Before she was Clara Fitzgerald pushing a “home on wheels” to California with her husband, she was Clara Dawson, a debutante with a secret – she was in love with Walter Scott, a man nearly ten years her senior. What should have been a private affair became an early version of tabloid fodder and Walter would pay the ultimate price for his “indiscretions.”
Clara Dawson-Scott and Walter Scott pictured in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 22, 1896, 6.
Twas the night before Christmas in quiet Des Moines In holy matrimony our fair couple are joined But the golden hour soon disappears As the sounds of betrayal ring in their ears
Yes, the turbulent and dramatic affair of Clara Dawson and Walter Scott was anything but a fairy tale. In fact, The Zanesville Signal suggests “many sensational novels have been written with far worse plots than is embodied in [the] truthful story” of their love affair.1Clara first met Walter some time in 1894 at the home of a friend. She was sixteen at the time and he was twenty-five. Most newspapers from the time describe their relationship as “a friendship that ripened into love.”2 Walter was, according to The Iowa State Register, ” a man of determined character” who “fell as desperately in love with the girl as she did with him.”3 Initially, Clara and Walter were able to enjoy each other’s company in peace and one would think objections to their union stemmed solely from their gap in age, but The State Register notes that sentiments within Clara’s family began to change after her father found success with a process for making Damascus steel and started making good money in late 1894.4In his mind, perhaps, S.R. Dawson had an attractive daughter who could do better than a lowly candy maker like Walter. As her father developed a new distaste for her relationship with Walter, he actively worked to keep them apart, but they continued to meet in secret.
According to The Zanesville Signal, Clara convinced members of the Des Moines Women’s Club and the Young Women’s Christian Association that “her mother had tried to induce her to lead a life of shame” and in late April 1895, Clara was quietly taken from her home and placed with “a well known family in the suburbs.”5 It is believed that Walter helped execute this “escape plan” and Clara spent several weeks away from her father’s overbearing disdain for Walter. But Clara’s father had been looking for her since the day she disappeared and forced her to return home once he learned where she was. He then kept her under close surveillance, forbidding her from leaving the house unless she was accompanied by one of her parents. Unfortunately, this did not offer enough security and peace of mind for Mr. Dawson, so he took Clara before the insanity commissioners and testified that she was insane. She was sent to the Mount Pleasant asylum “for her protection.” Upon learning of these new circumstances, Walter sought legal help to get Clara released from the asylum. After being held in the asylum for seven months, Clara was released on December 11, 1895. Walter was meant to meet her upon release and take her home, but her father, of course, had other plans, arriving at the asylum before Walter and whisking Clara off to Chicago where she was placed in a convent. That same day, The Iowa State Register reports Walter was thrown in jail, “charged with mailing obscene letters to Miss Clara Dawson.”6 It should be no surprise that the charge against Walter was leveled by Clara’s father in yet another attempt to keep the lovers apart. Walter was released on bond and continuing chasing after his beloved Clara.
Some reports claim Clara left the convent and was returned to Des Moines while others insist she was taken to Canton, Ohio where she would be enrolled in school for the purpose of “learning to become a perfect lady.”7 In either case, it was at this point in their torrid affair that Clara became suspiciously cold and resistant to Walter’s advances. From the beginning of their sensational story, reporters had described Clara as “weak-willed” and “unable to withstand [Walter’s] importunities.”8In fact, The Iowa State Register argues her time in the asylum was justified because “her mind . . . was never developed in unison with her body.”9 According to Walter, Clara wrote to him from Ohio, “upbraiding him for being untrue to her.”10 He believed outside influences were responsible for her change of heart because, as The State Register notes, her letters “are serious in every aspect, sensible in every expression and have absolutely nothing in them that is silly or sentimental. . . . They have a sad tone in them and constant reference is made to her once happy home, and the reasons why she is no longer happy.”11Whether by letter or in person, Clara now refused Walter’s marriage proposal, but she later wrote to Walter telling him she had been “forced to reject him by her father, who had threatened to kill [him] if she consented.”12 His spirit may have been broken but Walter was no less determined, having already “sacrificed much in pursuing the rough path of true love.”13
By Christmas 1895, Clara was back at her family’s home in Des Moines. At 3:00 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, Clara “slipped out of the house, dressed in her street gown, met [Walter] by appointment at his store, jumped into a carriage, and driving to Justice Silvara’s court, but two blocks away, they were married.”14 Thus, the romantic saga of Clara Dawson and Walter Scott should have a happy ending. But Walter, being a true gentleman, could not let his new bride start her life as Mrs. Scott without the clothing she left behind at her father’s house. Knowing how Clara’s father felt about him, Walter had taken Clara to the safety of his father’s house and then secured the company of a police officer to proceed to the Dawson home. Clara’s father refused to turn over the clothing in question and called for Walter to step out from behind the officer. When finally face to face with Walter, Clara’s father fired a bullet into his abdomen and then fired again, striking Walter in the head.15 Walter died on the Dawsons’ doorstep close to an hour after marrying his dear Clara.
S.R. Dawson’s guilt as the murderer of Walter Scott was unquestionable but very soon after the killing, he was being described as “an eccentric man” to almost excuse his actions. Several papers reported “there was much talk of lynching” following Dawson’s arrest.16The Evening News of Kenosha, Wisconsin commented that “if public sentiment in this community counts for anything [S.R. Dawson] will pay on the scaffold the extreme penalty of law . . . His defense will probably be insanity.” 17 Clara and her mother-in-law were said to be inconsolable and on the verge of dying from grief. In court on December 26, Clara’s father “appeared dazed and declared he knew nothing of committing any murder.”18 He claimed he “had no enmity against [Walter]” only that he opposed the marriage because of his daughter’s “youth and inexperience.”19The coroner’s jury concluded Walter’s death was “premeditated and with malice aforethought” and Clara’s father was charged with first degree murder.20
Walter’s funeral was held on December 27 and the church was packed with mourners. Many outside spectators, however, showed little sympathy, suggesting Walter’s killing was “practically a suicide” since he knew where he stood with the Dawson family.21 Still, public sentiment, as shown by the South Edmonton News of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, largely indicated Clara’s father “needs hanging badly” for the “diabolically cold-blooded murder of a young man.”22 Dawson sat in jail for several months saying he was too sick to withstand trial. In early March 1896, he pleaded not guilty to his crimes.23 The trial commenced on April 27, with Clara set to be the principal witness against her father. Clara’s younger sister, Daisy, testified that their father had at one time threatened to kill her and then take his own life.24 She also testified that neither she nor her mother handed the gun to her father that fateful night and she was not sure how he got it since it “was usually kept on a shelf in the closet” and not at ready reach.25Clara’s testimony recounted conversations with her father about Walter and her subsequent time in Mount Pleasant insane asylum. The lengthy testimonies heard throughout the trial were reproduced in papers throughout the country and the trial hinged on the argument that “the sudden announcement of the marriage of Clara, by Policeman Duval, unbalanced [her father’s] mind and caused him to commit the crime.”26At least one doctor, Dr. R. E. Patchin, who had been the Dawson’s family physician for eleven years, testified that he believed S.R. Dawson had been insane for years “at least at times, and on certain subjects.”27 The insanity defense was not strong enough and S.R. Dawson was convicted of murder in the second degree on May 9, 1896, and was sentenced to ten years in jail.28
As public interest in the story of Clara Dawson and Walter Scott intensified in the months leading up to the trial, Clara took the time to write a book. Whether to memorialize her husband or to cash in on the notoriety of their affair is left to individual interpretation, but her book, The Romance and Tragedy of Walter Scott, was ready to hit bookshelves across Iowa in March 1896.29It appears to be a short book of a mere 27 pages, and the only known extant copy of it is held by the Library of Congress. With her true love dead and her father in prison for his murder, the young widow found herself in the arms of Walter’s good friend, Willard McKay, and the couple were wed less than a year after the Christmas Eve wedding and murder of Walter Scott.
“Romance and Tragedy,” The Zanesville Signal, April 3, 1896, 7. ↩︎
“Killed for His Love,” Daily Citizen [Ottawa, Ontario, Canada], December 25, 1895, 2. ↩︎
“Path of True Love is Rough,” The Iowa State Register, December 13, 1895, 3. ↩︎
“Romance and Tragedy,” The Zanesville Signal, April 3, 1896, 7. ↩︎
“Path of True Love is Rough,” The Iowa State Register, December 13, 1895, 3. ↩︎
“Romance and Tragedy,” The Zanesville Signal, April 3, 1896, 7. ↩︎
The number of shots fired by Dawson varies among reports, with most early reports saying he fired four shots. Later testimony from Officer Duval put the total at three and summary stories reduce the number to two. See “Short Lived,” Zanesville Times Recorder, December 25, 1895, 1; “Iowa’s Tragic Crime,” The Chicago Chronicle, May 17, 1896, 33-34; and “Romance and Tragedy,” The Zanesville Signal, April 3, 1896, 7 as a few examples of the discrepancy. ↩︎
“Short Lived,” Zanesville Times Recorder, December 25, 1895, 1. ↩︎
“Young Bride May Die,” The Evening News [Kenosha, Wisconsin], December 26, 1895, 1. ↩︎
“Does Not Remember the Murder,” The Chicago Chronicle, December 27, 1895, 5. ↩︎
There are several groups on Facebook dedicated to sharing images, stories, and memories of the history of Mansfield, Ohio. It was in a group called Abandoned Mansfield that I first saw a post about Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald. The original poster shared the photo shown below whose caption reads, “Mr. and Mrs. R.S. Fitzgerald. Walking from Mansfield, O. to the Pacific Coast. Started September 5, 1910.” According to the poster, “It’s unknown why they would want to do this. No word if they ever made it.”1That sounds like a mystery for the Sherman Room!
