The Council passed an ordinance to divide Bowling Green into four wards: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ward respectively.

- January-

• Fire! The American Foundry & Machine Company's Works was almost totally destroyed by fire. The damage was $20,000 with only slight insurance.

- March-

• Democrat and Republican conventions were held.

- April-

• Elections of Mayor, Clerk, Treasurer, Marshal, State Commissioner, Solicitor, Councilman, Cemetery Trustee, etc. for each ward took place in Bowling Green.
• Fire! At about 10:00 p.m. fire wiped out seven of 11 buildings on the west side of Main Street, between Conley's grocery and the Reed & Merry Block. The fire started on the rear of Frank Van Camp's restaurant. This was Bowling Green's third big fire in four years.
• The republican electors of Wood County met in mass convention at Bowling Green at 10:30 a.m. on April 21st for the purpose of choosing 21 delegates to represent Wood County in the district convention to be held at Toledo, Monday, April 25th, and also to choose 11 delegates and 11 alternates to represent the county in the Republican State Convention to be held April 27 in the city of Cleveland.

- May -

• Oil Strike! Black & Reese struck a big oil well (1, 200 barrels) on the Wesley Erving Farm, three miles northwest of Bowling Green. According to the Wood County Sentinel (May 19, 1892), until then "the Black & Reese ha[d] put down many wells in Wood County since the field opened, and ha[d] experienced all kinds of luck but good."
• The Democrats of Wood County met in mass convention at the Court House, Saturday, May 28 to select delegates to the judicial, congressional and district convention to select national delegates to Chicago.

- June -

• Water service established in Bowling Green

- July -

• The ground for the new Town Hall was broken on July 11, 1892.

- August -

• A Republican convention met on August 16th at the Opera House to nominate a ticket and select delegates while, the Democrats met at the Court House to nominate a county ticket and select delegates.
• The proposition of W.S. Coon & Co. to put in a water works plant for Bowling Green was ratified by an almost unanimous vote.
• The Ringling Brothers' World's Greatest Shows came to Bowling Green and performed at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. According to the Wood County Sentinel (September 1, 1892), the afternoon was filled with an estimate of 4,000 people. Two thousand five hundred people attended the evening performance.

- September -

• The 11th Annual Fair of Wood County was held at Bowling Green.

- November -

• Elections of President, Secretary of State, Circuit Judge, Congressman, Sheriff, Commissioner, Infirmary Director, Surveyor, etc. were held. Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected for President.

- December -

• Wallace H. Smith, cashier of the Commercial Bank, Corporation Treasurer, and one of the most popular men of Bowling Green was found dead. He had committed suicide.

-1893 -

- February -

• Wood County farmers held their Twelfth Annual Institute.

- March -

• A Republican ward meeting was held to nominate candidates and select delegates to March 20 evening's convention.
• A Democrat Convention was held to nominate a corporation ticket.

- June -

• The Town Hall was finished. (The population growth created a need for a Town Hall. Therefore, the City Council had passed a resolution in 1892 and submitted it to a vote of the people. Ground was broken on July 11, 1892.)
• There was a little fire in the shoe store of Eberly & McClelland, in the Buckeye Block. However, according to the Wood County Sentinel (June 29, 1893) "the fire was not enough to give the new water works a chance to show off."

- August -

• A Democrat Convention was held to select delegates to the State Convention at Cincinnati, on the 9th and 10th and also to the Senatorial convention at Toledo on the 17th of August.
• A Republican Convention was held at the Court House to select 17 delegates and 17 alternates to the County Convention.

- September -

The 12th Annual Exhibition of the World County Fair Company was held in Bowling Green.

- October -

• William McKinley, governor of the State of Ohio, visited Bowling Green for the Republican meeting on October 7th.
• An oil explosion occurred about 10:00 in the evening on the Canfield farm, 3 miles south of Bowling Green, and two men, Joe Topper and Bob Henderson, were badly burned and died.

- November -

• Elections of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Senators, Representatives, Treasurer, Auditor, Prosecuting Attorney, Clerk, Commissioner, Coroner, Infirmary Director, etc. were held.
• W.S. Haskell was elected as Mayor of Bowling Green.

