Article by Jessica Shoemaker, Registration Assistant at the Massillon Museum. Nan McAllister Ream recently donated photos from Fidelity Motor Bus Lines, Inc. to the collection of the Massillon Museum. C.I. McAllister, Sr. chartered Fidelity Motor Bus Lines, Inc. in 1926. The initial two bus routes were laid out by McAllister and Mayor Irving Ferrell.

West Park and Kendal buses in front of a hotel
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Nan Ream (2014.022.19)

McAllister opened the first office of Fidelity in the old Arcade building on Lincoln Way W, just west of the Weslin Theater.

Six men standing in front of arcade
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Nan Ream (2014.022.12)

After some time, Fidelity moved its offices to 15 Lincoln Way E, above Linde’s Women’s Apparel. During World War II, Fidelity advertised for war bonds and stamps in effort to support the war effort, and men overseas, as well as promote patriotism.

Buy War Bonds & Stamps decal on Fidelity Bus, c.1946
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Nan Ream (2014.022.06)

Mac McAllister, Rogers, and man in front of West Park Bus
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Nan Ream (2014.022.07)

Fred Ebner, Charlie Sebus, Mac McAllister, Leonard, Dallas Moritz, and Myers
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Nan Ream (2014.022.11)

Les Mason, Norm Smith, Peck Smith, Gus Heiman and three men in front of Goodyear Tires
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Nan Ream (2014.022.13)

In 1956, Fidelity was collecting over one million fares a year and was running seven routes. C.I. McAllister retired in 1968 and passed the business on to his son, C.I. “Mac” McAllister, Jr. By 1970, bus patronage had dropped due to an increase in private car ownership. As a result, in 1970 Fidelity reduced to four bus routes. The company cancelled its city bus line on September 30, 1970. It became a charter service traveling all over the United States, supervised by Mac McAllister. Fidelity continued to expand and became Fidelity Tours, thanks to Nanette McAllister Ream, the third generation. Fidelity Tours was acquired by US Coach Tours in 2008.

State Hospital, c.1948
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of the Evening Independent (91.47.3069)

How do I find my relatives who lived at the Massillon State Hospital?

Unfortunately those records do not appear to exist any longer. The former State Hospital grounds are owned in part by the City of Massillon and by Heartland Behavioral Center. Heartland retains patient records for the last 10 years, and are not available to the public. The Massillon Museum does not have any records of residents.

Another way to track down your relatives’ information is through the Stark County Recorder’s Office. They retain vital information, including birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates. Please click here to visit their site.

Photographs of the State Hospital:

The Massillon Museum preserves a small collection of photos of the Massillon State Hospital, which may be viewed here. Reproductions of these images are available upon request. Prices may be found here.

Postcards showing the interior of McKinley Hall (top, BC 3919.20) and the dining hall (bottom 89.13).Collection of the Massillon Museum

History of the Massillon State Hospital

The grounds where the State Hospital exists originally was owned by James Duncan, founder of Massillon. In 1817, he and his wife Eliza moved into a cottage on the land called “Estramadura Farm,” or “The Plains.” The home was built by William R. Dickinson to raise Merino sheep, and Estramadura was the name of the region in Spain where the sheep originated. By 1821, the Duncan family moved to Kendal, Ohio, and later built homes in Massillon.

State Hospital water tower, c.1899
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of the Karl Spuhler Estate (91.7.574)

During William McKinley’s first term as the governor of Ohio, the city of Massillon was chosen for the very first state hospital in the United States and Canada in 1892. The Massillon Board of Trade purchased the Kegler and Smith farms to complete the 400 acres needed for the hospital. Construction of the hospital began in 1893 with the groundbreaking for McKinley Hall. The hospital opened on September 6, 1898, housing 300 patients from 21 different counties.

Even though it holds the name Massillon, it was not really owned by Massillon itself. This is because there was no money collected from the city in taxes, and the hospital supported itself with patients’ payments and the farm grounds.

State Hospital fields
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of the Karl Spuhler Estate (91.7.575)

The hospital was both a member of the American and Ohio Hospital Associations and it functions through the Board of Trustees (consisting of nine local men). The hospital was originally the Eastern Ohio Mental Asylum, but was later changed to the Massillon State Hospital.

Dr. A.B. Richardson was the first superintendent for one year. Patients were housed in cottages across the grounds, instead of large dormitories that were previously used in other state hospitals. Richardson was followed by Dr. Henry C. Eyman. He made sure that the grounds were beautiful for all to enjoy. He created a patient work program to work on grounds beautification and farming to help sustain the operation of the hospital, and give the patients real jobs.

