Today in Wheeling History: September 3--Edward "Pop" Geers, famed harness racing driver, dies from injuries suffered at the West Virginia State Fair (1924).
 
Edward Franklin "Pop" Geers was born January 25, 1851, on a farm near Lebanon, Tennessee, to William Gideon Geers and Emily Woolard. He discovered a passion for horses in boyhood and won his first race at the Wilson County Fair at age 20, driving Little Dave to a time of 3:04. Four years later he opened his own training stable at Major Brown's Swell Stock Farm in Spring Hill, Tennessee, launching a career that would make him one of harness racing's greatest figures. Nicknamed "The Silent Man from Tennessee" for his modest, quiet demeanor, Geers developed the famed Hal family of pacers, drove champions like Brown Hal, Hal Pointer, Robert J., Star Pointer, and Napoleon Direct, and was among the first drivers to adopt the lightweight, pneumatic-tire bicycle sulky. His decades on the Grand Circuit earned him nearly $2 million in prize winnings. In September 1924, the 73-year-old Geers came to Wheeling to exhibit his champions Peter Manning and Sanardo at the West Virginia State Fair, with September 2 declared "Pop Geers Day" in his honor. Driving his mare Miladi Guy, he was thrown when she stumbled and fell, fracturing his skull; he died hours later at Ohio Valley General Hospital. The next day, 50,000 mourners gathered at the fairgrounds for a memorial service. He was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Columbia, Tennessee. On the 100th anniversary of his death, the Ohio County Public Library's Lunch With Books series hosted researcher Sarah Elizabeth Hickman-McLeod for a program on his life, in partnership with Oglebay Institute's Mansion Museum.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia – Edward Geers (https://tinyurl.com/3dbs487d), Harness Racing Museum – Edward F. Geers (https://tinyurl.com/mw9hww7d), Wilson County Agricultural Hall of Fame – Edward "Pop" Geers (https://tinyurl.com/3r6499f5), Ohio County Public Library – Special Program on Pop Geers (https://tinyurl.com/kjhhc5su), Harness Racing Update – Remembering Pop Geers (https://tinyurl.com/bdewfsbw), Find a Grave – Edward Franklin Geers (https://tinyurl.com/3xem3rfm), YouTube – The Life and Times of Edward Franklin "Pop" Geers (https://tinyurl.com/4jrjfxch), The New York Times – "50,000 Pay Tribute to Geers's Memory" (https://tinyurl.com/4dz8e69v)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons, Find a Grave  

​Today in Wheeling History: September 2--Jacob Brittingham, beloved rector emeritus of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, died at his Woodsdale home (1926).
 
Reverend Dr. Jacob Brittingham, affectionately known as the "Bishop of Wheeling Island," passed away at 6:45 p.m. on September 2, 1926, at his home at 24 Walnut Avenue, Woodsdale, at age seventy-four. Born near Eastville in Northampton County, Virginia, on September 25, 1852, to Elijah and Virginia S. H. (Nottingham) Brittingham, he was raised in a devout Episcopal family of English descent. He graduated from the Episcopal High School near Alexandria, Virginia, and studied for three years at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. After teaching for three years—one year in Hardy County and two years as principal at Moorefield—he entered the Theological Seminary of Virginia on September 25, 1878. Ordained to the deaconate on June 24, 1881, and to the priesthood on June 13, 1882, he served Episcopal missions throughout West Virginia before becoming rector of Christ Church, Clarksburg, on August 12, 1883. On January 25, 1889, he accepted a call to St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Wheeling Island, where he served faithfully for thirty-six years until retiring on March 19, 1924. Washington and Jefferson College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1912. He married Florence Virginia Shearer on September 5, 1882; she died in 1890. Their son, Philip Shearer Brittingham, drowned while serving as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1904. In 1896, Dr. Brittingham married Sarah Ford Beaumont. He was survived by his widow and daughter, Mrs. Laura Beaumont Whitley of Woodsdale. A member of Bates Lodge No. 33, A.F. & A.M., and the West Virginia Consistory of the Scottish Rite, Dr. Brittingham was renowned for his interfaith work and civic involvement, earning the devotion of Wheeling citizens of all faiths.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV (https://tinyurl.com/2bmt4anz) (https://tinyurl.com/2s3th7yz); Find a Grave (https://tinyurl.com/ypvcc3jm), Wikipedia: Florence V. Brittingham (https://tinyurl.com/3rt22xmh), Wheeling Register (https://tinyurl.com/6fu6muaw), Wheeling Intelligencer (https://tinyurl.com/mrjmhtkp)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons, Find a Grave, Google Maps

