Finding Utopia

 

It's here! Randy McNutt's Finding Utopia: More Travels into Lost Ohio has now been published by the Kent State University Press and its Black Squirrel imprint. The book is the follow-up to Lost Ohio: More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Lives, winner of the Ohio Genealogical Society's Henry Howe Award for best Ohio history in 2006. Available at bookstores and through Amazon.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Union Village: Shaker Ghost Town

By Randy McNutt

(For additional information, please read Finding Utopia: Another Journey Into Lost Ohio, published by Black Squirrel Books.)

Near Monroe, Ohio, lies a ghost town named Union Village, once the largest Shaker community in the early west. It population reached hundreds of residents in a time when small towns had few people. Founded in 1805, when Ohio was only two years old, Union Village--also called Wisdom's Paradise by its residents--continued to grow into a leading area producer of brooms, chairs, and various other products.

           I came searching for the Warren County town to include it in my new book, Finding Utopia: Another Journey Into Lost Ohio. I was looking for interesting ghost towns, and this one seemed appropriate. It was once a bustling center of commerce, religion, and agriculture. Nowadays cars go past it on State Route 63, and drivers don't even know they have passed something that once attracted sightseers and curious travelers.

The Shakers—formally known as the United Society of Christ’s Second Appearing— were a persecuted religious sect founded in England in the late 1700s by Ann Lee, the wife of a blacksmith. She and her small group left for America and built villages in New York and other eastern states. Eventually their representatives came to southwest Ohio and found fertile ground. A main tenant of their faith was celibacy, although the group accepted women and minorities and offered them positions of leadership.

The Shakers got their name from the way some of their early converts shook while praying. The name stuck. Nowadays, the early Shakers are known mostly for their fine craftsmanship and woodworking. Only a handful of Shakers remain, and they live in New England.

In time, the Shakers built 24 communities in the United States, including Union Village. The self-sufficient town became the leading Shaker community in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. The  village helped create a number of other villages in neighboring Ohio counties and in Indiana. In 1818, Union Village's population peaked at 634 people. Early on, the town even featured its own printing plant and newspaper, the Day-Star.

            In 1861 the Civil War started a swift downward spiral for the community, draining it of potential new converts and business markets. By the early 1900s, Union Village had dwindled to only 44 residents. In 1912, the community was sold to the United Brethren Church, which used the village as a home for the elderly. Today, the site is the home of Otterbein-Lebanon Retirement Community on Ohio 741.

Starting in the second decade of the 1800s, Union Village became a center of Merino sheep and Poland-China hogs. Meanwhile, the community began to package and sell garden seeds. “The Shakers,” Cheryl Bauer and Rob Portman wrote in Wisdom’s Paradise, “were always successful merchandisers, even in the early nineteenth century, whether they were selling seeds in Ohio or chairs in New York.”

            Today, Otterbein-Lebanon features a few remnants of the old Shaker community, including Marble Hall, built in 1810. Most of the original structures have been torn down. The most eye-catching building is called Marble Hall, built in 1891-1892 when the Shakers renovated it in the Victorian style. They added marble floors (hence the name), modern fireplaces, fancy woodwork, and porches. Other impressive remnants that remain include a 10,000-gallon (21 feet deep and 9 feet wide) reservoir that caught rain, various Shaker cupboards, and other historical items.

In 1909, just before Union Village was sold, a reporter visited and wrote: “The past quarter century especially has brought about great changes, especially one, the mode of worship. Whereas years ago, marching, whirling, shaking and exhortations of a pronounced nature was indulged in, today a more intelligent spirit is manifested in forms of singing, reading, and remarks, heralding the essentials of life and duties that tend toward the bettering of selfhood, home and humanity . . .”

Nowadays, the site is busy as a retirement center. One of the site's few remaining larger Shaker buildings was torn down in 2010. A small group of residents opposed the demolition, but with no success. The center wanted the property for a new, modern project. Next door, the Victorian Marble Hall still stands, but it looks nothing like its original design in the early 1800s. Most of the center's residents are vaguely aware of what happened at this place, but they are living here because of the services provided, not for the history.

            Unfortunately, the Shaker town was doomed once the Civil War broke out and Southern markets collapsed. Its membership further declined to only 24 members in 1910. Finally, the end had come to one of Ohio’s more interesting independent religious communities.


