Archive of an Amateur Historian’s Writings on Small-Town Ohio History, Including His Family’s Settler Story and His Experience Teaching in Appalachian Ohio, and His Short Fiction Inspired by the Region
- Eight overall groups separated into two binders: short stories (seven items), personal and family history (six items), Palmyra h
- Palmyra, Ohio , 1930
Palmyra, Ohio, 1930. Eight overall groups separated into two binders: short stories (seven items), personal and family history (six items), Palmyra history (eight items), other Ohio town histories (five items), three miscellaneous family-related items, four loose pages, and an unfinished project on the early residents of Palmyra. The latter contains several handwritten anecdotes and death notices, along with a list of names and seventy-eight pages with photographs, names, and occasionally personal details of the individuals. Totaling approximately 348 pages: seventy-eight 8 x 10 ½ inch handwritten pages with eighty-seven photographs; one 6 x 9 ½ inch typed; twenty-eight 8 ½ x 11 inch typed; and 241 5 ½ x 8 ½ inch typed. Four bound booklets comprise 162 of the latter 241 pages. Condition varies; overall excellent.. Palmyra is a small town in Portage County, northeastern Ohio. Its first European settlers arrived in 1799, and the township was established in 1810. Many of its early settlers were Welsh, and its main industry was coal mining. Harley A. Tuttle (1881–1934) was a highschool teacher, Methodist preacher, and native of Palmyra. He was also an author and amateur historian, writing columns for the Mahoning Dispatch and a history of Palmyra titled Palmyra, My Old Home Town (1930).
Offered here is a large archive of Tuttle’s writing about Ohio. Besides fictional and autobiographical writing, Tuttle gives brief histories of a number of small towns in northeast Ohio, basing them partly on existing histories and partly on his own research; and writes short articles on coal, milling, early Euro-American settler families, and other topics concerning early Palmyra. He also seems to have been in the middle of working on a series of profiles of the settlers; these are very incomplete but do contain entertaining tidbits, such as Harvey Daniels’ “habit of wearing 2 or even 3 hats at one time”, George W. Tuttle “swallowing his food before it was chewed up and using vinegar to aid digestion”, and John M. Owens who would sometimes “imbibe too freely” on which occasions “the boys would play tricks on him”. The short fiction often draws on anecdotes from the histories.
Two longer manuscripts especially stand out: “The Lure of the Hills” and “A Narrative Written by Joseph Tuttle”, who is Harley Tuttle’s grandfather’s cousin. “The Lure of the Hills” describes Harley Tuttle’s time teaching highschool and ministering in Appalachian Ohio – in Pine Ridge (now in Independence Township), Cow Run, and Marietta in the southeast, and further north in Peoli and Stafford. We find one other copy of “The Lure of the Hills” on OCLC, housed at the Ohio Historical Society.
Tuttle is brought to work in Pine Ridge in 1905, where he struggles with the culture and the students. He writes:
“I never saw such complacency in men anywhere as I did there. They would hardly stir themselves if a fast train were coming straight at them. The women work and slave as tho they considered it their proper vocation. [...] In that section the boys stayed out of school until the corn was husked. Then, having nothing else to do they were allowed to go to school. [...] They were a class who needed thorough conversion before being admitted to church. When I think of them I am quite reconciled to the mourners’ bench in the church. One evening as Perry and I were driving to Newport I heard one of the vociferous young men yelling down in the hollow “We’re the boys that make the noise”. If that were the extent of their perverted ambition! This school was located in a part of the state which has been the subject of no small amount of study by sociologists on account of its tendency to crime. [...] Well, the boys began to come to school.”
Conflicts with parents and students “gradually broke [him] down” and he quits partway through the academic year. He is convinced to finish out the year at nearby Cow Run, and explains the economic state of the town:
“We might say that Cow Run was the aftertaste of a town. Soon after the Civil War oil was struck on the run not far from my former school. One well was known as the School House well. People flocked there until there was a town of nearly 1500 persons. With their primitive outfit men would drill down some 200 feet and the oil would come up with a gush and often drench the workers. [...] Thenty-five [sic] years ago the day of the gusher had passed. The drillers were fortunate if they could strike a well producing a few barrels per day.”
