Benjamin Douglass’s World

While local historical books provide a lot of information, it is easy to forget that they were written by people who had their own backgrounds, biases, and perspectives.

“New Railroad Map of the Middle States.” George Woolworth Colton (1865). Library of Congress via Picryl, Public Domain.

Benjamin Douglass, who wrote the first book on Wayne County’s history in 1878, is no different. By the time Ben Douglass came along, local history books were very popular. The 1876 centennial made people more interested in learning about their local areas. As people moved to the far west and started towns, older towns in the Midwest, like in Ohio, began to write about their pasts.

Who was Ben Douglass?

A large red brick building with a white tower — First image: “Vermillion Institute, Hayesville, Ashland County.” Jerrye and Roy Klotz, MD. Wikimedia images, CC 4.0. Second image: A portrait of Benjamin Douglass on page 656 of History of Wayne County Ohio. Public Domain/No Known Restrictions on Copyright. Note that in many mentions of Douglass, his last name is spelled as ‘Douglas.’Third image: “Cleveland Park.” Sarony, Major & Knapp Lith., 1859. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

Portrait of Benjamin Douglass — First image: “Vermillion Institute, Hayesville, Ashland County.” Jerrye and Roy Klotz, MD. Wikimedia images, CC 4.0. Second image: A portrait of Benjamin Douglass on page 656 of History of Wayne County Ohio. Public Domain/No Known Restrictions on Copyright. Note that in many mentions of Douglass, his last name is spelled as ‘Douglas.’Third image: “Cleveland Park.” Sarony, Major & Knapp Lith., 1859. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

Benjamin Douglass’s family was Scottish and came from Pennsylvania in 1832. His father was a farmer. Benjamin Douglass was born four years later in Plain Township.¹ While today, historians earn degrees in history, early local historians came from a variety of backgrounds, but were most commonly white upper-middle-class men.² Douglass was well-educated, having attended secondary school and postsecondary education at the Vermillion Institute, which at the time was a respected college state-wide, and Cleveland Law College.³ After his education, Douglass would find a calling in speaking, journalism, and eventually, local history.

Douglass Goes West

THIS SECTION CONTAINS DISCUSSIONS OF VIOLENCE

A large crowd poses in front of two train cars, while a man in the middle hands another man a bottle

First image: Recruitment ads from the Wooster Daily Republican, October 11th, 1861. Public Domain. Second image: Portrait of Brigham Young taken by Charles William Carter, 1860s-1870s. Wikimedia Images, public domain. Third image: Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad with the meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads, 1869. Andrew Russell, Wikimedia Images, US Public Domain.

Douglass wore many hats in his lifetime.

He set out to be a lawyer and was admitted to the bar in 1861, but when the Civil War hit, he became a recruiter. After the war, he continued his speaking career and tried to gain support for the passage of the 14^th Amendment and travelled as far as Nevada and California. He then wrote a speech about his recruiting efforts and traveled West.

According to the Wayne County Biographical Record, Douglass was able to meet with Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormon Church to conduct an interview. On his way, he stopped at other cities in the West such as Benton, Wyoming, which boomed in the 1860s but is now a ghost town.⁴

While the original talk has been lost to the historical record, we can find helpful summaries from the Wooster Daily Republican. According to those who attended, Douglass gave Wooster residents a vivid picture of what the American West looked like in 1868: he celebrated the building of the Continental Railroad and described which areas were rich in minerals or soil.

Douglass had a front-row seat to westward expansion.

First image: “At the Sand Creek Massacre” Howling Wolf, 1875. Wikimedia images, public domain. Second image: Sand Creek Massacre Memorial, 1985. Wikimedia images, CC 3.0.

From the way that he talks about the railroad and the rich landscape, we can tell that he saw white settlement of the west as a good thing. Douglass thinks about the white settlement of Ohio and the West in very similar ways. Much like how westward expansion and the arrival of the pioneers pushed Indigenous people out of Ohio and Wayne County, in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, western Indigenous nations, like the Comanche, Apache, Nez Perce, Sioux, Shoshone, and Navaho were experiencing the same violence and removal that Ohio’s Indigenous nations faced 100 years earlier.

By the 1860s, the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandotte faced removal from Kansas to Oklahoma to make way for further white settlement and the Transcontinental Railroad.⁵ Meanwhile, conflicts between western Indigenous groups and the US Military or white settlers were justified in many of the same ways that Douglass justified violence towards and removal of Indigenous people in Ohio. A few years before Douglass arrived in the West, the United States killed hundreds of Cheyenne people, including women, the elderly, and children, based on reports that Cheyenne warriors had killed a white settler family. The event was later called the Sand Creek Massacre. The massacre was justified as an effort to make Colorado safer for white settlers. The Massacre of Gnadenhutten, which occurred in Ohio in 1782, rested on the same justification.⁶

After Douglass observed westward expansion in the far west, he began to write about white expansion into Ohio, and took the side of white settlers.

When Douglass returned from the West, he almost immediately began to write History of Wayne County, Ohio. Not only did his time out West influence his perspective, but he also drew upon other local historians and racial pseudoscience to write his work.