Reflection on Oral History

In my interview, my grandmother talked mostly about the school and how Green Springs used to have it’s own high school instead of Green Springs students graduating from Clyde High School, like today.

Green Springs High School was built in 1881 and demolished in 1937. The new school was then built in 1937.

Green Springs school built in 1881. Photo from oldohioschools.com

 

With the construction of the new building, a bell from Green Springs High School Class of 1939 was also installed on the front lawn of the new school.

Bell from Class of 1939 that sat in front of the school until demolition in 2010. Photo from flickr.com.

 

Front doors of Green Springs school, built in 1937. Photo from flickr.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While thinking about this, I would have liked to known the perception of Green Springs High School students and Clyde High School students. Was there a rivalry? Did the students get along? How would they have felt had they known they would all be attending the same school together?

Just from being around Green Springs and being a Clyde High School student and athlete, I can’t imagine that there was much resentment between the schools. There are still Green Springs Bobcats in the village today, and they show their sense of Flier Pride in supporting athletics at Clyde High School.

This thought mostly came into my head with the latest football playoff victory for Clyde High School. I saw many people on Facebook saying how proud they were of the Fliers for the win. Some of them were even older adults (40-50) who were showing their support. One of my best friends from Green Springs has grandparents who graduated from GSHS and all throughout our time in school, they supported us as Clyde students and athletes. From all that, I’m mostly interested in how the schools saw one another during the times of Green Springs High School.

Interview with my grandmother

For my next post, I talked to my grandmother on the phone about how Green Springs has changed over the years.

The biggest change in the village is the school.

flickr.com

This school used to be known as Green Springs High School. The nickname for the school was the Bobcats.

Stemtown Museum

Eventually, Green Springs students started to attend Clyde High School in the next town over. When I went to school, I went to Green Springs elementary from kindergarten to sixth grade. In fifth grade, Clyde elementary students would begin to bus over and attend Green Springs Elementary for fifth and sixth grades. Then, for seventh and eighth grades, all those students would attend McPherson Middle School in Clyde. 9-12 were then at Clyde High School.

In 2009, Green Springs High School/Elementary school was torn down. A new levy passed to rebuild new schools in the district. As a result, Green Springs was torn down and rebuilt, as well as McPherson Middle School and Vine Street Elementary in Clyde. (Clyde had two elementary schools, Vine Street and South Main).

Clyde-Green Springs Schools

Another change in the village is the restaurants and social areas in the “uptown” part. The only real food source in Green Springs that has survived is Pizza-Rama, my cover photo on the page. But now, Green Springs has another restaurant, Papa Jimmies, along with two bars, King’s Den and RatPick’s.

The grocery store in Green Springs also changed. You can tell the people who have been in the village for a long time by if they cal the grocery store “Great Scot” or “IGA”. In the late 90s, the change was made as IGA was gone in Green Springs and Great Scot had moved into town.

Structurally, everything is about the same. There have been some housing sub-divisions added on near the outside of town, but basically, Green Springs has remained Green Springs. The bars in town and Papa Jimmies moved into vacant buildings in town, so the old buildings remain in tact.

Green Springs in the news

In my unsuccessful attempt at finding vintage pictures from Green Springs, I decided to do an extra blog about what has been going on in Green Springs until I can get home and see what I can do about getting some pictures. 

In neighboring Clyde, there has been what people are calling a cancer cluster. This has been going on since I left northwest Ohio in 2010.

Cancer cases have been popping up over the past few decades with 37 reported cases in children. Four of the children have died.

Clyde is a “Whirlpool town”. Most of the jobs in the town are at Whirlpool. Some people seem to think that without Whirlpool, there is no Clyde.

Clyde Historical Museum

Whirlpool purchased land just outside of Green Springs in 1950 and turned it into a swimming pool. Whirlpool sold the land in 2008.

Clyde Historical Museum

Recently, testing was done at WhirlpoolPark to find out if this site was the cause of the cancer cluster in the Clyde/Green Springs area. The EPA investigated and found high levels of PCBs and toxic metals in the soil at Whirlpool Park. Locals in Green Springs said that toxic sludge was dumped on the site in the 1950s, when the site was purchased.

No link was ever made between the PCBs found in the soil and Whirlpool.

Recently, a group of parents involved in the cluster have filed a class-action lawsuit against Whirlpool. A total of 27 class-action lawsuits were filed against the corporation.

Photo from the Toledo Blade

Photo from the Toledo Blade

Downtown Green Springs

Downtown Green Springs is a section of State Route 19 on the Seneca County side where most businesses in the village are. All of these buildings have been in the town since I can remember, but some of them have undergone repairs and have had different businesses in it, but structurally, everything is the same as it has been since I’ve lived in Green Springs.

Here is a look down State Route 19 on County Line Road under the stop light.

