Memories of Marietta

The Marietta Daily Times, November 18, 1933

W. G. Sibley, friend and acquaintance of many Marietta residents, writes interestingly of Marietta men of the 1870s in his column, "Along the Highway," in the Chicago Journal of Commerce. He says:

There is one place we can always write about, and that is beautiful old Marietta, where for seven years we were an academy boy and a college student. Our memory goes back to the men of Marietta in the 1870s, and of them we shall write. They were great men in our youthful eyes and (many of them) really superior individuals, whose sons and grandsons adorn great cities today. 

First, there were the lawyers, always interesting to us because our father was one of them. There were Judges Loomis and Knowles, General Richardson, who refused an election as attorney general during the Civil War; T. W. Ewart, Brigham, Alban Davies, Judge M. D. Follett and Colonel R. L. Nye, W. G. Way and Fred J. Cutter.

Then there were the newspaper publishers - R. M. Stimson and E. R. Alderman of the old Register, Theodore Davis of the Leader, and S. M. McMillan father of the violinist - all conspicuous men, the last proprietor of The Times, the only newspaper survivor after nearly sixty years.

Among the business men of that period we knew Cadwallader and Bennett, the photographers; M. P. Wells of Bosworth, Wells and Company, the senior Turner and his clever sons, Charles and Fred. Mr. Wells made himself historical by building Marietta's wonderful system of shade trees. One ornament to the town was General Edward Benjamin Dana Fearing, a gallant soldier, General Dawes and General Warner were both business men and congressmen in turn. Down Front Street were the Glines bookstore, the Sniffens, with Jake Pfaff, the caterer, on Putnam whose escalloped oysters, chocolate cake and ice cream were famous; McCaskey, the druggist, who brought the "cigars of our daddies" to town; George Eels, the shoe man and postmaster; Asa Waters, the banker; Fred Wehrs, a capable grocer, who had everything good to eat.

The town was fortunate in its preachers. There were Doctor Boyd, the Episcopal rector; Doctor Addy, the Presbyterian; Mr. Lusk, the Unitarian, and Doctor Hawkes, who presided over the Congregational Church - all gifted and pious leaders in intellectual affairs.

One man who stands out in our memory is Ben McKinney. Father told us once he was the cleverest Democratic politician in southern Ohio. His political office was the sidewalk in front of the court house where his plans and stratagems were discussed and determined. With George Wieser we thought that what McKinney did not know about politics was not worth knowing. Now his capable sons control the destinies of The Times, since the redoubtable Sam McMillan moved away from Marietta. Their daily compares with the Cincinnati papers of the 1870s in interest and volume.

There was another group of men we knew in our college years. They were, for the most part, clustered around Flat Iron Square, facing the levee, and so convenient to river travelers. There was "Windy" Wood, "Billy" Smith, the National House bar, and sundry saloons up Front Street with which we were familiar. One of them was the Philharmonic Hall, in which students liked to imbibe beer and music together, run by the Becker boys.

Physically Marietta, excepting street improvements and the court house, has not changed so very much. The old city hall stands, an example of ugliness in public buildings, to remind one of the scandal in its erection. The one marked change to us is the disappearance of the Ward home on the lower block of Putnam Street. Fronted by a row of stately and magnificently great sycamore trees, its large lawn, filled with flower bushes, was a lovely asset to the city. Diagonally across Second and Putnam by the old jail stood a huge forest monarch whose kindly shade protected the chain gang that broke rock for street repairs long before brick and concrete streets were dreamed of.

Marietta's old city hall, "an example of ugliness in public buildings."

We must not omit from our business acquaintances Eugene Warner, James Nye, A. T. Nye, the gifted Mrs. Peddinghaus who conducted a successful jewelry store, nor W. F. Curtis, the Reckards, the Browns, the elder Mills and his son John, nor S. A. Cooper of the chair factory - nor George M. Woodbridge and Doctor Hildreth, who kept records of physical phenomena.

The college families - Andrews, Rosseter, Beach, Manatt, Biscoe and Gear - were, of course, social leaders in the community, and made Marietta famous for culture. And there was the elder Oldham, a pillar of Democracy in his time.