Today in Wheeling History: September 1—Thomas Glenn, frontier surveyor and namesake of Warwood's Glenova neighborhood, is killed at the First Siege of Fort Henry (1777).
 
Thomas Glenn was born in 1750 in the Pennsylvania Colony. Little is documented about his upbringing, but by 1774—and possibly earlier—he had settled in present-day Wheeling with his wife, having married before that year. In April 1774, Glenn was surveying along the Ohio River with a small party under Lawrence Darnell when they were captured by Shawnee warriors and held for three days before being released. That same year, Glenn and his younger brother David joined James Harrod's expedition down the Ohio River, becoming part of the 32 men who founded Harrodstown, Kentucky, on June 16, 1774—the earliest permanent European settlement west of the Appalachians. The brothers went on to explore large portions of Kentucky, from Frankfort to Russell Springs.
 
Glenn returned to the Wheeling area and was killed during the First Siege of Fort Henry, which began September 1, 1777. Marching alongside Captain Samuel Mason during a militia sortie, Glenn shot and killed a Native warrior, triggering an ambush by a force of roughly 200 Wyandot, Mingo, Shawnee, and Lenape fighters. Attempting to flee back to the fort, Glenn was struck in the back by a thrown tomahawk and killed, likely scalped as well. He was 26 or 27 years old. His estate was later claimed on behalf of his sons by his brother David in 1780. Glenns Run, a stream rising east of Wheeling and emptying into the Ohio River in Warwood, and Glenova, Warwood's northern section, are both believed named for him.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia – Thomas Glenn [pioneer] (https://tinyurl.com/3rdbmxhv), Harrodsburg/Harrodstown history overview [context for Glenn's Kentucky work] (https://tinyurl.com/hhu7p49v), Wheeling News-Register - Historic Warwood Structures Explored (https://tinyurl.com/mr3fa8p9), The Clio - Warwood High School [Warwood Town Center] (https://tinyurl.com/332s4kza), Ohio County Public Library - The Fort Henry Story by Klein and Cooper (https://tinyurl.com/y3bya6b9), Wikipedia - Siege of Fort Henry [1777] (https://tinyurl.com/5h3f4epn), Grokipedia - Thomas Glenn [pioneer] (https://tinyurl.com/55u77efu), Historical Marker Database - Fort Henry: "The Bloody Year of the Three Sevens" (https://tinyurl.com/2a9r5t6b), Historical Marker Database - Ft. Henry (https://tinyurl.com/yzbw48vf), Wikipedia - Glenns Run [Ohio River Tributary] (https://tinyurl.com/yhyvmme3)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wheeling News-Register, Wikimedia Commons, Historical Marker Database, Google Maps

​Today in Wheeling History: August 31 — Flash flood devastates Wheeling and the surrounding Ohio Valley, killing two (1975).
 
