Medina Historical Society
John Smart House
Whiskey Painters of America
The Smart family used this sleigh in the winter.
Edison Phonograph
Giants of Seville
This sign is found in the Smart House's basement.
This frock coat from around 1811 belonged to George Burr. The shirt beneath it from around 1835 belonged to Rev. Anson Clark.
Medical Exhibit in the Smart House
Operating table used in the office of Dr. Gregory Martin in Wadsworth.
Smart House Master Bedroom
Smart House Kitchen
Smart House Basement
Medina Town Hall & Engine Museum
McDowell-Phillips House Museum
Inside the McDowell-Phillips House
Beehive made around 1865 by the A.I. Root Company.
Lincoln 1860 Election Banner
Stained Glass Window in the McDowell-Phillips House
Parlor in the McDowell-Phillips House
Inside the Smart House
X-Ray on display in the Smart House.
Elijah Boardman was a Connecticut politician and merchant who founding Medina.
Dumbwaiter in the McDowell-Phillips House in which Elizabeth McDowell came plunging down to the basement.
I had a simple plan. I’d drive an hour down State Route 18 to Medina, spend an hour visiting the Smart and McDowell-Phillips Houses run by the Medina Historical Society, then drive back home. I’d leave around noon and get back around three in the afternoon, a perfect outing for one of the few Sundays during which the houses in question are open (the second Sunday of every month from March to October).
Like all good plans, this one didn’t go as expected. The first delay happened on RT 18, a portion of which was closed, forcing me to take a detour. I arrived at the John Smart House at about 1:15, a bit later than planned but not too bad. I headed into the museum and, after paying a modest entry fee, took a self-guided tour.
In an age where many rarely traveled past the borders of their county, the man who had this house built, John Smart, moved far and frequently. Born on October 18, 1829 in England, he immigrated to the United States in 1854, initially settling in Rome and Albany, New York. In 1857 he moved to California where he stayed for about two years, then he returned to Albany. In 1859 he married Julia F. McGillvrae and the two made their home in Peekskill, NY, where he was a partner in the holloware company Shelley, Curry, Smart & Flocton. (Holloware is tableware that holds liquids such as bowls, teapots, and pots.)
Like all good plans, this one didn’t go as expected. The first delay happened on RT 18, a portion of which was closed, forcing me to take a detour. I arrived at the John Smart House at about 1:15, a bit later than planned but not too bad. I headed into the museum and, after paying a modest entry fee, took a self-guided tour.
In an age where many rarely traveled past the borders of their county, the man who had this house built, John Smart, moved far and frequently. Born on October 18, 1829 in England, he immigrated to the United States in 1854, initially settling in Rome and Albany, New York. In 1857 he moved to California where he stayed for about two years, then he returned to Albany. In 1859 he married Julia F. McGillvrae and the two made their home in Peekskill, NY, where he was a partner in the holloware company Shelley, Curry, Smart & Flocton. (Holloware is tableware that holds liquids such as bowls, teapots, and pots.)
Leaving the firm after about ten years, Smart joined another one in Troy, NY, for another ten years. Around 1871 he moved his wife and children to Medina and here started an iron foundry that made holloware and other items for households. A flyer I picked up named the company as the Hollow Ware Foundry, but an information sign says it was Jones, Thomas and Smart. Smart sold his part of the partnership in 1898, then retired with his wife in Cleveland. He died on August 11, 1902. He wife, Julia, outlasted him considerably, passing on February 10, 1928.
If you’re into antique furniture, the Smart House is a wonderland. Jarringly, here and you’ll see paintings done between the late 1950s into early the twenty-first century. These works of art came from a group called the Whiskey Painters of America. Starting in Akron in the late 50s, it was formally chartered in 1962. Members of this group were encouraged to paint watercolors no larger than 4” x 5” after 10:00 p.m. using candlelight while dipping their brushes into drinkable alcohol. To join you had to be sponsored by an existing member and, one presumes, like to get liquored up while painting.
