A Crowd Gathered in Milan in the 1890s (Mystery Photo)

In the late 1890s, amateur photographers from Milan, F.T. Cooke and K.P. Ruggles, took photographs of a crowd gathering to hear someone speak in front of an electric railway car. There was no information accompanying the original picture as to the people in the scene, or the reason for the gathering. The man speaking at the time was moving when the picture was taken, so his face is blurred. Several other men are sitting nearby on the speakers' platform.

As was the custom of the time, almost all the people were wearing hats. The ladies’ dresses were floor length. The streetcar was part of the Sandusky, Milan & Norwalk Electric Railway line that was in operation at that time. Frank T. Cooke moved from Milan to Oberlin, where he became an agent for the Eastman Kodak Company. Mr. Cooke worked as a photo finisher at the A.G. Comings and Son bookstore for several years. If anyone has more details about this scene from Milan, please leave a message in the comments section of this post.

Edit: If you look closely particularly at the second image you could see portraits of men, draped in bunting, suggesting that this might be a political rally of some sort. William McKinley ran for Governor in 1891 and President in 1896, but the visible portraits do not show his face. Could he be the blurred-faced man speaking? We don't know, but have some doubts.

The Sandusky, Milan & Norwalk Electric Railway

Pictured below is Car No. 9 of the Sandusky, Milan & Norwalk Electric Railway, near the northwest corner of Monroe and Hancock Streets in Sandusky. William Brehm’s dry goods store is visible at the left. Notes with the original picture indicate that Walter Rieger is one of the boys in the photograph.

The Sandusky, Milan & Norwalk Electric Railway was in operation from Sandusky to Milan beginning in July of 1893. The line from Milan to Norwalk began running in September, 1893. The track connected with the Peoples Electric Railway in Sandusky. The electric railway car below is in Norwalk, Ohio.

In 1901 the Sandusky, Milan & Norwalk Electric Railway became part of the Lake Shore Electric Railway. The Lake Shore Electric Railway was closed out in 1938, with the Lake Shore Coach Co., a bus transportation facility taking its place. The Lake Shore Coach Co. was sold to Greyhound in 1949.

An earlier streetcar line in Sandusky, the Sandusky Street Railway Company, was drawn along the tracks by horse. Chapter XVII of Charles E. Frohman’s book Sandusky's Yesterdays, entitled “Trolley Days,” provides historical information about early transportation in Sandusky. A sixteen page illustrated booklet by R. G. Morrison, The Sandusky, Milan and Norwalk Electric Railway, is housed in the Transportation Collection of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center. To view this item, inquire at the Reference Services Desk in the lower level of the Sandusky Library.