COW project documents history of Wooster
When the Ohio Experimental Research Station outgrew its location on the Ohio State campus in Columbus in 1892, Wayne County, with an offer of 470 acres and $85,000, won the bidding for a new site on Madison Hill in Wooster.
Editor’s note: This is Part II of a two-part series on the Wooster Digital History Project, developed by faculty and students of The College of Wooster as a comprehensive history of the City of Wooster as far back as the 17th century. Part I was published Jan. 18.
Brittany Previte, College of Wooster class of 2016, researched Wooster’s Italian community for the WDHP.
The website explains, “America’s large cities saw waves of nativism and a hostility to the settlement of the growing number of immigrants in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and small towns like Wooster saw some discrimination as well. Articles in the Wooster Daily News comment on the ‘foreign element’ in Wooster. The Italian Society of 1910 built ‘Town Hall’ to accommodate for their growing activities, which included a citizenship class.”
The structure, Wooster’s only brownstone, still stands on Palmer Street. Previte found her research of particular interest, as her great-grandparents immigrated from Italy to Cleveland, her hometown. She majored in history and English at Wooster and went on to earn her master’s at the Ohio State University. She now works as communication and operations coordinator for the Career Advancement Center at Lake Forest College.
“I found the digital aspects of curation very rewarding,” Previte said. “This internship was one of my first tastes of web design and geo-location tools, and I enjoyed developing my graphic-design skills.”
Previte also found it rewarding to uncover gems about Wooster’s past and the people who lived here. “Family names kept coming up, and you began to appreciate the patterns of community support,” she said.
Also on the website is the history of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center on the south edge of the city.
When the original center at Ohio State’s main campus needed more room and became more expensive and OSU could no longer provide funds for the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Wayne County offered $85,000, plus 470 acres of land for the new campus. The original buildings of Wooster’s OARDC campus, built in 1893, included laboratories, a creamery, a dairy barn and greenhouses.
Eventually the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state should pay the $85,000, as the new facility would benefit all Ohioans. The first group of buildings was completed in 1894 on Madison Hill, where the campus remains today.
The website also offers an app-based walking tour of downtown Wooster’s food history and related establishments. According to the website, “Food and food production are vital to understanding the area’s past and present. The relationships between farmers and consumers in Wayne County are central to Wooster’s embrace of local food and drive a thriving community of restaurants and retailers that supply regional products.”
Walking tours of various streets also are available. One tour stop acknowledges the influence of the Lenapé, or Delaware, Nation, which inhabited the area when the first settlers arrived at the dawning of the 19th century. The tour also provides the history of buildings such as Germania Hall on South Market Street. Its exterior has changed little since its 1878 construction, but the structure has hosted a meat business, a saloon, living quarters, a dance hall, the original Freedlander’s department store and a series of restaurants.
One poignant exhibit on the website tells the story of the fire that demolished “Old Main” on The College of Wooster campus in 1901. This tragedy involving the school’s main academic building could have been disastrous for the fledgling institution.
However, the town quickly lent a school building for temporary use while the Wooster Board of Trade provided $15,000. Donations poured in from alumni and local businesses and churches. The college also received a curious proposal: If $40,000 could be raised in 65 days, an anonymous benefactor would donate $100,000 toward rebuilding efforts.
On the last day to fulfill the condition, local businesses closed and the town held a jubilee to celebrate raising the required funds by the deadline. America’s wealthiest man, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, then kept his promise.
The WDHP is just one of many ways Wooster’s students contribute to this small city where they have come from around the globe to study for four years. The WDHP research team recently developed a new website for the Wayne County Historical Society. Countless other students volunteer for community service such as mentoring youth under the care of Wayne County Children’s Services and serving as health coaches for individuals with medical conditions.
Elisabeth Abell, one of the original student researchers for the WDHP, said she has always loved Wooster. “So the chance to go deeper into its history was incredibly appealing. It was fun to unearth connections between street names, plaques on buildings and Wooster traditions,” she said.
Each year the team focuses on a category such as agriculture or civic development. New stories are added, and depth is added to existing stories. According to Gregory Shaya, COW professor of history, who conceived and organized the project six years ago with the help of associate professor of history Katherine Holt, they are always looking for community partners to share the history of their businesses. He encourages those with a story to tell to email him at gshaya@wooster.edu.
“History is all around us, not just in the past,” said Jordan Biro Walters, assistant professor of history. “This project helps showcase that.”
Check out the WDHP and learn more about the city, traveling back in time through the stories and rare photos. Find out what made Wooster what it is today at www.woosterhistory.org.