Tales from the Negatives: WandL.E. Tower What…

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archive, Canton, communication points, freight train, history galleries, keys, main line, Massillon, MN Tower, Museum, negatives, ohio, photograph, railroad, scanning, Stark County, Street of Shops, switch tower, switchman, track, tracks, trains, Wandle, Wandle Tower, Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad Company

While scanning an archive of some 1400 negatives I found an interesting image of a switch tower. 

John Taylor at MN Tower

A switch tower is a building where railroad personnel monitor track switches.  Towers were placed near switch locations into order for the railroad personnel to manually “throw” the switch to direct trains to a different track.  A switchman possessed keys to unlock/lock a switch so that someone just walking along could not “throw” the switch and cause an accident.  These towers also served as a communication points along the rails passing along information to trains as to the status of the tracks ahead.

The MN switch tower in this collection was near a passing siding.  Passing sidings utilized switches in order to allow two trains on the same track to pass one another.  As these opposing trains approach one another, one train is switched from the main line onto a passing siding to wait for the other train to pass. Once the train with the right of way has passed, the train waiting can move back onto the main line and go on its way.  The average freight train can be one to one and a quarter miles in length or 90 to 120 rail cars and therefore this passing siding must be long enough to accommodate these large trains. 

The photographs in this large archive were shot by amateur photographer William Ward Lowery in the early twentieth century. Mr. Lowery worked for the Canton City Water Department where he retired in 1955 having served the City of Canton for forty-two years.

William Ward Lowery

While cleaning the history galleries in our museum last Friday I noticed a tower in the model train set up we have in our Street of Shops. This tower looked like the switch tower in Mr. Lowey’s photographs.  As I walked around the set up I noticed more towers in more cities in Stark County. 

The two towers we feature today are the MN Tower, and the Wandle Tower.  We have found evidence that the MN Tower was East of Massillon, Ohio. The Wandle Tower in the model represents a tower that once stood in Canton, Ohio. The word Wandle is an amalgamation of the initials of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad Company W. and L.E. Wandle.

Stay tuned to our museum’s Facebook, YouTube Channel, and our blog Archivist’s Attic for more Tales from the Negatives…

McKinley Presidential Library & Museum

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Tales from the Negatives: Get Technical…

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Archives Bring Good Feelings, archiving in the key of life, Baltzly, Canton, find your quest, Glass plates, Hamilton, History, history nerds, Massillon, Massillon Museum, McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, negatives, seek the threads, Stark County

In February of this year Archivist, Mark Holland discovered a clue that solved a 48 year old mystery. See how this happened and get to know a little bit about two Stark County Photographers…

Tales from the Negatives…Victory on His Birthday…

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Canton, negatives, ohio, Pacific Theater, photographer, Stark County, Tales, The Great War, Timken Company, victory, Victory Chapman, WWII

 

This is a continuing series of stories about the donation of black & white negatives we received in January of this year from a gentleman in Kentucky.

In a previous blog on February 21^st Majorette Found in Middlebranch… we introduced you to Victory Chapman who photographed many weddings in the Canton, Ohio area in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Victory was born on the last day of The Great War, participated in the Pacific Theater in WWII and had a long career at the Timken Company in Canton.

Eric Chapman writes: My dad was born on November 11, 1918 – the day WWI ended. When my dad was 17, he heard that the Timken Company was hiring, so he went right down there and applied, lying on his application that he was 18. The gentleman that interviewed him said something like this: “Hmm, you were born exactly one year to the day before WWI ended and your parents named you Victory? They must have had amazing foresight!” The guy hired him knowing full well he was only 17. He worked there for 46 years, retiring in 1982. Eric Chapman continues, my dad was a chemist and he worked his way up from the bottom of what he called the “Chem Lab” becoming chief chemist sometime in the mid to late 1970’s. When he retired, he was the last person in that position in any steel mill in the country with only a high school degree. Victory Chapman is a Marine Corp Veteran and fought on Okinawa in the Pacific Theater. He must have stopped over on Hawaii because there are photographs that appear to have been shot by him, and a small collection of period postcards of the islands. He also documented the First Marine Division cemetery, his barracks, some of the natives, and their lifestyle, the landscape, military trains, and Bolo and Yontan airfields.

These are just a few of the printed photographs in this archive, wait until we get to the negatives!

Thank you to Eric Chapman for his contribution to this blog, and the wonderful donation of invaluable photographs.

Eric Chapman, PhD
University of Kentucky

Mark G. Holland
Archivist
McKinley Presidential Library & Museum

Tales from the Negatives: Majorette Found in Middlebranch…

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1956, archive, box, business, Canton, donor, father, fifties, graduated, January, Kodak, Library, Majorette, McKinley National Memorial, Middlebranch, Middlebranch High School, Monument, negatives, october, photographer, Plain Township, senior year, Stark County, Victory Chapman, volunteers, wedding photographer

 

On January 2nd of this year a donor brought into our Library a large box of negatives from a photographer that operated in Canton, Ohio in the nineteen fifties.  The donor told me his father was the photographer and the photography business was finished before he was born.  Victory Chapman was a wedding photographer and we now have hundreds of negatives of weddings that happened in Stark County during the 1950’s. This week I decided to unpack the box and see what I really had in this archive.  

One of the Kodak boxes was marked Middlebranch High School Majorettes taken October 13, 1956.  Wanting to know more about these photographs from Plain Township I asked one of our volunteers in the library if he knew anything about them and he suggested I talk to another one of our volunteers who knows some history of Middlebranch High School.  This volunteer suggested I speak to Connie Blinn and went on to say because of the time these photographs were taken Connie may even be one of the majorettes. Taking a closer look at the carefully packaged negatives of each group of photographs of majorettes I discovered Connie Pavey whose married name is Blinn.

Where do you go in Stark County to pose for pictures?  The “Monument!” Connie graduated in 1957 making this photography session the fall of her senior year.

Connie Pavey October 13, 1956

Judy Pocock who volunteers in our library and is a longtime friend and was a year behind Connie at Middlebranch called her to let her know.  Connie subsequently visited our library and viewed four photographs that Victory Chapman had taken of her at the McKinley National Memorial.   She brought with her a framed photograph in color of one of the poses. Connie was thrilled with what we found in our archives and she told us how fun it was to come and see a bit of her history.  Thank you Connie for making our work fun too.

Volunteer, Judy Cloud Pocock & Connie Pavey Blinn

 

Connie Pavey Blinn