Following the school year at Cow Run, Tuttle leaves teaching, receives a chemistry degree from Ohio University in Athens, and then enters the Methodist ministry. This sends him back to Washington County on a circuit between three rural churches—Tunnel, Warren, and Bethel—in Marietta. He enters regular ministry in 1922, but in 1924 goes “back to the hills” – this time to Peoli, where a famous retiree does him a favor: “During the winter my coal played out. I spent two or three nights visiting at the homes of the people. Then Cy Young brot me a load of coal which lasted as long as I was in Peoli.” His last stop is Stafford, Ohio, formerly a station of the Underground Railroad:
“Here I had five churches for a while. [...] There are also many Negroes in the neighborhood. Just before I went there some of the Kluckers in the congregation had talked of painting some of the seats another color and making the Negroes sit in them. Well, this plan was never carried out.”
It is unclear, but does seem that Tuttle is suggesting that he himself put a stop to the Klansmen’s scheme.
Joseph Tuttle’s (1796–1884) narrative starts nearly 150 years before Harley Tuttle’s; it is unclear how this narrative came to Harley, who was only three years old when Joseph died. Told in June 1878, the narrative gives some of the Tuttle family genealogy (including the interesting fact that Joseph Tuttle was a step-cousin of LDS founder Joseph Smith), and relates the story of this branch of the family from their time in Sunderland, Massachusetts around 1760 to the birth of Joseph Tuttle’s daughter Harriet in 1840. Most interesting is Tuttle’s telling of the family’s 1807 journey from their home in Richfield in upstate New York to try settling Palmyra. Among other incidents, he relays meeting a large Indigenous group while staying near Cattaraugus Creek:
“there were about 160 Indians assembled there for a powwow. As they could not get any whiskey they behaved orderly. I recollect very distinctly of seeing the squaws plucking birds and preparing other birds for supper. There were no houses or other buildings on the east side of the creek. [...] While we were here the Indians were about, being encamped on this green. I recollect distinctly several little incidents connected with them here. Among the Indians was one called ‘The Little Fool’ and another called ‘The Big Fool’, who expressed the greatest thankfulness. He spoke in Indian and those standing by who understood him said that he called father a gentleman, gentleman.”
Once in Palmyra, Tuttle learns some lore about relations with the local Indigenous people:
“While we lived on our new farm the Methodists used to hold meetings at our house. A minister named Shewell used to preach then and David Diver, a local exhorter, used to speak at these meetings. I remember that on one occasion at least, he stayed at our house over night and I have often led him about on account of his blindness. He had his eye shot out several years before by some Mohawk Indians at the center of Deerfield [...]. In reference to the shooting I have heard Esq. Day of Deerfield tell father that after the horse trade between John [sic?] Diver and the Indians in which the Indians complained that they had been cheated they came to him to have him sue Diver for them but he told them he could do nothing about it and sent them back to Diver and as a result the shooting ensued.”
These Tuttles only remained in Palmyra through 1809 before returning to upstate New York, though the narrator returned to Ohio to live with extended family following a series of misfortunes back home.
Overall, a compelling series of pieces on personal and regional history; if not the most able writer, Harley Tuttle did have an eye for entertaining and interesting subject matter. Of interest to Ohio historians, especially of rural and settler life.
Offered here is a large archive of Tuttle’s writing about Ohio. Besides fictional and autobiographical writing, Tuttle gives brief histories of a number of small towns in northeast Ohio, basing them partly on existing histories and partly on his own research; and writes short articles on coal, milling, early Euro-American settler families, and other topics concerning early Palmyra. He also seems to have been in the middle of working on a series of profiles of the settlers; these are very incomplete but do contain entertaining tidbits, such as Harvey Daniels’ “habit of wearing 2 or even 3 hats at one time”, George W. Tuttle “swallowing his food before it was chewed up and using vinegar to aid digestion”, and John M. Owens who would sometimes “imbibe too freely” on which occasions “the boys would play tricks on him”. The short fiction often draws on anecdotes from the histories.
Two longer manuscripts especially stand out: “The Lure of the Hills” and “A Narrative Written by Joseph Tuttle”, who is Harley Tuttle’s grandfather’s cousin. “The Lure of the Hills” describes Harley Tuttle’s time teaching highschool and ministering in Appalachian Ohio – in Pine Ridge (now in Independence Township), Cow Run, and Marietta in the southeast, and further north in Peoli and Stafford. We find one other copy of “The Lure of the Hills” on OCLC, housed at the Ohio Historical Society.
