Upcoming Events

    • Monday, October 21, 2024
    • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
    • CRF Museum (203 E Main Street Loudonville OH)

    How did a 16-year-old guerrilla fighter become one of the most famous men to survive the Civil War and ignite the country's imagination with their famous (or rather, infamous) exploits? Jesse James has been popularized in numerous books, TV shows and movies.

    Jesse James, painted alone on a blank canvas becomes just another outlaw. However, portrayed within the tumultuous times in Missouri – he becomes something more. Some of the most defining times in our country became the music of his violent life: conflict between slavery and opposition to it, the terrible war between ourselves, emancipation, heavy-handed reconstruction, the expansion and corruption of the railroads – even the very beginning of industrialization.

    “Jesse James,” said Carl Sandburg, “is the only American who is classical, who is to this country what Robin Hood…is to England, whose exploits are so close to the mythical…”

    Was he an American Robin Hood or just a cold-blooded killer? Mel Maurer joins us to tell the true story of Jesse James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War.

    Mel Maurer is the past president of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable, a nonprofit historical society and social group dedicated to the study and discussion of the American Civil War and that period of our nation's history. Maurer is a passionate researcher and author, publishing numerous articles on Civil War history.

    This program is free and open to the public. It is held in the lecture hall of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum; doors open at 6:30 and the program begins at 7:00 pm. 

    • Monday, November 18, 2024
    • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
    • CRF Museum (203 E Main Street Loudonville OH)

    Negative public reaction to controversial texts goes back centuries, even pre-dating the European printing press. Professor and Librarian John T.Rasel from Cuyahoga Community College will present an overview of censorship from antiquity to the present day. Why were materials censored, how objectionable texts and authors were dealt with throughout history, and how our reaction to controversial material has evolved over time.

    This program is free and open to the public. It is held in the lecture hall of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum; doors open at 6:30 and the program begins at 7:00 pm. 

    • Monday, February 10, 2025
    • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
    • CRF Museum (203 E Main Street Loudonville OH)

    The Newark Earthworks in Newark and Heath, Ohio, consist of three sections of preserved earthworks: the Great Circle Earthworks, the Octagon Earthworks, and the Wright Earthworks. This complex, built by the Hopewell culture between 100 BCE and 400 CE, contains the largest earthen enclosures in the world, and was about 3,000 acres in total extent while using more than 7 million cubic feet of earth. These earthworks have been designated as a National Historic Landmark, as the official prehistoric monument of the State of Ohio, and most recently as a UNESCO World Heritage site along with the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park and Fort Ancient sites, forming the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. Why did the Hopewell build such monumental works? Were they prehistoric forts or ancient American cathedrals? Joining us to answer these questions and more is Dr. Brad Lepper, the Senior Archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage Program. 

    Dr. Lepper's primary areas of interest include the Ice Age peoples of North America, Ohio's magnificent mounds and earthworks, and the history of North American archaeology. He has written extensively on these subjects and is the author of the book, Ohio Archaeology: an illustrated chronicle of Ohio's ancient American Indian cultures, published in 2005 by Orange Frazer Press. Especially noteworthy research includes the excavation of the Burning Tree mastodon in December of 1989 (named one of the top 50 science discoveries of 1990 by Discover magazine in their January 1991 issue) and the discovery of the Great Hopewell Road, first reported in 1995 (see Archaeology magazine, November/December 1995). Dr. Lepper's research on the Great Hopewell Road was featured in the public television documentary Searching for the Great Hopewell Road first broadcast in April of 1998. 

    This program is free and open to the public. It is held in the lecture hall of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum; doors open at 6:30 and the program begins at 7:00 pm. 

    • Monday, March 17, 2025
    • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
    • CRF Museum (203 E Main Street Loudonville OH)

    In the late spring of 1993, the young Mark Jordan had the opportunity to check something off his bucket list: Be in a movie. Little did he know that it was to become the world's favorite movie: The Shawshank Redemption. While Mark was not yet the celebrated chronicler of Ohio history that he was to later become, he served for a month as a background actor on the film, and soaked up his experiences and observations. Forty years later, he decided to write a memoir full of delightful behind-the-scenes stories that reveal quirks of the movie-making process, insights about the actors and the director, and revelations about how the film helped Mark himself "tunnel out" of youthful malaise and begin dedicating himself to his calling to write. 

    Mark Sebastian Jordan is a well-known Ohio writer. The author of seven books, the weekly History Knox podcast, and classical music reviews for Seen & Heard International, Jordan's writings have been awarded prizes from the Ohio Arts Council, the Associated Press, and many more, and have been featured by the Ohioana Book Festival, the Columbus Book Festival, and the Buckeye Book Fair.

