Reference Questions

Since several members of the Local History Team work on the Reference Desk, some of the posts on this blog will be about topics that originated with reference questions.

Sometimes, as in this case, reference skills can only go so far, and we have to rely on serendipity to get the story.

Several years ago, a patron offered to loan me a small box of photographs, which I scanned at high resolution, and returned to her. Most of them were recognizable buildings around town, but none of them had any information on the backs.  A couple showed a building with a very distinctive tower and the tantalizing “… man house” just visible behind the trees.

Clearly not a building in Richmond, and several blind Google searches came up empty.  I had no choice but to put it aside.  Right now I don’t recall how I came upon it, but it turns out that this is the Cushman House in Petoskey, Michigan.  In the late 19th century, northern Michigan was a quite popular summer destination for Richmond travelers, and Petoskey especially shows up often in the society columns of the local papers.

In the same box of photos were two very dramatic looking images of a destroyed house on a snowy day.  Certainly there’s a story here, but with no identifying marks on the reverse, I couldn’t even be sure the photos were taken in Richmond.

The only solid clue I had was the gaslight right in the center of one of the photos.  The high resolution scan revealed the street names on the frame of the light.  “N 10 St” and “N I St”  How many places would even have a North I Street?  A glance at the Sanborn maps showed a couple houses at the corner of North 10th and I that correspond to those in the photo, so this probably is Richmond.

Morrisson-Reeves has an amazing collection of microfilmed newspapers, and perhaps more importantly, an index to those newspapers compiled by librarians for more than 100 years.  As wonderful as it is, the index provides access to a tiny fraction of the information that’s hidden on the hundreds of rolls of film.  I searched the index, but found nothing that sounded like the destruction I saw in the photos.  I hit a dead end for the moment, but I tucked the information away.

A couple months ago, when looking through my “Miscellaneous” file, I came across one of those articles that catch our eyes when we’re scrolling through the microfilm.  “He Found the Leak” was the title, and it told in great detail about a really poor decision to look for a gas leak with a lighted match.  I had a friend in my office at the time, and read the article out loud to her for a bit of entertainment.  (It’s the same thing Steve Martin often does for his Palladium-Item series.)  The second paragraph started with, “The scene of the disaster was at the corner of north 10th and I streets where stood the two story frame house and grocery of Thomas Crabb.”  Fortunately, the image of the gaslight wasn’t buried too deeply in my memory, and I had a big “Eureka” moment. When I proposed the story as a possible future blog story, Steve told me he had already written a column about it for publication in the P-I, so now his column has some great images to go with his description.

Now that I had a name to search, I found some further information to wrap the story up.  A couple days later an Item reporter checked on the family and found them “suffering intense agony” from broken bones and burns.  They were being cared for by neighbors.  Within a month Crabb’s mother, Sarah Baker, filed suit against the Richmond Gas Co. for $10,000, and was awarded $4500.  The family filed other suits, the last of which wasn’t settled until 1897 when Mr. Crabb was awarded $500 for the damage done to his stock of groceries.

–Sue King

Allen Jay (1831-1910)

Upon his death in 1910, Allen Jay was said to be the “most widely known Friend in the world.” He was born with a cleft lip and palate, yet Jay was able to rise above the embarrassment and ridicule that his speech impediment brought him to become an admired and eloquent speaker.

Growing up in Clark County, Ohio, Allen was brought up in an orthodox Quaker family. In his youth, he was an active participant with the Underground Railroad. He first came to Richmond as a teenager and spent a year at the Quaker boarding school, which would become Earlham College. He attended college for one year at Antioch. After leaving college, he farmed and became a Friends minister.

After the Civil War, Allen went to work for the Baltimore Society in North Carolina. The war had taken its toll on the nation; Jay was tasked with helping the Quakers in North Carolina and Tennessee recover. He and his family moved to High Point, North Carolina, in Guilford County. During the eight years that he was there, he helped establish 44 schools and 58 meeting houses. It was here that Jay’s reputation as the ”Great Orator” started to grow.

Allen Jay began his stint at Earlham College in 1881 as superintendent and treasurer. He and his wife, who filled the matron position at the college, lived directly across the street from the school at the corner of 8th and National Road. Earlham consisted of a singular building when he began his new job but had grown to 6 buildings by 1887 when he resigned as superintendent to take the position of chief solicitor and trustee for the college.

As chief solicitor, it is said that Allen Jay alone was the most successful fund raiser in all of Earlham’s history. He traveled the world speaking on behalf of the college. In addition he raised money for practically every Quaker institution in the world including Whittier, Penn, Guilford, Pacific, and Nebraska colleges. He served as the preacher at the East Main Quaker Church during this same time period.

It was on a business trip to Chicago that Allen Jay suffered “severe indigestion.” While passing through Kokomo on his return trip, he became seriously ill. Jay was taken to his home in Richmond in critical condition where he remained conscience until his death. Despite occasional complaints of “intense suffering,” he considered his ailment to be of little consequence.

Born with a cleft lip and unrepairable cleft palate and self-conscious of his speech throughout his life, the “Great Orator” had in ironic fashion become the “most widely known Friend in the world” at the time of his passing.

— Eric Burkhardt

Where is it? January 16

The large chunk of stone featured in the Pal-Item on Saturday, January 16, is the cornerstone from the old City Hall, which was located on the east side of Fifth Street across the street and a little south of our current Municipal Building.  The cornerstone itself is barely visible in the lower right of this image from the early 1890s.