Settling Ohio with Timothy G. Anderson & Brian Shoen

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (00:00):
One of the beauties of Ohio is that it is a microcosm of so many different parts of America. It was in the early 19th century and it is now, too.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:11):
Welcome to Page Count, presented by the Ohio Center for the book at Cleveland Public Library. This podcast celebrates authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, literary advocates and readers in and from the state of Ohio. I'm your host, Laura Maylene Walter, the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow and author of the novel BODY OF STARS. Today we'll be discussing SETTLING OHIO: FIRST PEOPLES AND BEYOND, which is the Ohio Center for the Book's 2024 Great Reads From Great Places selection for adult readers and will represent Ohio at the National Book Festival. We're joined today by the book's editors who are both professors at Ohio University. Timothy G. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Geography. Tim, welcome to the podcast.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (00:58):
Yeah, thanks so much. Laura, thank you for the invitation, to participate in the podcast and I'm looking forward to it.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:05):
And we're also joined by Brian Shoen, the Chair of the Department of History at Ohio University. Brian, thanks for being here.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (01:12):
Great to be here Laura. Thanks for having us.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:14):
Well, I'm excited to discuss your book. We'll be talking about SETTLING OHIO and some Ohio history today, but we'll also discuss your process for putting this book together, academic publishing and more. But let's start with the genesis of SETTLING OHIO, which seems to stem from one specific source of inspiration. So Brian, maybe we could start with you. What inspired both of you to put this book together?

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (01:41):
Yeah, Laura. Well, it really came down to the publication of David McCullough's book, THE PIONEERS, which was inspired by his trip to our university, our campus in 2004 when we celebrated its bicentennial. And he realized there were lots of stories around this place that had not been told and were not known outside of this region. And so he, he published THE PIONEERS and, you know, with good commercial success, it made its way up through the New York Times bestseller list. And I read the book, I enjoyed the book, I've assigned it in classes, but as a mid-career historian, it was kind of that it didn't tell the full story and Tim and I were at an academic conference in Michigan and it was quite powerful some of the criticism that academic historians presented of the book. And so inspired by some of what we heard there and desiring to continue a conversation that David McCullough had started, we decided to host a conference here in Athens to talk about the many groups of people who are responsible for the settling of Ohio. We got the support of our president and Central Region Humanities Center to fund it. And I guess the rest is history.

Laura Maylene Walter (02:59):
Absolutely. Well, for listeners to have a bit more context, McCullough's book, the full title is THE PIONEERS: THE HEROIC STORY OF THE SETTLERS WHO BROUGHT THE AMERICAN IDEAL WEST. And I think just in that full title, some of those words can seem fairly loaded, right? Talking about the heroic story of the settlers who came and bringing an American ideal west without really referencing a lot of the bloodshed and displaced populations. I'll link to a New York Times review of the book listeners in the show notes and a Slate review as well. But some of the criticisms did surround celebrating the white settlers and just not paying attention to some other parts of the story. And so those are the gaps that your book seems to fill with the caveat that, you know, there is a lot of respect for McCullough's work overall in general. Do I have that about right?

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (03:51):
Yeah, I think that that's right and I think THE PIONEERS tells a story and a compelling story in the sense that many of those settlers who pushed off from New England, you know, really were trying to implement their vision for what the West should look like. But the way that the story is told, which is largely dependent on the sources of those New England settlers misses, we think, a much bigger opportunity. And that is an opportunity to tell, you know, the quite interesting, quite engaging story of Euro-American settlers and indigenous people who were themselves had different visions for what the West should look like. And that's a harder type of scholarship to do. It requires, you know, using anthropological sources, it requires not just taking texts at their face value, but really reading much more deeply into understanding motives and conflict. And so, yeah, in essence, settling Ohio is an attempt to try to capture a history which is true to the facts, a more contested history one in which there are, you know, not really heroes and villains, but people who have complicated motives, who are trying to get along with one another and resist anything that might threaten their interest.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (05:08):
It's meant to be a history that is both more accurate and I think far more interesting because people are complicated. The past is complicated, not terribly unlike our own day.

Laura Maylene Walter (05:18):
Yeah. And we'll get into a few of the specific chapters that I would like to ask about, but I would like to just open up to you, to both of you share a bit about what kind of stories are in this book. What stories does this book offer about Ohio's history and founding? I know you can't give us a summary of the whole book in five minutes, but Brian, you wrote the introduction, and Tim, you have an essay in the book about Ohio's regional cultural landscapes and how the different regions were formed. So could you each just share a bit either about your own chapter or about some of the stories or people represented in this book that you think are notable?