    In addition to speaking and taking questions about the film, Mark will be selling and signing copies of his book. Both cash and card will be accepted.

    This program is free and open to the public. It is held in the lecture hall of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum; doors open at 6:30 and the program begins at 7:00 pm. 

    • Monday, April 21, 2025
    • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
    • CRF Museum (203 E Main Street Loudonville OH)

    The 2015 mass shooting in Charleston and later the events in Charlottesville have added fuel to the intense and sometimes heated debate in contemporary America about Confederate monuments and flags. What sometimes gets lost in this debate is that monuments and flags are not history themselves, but are commemorations of a particular interpretation of history. This is particularly true in this case. Most Confederate monuments were not constructed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, but, instead, were put up as part of the effort to create a “Jim Crow” South that rendered African Americans politically invisible and powerless. And the revival of Confederate flags was part and parcel of the mid-twentieth-century white resistance to the Civil Rights movement. In effect, the Confederate monuments and flags – and the fierce defense of both – are manifestations of the fact that the South lost the Civil War but won the writing of history. And the current opposition to Confederate monuments and flags grows out of a very deep desire to tell a new and more accurate story about our past.

    Joining us to discuss this topic is William Trollinger, professor of history at the University of Dayton.  He is also director of UD’s Core Integrated Studies Program, which features an innovative, five-semester interdisciplinary curriculum. He earned his B.A. in English and History from Bethel College (MN) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research has focused on 20th/21st-century American Protestantism, particularly fundamentalism, creationism, and Protestant print culture. His publications include God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) and Righting America at the Creation Museum (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), the latter which he co-authored with his wife, Susan Trollinger. He has also done a good deal of research on the Ku Klux Klan in Ohio in the 1920s; one result of this work is “Hearing the Silence: The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities and Colleges” (American Catholic Studies, Spring 2013), for which he won the 2014 Catholic Press Award for Best Essay in a Scholarly Magazine.

    This program is free and open to the public. It is held in the lecture hall of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum; doors open at 6:30 and the program begins at 7:00 pm. 

Past Events

Tuesday, October 01, 2024 Loudonville Free Street Fair
Friday, June 28, 2024 Johnny Appleseed: Cultivating a Nation (Exhibit)
Monday, April 22, 2024 Paul Brown: Coach, Teacher, Innovator
Monday, March 18, 2024 The Power of Family Story
Monday, February 12, 2024 Fort Fizzle: The Holmes County Rebellion
Monday, November 20, 2023 Eliot Ness & the Torso Murders
Monday, October 16, 2023 The Witch of Mansfield: The Tetched Life of Phebe Wise
Saturday, July 01, 2023 Root Beer Floats at the Loudonville Car Show
Saturday, June 10, 2023 Mohican Adventure Hunt
Monday, April 17, 2023 Camp Mohican: The Local Legacy of the CCC
Monday, March 20, 2023 Medieval Crusades and Modern Legacies
Thursday, February 23, 2023 Volunteer Open House
Monday, February 20, 2023 The Mutiny That Built An Empire: Greed, Power, and the Army in British India
Tuesday, January 31, 2023 Ohio Archaeology Roundtable
Monday, November 21, 2022 Operation Torch in Retrospect
Monday, October 17, 2022 Murder Ridge: The Cletus Reese Story
Thursday, October 06, 2022 'Historic Barns of Ohio' Live Painting & Book Signing
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 Cemetery Preservation Workshop
Monday, June 13, 2022 History Camp!
Saturday, June 11, 2022 Mohican Adventure Hunt
Sunday, May 15, 2022 Loudonville Cemetery Walk
Monday, April 18, 2022 The Civilian Conservation Corps: Roosevelt's Tree Army
Monday, March 21, 2022 The Dyatlov Pass: Theories on the Outdoor's Greatest Cold Case
Tuesday, January 11, 2022 Build a Reinhard Style Rifle
Monday, November 15, 2021 History & Material Culture of Native Americans in the Upper Ohio Valley
Monday, October 18, 2021 Blood, Brains and Lobotomies
Friday, September 24, 2021 'Historic Barns of Ohio' Live Painting & Book Signing
Tuesday, August 03, 2021 Ohio Archaeology Workshop
Monday, July 12, 2021 'The Ceely Rose Murders at Malabar Farm' Book Signing
Saturday, June 12, 2021 Mohican Adventure Hunt
Monday, May 17, 2021 Annual Meeting
Monday, April 19, 2021 Tattooed and Tenacious: The Hidden Histories of Inked Women in the American West

  The Cleo Redd Fisher Museum is a subsidiary of the Mohican Historical Society.  All rights reserved.   

The Mohican Historical Society is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. 203 East Main Street  Loudonville, OH 44842

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