Prince Louis and Francis the Baker

      This is an abbreviated version for newspaper of an earlier post, “The Royal Visitors,” about Prince Louis Philippe of France’s visit to the Marietta area.. To read the full version, click here.

     In July 1839, King Louis Philippe I of France received an American visitor, a Mr. Hughes, the American charge d’affaires in Stockholm. After introductions, conversation turned to the King’s visit to America in the late 1790’s.

King Louis: “Have you ever been at Marietta?”

Mr. Hughes, surprised at the familiar connection, said yes! He had lived there for several years.

King: “Did you know a French baker there, named Thierry?” Francis Thierry was a French immigrant who arrived in Marietta in 1790 with his wife and two children.

Mr. Hughes answered that indeed he knew Thierry.

King, explaining with amusement: “Well, I once carried him away from his family,” referring to a decades-earlier "kidnapping" incident during Louis Philippe’s visit to Marietta in 1797.

     Louis Philippe De’Orleans, later King Louis Philippe I, visited the United States with his two brothers in 1796 and 1797. He was anxious to see natural wonders, Indians, and the backwoods of the new country. The King often amazed visitors with his memory of minute details of his American tour decades earlier.

           Portrait by James Sharple of Prince Louis Philippe at the time of his American visit in 1797.   

     Toward the end of their American tour, Prince Louis and his brothers visited Marietta on a frigid December day in 1797. They were floating down the Ohio River on a keelboat, headed to New Orleans for a return trip to Europe. River travel was treacherous with the ice, swift currents, and snags. They pressed on anyway. At Marietta they stopped for supplies. Louis Philippe wanted fresh bread and was directed to Francis Thierry, a French baker living in Marietta. Thierry fired up his oven to begin baking while the Frenchmen toured Marietta. They were fascinated by the Indian mound earthworks and made a sketch of them.

     As they prepared to leave Marietta, Mr. Thierry rushed the fresh bread to their boat on the Muskingum River. But ice on the river was breaking up at that exact moment. The boat lurched away from the shore - with Thierry still on board - to avoid the ice. He was frightened and visualized never seeing his family again. He was relieved to be returned to dry land by canoe when the ice danger passed. The future King and his party continued down the Ohio River, grateful for the fresh bread. He later amused listeners, such as Mr. Hughes, in retelling the adventure of "kidnapping" a French baker at Marietta.

     There was another Marietta connection during his American tour. He had a chance meeting with pioneer leader Ephraim Cutler who recorded the event in his journal. Cutler met two Frenchmen while boiling salt at the "Salt Works" on Salt Creek in Muskingum County, Ohio. He was working there as a volunteer with a friend, Peter Noblaise, a Frenchman from Gallipolis, Ohio.

     The two visitors asked to stay with Cutler and Noblaise that night at their cabin. Cutler noted that the three Frenchmen became "quite loquacious in their native language." Noblaise was a good singer and sang the Marseilles hymn and several French airs. Cutler reported that one of the men asked him detailed questions about the Ohio Company, and the settlements at Marietta and Gallipolis. After midnight they retired; Ephraim gave him his bunk and bear skin. Cutler learned the next day that the man was Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the future King of France.

     Louis was king from 1830 to 1848 when he was forced to abdicate. He was the last king of France; the monarchy ended with the French Revolution of 1848. He treasured memories of his American visit; stating that it profoundly influenced his beliefs and judgment during his reign. Likewise, he left fond memories with those he visited in Marietta.

Attack at Picketed Point!

 Life in early Marietta was difficult: few amenities, flooding, epidemics, primitive (if any) shelter, and Indian threats. Early on, there were three communities in the new town. Fort Harmar was built in 1786 with its soldiers and residents was located near where Harmar School is today. Campus Martius was a fortified mini-city about one acre in size located where Campus Martius Museum is today. Picketed Point was the community on the "point" where the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers converge. It included residences along with businesses serving traffic on the Ohio River.

