2018 has been a good year for the Firelands History Website. Today, we’ll take stock of the year’s most viewed posts. With apologies to David Letterman, here is my top 10 list.

#10 – Sufferers’ Land – Post 10 – Women’s Life on the Frontier. Frontier women endured a life of constant work, with no respite from dawn to dusk — and usually continuing after dark.

#9 – Battle of Chickamauga III – A Cup and a Spoon. Somewhere on the fought-over ground, David found and carried away with him a coin silver spoon and a gracefully shaped pewter cup, lightly engraved with the Masonic emblem. On the back of the spoon is “Dr. Wm. R. Lemon, 82nd Regt., Ind. Vol.”

#8 – Norwalk Basketball Champions 1907: Who Were They? Who were these boys? Was the bespectacled young man sitting center front row a player, or the coach. And what’s with the teddy bear sitting on the basketball in his lap?

#7- A Wasted Life. I confess that my image of reformatory schools in the early 19th century was Dickensian: miserable inmates enduring harsh treatment inflicted by cruel guards and matrons.

#6 – Norwalk, Ohio in the Civil War. David Benedict had been with the Union army since the beginning of the war. Captured at Chickamauga, he was held prisoner at Libby Prison for a few months before being exchanged. He returned to his regiment before the Battle of Atlanta, then, after the fall of that city, participated in Sherman’s March to the Sea.

#5 – Temporary Derangement. Laura’s mother dangled from the rafter, a noose tight around her neck.

#4 – Battle of Chickamauga I – Muskets and Medicine. Suddenly, from beyond the road sounded the blood-curdling Rebel yell, and a group of horsemen burst from the woods. Hyde seized the sheet from the amputating table and waved a bloody flag of truce.

#3 – Battle of Chickamauga II – General Nathan Bedford Forrest Comes to Breakfast. At sunrise on Monday, two Confederate generals, Forrest and Cheatham, rode into camp, tied their horses and remarked casually that they had come to breakfast.

#2 – A Home in the Wilderness Revisited. Two hundred years ago today, September 9, 1817, Platt and Sally Benedict and their family arrived in the Sufferers’ Land of northern Ohio, ending a two month trek from their home in Connecticut.

#1 – One Night in Norwalk, Ohio – A Hitchhiker’s Tale. To my knowledge I have spent only one night in Norwalk, Ohio: Thursday, September 27, 1973, forty-four years ago today. How do I know that, you may ask? I’ll tell you. 

That’s it. Thanks to everyone who visited this past year. Please return often in 2018 to learn more about the Firelands of northern Ohio.

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