Gardens of the State Hospital, c.1920
Collection of the Massillon Museum (06.22.4 top, 06.22.2 bottom)

The Massillon Street Railway Company began service in 1891, with Main Street (now Lincoln Way) being the main thoroughfare. The tracks went as far south as Erie Street with a turn-around at the State Hospital. Many Massillonians enjoyed a ride to the state hospital, where they enjoyed picnics on Sundays on the hospital grounds, as the lush gardens and expansive fields made for a wonderful setting. Friday night dances held at the state hospital were popular entertainment.

Streetcars leaving the State Hospital Grounds, c.1900
Collection of the Massillon Museum (06.22.11)

By 1950, the hospital housed 3,100 patients with approximately 365 full and part time employees and nurses. The expanse of the land was so beautiful that many family picnics took place on the lawn, as well as the Massillon football and baseball games at Sunnyside Field.

Dr. Arthur G. Hyde served as superintendent from 1918-1954. Throughout his tenure, more than 250,000 patients had been admitted. One of the major problems that patients were admitted for was alcoholism. They strove to treat them and release them with the hope that they would not return. Dr. Hyde called each patient by name to make the experience more personal. Judge John H. Lamneck said that Hyde did more for the mentally ill than any other individual in the State of Ohio.

As philosophies for mental health treatment shifted by the mid-1970s, more than half of the patients were transferred to other facilities. The state hospital changed its name to Massillon Psychiatric Center and then to Heartland Behavioral Health Center, which remains its name today, with only a few hundred patients remain. Other community organizations and mental health agencies have stepped in to help and make services available to the community.

Aerial view of the State Hospital, c.1970
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of the Massillon Area Chamber of Commerce (92.98.756)

 

Many patrons wish to donate or sell their historic newspapers to the Massillon Museum. These newspapers are often from historic events, such as the moon landing or Kennedy’s assassination. The Museum archives contain thousands of newspapers and  clippings relating to local history, significant individuals, and Museum history.

Why does the Museum not typically accept donations of newspapers?
Newspapers are incredibly difficult to care for. They are made of acidic paper made from wood pulp and are typically fragile, as they were only meant to inform people of the day’s events and then be thrown away. To keep costs down, printers often used cheap, thin, wood pulp-based paper. Earlier newspapers in the 1800s were made from rag paper and are more durable and less acidic. Many of those rag-based newspapers are still in great shape in the Museum archives.
Above: Plain Dealer, July 21, 1969
Collection of the Massillon Museum

This rag-based newspaper from New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1823 is in good shape, considering its age. This newspaper contains the announcement of Thomas Rotch’s death.
Collection of the Massillon Museum (BC 1825)

There are exceptions to accepting newspapers. Publications from rare newspapers that were only in business for a few years like the Massillon Gleaner, the Massillonian, the City Item, the Massillon News, the Massillon Gazette, Massillon Telegraph, the Massillon Weekly American, and the Massillon Morning News are very important. These newspapers contain information on our city’s history that we cannot find anywhere else. These have not been scanned or been made available online.

The Massillon Telegraph, January 5, 1848. (BC 3894.2)

An April 16, 1884 edition of the Massillon Weekly American is laminated to protect this rare piece.
Collection of the Massillon Museum

Most of our small newspaper clippings about a certain person or business are laminated, to save the information, but make them usable for researchers. The other solution is to make a photocopy of the clipping onto archival paper.

Another reason we do not need to save every newspapers is that many newspapers have already been digitized and are available online, and are searchable. If you live in Massillon, you may access hundreds of newspapers across the world through the Massillon Public Library’s website.

The Gleaner is a rare publication, often with only one copy of certain days is known to exist. Some are in the Museum’s collection, and several football-related editions are in possession of the Massillon Tiger Football Booster Club.
March 29, 1895
Collection of the Massillon Museum (68.86.2)

Why are newspapers important?
When thinking of newspapers as historic objects, it is often the information they contain that is important, not the newspaper itself.  Articles on local events, local perspective on world events, obituaries, and advertisements from local businesses are just some of the important features of a newspaper. Even if you do not have the original paper in front of you, you can still read about this information.

This clipping shows an ad for Bloomberg’s shoes, a Massillon business.

How do I care for my newspapers?
Do not put in plastic bags. This will trap moisture and dust inside.
If you store them in extremely dry locations, they will become brittle.
Do not store them in direct sunlight. Newspapers will yellow after just a few days.
If you clip a particular article from a newspaper, be sure to record the newspaper it came from and the date it was published.
As with all items of importance, do not use scotch tape. See photo below.

This newspaper was held together by scotch tape, which yellows and damages documents over time. The Evening Independent, March 5, 1897
Collection of the Massillon Museum

The Northeast Document Conservation Center explains, “Newsprint paper is of extremely poor quality and will continue to deteriorate even if it is deacidified or washed… If a clipping is retained solely for informational purposes, the most efficient preservation strategy is to make a photocopy on archival-quality paper.”

