This Week In Toledo History Week Of 5/30/2022

By: 
Lou Hebert

May 29 to June 4

May 29
1837 -Toledo Fire Department formed with volunteers.
1841 - First Seneca County courthouse is destroyed by fire.
1884 - As scores of cigar smoking, laughing men looked on, Wesley Johnson, convicted of a gruesome double ax-murder is hanged in a dark cell in the Henry County Jail in Napoleon. Spectators were allowed to watch the execution with a special admissions ticket.
1892 -First mass held at present-day St. Rose Catholic Church in Perrysburg.
1917 - Fisticuffs break out between opposing sides during a heated rally by anti-war pacifists on the lawn in front of the Lucas County Courthouse. The violence erupts when National Guardsmen on the scene begin singing patriotic songs. Several people are injured and arrested.
1922 - News Bee readers are treated to story about a monkey named Jack in North Toledo that likes to ride on a dog's back and also hangs out at the fire station on Ontario and slide down the fire pole.
1929 - Illegal 500-gallon still explodes in an apartment house in 1400 block of Prouty. Two men and two women flee in their night clothes after explosion.
1938 - Webber’s Tavern in Point Place erupts into flames, forcing 400 patrons to flee. Damage estimated at $30,000.
1940 - Ottawa County Sheriff's Department is on a lookout for 750 pounds of dynamite stolen from the Kelly Island Lime Quarry at Clay Center. Toledo Police and other agencies are being asked to help in the search.

May 30
1904- Sixteen boys at the Southeast Toledo School sew a “handsome” bed quilt and give it to the janitor at the school as a present.
1910 - Toledo population now reported to be 168,490.
1918 - It’s revealed that a 14-year-old Toledo boy, Ells G. Porterfield, has enlisted in the U.S. Army Engineer Corps and is now serving his country.
1922 - Toledo Police and dry agents raid a home on Westwood near Swan Creek, and they say the residence contained two 100-gallon stills for brewing whiskey.
1931-The only remaining historic blockhouse at the former Confederate prison camp on Johnson Island at Sandusky is now reportedly being used as a "pig sty" by a local famer.
1940- Future mayor Carty Finkbeiner is born.
1953 - The newly formed Lucas County Sheriff mounted posse is sworn in with 20 men and horses.
1972 - Betty Mauk, the "Mother of Promenade Park" continues her tireless campaign to promote the new riverfront park in downtown Toledo and to offer crepes for sale to park goers.
1980 - President Jimmy Carter visits Toledo on campaign stop.

May 31
1907 - The Reverend D.T. Robertson of East Toledo Presbyterian Church is urging anyone under the age of 16 not to attend his sermon on Sunday. The clergyman promises to talk explicitly about the evils of Toledo in a message entitled "From Dawn to Daylight." He says he has made his own night investigation into the "goings on" in the seedy parts of town and every parent should hear about what awaits their children.
1914 - Fish Hatchery burns at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie.
1928 - Crowds gather outside Toledo Police Court, where 26-year-old Stanley Hoppe of Elm Street is charged with murder of a 7-year-old girl. Dorothy Szelagowski had been kidnapped from her bed several days before and her body found later on the front porch of her Palmer Street home. Hoppe is found guilty and executed later that year.
1935 - More reports surface that aviator Paul Redfern, married to Toledo woman Gertrude Hillabrand, may still be alive in the jungles of South America after he vanished on a solo flight to Brazil in 1927.
1939 - The Aquarium at the Toledo Zoo opens and is billed as the "largest freshwater aquarium in the world.”
1960 - Court of Appeals upholds conviction of Toledo businessman Bert Kaplan for violating Sunday “Blue Laws” by opening his Family Fair stores on Sundays in Toledo.
1976 - Kip Boulis, a Perrysburg policeman, drowns while trying to rescue a man and his four children who had fallen from their boat in the Maumee River.