The house doesn’t limit itself to the history of the those who lived there. It has exhibits about Medina County as well. In Seville, as an example, there once lived Captain Martin Van Buren Bates, a Civil War veteran who fought for the Confederacy. Born on November 9, 1845 in Kentucky’s Letcher County, he was a student at Emma-Henry College when the war broke out. Although Kentucky didn’t secede, it nonetheless raised Confederate units, and Bates joined the Fifth Kentucky Infantry CSA in 1861 as a private. Discharged in 1863, he joined the Virginia State Line Troops’ First Division as a 1st lieutenant, a unit that merged with the Seventh Confederate Cavalry.
If you’re into antique furniture, the Smart House is a wonderland. Jarringly, here and you’ll see paintings done between the late 1950s into early the twenty-first century. These works of art came from a group called the Whiskey Painters of America. Starting in Akron in the late 50s, it was formally chartered in 1962. Members of this group were encouraged to paint watercolors no larger than 4” x 5” after 10:00 p.m. using candlelight while dipping their brushes into drinkable alcohol. To join you had to be sponsored by an existing member and, one presumes, like to get liquored up while painting.
The house doesn’t limit itself to the history of the those who lived there. It has exhibits about Medina County as well. In Seville, as an example, there once lived Captain Martin Van Buren Bates, a Civil War veteran who fought for the Confederacy. Born on November 9, 1845 in Kentucky’s Letcher County, he was a student at Emma-Henry College when the war broke out. Although Kentucky didn’t secede, it nonetheless raised Confederate units, and Bates joined the Fifth Kentucky Infantry CSA in 1861 as a private. Discharged in 1863, he joined the Virginia State Line Troops’ First Division as a 1st lieutenant, a unit that merged with the Seventh Confederate Cavalry.
That he wasn’t killed in battle is a miracle. Why? He was exceptionally tall, and he kept growing until the age of twenty-eighty by which time he stood at 7’8”, a target even the worst shot could manage. And someone did. Severely wounded, he was imprisoned in Camp Chase in Columbus. After the war he joined a circus.
In 1865 another giant, Anna Swan, who stood 7”11”, nearly died in a museum fire in New York City, where she’d become trapped. Unable to fit through the doors and fearful the stairs would break if she reached them, it seemed she was doomed. Fortunately the was a derrick nearby, and museum workers used this to reach the room in which she was trapped, then they knocked out part of the wall to let her out. Had perished her, she’d never have met Bates in 1871 in New Jersey where they became engaged.
That same year the circus Bates worked for headed to Europe and she went with him. While in England they met Queen Victoria, and when she learned of their engagement, she arranged their wedding. They married in a chapel at St. Martin’s in the Fields. The queen had her own dressmaker make Anna’s white wedding dress, which, according to an information sign, was “made of 100 yards of fabric and 50 yards of lace. Her attendants were Mille and Chrisine McKoy, siamese [sic] twins who were also part of the traveling group.”
In 1865 another giant, Anna Swan, who stood 7”11”, nearly died in a museum fire in New York City, where she’d become trapped. Unable to fit through the doors and fearful the stairs would break if she reached them, it seemed she was doomed. Fortunately the was a derrick nearby, and museum workers used this to reach the room in which she was trapped, then they knocked out part of the wall to let her out. Had perished her, she’d never have met Bates in 1871 in New Jersey where they became engaged.
That same year the circus Bates worked for headed to Europe and she went with him. While in England they met Queen Victoria, and when she learned of their engagement, she arranged their wedding. They married in a chapel at St. Martin’s in the Fields. The queen had her own dressmaker make Anna’s white wedding dress, which, according to an information sign, was “made of 100 yards of fabric and 50 yards of lace. Her attendants were Mille and Chrisine McKoy, siamese [sic] twins who were also part of the traveling group.”
