this opened up a Senate seat. Ohio’s governor, Asa Bushnell, immediately appointed Hanna to the Senate. After a controversial election within the Ohio legislature, Hanna was reappointed to the Senate in 1898. As a senator, Hanna was President McKinley’s strongest ally in the Congress. His greatest success was convincing the Congress to build the Panama Canal. Upon McKinley’s death in 1901, Hanna remained one of the nation’s most powerful Republicans. In 1903 and 1904, many Republicans contemplated nominating Hanna for the presidency rather than Roosevelt. Hanna withdrew from consideration and supported Roosevelt’s nomination.

In 1903, the Ohio legislature reappointed Hanna to the Senate. Shortly after returning to Washington, DC, Hanna became ill. He died on February 15, 1904.

 

James A. Garfield Bio

From the Ohio Historical Society

James Abram Garfield was the 20th President of the United States. Elected in 1880, he served only six months before being assassinated in office on September 19, 1881.

Garfield was born on November 19, 1831, in Orange, Ohio. Garfield’s father died in 1833, and James spent most of his youth working on a farm to care for his widowed mother. At the age of seventeen, Garfield took a job steering boats on the Ohio and Erie Canal.

Garfield received minimal schooling in Ohio’s common schools. In 1849, he enrolled in the Geauga Seminary in Chester, Ohio. After briefly serving as a teacher, Garfield attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio. He transferred to Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1858. He returned to Hiram College in that same year as a professor of ancient languages and literature. He also served as Hiram’s president until the outbreak of the American Civil War. In 1859, Garfield began a political career, winning election to the Ohio Senate as a member of the Republican Party.

During the Civil War, Garfield resigned his position at Hiram College and joined the Union Army. He began as lieutenant-colonel of the Forty-Second Ohio Volunteer Infantry and fought in the Battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga. He resigned from the army on December 5, 1863, with the rank of major general.

Garfield resigned his commission because Ohio voters had elected him to the United States House of Representatives. He served nine consecutive terms in the House of Representatives before he was elected President of the United States in 1880. In Congress, Garfield was a supporter of the Radical Republicans. He opposed President Andrew Johnson’s lenient policy toward the conquered Southern states and demanded the enfranchisement of African-American men. He was appointed by the Ohio legislature to the United States Senate in January 1880. He declined the office, because he was elected president a few months before he was to claim his seat in the Senate.

Garfield served for only four months before he was shot by Charles J. Guiteau. Guiteau had sought a political office under Garfield’s administration and was refused. Angered by his rejection, Guiteau shot Garfield while the president waited for a train in Washington, DC. Garfield lived for two more months, before dying on September 19, 1881. While Garfield accomplished little as president, his death inspired the United States Congress and his successor, President Chester A. Arthur, to reform the public service system with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883. Rather than having the victors in an election appoint unqualified supporters, friends, or family members to positions, the Civil Service was created to assure that at least some office holders were qualified for their positions.

Alan Freed

From the Ohio Historical Society

Alan Freed was a radio personality and creator of the term “Rock and Roll”.

Alan Freed was born near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on December 15, 1921. His birth name was Albert James Freed. When he was a child, Freed’s family moved to Salem, Ohio. Always interested in music, he played trombone as a teenager in a band called the Sultans of Swing.

Freed was hired by radio station WKST in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1942. He became a sportscaster for WKBN in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1943. Two years later, Freed became a disc jockey at WAKR in Akron, Ohio. He remained in Akron until 1949, when he moved to Cleveland to join the staff of WXEL-TV. In 1951, Freed began hosting a rhythm and blues program on WJW radio in Cleveland, using the nickname “Moondog.” His program soon had a large popular following. It was during this period that Freed referred to the music he played as “rock & roll” for the first time. At first, much of his audience was African-American. Soon many other Americans began listening to this new style of music. Freed is credited with hosting the first live rock & roll concert in 1952.

Freed moved to WINS radio in New York City in 1954, and “rock & roll” became a common term across the nation. Freed worked with a number of live “rock & roll” concerts which were broadcast by radio across the country. He also acted in a number of movies with musical themes. In 1957, Freed began hosting a live show on ABC television.

In 1959, Freed was caught up in the broadcasting “payola” scandal. He later admitted that he had accepted bribes from record companies to play their records on the radio. This scandal led to his dismissal from his television and radio jobs.

Freed continued to work as a radio disc jockey in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Miami. Freed died in Palm Springs, California, on January 20, 1965.

In 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland. Freed was inducted as one of the organization’s original members. He also became a member of the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. A motion picture about Freed’s contributions to the development of rock & roll called American Hot Wax was produced in 1978.