For more frequently asked preservation questions, such as how to care for wet photographs, musty books, and insect infestations, visit the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s website.

The Massillon Independent, October 17, 1884
Collection of the Massillon Museum (BC 3839.2)

This 1940s newspaper is split in two, and continues to crumble as it is handled by staff and researchers.
Collection of the Massillon Museum

Gift of Washington D.C. Chapter of the National Artists Equity Association to the Massillon Museum and Mr. Albert Hise. 70.1.

The Massillon Museum acquired “Artist and Model,” a 1968 black and white print by Leonard Maurer, from the Washington D.C. Chapter of the National Artists Equity Association. It was a gift to the Museum and Mr. Albert Hise, who contacted Picasso’s agent to give it to Picasso; however, the agent was not interested in the piece, thus the gift became the Museum property.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was heavily inspired by Greek myth, and the Minotaur figured predominantly in his work. The Minotaur is a mythological creature with the body of a man with and the head of a bull that was, according to legend, sentenced by King Minos to roam the labyrinth on the island of Crete. The Minotaur is often depicted surrounded by meandering lines to represent this maze. Picasso first included the Minotaur in his oeuvre with the Minotaur collage in 1928, and continued figuring this part-monster into his work with the cover of the first edition of the Surrealist publication Minotaure in 1933, Minotauromachy from 1935, and “The King of the Minotaurs” from 1958, among many others. The artist likely first saw an image of the Minotaur in images of the Palace of Knossos on Crete, included in the 1926 issue of the publication Cahiers d’Art (Notes on Art). As Jacob E. Nyenhuis writes in Myth and the Creative Process, “The Minotaur became Picasso’s iconographic symbol, particularly during the 1930s, when the bestiality within humanity was emerging more clearly on the world stage.”

In this print by Maurer, however, it is curiously not the artist himself who draws the Minotaur. The roles are reversed and it is the half-man, half-bull that treats the artist as the subject of the drawing. This suggests that the role of Minotaur and Picasso are interchangeable, and that the artist used the Minotaur as a double, to serve as an autobiographical form in disguise.

In “Artist and Model,” who is the artist and who is the model? Minos and the Moderns: Cretan Myth in Twentieth-Century Literature and Art supports just such a hypothesis of interchangeability: “Indeed, Picasso’s understanding of the myth [of the Minotaur] was so profoundly personal that his Minotaurs show little or no trace of their mythic source.” Maurer follows suit in this print, giving the Minotaur more human qualities than his partial humanness might otherwise infer: the cultivated patience required to draw a portrait, and the keen eyes to study and record the subject’s face. Furthermore, the Minotaur is not placed within a maze in this image, and the placeless vista from the window behind the pair does not indicate a Mediterranean landscape (or anywhere specific, for that matter). What meandering lines have already been added to the drawing-in-progress suggest a labyrinth, as the Minotaur is often depicted within the center of a series of mazelike lines. The portrait of Picasso can thus be read both as portrait and labyrinth, further suggesting the complicated inner workings of the artist’s psyche.

Many patrons call to inquire about how to properly store their family photographs. These helpful tips below will guide you through a few simple things you can do to better store your photos. These tips are good suggestions for other items as well, such as textiles, documents, and other heirlooms.

Common Sense Storage

•     NO ball point pen identifications (either side)
•     Use pencil or Staedtler Pigment liner sketch pen (acid free)
•     NO self-adhesive tape (This causes discoloration and may rip photos- see photo below)
•     NO staples or paper clips (These cause rust discoloration and bend documents)
•     NO rubber bands (Over time, rubber bands break down and may ruin photos)

These Civil War letters were donated in this condition to the Massillon Museum. The ripped document had been previously repaired with tape. It is best to use archival document repair tape, available online at Gaylord.

These decaying rubber bands left residue and pieces of rubber attached to the photographs they were on.

IDEAL STORAGE SPECIFICATIONS
The specifications below are the ideal situation. Peoples’ homes are not typically equipped with humidity and temperature controlled storage. So do the best you can. Do not store in the basement (too moist and causes mold or water damage in a flood) or in the attic (too hot and will damage your photos). If you hang a photo on the wall, don’t place it in a sunny area. The sunlight will cause your photo to fade quickly.

•     CLEANLINESS: Exclude dust but not air flow
•     TEMPERATURE: Approximately 70 degrees- minimal fluctuation
•     HUMIDITY: 40%-60% with minimal fluctuation. Humidity causes water damage and mold
•     LIGHT: Avoid light- especially fluorescent and sunlight that may cause fading

This negative was stored in either damp conditions or heat. The surface of the negative has shrunk, distorting the faces of the people in the image.