June 1
1905 - James Winter, the caretaker of Oak Grove Cemetery in Bowling Green, is charged with misconduct after being accused of using profanity and shooting at a dog in the presence of ladies.
1930 - Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral, opens on Collingwood Avenue as the mother church of the Toledo Catholic Diocese.
1934 - Actor Jamie Farr born in Toledo as Jamiel Farrah.
1935 - Mrs. Alta Miller, a widowed mother of 10 children in Sylvania, is bludgeoned to death in a horrific murder. Investigators believe they know who the killer was but never had enough evidence to charge him. It remains unsolved.
1942 - A Lake Erie "tidal wave", 15-20 feet high, slams into a 60 mile wide area near Cleveland. Seven people die in the deadly wave that washes them into the lake, including one Toledo man. The wave action was blamed on a sudden shift in wind direction.
1945 - Chicago and Southern Airways opens service at Toledo Airport, providing Toledo with air links to cities in seven states.
1965 - Sylvania School Superintendent Frank Dick selected as the new chief of Toledo Public Schools.
1971 - Special ceremonies are held as TARTA officially takes control of Toledo’s long-held transit agency, the Community Traction Company.
1975 - The "Poe Ditch Music Festival" is held at BGSU drawing upwards of 45,000 fans for the all-day event held at Perry field. The featured headliners were Johnny Winter, Pure Prairie League, Golden Earring, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Richie Havens and Styx. A thunderstorm however soaked the crowd towards the end of the day and some of the groups did not perform.

June 2
1854 - East Toledo is laid low by cholera epidemic; 300 people perish, and thousands of others stricken over the course of a few weeks.
1905 - Fresh load of horses have arrived at New York Feed barn at Jefferson and Superior. Excellent general work horses. Broke and gentle.
1906- Hundreds of rats are removed from under intersection of Superior and Adams Streets in downtown Toledo. There were so many burrows, they were causing streets to cave in.
1912 - Six Toledo women are rescued after spending night on sandbar in Maumee Bay, where their sailboat ran aground.
1921 - One of the accused conspirators in the great Toledo mail robbery of 1921 pleads guilty. Harry Fisher, owner of a local cabaret, admits that he helped launder $250,000 worth of stolen bonds.
1940 - Spectacular downtown fire erupts at the Home Furniture Warehouse at Jackson and Water Streets on the riverfront. The sky was filled with dense smoke and the streets were lined with thousands who watched as scores of firemen battled the $300,000 blaze.

June 3
1919 - Striking workers from the Toledo’s Overland factory riot near the plant and on Lagrange Street. Thousands of people jam the streets. Two people are shot dead and 24 others wounded as police attempt to disperse the crowd.
1922 - More than 170,000 gallons of “medicinal” wine are confiscated by prohibition dry agents on the Sandusky wharf. No arrests are made.
1929 - U.S. Supreme Court rules that Toledo can abandon the Erie and Miami Canal, thus opening the way to its drainage and the eventual building of what would become the Anthony Wayne Trail.
1937 - Toledo’s Inverness Country Club plays host to 16 top pro golfers, including Sam Snead, Tommy Armour and Gene Sarazen, for the third annual Inverness Invitational. It is said to be biggest sporting event in Toledo since the Dempsey-Willard boxing match.
1938 - Toledo Transcontinental Airport opens in Wood County near Millbury. As many as 50,000 people by some accounts jam the airfield to see the first planes take off and land. Mayor Jackson presides over the ceremonies and his daughter christens a new mail plane.
1968 - Toledo City Council continues hearings on gun control in the city. They are told than residents of Toledo own 200,000 guns and that "drunks, maniacs and persons with long criminal records" have no trouble getting guns in the city.

June 4
1888 - The Portage River at Oak Harbor catches fire from the upstream oil contamination in the Wood County oilfields.
1904 - The historic "Liberty Bell", a national icon of freedom, arrives in Toledo while on a special tour of the country. Thousands of Toledoans converge at Union Station to witness the famous bell which will be displayed on a special car on a track siding.
1909 - As a result of a summer rabies outbreak, Toledo enacts a “war on dogs,” assigning squads of shooters to kill all dogs running at large in the city.
1910 - Monroe, Mich. pays tribute to General George Custer as Custer’s widow unveils the new statue to him in downtown Monroe, where he spent much of his youth. President Taft and many notables are in attendance with a crowd of 10,000.
1915 - Home sites are being offered in the Auburn Central Avenue area to Overland workers starting at $250, or $5 down and $1 per week.
1933 - Upton Weirick, “The Corn Cob Pipe King of the West,” died at the age of 85 in Tiffin, where he had retired after a long and colorful life in the Old West.
1976 - Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, comes to Toledo for rally at Woodward High School. On the same night, candidate Frank Church of Idaho also campaigns in Toledo.

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