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (05:56):
Yeah, so as a geographer, I'm really interested as a historical geographer, not only in the past but past places. So I'm now a native of Ohio. I came in 1996, but when I first came here I realized that Ohio was really a special place in terms of the number of different regional cultural landscapes within the boundaries of one state. It probably has more than almost any state except maybe Texas. So I began from the very beginning when I came here looking at these origins of these early Ohio populations that settled in the early federal period, say from around 1790 to around 1850 or so. And I started with the 1850 census which asked every person enumerated what state they were born in or if they were from a foreign country, what country they were born in, and kind of went from there. And for a long time I've been working on mainly documenting the migrations from these three major east coast regions, New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, into what's now Ohio in the old Northwest...north and west of the Ohio River, and then further west in the Indiana, Illinois and such.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (07:02):
But serendipitously about the time that Brian and I were at this conference in Michigan, I'd begun thinking about, well, you know, okay, Euro-Americans were, and Anglo-Americans were certainly the majority numerically. But you know, there are a lot of other groups that show up in the census. You know, immigrants directly from Europe, especially from German speaking Europe, but also African-Americans, right? The 1850 census enumerated around 25,000 African Americans. And that's probably an under count because of the different terms that were used, "mulatto" for example, and that show up in the census records. But I began thinking about this and here in in Athens County, northeast Athens County, there is a group of folks who descended from some of these early African American settlers. And so this was pre-Civil war, right? Very early. And one of the chapters in the book by Anna-Lisa Cox is basically an overview of her book THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE LAND, which is about early black towns in mainly Illinois is what she's looking at, Illinois and Indiana.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (08:10):
But she delves a little bit into Ohio as well. So there's this kind of unwritten or...unwritten is the wrong term, but this history that has not been explored as much and really only in the past decade or so, has really begun to be told about early black populations in the Northwest Territory. My chapter is kind of about that, about these five major population groups and kind of using genealogical family histories to recreate those migration streams into the state and where they settled that affected the cultural landscape. So northeast Ohio has this New England feel from the very beginning that New Englanders were the principal, so to speak, authors of the cultural landscape, whereas in southern Ohio it was mainly Virginians and such. And so those places look and feel and smell and taste very different as a geographer, I'm really interested in that regionality.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (09:06):
So I think that that, you know, actually is a common thread in the book as well as these different groups all coming into the state kind of reemerging, if you will, from the east coast, where many of those groups during the colonial period were geographically and actually temporally isolated from each other. But here in Ohio was one of the first places during the early national period where those groups kind of met up again. And so I would argue that Ohio is a, not only a palimpsest of different early population groups, that really is a palimpsest of the country as a whole in terms of this fundamental fact of a multinational multi-ethnic state from the very beginning. But it's also a place that was a proving ground for land policies, right? The first two congresses, if you look at the laws that were passed, a lot of those had to do with how are we going to settle this area north and west of the Ohio River, given that there are native populations there, Indigenous groups who claim ethnic homelands in those areas, given the fact that Connecticut and Virginia both claimed areas all the way to the Pacific Ocean, right?

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (10:15):
By virtue of colonial charters. How are we going to deal with this? And Ohio is a place where a lot of those questions were worked out, if you will. So not only geographically, but I think in terms of public education, in terms of what is going to be the role of public education, what's the role of the proper role of government? And there were all these different population groups brought with them different ideals about that. And it's here in Ohio where these things begin to to be worked out.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:43):
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. And I think people in Ohio today would be interested to look at your chapter. And I enjoyed the migration maps of showing where different populations were moving from. And you know, I'm not from Ohio originally. I actually grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I noted the, the map from that area, kind of the German ancestry moving into central Ohio, which makes me think of the Amish and Lancaster and the, all the Amish that are in central Ohio. So I thought that was interesting.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (11:11):
Yeah, so the Pennsylvania, you know, the Amish and Mennonites...old order Amish Mennonites are part of that Pennsylvania German subculture, but really they were the numerical minority, right? Most Pennsylvania Germans, the, so-called Pennsylvania Dutch were Lutherans and German reformed and such.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:26):
Yeah.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (11:27):
But a significant minority were Amish and Mennonites. And so both of those groups, the so-called church Germans, the Lutheran and German reformed, as well as the House Germans, the Amish and Mennonites both came to Ohio. But numerically most were Lutherans and German reformed.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:41):
I should know that better than anyone. As someone who grew up in Lancaster and people from other areas would ask me, oh, are you Amish? And I have to explain, no, no,