Caption: early drawing of Picketed Point, from Wikipedia with credit to Marietta College Special Collections. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

     The "Picketed" name was a later addition in 1791 when blockhouses and a protective enclosure of wooden posts (“pickets”) of about 4 acres was built around the community. William Stacy and Sheriff Ebenezer Sproat oversaw construction. This was after the Indian massacre at Big Bottom, along the Muskingum about 25 miles from Marietta. The blockhouses are seen in the photo at the corners of the community. They offered protection in event of attack and were occupied by sentries standing watch.

     If any one of the three communities experienced an emergency, they fired a cannon. That would be answered by a cannon firing from the other two. Help would be mobilized. Area residents could seek shelter within the closest protective enclosure.

     One historical account recounts the following Indian attack episode at Picketed Point.

     "On a very rainy, dark night, the sentinel from the bastion of the Campus Martius saw by the help of a flash of lightning an Indian skulking about almost under him; the cannon was fired, answered at "the Point," but nothing further was seen, but plenty of their tracks in the morning. Some short time after, Capt. Joseph Rogers from Pennsylvania. and one of the men with him, were killed and scalped on the hill in the Indian path leading from Mill Creek to the Campus Martius.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

   Such was life in early Marietta.

“Mommy, Look! The Bridge is Falling Down.”

 This is an abbreviated version for newspaper of an earlier post about the Silver Bridge collapse. To read the full version, including chilling survivor stories, click here.

Cars and trucks packed the iconic Silver Bridge at dusk on a cold Friday, December 15, 1967. People were headed home to and from Gallipolis OH and Point Pleasant WV, anticipating the weekend and Christmas. The bridge swayed with the traffic load. But it always did that; people barely noticed. Suddenly, the bridge, vehicles, and people were gone - like a David Copperfield illusion.

Early photo of the Silver Bridge from Wikipedia

CLICK TO ENLARGE

A connecting link in the bridge suspension had broken. The roadway twisted violently - “slithering like a snake,” flipping the vehicles into the river "like children's toys." The entire bridge then fell, trapping many under the bridge superstructure. 46 people perished.

Several survivors were rescued from the water and from mangled steel on the Ohio side. A large truck floated downstream. After that, the scene was eerily quiet. The most shocking aspect to onlookers was what wasn’t there: the bridge. The Ohio River had swallowed up everything.

The 1760-foot-long Silver Bridge was a graceful suspension bridge, built in 1928 on the Ohio River, connecting Gallipolis, OH and Point Pleasant, WV. Its bright aluminum paint earned it the “Silver Bridge” moniker. The bridge was an elegant landmark, pride of the region, and a vital transportation link.

Photo by author of 1930s tourist brochure extolling the virtues of the Silver Bridge - and encouraging travelers to use it. CLICK TO ENLARGE

The Silver Bridge disaster changed thousands of lives in both communities. Family and friends grieved the losses. Witnesses and first responders suffered nightmares, fear of water, and anxiety about crossing bridges. Christmas season thereafter was difficult for many. And the beloved bridge itself was gone and with it the connection between the two towns.

Several Marietta area people were soon present at the disaster scene. Washington County Sheriff Richard Ellis and a few deputies drove to the site to help with emergency crews. Ellis's vehicle had a public address speaker. They used that for crowd control and other activities.

Don Yoho, Larry Barnes, and Guy Meeks from Washington County were employees of Hocking Valley Steel working on a job just north of Gallipolis. They helped extract a trapped man from a truck and brought a truck crane from their job site to help. Cliff Winstanley, Jr., the Game Warden for Washington County, was on law enforcement duty there the day after the tragedy. One of his tasks was to keep unauthorized persons away from the scene on the Ohio side.

