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     Mariettan Ross Thomas showed me an old apothecary bottle and said, "See what you can find out about it." The quart-size glass bottle has a cork and a label: "Wm H. Styer, Prescription Druggist, 240 Front Street, Marietta, Ohio."  The label included space for the name of doctor and prescription number.Photo of Styer bottle by author. […]

 This is an abbreviated version for newspaper of an earlier post titled “Man Overboard on the Steamboat Carrie Brooks.” To see the entire article, click here.     The steamboat CARRIE BROOKS chugged along down the icy Muskingum River one frigid winter day in the 1870's. Engineer Cliff Crane was on duty in the engine room. Near […]

      This is an abbreviated version for newspaper of an earlier post, “The Royal Visitors,” about Prince Louis Philippe of France’s visit to the Marietta area.. To read the full version, click here.     In July 1839, King Louis Philippe I of France received an American visitor, a Mr. Hughes, the American charge d’affaires in […]

 Life in early Marietta was difficult: few amenities, flooding, epidemics, primitive (if any) shelter, and Indian threats. Early on, there were three communities in the new town. Fort Harmar was built in 1786 with its soldiers and residents was located near where Harmar School is today. Campus Martius was a fortified mini-city about one acre in […]

 This is an abbreviated version for newspaper of an earlier post about the Silver Bridge collapse. To read the full version, including chilling survivor stories, click here.Cars and trucks packed the iconic Silver Bridge at dusk on a cold Friday, December 15, 1967. People were headed home to and from Gallipolis OH and Point Pleasant WV, […]

     You've driven by an old official-looking building on Greene Street dozens of times without noticing it. People used to call it "the bank" because it once resembled one. It was the office/research center/auditorium of the former Remington Rand (originally Safe Cabinet Company) plant. It, and the sprawling four story brick and glass […]

     You could think of Sacra Via Park as the remains of an ancient road. Sacra Via (Latin for “Sacred Way”) is part of the extensive Marietta Earthworks network (sometimes called Indian mounds) constructed around 1,500 years ago. This was no ordinary road as we think of it today. It was 150 feet wide, 3 blocks long, descending on a uniform […]

     Yes, this football score is for real. The year was 1895. Sure, the game then was new and far different from today. But that year the Marietta College Pioneers were dominant. The Parkersburg News in a 1964 article suggested that the 1895 Marietta College team might have been the best ever.      Marietta played OSU eight times in the […]

They built ocean-going vessels here, 300 miles away from any ocean. How could that be? It's what I call a Marietta-ism: a combination of amazing skills, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and river access. Ships were built here, floated down to the Gulf of Mexico, and sailed out into the world. People in European ports knew of Marietta before […]

      There it was, laying next to the grass trimmer I was about to start: a paw paw, the first fruit of the season. Suzanne had found it doing yard work. It was ripe, and I took a bite. Fantastic!      Paw paw has an Appalachian ring to it, sounding like a dog extremity or ma's husband. A paw paw is a greenish potato-sized wild fruit […]