Photo of Mr. and Mrs. R.S. Fitzgerald with their novel two-wheeled cart. Original photographer and source unknown.
The Fitzgeralds Come to Mansfield
Robert Stevens Fitzgerald was born October 18,1871, in Sedalia, Missouri to Joseph Hawkins Fitzgerald and Mary/Maria Overarcher (Booth/Mitchell) Fitzgerald.2According to Presbyterian Church records, Robert was baptized in Worthington, Indiana, on January 28, 1877.3 From his earliest years, Robert and his family were frequently on the move. Some sources indicate Robert’s father passed away on April 11, 1877, in San Antonio, Texas and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.4 No evidence has been located to confirm whether Robert was in Texas when his father died. The next record we have for Robert’s potential whereabouts is an 1880 census record for Dayton, Ohio that show Robet [Robert] Fitzgerald living with Mariah and William Mitchell; Robert is listed as William’s step-son, suggesting his mother had remarried.5
In 1908, Robert was still in Dayton where he married Clara J. (Dawson) McKay on December 3 at the Third Street Presbyterian Church.6According to The Dayton Herald, Robert was a thirty-seven-year-old advertising solicitor at the time of his wedding.7
The 1909 Dayton city directory shows Robert working as the president of The Fitzgerald Company, a group incorporated in Columbus in early July with a capital stock of $25,000.8 Prior to this, Robert spent time as general manager for Business Letter Company in Dayton and the Herald cites Robert and Clara as being linked to Two Fitzgerald Advertising Company.9 In March 1909, the Herald published a short noted from J.N. Hess addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald. In the note, Hess states that a “Schantz Lily Water cooler” the Fitzgeralds had installed in office suite 27 of the Christian Association building must be removed and “should you insist on retaining it in said office you are hereby notified to pay rent and vacate the above offices.”10 In a much longer article following the initial note, the Herald reports the issue seems to have arisen from a misguided belief that the water cooler was made by the Dayton brewing company; at this time, the Temperance Movement condemning the consumption of alcohol was gaining popular favor throughout the United States and in 1909, sixty-three counties in Ohio went dry.11
While Robert argued, “the simple use of a Lily Water cooler in our office is not a legal cause for an order to vacate the office,” he and his wife elected to move their business elsewhere, announcing their new location in the Gibbons Arcade on March 25, 1909.12In an almost full-page announcement in The Dayton Herald, they called the Christian Publishing Association’s order to remove the water cooler “ridiculous and unreasonable” and went on to say, “We are temperate, law-abiding and liberty-loving people, and feel competent to conduct out business affairs without interference on the part of self-constituted censors of business morals.”13
Having spent much of his early life in Dayton, Robert and Clara were perhaps soured by the water cooler debacle and moved their talents to Mansfield in early 1910. According to a Mansfield News article from September, the couple had only been in Mansfield for six months, “having come here from Cincinnati.”14 It the Fitzgeralds spent any time in Cincinnati prior to their move to Mansfield, it was too short to be officially documented. The 1910 census, taken in mid-April, lists Robert as an advertising agent in Mansfield and Clara as just a “roomer” living in his house (the census taker used this distinction for several houses in the Fitzgerald’s neighborhood for reasons we will never know). Even stranger, though, is this census reports the pair had been married for eleven years; this is not the first complication in the marriage record of Robert and Clara Fitzgerald.15
Clara J. Dawson was born August 5, 1877, in Marengo, Iowa, the daughter of Samuel R. Dawson and Josephine Carman.16Her father was involved with a coal mining business in 1887 and a manufacturer of “newly invented [articles] and other novelties” in 1895.17 Two of the latter’s “newly invented articles” were apparently a valuable process for hardening copper and another for making Damascus steel, both of which Samuel Dawson had locked away in a safety deposit vault in case of his death.18 According the The Zanesville Signal, “the Dawson family lived in an aristocratic neighborhood,” and as Clara approached adulthood, she became a very popular debutante.19 Clara married her first husband, Walter Scott, in December 1895, a marriage that lasted only one hour.20 The following year, she married Walter’s close friend, Willard McKay; she was twenty years old at the time. Clara and Willard briefly moved to Canada to live with his family, but they appear in the 1900 census living in Alpena, Michigan.21At some point between the taking of that census and the fall of 1904, Clara and Willard separated and Willard married Jennie Dawson (no relation to Clara) on October 16, 1904, in Detroit.22
Clara J. Dawson and Walter Scott, married for one hour. “Romance and Tragedy,” The Zanesville Signal [Zanesville, Ohio], April 3, 1896, 7.
Clara retained her McKay name until she married Robert Fitzgerald in 1908. City directories indicate Clara took up work as a teacher and moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio by 1903.23 What brought Clara to Dayton and into the arms of Robert Fitzgerald remains unclear, but her early marriages indicate she was no stranger to drama and was a little bit of a show-woman. In January 1896, she sought to capitalize on the notoriety of her short marriage to Walter Scott by publishing a book chronicling their two-year courtship.24 Fourteen years after her book deal, Clara was once again a darling of the press as she and her newest husband undertook a long walk to the West coast. The Indianapolis Sun commented in October 1910, “Mrs. Fitzgerald is a good-looking young woman with handsome brown eyes . . . [She] created quite a sensation Wednesday morning on the downtown streets when she appeared in her walking costume of khaki with the skirt cut short for walking, leggings and a broad felt hat.”25 According to the paper, the couple decided to embark on this walk “just to be out of the ordinary.”26
To the Pacific Coast or Bust
The true novelty of the Fitzgeralds’ westward journey was the two-wheeled cart they planned to take with them. Weighing just 150 pounds or so, in its close state, the cart measured four and a half feet but could extend to six feet “to furnish sleeping accommodations” for the couple.27The width of the cart, as reported by the Mansfield News, “is 30 inches and the balloon frame is covered with heavy canvas and is painted and varnished so as to render it waterproof.”28 Furnished with a cupboard at the front that could store several days’ worth of food and cooking supplies, the cart was “an oddity in the way of a vehicle” because it was a “complete home” – dining room, living room, bedroom, and kitchen combined!29The Democratic Banner of Mount Vernon, Ohio, reported in late July 1910 that the cart’s construction was finishing up in Mansfield and it was “designed to meet any emergencis [sic] that may arise on the trip.”30According to the paper, Robert had been planning the trip for several months, likely to allow enough time to design and construct their eye-catching home on wheels.31
The motivation behind their trip and even their final destination varies among reports of their travels. The Indianapolis Sun suggests the couple “decided they would migrate to the great northwest and picked out Washington as the state in which they would live.”32Several papers, including The Pittsburgh Post, list San Francisco as their final destination while others simply conclude the Fitzgeralds were heading for the Pacific coast.33 Interestingly, Clara’s second husband, Willard McKay, was living in San Mateo, California (a brisk twenty miles from San Francisco by today’s standards) in 1910.34While it is unlikely that Clara was following Willard, the connection is nevertheless intriguing. The press coverage dedicated to the Fitzgeralds’ jaunt typically cites their motivation as being “for pleasure and health;” the Mansfield News further specifies the trip was designed for “sightseeing and the walkers will take their time to it as they are in no hurry to reach their destination.”35
An approximation of the Fitzgeralds’ planned route to the Pacific coast. Map created using travelmap.net.
