About this collection
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- The Ohio Board of Canal Commissioners was created in 1822 through an act passed by the State of Ohio General Assembly. Early members included Thomas Worthington, Isaac Minor, and Alfred Kelley. Their duties were to examine, survey, and estimate the practicality of canals connecting the Ohio River with Lake Erie, and to make an estimation of cost. During construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal, each commissioner was responsible for certain sections of the canal, including hiring laborers, engineers, and building suppliers. In the 1830s, Commissioners continued to mange the completed waterway, employing toll collectors, maintenance laborers, and resident engineers. Commissioners also approved requests for water rights and were responsible for the canal's finances. The collection consists of payment vouchers for work done on the Ohio and Erie Canal, signed by Commissioner Alfred Kelley from 1824-1826, and on the Miami and Erie Canal, signed by Commissioner Micajah J. Williams from 1825-1826.
- The Ohio Historic Preservation Office, Western Reserve Region was a regional office of the state agency designated to regulate funding and organize and administer an historic preservation plan in Ohio. It was established in 1973 and located at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. After state funding ceased in 1981, the Historical Society funded the office until 1990. Eric Johannesen served as the preservation officer. The Western Reserve Region includes 12 counties in Northeast Ohio. The collection consists of nomination forms, inventory forms, correspondence, photographs, and research material relating to the office's National Register of Historic Places program and the Ohio Historic Inventory program collected during the office's operation at the Western Reserve Historical Society. The first program was to recognize and nominate important historic structures within the region to the National Register of Historic Places. The second program was an on-going survey to record all buildings, sites and structures of architectural and historic significance in the state. The files include building and district histories, property records, architectural reports, and information on historic status. These files will be useful to professional preservationists, students of history and architecture, land-use planners, various local and county agencies, and neighborhood researchers.
- The Ratner (formerly Ratowczer) family has been prominent in the Cleveland, Ohio, area since the mid-twentieth century. The family immigrated to the United States in 1920 and settled in Cleveland in 1921. Leonard Ratner began his business career by opening two creameries in the Glenville neighborhood. He then formed the Buckeye Material Company in 1924, later merging it with his brother Charlie's business, Forest City Material Company, in 1929, to form the B & F Building Company, a major builder of prefabricated homes in the east side suburbs. The family consolidated their business interests into Forest City Enterprises, Inc. in 1960. Leonard Ratner married Lillian Bernstein in 1924 and had two children: Ruth Ratner Miller and Albert B. Ratner. Leonard Ratner held many important positions on community boards during his lifetime, including the positions of honorary life trustee at the Jewish Welfare Federation, the Jewish Community Federation, and Mount Sinai Hospital. His children were also heavily involved in philanthropy. The Ratner family was particularly instrumental in establishing the Cleveland Jewish Archives at the Western Reserve Historical Society in 1976. The collection consists of advertisements, annual reports, census reports, certificates, correspondence, reports, lists, newspaper clippings, newsletters, programs, scrapbooks, ship manifests, songs, and speeches.
- Simon Perkins (1771-1844) was a surveyor, soldier, and banker, of Ohio. The collection consists of correspondence, land agreements, promissory notes, powers of attorney, deeds, field books, surveys, financial accounts, receipts, ledgers, daybooks, and other papers, relating to Perkins' career as surveyor and land agent for the Erie Land Company. Includes account books and business papers of Henry B., Jacob, Jacob B., and Joseph Perkins.
- Cleveland's Jewish community played an active role helping Soviet Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union and resettle in the United States, and especially in Cleveland, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Approximately 12,000 Soviet Jews came to Cleveland during these years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the emigration continued, though at a slower pace. This collection, a project of the WRHS Cleveland Jewish Archives Advisory Committee, includes oral histories with Soviet Jews from the Greater Cleveland area and related materials. The collection consists primarily of abstracts, article drafts, correspondence, descriptions of the project, a dissertation, information sheets, interview protocols, lists, minutes, newspaper clippings, notes, oral history user agreements, procedures, programs, progress reports, reports, a script, a student paper, and transcripts of interviews.
- The Western Reserve Manuscripts is a collection of small manuscript accessions that have been donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society since its founding in 1867. These manuscripts often consist of one document but can include multiple items contained in one folder. This collection of material documents numerous subjects and themes in the history of Cleveland, Ohio, and the region of northeast Ohio known as the Western Reserve. The collection consists of advertisements, agreements, applications, articles, autobiographies, autograph books and autographs, biographical sketches, certificates, correspondence, deeds, diaries, drawings, envelopes, genealogies, histories, indentures, invoices, letters, lists, manuscripts, memoranda, newspaper clippings, notes, papers, photographs, poems, receipts, reports, scripts, speech transcripts, telegrams, and other material. Western Reserve Historical Society library staff began to describe these manuscripts in this finding aid in 2015. This is an ongoing project that will be updated for public access as the project progresses in real time.