Randy McNutt is the author Lost Ohio:  More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Places. Read more about Union Village in his new history and travel narrative, Finding Utopia: Another Journey Into Lost Ohio. It will be published in October 2012 by Black Squirrel Books, an imprint of the Kent State University Press.

 

Shaker Ghost Town

By Randy McNutt

Near Monroe lies a ghost town named Union Village, once the largest Shaker communities in the early west with hundreds of residents. Founded in 1805, when Ohio was only two years old, Union Village continued to grow into a leading area producer of brooms, chairs, and various other products. At State Route 741, near State Route 63, I stopped to see one of last larger Shaker buildings left in the area--Marble Hall. It's fancy inside, lined with expensive wood trim and marble. If this seems an unlikely Shaker style, it is. The Shakers decided to remodel one of their early buildings to fit the times of the 1890s, and in the process renamed it Marble Hall. Although still attractive and useful, the building is also a sad reminder of the decline of the Shaker faith. 

The Shakers—formally known as the United Society of Christ’s Second Appearing—were a persecuted religious sect founded in England in the late 1700s by Ann Lee, the wife of a blacksmith. She and her small group left for America and built villages in New York and other eastern states. A main tenant of their faith was celibacy, although the group accepted women and minorities and offered them positions of leadership. The Shakers got their name from the way some of their early converts shook while praying. The name stuck. Nowadays, the early Shakers are known mostly for their fine craftsmanship and woodworking. Only a handful of Shakers remain, and they live in New England.

In time, the Shakers built 24 communities in the United States, including Union Village. The self-sufficient town became a leading Shaker center in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. The community helped created a number of other villages in neighboring counties and in Indiana. In 1818, the town’s population peaked at 634 people. Early on, the town even featured its own printing plant and newspaper, the Day-Star.

Starting in the second decade of the 1800s, Union Village became a center of Merino sheep and Poland-China hogs. Meanwhile, the community began to package and sell garden seeds. “The Shakers,” Cheryl Bauer and Rob Portman wrote in Wisdom’s Paradise, “were always successful merchandisers, even in the early nineteenth century, whether they were selling seeds in Ohio or chairs in New York.”

In 1861 the Civil War started a swift downward spiral for the community, draining it of potential new converts and business markets. (Earlier, many of the village's markets had been in the South.) By the 1900, Union Village had dwindled to only 44 residents. In 1912, the community was sold to the United Brethren Church, which used the village as a home for the elderly. Today, the site is the home of Otterbein-Lebanon Retirement Community on Ohio 741. 

Today, Otterbein-Lebanon features a few remnants of the old Shaker community, including Marble Hall, built in 1810. Most of the original structures have been torn down. The most eye-catching building is called Marble Hall, built in 1891-1892 when the Shakers renovated it in the Victorian style. They added marble floors (hence the name), modern fireplaces, fancy woodwork, and porches. Other impressive remnants that remain include a 10,000-gallon (21 feet deep and 9 feet wide) reservoir that caught rain, various Shaker cupboards, and other historical items.

In 1909, just before Union Village was sold, a reporter visited and wrote: “The past quarter century especially has brought about great changes, especially one, the mode of worship. Whereas years ago, marching, whirling, shaking and exhortations of a pronounced nature was indulged in, today a more intelligent spirit is manifested in forms of singing, reading, and remarks, heralding the essentials of life and duties that tend toward the bettering of selfhood, home and humanity . . ."

Unfortunately, the Shaker town was doomed. Its membership further declined to only 24 members in 1910. The end had come to one of Ohio’s more interesting independent religious communities.

Randy McNutt is the author Lost Ohio:  More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Places.

 

Woodsdale Is Missing

By Randy McNutt

Ghost towns are plentiful in Ohio. Their stories and history add to the Buckeye State’s culture and lore.

 
In Butler County’s Madison Township, near Trenton, lies one of the more lively ghost towns, a place named Woodsdale. It was once the home of Amish-Mennonites, a resort, and a paper mill.

