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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.
- Perry B. Jackson (1896-1986) was Ohio's first African American judge. He was active in Cleveland, Ohio civic, religious, and educational organizations. The collection consists of correspondence, reports, minutes, programs, speeches, financial material, personnel lists, bench notes, judicial election material, and other material relating to Judge Jackson and his judicial, church and civic activities.
- 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.
- Ruby L. Terry was a former engineer and marketing executive for Bell Laboratories and the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, later Ameritech/SBC, and currently AT&T. She was responsible for generating $300 million in annual revenues from the engineering of large communication systems for such corporations as East Ohio Gas, Cleveland Clinic, Timken Company, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber. She also was assigned by her division engineer to design the first cable television system for cities in the northern and southern Ohio Bell service area. As an engineer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she had to overcome many obstacles as both an African-American and as a woman. This oral history was conducted by Celeste Terry, daughter of Ruby Terry, at Western Reserve Historical Society on July 28, 2018.
- The Severance family was a prominent Cleveland, Ohio, family known for its philanthropic activities. Solon Severance, a Cleveland banker, was the son of Solomon Severance and Mary Helen Long, and a brother of Louis Severance. He was also a descendent of John Walworth, an early settler of Cleveland who was a civil engineer and was appointed in 1806 as the Custom Collector for the District of Erie. Solon's wife, Emily Allen, was the daughter of Dr. Dudley Allen, and the sister of prominent surgeon Dudley P. Allen. Solon and Emily's daughter, Julia Severance Millikin, was the wife of Benjamin Millikin, a noted Cleveland opthalmologist. Julia's children included Helen Millikin Nash and Severance, Marianne, Dudley, and Louise Millikin. The collection consists of historical and biographical data on various family members; diaries and travel journals, especially of Julia Severance Millikin and her mother, Emily Allen Severance; correspondence, especially between Julia and her mother, Emily Severance; wills, genealogical notes, deeds, notices of events, and newspaper clippings. Among the correspondence are numerous letters from Julia's friends from Wells College. The collection also includes a certificate appointing John Walworth collector for the district of Erie, 1806, and a journal kept by Dudley Allen detailing early medical practice in the area. There is also material on author Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) and his voyage around the world, which included Solon and Emily Severance, and became the basis of his novel "The Innocents Abroad".
- The Shakers were a religious communal society founded and originally led by Mother Ann Lee, who came to America from England in 1774. By 1826 communities were established throughout New England and the Midwest, as well as in Georgia and Florida. In 1911 Wallace H. Cathcart, Director of the Western Reserve Historical Society, began collecting Shaker memorabilia. The collection consists of covenants, laws, legal records, land records, financial records, membership records, correspondence, diaries, journals, testimonies, biographies, addresses, sermons, essays, inspired writings and drawings (also known as spirit drawings), other writings, music, poetry, recipes, prescriptions, school books, instructional texts, scrapbooks, photographs, and miscellaneous material relating to 20 Shaker communities located in 10 eastern States.
- 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.
- Carl Stokes, and his brother Louis, were groundbreaking African-American politicians from Cleveland, Ohio. Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city when elected in 1967. Louis Stokes was the first African-American congressman from Ohio when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, a position he held for 15 consecutive terms. During Carl Stokes two mayoral terms, city hall jobs were opened to blacks and women, and a number of urban renewal projects were initiated. Between 1983 and 1994 Carl Stokes served as municipal judge, and in 1994 was appointed by President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Seychelles. Louis Stokes began his career as a civil rights attorney, and helped challenge the Ohio redistricting in 1965 that fragmented African-American voting strength. In 1967, Louis Stokes argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Terry v. Ohio case, also known as the "stop-and-frisk" case. In the 1970s, Louis Stokes served as chair on Assassinations and in the 1980s was a noted member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. The collection includes 34 interviews with family and friends, associates and staff, and was conducted to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of Carl Stokes election as mayor and Louis Stokes to Congress.
- Walker and Weeks was the foremost architectural firm in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1920s. The firm specialized in bank buildings, religious structures in classical revival styles, and major commercial and public buildings. The collection consists of technical drawings and blueprints of the buildings, arches, memorials, and proposed plans designed by the Cleveland, Ohio architectural firm of Walker and Weeks.