Setting off on the fifth or sixth of September the Mansfield News outlined their route as passing through “Marion, Kenton, Wapakoneta, and Celina [Ohio].”36 The couple was then expected to stop in Indianapolis before moving through “southwestern Indiana, touching Vincennes and going to Cairo, Ill., after which they will cross Kentucky and Tennessee into Louisiana. Leaving New Orleans, they will follow the Southern Pacific railroad through Texas, Arizona and New Mexico into Southern California.”37
The Fitzgeralds chose what could be called “the scenic route” to California so they could, understandably, avoid cold weather conditions that would hinder their pace and progress. It was also reported that they hoped to reach New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras in February.38 They expected the trop would take close to a year to complete as they anticipate walking “at a rate of about 400 miles per month.”39Coverage of their walk estimated the total distance of their journey to be 5,000 miles; a more direct route with modern roads would only cover about 2,500 miles.40
Their first noted “stop” was in Bucyrus, Ohio, where they “walked into [the city on September 8] and walked out again.”41At this early stage of the journey, the pair were averaging ten miles per day.42 They were next spotted in Marion, Ohio, around September 10, a distance of about eighteen miles by today’s standards. The Marion Daily Mirror described the travelers as “fresh as daisies” and quoted Mrs. Fitzgerald as telling a reporter, “You tell the people that all those who have not enjoyed a night out of doors that they have missed a great deal.”43On Thursday, September 22, The Weekly News in Mansfield reported they had received a postcard from Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald which was “written in camp at Roundhead, Ohio, and was mailed at Waynesfield.”44 According to their postcard, the Fitzgeralds were “having a fine trip and enjoying it immensely,” although they had encountered “several hills and considerable mud.”45Their next stop was said to be Celina, Ohio, where they would be able to receive any return mail.46 A week after sending the postcard to the News, the Fitzgeralds had covered 200 miles and passed through Richmond, Indiana on their way to Indianapolis.47The Richmond Item indicates “their only means of making money [to sustain the trip] is by selling postcards with their pictures on them” – was it one of these novelty postcards they sent back to Mansfield? Only the recipients will ever know.48
By the first of October, another fifty-two miles had been covered as the pair spent several days in Eaton, Indiana, a rather odd northerly path to have followed from Richmond.49 From Eaton, they began moving south with their eyes set on New Orleans. They passed through Indianapolis before stopping east of Irvington, Indiana. On October 12, the Indianapolis Sun reported the couple planned to “move on until they reach Kansas City, where they propose to spend the winter, after which they will attack the Rocky mountains.”50This is the last report of their trip’s progress.
The Fitzgeralds’ documented progress as recounted through newspaper coverage. Map created using travelmap.net.
Walk This Way
On September 30, 1910, the Lake Elsinore Valley Sun-Tribune of Lake Elsinore, California commented, “That eastern people are bound to get to California one way or another is shown by . . . Mr. and Mrs. R. S. Fitzgerald, who are walking through to the Pacific coast from Mansfield, Ohio.”51Throughout the nineteenth century, from the Louisiana Purchas through the Gold Rush and beyond, there was a peculiar fascination with finding a way to California. Despite the 1890 census defining a “closure of the American frontier,” in that there was hardly a frontier left to explore or settle, there was still a strong westward draw for Americans living in the Midwest or the Northeast. What this meant for Robert and Clara Fitzgerald was their “long tramp” out West was not a new or novel idea, and they weren’t alone in hitching a ride on the shoe leather express in 1910.
C.A. Poling and J.M. Layer left Dayton in March on their own long tramp to San Francisco. Their trip was in answer to a $1,000 bet that said they could not make the journey in 100 days. Approximately thirty-four days into the trip, they had reached Luther, Oklahoma.52 Similarly, Isador Walchell and Lewis Keller set off from Philadelphia in May en route to San Francisco. According to the Valley Spirit of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, “these ocean-to-ocean walkers are not out after any records . . . [they] admitted that two Philadelphians had wagered bets upon the result of the walk, but that this didn’t bother them any as they were just going to keep on walking regardless of bets.”53 From Wichita, Kansas in May, “Two Muskogee women are walking to the Pacific coast for a purse of $25,000.”54Another pair, Roy Fourbush Hansford and Terry Churchill Elmenderf, “two New York newspaper men who are on a twenty thousand-mile walk to the Pacific coast” left New York at the end of May, spending Christmas in Alabama with Frank S. Stone, the solicitor of Baldwin County.55The final team to step onto the track to the coast in 1910 were Morris I. Roberts and Frank B. Surman (along with their English bulldog, Lady) who left Wilmington, Delaware, at the end of November, making their way to the Pacific coast “in the interest of the outdoor sports section of a New York city magazine.”56
A handful of the other people attempting to walk to the Pacific coast in 1910.
The Fitzgeralds, due to no fault of their own, were competing for press space in a pretty saturated field and the one thing designed to set them apart – their home on wheels – was not enough to garner prolonged attention. It is unfortunate as well that just as the Fitzgeralds were making progress towards Kansas City in October, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat announced: “Accompanied by a dog and horse, with a two-wheeled cart load of provision, Mr. and Mrs. Dwight Wolf of Kansas City, Kan., left last night on a 7500-mile walk.”57 Here was another married couple undertaking a long-distance walk with a two-wheeled cart. Of course, Dwight and Stella Wolf also had a dog and a horse, and they weren’t working their way to the Pacific coast. From Kansas City, the Wolfs were heading to Texas where they would then make their way eastward to Jacksonville, Florida for the winter before moving up the east coast to the Canadian border and round their way home to Kansas City through Minneapolis.58 The St. Louis paper notes this roundabout journey covering “two-thirds of the United States” was not the first long distance walking trip the pair had undertaken: “A few weeks ago the same couple, with the same outfit, walked from Kansas City to New York in ninety-five days.”59
The announcement of the Wolfs’ newest trip was published in newspapers from Georgia to California and even appeared in the Canadian press! They received a very large article on the second page of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle on June 30, 1911 (complete with photo similar to that of Robert and Clara Fitzgerald with their cart), indicating that there was popular interest in their journey and that they had made their way through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and on all the way to New York.60
And just like the Fitzgeralds who heralded their walk as “for pleasure and health,” the Brooklyn paper notes the Wolfs “started this walking back in 1909, and then mainly on account of Woolf’s [sic] health. Then he was weighing 107 pounds and so weak that at the end of the first day’s walk all he could do was get out [of] the cot and fall on it while his wife cooked supper.”61The established track record of Dwight Wolf and his wife, having completed two walking journeys, was arguably a more reliable story for the press to cover when compared directly to the leisurely jaunt of the Fitzgeralds.
The trip from Kansas City to Canada was touted as “the longest walk a woman has ever taken,” but, surely, the reporter conveniently forgot all the women who crossed the country on foot out of necessity in the previous century.62 With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 and the introduction of the Model T in 1908, long distance walking in 1910 was a luxury of those who had the time to do it. What set the Fitzgeralds and the Wolfs apart from the pack was that they were walking on their own terms as opposed to responding to a lucrative bet or seeking purposeful publicity – the California press expressly notes, “it is through no wager that [the Fitzgeralds] are making the trip, but simply taking the trip for the novelty of walking through.”63 The myriad of other pedestrians crisscrossing the country all had what could be seen as selfish motivations. But in pursuing monetary glory or notoriety, they were all following in the well-worn footsteps of the feats of endurance walking that had come before them. Yet another contender entering the already crowded walking space of 1910 was Edward Payson Weston, who, at a spry seventy-one years old, was endeavoring to walk from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic.64It had only been fifty years since Weston had first proven he could make a name for himself through the exercise of walking, and he kick started what author Gary Yanker has dubbed “the Pedestrian Age.”65
To learn more about Weston and the pedestrianism craze, check out Algeo’s book which will be on display in the Sherman Room for the month of May.
According to Matthew Algeo, Weston’s rise to pedestrian fame “began with a wager.”66 The year was 1860 and the upcoming presidential election was a hot topic of conversation. Weston strongly believed Abraham Lincoln would lose the election while his friend, George Eddy, was convince Lincoln would win. Their casual debate turned into a bet – whoever’s stance was incorrect would have to walk from the State House in Boston to the Capital in Washington, a distance of almost 500 miles, in ten consecutive days to arrive in time for the inauguration on March 4. As history would have it, Lincoln won the election and Weston was on the hook for a few good miles of drudgery.
He left Boston on the morning of February 22 and had calculated his route to arrive in Washington on the morning of March 4.67 News of his journey appeared in papers from Bangor, Maine to California. The Morning Democrat of Davenport, Iowa, called him a fool and said, “if he succeeds in reaching Washington City by the evening of the 3d of March, his perseverance and pluck are to be rewarded with six quarts of peanuts.”68 Weston encountered crowds of excited spectators along the way as well as a few individuals looking to collect on debts owed to them and these distractions caused him to fall behind schedule. He finally arrived in Washington at 5:00pm on Monday, March 4, five hours after the inauguration.69As Algeo notes, Weston, “had failed to pay off his bet but had won widespread admiration;” somehow on the eve of the American Civil War, Weston’s walk “south across the Mason-Dixon Line from New England to Washington . . . represented a rare and welcome symbol of unity in a nation about to be violently fractured.”70
Weston exhibited a remarkable stamina in this extended feat of endurance, and he volunteered his pedestrian prowess to the Union cause during the war. Although he declared in 1862 that he hoped “soon to enter a more laudable business than pedestrianism,” he spent much of his time in the coming decades making and taking bets to push his walking feats further, even taking his talents overseas to England.71 But not everyone was a fan or even impressed by his “exhibitionist walking” stunt. The Semi-Weekly Wisconsin in Milwaukee asked, “Seriously . . . what has Weston achieved that justifies all the fuss made over him? Has he exhibited any more noble, admirable, or praiseworthy qualities than the horse that performs an extraordinary feat of pedestrianism?”72 The only positive attribute the paper could find in Weston’s celebrity was “if it shall have the effect to popularize among Americans that much neglected species of exercise, pedestrianism.”73 As Algeo argues, Weston did indeed popularize pedestrianism on both an amateur and professional level, giving rise to America’s first spectator sport in which athletes competed in foot races akin to late NASCAR event where they set distance records by traversing circles around a track inside stadiums like Madison Square Garden in New York.74To this point, author John Cumming has made the bold choice to label Weston “the man who invented walking.”75
As his seventieth birthday approached, Weston announced in January 1909 that he was “off for another good sized walk . . . going clear across the continent this time [with the] hope to set a mark even the youngsters won’t touch for a while.”76 This walk would take him from New York to San Francisco and, while Weston was not the first to attempt this feat, his widely publicized exploits of the past inspired many a copycat challenger to follow this same westward path in 1910.77When Weston turned his sights to the opposite direction, The Mansfield News noted, “the spectacle of Weston, at 71 years of age, walking from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast . . . preaches a powerful sermon on the value of continued and careful exercise in the open.”78 Clara Fitzgerald and Stella Wolf certainly agreed, and both sang the praises of outdoor living, with Stella quoted in 1911 as saying, “I can hardly bear now to be under a roof for long. It seems stifling and unhealthy. I am always eager to go out again. I don’t know how I am ever going to be able to stop this tramping life.”79
What Happened to the Fitzgeralds?