There were Marietta area traffic impacts. The Hiram Carpenter Bridge (see photo) connecting Newport OH and St. Marys WV had the same design as the Silver Bridge. Though it carried far less traffic, it was closed as a precaution and later replaced. The Interstate 77 Ohio River Bridge at Marietta, was scheduled to be opened the following Monday. Ohio Governor James Rhodes and West Virginia Governor Hulett Smith conferred Friday evening and decided to open the new bridge that night. The Ohio Highway Patrol notified Marietta Police. Road crews scrambled to move barricades and uncover signs.

Photo of the original Hi Carpenter Bridge in 1970. The ferry in the foreground was used after the bridge closed in 1967. CLICK TO ENLARGE

 S. Durward Hoag was given the honor of being the first to cross the new bridge. He was the owner of the Hotel Lafayette and a tireless civic booster. He was credited with influencing the decision to add I-77 to the Interstate system. He drove across at 10:19 p.m. Marietta Mayor John Burnworth and Williamstown Mayor Aubrey Rymer joined the procession.

One positive Silver Bridge legacy was a new emphasis on bridge inspections and safety. Five days after the Silver Bridge tragedy, President Lyndon Johnson appointed a task force to study bridge safety. The Highway Safety Act of 1968 passed on August 24, 1968, formalized a program for bridge safety nationwide.

Fireproof! The Safe Cabinet Company

     You've driven by an old official-looking building on Greene Street dozens of times without noticing it. People used to call it "the bank" because it once resembled one. It was the office/research center/auditorium of the former Remington Rand (originally Safe Cabinet Company) plant. It, and the sprawling four story brick and glass facility, were once the bustling center of a leading national brand of office equipment.

The Safe Cabinet Company Administrative and Laboratory Building on Greene Street in Marietta. Photo by author

     The Safe Cabinet Company made fireproof safes and file cabinets. It had an unlikely beginning: a Methodist minister named Willis V. Dick founded the company in 1905. He saw a need for a storage product to organize and protect valuable documents, such as those of his church. Though designed for historical records, there was soon wide commercial office demand. Severe fires were more common a century ago with less advanced building codes, construction methods, and fire fighting equipment. Companies wanted the protection – from fire and building collapse -  that the Safe Cabinet provided.

     The founder's son, R. H. Dick, worked with New York City firefighters to learn more about the characteristics of structure fires. The company installed a laboratory to heat-test the safes. Soon their product could withstand an hour of extreme heat and survive a fall of three stories if the burning building collapsed. Underwriters Laboratories certified the safe cabinets as effective in withstanding heat up to 2,000 degrees F. and impact from a 30 ft fall. With that certification, sales soared.

    The Safe Cabinet Company outgrew three facilities until the 224,000 square foot building on Greene Street was built in 1925. Hundreds of people worked there. The stone clad building with columns housed the office, laboratory, and an auditorium. The latter contained theater seating (see photos below) for a live, carefully orchestrated fire test and the drop test. It had the precision and drama of a missile launch today.

Cut away illustration of Test Auditorium.Copied from The Tallow Light, Vol. 46, Fall-Winter 2015

     

     A Tallow Light article by Claire Showalter sets the scene: "...a safe was pulled off the line at random…, filled with documents..., exposed to an hour of intense heat in a furnace, (then) hoisted 30 feet up..., and sent crashing down to a bed of crushed brick while white-hot." The safe was then opened, showing that the contents were preserved intact. The audience could clearly see stunning eye-witness proof that the product worked. The process is shown in the above illustration on the stage area as the safe is heated, then dropped from 30 ft above.

Auditorium filled to capacity for test demonstration. Courtesy Marietta College Special Collections Harry Fischer Collection

     Sadly, today the building sits empty. Its state-of-the-art research and testing are long gone. The plant is mostly empty. Safe Cabinet Company was acquired by Remington Rand in the 1920’s. The Greene Street plant was moved to the new Remington Rand plant in Reno, Ohio in the late 1960’s. Over the decades, reduced demand for fireproof storage and office automation spelled the end of the Safe Cabinet Company products. Their pioneering technology survives in similar fireproof safes and vaults today.