 [INSERT PICTURE OF HASKELL]

--from Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio; Its Past and Present. (1897). Chicago: J.H. Beers & Co. (p. 456).

• Dick Biggs accepted the position of night watch and fire chief and began working towards re-organizing the fire department.

 - December -

• The Fire Department was once again reorganized. Richard Biggs was appointed Chief, and Charles Hannah elected as captain. About a year later, the firemen decided to name the department after Biggs. (Sometime in 1893, the council authorized a "partial salaried" Fire Department.)
• The old building of the Wood County Court House was deserted and was handed over to Contractor Townsend for demolotion.
• A terrible accident occurred at the old Court House construction site when the roof fell in and injured six men, two of them very serious.
• The farmers had their 14th Annual Session of Farmer's Institute.

-1894-

• "Old Mackie" house located at Mr. Ararat at Napolean and Main torn down.
• Rev. Father Kress adds addition to St. Aloysius (cost $1200)
• June 19th Arthur B. Murphy nominates Robert S. Parker (R) for Congress - Southard wins nomination and election.
• Court House cornerstone laid.
• Hefting blocks erected downtown
• The T, BG & S line extended south to the B&O line (railroad)
• June 29 violent weather "one of the greatest electrical storms ever known in Wood County." Summers heavy rainfall and temperatures in the 100s are not unusual.
• July 4 celebrations bring upwards of 25,000 people to Bowling Green.
• Summer scarcity of office space in town and residences presents some hardships for Bowling Green residents.
• Summer traveling circuses bring "riff-raff" ie., "gypsies." Also "summer niggers" "gangs of toughs" and "horsetraders" frequent the prospering town, offend middle-class sensibilities, commit crimes and serve as scapegoats.
• Bowling Green has "everything" but a fish market.
• Populist Party rally in city park "not well attended."
• School opens in Bowling Green; many Ohio cities celebrate Labor Day, but not Bowling Green.

-1895-

• Milliken Hotel and business rooms completed. Bowling Green's population 4000 (+); 800 families.
• Church communicants: Methodist - Epispcopals make up largest church-going population in the city followed by 450 folks attending United Brethren, 225 at Church of Christ, 122 Baptist Church and fewer than 65 families attending the Catholic Church.
• Pipe organ (a Johnson and Sons tracker organ) in First Presbyterian dedicated.
• Gubernatiorial race with Jacob Coxey, People's Party candidate from Massillon running.
• Population Stats: average age of death: men 63.8 women 66.6; births peaked in 1895 (stats from 1820-1900) 38 births; 15 deaths; 18 girls born; 5 men died. City grew by 1600 in the last decade; about 1/4 to birth; 3/4 to new settlers.
• Glass workers make up about 1% of the city's population.

-1896-

• First reunion of the Women's Relief Corps.
• D. A. Haylor hired as superintendent of school board.
• Isaac Fenberg is sentenced to 20 dyays for receiving stolen goods and fined $50.00 a day.
• Senator Hankey introduuces a bill to increase Wood County Commissioners salary from $3.00 a day to $1,500 a year.
• Mrs. E. A. Barton, wife of Councilman Barton dies.

 April

• Council passes resolution to allow W. H. Milliken to have half the street around his building
• Milliken Hotel has water trouble

  May

• R. S. Parker lays a new foundation for his building
• Carpenters start working on the Von Kanel lot.
• Milliken replaces a fence around his building.

 July

• A. Froney and W. H. Milliken close an important real estate deal
•  Levi Leffler and Anson Heil (wood choppers) rob a peddler named Tom B. Shara of five dollars.
• First Boxwell examinations of the year.
• Toledo is connected to Fremont by an electric street railway.
• William K. Hance files suit against T & O. C. Railway Company for scraing his horse.
• Teacher's Institute holds meeting in which almost 200 teachers attend.
• C. D. Yonkey, J. C. Lincoln and Son, Ford and St. John, D. D. Downing and J. P. Marshall and Company charged with violating cigarette law.

 September

• Wood County Courthouse completed.
• W. H. Milliken's new electric plant located near the Bowling Green Electric Light and Power Company

-1897-

January

• Hotel Milliken opens for business.

