This Week In Toledo History

September 17
1909 - Four “tramps” picked up by Fostoria Police and taken to court and then ordered to be washed down with hoses and put in jail for five days on bread and water.
1930 - Prudence Lamb, of Perrysburg, confronts city workers with a rifle as they try to tear down her new white picket fence. Police return the next day with a posse and a machine gun and proceed to remove the fence.
1937 - The newly built Naval Armory at Bay View Park opens with ceremony and dinner. Thousands attend the gala event.
1938 - Fourteen strikers are shot by guards on the picket line at the Federal Creosote Plant in Toledo. Two of the strikers were seriously wounded.
1973 - Notorious Toledo gangster Thomas “Yonnie” Licavoli dies at his home in Columbus a few years following his controversial pardon by Governor Jim Rhodes.

September 18
1902 - Toledo pioneer and well known community figure, Elijah Woodruff celebrates his 100th birthday with a big party held at Navarre Park in East Toledo.
1913 - Bodies of those killed in Battle of Lake Erie at South Bass Island are reburied in the rotunda of the still unfinished Perry’s Monument.
1937 - Commodore Perry Statue is erected and dedicated in downtown Perrysburg.
1970 - Toledo Police Patrolman William Miscannon shot to death as he sat in his patrol wagon on Dorr Street.
1981 -Toledo real estate developer Peter Sawicki shot to death near his home as he attempts to rescue his daughter during an attack by the notorious Cook brothers.

September 19
1863 - Battle of Chickamauga begins as Toledo’s 14th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Gen. James Blair Steedman, took many casualties in this deadly Civil War battle in Tennessee and Northwest Georgia. Steedman was credited with helping prevent the Union defeat from becoming a slaughter of Union regiments that were in grave danger. Steedman himself was wounded and had his horse shot out from under him.
1864 - A secret plot by Confederate conspirators is thwarted on Lake Erie. Rebels based in Canada were to hijack passenger boats on the Lake and use them to free the rebel prisoners held at the POW camp on Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay. The plot was foiled and the hijackers were arrested.
1884 - Earthquake tremors felt in Toledo and throughout Northern Ohio. The shaking was so bad, the Williams County courthouse in Bryan suffered severe damage and had to be rebuilt.
1929 - Roger Conant, curator of reptiles at Toledo Zoo, is bitten by rattlesnake at the zoo. The bite is very serious and Conant develops lock jaw, loses a thumb and suffers other long term complications.

September 20
1864 -Toledo ends the volunteer police force and begins formation of paid police department.
1898 - Toledo’s deadliest fire occurs when flames race through the Paddock and Hodge Grain Works in East Toledo. Fourteen workers die in the explosions and fires.
1958 -Toledo fireman Ken Williams killed in blaze at S & S Distributors on Central Avenue.

September 21
1904 - Home rental ads in Toledo list a small cottage in East Toledo at $6 a month, or a new two-story home on Cherry at $30 a month.
1911 - A large bull being led to the slaughter pens in the West Toledo stockyards escapes and goes on a rampage down Phillips Avenue, ripping up fences and lawns, smashing wagons, terrorizing neighbors, and children.
1934 - Waite High School’s new 15,000-seat football stadium is dedicated. Waite Indians defeat visiting team from the Mooseheart School for Boys in Illinois, 6-3.
1966 - A riot occurs at Toledo House of Corrections. The riot was triggered by the capture of an escapee. Other inmates however began yelling and complaining of poor food and crowded conditions. They broke widows and light bulbs. Several inmates and officers were injured.

September 22
1863 - A train collision occurs in Perrysburg involving a troop train carrying Union army recruits from the Wood County area. The crash sends two of the boxcars off the track. Two recruits are killed and 24 others are injured. Many are taken by a rescue train to the Oliver House Hotel in Toledo for treatment at a makeshift hospital.
1907 - Toledo police officers arrest a very large man from Maumee for lying down on the scales at the city market to weigh himself. They claim he was so heavy the scales were unable to register a weight.
1914 - It is announced that Milburn Wagon Works in Toledo will now begin producing electric automobiles at the factory. The first Milburn Electric was produced the next year.
1930 - Four bootleggers are killed in the explosion of their "still" in a building on Champlain Street.
1945 - Emergency gasoline rationing is ordered by Mayor Lloyd Roulet of Toledo as a result of a severe shortage.