Kelleys Island History Blog

The first mention of Valentine's Day appeared in The Islander in 1861 – “St. Valentines Day passed off very briskly. We learn that 50 Valentines passed through the Post Office on that day. We went down after one but were doomed to disappointment and were very much surprised to hear that we wrote this Valentine and we wrote that. We must have had our hands full to have written 40 or 50 Valentines besides attending our Editorial duties. We can assure our readers that Editors have enough to account for besides manufacturing Valentines.” F. Kelley and E. Huntington were the editors of this issue of the Islander. The Post Office, established in 1854, was located in the Store on the Corner, also known as The Lodge (the building on the left) On the right was the Kelley family home and hotel called the Island House and in the middle is Kelley's Hall.   THE HISTORY OF VALENTINES The island Store was always willing to provide the community with the latest items and when valentines...

We’ve all seen them, the yearbooks from the 1970s when Kurt Boker had a hand in preparing them. They were hardbound and full of photos from the school and its students, but they also contained loads of historic pictures, stories and information. One of the projects that Leslie undertook this winter was scanning all these old yearbooks and posting them to the KIHA website . These yearbooks contained quite a few surprises. The earliest complete yearbook we found in our files was from 1954 and came from Iola Riedy’s house. Iola Riedy lived in the stone building on Division St. that used to be the stone school house . After the death of her husband, Gilbert, Iola, who was a professional librarian, installed a branch of the Sandusky library in a small room she added to the SW side of her house. The library served islanders and summer visitors until 1985 when she retired. Islanders recall putting their returned books on the washing machine inside the back door. The library then moved int...

January 1952 – The Martin Light & Power Co. and residents of Kelleys Island received badly needed fuel oil … a mercy mission by the U S Coast Guard. A total of 254 barrels were transported to alleviate the fuel oil famine when ice and hazardous weather prevented shipment by normal methods.  (Thanks to Leslie Korenko for this article) Today we enjoy heat during the winter, air conditioning in the summer with reliable electric service provided by the Hancock Wood Electric Co-op. But in the early days of electric service on the Island, electricity was provided by the Martin Electric Co., which  was housed in the old south side crusher building. The entire Island was powered by an electric generator, the wires were 'daisy chained' which meant that if one link went down, the entire system failed.  In 2018, the museum featured the history of Electricity on the Island. You view those posters here:   https://www.kelleysislandhistorical.org/island-electricity-1.html...

Needless to say, travel over the ice can be exciting, invigorating and extremely dangerous. Fortunately, there have been very few deaths while traversing the ice to the mainland, but there have been some harrowing experiences as this article shows.

November 1952 - The marriage of Jean Icsman and John Lange of Kelleys Island - We love the exquisite description of the wedding attire. You just don't get that kind of detail today. These announcements are a wealth of information about people who were connected to Island families. Click on the picture to make it larger and easier to read.  posted by Leslie Korenko

by Leslie Korenko I recently met with Randy Edwards who is a freelance writer doing research for an article on island quarries for Twine Line (Ohio Sea Grant's print magazine). https://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/products/twineline After exchanging several emails, Randy visited Kelleys Island on December 20 to tour the museum and explore our quarry displays. He brought a long list of questions. One item that intrigued him was a nicely detailed article in our display, “The Shays of Kelleys Island” (The Kelley Island Lime & Transport Company’s Kelleys Island operations) by Lee Rainey. This article appeared in the Railroad Model Craftsman magazine, December 1986. It is a treasure trove of information about the early days of quarrying here. Because it contains so much great information about such an important part of our history and was so well researched – we scanned it and shared it with him and now with you. There are some great photos here. We particularly like the long shot ...

