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In 1934, workers at the Electric Auto-Lite Company and other automotive-related manufacturers secretly organized the Automobile Workers Federal Union Local 18384, American Federation of Labor (AFL), which became the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 12. Anti-unionism, broken pledges by management, and abuse of workers had festered locally for generations. Workers bitterly resented the fact that management took advantage of the Depression’s high unemployment to decrease wages. In February, workers struck at Auto-Lite, Bingham Stamping, Logan Gear, and Spicer Manufacturing Company. When management refused to negotiate in good faith, the workers, including a large number of women, struck the Auto-Lite in mid-April. Auto-Lite management secured a court order limiting the number of strikers to twenty-five. The strike appeared to be lost until the Lucas County Unemployed League organized fierce resistance to the court injunction as the crowd around the plant grew to ten thousand. (continued on other side)
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Established in 1851 after the addition of the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railway, Glendale incorporated in 1855 as Ohio’s first planned community and one of the nation’s first planned villages. The original planning included forested greenbelts and parks, curvilinear streets meandering around established trees, large lots, and superior building standards. Glendale is designated as a National Historic Landmark community from the Department of Interior and a Certified Local Government through the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, all owed to Glendale’s persistent adherence to the plan and faithful preservation of original infrastructure. Much of today’s preserved infrastructure includes the original 59 pivotal buildings, curvilinear streets, tree canopy, stone gutters, gas streetlights, and railroad depot.
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The Stoner House, built circa 1852 on a natural spring thought to have medicinal properties, served as an inn, tavern, and spa, and as a hiding place for runaway slaves. George Stoner, owner and operator, drove the stagecoach from Columbus to Westerville transporting passengers who spent the night in this building. Runaway slaves were brought to this location in the luggage compartment of Stoner’s stagecoach and hidden in the cellar until they could be transported further north on their journey to Canada and freedom.
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Roy J. Plunkett was born in New Carlisle, Ohio, and graduated from Newton Township High School in Pleasant Hill. He received his B.A. degree from Manchester College before enrolling as a graduate student in chemistry at The Ohio State University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1936 under the direction of William Lloyd Evans in the McPherson Chemical Laboratory. On April 6, 1938, while employed by the Du Pont Company to develop a nontoxic refrigerant, Plunkett discovered Teflon®, one of the most important polymers of the 20th century. On that day, Dr. Plunkett opened a tank of gaseous tetrafluoroethylene only to find that the gas was gone–its molecules had combined with another (“polymerized”) to form a solid material. Teflon has been used on cookware, the outer skin of space suits, nose cones of space vehicles, bone replacement, and much more.
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In 1937, Anne O’Hare McCormick became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence. She was born in Yorkshire, England and moved to Ohio as a child. She was educated at the Academy of St. Mary of the Springs. As a freelance writer, McCormick contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and others. She became a regular correspondent for the Times in 1922 and was the first woman to join its editorial board in 1936. As a Times correspondent in Europe during the tumultuous years before and during World War II, she conducted interviews with leaders including Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin.
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Streams are both a principal economic resource and a natural hazard in Ohio. Accurate and systematic streamflow records are crucial in protecting lives and property and ensuring an adequate water supply. At this site in 1892 and 1893, engineering students from The Ohio State University (OSU) made the first streamflow measurements in Ohio with a current meter – a technology still in use at the beginning of the 21st century. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), an agency that cooperated with OSU in stream-data collection until the early 1900s, furnished the current meters.
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Spring Grove received its charter by an act of the Ohio Legislature in January 1845. Motivated by crowded conditions of small cemeteries created by the cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s, the Cincinnati Horticultural Society formed a cemetery association in 1844 to find a location for a rural cemetery. Under the guidance of Robert Buchanan, local attorney Salmon P. Chase drafted the charter that was granted, and Spring Grove, consisting of 166 acres designed with a natural setting embellished with shrubbery, flowers, trees, and walks, was dedicated on August 28, 1845. A leader in cemetery design and the landscape “lawn plan” concept, Spring Grove officially changed its name to Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum in 1987.
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At this location, in 1913, R. Guy Cowan opened Northeast Ohio’s only art pottery, the Cowan Pottery Studio (known first as the Cleveland Pottery and Tile Company). Cowan began molding Lakewood’s clay into sculptural forms covered with unique glazes. Cowan’s venture depended on the commercial success of his tiles, which adorned homes and community institutions throughout greater Cleveland. By 1917, his Lakewood Ware had achieved international recognition with an ward from the Art Institute of Chicago. After his World War I service, Cowan returned to Lakewood, where a drained gas well prompted the pottery’s relocation to Rocky River. Until the pottery closed in 1931, a casualty of the Great Depression, its artists produced elegant household wares and limited-edition ceramic sculptures that were sold throughout the United States and Canada.
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