A catastrophic flash flood struck the Wheeling area on Sunday, August 31, 1975, when a cloudburst dumped roughly 4.8 inches of rain in two hours and about 7.6 inches over the weekend, sending 46 million gallons of water surging down the valley's hillsides. The Twenty-ninth Street–Fairmont Pike area, Warwood, and the Fulton and Leatherwood areas were among the hardest hit: in Warwood, floodwaters ripped up Eighth Street and roared downhill across Warwood Avenue, leaving cars trapped and streets impassable for hours. Woodsdale also suffered significant damage, as did McMechen and Benwood's Boggs Run neighborhood in Marshall County, where roughly 250 homes were damaged and dozens of vehicles washed away. The new Wheeling Hospital, dedicated just weeks earlier on Sunday, June 1, 1975, flooded on its lower level, forcing staff to evacuate more than 200 patients, carrying many down darkened stairwells; nurse Eleanor DiProsperis later called it among her most frightening professional memories. Hospital employees and volunteers pitched in for the cleanup, a formidable task given the scale of the damage. McMechen volunteer fireman Frank Criswell, 73, drowned trying to keep a flood-swept car from slamming into homes on Ninth Street; an unidentified female hospital patient died of cardiac arrest during the evacuation. By September 2, damage estimates topped $20 million across the tri-state area, and officials in Wheeling, Martins Ferry, Bellaire, Shadyside, and Belmont County sought disaster-area declarations. Cleanup crews worked around the clock clearing mud, debris, and washed-out bridges from streets across the region.
 
To learn more: West Virginia GenWeb [Ohio County] - The Warwood Disaster - August 31, 1975 (https://tinyurl.com/4rhxsa75), Facebook - Steubenville Ohio Buy Sell and Trade (https://tinyurl.com/3dkjy7dx), Wheeling News-Register and The Intelligencer - Damages Top $20 Million (https://tinyurl.com/3vw899uy), Archiving Wheeling - Angels of the Wards: All-Star Nurses of Wheeling (https://tinyurl.com/32cw7cbw)
 
Photo credits: Wheeling News-Register, Wheeling Intelligencer, Facebook

​Today in Wheeling History: August 30--Dr. Robert Otto McMaster, founder of Wheeling's McMaster Hospital, was granted a U.S. patent for a nasal respirator (1887).
 
Dr. Robert Otto McMaster, founder of Wheeling's first private hospital, was born January 5, 1852 (his obituary says January 3), in Belmont County, Ohio, son of Judge Robert McMaster and Mary Adeline Staley Rankin McMaster. Raised near Bellaire, he taught school before turning to medicine, graduating from Starling Medical College in Columbus in 1875. He trained further in New York and Europe before settling in Wheeling in the early 1880s.
 
In 1886 McMaster founded McMaster Hospital at 1108 Chapline Street, West Virginia's first private hospital, rebuilt in 1892 into a three-story institution with eighteen private rooms, an operating suite, elevators and electric call bells. He specialized in women's health and abdominal surgery. On August 30, 1887, he was granted U.S. Patent No. 369,019 for a nasal respirator, a rubber-or-celluloid mask secured by spring clamps gripping the nostrils, filtering dust and poisonous chemicals from inhaled air. It doubled as an inhaler for asthma and catarrh.
 
In 1876 he married Eleanor "Ella" Ault of Bellaire, Ohio; they had three children, including Mary L. Armstrong and Thomas Austin McMaster. A Mason, Shriner, and Knight Templar, he belonged to the Ohio County Medical Society and State Medical Association of West Virginia. After a long illness treated by the Mayo brothers and specialists in New York and New Hampshire, McMaster died December 6, 1907, at his daughter's home on Wheeling Island, and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery.
 
To learn more: Google Patents - US369019A - Nasal Respirator (https://tinyurl.com/yv4883h9), Wheeling Register - "A New Hospital" (https://tinyurl.com/5n888b74), Find a Grave - Dr. Robert Otto McMaster (https://tinyurl.com/22643wcj), Facebook - Appalachian Americans - "Wheeling Hospital chartered in 1850" (https://tinyurl.com/3barmbh9), West Virginia GenWeb [Ohio County] - From "History of Wheeling City and Ohio County, West Virginia and Representative Citizens," By Hon. Gibson Lamb Cranmer, 1902 - Dr. R. O. McMaster (https://tinyurl.com/3zxuwucj), Wheeling Daily Register - Saturday, December 7, 1907 - "Dr. M'Master Died Friday" (https://tinyurl.com/ms8ach57), HeritageQuest - 1900 U.S. Federal Census - Robert O. McMaster (https://tinyurl.com/3248zsbt), HeritageQuest - 1870 U.S. Federal Census - Robert O. McMaster (https://tinyurl.com/4u2pkp3b)
 
Photo credits: U.S. Patent Office, Find a Grave, Wheeling Daily Register

Today in Wheeling History: August 29—Norbert A. Myles, silent-film actor, director, and later Hollywood makeup artist, is born in Wheeling (1887).
 