When they set off in early September, the Fitzgeralds were likely unaware of how many others were also attempting to walk to the Pacific coast, but their ambitions were not to win any races or claim any records. So even if the press could not document every step of their journey, did they make it to California? The simple answer is most probably that they did not continue on past Indiana. Robert and Clara appear in the 1913 city directory for La Porte, Indiana, showing Robert working as an advertising department manager for M. Rumley Company and the couple’s residence is listed as 906 Tyler.80Their story only gets more complicated from here. In July 1918, The Dayton Herald reported that Robert had been granted a divorce from Clara, but the pair appear in the 1920 census renting a house in Sausalito, California.81 A year later, they are listed in the city directory for Atlanta, Georgia, where Robert is working as a manager for Business Builders, an advertising company.82
These are all records linking Robert S. and Clara D. (Dawson) Fitzgerald and, of course, it is possible that there was more than one pair of Robert S. and Clara D. moving around the country together at this time. The consistency of Robert’s employment falling within advertising in each of these records gives some credibility to the idea that these are in fact the same Robert and Clara who wanted to push their home on wheels to California.
Why they would continue to live together and traverse the country if they had divorced in 1918 is unclear.
Adding to the complexity of the Fitzgeralds’ post-walk whereabouts is a marriage license application from Hancock, Indiana, dated August 5, 1924, listing Robert Stevens Fitzgerald and Clara Dawson Fitzgerald as the couple to be joined in matrimony. Both Robert and Clara completed their own copies of the application. In his application, Robert states that he had been married twice and his previous marriage ended in divorce in June 1924. Clara, on the other hand, says her previous marriage ended in July 1917.83Given that census records and directory listings show the two living together as recently as 1921, it is difficult to believe Robert had married again and divorced by June 1924.84 It is most likely that these two either did not fully understand how to answer the questions on the application or were being purposefully misleading (we do not know if they filled the applications out in the presence of each other, but it would be off if they didn’t). For the question of how many times she had been married, Clara put twice even though her marriage to Robert in 1908 was already her third marriage.
In the Beauty Department with Clara D. Fitzgerald. The Cincinnati Enquirer, October 9, 1921, 27.
Newspaper clippings suggest there was a business and possible geographic separation between Robert and Clara by late 1921 as The Cincinnati Enquirer shows Clara running a beauty parlor in the city.85 On her 1924 marriage license application, Clara lists her occupation as “beauty parlor owner and operator,” she just doesn’t specify where her parlor was. According to the Greenville Daily News in Greenville, Ohio, Clara opened a new shop in that city in September 1922.86 Her shop changed name in 1926 and she continued in this line of work at least until 1930 when, one can only guess, Robert’s work took them to Tampa, Florida.87The 1930 census shows them renting a house in the sunshine state where Robert was working as a printing salesman.88 By the 1940s, the pair had found their way back to Dayton where Robert found steady work as a salesman.89 The 1950 census lists them both working as salespeople for “specialties retail,” Robert in Business and Clara in Clothing.90On November 19, 1953, Robert passed away at the Miami Valley hospital in Dayton.91His funeral was held on November 22 and he was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery not far from his father, Joseph.92Clara, not one to stay still for long, remarried one last time, tying the know with Raymond L. Hull in Indiana on July 21, 1956 – on her application for a marriage license, she says this is her first marriage but we know better, Clara!93 It is believed Clara passed away on May 25, 1965 at the age of eighty-seven.94
Donn Mengert, 2024, “This photo shows a man and a woman on either side of a hand-drawn cart bearing the words: ‘Walking to the Pacific Coast.’,” Facebook, posted March 9, 2024.↩︎
Available records like Robert’s death certificate list his mother as Maria Mitchell, while his 1940 Social Security application lists her as Maria Booth and his 1924 marriage license lists her simply as Booth (the application for the license lists her as Mary Overarcher Mitchell). It is most likely that her maiden name was Booth andMitchell became her surname when she remarried following Joseph’s death. See: “Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953,” database with images, FamilySearch (May 21, 2014), 1953 > 73401-76200 > image 3018 of 3168; “United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007”, database, FamilySearch (February 10, 2023), Robert Stevens Fitzgerald; “Indiana Marriages, 1811-2019”, FamilySearch (March 7, 2024), Entry for Robt S Fitsgerald and Joseph L Allen, 5 Aug 1924; “Indiana Marriages, 1780-1992”, FamilySearch (January 13, 2020), Robert Stevens Fitzgerald, 1924.↩︎
“Robert Stevens Fitzgerald Baptism Record,” Presbyterian Historical Society; Philadelphia, PA, USA; US, Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1907; Book Title: 1903-1918. Available on Ancestry.com.↩︎
Year: 1880; Census Place: Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio; Roll: 1051; Page: 105a; Enumeration District: 151. Available on Ancestry.com.↩︎
“1908 Record of Marriage of Robert Stevens Fitzgerald and Clara J. McKay,” Presbyterian Historical Society; Philadelphia,PA, USA; US, Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1907; Book Title: 1903-1918. Available on Ancestry.com.↩︎
“Wedding Bells,” The Dayton Herald, December 3, 1908, 8.↩︎
Williams’Dayton City Directory (Cincinnati, OH: The Williams Directory Company, Publishers, 1909), 420. “New Concern to Promote Stocks,” The Dayton Herald, July 9, 1909, 15.↩︎
Williams’ Dayton City Directory (Cincinnati, OH: The Williams Directory Co. Publishers, 1908), 440. “Lily Water, Not Rent, Cause of Order to Move,” The Dayton Herald, July 29, 1910, 12.↩︎
“Lily Water, Not Rent, Cause of Order to Move,” The Dayton Herald, July 29, 1910, 12. Lloyd Sponholtz, “The Politics of Temperance in Ohio, 1880-1912,” Ohio History Journal 85, No. 1 (Winter 1976): 9.↩︎
“Will Start Tuesday Morning on Walk to the Pacific Coast,” Mansfield News, September 3, 1910, 5.↩︎
The 1910 Mansfield city directory shows Robert working as a representative for International Correspondence Schools and lists the Desoto Hotel as the Fitzgeralds’ residence. See Mansfield Official City Directory (Akron, OH: The Burch Directory Company, 1910): 172. “1910 Overview,” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/overview/1910.html.Year: 1910; Census Place: Mansfield Ward 4, Richland, Ohio; Roll: T624_1225; Page: 5b; Enumeration District: 0188; FHL microfilm: 1375238.↩︎
“Clara D. Fitzgerald Marriage to Raymond L. Hull, 1956,” Indiana, U.S., Marriages, 1810-2001 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014; “Clara J. Scott marriage to Willard L. McKay, 1896,” Iowa, U.S., Select Marriages Index, 1758-1996 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.↩︎
The Des Moines Register, September 2, 1887, 7; The Gazette [Cedar Rapids, Iowa], February 12, 1895, 1.↩︎
“Verdict of Coroner’s Jury,” Sioux City Journal [Sioux City, Iowa], December 27, 1895, 1.↩︎
“Romance and Tragedy,” The Zanesville Signal [Zanesville, Ohio], April 3, 1896, 7.↩︎
“Quite Romantic,” The Dayton Herald, November 17, 1896, 7. Year: 1900; Census Place: Alpena Ward 5, Alpena, Michigan; Roll: 699; Page: 5; Enumeration District: 0013.↩︎
“1904 Marriage Record for Willard L. McKay and Jennie Dawson,” Michigan Department of Community Health, Division of Vital Records and Health Statistics; Lansing, MI, USA; Michigan, Marriage Records, 1867-1952; Film: 83; Film Description: 1904 Saginaw-1905 Barry.↩︎
