Plaque Honoring Sandusky’s Pioneers

 You might have driven past this monument many times and not noticed it, but it deserves recognition. It is a tribute to the founders of Sandusky.

On June 25, 1937 members of the Martha Pitkin Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution unveiled a plaque honoring several of Sandusky’s pioneer citizens at the triangular park located between Huron Avenue, Wayne, and East Adams Streets. The bronze plaque, created by A. J. Balconi, was placed on a three ton boulder at the park.

Names on the top portion of the plaque include the founders of Sandusky:  Zalmon Wildman, Isaac Mills, and George Hoadley. On the bottom portion are the names of the nine men who directed the incorporation of Sandusky as a city in 1824. They were: Dr. George Anderson, Aaron C. Corbet, Cyrus W. Marsh, Alexander Clemons, Eleutheros Cooke, John Wheeler, William Townsend, William Kelly, and Moors Farwell, who served as Sandusky’s first mayor. Several of these men were Masons; an article in a 1937 issue of the Sandusky Masonic Bulletin recognized them and the construction and dedication of the monument

Visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center to learn more about the pioneer residents of Sandusky, Ohio. And be sure to stop and visit the monument in the park sometime.

Amy Ruth Kelly, Biographer of Eleanor of Aquitane

An article about Amy R. Kelly appeared in the June 9, 1911 issue of the Sandusky Register. While on faculty at Wellesley College, she and Laura E. Lockwood edited the book, Letters That Live.

Over one hundred fifty letters appeared in the book, representing seventy authors, including Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and Emily Dickinson. The New York Times covered the book in its “Review of Books” section on May 7, 1911.

Miss Kelly is best known for her book, Eleanor of Aquitane and the Four Kings, published in 1950 by the Harvard University Press.  It was the first New York Times bestseller for that publisher. Even though it was written over fifty years ago, many maintain that Miss Kelly’s book it is still the best written biography about Eleanor, mother of Richard the Lionhearted; it has been republished multiple times through the 1990s, and remains in print.  While doing research for the book, Amy Kelly made six trips to Europe to retrace Eleanor’s steps. Her research was meticulous. Time Magazine carried an article about the book in an article “The Greatest Frenchwoman” published in June, 1950.

Amy Ruth Kelly was born in Port Clinton, the daughter of Judge Malcolm Kelly. Judge Kelly was a judge of Erie County Common Pleas Court from 1892 to 1897. He also had served in several offices in Ottawa County (including a term as Mayor of Port Clinton), and was held in high esteem by the Bar Association. (He was a grandson of William Kelly, builder of the Marblehead Lighthouse.) Amy’s mother was active in women’s suffrage activities in Erie County; she donated this “Let Ohio Women Vote” poster to the historical collections of the Sandusky Library.

Amy Kelly lived the last years of her life with her sister Elizabeth “Bessie” Kelly  in Miami, Florida, where she died in February of 1962.

Mrs. Malcolm Kelly, Library Trustee and Suffragist

Mrs. Malcolm Kelly was born Susan Smith, a daughter of John and Eleanor Smith, who were pioneer residents of Sandusky County, Ohio. In 1876 Susan Smith married attorney Malcolm Kelly, who later became a Circuit Judge. Judge and Mrs. Kelly lived in Sandusky from 1898 through the 1920s. 

In October of 1912, Susan Kelly was part of a group of women who formed a Women’s Suffrage organization in Erie County. The women spoke at local club meetings, granges, and farmers’ institutes, to solicit members and pass resolutions favorable to women receiving the right to vote. The members of the Equal Suffrage League of Erie County decorated automobiles and rode in the Perry Centennial Celebration parade in Sandusky on September 8, 1913. (To read more about women’s suffrage in Erie County, see the January 1921 issue of the Firelands Pioneer.) Though we do not have a picture of the ladies’ decorated automobile, here is a picture of downtown Sandusky at the time of the Perry Centennial Celebration.

For many years in the early twentieth century, Mrs. Kelly served on the board of trustees of the Library Association of Sandusky. While serving as secretary of that board, Mrs. Kelly prepared an annual report which was printed in the Sandusky Register of January 4, 1922.

Susan Kelly was active in several women’s organizations, including the Martha Pitkin Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Monday Literary Club, the Nineteenth Century Club, the Women’s Rest Room Association, and she was the former president of the Sandusky Federation of Women’s Clubs. 

Mrs. Susan Kelly died on November 9, 1935 in Westchester County, New York, at the age of 86. An obituary which appeared in the November 12, 1935 issue of the Sandusky Register stated that Mrs. Kelly was “for years prominent in the women’s clubs and cultural life of Sandusky.” She was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ottawa County, next to her husband Judge Malcolm Kelly, who had died in 1923.

Mrs. Eunice Brown Dewitt on the Home Front in the Great War

Eunice Ann Brown was born in Danbury Township in 1832 to Loderick Brown and Margaret Kelly Brown. Loderick Brown was the Keeper of the Marblehead Lighthouse from 1849 to 1853. Mrs. Brown was the granddaughter of William Kelly, who built the Marblehead Lighthouse in 1822. Eunice married James Dewitt in 1876, but was widowed before 1900. She was a tireless worker during World War I, knitting one hundred and eleven pairs of socks for the soldiers overseas. Her goal was “to beat the Kaiser with my knitting needles.”

The Honor Roll, Erie County Edition provides photographs and biographies of the area soldiers who served in World War One, as well information about those who aided the war effort on the home front.