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (11:49):
I looked especially at the area around centered on Lancaster, Ohio, not Lancaster, but Lancaster.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:56):
Ooh, you said it, right! Yep. <laugh>.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (11:57):
Yeah. And that area....centered on Fairfield County, Perry County was settled primarily if you look at the 1850 census and early genealogical histories, yeah clearly most of those folks were Pennsylvania German. And so I kind of looked at genealogical data to recreate some of those. And that area, if you were to visit there and go into the kind of the rural countryside, it would look and feel very familiar as someone from Southeast Pennsylvania.

Laura Maylene Walter (12:24):
Interesting. Well, you had mentioned Anna-Lisa Cox's chapter, which I do want to get to in a minute. But first, Brian, since you wrote the introduction, is there additional context you'd like to share about some of the stories in this book?

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (12:37):
Yeah, I think what Tim's chapter and several others there do, do highlight is space, right? The sort of the environment and the legacy of this early settlement all the way from the early mounds, which, you know, excitingly shortly after the book was published were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and which are discussed in the first chapter by Joe Gingerich. All the way, you know, through the loss of some of the historic sites, including many African American landmarks that just due to poor upkeep and lack of resources that fallen apart. You'll see sort of the built environment as one of the themes in the book. Another theme of the book that I think our stories reveal is just how contested...And as a historian, I'm interested in kind of change over time and I'm interested in contingency. If you were to ask somebody in 1750 who was going control the state that we know as Ohio, you would've had lots of different possible answers.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (13:30):
It was controlled by France, British colonies were sort of pressing into the Ohio River Valley. It wasn't known as sort of just Indian country, but lots of different rival Indian groups from the Miami to the Shawnee all had a place in this space. And so the beginning of the book, there is sort of an arc, a narrative arc to some extent within these chapters, which is how is it we move from this deeply contested place in the mid 18th century, a place that was growing in global significance as Atlantic empires sort of struggled to contest it and ally with different Indian groups. How is it we get from that place to really, by the 1820s and by the 1830s, it's pretty clear who's going to control this space. And that necessarily brings to the forefront the role of government power and the role of the United States who sort of saw Ohio as a place in which they could help pay off the national debt through the sale of land. And also where they could replicate the Republican experiment, which was just underway in the 1780s. So, you know, this is important, I think, context as we head in to the 250 year anniversary of the American Revolution, to sort of think about what happened in this space. So I think some of the chapters in the book speak a little bit towards those dynamics as well.

Laura Maylene Walter (14:57):
Chapter nine is Anna-Lisa Cox's piece in the book, which surrounds the history of diverse pioneers who created Ohio. I found this really fascinating. So she mentions in THE PIONEER'S McCullough's book that he mentions a black man who voted in territorial Ohio in 1802. He refers to this man as the first vote cast by a black African in the Northwest territory. And her criticism of this is, I'll just read a few sentences from her piece, "When historians argue that someone who is not a white Protestant man is the first or only it blinkers the reader and other historians, for it is a subtle yet powerful message that we should not look further back in time. We should not look for more and we should certainly not look for many." So I'm wondering if you could both comment on that, either in the context of her chapter or of the larger themes that she's addressing in terms of the presence of black people in Ohio at this time.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (15:58):
Yeah, sure. I remember talking with Anna-Lisa, and she recalled being told by an informant at one time...a person she was interviewing that this term, the first, that idea blinds us to the fact that there were probably others before that, right? So I found that very interesting. She's mentioned that before.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (16:18):
Yeah, and I think one of the things that her chapter does show is just where Ohio is situated, means that it is a place in which, for African Americans, there's an escape from servitude in the south, south of the Ohio River, which we kind of know about through the Underground Railroad and some of those things. But one of the first people she introduces us to is actually an enslaved individual who is living in British Detroit who head south to find freedom in Ohio, which is sort of not what we typically think of. And you know, in her chapter, you kind of see how it is that there are many African Americans who of course faced considerable discrimination, and there were black laws that passed in Ohio. But they managed to carve out for themselves important economic opportunities and a modicum of civil rights that they were able to build upon within their communities. And you know, I think that the appendix, which is a great source for people you know, who live within communities in Ohio, who might be interested to know, identifies some of these early landowners amongst the black community, which she intended for, and hopes subsequent readers will find, and then try to reproduce more of these stories.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (17:32):
I was going to say, you know, there are dozens, at least dozens of early black communities, mainly in the southern part of the state, in rural areas, right? So that's what she was mostly talking about, are these early Black populations in these small rural hamlets, right? That emerged pre-Civil war. And those landscapes are significant. They haven't been written about very much until as of late. And the landscapes, have not been really explored that much. Those landscapes are primarily in the form of, in many cases, kind of remnants of these early settlements. They're just areas where the descendants of those early families still live. And so the landscapes of those early black towns are mainly seen in churches and cemeteries and also in like genealogical societies that focus on that early history and sometimes historical markers that you see, but you kind of have to search for these, right?