As we move down 19, you can see some businesses that have been shut down and never recovered. For example, this hardware store.

True Value hardware (on the left) was there when I was a child. They went out of business sometime in the late 90s. To the right of the building has been turned into apartments. This space was actually a Broadway Video store until around 1995 or so.

Next to the video store/apartments is the Post Office. This building seems like it hasn’t changed since I’ve been born. I still see the outside, and though our family doesn’t use the post office anymore, anytime I see it, I can still remember the smell inside the building, the dull lighting and the hum of the lights inside the quite building.

 

(Photo from postofficefreak.com)

The building attached to the post office has always intrigued me. I’ve never know what exactly is inside the building, but the symbol on the front is the same as a Freemason symbol and I’ve always wondered what was inside. As small as the town is, I always thought that if we had a Freemason group in the village, I sure would have known about it. For my 20+ years of living in Green Springs, I’ve never know what this building is.

This big open lot next to the mysterious building used to be the town laundromat. A fire to the brick building put an end to that, and it was never replaced. The laundromat moved a little further down the road to where the old Patio Dairy Bar (the village ice cream shop) was. After the laundromat, that building became a bar, the town’s third.

Across the street are two buildings that always stick out to me from my childhood. I’ve always noticed these building were unlike any other buildings in the strip because they had years on the top of them. The building on the left has the year 1891 on it and to the right is 1894. Now, the 1891 building has a bar under it and upstairs are apartments. The 1894 building is a restaurant with apartments above it.

Attached to those two buildings is the Style Center. I remember getting my hair cut there as a child, as it has always been the Style Center as far as I can remember. This building interested me because it says “BANK” on the top of it.

Outside of this downtown area are mostly houses. The houses are mostly older. Here are a few houses just off 19.

This next house is just off of 19 and is where one of my best friends used to live. This is one of the oldest houses in Green Springs. My friend and his family had some spooky stories from the house, and some I’ve been personally there for. After some time of these “supernatural happenings”, they found a historian and asked them about the house. Turns out, their home was the village’s dentist’s office.

As Thanksgiving break nears, I will try and get actual pictures for this post. All images now are from Google Maps Street View.

County History. Or histories, in my case.

In Green Springs, county road 113 is often referred to as ‘county-line road’ by the locals. This is because you’re in a different county depending which side of the road you’re on.

This displays the counties each side of town lies in.

Seneca County saw a massive population increase around 1860 and continued to increase during the Great Depression and post World War II baby boom.

Township map of Seneca County.

The county seat is Tiffin, the county’s largest city.

Townships include Adams (which includes part of Green Springs), Big Spring, Bloom, Clinton, Eden, Hopewell, Jackson, Liberty, Loudon, Pleasant, Reed, Scipio, Seneca, Thompson and Venice. The largest cities in the county are Tiffin and Fostoria, but only part of Fostoria, as it is part of Seneca, Hancock and Wood counties.

In 1850, Adams Township had a total population of 1,416 people. The majority of people in Adams Township came from Pennsylvania, 253 people. Second most was 160 from New York.

Township map of Sandusky County.

Sandusky County was formed on February 12, 1820. The land was originally part of territory set aside for the Indians by the Treaty of Greenville.

The county seat here is Fremont. Cities within in the county are Bellevue, Clyde and Fremont. Townships include Ballville, Green Creek (Green Springs), York, Jackson, Madison, Scott, Woodville, Rice, Riley, Scott, Sandusky and Townsend.

In 1850, Green Creek Township had a total population of 1,289 people. The majority of these people came from New York, 244 of them. 123 also came from Pennsylvania.

Something I found interesting with Hulbert’s Origin and Settlements Appendix was that of the 2,705 people in the two townships that Green Springs is in, 20 of them came from Virginia, where most of my Clevinger relatives come from, especially the town of Grundy. Upon Googling, I found a Ray Clevinger Road in Grundy, VA. The road is a side dirt road with about three houses at the end of it. It had me interested because Ray Clevinger is my grandfather’s name.

Churches

Green Springs has two churches in the village; Calvary United Methodist Church and Green Springs United Methodist Church.

After learning about the New Englanders in the northern part of Ohio and Green Springs having two Methodist churches, I did some research on the Methodist religion itself. 

The religion was originated as a revival in the Church of England and became a separate church after the death of John Wesley. 

Further researching the religion, more specifically the religion in Ohio, I found a website called the General Commission on Archives & History. It says that in 1819, the formation of Methodist Missionary Society- mission to Wyandot Indians in Ohio was officially established. 

This bit of information makes sense due to the Wyandot Indians being in northwest Ohio, as we learned in class.

From this, I can only assume that the religion spread across the region and made its way to Green Springs.  The formation above took place only 11 years before Green Springs was founded by Jacob Stem. 

I found a website for the Green Springs United Methodist Church, but was unable to find any information about the history of that specific church itself. 

