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One of my wife's numerous wonderful qualities I have discovered during many years of marriage is that she always seems to know just what to say to me or our children when confronted with different situations. Whether it be words of encouragement, advice or the occasional instance when we need to be pushed back on the right track, she always is there to offer a bit of wisdom.
I envy her ability to pull out sayings that are appropriate and one that I constantly need to be reminded of, especially in our profession, is that "the past is another country." That is to say that it would be hard for us in our 2021 frame of mind to put ourselves back in a distant past because of our dependence on technology, our culture and the modern world view to just name a few reasons. I almost think that it would be an easier transition for someone from the past to come to the present than the other way around.
As historians, we try every day to bring the past to life and do our best to understand the people, places and things that impacted their world. One of the cool and effective ways we do that here at Historic Fort Steuben is by archeology.
Since 1978, the Franciscan University of Steubenville has led those efforts here, first under the direction of Professor Jack Boyde and now under Professor Phillip Fitzgibbons. The finds from these extensive digs during the last 40 years have been numerous and include lots of objects that tell the story, not just of the fort, but of our early local community stretching until the 1960s when this block that would be part of the fort complex was actually turned into a parking lot.
A good majority of that lot is still here under about 8 inches of topsoil, forever frustrating anyone who wants to stick something in the ground. The benefit of this lot is that the parking area effectively sealed off the archeology pre-1960s, preserving it for future discovery.
Right now, the team from the university is digging an edge of a foundation of a substantial brick home. To identify the place and who lived there is possible if one knows where to look.
There are several maps one can reference that will show the lots laid out presumably in the 1790s by Bezaleel Wells. Our lots in question that make up the fort area today are lots 51, 52, 53, 54. The lots are, generally speaking, 60 feet wide and 161 feet deep with frontage on the now missing South High Street, essentially state Route 7. With the aid of maps and the dimensions of the lots, the team from the university measured out the ground and identified the building in question was on lot 52.
There is a building matching that dimension on the earliest known map showing structures in downtown Steubenville in 1856. With the help of the Sanborn Fire insurance maps of downtown Steubenville on the Library of Congress website, we can discover the address of the home as 131 S. High St., with the owner of the property as Judge John Huston Miller.
Miller was born on a farm in Northampton County, Pa., in 1813. He came to Steubenville in 1837 and engaged in the wagon trade, but that life was not for him.
Since he was bright and had been gifted a good education, he aspired to be an attorney and studied law under Gen. Samuel Stokely, who was a local attorney, a general in the militia and elected to the 1841 U.S. Congress. He was admitted to the bar in 1840.
Miller married Ann Stokely in 1841, Samuel's younger sister and child of Revolutionary War Capt. Thomas Stockley. The Millers had two children. According to his obituary in 1891, Miller practiced law in Steubenville for more than 30 years and was appointed by future president Rutherford B. Hayes to fill a vacancy as judge of the Common Pleas Court for the Third Subdivision of the Eighth Judicial District.
It can be discovered when the Millers moved into, or built, their home at 131 S. High St. by a visit to the county records office, but the building, dating to before 1856 was owned at least in the 1870s and 1880s by the Miller family. According to the 1880 census, living at the address were John and his wife; their son, George; their daughter, Elizabeth, with her husband, Henry; and a granddaughter, Maria. Also at the residence was a domestic servant, Mary Canfield, and her daughter, Emmeline. In 1882, Ann Miller, John's wife, died and was interred at Union Cemetery. Devout Presbyterians, members of the Miller family were members of First Presbyterian Church, and most likely Ann's funeral was held there, as it was when John died nine years later. At the time of his death, all of his six siblings were still living except one half-brother, Amos, who died while fighting in the Civil War in 1863.
With the excavation of what we believe to be the Miller home, we should eventually run into another property and dwellings located on lot 53. The homes located on that lot, number 127 and 125 S. High St., were owned by the Basler family at the same time that the Millers were living in their home in the later half of the 19th century. Joseph and Max Basler, along with their father, Joseph Basler Sr., occupied several dwellings on the east and west side of South High Street. The Baslers were immigrants to the United States from their native Baden, Germany, and upon arriving in Steubenville they engaged in a variety of businesses, specifically a brewery.
Basler's Beer Brewery was established in 1836, but by 1852 a new brewery building had been erected directly across South High Street from the Basler's and Miller's place with the number 130. The business did a good trade in Steubenville for a number of years. In 1875 though, disaster struck when a 2-ton boiler exploded on the upper level of the brewery, practically destroying the building and several neighboring residences. The explosion ejected the iron boiler more than 300 feet away. Luckily, no one was seriously injured in the blast. The buildings were rebuilt and work began again until 1882 when a fire partially destroyed the facility. That, unfortunately, spelled the end of the Basler brewery.
Today there is nothing left of South High Street except an overgrown sidewalk near Route 7 which cuts directly through the site of the Basler Beer Brewery. Looking at the forgotten foundations at our dig in the fort, one can begin to connect the pieces of a forgotten time and bring together the stories of those who have gone before on this same ground.
My wife is right that the past is a different country and we can get there by digging the past. It's our passport to history.
(Zuros is executive director of Historic Fort Steuben.)