 March

• Sam M. Jones (Republican Candidate for Mayor in Toledo) addresses the Lincoln Club

-1898-

January

• The Wood County Beet Sugar Manufacturing Company is chartered, and stock subscriptions are sold.

February

• O. J. Johnson announces the name of the town's new canning company: The Bowling Green Canning Company.
• In Havana the warship Maine explodes. US naval forces are mobilized, says the Sentinel: "naval authorities at Washington have been making arrangements to meet any attack from Spain. If trouble comes it will find the administration prepared."

March

• From the Sentinel: "The situation to-night. . . is the most active preparation for war that this country has ever known since the dark days just preceding the rebellion" of 1861. "It is sufficiently understood that whatever action is undertaken by the administration, it will not be a half-way one under the present emergency."
• William Carlisle and the Bowling Green Water Company submit to the mayor and council a proposal to sell the waterworks for a price of $100,000.
• Sheriff Biggs breaks up a cockfight. Writes the Democrat: "cock fights have been periodical occurrences in Wood county but this is the first time that the officers succeeded in catching on until the affair was over."

April

• President McKinley issues to Spain an ultimatum to forestall war. "The United States has declared war upon one of the nations of the world," writes the Sentinel. "Every American citizen should be a patriot, and every patriot will stand by his chief and assist in the conflict at the earliest possible moment, if conflict it must be." Bowling Green soldiers are in Company K and in Company H, whose men "went to the front, and who will fulfill all of the predictions made of them."

May

• Admiral Dewey's naval forces engage the Spanish fleet at Manila. A Sentinel headline boasts that Dewey "Gave the Dons a Good Thrashing." As to the Philippines: "It is not believed that the Philippines are capable of self-government. They are ignorant, uneducated, and depraved, and, although naturally, a peaceful and submissive people, are easily aroused by grievances or appeals to their superstition."

June:

• A fire on North Main Street behind the Orme and Rogers buildings destroys six barns and kills the twelve horses inside them. Several vehicles are also destroyed, including the undertaking cars of D. W. Young. The fire's cause looks suspicious.
• Grocer James Zimmerman is found robbed and murdered in his store. A young African American man, Charles Nelson of the town's east side, is arrested and charged.
• The Bowling Green Canning Company is preparing for business, ready to employ, in peak production, 120 to 140 persons. Moreover, the company is considering adding a line: the manufacture of cob pipes.

July:

• The Sentinel writes that "it will now be necessary for certain European military writers to revise their estimates of American skill and bravery. Two of the greatest victories ever recorded in naval history have fallen in quick succession to the American navy."
• The Sentinel writes on the overwhelming vote in the US Senate to annex Hawaii: "The Hawaiian Islands afford an excellent field for the investment of American capital and industry. . . . With the new responsibilities resting upon this nation it was absolutely essential that we have control of these islands."
• The Sentinel addresses Central America: "Now that the spirit of progression and the realization of manifest destiny is upon congress, it would be well to push the Nicaraguan Canal scheme."
• Charles Nelson is found guilty of the murder of James Zimmerman. The next day Judge Taylor sentences him to execution. "The trial of Charles Nelson," boasts the Democrat, "was the least expensive of any murder trial in the history of the county."

August:

• The Sentinel reviews the Philippines after the battle at Manila: "`Manifest destiny,' or whatever term you give it, says that we must prevent the rule of Spain from ever again dominating the Philippines. . . . Whether or not we shall assume the responsibility for these turbulent peoples ourselves is another question."

November:

• Charles Nelson, the African American convicted of the murder of James Zimmerman, is executed in the electric chai

December:

• A year-end review of the town's most prosperous businesses includes the Palace Drug Store; Ross and Avery hardware; Frank A. Conant's shoe store; the Jim Marshall and Co. grocery; and eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist Dr F. W. Rogers.

