Kipton Article – August 29, 1963

Kipton just keeps popping up as a topic on this blog over the years. Not bad for a place with a population (as of the last census) of 243 residents.

Here’s a nice, full-page of the Lorain Journal devoted to the history of the village that ran in that paper on August 29, 1963 – 55 years ago today. The two articles were both written by Frances Perkins.

The first article points out that the village had only been incorporated in February 1958. The second article notes the the village was originally named Binghamton (which any TV-watching Baby Boomer remember as the name of the Captain played by Joe Flynn on McHale’s Navy). It doesn’t really say why the railroad renamed it Kipton.

Anyway, the top article includes a photo of Kipton’s Civil War Soldier Monument, which at least to my eye was already beginning to lean.

The Kipton Community Church looks pretty much the same today as it does in the photo. (At least it did in 2012, when the photo below was taken.)

Kipton Civil War Soldier Monument Stands Tall

About a month ago, I received an email from Bill Stark of Cleveland. He was wondering if I had heard that the Civil War Soldier Monument out in Kipton had been fixed so that it no longer was leaning backwards.

(I had done a post about the leaning monument way back here in 2011.)

I thanked Bill for the heads-up, and did a little online research. As it turns out, it had been fixed back in 2017 in time for the Kipton, Camden, Henrietta Memorial Day and Program. 

Nevertheless, this provided me a good excuse to take a little drive out to Kipton for some new photos of the monument to post today on Memorial Day.

I’ve said it before: I sure wish Lorain still had its Civil War Soldier statue, which looked similar to this one.

Have a safe and solemn Memorial Day.

Beautiful Downtown Kipton – Then & Now

I saw this vintage postcard dated 1910 of “North Main St. East Side, Kipton, Ohio” recently on Ebay and decided it would be a good candidate for the “Then & Now” treatment.

It had been a while since I drove through the small blink-and-you-might-miss-it village of a few hundred people anyway. (I wrote about its Civil War monument here.)

I got my shot (below) this past weekend.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon when I left Lorain, but of course when I arrived, the sun disappeared for almost a half hour. So I loitered until it came out again, trying not to attract too much attention with my camera so as to avoid being thrown in the calaboose.

As you can see, the railroad right-of-way is now a popular bike path. 

Nearby is the site of the tragic train wreck that took place on April 18, 1891. Here’s a link to an article on the Smithsonian National Postal Museum website about the disaster.

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Incidentally, the back of the vintage postcard – dated August 8, 1910 – was interesting. ‘Mattie’ was writing to her Uncle Frank in Honolulu, Hawaii and told him she was having a week’s vacation and that she was in Kipton. I wonder what she did all week?

I think she should have visited good old Uncle Frank instead.

"Wild Man" on the Loose in Kipton – August 1932

During the early 1930s, the Great Depression was underway – and many unfortunate citizens found themselves homeless in those terrible economic times.

That may or may not have been the contributing factor behind the above story of a "wild man" living in the woods near Kipton that appeared on the front page of the Lorain Journal on August 6, 1932.

It's kind of a sad story. The poor guy wasn't really bothering anybody. Plus, he was more of a hermit than a true “wild man” (the kind that you might see in a circus sideshow in the old days) or the medieval version (seen at right).

But the Sheriff and his deputies were after him just the same, and it livened up the front page of the Journal – 85 years ago this month.

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UPDATE (August 11, 2017)
So what happened with the Sheriff and his posse? Did they throw a dragnet around the "wild man"? Rick Kurish has the answer.

As Rick noted, "Perhaps you already have this info, but since your blog today left a “wild man” loose in Lorain County, I decided to find the “rest of the story.”

"The story ended two days later, and was detailed in the C-T of August 8, 1932."

Here is the article (below). Note how there ended up being another wild man as well!

"Seems like a poor guy just down on his luck — like many others during the depression," wrote Rick. "I hope his story had a happy ending."

Kipton's Civil War Monument

Kipton's Civil War Statue

Since I've spent the whole week featuring news stories about the big G.A.R. encampment held in Lorain back in 1911, it seems fitting to close out the week with another item related to local Civil War veterans.

I've been doing research for months now about the old Civil War statue that used to be in the park across from Lorain City Hall. (I've featured it on this blog before many times, but I've been working on a detailed history of it.)

During my research, I found a great book, Zinc Sculpture in America: 1850-1950 by Carol A. Grissom, and it provides a great history of the use of zinc in statues – including Civil War statues. It turns out that Lorain's long-gone statue was made of zinc, as well as the statue on State Route 511 in Kipton.

Zinc was popular for these kind of statues, according to the book, because it was inexpensive, and it was easy to work with. The various parts of a statue were cast separately and then soldered together. Thus, zinc statues are hollow.

I drove out to Kipton a couple of Sundays ago to see how Kipton's statue was doing. I'm sorry that I don't have any historical information as to how long the monument has been there, but nevertheless it appears to be in great shape (although the statue is leaning back quite a bit).

I was actually pretty impressed that Kipton's monument looked so good, and that the park was so well maintained.

Kipton's monument is mentioned on a great website created by the Cincinnati Historical Society Library that features information on Ohio Civil War monuments. In the section entitled 'Monument Builders' it says:

Two firms built many of the soldier monuments in Ohio. The Monumental Bronze Co. of Bridgeport, CT. specialized in a zinc or white bronze monument. Because the material could be stamped, bases could contain elaborate decorations and inscriptions. The monument at Kipton in Lorain County is a good example. The front of the monument includes the Grand Army of the Republic emblem, a profile of Abraham Lincoln, a list of soldiers, "Lincoln" in large letters and a verse from the poem, "Coat of Blue." The other three sides are similarly embellished. The same zinc soldier can be found in Cardington, Defiance, Grafton, New California, Wauseon, and Windsor.


Here are a few shots of the base of the monument. Click on each so you can see the craftsmanship that went into its construction.