Returning home, the newlyweds visited their friend Frank Bowman in Seville. Liking the place, they decided to settle there. They had a house built appropriate for their size, which was torn down in 1948. Martin raised horses and Anna taught Sunday school. The two had a child who weighed 23¾ pounds but only lived for eleven hours. Anna died on August 5, 1888. Martin remarried to a normal-sized woman and lived until January 17, 1919.
The museum recently added the “History of Medicine in Medina County Exhibit” with a focus on Lodi. A row of information signs offered short biographies of some of Lodi’s medical professionals such as Dr. Joseph R. Baughman. Born on April 19, 1834 in Lexington, he started practicing as early as 1863, and probably learned most of what he knew by apprenticing with an established medical doctor rather than formal training, which amounted to a year’s course at the University of Wooster in 1870. The next year he settled in Lodi.
He had a colorful career. A member of the Lodi Temperance Battalion, in 1873 he was involved in the trial of Celia Lewis, who was accused of poisoning her husband. A jury acquitted her. Dr. Baughman also saved a child accidentally poisoned by giving him the antidote. In 1879 he was thrice accused of performing abortions. Two of the cases were dismissed and one went to court. A jury found him not guilty. Retiring that same year, he died in 1894.
The museum recently added the “History of Medicine in Medina County Exhibit” with a focus on Lodi. A row of information signs offered short biographies of some of Lodi’s medical professionals such as Dr. Joseph R. Baughman. Born on April 19, 1834 in Lexington, he started practicing as early as 1863, and probably learned most of what he knew by apprenticing with an established medical doctor rather than formal training, which amounted to a year’s course at the University of Wooster in 1870. The next year he settled in Lodi.
He had a colorful career. A member of the Lodi Temperance Battalion, in 1873 he was involved in the trial of Celia Lewis, who was accused of poisoning her husband. A jury acquitted her. Dr. Baughman also saved a child accidentally poisoned by giving him the antidote. In 1879 he was thrice accused of performing abortions. Two of the cases were dismissed and one went to court. A jury found him not guilty. Retiring that same year, he died in 1894.
Dr. Joseph Gilbert (Doctor Joe) was born on January 23, 1887 in Boggstown, Indiana. An information sign says he “studied homeopathic medicine at the Ohio State University obtaining an M.D. degree in 1917.” By this time, he’d married Clarice E. Gould, and the two moved to Lodi in that same year. A mother of two children, she did something unusual for in this era: she, too, began studying medicine.
She began a pre-med course at Wooster College in 1926 and got her medical degree from Western Reserve Medical School in 1932. At this time she and her husband headed to Germany where she did some postgraduate work. Returning to Lodi the next year, they opened a medical practice together. Both did house calls in Medina, Wayne and Ashland Counties.
During one of these, Dr. Joe’s car slid on the ice and plowed into a telephone pole, resulting in a nasty cut on his forehead. Stitching it up himself in a men’s room at a restaurant, a friend took him to his appointment. Dr. Clarice once fell on the ice while going to her grandchildren’s concert. Insisting she was fine, after the event she had an X-ray done that revealed she’d broken her hip. Fortunately it wasn’t a bad fracture, and three days later she started seeing patients again.
She began a pre-med course at Wooster College in 1926 and got her medical degree from Western Reserve Medical School in 1932. At this time she and her husband headed to Germany where she did some postgraduate work. Returning to Lodi the next year, they opened a medical practice together. Both did house calls in Medina, Wayne and Ashland Counties.
During one of these, Dr. Joe’s car slid on the ice and plowed into a telephone pole, resulting in a nasty cut on his forehead. Stitching it up himself in a men’s room at a restaurant, a friend took him to his appointment. Dr. Clarice once fell on the ice while going to her grandchildren’s concert. Insisting she was fine, after the event she had an X-ray done that revealed she’d broken her hip. Fortunately it wasn’t a bad fracture, and three days later she started seeing patients again.