-1899-

January:

• A review of the local oil business in 1898 shows a promising outlook. December was the most prosperous single month of the last four years, and the entire year was not marred by a fatal and destructive explosion. In Wood County 978 wells produced 19,805 barrels.
• The board of County Visitors, condemning the existing county jail as inadequate, urges construction of a new one.
• The Bowling Green Canning Company will expand, canning not only tomatoes but also corn.
• The Military Band performs a minstrel show at the Opera House. The auditorium is packed with an audience that enjoys not only vocal solos but also, says the Democrat, the "burnt cork artists" as well as "Uncle Sam with his new acquisitions--Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines and Hawaii, represented by Harold St. John, Robert Rudulph, Katie Ordway and Ethel Ott, all properly costumed."

February:

• Wood County reports the drilling of seventeen new oil wells.

March:

• The Adjutant General's office announces that no Ohioans who volunteered in the Spanish American War were killed.
• John and Paul Zeltner are arrested for the murders of Clarence Wittenmyer and well-known attorney E. H. Westenhaver.

April:

• Jeff Richerek adds to his furniture business an undertaking establishment, to be managed by J. T. Bever, whose eight years' experience in town has earned his high reputation as an embalmer and funeral director.
• The Sentinel prints a letter from a soldier in the First Idaho Volunteers. Bunnard S. Maxwell from Findlay recalls to his family that "I said that if we ever opened on these savages, they would never know what happened to them."

May:

• The Bowling Green Gas Company, dealing in artificial gas, will begin operations in July on North Grove Street.
• A spring storm--"a regular twister in some localities," says the Sentinel--blows through the county. In Bowling Green the U. B. Church building is damaged by a felled maple tree, and south of town Ike McCone's barn is unroofed. In July E. B. Garriott of the Weather Bureau advises people who see an approaching tornado to "throw open every door and window in their house and then wait for the storm to pass over."

June:

• Friedlich and Co. clothiers announce special prices on flags for the upcoming holiday. Large (8' x 5') flags with brass grommets and canvas headings sell for only $1.25.

July:

• The treasurer's office reports that the number of both saloons and cigarette dealers is declining. Bowling Green has 17 percent of the county's saloons, and the town's annual cigarette tax revenue is $15.

August:

• Thunder and lightning warn Bowling Green residents of an approaching storm, but the dark clouds produce not rain but insects. Says the Sentinel: "They were everywhere. Myriads of them fell on the streets about the electric lights and the sidewalks were almost slippery from them. . . . They appear to be a cross between a katydid and a cricket. They are smaller than a cricket and have wings large enough to apparently fly any distance."
• Convicted in the murders of Wittenmyer and Westenhaver, John Zeltner is sentenced to twenty years' hard labor. John is convicted of manslaughter; his brother Paul is later convicted of first-degree murder.

September:

• The new Bowling Green Telephone Company will take over the old People's Telephone Company plant. A line already connected to Butler, Indiana, allows people at each end to hear each other "as plainly as though they were in the same room."
• Charles Billheimer is arrested for bigamy. In 1894 he married Kate Seybert, says the Democrat, then enlisted in Company K during the Spanish war "till the regiment was mustered out. He then returned to Wood county, and on June 17, 1899, he married Miss Mertle Mercer, of Henry township, without having obtained a divorce from his first wife."

October:

• Fire on North Grove Street destroys the old Royce and Coon elevator as well as barns belonging to Sam Riess and D. B. Brown.
• Mark Hanna addresses a crowd that packs the Grand Opera House, telling them, "The abolition of trusts would stop all industries." The Democrat reports that the Republican Hanna read "in a very lame manner."

November:

• Unofficial results of the election show that Bowling Green voters, by a margin of 601 to 250, help elect Republican George Nash governor.
• Grove Street residents object to both the crookedness and the very presence of telephone poles on their street built by the United States Telephone Company.

December:

• Board of Improvement secretary Rudulph receives a letter from the manufacturer of a ball-bearing umbrella expressing interest in setting up a factory in town.
• The Sentinel prints a celebration of the new M. E. Church on the corner of Prospect and East Wooster, "one of the most beautiful and perfectly constructed temples of worship ever made by hands."
• The town's merchants report their best holiday business ever.

Last modified Spring of 1999 Ken Dvorak. "Welcome to the Crystal City" web site is a joint project produced by Dr. William Grant and Ken Dvorak at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA. For more information or to send comments, please direct email to wgrant@bgnet.bgsu.edu or kdvorak@bgnet.bgsu.edu. Thank you.