Cuyahoga River Fire

From The Ohio Historical Society

On June 22, 1969, an oil slick and debris in the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to environmental problems in Ohio and elsewhere in the United States.

This Cuyahoga River fire lasted just thirty minutes, but it did approximately fifty thousand dollars in damage — principally to some railroad bridges spanning the river. It is unclear what caused the fire, but most people believe sparks from a passing train ignited an oil slick in the Cuyahoga River. This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.

On August 1, 1969, Time magazine reported on the fire and on the condition of the Cuyahoga River. The magazine stated,

Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. “Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,” Cleveland’s citizens joke grimly. “He decays”. . . The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: “The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.” It is also — literally — a fire hazard.

Because of this fire, Cleveland businesses became infamous for their pollution, a legacy of the city’s booming manufacturing days during the late 1800s and the early 1900s, when limited government controls existed to protect the environment. Even following World War II, Cleveland businesses, especially steel mills, routinely polluted the river. Cleveland and its residents also became the butt of jokes across the United States, despite the fact that city officials had authorized 100 million dollars to improve the Cuyahoga River’s water before the fire occurred. The fire also brought attention to other environmental problems across the country, helped spur the Environmental Movement, and helped lead to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

George Cox

From the Ohio Historical Journal

George Cox was born in 1853 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was an English immigrant, struggling to support his family. When Cox was only eight years old, his father died, forcing Cox to leave school to help support his family. He worked numerous different jobs, including newsboy, bootblack, steamboat cabin boy, grocery deliveryman, butcher boy and bartender, all before Cox turned eighteen years of age.

By the early 1870s, Cox had saved enough money to purchase a bar in Cincinnati. It was located in a notorious part of the city, famous for its unsolved murders, called “Dead Man’s Corner.” Cox also became involved in politics during this time period, drumming up illegal voters for candidates that he favored. He also won election to the Cincinnati City Council in 1879. Cox’s reason for seeking office was because of the numerous raids Cincinnati police officers made against his bar. At this time, the Democratic Party controlled the Cincinnati city government. Cox ran as a Republican. He held office for two terms. Interestingly, upon assuming office, the police raids against Cox’s bar immediately stopped.

Cox emerged as the most powerful member of the Republican Party in Cincinnati by the mid 1880s. He chaired the Hamilton County Republican Committee. While Cox never held political office after his second term as city councilman, he virtually ran the Cincinnati city government by becoming a city boss. Like other city bosses, Cox used gifts and money to build support for himself among the working class in Cincinnati. During elections, Cox would then have his followers vote for the candidate that he supported. As Cox once stated: “The people do the voting. I simply see that the right candidates are selected.” By the late 1800s, if a person sought a political office in Cincinnati, he had to receive Cox’s endorsement to win the office. Cox also required the people that he placed in office to appoint loyal Cox followers to other government positions. These positions included police officers, firefighters, street cleaners, secretarial positions, and numerous other occupations.

By 1905, Cox had managed to provide nearly every Republican ward chairman a city office. To build support among the Democratic Party, Cox also appointed members of this party to forty percent of the city offices. To show their appreciation to Cox, these appointees had to turn over 2.5 percent of their salary to the Hamilton County Republican Committee. Cox then used this money to buy votes during elections. In particularly close elections, Cox paid residents of nearby states to come to Cincinnati to vote illegally. He also had no problem with some voters casting more than one ballot under assumed names — as long as the person voted for Cox’s candidate.

City bosses established virtual dictatorships over their cities, using illegal means to do so. Cox was no different. City bosses, however, did make some improvements in city life during the late 1800s and the early 1900s. As industrialization occurred and thousands of Americans moved to cities seeking employment, city governments had tremendous difficulty providing the necessary services to the city’s residents. City bosses commonly filled that void by having streets cleaned, by enforcing laws (at least the ones they chose to enforce), and by providing other services. While Cox allowed gambling and prostitution to occur to award his loyal supporters, he also greatly reduced the availability of these items by only allowing a small number of his followers to engage in these activities.

By 1905, Cox’s dominance of Cincinnati government began to fall apart. Over the next several years, Cox encouraged his supporters in the city government to annex surrounding communities. Many of the people in these neighborhoods were middle-class residents. They opposed Cox’s political corruption. Many of these people were supporters of the Progressive Movement and sought to return Americans to traditional and more moral values. With this influx of new voters — voters that Cox could not control — the city boss failed to have his candidate elected mayor of Cincinnati in 1911. City bosses maintained their power by guaranteeing that they could fulfill their promises to candidates. Cox failed to do this in 1911, and his supporters quickly deserted him. Cox immediately retired from politics, although some of his underlings continued to try to control the city unsuccessfully over the next decade.

Cox suffered a stroke in 1916, and he died that same year on May 20.

 

 

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