History Blog

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March 25, 2024

Lady Fanm: Master of Disguise

By Valerie Boyer, School and Inclusive Community Programs Coordinator Lady Fanm Goumen, a Creole woman, was known as many different people throughout her life. She’s said to have been born in the summer between 1807 and 1815 in Franklin, Louisiana. Keep in mind that chattel slavery was a time of not seeing enslaved persons as […]

February 21, 2024

Tice Davids: The Origins of the Underground Railroad Name

By Valerie Boyer, School and Inclusive Community Programs Coordinator The commonly held notion of the Underground Railroad is that it was a network of people, places and secret routes that spirited southern slaves from captivity to freedom. We can surmise from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, that enslaved folx were already making their escape […]

February 14, 2024

Charles W. Follis: Changing the Game

By Valerie Boyer, School and Inclusive Community Programs Coordinator Charles W. Follis was born on February 3, 1879, to James Henry and Catherine Matilda Anderson Follis in Cloverdale, Virginia as the 3rd of 7 children. In 1885, the family moved to Wooster, Ohio. Follis entered Wooster College, in 1901, however, he chose to play football for the amateur Wooster […]

January 18, 2024

Yours Respectfully, Miss Elvira Johnson

By Wendy Korwin, Archives Services Manager Within large archival collections, certain names and voices stand out. From 2021-2023, archivists at the Ohio History Connection worked to catalog President Warren G. Harding’s papers and photographs. During this project, we identified thousands of correspondents (another blog post explores some of Harding's early letters). There were close, distant […]

December 4, 2023

Discover Five Decades of Columbus Women Traveling the World

By Veda Faust, Professional Writing Intern This blog post was written by Veda Faust, an Ohio State University student conducting a professional writing internship at the Ohio History Connection. During her fall semester, she worked with the Archives Services department on an upcoming exhibit. The new exhibit features material from a recently acquired collection; AV […]

October 10, 2023

Remembering Dolly Divine’s Annual Halloween Drag Ball

In 1964, David Zimmer and Orn Huntington started a Halloween tradition. The Berwick Ball celebrated and supported Central Ohio's LGBTQ+ community for three decades.

October 9, 2023

Meet Olivia Wood, the new Manuscripts Archivist

A native of the Lima, OH area, Olivia Wood grew up in a household enveloped in history. As a child being raised by two educators—one of whom taught high school history for 25+ years—Olivia was taught to recite facts about Ohio history, which only fueled her spark for a career dedicated to preserving it. Olivia […]

September 18, 2023

Recent Acquisition: Neil Armstrong Welcome Home Parade

By Daniel Willis, Audiovisual Archivist The Ohio History Connection recently acquired a new photograph collection documenting a moment in the life of Neil Armstrong. The collection, AV 362 Neil Armstrong Welcome Home Parade, features photographs taken of Armstrong and other participants in a “Welcome Home” parade held in Wapakoneta on September 6th, 1969,. This parade […]

September 15, 2023

Warren G. Harding Records Preservation Project Concludes

Three significant collections cataloged with support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission

September 11, 2023

Recent Acquisition: Scrapbooks of Cleveland’s First Female Laywer

Nearly a decade before women had the right to vote, Handrick became the first woman to pass the bar and establish a legal practice in Cleveland.

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