These days, the town consists of a large electric-generating plant and the Chrisholm Farmstead, operated by the Friends of Chrisholm Farmstead and the Butler County MetroParks. Christian Augspurger led the area’s early Amish-Mennonites to Butler County from Alsace in 1829, and settled in what was then a rural area. A year later, he started a farm and built a stone farmhouse. From there he welcomed more Amish immigrants and helped them on their westward journey. When Augspurger died in 1848, a son, Samuel, inherited the farm. In the 1860s he joined with the Beckett Paper Co. of Hamilton in starting a paper mill in the Amish area, creating a town called Woodsdale. It was named after a county founder and leader, Thomas Woods. Soon it became a growing town with 100 residents and several businesses, a school, and a post office. It continued to grow until the paper mill’s fortunes reversed.

In 1874, the Augspurger farmhouse burned. Samuel replaced it with a brick house a year later. This is the same house that stands on the farm today.

In the late 1800s, people came to Woodsdale Island, located between the Ohio-Erie Canal and the Great Miami River. It became a popular resort until a fire destroyed a major building about 1900. After that, few people had reason to visit Woodsdale, and the town was nearly forgotten by many people in the county.

 

In the 1980s, the Trenton and Ohio historical societies began to dream of acquiring the Augspurger farm, with its huge barn and farmhouse. The house had become run-down rental property, but worth restoring. When the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. bought the property in 1989 to build a generating plant, the company donated the farm to the nonprofit groups.

Today, volunteers continue to improve the 259-acre farm and its buildings. Last year, volunteers of the Friends of Chrisholm planted a garden at the rear of the farmhouse. They have continued to work on the garden this year. They call it the Friends Memorial Garden. “There are no pesticides used in this garden, and it is an easy way to teach organics, composting, and other sustainable practices,” said Judy Shillinglaw, a master gardener and volunteer.

Other goals of Friends of Chrisholm for 2011 include: reduce energy costs, help MetroParks as it develops a strategic plan for the site, obtain grants for various projects on site, and help pay for the Doris L. Page Internship program.

Approval of a MetroParks operating levy last fall “means that Chrisholm will continue to remain open to the public, and allow for needed improvement to be made at the park,” said Laura Konnert, president of Friends of Chrisholm.

She said the group will continue to work with MetroParks to determine how to improve the farmhouse’s heating and cooling system—and save on other costs.

Meanwhile, visitors continue to come to the Farmstead for the annual This Old Farm Days celebration, held over Labor Day weekend. On Sept. 11, a Civil War quilt presentation and house tour will be held at the old brick home.

Randy McNutt is the author of twenty books, including two about Ohio ghost towns and regional history—“Ghosts” and “Lost Ohio.” He lives in Hamilton.

           

           

From Blue Ball to Busenbark

By Randy McNutt

Butler County operates on two levels—past and present. Sometimes the two cross paths. The past is littered with dead communities, or ghost towns, that once stood across the county and the region. They are good for exploring on autumn days when the weather is warmer and the leaves are changing colors.

Here are a few of the more interesting ones:

At Alert-New London Road at Howards Creek in Morgan Township is the site of Alert, which today consists of a few barns and houses. The town name originated with the Literary Association of Morgan and Crosby Townships in 1821. The group operated an early library. Area farmers started calling the little community Alert, as in “Those people certainly are alert, aren’t they?” They meant intelligent, or well read. To the uneducated pioneers of the period, the library alerted townspeople to the happenings of the world. Through the years, Alert didn’t grow much. A post office opened there in 1850, and closed in 1904. By then, all but a few businesses had disappeared. Alert became just another ghost town name.

On the old Dixie Highway, I found Blue Ball. It is one of Butler County’s most recognized ghost towns. The former unincorporated community doesn’t exist—in name—any longer because Middletown annexed it and its 752 residents in 1993. It began as an early Ohio stagecoach stop, inviting passengers to spend the night at an inn with a big blue ball mounted on a pole. This was to summon illiterate stagecoach drivers. The town’s claim to fame: a guest on the Tonight Show once mentioned the name to a bemused Johnny Carson. When I roamed around Blue Ball, the area was busy with traffic and shoppers at Lowe's and a Target store. Not far away I noticed a big blue ball that somebody had hung from a pole. That was about the only connection to the stagecoach days. 