Norbert Aloysius Myles was born August 29, 1887, in Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia, into a family already steeped in image-making: his grandfather William Myles, an immigrant from County Cork, Ireland, ran a Wheeling daguerreotype and ambrotype business, and his father John Myles was a portrait painter. As a young man, Myles built a stage career in Shakespearean repertory, minstrel shows, and vaudeville, and through the 1900s he was a fixture of Wheeling's amateur theatrical scene, appearing repeatedly in Carroll Club and Cathedral High School alumni productions covered in the Wheeling Register and Intelligencer. He entered film in 1913 with three Kalem Company shorts, then spent 1914 acting in twenty-six westerns for Eclair American in Tucson, later working for Signal, Victor, and Universal before becoming a Fox Film Corporation contract player in 1917. In 1920 he directed his most historically significant work, "The Daughter of Dawn," a silent Western with an all-Native American cast of Kiowa and Comanche performers; thought lost for decades, it was rediscovered in 2005 and entered the National Film Registry in 2013. He also directed "Walloping Wallace" (1924) and "Faithful Wives" (1926). After sound arrived, Myles shifted to makeup artistry, working on "The Wizard of Oz," "Stagecoach," and "Duel in the Sun," and became a 1937 charter member of Makeup Artists and Hair Stylists Local 706. He married Ethel Phillips Miles (d. 1949) and had two children, Terry Miles and June M. Gordon; at his death he was survived by 7 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild. He died March 15, 1966, in Los Angeles, and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.
 
To learn more: Grokipedia - Norbert A. Myles (https://tinyurl.com/4pdwvf6h), AFI Catalog - Norbert Myles (https://tinyurl.com/yc7xmr9b), IMDb - Norbert A. Myles (https://tinyurl.com/ykyvurpz), Highbrow Magazine - Norbert Myles (https://tinyurl.com/3jhv6xwm), Amazon - Norbert A. Myles (https://tinyurl.com/43t7u95f), The Criterion Collection - "The Daughter of Dawn's" Vanished World (https://tinyurl.com/2h2chm54), WVU - Subcultures in Conflict in Polonia (https://tinyurl.com/5n6fpz32), Wheeling Register - This Week in Social Circles (https://tinyurl.com/4ruk4543), Wheeling Intelligencer - Homeless Twenty-Six Banqueted at Park (https://tinyurl.com/589kam9s), Wheeling Intelligencer - Presented "Our Jim" (https://tinyurl.com/fu93ysub), Wheeling Intelligencer - Social Whirl - "Halloween Affair" (https://tinyurl.com/4p885vwe), Wheeling Register - "Halloween Party at Country Club" (https://tinyurl.com/pzjcawzy), Wheeling Register - Society (https://tinyurl.com/2kbmhm4w), Wheeling Register - Society (https://tinyurl.com/4hy5umue), Wheeling Register - The "Three Hats" (https://tinyurl.com/zj34mnzb), Wheeling Register - The Week in Society - Entertainments (https://tinyurl.com/467x7rst), Wheeling Register - "Banquet by Alumni of Cathedral H.S." (https://tinyurl.com/y93fjtv6), Wheeling Register - "Benefit for the Cathedral School" (https://tinyurl.com/bp54965y), Wikipedia - List of incomplete or partially lost films (https://tinyurl.com/ydv45mu2), Wikipedia - List of rediscovered films (https://tinyurl.com/2tnevcv8), Wikipedia - Daughter of Dawn (https://tinyurl.com/4efk5suf), HeritageQuest by Ancestry - Norbert Aloysius Miles (https://tinyurl.com/3yy358fn), Find a Grave - Norbert Aloysius Miles (https://tinyurl.com/bt4b6fk6)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wheeling Register, Wheeling Intelligencer, Wikimedia Commons, IMDb, Find a Grave, Wheeling Register, West Virginia & Regional History Center, Google Maps

​Today in Wheeling History: August 28—Wheeling’s first Labor Day celebration marks the city’s growing organized labor movement and civic pride (1886).
 