Dr. Joe died on January 7, 1950, shortly after prostrate surgery. Dr. Clarice continued to run their practice. In 1952 the area had a terrible polio outbreak. Here she did something few others considered: contract tracing and detailed observations about the disease’s progression and spread, an idea many in the medical community at the time resisted. She died at Cleveland’s St. Luke’ Hospital on November 11, 1960.
While at the Smart House I asked a staff member if they had any information about Western Reserve pioneer Rufus Ferris, who settled in what would become the city of Medina in 1816. The Medina Historical Society didn’t, but the person I spoke to suggested that I go to the Medina Town Hall & Engine Museum because it covers the city’s history and might have something. I pointed out that its website said it was only open on Saturdays. Well, I was in luck. In the town square that day was a fair, and because of this special event, this museum was open.
It was suggested that I leave my car in the house’s lot and walk to the Town Hall Museum because it was about two blocks away and parking would be difficult that day because of the fair. To this I agreed. I carefully followed the directions given to me and noted street names and landmarks so I could trace my route back. Pushing through thick crowds, I came upon the Town Hall Museum and entered.
While at the Smart House I asked a staff member if they had any information about Western Reserve pioneer Rufus Ferris, who settled in what would become the city of Medina in 1816. The Medina Historical Society didn’t, but the person I spoke to suggested that I go to the Medina Town Hall & Engine Museum because it covers the city’s history and might have something. I pointed out that its website said it was only open on Saturdays. Well, I was in luck. In the town square that day was a fair, and because of this special event, this museum was open.
It was suggested that I leave my car in the house’s lot and walk to the Town Hall Museum because it was about two blocks away and parking would be difficult that day because of the fair. To this I agreed. I carefully followed the directions given to me and noted street names and landmarks so I could trace my route back. Pushing through thick crowds, I came upon the Town Hall Museum and entered.
Once a firehouse, it is a one-room affair with a 1918 antique firetruck as its centerpiece. Here I learned that the village of Medina (it’s now a city) was incorporated in the first few years of the 1830s. The precise date went up in flames along with all the other town records in the Great Fire of 1870, the worst of one of several major conflagrations that burned through Medina. At this time, the village had no fire department. One information sign says the fire began in Barney Prentice’s shoe store, while another says it started in the back of a barbershop. There is agreement that it erupted in the early hours of April 14, and that Jim Smith was the first to raise the alarm at one or two that morning.
A coal lamp had started the initial fire, and had someone possessed a bucket of water, it might have been put out. But none was at hand, and it soon spread, destroying twelve buildings outright and damaging many more. The fire continued to burn until around five that morning when a wind pushed it back onto itself. A bucket brigade consisting of sixty to seventy formed to fight it, and it was eventually reinforced by a fire wagon from Seville. No one died, although quite a few suffered from minor burns and injuries. Realizing the need to rebuild using bricks, throughout the 1870s at least four brickworks ran six days a week to restore the lost commercial section of the downtown—this during a terrible economic depression starting in the fall of 1873. Medina didn’t establish a fire department until 1878. The museum had nothing about Rufus Ferris.
Retracing my steps to return to the Smart House proved more challenging than I thought. Cutting through the town square, I got diverted and came out on a different street than I’d expected. Having no sense of direction, I wandered about for a time looking for something I’d passed earlier but saw nothing. I tried using Google Maps, but it’s useless for walking directions. I did know I needed to find Friendship Street to get back. At an intersection my inclination was to turn left, but before doing so, I asked someone waiting at the crosswalk light where Friendship Street was. He told me it was the direction from which I’d come.
A coal lamp had started the initial fire, and had someone possessed a bucket of water, it might have been put out. But none was at hand, and it soon spread, destroying twelve buildings outright and damaging many more. The fire continued to burn until around five that morning when a wind pushed it back onto itself. A bucket brigade consisting of sixty to seventy formed to fight it, and it was eventually reinforced by a fire wagon from Seville. No one died, although quite a few suffered from minor burns and injuries. Realizing the need to rebuild using bricks, throughout the 1870s at least four brickworks ran six days a week to restore the lost commercial section of the downtown—this during a terrible economic depression starting in the fall of 1873. Medina didn’t establish a fire department until 1878. The museum had nothing about Rufus Ferris.