Tuttle is brought to work in Pine Ridge in 1905, where he struggles with the culture and the students. He writes:
“I never saw such complacency in men anywhere as I did there. They would hardly stir themselves if a fast train were coming straight at them. The women work and slave as tho they considered it their proper vocation. [...] In that section the boys stayed out of school until the corn was husked. Then, having nothing else to do they were allowed to go to school. [...] They were a class who needed thorough conversion before being admitted to church. When I think of them I am quite reconciled to the mourners’ bench in the church. One evening as Perry and I were driving to Newport I heard one of the vociferous young men yelling down in the hollow “We’re the boys that make the noise”. If that were the extent of their perverted ambition! This school was located in a part of the state which has been the subject of no small amount of study by sociologists on account of its tendency to crime. [...] Well, the boys began to come to school.”
Conflicts with parents and students “gradually broke [him] down” and he quits partway through the academic year. He is convinced to finish out the year at nearby Cow Run, and explains the economic state of the town:
“We might say that Cow Run was the aftertaste of a town. Soon after the Civil War oil was struck on the run not far from my former school. One well was known as the School House well. People flocked there until there was a town of nearly 1500 persons. With their primitive outfit men would drill down some 200 feet and the oil would come up with a gush and often drench the workers. [...] Thenty-five [sic] years ago the day of the gusher had passed. The drillers were fortunate if they could strike a well producing a few barrels per day.”
Following the school year at Cow Run, Tuttle leaves teaching, receives a chemistry degree from Ohio University in Athens, and then enters the Methodist ministry. This sends him back to Washington County on a circuit between three rural churches—Tunnel, Warren, and Bethel—in Marietta. He enters regular ministry in 1922, but in 1924 goes “back to the hills” – this time to Peoli, where a famous retiree does him a favor: “During the winter my coal played out. I spent two or three nights visiting at the homes of the people. Then Cy Young brot me a load of coal which lasted as long as I was in Peoli.” His last stop is Stafford, Ohio, formerly a station of the Underground Railroad:
“Here I had five churches for a while. [...] There are also many Negroes in the neighborhood. Just before I went there some of the Kluckers in the congregation had talked of painting some of the seats another color and making the Negroes sit in them. Well, this plan was never carried out.”
It is unclear, but does seem that Tuttle is suggesting that he himself put a stop to the Klansmen’s scheme.
Joseph Tuttle’s (1796–1884) narrative starts nearly 150 years before Harley Tuttle’s; it is unclear how this narrative came to Harley, who was only three years old when Joseph died. Told in June 1878, the narrative gives some of the Tuttle family genealogy (including the interesting fact that Joseph Tuttle was a step-cousin of LDS founder Joseph Smith), and relates the story of this branch of the family from their time in Sunderland, Massachusetts around 1760 to the birth of Joseph Tuttle’s daughter Harriet in 1840. Most interesting is Tuttle’s telling of the family’s 1807 journey from their home in Richfield in upstate New York to try settling Palmyra. Among other incidents, he relays meeting a large Indigenous group while staying near Cattaraugus Creek:
“there were about 160 Indians assembled there for a powwow. As they could not get any whiskey they behaved orderly. I recollect very distinctly of seeing the squaws plucking birds and preparing other birds for supper. There were no houses or other buildings on the east side of the creek. [...] While we were here the Indians were about, being encamped on this green. I recollect distinctly several little incidents connected with them here. Among the Indians was one called ‘The Little Fool’ and another called ‘The Big Fool’, who expressed the greatest thankfulness. He spoke in Indian and those standing by who understood him said that he called father a gentleman, gentleman.”
Once in Palmyra, Tuttle learns some lore about relations with the local Indigenous people:
“While we lived on our new farm the Methodists used to hold meetings at our house. A minister named Shewell used to preach then and David Diver, a local exhorter, used to speak at these meetings. I remember that on one occasion at least, he stayed at our house over night and I have often led him about on account of his blindness. He had his eye shot out several years before by some Mohawk Indians at the center of Deerfield [...]. In reference to the shooting I have heard Esq. Day of Deerfield tell father that after the horse trade between John [sic?] Diver and the Indians in which the Indians complained that they had been cheated they came to him to have him sue Diver for them but he told them he could do nothing about it and sent them back to Diver and as a result the shooting ensued.”
These Tuttles only remained in Palmyra through 1809 before returning to upstate New York, though the narrator returned to Ohio to live with extended family following a series of misfortunes back home.
Overall, a compelling series of pieces on personal and regional history; if not the most able writer, Harley Tuttle did have an eye for entertaining and interesting subject matter. Of interest to Ohio historians, especially of rural and settler life.