On Saturday, August 28, 1886, Wheeling held its first Labor Day celebration, organized by the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly. The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, reporting two days later on Monday, August 30, called it "the most imposing display of the kind...ever witnessed in the city." Over 3,000 marchers assembled in three divisions: the first made up of Knights of Labor assemblies under Marshal Edward Robertson, the second combining trades unions like the Typographical Union, Bricklayers, and Carpenters under Marshal A. H. Britt, and the third composed entirely of local and visiting glassworkers under Marshal Patrick McGrannahan. The procession wound through downtown streets before crossing the bridge to the State Fair Grounds, where an estimated 12,000 people gathered for an afternoon picnic featuring a baseball game between Steubenville and Wheeling (won by the visitors, 10–9), a horse race won by George Stamm's "Roan Lucy," music, and dancing. The event predates the federal Labor Day holiday, which Congress established in 1894, by eight years. The Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly, which organized the march, remained active in Wheeling labor and civic affairs for decades under later president Valentine Reuther, a German immigrant and dedicated socialist. His sons Walter, Roy, and Victor Reuther, all born in Wheeling, would go on to found and lead the United Auto Workers, carrying the family's labor tradition into national prominence.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library - Library Closed Labor Day - Wheeling's First Labor Day (https://tinyurl.com/mv2vbpes), WTOV9 – "Wheeling's Labor Day legacy" (https://tinyurl.com/37m3wbu4), U.S. Department of Labor – "History of Labor Day" (https://tinyurl.com/3j4ndp9a), Wheeling Daily Intelligencer (https://tinyurl.com/mv2vbpes), Wheeling Daily Intelligencer - "A Great Display: The Big Labor Demonstration" (https://tinyurl.com/3wwkmd5f), Wikipedia - Labor Day (https://tinyurl.com/56n2knys), Ohio County Public Library - 1886: Wheeling’s First Labor (https://tinyurl.com/yc3f8mfa)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wayne State University, Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Find a Grave

​Today in Wheeling History: August 27—Floor construction and seating retrofits at the Wheeling Civic Center were completed for the incoming Wheeling Thunderbirds hockey franchise (1992).
 
By late August 1992, crews at the Wheeling Civic Center finished a major renovation project that installed a new arena floor and made accompanying seating changes, clearing the way for professional hockey to arrive in the city. The work was undertaken to accommodate an ice-making system, including roughly a mile and a half of stainless steel tubing, needed to create a rink for the incoming Wheeling Thunderbirds, a minor league hockey club that had relocated from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after an announcement on March 31, 1992. Construction on the floor had begun on July 13, 1992, and civic center executive director Dennis Magruder oversaw the project alongside architects and contractors, working from a precise daily schedule developed during the week of May 17–25. Because the new tubing left far less room for error than the old floor, officials obtained the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus floor plans and used them to reset the floor anchors, ensuring the venue could still host touring events like the Osiris Shrine Circus, whose 44th annual performances were held there just a day later, on August 28–29, 1992. Ice was first made in the new rink on September 22, 1992, with Bob Otten as the first skater, and the Thunderbirds played their inaugural regular-season game on October 18, 1992, defeating the Dayton Bombers 9–3. The building, later renamed WesBanco Arena in 2003, remains home to the franchise, now known as the Wheeling Nailers.
 
