Attention Economy - June 18, 2023

A photograph of a stone building in Yellow Springs, OH that was an Underground Railroad station.

Virgil Hervey “Moncure Conway, a Methodist minister and abolitionist son of former Virginia slave owners, had found his family’s runaway slaves in the Washington, D.C. area and escorted them to Yellow Springs, because he apparently perceived it as a welcoming place. That the group founded a church in the same year as their liberation is a testament to a piety that continues to this day. Isabel Newman, the church historian, is a great, great granddaughter of Dunmore and Eliza Guinn, two of the original founders of the church, which first held meetings in a home at 117 West Center College Street. Many other descendants of that group are still members of the church today.”

7 results. Mary Sargeant Gove, 1810-1884

19 results.

Yellow Springs history, like the layout of the village, has many byways and odd pockets. It is our hope to share our discoveries.

Mary Mann ca. 1850s: “The boys were wild with making maple sugar early in the spring - there is a fine camp directly below us. They pass much of every day in the ravine, where they bathe in the living water, & gather water cresses & cowslips from under the very springs as they gush from the rocks. These woods are more like the park of an English country seat than anything else I ever saw. There is something in the fresh society & country & these virgin woods that excites me greatly. We have such a wealth of wildflowers here, that garden flowers are almost a superfluity. We actually found trascadentias growing wild on the railroad bank today. Last year we found SIXTY VARIETIES of flowers in our ravine within half a mile of the college. Among these are many of our eastern garden flowers - phloxes … bee larkspurs, jonquils, lilies… violets, blue & yellow-eyed grasses, laurustinus trees, white hawthorne now in splendid bloom, horse chestnuts (the buckeye of Ohio…”

Scott Sanders: “They didn’t need to send the copy they mailed to the president’s office at Antioch. Mann knew their work all too well, and was none too pleased at the prospect of their arrival. By this time the Nichols were already noted (and notorious) for their published avocations of free love in their journal Nichols’ Monthly. In 1855 Mrs. Nichols’ autobiographical novel Mary Lyndon first appeared, receiving harsh reviews (including four full columns in the New York Times entitled “A Bad Book Gibbeted”) for its attack on the institution of marriage. Dr. Nichols had further given a series of lectures in Cincinnati on “Free-Love, a Doctrine of Spiritualism.” Free-love and spiritualism were, in fact, only the latest of the Nichols’ interests, which also included vegetarianism, hydropathy, phrenology, Swedenborgianism, Fourieristic socialism, and women’s rights. They gravitated to intellectual trends like gadflies.”

[referring link, see note 6] The Elephant of the Bastille was a monument in Paris between 1813 and 1846. Originally conceived in 1808 by Napoleon, the statue was intended to be created out of bronze and placed in Place de la Bastille, but only a plaster full-scale model was built. At 24 m (78 ft) in height the model itself became a recognisable construction and was immortalised by Victor Hugo in his novel Les Misérables in which it is used as a shelter by Gavroche. It was built at the site of the Bastille and although part of the original construction remains the elephant itself was replaced by the July Column.

“TORONTO (AP) - It was a chilling photograph that came to symbolize the horrors of the Vietnam War and, ultimately, helped end it. It also saved the life of Kim Phuc, who was just 9 years old when, on June 8, 1972, her village was attacked by south Vietnamese planes. Phuc, who lives near Toronto with her family, honored those who saved her at a dinner Friday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the iconic photograph. They include AP photographer Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut, who snapped the shot, as well as other journalists, doctors and nurses who helped her get help and who treated her injuries. Ut, who was 21 at the time, heard Phuc’s screams as she ran down the road to escape her burning village, and snapped the photo that became famous around the world. The Vietnamese photographer then drove the badly burned child to a small hospital, where he was told she was too far gone to help. He flashed his American press badge, demanded that doctors treat the girl…”