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (18:29):
They're not widely known. I'm thinking of, one of the earliest is in Brown and Adams County, just east of Cincinnati, and that early black settlement dates from the early 1820s and was established by the, so-called Gist settlement that was established by a plantation owner in Virginia who manumitted his slaves on his plantation when he died. He actually died in England. He was a...He sided with the British in the Revolutionary War and had to leave, but he left the plantation to his eldest daughters. And when he died, they were responsible for hiring someone to come find land over here and then getting those folks over here. I remember the first time I heard that story. It's just, you know, that's just something most people don't hear about is they were free Black populations in Ohio in the 1820s.

Laura Maylene Walter (19:21):
Yeah. And I mean, the point that a lot of people assume early Black populations in Ohio were centered only in the cities and instead of in more rural areas. So I think that's, that's really interesting. And I would like to read one more short excerpt from Anna-Lisa Cox's chapter. She writes, "For too long the myth that African Americans came late to this region, were unsuccessful and were primarily urban, has allowed a collective blindness to grow. This blindness has resulted in real damage to the historical narrative of this region, as well as hampered attempts to preserve and make known the historic sites and buildings that testify to the successes and accomplishments of early African American settlers and farmers." This is an important chapter that I hope a lot of listeners will take a look at or explore more of her work.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (20:10):
Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:10):
And another chapter, another familiar name that a lot of people will definitely know is Johnny Appleseed. This is in William Kerrigan's chapter, Johnny Appleseed in Apple Cultures in Early Ohio. Would one of you like to talk about this chapter a bit and what it shows about not just the history involving Johnny Appleseed, but about the broader picture of how American tree planters, you know, who was erased and who was maybe hiding behind the shadow of Johnny Appleseed, which sounds really ominous the way I said it, but I think, you know what I mean.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (20:44):
Well, I guess I'll, I'll take that one. I mean, I think we all grew up with the Johnny Appleseed lore. The vision of apple orchards sort of cropping up. And what I think William Kerrigan's chapter does so nicely is to evidence both the importance and significance of that culture of apple culture, especially in the early decades of settlement. In large part because many of the people who came to Ohio were not very well off. And you know we learn everything in this chapter from sort of how it is that hybridization of apples are kind of chance...Whether you get edible apples or whether you don't. And so the more apples you plant, the more likely you'll get edible ones, not just for yourself, but for livestock who you need to feed. And so apple growing, which has, you know, some roots in Native American society and sort of harvesting of apples becomes an important story for less well off Ohioans who are just trying to make ends meet.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (21:44):
And yet, by the end of his story, the settling of Ohio and the general wealth and prosperity, we might even call it early middle class by the 1820s and 30s, has made that particular component of apple orchards less significant, right? Ohioans have enough resources in general where they can put Johnny Appleseed as part of this sort of mythic past, and it becomes more of lore than it was at the beginning, which was actually really important substance for those people who were traveling through. So I think that's at least my takeaway from that particular chapter, which I know a lot of the audience members at the conference and subsequent readers have really enjoyed getting just a new perspective on a pretty well known and traditional story.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (22:32):
Yeah, I think he does a great job of removing the, kind of this mythic mask, if you will for Johnny Appleseed. And for me, one of the most interesting aspects of his chapter is how apple production was not only for human consumption, livestock consumption, but you know, it had to do with lack of potable water as well, right? Because they were making cider. Cider was one of the main reasons for growing apples. So I thought that was quite interesting.