To learn more: Wheeling Nailers – Team History Timeline (https://tinyurl.com/254k864m), Weelunk – "Wheeling Thunderbirds: 33 Years Since Opening Night" (https://tinyurl.com/mr3cfjnb), Wikipedia – WesBanco Arena (https://tinyurl.com/57tmudhv), Wikipedia – Wheeling Nailers (https://tinyurl.com/mpktb8xw), Wheeling News-Register (https://tinyurl.com/3m75n6k9)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons, Weelunk, Wheeling News-Register

​Today in Wheeling History: August 26--Wheeler H. Bachman, Wheeling dry goods jobber, financier, and civic leader, died (1932).
 
Wheeler H. Bachman (1870-1932) was a Wheeling financier, dry goods jobber, and civic leader whose work shaped the city for decades. Born in Wheeling March 22, 1870, he was the son of William Phillip Bachman, a Bavarian-born merchant, and Lucy Wheeler Bachman of Dudley Port, England. He attended Wheeling's public schools, Linsly Institute, and Frazier's Business College, finishing around 1888, then spent seven years learning the dry goods trade before opening his own wholesale dry goods business in 1895. He ran it until 1914, trading across West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York City, and Chicago. In 1914 he co-founded the investment firm Speidel & Bachman, Incorporated, as president. Bachman held numerous directorships, including the Wheeling Bank and Trust Company, Carr China Company of Grafton, United Dairy Company, Camden Coal and Land Company, the Fidelity Investment Association, and the Arizona Mossback Mine Company. He served ten years as president of the Wheeling Y.M.C.A., helped organize the Wheeling Y.W.C.A., and was vice president of the Union Mission. He founded and led the Wheeling Art Club, pursuing his own talent for pen-and-ink and oil painting. During World War I he worked on Liberty Loan and Red Cross campaigns. A vestryman of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, he married Edith Carr in 1908; they had one son, Wheeler Carr Bachman. Bachman died at his Cecil Place home in Elm Grove on August 26, 1932, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library - Wheeler H. Bachman (https://tinyurl.com/5ajzynuu), Internet Archive - "History of West Virginia, Old and New" (Callahan), Vol. II (https://tinyurl.com/32em6rjf), Wheeling Intelligencer - Obituary - Wheeler H. Bachman (https://tinyurl.com/2p9zejdh), Find a Grave - Wheeler H. Bachman (https://tinyurl.com/a9764anm)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; "History of West Virginia, Old and New" (Callahan), Vol. II; Wheeling Intelligencer, Find a Grave, Wikimedia Commons

Today in Wheeling History: August 25—George G. Heil, longtime Wheeling gas board official, Ohio County deputy sheriff, and St. Vincent's College graduate, is born in Wheeling (1853).
 
George G. Heil was born in Wheeling on August 25, 1853 (one biographical sketch gives 1858), the son of Casper Heil, a well-known Wheeling grocer who came from Germany and settled in the city, and his wife, Mary (Hungermann) Heil, also a native of Germany. The family belonged to St. Alphonsus Catholic Church. George grew up in Wheeling and received a classical education at St. Vincent's College, the short-lived Catholic institution that operated in the city from 1865 to 1871. He went on to serve as a deputy sheriff of Ohio County under Sheriff R. S. Brown, then was appointed assistant secretary, and later secretary, of the Wheeling city board of gas trustees, a post he held for many years. On January 22, 1884, he married Annie Yeager, and the couple raised five children: Mrs. William Eagen, Marie, William G., Louis J., and Albert J. Heil. In his later years, Heil lived at 7 North Nineteenth Street in Warwood, where, after a long illness, he died on December 31, 1926, at age 73 (74 per the Intelligencer obituary). Funeral services and a requiem mass were held at Corpus Christi Church, with burial in Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
 
To learn more: Internet Archive - History of the Upper Ohio Valley, with family history and biographical sketches [1890] (https://tinyurl.com/3duf9m6u), Find a Grave - George Heil (https://tinyurl.com/swmuxe7z), HeritageQuest by Ancestry - George Heil (https://tinyurl.com/3xkm6y9j), History of Education in West Virginia [1902] (https://tinyurl.com/2hhmteys), Wheeling Intelligencer - Heil Services Monday Morning (https://tinyurl.com/easfducb)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wheeling Intelligencer, Google Maps