Busenbark, in St. Clair Township, began in the 1850s as a stop on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad. The company bought land from a farmer named Robert Busenbark, for whom the little town was named. Its biggest event occurred on Aug. 31, 1867, when 3,000 spectators watched Mike McCoole, the 190-pound American boxing champion, fight Aaron Jones, the 175-pound English champion in a bare-knuckled duke-out. After knocking out Jones, McCoole was named the world champ. He left the ring and leaped over a fence to show how much strength he had left. The unfortunate Jones suffered two broken ribs, a concussion, and internal bleeding. A few weeks later, he died in a Cincinnati hospital. Later, Busenbark was known as the home of a 550-volt electric generating plant that powered traction cars.

In southern Butler County, my favorite ghost town is named Schnaps Town, named for Schnap’s Tavern on U.S. Route 4 in what is now Fairfield. The community was filled with Germans who drank locally brewed spirits, hence the local derivative of the German Schnapps. Later the town changed its name to a more mundane Furmandale, to honor a Hamilton educator named Furman.

Nearby, workers toiled in a sawmill, carding mill, distillery, and other factories in a town named Black Bottom. The town was named for the black, rich soil. Black Bottom died after the local paper mill moved to Hamilton in the 1850s. Nowadays, the paper mills are closing in Hamilton, victims of a digital world.


The Observer’s Randy McNutt is the author of Ghosts: Ohio’s Haunted Landscapes, Lost Arts, and Forgotten Places, from which this piece is partially excerpted.   

Now Entering Lost Ohio

Welcome to Lost Ohio, a blog dedicated to exploring forgotten places and neglected Ohioana. 

The site is named after my book Lost Ohio: More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Lives. The blog will be used to share and receive more tales of missing Ohio communities and vanishing historical sites, provide news about the books (and the places I've written about), post new and old photos of interest to those of us who enjoy traveling the rural routes, view photos taken by Ohio ghost town enthusiasts, and discuss future projects. Most of all, the site will allow me to expand my writings about rural Ohio and its disappearing towns and culture. For the most part, stories on the blog will not appear in my books.

My first book in the "series" was Ghosts: Ohio's Haunted Landscapes, Lost Arts, and Forgotten Places, published in 1996 by Orange Frazer Press of Wilmington.  Initially, some people called it the "ghost town book," but then they realized it is also about the changing cultures of rural Ohio and America, the loss of our historic sites, and my own observations and connections to these subjects.

When the book went out of print about 2004, I started revamping it. I found some photographs I had shot on my trips, bought some old postcards and other Ohio paper memorabilia, and began adding more stories to the original manuscript. Three years later, while in Columbus to receive an award from the Ohio Genealogical Society, I met Barbara Gargiulo, owner of Little Miami Publishing in Milford. She agreed to publish a second edition of Ghosts featuring 270 pages and 36 photos and illustrations. With a new cover, this book is closer to what I wanted the book to look like originally. I wanted readers to see some of the people I met on my trips around Ohio. I also added two new chapters, lengthened a number of others to their original sizes, and added a fanciful map.

It took me ten years to get around to writing a second book like Ghosts, but I finally did it in 2006, when the Kent State Universitiy Press published Lost Ohio. That year it won the Ohio Genealogical Society's Henry Howe Award for best Ohio history.

I am happy to report that in September 2012 Kent State will publish the third book in the unofficial series: Finding Utopia: Another Journey into Lost Ohio. It is written in the same style as the first two books--in first person, using narrative chapters organized under several different book sections, and back matter that features colorfully named ghost towns and other sites. Like the first two books, Finding Utopia isn't exclusively about ghost towns. It will be about lost legends, vanishing Ohio, forgotten historical figures, people with big dreams, trips on back roads, and personal stories that connect us to an Ohio that is slipping away a little more each year. As development continues and technology changes the way we communicate, Ohio continues to become a more urban place.

In all three books, I hoped to chronicle the loss of our rural culture. If someone picks up the book fifty years from now, I want him or her to get a snapshot of what life was like in the old Ohio. This was one of my goals when I started writing these books.

