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Like most kids who grew up in Warwood, I walked, biked, or drove by a place called Centre Foundry & Machine Company thousands of times without really knowing what went on behind its nearly transparent, sun-bleached, hospital blue-green, corrugated metal and cinder block walls. Passing the building at any hour ...more
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On Monday, September 2, 1907, even as a one-day-old Walter Phillip Reuther, future president of the United Auto Workers and arguably the most influential human ever born in his small Ohio River city, Wheeling prepared to begin its twenty-second Labor Day celebration with an enormous parade, despite the threat of ...more
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Wheeling's Baseball Oddities During the early twentieth century, baseball was indeed America's game. And Wheeling loved baseball more than most American towns. It was perhaps the most popular form of entertainment in that long ago era before the internet, before cable TV, even before motion pictures were established. Baseball was the ...more
All editions of the Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review, 1968 to Present, have been digitized and are now available online in the OCPL's document center (scroll down to "Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review"). Visit the Document Center Founded by the Wheeling Area Historical Society in 1968, the UPPER OHIO VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW ...more
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The Behemoth March 16, 1936. Wheeling, West Virginia. The weather report in the upper left corner on the front page of the Wheeling News-Register was a little concerning, but certainly not dire. Not yet. "HOURS OF RAIN This city has had a five hour rain starting at eleven o'clock last night with a ...more
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The Collection of Brother Cy Williams of Doc Williams & the Border Riders By Sean Duffy, with Salli J. Barach Note: Thanks to his niece Salli J. Barach, the Ohio County Public Library recently acquired a collection of artifacts once belonging to Cy Williams, fiddle player for the band, "Doc Williams & ...more
Wheeling in the Green Book Don't miss our related program on Feb. 20. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth ...more
What if we asked people on social media to submit their long ago Wheeling Santa photos? What would that look like? Here ya go: SLIDESHOW Click the pic to watch the Wheeling Santa Slideshow! OR, BETTER YET... Stop in and See the Exhibit, which now includes vintage Santa suits from both Cooey-Bentz AND Stone ...more
We recently received a kind email from Dr. Scott McNamara, who drove all the way from Washington D.C. to visit and sit in his grandfather's booth from McNamara's Drug Store. When we posted the photo of him sitting in the booth on OCPL's social media, we received a lot of ...more
Pvt. James M. Jacobs & The Aliceville WWII POW Camp Read on Archiving Wheeling German POWs on American Soil During the course of the Second World war, more than 400,000 German POWs were interned in 511 prisoner of war camps in the U.S. The largest, Camp Aliceville in Alabama, housed more than 6,100 ...more
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Ohio County Public Library (OCPL) Productions proudly presents its annual Halloween Horror feature film for 2023: "The Hempfield Vampyre." This is the harrowing tale of the problems that can arise when you build a library on the site of an old cemetery, and how librarians solve such problems (hint: bookishly). ...more
A Sign for Chuck A Warwood boy and graduate of Corpus Christi Grade School, Chuck Howley was an All-State football player at Warwood High School (`54). He earned All-Southern Conference honors three times and Southern Conference Athlete of the Year (`57) at West Virginia University. He made WVU history by starring ...more
In 1927, 14 years before the attack on Pearl Harbor would change the relationship between the two countries forever, Japan sent ambassadors to the United States in the form of lovely, elegantly clad, three-foot tall dolls, one of which visited Wheeling. The Power of Archives One of the photographs chosen to illustrate ...more
by Dr. Christina Fisanick As we collectively mourn the recent passing of Gordon Lightfoot, it calls to mind the connection between the singer-songwriter’s most famous ballad and Wheeling’s most celebrated park. That song, of course, is “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which commemorates one of the worst ship disasters in Great ...more
By Sean Duffy Born Drusilla Petticord on March 4, 1865 on a West Liberty farm, she grew up to become Mrs. Drusilla “Drucie” Petticord Bauer-Turner, a respected baseball “authority” and Wheeling’s most formidable and perhaps West Virginia’s only female baseball “magnate.” When a reporter asked her in 1917 why she took such ...more
John Constantine, Hellblazer, by Jamie Delano This volume of the Hellblazer series contains the first John Constantine stories ever told. Described as a “blue collar warlock,” John is an occult detective who frequently contends with the forces of Hell and his own vengeful ghosts. Original Sins follows John as he investigates ...more
These best-selling books all have television or movie adaptations. From famous movies like Harry Potter, to lesser known shows, like The Mortal Instruments, watch these books come to life. Find these great books now on display at the Ohio County Public Library. Many titles are also available digitally from Libby and ...more
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The Wheeling Irish How did so many Irish immigrants end up in the United States and in Wheeling? There were many waves of immigration. But the biggest one related to the Gaelic -mostly Catholic- Irish, was caused by starvation. In oversimplified terms: by the mid-19th century, the tenant farmers and working poor of ...more
“Sometimes racial prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing it because the feel of it is irritating.”-Marian Anderson Marian Anderson was one of the world's greatest contralto singers. She toured the planet as a musical ...more
Good-buddy. 10-4. Rubber Duck. Pig pen. Good-buddy. Chicken coop. During the 1970s, code language such as this became extremely popular for truckers, families, and trucking enthusiasts on citizen band radios. The language and trucker culture became so popular throughout the decade that it would influence popular culture including music, movies, television, ...more
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel Reviewed by Phyllis Sigal Five Stars “Sea of Tranquility” is anything but tranquil. The novel is filled with decades -– centuries even — of upheaval. War. Pandemics. Ponzi schemes. Survival. Another pandemic. Suicides. Violins. Supernatural events. And one of my favorites — time travel. We begin in 1912 ...more
Celebrate black voices beyond February by reading graphic novels written by Black authors. Titles are available from the Ohio County Public Library, Hoopla, and Libby! March: Book One by John Lewis March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on ...more
People's University Ancient History series begins on Thursday, January 5th. Here are a few recommendations for reading as the series begins. Books are available from Hoopla and WV Deli-Libby. For more information on the People's University Ancient History Series, click here. Class 1- Jan. 5, 2023 - 7 pm: Egypt Part 1 ...more
Posted by S. Duffy On October 25 at Lunch With Books for our annual Halloween Special, we explored the bizarre and terrifying alternate universe of historic lycanthropy in the Friendly City. The event featured five tall tales (or tall tails) -- by Cheryl Harshman, Kyle Knox, and Laura Jackson Roberts, yours truly, ...more
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