F.M. French’s Mt. Vernon City and Knox County Farmer’s Directory (F.M French, 1903):115.↩︎
“Romance of Real Life,” The Inter Ocean [Chicago, Illinois], January 21, 1896, 10.↩︎
“Taking Walk to Pacific Coast,” Indianapolis Sun, October 12, 1910, 2.↩︎
“Man and Wife Push Cart on Long Trip,” The Chronicle-Telegram [Elyria, Ohio], July 29, 1910, 7. “Will Start Tuesday Morning on Walk to the Pacific Coast,” Mansfield News, September 3, 1910, 5.↩︎
“Will Start Tuesday Morning on Walk to the Pacific Coast,” Mansfield News, September 3, 1910, 5.↩︎
“Man and Wife Push Cart on Long Trip,” The Chronicle-Telegram [Elyria, Ohio], July 29, 1910, 7.↩︎
“Couple to Walk Across the Continent,” The Democratic Banner [Mount Vernon, Ohio], July 29, 1910, 5.↩︎
“Taking Walk to Pacific Coast,” Indianapolis Sun, October 12, 1910, 2.↩︎
“Carry a Complete Home with Them,” The Pittsburgh Post, September 12, 1910, 7.↩︎
Year: 1910; Census Place: Township 1, San Mateo, California; Roll: T624_104; Page: 27a; Enumeration District: 0048; FHL microfilm: 1374117. “Willard Leslie McKay World War I Draft Registration Card, 1918,” Available on Ancestry.com. By the end of the decade, Willard was working as a candy maker in San Francisco. See: Crocker-Langley San Francisco Directory (San Francisco, CA: H.S. Crocker Co., Inc., 1919): 1099.↩︎
The Greenville Journal notes the couple believed the long walk would “restore [Robert’s] health, failing under long indoor confinement.” See “Mansfield,” The Greenville Journal [Greenville, Ohio], September 1, 1910, 2. “Man and Wife Push Cart on Long Trip,” The Chronicle-Telegram [Elyria, Ohio], July 29, 1910, 7; “Couple to Walk Across the Continent,” The Democratic Banner [Mount Vernon, Ohio], July 29, 1910, 5; “Will Start Tuesday Morning on Walk to the Pacific Coast,” Mansfield News, September 3, 1910, 5.↩︎
“Will Start Tuesday Morning on Walk to the Pacific Coast,” Mansfield News, September 3, 1910, 5.↩︎
“Traveling to Pacific Coast,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, September 9, 1910, 3; “Carry a Complete Home with Them,” The Pittsburgh Post, September 12, 1910, 7; “Pushing Their Home Ahead,” The Daily Times [New Philadelphia, Ohio], September 13, 1910, 2. If one is to believe the news out of Tacoma, Washington, they did not make it to Bucyrus until September 26. See “Transport Home on Small Cart,” The Tacoma Daily, September 28, 1910, 7.↩︎
“Carry a Complete Home with Them,” The Pittsburgh Post, September 12, 1910, 7.↩︎
“First Leg of a Long Tramp,” The Marion Daily Mirror, September 10, 1910, 8.↩︎
“Enjoying Their Trip,” The Weekly News, September 22, 1910, 10.↩︎
“Taking Walk to Pacific Coast,” Indianapolis Sun, October 12, 1910, 2.↩︎
Lake Elsinore Valley Sun-Tribune, September 30, 1910, 8.↩︎
“To Start Long Tramp,” The Dayton Herald, March 24, 1910, 12. “Walking to Pacific Coast,” Antlers News-Record [Antlers, Oklahoma], May 13, 1910, 1.↩︎
“Ocean to Ocean Walkers, Harrisburg Daily Independent, May 17, 1910, 12. “Ocean to Ocean Walkers,” Valley Spirit (Weekly) [Chambersburg, Pennsylvania], May 25, 1910, 3.↩︎
“Newspaper Men Are Walking to Pacific,” The Huntsville Times [Huntsville, Alabama], December 28, 1910, 7 (emphasis added). “Two Young Men on Journey 20,000 Miles,” The Sentinel [Winston-Salem, North Carolina], October 25, 1910, 2.↩︎
“Walking to Pacific Coast,” The York Dispatch [York, Pennsylvania], December 2, 1910, 15.↩︎
“Couple Start on Long Walk,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 20, 1910, 4 (emphasis added).↩︎
Matthew Algeo, Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport.↩︎
John Cumming, Runners and Walkers: A Nineteenth Century Sports Chronicle (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1981).↩︎
“Veteran Walker to Cross the Continent,” The Salt Lake Herald-Republican [Salt Lake City, Utah], January 23, 1909, 7.↩︎
One of the earliest documented attempts at walking to the Pacific coast “for fun” was in 1895 by B.H. Mills who began in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did not complete the trip after falling ill in Baraboo, Wisconsin. See Baraboo Republic, August 21, 1895, 5. In 1902, Harris Adonis made a wager with two gentlemen in Massachusetts that he would walk across the country to San Francisco pushing s wheelbarrow. To add to the adventurer’s challenge, Adonis was required to make $500 in cash along the way without begging and he was also required to get married. According to reports out of Kansas and New York, Adonis married a Kansas girl in that summer and they continued the walk to California, arriving in the golden state in December. See “A Fair One in Dayton,” Dayton Daily News, March 18, 1902, 2; “He Has Found Wife at Last,” The Topeka Daily Capital, June 22, 1902, 6; “Trundles Wheelbarrow Across the Continent,” The San Francisco Call and Post, December 20, 1902, 9. George Tisell, a “globe trotter” from Philadelphia took on the challenge in 1905 in response to a $2000 bet. Later reports indicate he did complete this feat, earning the “world’s record for pedestrianism.” See “Walking to Pacific Coast on $2000 Bet,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 21, 1905, 6; “George W. Tisell is Out on a 2,000 Mile Jaunt,” The Omaha Daily News, July 7, 1907, 22.↩︎
“Man and Wife Here on 8,000-Mile Tramp,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 30, 1911, 2.↩︎
Smith’s Directory of LaPorte, Indiana (Gary, IN: Edgar Smith, Publisher, 1913), 88.↩︎
“Divorce Records,” The Dayton Herald, July 24, 1918, 5. Year: 1920; Census Place: Sausalito, Marin, California; Roll: T625_120; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 103. ↩︎
Atlanta City Directory (Atlanta, GA: Atlanta City Directory, Co., 1921), 485.↩︎
“1924 Application for Marriage License, Robert Stevens Fitzgerald and Clara Dawson Fitzgerald,” Applications, V. 13 (from p. 150) 1923-1924 Applications, v. 14-15, 1924-1925. Available on FamilySearch.↩︎
No marriage license has been located for their 1908 wedding, there is just a list of wedding dates and names available from the Third Street Presbyterian Church. It is possible that Robert had been married prior to this date but no reliable evidence to that effect has been found thus far. See: “Robert Stevens Fitzgerald Baptism Record,” Presbyterian Historical Society; Philadelphia, PA, USA; US, Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1907; Book Title: 1903-1918. Available on Ancestry.com.↩︎
“Beauty Department, Clara D. Fitzgerald – Advertisement,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, October 9, 1921, 27.↩︎
“To Whom it May Concern,” Greenville Daily News [Greenville, Ohio], September 5, 1922, 4.↩︎
The Daily Advocate [Greenville, Ohio], January 8, 1926, 5. Year: 1930; Census Place: Tampa, Hillsborough, Florida; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 0017; FHL microfilm: 2340053.↩︎
Year: 1940; Census Place: Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio; Roll: m-t0627-03256; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 94-188; Williams’ Dayton City Directory (Cincinnati, OH: The Williams Directory Company, Publishers, 1942), 563; Williams’ Dayton City Directory (Cincinnati, OH: The Williams Directory Company, Publishers, 1944), 418; Williams’ Dayton City Directory (Cincinnati, OH: The Williams Directory Company, Publishers, 1946), 422.↩︎
National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: Van Buren, Montgomery, Ohio; Roll: 4212; Page: 73; Enumeration District: 57-188.↩︎
“Robert S. Fitzgerald – Obituary,” Dayton Daily News, November 22, 1953.↩︎
“1956 Application for Marriage License, Clara D. Fitzgerald and Raymond L. Hull,” Marriage licenses, Circuit Court, Wayne County, Indiana, v. 225, May 26, 1956 – Jun 30, 1956. Available on FamilySearch. On the application she also says her previous marriage ended in death in 1953.↩︎
“Clara D. Hull in the Ohio, U.S., Death Records, 1908-1932, 1938-2018.” Available on Ancestry.↩︎
Richwood Gazette [Richwood, OH], June 22, 1876, 1.
We are one week away from the 2024 total solar eclipse. So, get out your smoked glass and let’s explore a few burning questions about this cosmic phenomenon!
What makes the eclipse on April 8, 2024, a “once-in-a-lifetime” event?