ISLANDERS ATTEND A NEW YEAR'S EVE DANCE AND A WEDDING JANUARY 1861 - A. S. Kelley reported   “New Year’s Day. Pleasant. Had lottery at the Store, Henry Worden drew first prize, bbl flour. Chas. Nelson also had lottery at Himmeleins. Dance at the Island House last night, 28 couples.” This dance was described in detail by another writer. “We more than half made up our minds to stay in our sanctum and let the Senior go to dance the old year out and the New Year in; but valor got the upper hand of discretion. [ The Editors of this issue of the Islander were M. K. Holbrook (Senior) and E. Huntington (Junior). ] So we finally concluded to go also inasmuch as we had heard all about the wedding and as how the happy pair would be there. [ Homer Woodford and Rosetta Moore were married on December 30. ] A New Year’s dance and wedding celebration was held at the Island House and a lottery was held at The Store on the Corner the next day. Then too, we were reliably informed that a go...

THE OTHER INSCRIPTION ROCK ON THE NORTH SHORE By Leslie Korenko We all know that our Inscription Rock on the south shore is world famous, but it seems everyone is suddenly interested in the OTHER inscription rock, which was located in the North Bay near the State Park beach, half way between the boat launch and the swamp. The results of a monumental task, the chronicling of Indian antiquities, was published in 1853. It was an extensive discourse on Indians published by Henry P. Schoolcraft and illustrated by S. Eastman, Capt. U. S. Army. The publication was entitled Information Respecting the History Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Collected and Prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs per act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847 . There were five very substantial volumes published between 1853 and 1856. Parts two and three made mention of the pictographs on Kelley’s Island and the history of the Indians in this area. Schoolcraft’s...

A FIRST HAND ACCOUNT OF HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS – 1868  ON KELLEYS ISLAND By Leslie Korenko, author of Kelleys Island 1866-1871 The Lodge, Suffrage & Baseball   There were many traditions celebrated on Halloween. Most were of Celtic, Scottish or English origins and reflected the heritage of Kelleys Island residents. Hallowe’en was traditionally a time for marriage divination. One custom was for country girls to be blindfolded and then led into a field where they were supposed to pull the first cabbage they could find. If the cabbage head had a lot of dirt attached to the roots, their future husband would be wealthy while a cabbage with a close white head meant an old husband. Eating the cabbage would reveal his nature - bitter or sweet! The ladies brought the cabbages home and hung them above the door; perhaps to attract that perfect mate. Apples played a role too. The theory was that if an apple was peeled in one long continuous strip, and the peeling thrown backwards ove...

  THIS ISLAND’S STONE FENCES By Leslie Korenko author of Kelleys Island - The Courageous, Poignant, and Often Quirky Lives of Island Pioneers. So what is the story about these walls which snake across the Island, looking like historic beasts? THE RUMORS Recently we had three queries about our stone fences. The first was a belief that they had been built by the WPA.   President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the WPA with an executive order on May 6, 1935. It was part of his New Deal plan to lift the country out of the Great Depression by reforming the financial system and restoring the economy to pre-Depression levels. In 1939 it was renamed the Work Projects Administration which employed mostly unskilled men to carry out public works infrastructure projects. They built more than 4,000 new school buildings, erected 130 new hospitals, laid roughly 9,000 miles of storm drains and sanitary sewer l...

  THE ISLAND’S TELEGRAPH CABLE (PART 2) LONGEST FRESH WATER SUB-MARINE TELEGRAPH CABLE IN THE WORLD By Leslie Korenko Heralded as the ‘Longest Fresh Water Sub-Marine Telegraph Cable in the World ,’ the Island’s telegraph cable was laid on Saturday, June 19, 1875 and received extensive coverage in the press. “ Laying of the Longest Fresh Water Sub-Marine Telegraph Cable in the World. - On Saturday the sub-marine telegraph   cable between Kelley’s Island and Marblehead   was laid. The operation was witnessed by a large number of people from this city and the Islands. The Gazelle   took the cable on board here and proceeded to Put-in-Bay , touching at Kelley’s Island. She returned to the latter place about half-past 1 o’clock that afternoon and went directly to Marblehead, where one of the shore ends of the cable was made fast. The Gazelle carried the cable to the Island. While the Gazelle   was at Marblehead   the Mystic   arrived, having on board...