Women's History

Meet one of Richland County's most colorful citizens.

There are those who thought Phebe Wise was a witch. More thought that the cranky old lady was "tetched," meaning crazy. And she was crazy--like a fox. An eccentric who outwitted violent robbers, a mad stalker, and a society that expected her to marry and raise children, Phebe alternated between dressing up in men's clothes and strutting to town in an antique ball gown, the trail dragging behind her in the dirt. If anyone had the gall to stare, she'd cuss them out. She was in touch with a different world, and she used it to help launch the career of a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Louis Bromfield.

Local author and historian Mark Sebastian Jordan unravels the myth and history of Phebe Wise.

On a cold, drizzly fall afternoon in 1958, a trio of duck hunters stumbled on the charred remains of Cincinnati resident Louise Bergen. When investigators learned that her estranged husband was living with an older divorcee, Edythe Klumpp, they wasted no time in questioning her. When she failed a lie detector test, Edythe spilled out a confession. Although it did not fit the physical evidence, she was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Governor Michael V. DiSalle put his political career on the line to save Edythe from the death penalty, personally interviewing the prisoner while she was under the influence of truth serum. But was it the truth? Richard O Jones separates the facts from the fiction in this comprehensive book about the Klumpp murder.

Award-winning crime writer Jane Ann Turzillo recounts the stories of Ohio's most notorious vixens, viragoes and villainesses.

The Buckeye State produced its share of wicked women. Tenacious madam Clara Palmer contended with constant police raids during the 1880s and '90s. Only her death could shut the doors of her gilded bordello in Cleveland. Failed actress Mildred Gillars left for Europe right before World War II. Because she fell in love with the wrong man, she wound up peddling Nazi propaganda on the radio as Axis Sally. Volatile Hester Foster was already doing time at the Ohio State Penitentiary when she bashed in the head of a fellow inmate with a shovel. The sinister Anna Marie Hahn dosed at least five elderly Cincinnati men with arsenic and croton oil and then watched them die in agony while pretending to nurse them back to health.

In the history of Cleveland television, there is no more formidable pioneer than Betty Cope .

From her entry-level position as a receptionist at WEWS in 1947, Cope rose up the ranks to become the producer of some of the area’s most memorable early local programs. Together with a group of concerned citizens, she founded Cleveland’s educational television station, WVIZ, in 1965.

Under her management, Channel 25 became one of the nation’s largest producers of instructional classroom programming. Throughout Cope’s twenty-seven-year tenure, WVIZ maintained high-quality programming standards, and she kept her station financially sound largely through the funds raised from the popular annual televised Auction. After TV, she embarked on a new career as an advocate of land conservation and park preservation./

Compiling original interviews and never-before-seen photos, author Christine Martuch tells story of one of Northeast Ohio’s most remarkable women.

Hillsboro was carved out of the thick woods of central Highland County in 1807. The small village soon built itself up from a collection of rough log buildings to a place of considerable prominence in southern Ohio. Blessed with an unusually healthy climate and rich surrounding farmlands, the town became an important business center and transportation hub. It was the home of many state and federal officeholders, including a multiterm governor of Ohio. Hillsboro became a center of women’s education as early as 1839, with as many as three women’s colleges in operation at one time. In 1873, many of these college-educated women launched the Women’s Temperance Crusade against the sale of liquor, which led directly to the federal passage of Prohibition in 1919. 

Tara Beery is a retired veterinarian with a passion for Hillsboro’s history. She lives in Hillsboro with her husband, son, and daughter. The Highland County Historical Society opened its archives to provide the historical photographs for this collection. Special effort was made to select images that have not been used in previous histories, though some old favorites will be found among these less-seen photographs.

In Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio, author Jane Ann Turzillo recounts the misdeeds of ten dark-hearted women who refused to play by the rules.

They unleashed their most base impulses using axes, guns, poison and more. You'll meet Perry's Velma West, a mere slip of a girl who was unfortunately too near a hammer during an argument. New Philadelphia's Ellen Athey, no lady herself, had a similar problem with an axe. Ardell Quinn, who operated the longest-running brothel in Cleveland, would simply argue that she was a good businesswoman. Grim? Often. Entertaining? Deliciously so.

While industrialists were building the great rubber factories, cereal mills, and potteries, Akron women were weaving together the cultural and moral fabric of the city. Women established churches, hospitals, schools, and cultural institutions, even as they nurtured their families and worked in the city's factories, stores, and offices. Even though they were busy holding the fabric of Akron life together, they still found time to enjoy the city's wonderful entertainment and recreational attributes. Akron Women captures the rich diversity, determination, spirit, courage, and energy of this extraordinary population of women through the use of historic photos, rare advertising, and supporting commentary.

Western Female Seminary, the first daughter institution of Mount Holyoke College, opened its doors in 1855 as a Christian institution. The seminary, which became Western College for Women, was founded on the Mt. Holyoke plan, with a strong emphasis on academics. Many of its graduates in the 19th century served as home and foreign missionaries, and by the 20th century, young women from many foreign countries attended Western. In the 1950s, the curriculum was expanded to include a strong international emphasis. Western was the first college in the country to have an artist-in-residence, when composer Edgar Stillman Kelley was invited to live on campus. Western attracted national attention when it hosted civil rights training for Freedom Summer 1964. In the 1970s, independent study programs were developed, and the college became coeducational. With its diverse architecture and the early emphasis on landscaping on its rolling campus, the college was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.