Every year, there are at least two solar eclipses and about every eighteen months, there is a total solar eclipse somewhere in the world. According to NASA, “it will take about a thousand years for every geographic location in the lower 48 states to be able to view a total solar eclipse” and scientists note these eclipses “recur only once every 360 to 410 years, on average, at any given place.”1 Based on these estimates, the next solar eclipse to travel across the continental United States from coast to coast will be in 2045 and the next total solar eclipse with visibility in Ohio won’t happen until 2099. Of course, these are averages and estimates used to predict the future (and astronomers have gotten quite good at that!), but if we look to the past, we can see just how rare next week’s eclipse is for Mansfield and Ohio.
TecumsehTenskwatawaWilliam Henry Harrison
The last time a total solar eclipse was visible in Ohio was on June 16, 1806. Mansfield, established as a city in 1808, didn’t exist yet and Ohio’s statehood was only three years old. Also known as “Tecumseh’s Eclipse, the 1806 event marked a significant moment in settler and Native American relations on the frontier.2 The prevailing legend is that, with a fraught peace treaty governing the northwest corner of Ohio (the Greenville Treaty) and a group of Native Americans fighting that treaty agreement in the Indiana Territory, General William Henry Harrison took a direct challenge to Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa. Tecumseh and his brothers were very influential figures in this area. Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee prophet, had “hundreds of devotees who followed his every word.”3 Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, challenged Tenskwatawa in a letter dated April 12, 1806, saying if Tenskwatawa could perform miracles, surely, he could “cause the sun to stand still, the moon to alter its course, the rivers to cease to flow or the dead to rise from the graves.”4 Harrison wanted to discredit the Shawnee leader but only embarrassed himself in the process. Several historical accounts assert that Tenskwatawa responded to Harrison’s challenge, proclaiming that “in exactly 50 days he would make the moon cover the sun and it would be dark as night.”5 We do not know exactly when Tenskwatawa delivered his response to Harrison or whether exactly fifty days had passed when the moon moved to block the sun just before noon on June 16, 1806 (Harrison’s letter was written sixty-five days before the eclipse). At this point, solar eclipses were nothing new to European and Asian scientists and observers, but there were almost thirty years between the first documented eclipse sighting in the United States and the 1806 event – the first eclipse observed in the infant country was on June 24, 1778, visible over modern-day Louisiana.6 Therefore, it is not a stretch to suggest that the 1806 eclipse was something settlers on the frontier had never seen before. Anyone, besides Harrison, who may have doubted Tenskwatawa’s prophetic authority were awestruck by the accuracy of his prediction. Those with connections outside the territory, however, may have been granted advance notice of the coming eclipse as announcements had been printed in newspapers in Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere. In fact, author Paul Cozzens noted the coming of the eclipse was “common knowledge in Detroit where [Tecumseh’s] British allies camped.”7 Regardless how Tenskwatawa came to know about the eclipse (whether he used established scientific predictions to his advantage or not), Harrison, having failed in humiliating Tenskwatawa, only grew angrier and many believe the mutual animosity boiled over five years later in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe that ushered in the War of 1812.8
Another popular tale out of Medina County, Ohio, suggests it was a female member of the Wyandot tribe who predicted the 1806 eclipse. In May 1806, she told others in her tribe “that a great darkness would soon fall over the Earth.”9 Unlike the story of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, it was not the settler population that did not trust the native woman, but, rather, her own tribe that turned against her. The tribe members considered her prediction to be “a dire threat” and they accused her of practicing witchcraft.10 According to historian Charles Neil, a council of tribe leaders decided she “should suffer death by strangulation by having invoked the powers of the evil one.”11 Her fate was sealed a few weeks before the eclipse and some of the tribe members responsible for her death may have believed the eclipse was an act of dark revenge from the witch on the other side.12 This nameless woman’s story is far less common in Ohio eclipse lore likely because the details are sparse and she went to the gallows unidentified, but she is representative of the prevailing wisdom of the time. In nearby Summit County, it is reported that citizens observing the eclipse were “greatly frightened, notwithstanding the event had been foretold by some of the squaws who apparently had gotten knowledge from more enlightened white people. The squaws were not believed and were put to death for witchcraft.”13
According to the Butler County Press, the 1806 eclipse was truly a memorable one.
The 1806 eclipse was regarded by astronomers for over half a century as the most memorable one because it was seen “over all parts of North America.”14 As The Butler County Press of Hamilton, Ohio, reported in 1917, “the day was a remarkably fine one, scarcely a cloud being visible in any part of the heavens.”15 An incredible sight, surely, for those educated in such astronomical phenomena. Michael E. Bakich notes that “before 1801, eclipse observations were largely descriptive in nature and primarily made to check to the mathematical calculations of astronomers.”16 By the middle of the nineteenth century, such observations relied less on written descriptions as they could now be visually represented in a more reliable way through photography. On July 28, 1851, Johan Julius Berkowski, a photographer at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Prussia, took the first successful photograph of an eclipse’s totality.17
In the 218 years since Ohio saw its last total solar eclipse, so much has changed! The brief moment of darkness that comes with the totality of the eclipse is now a marvel to behold instead of the harbinger of doom it was once thought to be.
One account of the 1806 solar eclipse:Darkness at Noon, or the Great Solar Eclipse of the 16th of June, 1806 by an Inhabitant of Boston.
Why do we wear special glasses to watch the eclipse?
In anticipation of a solar eclipse in August 1869, the Delaware Gazette in Delaware, Ohio, advised its readers, “in order to observe the eclipse a common opera-glass or small telescope of any kind, provided with a shade-glass to screen the eye will prove efficient. If nothing can be obtained, a bit of plain glass, smoked over a candle or lamp, in some parts more deeply shaded than in others, in order to suit the varying intensity of the sun’s rays, will give a good view of most of the phenomena.”18 Six decades after the notable eclipse of 1806, Ohioans were less inclined to believe the Earth had plunged into the darkness of night and now viewed solar eclipses with a healthy curiosity.
An 1897 newspaper illustration of eclipse observers using their smoked glass for safety. Cincinnati Post, July 29, 1897, 1.Path of the 1869 eclipse as shown in Scientific American, August 21, 1869, 117.
The negative effects of looking directly at the sun had long been recognized by scientists, philosophers, and the educated elite. According to Nick Thieme, Ibn al-Haytham, an Egyptian scientist in the tenth century, used the first pinhole camera to view an eclipse.19 This “camera” in its most basic form is a box with a small pinhole in one end and a translucent screen at the other. The light produced by the eclipse (or any other object) would go through the pinhole where it would be inverted and projected onto the translucent screen.20 Instead of looking directly at the eclipse, you would essentially be observing the eclipse’s shadow; better for your eyes but maybe not the most satisfying for the curious astronomer. King Louis XIV of France is credited with first utilizing smoked glass to view a full solar eclipse around 1706 – the smoked glass covering the lens of his telescope worked to dilute the harmful ultraviolet light of the sun.21 A 1798 encyclopedia published in Philadelphia notes, “the sun, tho’ [sic] to human eyes so extremely bright and splendid, is yet frequently observed, even through a telescope of but very small powers, to have dark spots on his surface. These were entirely unknown before the invention of telescopes, though they are sometimes of sufficient magnitude to be discerned by the naked eye, only looking through a smoked glass to prevent the brightness of the luminary from destroying the sight.”22 Smoked glass, in this instance, not only protected the observer’s eyes, it allowed them to see new markings on the sun and this is noted as the moment of discovery of solar spots.23 Throughout the nineteenth century, British and American newspapers understandably predicted high demand for smoked glass whenever an eclipse was on the horizon.
By the turn of the twentieth century, smoked glass was becoming less popular and new forms of eclipse eyewear emerged alongside new trends like 3D glasses. Harvey and Lewis, a New England optical supply company, and other similar ventures began producing Eclipse-o-Scope viewers in the 1930s. These were cardboard “eyeglasses” with a small sheet of protective film covering the eyeholes. A 1932 pair marketed as “Viz-Eclipse,” includes a note saying, “this material developed by research expressly for visioning the sun over extended periods without injury to the eye. Approved by Eclipse committee of the American Astronomical Society.”24 But, much like smoked glass and 3D glasses of the time, a user would have to the Eclipse-o-Scope or other viewer in front of their face and while eclipse totality is nowhere near as long as any popular 3D film, the protection offered by these early eclipse glasses was limited. In fact, by the end of World War II, at least one California physician determined smoked glass, photographic film, or even dark sunglasses are not enough protection from the sun.25 Still, others working in the fields of astronomy and physics believed as recently as 1974 that solar eclipses could be “viewed safely through a photographic negative or smoked glass.”26 Today, eclipse glasses are made from a resin containing carbon particles and are certified to meet standards approved by NASA. Contemporary eclipse glasses that you can get for free from the library before April 8, 2024, are made to “reduce the sun’s brightness by about 500,000 times;” regular sunglasses only reduce that brightness by a factor of five.27 Only time will tell if the science and fashion of eclipse eyewear have been perfected but the current sleek design that sits comfortably on your face has been in style since the 1970s.28 As long as the filters remain undamaged, eclipse glasses can be used indefinitely, but any small scratch or tear renders them unusable and it is suggested these glasses be discarded after three years.29
“Eclipse-Gazers Warned,” Mansfield News-Journal, June 22, 1954, 4.