The only picture I could get online was a screen shot from Google Maps Street View.

I was unable to find a website or image for Calvary United Methodist Church.

 

Bounding the land

From the reading, I found that my hometown was very close to the border of the Congress Lands 1820-21 and the Connecticut Western Reserve, according to the map on page 110 of our Ohio book. Being in this area also placed us in the Greenville Treaty boundary. 

The Greenville Treaty was signed after the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 3, 1795. The Indians lost the battle to the Americans, who were led by General “Mad Anthony” Wayne. The treaty ended the Northwest Indian War in Ohio and moved a number of tribes, to the Two Mile Square Reservation. 

The Reservation was a two mile square at the lower rapids of the Sandusky River. 

The town of Croghanville in the reservation had it’s name changed to Fremont in 1848. 

I think this is important in Indian movement into Green Springs because Green Creek, which runs from the Sandusky River to the mineral springs in Green Springs could have been a major waterway used for transportation by the Indians, which ultimately led them to settle in Green Springs. 

This land being in the Greenville Treaty boundary was important because it stayed as Congress lands and when the Jackson administration removed the Indians almost 10 years later, Jacob Stem was able to easily purchase the land from the government and settle “Stemtown”, or Green Springs.

 

Early Ohioans

In researching this blog topic, I found that the most prevalent Native Americans in the area of Green Springs were the Seneca Indians, thus giving us Seneca County, which half the town resides in.

I came across a site called Remarkable Ohio which lays out the area and Native American presence. The site tells about a treaty signed by the United States government and a number of Native American tribes in northern Ohio in 1817.

The site reads:

“The Fort Meigs or Maumee Rapids Treaty bound the Seneca tribe to cede all claims to land north of the Greenville Treaty line, and in return they received a 40,000 acre reservation at Lower Sandusky (Fremont) and a $500 annuity to be paid each year in perpetuity. The reservation’s boundary began 1.5 miles north of here and extended 6.5 miles to the south. The width of the reservation was 8 miles with the western boundary at the Sandusky River.”

http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx?historicalMarkerId=805&fileId=7522

Other research I found says that the Seneca were removed in 1830 because of a policy of Indian removal by the Andrew Jackson administration. 

This removal of the Senecas freed up the land for Jacob Stem to purchase from the government in 1831 and form Stemtown, which became Green Springs. 

Water around Green Springs

Water is an interesting topic in regards to the village. It’s our claim to fame. It’s where we got our name from. It’s why we became a village.

Green Springs was originally named ‘Stemtown’, after it’s founder, Jacob Stem. Stem bought the land from the government in both Seneca and Sandusky counties. Stem used the mineral springs for the area’s first saw and grist mills and changed the name of the town to Green Springs because of the color of the water from the spring.

Today, the mineral springs is the world’s largest natural sulfur spring. The overflow of the spring runs into Green Creek, then into Sandusky Bay and eventually into Lake Erie.

Mineral Spring in Green Springs, Ohio.

We also have a pretty large reservoir just outside the village called the Beaver Creek Upground Reservoir.

After examining the map, I think the best way to get to Green Springs was for travelers to take the Sandusky River to Green Creek, which runs to Green Springs. I’ve edited a map that shows the route I think travelers would have taken.

This map illustrates the water route travelers could have taken to Green Springs.

Geography/Geology of Green Springs

The land of Green Springs is mainly flat. Surrounding the village is a number of agricultural fields maintained by area farmers. For example, across the alleyway in my backyard, is a large cornfield by a man with a house that maintains it and then the field is split up by numerous families who live around the field.

I say Green Springs is mostly flat because the area of Northwest Ohio in general is flat. Our town, however, seems to sit upon a hill. Coming into the village on State Route 19, you would go down and come up a small hill, which runs over a creek. After you get up the small hill, every right turn you would take in the village would send you down another hill.

Google Maps view of Green Springs

If you see a map of Green Springs, the right hand turns onto Maple Lane, Morgan Street, Adams Street, Euclid Street and Perry Street are the streets with hills that I mentioned above. Turning left off of State Route 19 is all flat as well. After Perry Street on Kansas Street, there is a hill going upward as you head south that flattens the village as you head out.

The main claim to fame that Green Springs holds is something I will discuss more in my next blog post about water around the village.

This water source I’m talking about is the mineral springs that Green Springs was named after. The village was originally called ‘Stemtown’ after the founder of the village, Jacob Stem. The town was later renamed Green Springs after the color of the water out of the springs.

The mineral springs in our little village is the world’s largest natural sulfur spring, but as I said above, I’ll get more into that in my next post.

After looking at the geographical layout of the town and surrounding area, I can only assume that Green Springs was formed around the plentiful farming land that surrounds the village and the mineral springs that Jacob Stem used for saw and grist mills.