Retracing my steps to return to the Smart House proved more challenging than I thought. Cutting through the town square, I got diverted and came out on a different street than I’d expected. Having no sense of direction, I wandered about for a time looking for something I’d passed earlier but saw nothing. I tried using Google Maps, but it’s useless for walking directions. I did know I needed to find Friendship Street to get back. At an intersection my inclination was to turn left, but before doing so, I asked someone waiting at the crosswalk light where Friendship Street was. He told me it was the direction from which I’d come.
Returning to my car, I drove a few blocks to the McDowell-Phillips House Museum. Built from 1890 and 1892 for Robert Murdoch McDowell and his family, its construction cost $10,000 (about $370,000 today). A flyer says it when built, it had seventeen rooms, “seven fireplaces, two full bathrooms, an attic cistern, a basement chemical plant to produce gas for lighting, and a dumbwaiter to carry items between the floors from the basement to the attic” (more on that later). The well was dug before construction for the house began, and after its location shifted, the well wound up being in the basement.
McDowell was born on October 13, 1837 in Pennsylvania, and moved to Wayne County in the 1850s. After college, he taught for a time, then, with the outbreak of the Civil War, joined the Union Army as a lieutenant. After the war he married Elizabeth Bell Blake from Medina. She was the daughter of the Harrison Gray (H.G.) Blake, the mayor of Medina when the Great Fire of 1870 struck.
Blake is one of those so-called self-made men Americans love to brag about. Born in Newfane, Vermont, at the age of three his mother froze to death in a blizzard, leaving him an orphan. His foster father brought him to Medina County when he was eleven. At the age of seventeen, he went into the village of Medina with just 50 cents in his pocket (you can’t have a rags to riches story without that old trope) and here found a job as a store clerk. In just three years he became a partner in the store, and in another three years owned it outright. He found time to study law and became a lawyer. He founded the Old Phoenix Bank. Elected to the state legislature, he put forth a bill to repeal Ohio’s notorious “Black laws” that institutionalized racist restrictions on African Americans. A stanch abolitionist, he served in the U.S. Congress during the Civil War, then joined the Union Army as a colonel. After the Great Fire he worked to rebuild downtown businesses.
McDowell was born on October 13, 1837 in Pennsylvania, and moved to Wayne County in the 1850s. After college, he taught for a time, then, with the outbreak of the Civil War, joined the Union Army as a lieutenant. After the war he married Elizabeth Bell Blake from Medina. She was the daughter of the Harrison Gray (H.G.) Blake, the mayor of Medina when the Great Fire of 1870 struck.
Blake is one of those so-called self-made men Americans love to brag about. Born in Newfane, Vermont, at the age of three his mother froze to death in a blizzard, leaving him an orphan. His foster father brought him to Medina County when he was eleven. At the age of seventeen, he went into the village of Medina with just 50 cents in his pocket (you can’t have a rags to riches story without that old trope) and here found a job as a store clerk. In just three years he became a partner in the store, and in another three years owned it outright. He found time to study law and became a lawyer. He founded the Old Phoenix Bank. Elected to the state legislature, he put forth a bill to repeal Ohio’s notorious “Black laws” that institutionalized racist restrictions on African Americans. A stanch abolitionist, he served in the U.S. Congress during the Civil War, then joined the Union Army as a colonel. After the Great Fire he worked to rebuild downtown businesses.
Upon passing in 1876, his son-in-law, the aforementioned R. M. McDowell, took over as the bank’s president. Robert stayed in this position until his death in 1897. I saw a display of photos of all the Phoenix Bank’s presidents and concluded that if you needed a bank president from Central Casting for a television show or movie, any one of them would have been perfect.