Does the Sherman Room have any eclipse materials in their collections?
Yes! We have a few pieces, including a 2020-2021 yearbook from Clear Fork High School with an eclipse theme. In the opening spread of the book, the editors talk about the Covid-19 pandemic and the atypical year it created, concluding that, like a solar eclipse, “even in the darkest of times, light remains.”30 Our collection also includes two pairs of eclipse glasses from the August 21, 2017, eclipse. Ohio was not in the path of totality for that eclipse, but these glasses commemorate what was dubbed “The Great American Solar Eclipse” since it was the first total solar eclipse visible from coast to coast in nearly a century. The News Journal also notes the 2017 eclipse was “the first total eclipse only visible in the United States since the nation’s founding.”31 Despite falling outside the path of totality in 2017, the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library still hosted programs to commemorate the event. Similarly, there has been an array of programs offered this year in anticipation of the April 8 eclipse. We have a copy of the March 2024 “At the Library” newsletter in our collection as well as three pairs of eclipse glasses marking both the April 8 total eclipse and an annular eclipse that took place on October 14, 2023.
A sampling of the Sherman Room’s very small collection of eclipse ephemera.
Since the major history of eclipses in Ohio predates the library – and even Mansfield itself – there is an opportunity to begin preserving this history now. We encourage you to take photos (with all safety precautions in mind) or otherwise document your eclipse experience to share with your friends and family in the future. You are also welcome to donate your eclipse ephemera to the Sherman Room should you so desire, but please note that current collection policy guidelines still apply and we will not be accepting any more eclipse glasses. With seventy-five years until the next eclipse will be visible in Ohio and ninety-three until the next transit of Venus, this is our chance to document a once-in-a-lifetime event!
Thieme, “A Brief History of Eclipse Glasses and the People Who Forgot to Wear Them.” ↩︎
Thomas Dobson, Colin Macfarquhar, and George Gleig, Encyclopedia: Or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . . and an Account of the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons in Every Nation, from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Times (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson at the Stone House, 1798): 433. ↩︎
One of the more prominent businesses to make its home in Mansfield was the Tappan Stove Company. But before the Tappan family found success under their own name, they were running the Eclipse Stove Company. This is not the story of that company, but, rather, the story that supposedly led to the inspired choice of Eclipse as the company’s name. Legend has it that after an 1889 fire destroyed their factory in Bellaire, Ohio, the decision was made to move the factory to Mansfield and rebrand with a nod to an astronomical phenomenon. In a 1966 News-Journal story, it is claimed that the Eclipse name was chosen to honor a late nineteenth century trip W.J. Tappan’s father, T.S., had taken to Siberia to photograph a solar eclipse.1 T.S. did indeed travel to Siberia but it was to photograph an eclipse of a different kind – the transit of Venus.
The Eclipse Stove Company manufacturing complex in Mansfield. Photo featured in Scott Schaut, Historic Mansfield: A Bicentennial History (San Antonio, TX: Historical Publishing Network, 2010): 28.
A group of Eclipse Stove Company factory workers posing outside one of the factory buildings. Photo featured in Scott Schaut, Historic Mansfield: A Bicentennial History (San Antonio, TX: Historical Publishing Network, 2010): 28.
According to an 1869 piece in Scientific American Magazine, “a transit is nothing less than an eclipse of the sun by an inferior planet, the passage of either Venus or Mercury directly between the earth and the sun, so that their disks partially obscure its face, and appear as round, dark spots upon it. Conventional usage has limited the term eclipse of the sun to the obscuration of its disk by the moon, and transit to the same effect produced by the passage of Venus and Mercury between the earth and the sun, although there is no essential difference in the nature of the phenomena.”2 In reporting on the anticipated eclipses of the twentieth century, The Mansfield News wrote in November 1899, “The total solar eclipses visible in the United States will occur in 1918, 1923, 1925, 1945, 1954, 1979, 1984, and 1994. There will be 12 transits of Mercury, the first in 1907; but the more important transit of Venus will not occur, its next date being June 8, 2004.”3 While there are at least two solar eclipses every year, the transit of Venus is a very rare event, occurring four times every 243 years in a predictable and easy to remember patter of 105.5 years, 8 years, 121.5 years, 8 years.4 That essentially means when Venus does show her lovely face to the Earth, she will do it twice in fairly close succession before disappearing again for a long stretch of time. When T.S. Tappan was sent to Siberia in 1874 (and to New Mexico in 1882) as part of a government expedition to study the transit of Venus, his photographs would be some of both the first and last physical photographs of the event. Prior observations of the transit of Venus predated the invention of photography and subsequent instances came after the shift to digital photography, or, as astronomer William Harkness put it in 1882, “When the last transit season occurred the intellectual world was awakening from the slumber of ages, and that wondrous scientific activity which has led to our present advanced knowledge was just beginning.”5 Venus made its most recent trips across the sun in 2004 and 2012, but, sadly, the next event of this kind is not predicted to occur until December 21176 and, just as Harkness knew in 1882, “not even our children’s children will live to take part in the astronomy of that day”7 (for many of us, it’s not very likely will still be around in ninety-three years to see the next transit).
Many of the men involved in the 1874 transit expeditions met in Washington, D.C. in the Spring of 1874 for a practice session to familiarize themselves with the equipment they would be using. From the Asaph Hall papers at the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93516258/.
As the first nineteenth century transit of Venus approached, there was great excitement in the global scientific community. For centuries, since the first predicted transit in December 1631, one of the greatest unsolved problems in the history of astronomy had been “the accurate determination of the distance of the Sun from the Earth, and thus the scale of the solar system.”8 It was hoped that advancements in technology, particularly the addition of photography, would allow more accurate measurements to be collected and, thus, an answer to the great question of the universe – the scale of the solar system – could finally be determined. Russia, Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, and Holland all organized scientific expeditions to document and study the 1874 transit, with one nineteenth century scholar commenting, “Every country which had a reputation to keep or gain for scientific zeal was forward to co-operate in the great cosmopolitan enterprise of the transit.”9 Despite the Russian government investing in twenty-six expedition teams of their own, the United States still insisted on sending a team of researchers to Siberia. There may have been one shared mission at the heart of each country’s expedition plan, but this was by no means a cooperative endeavor amongst the seven countries preparing for the transit.
While the majority of the European countries with expedition teams devoted great attention to “securing the best photographs,” the American organizers sought to take measurements from the photographs themselves which would require a vastly different approach to setting up and working with the camera.10 Thus, the Americans set about equipping their teams with a fixed horizontal telescope with a 40-foot focal length that would direct sunlight to a heliostat (“a slowly turning mirror that kept the Sun’s image stationary with respect to the telescope”).11 The lens and heliostat mirror would be mounted on a four-foot iron pier embedded in concrete (imagine traveling with that!). The lens would create an image that was four inched in diameter and projected onto a photographic plate placed 38.5 feet away on another concrete mount.12 Compared to the solar eclipse coming up on April 8, 2024, which will last 2.5 hours with only four minutes and twenty-eight seconds of totality, the 1874 transit of Venus was anticipated to last close to four hours.13 Still, that is a small window of time for the work astronomers were hoping to complete.
The complexities of the specialized equipment made for the expeditions are shown here. “A weight driven heliostat directs the Sun’s rays through a lens, which focuses the image onto a photographic plate 38.5 feet away.” See Simon Newcomb, Popular Astronomy (New York: Haughton and Mifflin, 1878): 186.
On March 3, 1871, Congress approved a $2,000 expenditure for “preparing instruments” for an expedition.14 Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory, Commodore B.F. Sands, petitioned Congress for an additional $150,000, stating that the transit of Venus was “one of the rarest and most interesting phenomena in astronomy” and an expedition for its observation “will afford our countrymen a peculiarly favorable opportunity to exercise their inventive ingenuity in the introduction of improved modes of observation.”15 In total, $177,000 was invested in the 1874 expedition, which included eight separate teams of astronomers and photographers.16 Not a single one of these groups was actually stationed on the continental United States – three teams were sent to Asia, four to Australia, and one to Antarctica. Otto Struve, an astronomer with the Russian Academy, wrote to Simon Newcomb in the United States in February 1873, recommending “the coast region [by] Wladivostok [sic] should be chosen as principal station on the part of the Americans.”17 Of the eight teams, there was no specified “principal expedition, but the Kansas City Weekly places the Valdivostock team including T.S. Tappan at the top of their list when reporting on the expeditions and the New York Daily Herald dedicated an entire page to this group and their work, giving special credence to the Siberian station.18 Headed by Professor Asaph Hall of the United States Navy, Tappan was appointed as the assistant photographer, bringing the desired skills of a “young gentleman of education . . . who had been practiced in chemical and photographic manipulation.”19 The group set sail for Vladivostock in July 1874, a journey that took a little over a month, to await the main event of December 9, 1874.20 Unfortunately, poor weather on the day of the transit meant the group only secured thirteen photographs but those were good enough to be fully reproduced in the New York Daily Herald in February 1875.21 When Tappan was called upon to photograph the transit of Venus again in 1882, he and principal photographer of the New Mexico expedition, D.C. Chapman, produced the highest volume of usable photographs of any expedition group that year, with a total of 216.22
Headline from the New York Daily Herald advertising the observations in Siberia and the photographs of Venus. New York Daily Herald, February 17, 1875.
