1890s Independence Day at Ohio Village
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- I Apologise for the lateness of this video....I was filming it at Ohio Village earlier today and things took a bit longer than I had intended.
But this video is how Independence Day might have been celebrated in a small town in Ohio's Heartland in the 1890s. Ohio Village is located behind the Ohio History Connection on 17th Ave in Columbus OH, across from the Expo Center, and often plays host to festivities to show what it was like during holidays, like Hallowe'en in the 1890s, A Dickens of a Christmas, Veterans Day in the Post-WWII era, and more.
While here I visited the houses and businesses that make up the village. This includes the one-room schoolhouse (both my parents went to school in these back in the 1930s), the general store and mercantile, the bicycle shop and the undertaker/furniture maker (always a cheerful visit :)).
There's also a blacksmith making tools and things...I remember doing that while in metal shop in high school...gets the arm tired quick.
I visited the local drugstore/apothecary and the bank, and also the American Hotel with a barber and bar inside, and the town hall. And of course, the toy store and candy shop.
They even had a baseball game going on, 1890s-style. I took in a few minutes of that to give you a taste of old-school baseball!
But everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun playing.
Okay, that's all for this video, and I'll have more up on Wednesday at 7pm. And I Thank You for Watching!
In the early 1980s, I knew 3 local Artisans, who were employed by the Ohio Village, as historic "re-enactors". They got to wear period clothing, provided by the Village, which I think was dated to the late 1800s. These artisans, were local craft-artists, who were making their art, using old techniques and materials. Two, were a married couple, who worked in Tin. They made household items out of tin. Tin was used for cookie cutters, molds for making candles, baking tins, and candle holders for tables, and ones that were used by individuals, before the invention of electric lighting. People walked around their homes at night, with a hand held, single candle, holder, made of tin, that had a built-in, reflector. And I knew another fellow who worked in the wood shop, in the village. He may have also worked as the town's Blacksmith.
The Ohio Village is always looking for volunteers from our community to help keep the village looking clean and orderly. One summer, maybe it was in 2002, I volunteered for 2 days. The village wasn't always open to the public. The 2 days I worked, myself, and about 6 other folks, strangers to me, but all able bodied, nice people, were assigned various tasks. I think we were given soda pop and a light snack for our efforts, at a break time. We didn't work more than 6 hours total. Two of us were assigned to each building. Our tasks weren't labor intensive. We swept the floors, dusted the displays, organized some props, & cleaned the windows. We were given all the cleaning & dusting cloths, and window cleaner, brooms and dustpans. Most of the buildings are a single story, with a fake 2nd story that can't be gotten in to. It was a fun experience, and I enjoyed imagining what it would have been like to become a historic re-enactor. My background as a printer, where I set lead type, by hand, would have come in handy, and I would have loved explaining that old technique, that was still being used when I was a teenager. Back then, I thought that was going to become my adult life employment.
Ohio Village recently announced they will closed for a couple of years during an extensive renovation project. The village is kind (cute),....the buildings aren't fully "to-scale", in terms of real buildings. They are partial buildings with fewer rooms. It's too bad their benefactors didn't scoop up some of the vintage buildings around Columbus, that had been slated for demolition, since the 1970s & 80s. Real Victorian homes throughout Old Town-East,....had been crumbling for years. If they had better funding they could have saved them and had them moved to this site.
Yeah, I figured I should go one more time to Ohio Village and do this video before it does close up.