Poring over the history of Kinsman

Book based on letters from the 1800s features Parker family

KINSMAN -- Two Kinsman residents pored over letters from the 1850s in writing the book, "The Parkers of Locust Hill: Connecticut Yankees on the Ohio Frontier."

Residents Richard Thompson, publisher of the book, and author Emily Webster said the research helped them learn more about early residents of Kinsman, including the historic Linus and Harriet Parker family, and other Parkers, who made the "debarker," or scrapers used to remove bark from trees.

Webster said the research began with the Peter Allen House and the historic letters. The letters, written by sisters Lemira and Hannah Parker to and from their brother Rufus in California, described what was happening in Kinsman.

Thompson, current owner of the 1820s-era Parker family home in Kinsman, had commissioned a book about the house, its family and their impact on the fledgling community.

IN A SHOEBOX

A member of the Kinsman Free Public Library Board, Thompson said he was doing research at the library when he found the letters.

"I found a shoebox, which had a number of letters inside. There were at least 150 letters and correspondences from the family who built my home in 1831. I began to investigate the letters and learned that letters had been donated to the library from a resident in Orwell who was a descendant of the Parker family," he explained.

"There were many correspondences between two sisters, who had lived in my house, and their older brother, who went to California during the Gold Rush in 1851. There was an exchange of many letters between them that told of what was going on then. It is remarkable the information in the letters," Thompson said.

Webster said seeing and reading the letters "was like watching history unfold through someone else's eyes."

Nearly a decade's worth of letters between a young Rufus Parker, trying to make his fortune in the California gold fields, and his sisters and mother at home in Kinsman, showed the women using every means to get him to return to the Ohio frontier.

Webster said the sisters' letters are full of the perils life held for an entire community of people who had migrated from Connecticut to settle here: typhoid, weather, alcoholism, spousal abuse, fatal farm accidents, and social and church life -- all seen through the eyes of those who lived through those years.

She said the letters talked of the development of Kinsman, how typhoid hit the township, how a railroad came to Kinsman, and the Parker family coming from Connecticut to build sawmills and forges in the township and make tools such as edge tools and debarkers.

Some of the tools are displayed in the Kinsman Free Public Library historical room.

Webster said Rufus, in the letters, would give his sisters advice and encouraged them to become educated.

Rufus and four high school friends had gone from Kinsman to San Francisco. His transcribed memoirs were found as well as many letters that have been transcribed to make them readable.

"We were able to get the letters in chronological order and connect them with Rufus' memoirs, which showed what was happening," Webster said.

Thompson said the letters mention Abraham Lincoln and others before the Civil War.

"You get to read history in that moment," he said.

PARKER FAMILY VISIT

Webster said the letters and memoirs tell of the Parker family coming to Kinsman, Rufus' life in California and then his return to Kinsman.

Thompson said the letters are what people today "use a telephone for.

"Some of it may be gossip, but they wrote letters to tell what was happening. A letter from Kinsman dictated a response from a letter in California. There were letters back and forth every 30 days. The letters are fascinating.

"It means a lot to me because they lived in the house I am in. When they talk of making maple syrup or killing a deer, I know exactly where it was," Thompson said.

Webster said the letters helped her write the book.

"The humanness of this family -- as you read the letters, the personalities of the people who wrote them come out. Rufus was a moral, responsible young man in his 20s. His mother was always ailing and sick since Rufus left for California after his father died. Lemira was the responsible one who took care of her mother and the house," she said.

Webster said she and Thompson read the transcripts of the letters, as reading the handwritten script on the letters was difficult.

"The narrative of the letters was fascinating to read -- that Rufus and his high school friends did to get to California. They lived to tell the story," Thompson said.

"They are telling the story themselves, which is what is so fascinating about it," Webster said.

Webster borrowed many of the letters from the library to do her research for the book.

"The letters are interesting to see because people did not have letter-sized paper and would write all the way across and even in the margins and then turned it sideways and wrote more. The ink looked brown on the paper," she said.

Thompson said the letters were folded and the address was placed on the outside.

"Kinsman residents are very conscious of their history," Webster said.

Thompson said there also are letters exchanged between Lemira Parker and Dr. Peter Allen's daughter, who was at Oberlin College.

He said he has contacted Oberlin College archives in the hope it might have saved some of those letters from Lemira from Kinsman.

"We have both sides of the letters from Kinsman to California, and only have the one side from Oberlin to Kinsman. We have no letters from written from Kinsman to Oberlin. It would great to have the other letters," Thompson said.

Webster said the Western Reserve Historical Society has just accepted the book into their stacks, for use by genealogists.

The book will be available this summer at the Kinsman library and the Peter Allen Inn, where book signings are planned.

LIBRARY COLLECTION

Nicole Straub, Kinsman Free Public Library reference and adult services librarian, has assisted Thompson and Webster when they come to the library. She said the library has received a $2,429 grant from the Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board to help inventory, re-house and digitize the historical collection. She said those records include items pertaining to local families, churches, schools and railroads.

Straub said Kinsman is a rural community that was home to many prominent families and individuals, such as attorney Clarence Darrow.

The Kinsman library's collection of local history objects and archival materials is stored and displayed in the local history room.

She said the OHRAB grant will preserve the materials and make them accessible for generations to come.