Thirteen segment photos from Tappan’s 1874 expedition team as reproduced in the New York Daily Herald, February 17, 1875.
According to the Directory of Indiana Photographers, Thomas Shaw Tappan was born in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio on October 28, 1838, the youngest son of Benjamin Tappan and Elizabeth Shaw.23 It is said that Tappan “developed a remarkable reputation as a photographer in Cincinnati, then Wheeling [West Virginia]” and the Directory of Indiana Photographers lists him as owning three studios in Noblesville, Hamilton County, Indiana between 1861 and 1866.24 IRS tax assessments from 1863-1865 confirm Tappan was working as a photographer in Noblesville.25 The spelling of Tappan’s surname is inconsistent in these tax assessments and his various photography studios and businesses were commonly listed under “Tappin,” which makes a thorough record of his work and whereabouts difficult to produce with absolute certainty of its accuracy. In the summer of 1863, twenty-four-year-old Tappan’s name appears in a draft record for the U.S. Civil War.26 Family histories like Jay Tappan Gilbert’s 1969 book do not mention anything about Tappan serving in the war but Gilbert suggests that it was likely around this time that Tappan “became associated with Mr. Leon Van Loo,” a photographer and artist most famous for introducing the “ideal” style of photography in which images “were printed on zinc oxide and applied to blackened sheet-iron.”27 What had prompted Tappan’s move to Noblesville is uncertain but by 1873, he was once again in Cincinnati, being found in the city’s directory listed as an artist.28 Newspapers and other records of the time offer scant commentary on Tappan’s artistic credentials, but it would seem an association with the famous Van Loo could only have drawn interest to Tappan when the Venus expeditions were being planned. Tappan’s relationship with Van Loo was evidently so influential and important to him that he named his youngest son Leon Van Loo Tappan.29
This portrait of Thomas Tappan and a feathered friend was taken at either his Bellaire or Wheeling studio. See Jay Tappan Gilbert, Tappan Family History, 26.
Tappan wrote many letters during his time away from home in 1874 and the Sherman Room has a small collection of those letters in our collection. He appears to have developed a particular fascination with Japan where his group had briefly stayed before making the final leg of their journey to Vladivostock. According to The Cincinnati Daily Star, Tappan “found in Japan a Cincinnatian, who has established himself very successfully at Sepparo, Island of Yesso, in the manufacture of flour.”30 Even a decade later, and after observing another transit of Venus, Japan was still on Tappan’s mind when he was invited to give a lecture to the Columbia Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. He told those in attendance about “the country, its people, their manners and customs, their religion, etc.”31 He concluded his talk with a display of Japanese fireworks he had acquired on the trip (one can only hope the presentation was outdoors).32
By the time Tappan was called upon again to capture the transit of Venus in 1882, he and his family had relocated to Wheeling, West Virginia. The family is shown in Bellaire, Ohio in an 1880 census, but by the next year, The Dail Register of Wheeling was proudly proclaiming Tappan “our photographer.”33 With only five miles between the two cities, Tappan may have maintained businesses in both cities, and he gave each city a boost of notoriety when he left for New Mexico in 1882. He first traveled to Washington, D.C. to join the rest of the expedition but he showed particular excitement for what he might find out West. The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer reports he took a rifle with him should he encounter and prime buffalo, deer, or other such game.34 For his efforts and photographic expertise in New Mexico, Tappan would be paid “three dollars a day and five dollars for subsistence and all other personal expenses.”35 He was once again an assistant photographer on the expedition but the Las Cruces Sun-News in New Mexico notes he had the foresight to document to occasion for posterity, writing, “the assistant Photographer, Mr. T.S. Tappan, of Bellaire [?], arranged the whole party in a group with the queer-looking buildings and the whole country for a background, and there photographed us. It was a noble group (our majestic figure in near the centre [sic]) and represented Science supported by Literature, and protected by Military Force.”36 Though Tappan promised to furnish the paper with a print of the photo, no extant copy has been located to prove he kept his word.
A portrait of Mary Elizabeth Stuart Tappan ostensibly taken by her husband, Thomas Shaw Tappan. Jay Tappan Gilbert, Tappan Family History, 26.
Tappan married Mary Elizabeth Steward [Stuart] on December 7, 1858.37 Together, they had four children: William Jared (1860-1936), Thomas S. (1865-1945), Katie Lavonda (1872-1902), and Leon Van Loo (1879-1939).38 In 1881, William Jared, along with J.M. Maring and W.A. Gorby, purchased the Ohio Valley Foundry Company in Bellaire, Ohio. This company, specializing in the manufacture of cast iron stoves, was the earliest precursor to the Tappan Stove Company.39 After a devastating fire in 1889, the company relocated to Mansfield and The Evening News in Mansfield announced the company had” been granted a new charter under the new name of Eclipse Stove Company by which it will hereafter be known.”40 Eclipse Stove Company was incorporated in 1918 but William Jared and his business partners soon discovered there was another Eclipse Stove Company operating out of Illinois. In a mutual decision, both companies decided to change their names and in 1921, William Jared’s company was rebranded one final time as the Tappan Stove Company.41 Thomas Shaw Tappan had little, if any, direct involvement with his son’s stove company, but when he passed away in October 1906, the shops of the Eclipse Stove Company were closed for his funeral.42 Whether inspiring the branding of kitchenware or the work of astronomers of the twenty-first century and beyond, Thomas Shaw Tappan’s eclipse legacy is one that won’t soon be forgotten.
Paul L. White, “This is the Mansfield That Was,” News Journal, May 15, 1966, 5. ↩︎
“The Transits of Venus in 1874 and 1882,” Scientific American Magazine 20, No. 18(May 1869), 281. ↩︎
The Mansfield News, November 19, 1899, 9. Emphasis added. ↩︎
Michael E. Bakich, “What are Solar Eclipses and How Often Do They Occur,” Astronomy, March 20, 2024, https://www.astronomy.com/observing/how-often-do-solar-eclipses-occur/; Steven J. Dick, Sky and Ocean Joined: The U.S. Naval Observatory, 1830-2000 (Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 241. ↩︎
William Harkness, “Address by William Harkness,” Proceedings of the AAAS 31st Meeting . . . August 1882 (Salem, 1883), 77 as quoted in Dick, Sky and Ocean Joined, 238. ↩︎
According to data from Steven J. Dick, a minimum of $34,000 was spent to supply all 8 teams with the same specialized equipment. See Dick, Sky and Ocean Joined, 248. ↩︎
According to a letter dated September 14, 1874, the total journey from Ohio to Vladivostok took 56 days. See Jay Tappan Gilbert, Tappan Family History (Mansfield, OH, 1969): 27. ↩︎
Dick, Sky and Ocean Joined, 259; “Transit of Venus,” New York Daily Herald, February 17, 1875. As of 2003, it is reported that none of the photographs from the 1874 transit expeditions survived. See Dick, Sky and Ocean Joined, 261. ↩︎
“U.S., IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1962-1918 for Thomas S Tappan,” Indiana – District 11; Annual Lists; 1863. Available through Ancestry.com; “U.S., IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1962-1918 for Thos S Tappin,” Indiana – District 11; Monthly Lists; Jan-July 1864. Available through Ancestry.com; “U.S., IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 for Thos S Tappen,” Indiana – District 11; Annual Lists; 1865. Available through Ancestry.com. ↩︎
“U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865 for Thomas S Tappin,” Indiana – 11th – Class 1, T-Z, Volume 3 of 6. Available through Ancestry.com. ↩︎
Williams’ Cincinnati Directory for 1872-73, 817. Available on Ancestry.com. ↩︎
See Gilbert, Tappan Family History, 10; “U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 for Leon Vanloo Tappan,” Ohio – Richland County – All – Draft Card T. Available on Ancestry.com. ↩︎
“1880 United States Federal Census for Thomas Tappan,” Ohio – Belmont – Bellaire – 026. Available on Ancestry.com; The Daily Register [Wheeling, W.V.], April 8, 1881, 4. ↩︎
The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, November 4, 1882, 4. ↩︎
Richard D. Witchey Jr. interview with P. R. Tappan, retired Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Tappan Company, May 22, 1964. See Richard D. Witchey Jr., “Industrial Growth of An Enterprise: A Study of the Tappan Company,” Master’s Thesis (Kent State University, 1966), 5. ↩︎
“The City in Brief,” The Evening News [Mansfield, OH], January 20, 1891, 4. ↩︎
Witchey Jr., “Industrial Growth of an Enterprise,”20. ↩︎
“Closed for Funeral,” The Mansfield News, October 29, 1902, 6. ↩︎
The Sherman Room at MRCPL 