In Ghosts, readers met some fading Buckeye characters--people with determination and spirit who chose to live in small towns that were dying or threatened by suburban growth. They included Charlie Potts, the century-old Clermont County man who couldn't stop farming in Branch Hill; Lawrence "Pood" Schaadt, who recalled the big Saturday-night boxing matches at the jewelry store in Glenmore in Van Wert County; and Carl Rudd, the Adams County man who opened what he called the world's largest Christmas display in rural--very rural--Blue Creek. In that book we went to lost places named Sodom (oh, yes!), Dull, San Toy, Mudsock, Knockemstiff, Temperanceville, Rialto, Henpeck, Hog Town, Moonville, Rural, and Surprise. We also met and heard stories about old-time bootleggers, tattooed chickens, canal wars, nitro shooters, mules and muskeetoes, hundred-year fires underground, big floods, and bad tempers. Later, in Lost Ohio, we traveled through what was left of the Great Black Swamp, which once swallowed pioneers' dreams and wagons. In Waynesville, we looked for the ghost of Louisa Stetson Larrick, sister of the creator of the Stetson hat. Moving on, we  went searching for the town where thousands of people were married in the 1800s, and the authorities promptly forgot to record their weddings. Then we happened upon Bentonville in Adams County and became official members of the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society. Finally, we stopped on the forgotten midways of Ohio to meet Harry Dearwester, king of the old cane rack game.

In Finding Utopia, you are invited to join me on the road again, to meet many new characters and, of course, to rediscover a Buckeye dream--Lost Ohio.

A picture of me visiting Amish country in 1994.

Lost Ohio

"Out there on black asphalt ribbons, deep in the heart of nowhere, I watch the images of towns and people grow smaller in my rearview mirror and finally fade to nothing. I feel at one with the speeding tires and the motion of the Jeep. In the cool rush of air on my sides, sometimes the movement seems strange yet vaguely familiar, as though it possesses a soul I once met but can't quite remember."

--From Lost Ohio, the Introduction


"Sometime in the dimness of the afternoon the snow stopped falling, and I drove home, alone, to confront my personal ghosts. Suddenly, everything I had seen and imagined on my trips--every town, every person  --came sharply into focus. My own life and brief time fit perfectly into a tiny corner of history. Passing the old fort grounds where Anthony Wayne and Michael Cahalane once walked, I realized my town is every man's town, and, for now, as good a place as any in which to make my stand."

--From Ghosts, Coda: Hometown

Where to Buy Them

Ghosts (ISBN 978-1-932250-64-0; $22.50) may be ordered at any bookstore or purchased directly from the publisher at www.littlemiamibooks.com. Lost Ohio (978-0-87338-872-6; $16.95) may be ordered from Amazon.com or from www.kentstateuniversitypress.com. 

Contents xi

Introduction: Charlie Potts' America 1

I. Leaving Their Mark

1. Getting on the Map   9

2. Boomtown   19

3. The Ghost of the Irish   33

4. The Big Washout   49

5. The Ghost of Mad Anthony   61

II. Forgotten Places

6. A Leisurely Tour of Downtown Dull   77

7. Knockemstiff, U.S.A.   85

8. Mudsock Is Missing   93

9. The Quest for Sodom   101

10. Looking for Rural   105

11. The Town That Had Everything   115

12. The Town Least Likely   123

III. Back Roads

13. Keepers of the Past   133

14. Toots Corner   143

15. Statue of Ohio Liberty  147

16. Top Brass   153

17. The Last of Eugene   161

18. The Bootleg Capital of Ohio   167

IV. First-Person Buckeye

19. Reflections of the Lake   177

20. Country Correspondence   191

21. A Hollow Christmas   201

22. Coda: Hometown   211

V. The Naming of Ohio   227

Bibliography   251

Index   255

 Contents

Introduction: Forgotten Ohio

Part One: Big Dreams  

1. The Life and Times of Fizzleville   3

2. Death of the Patriarch   10

3. Venice Times Two   20

4. Footville is Where the Worlds Meet   33

5. Sodaville or Bust   40

Part Two: Lost Legends

6. Journey to the Center of Obscurity   53

7. Separate Spirits   66

8. The Song of Mount Nebo   79

9. A View from the Tower   90

10. Louisa's Legacy   102

11. Travels in the Great Black Swamp   111

12. The Marrying Kind   128

13. The King of Ashville   137

Part Three: Vanishing Ohio

14. A Little Good News   147

15. The Riders of Bentonville   155

16. Satisfying an Agrarian Myth   167

17. Harry and the Midway   172

18. By Any Other Name:

Ghost Towns and Fabled Obscurities   179

Bibliography   202

Index   207