STORAGE CONTAINERS

•     NO corrugated cardboard boxes or department store boxes (High lignin and acid content causes discoloration)
•     NO untreated wooden containers
•     NO newspaper wrapping (High lignin content in newspapers causes discoloration)
•     NO airtight plastic bags, plastic containers, or laminating (This locks in dust, mold, and moisture)

Never do anything that can’t be undone. As technology advances, don’t take the original photos for granted. If your computer crashes one day, you’ll still have your original! When in doubt, consult a professional.

Archival supplies are easy to find. Don’t be fooled by the store “Archivers,” as not all of their items are acid free. The Massillon Museum uses Gaylord for archival supplies. If you have questions, their helpful staff can guide you to the right item.

Click here to download a PDF of this information

If you have a question about the preservation of your family’s heirlooms, call the Mandy Altimus Pond at the Massillon Museum at 330-833-4061, x113.

The Forest City Motor Car Company

The birth of the modern automobile is considered to be the year 1886. Many companies dabbled in design and function. By the 1900s, automobiles were seen as a viable form of transportation, and companies across the United States began manufacturing them. In 1905, attorney W.E.N. Hemperly purchased the Forest City Motor Car Company (later the Croxton-Keeton Company), hoping to make Massillon a major automobile production city. They began production on the “Jewell” automobile, originally sold to customers for $400. Their production facility was located on the first floor of the MCA Sign Company. The Croxton-Keeton taxi model was reportedly the first taxi used in New York City.
pictured above: Jewel Automobile advertisement, 1907
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Museum Purchase (94.6.6)

By 1908 Henry Ford was producing cars quickly and affordably because of his assembly line method. Because of this competition, by 1910 production ceased in Massillon, and the company folded by 1914. While several Jewell and Jewel motorcars are extant today (such as the one in the Museum’s collection), there are no known surviving Croxton-Keeton or Keeton motorcars.

The Jewel Automobile, Model “E” Stanhope is on display at the Massillon Museum on the second floor.

The Massillon-Cleveland-Akron (MCA) Sign Company

Original staff members of the MCA Sign Company, 1908
Founders Nicholas Mollet, Samuel Mollet, and unidentified woman
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Myron Bowling Auctioneers

Samuel Mollet came to Massillon in 1905 to join with the Massillon Sign and Show Print Company (1904). This business consolidated with the Cleveland-Akron Sign Company, making it the Massillon-Cleveland-Akron Sign Company. The business remained in the Mollet family until its closing. The company was known for cloth banners, signs on silk and tin, full-color photographs printed on plastic, masonite, steel and aluminum, and more. The artwork for each piece was made through one of three processes: lithography, flexography, or screen printing. Big companies such as Coca-Cola, Miller Brewing Company, Pixar, Mobil, Shell, Amoco, Texaco, Sohio, and others were clients for several decades. The company ran quantities as low as 100 or as many as 250,000.

Donation to the Massillon Museum Archives

Julie Payne of Myron Bowling Auctioneers showing Museum staff the MCA archives
2014
Photo by Mandy Altimus Pond

The Massillon-Cleveland-Akron (MCA) Sign Company closed in April 2014. Items from the business, including photographs, signs, and equipment which were auctioned on August 19, 2014. Special thanks to Julie Payne of Myron Bowling Auctioneers to assisting the Museum staff to document the building and the MCA Sign Company’s history. Julie was kind enough to give a tour of the facility to Museum staff and interns, pointing out where the Croxton-Keeton Company operated, and the room in which the 1907 Jewel Automobile was built.

MCA Sign Company Employees Sewing Signs
c.1950
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Myron Bowling Auctioneers

Myron Bowling Auctioneers donated dozens of photographs and slides that show MCA Sign Company employees working and examples of their signs. Massillon Museum Registration Assistant Jessica Shoemaker will take each item and assign and accession number to it. This unique ID will be used to record important information about each photograph, such as who donated it, what year it was taken, and sometimes identifications of the people pictured.

Massillon Museum Registration Assistant Jessica Shoemaker sorts slides from the MCA Sign Company.
August 2014
Photo by Mandy Altimus Pond

Croxton Keeton French 35 car in the Forest City Motor Car Company factory
c.1909
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of David Schultz

MCA Sign Company room where the Croxton Keeton automobiles were built
July 2014
Photo by Mandy Altimus Pond

MCA Signs at a Local Gas Station
c.1945
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Myron Bowling Auctioneers

MCA Sign Company Employee printing
c.1950
Collection of the Massillon Museum
Gift of Myron Bowling Auctioneers

Below are views from the tour of the MCA Sign Company building before the auction, July 2014:
(photos by Mandy Altimus Pond)

Staff of the Museum on the roof of the MCA Sign Company building
July 2014
Left to right: Cristina Savu, Scot Phillips, Margy Vogt, Mandy Pond
Photo by Julie Payne