Robert and Elizabeth McDowell had five children. One of their granddaughters, Florence Hewes, married O.B. Phillips in 1915, and thereafter several more generations of Phillips’s lived in the house. I noted earlier that the house had a dumbwaiter. At some point it was repurposed as an elevator—all be one only a single adult could occupy—and this led to a somewhere terrifying experience for Elizabeth in 1927, her eighty-sixth year. After getting into it on the second floor and sitting on its chair, the dumbwaiter’s cable snapped, plunging her down to the basement. Her daughter, Bessie, ran there and to her surprise and relief found that her mother had suffered nothing more than a bruise on her arm. The chair was the only casualty. Elizabeth commented that’s she’d been wanting to see the cellar for some time.
After World War II, the family split the house into four apartments, and that’s how it stayed until Florence’s grandson, Drew Phillips, converted it back to a single-family home in the 1990s. He was a teacher, and when I asked how he could maintain the house on a teacher’s salary, I was told it wasn’t easy. He did much of the upkeep himself, including painting the exterior. After he became ill, the Medina Historical Society took the house off his hands for a cool $300,000. The first thing Society had to do was change the four separate electric meters from the house’s apartment days to a single meter. After that, they did renovations to make the house look much like it did when Robert and his family first occupied it. Lucky for them, the family never threw anything out, giving the Society a treasure trove of items to choose from.
Robert and Elizabeth McDowell had five children. One of their granddaughters, Florence Hewes, married O.B. Phillips in 1915, and thereafter several more generations of Phillips’s lived in the house. I noted earlier that the house had a dumbwaiter. At some point it was repurposed as an elevator—all be one only a single adult could occupy—and this led to a somewhere terrifying experience for Elizabeth in 1927, her eighty-sixth year. After getting into it on the second floor and sitting on its chair, the dumbwaiter’s cable snapped, plunging her down to the basement. Her daughter, Bessie, ran there and to her surprise and relief found that her mother had suffered nothing more than a bruise on her arm. The chair was the only casualty. Elizabeth commented that’s she’d been wanting to see the cellar for some time.
After World War II, the family split the house into four apartments, and that’s how it stayed until Florence’s grandson, Drew Phillips, converted it back to a single-family home in the 1990s. He was a teacher, and when I asked how he could maintain the house on a teacher’s salary, I was told it wasn’t easy. He did much of the upkeep himself, including painting the exterior. After he became ill, the Medina Historical Society took the house off his hands for a cool $300,000. The first thing Society had to do was change the four separate electric meters from the house’s apartment days to a single meter. After that, they did renovations to make the house look much like it did when Robert and his family first occupied it. Lucky for them, the family never threw anything out, giving the Society a treasure trove of items to choose from.
Some rooms are set up as exhibits. One is called the Blake Room in which there is a hand painted portrait of pre-beard Abraham Lincoln on an 1860 election banner. On the opposite side is hand painted portrait of William McKinney on a banner for his election.
At one point I noticed a woven beehive from about 1865 made by the A.I. Root Company. It sold them via mail order, and even did well during the major economic depression of the 1870s. It also sold candles made out of beeswax. The company’s namesake was a friend of the Wright Brothers, and he promoted their first historic first flight by publishing an eyewitness’ account in his magazine Gleanings in Bee Culture.
The houses took far longer to go through than I’d expected, and the addition of the Medina Town Hall & Engine Museum plus the detour on RT 18 resulted in my return home being around 5 p.m., not 3 as I’d planned. It was worth it.🕜
At one point I noticed a woven beehive from about 1865 made by the A.I. Root Company. It sold them via mail order, and even did well during the major economic depression of the 1870s. It also sold candles made out of beeswax. The company’s namesake was a friend of the Wright Brothers, and he promoted their first historic first flight by publishing an eyewitness’ account in his magazine Gleanings in Bee Culture.
The houses took far longer to go through than I’d expected, and the addition of the Medina Town Hall & Engine Museum plus the detour on RT 18 resulted in my return home being around 5 p.m., not 3 as I’d planned. It was worth it.🕜