Laura Maylene Walter (22:59):
Yeah, it was a bit maybe surprising to come to a chapter on Johnny Appleseed, in a good way. It's maybe not what you think of first or what you expect when you're thinking about Ohio's history, native populations, displacement, and white settlers. But what I found so fascinating about that chapter is in one really small way, I think it stands in for a lot of the big themes of this book, which is one mythic figure, a white man, kind of taking the attention or getting the attention and maybe overshadowing a lot of other stories and a lot of other kinds of people. So I found that really interesting.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (23:34):
A really important part of this book, and maybe we haven't talked about it enough, is to highlight the fact that before groups of New Englanders set off to settle Marietta and southeastern Ohio, the story of the people who were there before take center stage in this book. And so, you know, chapters that frame just the general context and the vibrancy of pre-Marietta, let's call it Ohio, really capture what a vibrant culture there was. And the extent to which Native Americans were doing business with and cultivating business with Europeans in the 18th century is a useful beginning for this book. And one of the chapters by John Bickers, who himself is a member of the Miami Nation evidence, is how it is that Indians navigated detentions that emerged as Euro-American settlement into this region, you know, magnified. And I think it does a wonderful job of giving voice to some of those who in the record often have been neglected and capturing the real dynamisms tensions that could exist within these different bands of Miami Indians who were trying to figure out how they're going to react to the U.S. Government moving in.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (24:52):
How are they going to do business with, when are they going to fight, when are they going to resist? And you see the real challenges that were incurred there and the perseverance of those people. All too often we kind of think that somehow after the 1790s Native Americans have sort of disappeared from Ohio or have just disappeared entirely. But Bickers chapters shows is the endurance of those groups, even as they have to, in many cases find homelands elsewhere. So I just want to call attention to that thread of the story and to highlight that as other chapters demonstrate that story of Native American history dovetails and intersects with important moments in the traditional narrative of U.S. History, including the Northwest Ordinance, including the Constitution, including obviously the War of 1812.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (25:42):
Yeah, I agree. I think that this idea of giving agency or assigning agency to all of these groups, right, had a hand in building Ohio. I think that's a dominant theme in the book. Yeah, I agree. I think John's chapter does a great job of that, of highlighting how, yeah, again, to use that term that Brian uses it, "contingent". This all was with groups vying for control and such, and not only Euro-Americans, but African, free African American populations, Indigenous groups, and even bands within different tribes trying to figure out what their role was going to be in this and such,

Laura Maylene Walter (26:21):
Along the lines of giving or assigning agency. I do want to talk about the afterward, which was really fascinating. Which was written by Chief Glenna J Wallace, who since 2006 has served as the chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and was the first woman ever elected to that office. And this chapter in part, I think paints a picture of what it was like for the first Ohioans to be pushed off their land. So I would love to hear more about how this chapter came to be, what it was like working with her and why, I mean, it's probably clear why it was important to add that to the book, but I would just like to hear a bit about how that became a part of it.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (27:01):
So Chief Glenna, she preferred that we call her, was just a remarkable person. And fortunately for us, she had already visited Ohio University to give a keynote address at an agricultural history conference with one of our colleagues, Katherine Jellison, also a remarkable person had helped facilitate. And so using those connections, we reached out to her. We knew that we needed to give voice to that and to remind people that many of the first Ohioans that, for lack of a better adjective, were no longer in Ohio. And her people who had been pushed west into what is now sort of right at the nexus of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas, needed to be given, you know, a prominent role in this book. And so she came and gave just a deeply personal and touching account of her own life and that of her people, which she said to us during dinner at that conference, she had to research...

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (28:00):
There really wasn't a history of the Eastern Shawnee when she became the Chief. They just didn't really have one written down. She had to track down scholars and lean on another historians and anthropologists and Native American scholars, but try to recreate what the history looked like. And so she tells that story, intersected with her own life story, I think in such a compelling way at the end of the book, you know, she, she is dedicated much of her time to calling attention to the significance of the Mounds, the Newark Mounds, to sort of pushing the UNESCO World Heritage Site and really to trying to help educate many of us who just don't have as much knowledge or background or experience. And so I think it was a really appropriate way to end the book.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:50):
She writes a visiting the Mounds where there's a golf course and being told to leave that she can't be there at that time. Which is just the irony is just so strong. Yeah.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (29:00):
Yeah. That golf course is in Newark. That's the Octagonal Newark Earthwork, which is now part of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. And yeah, I agree that's quite a striking scene. She paints there of that, that whole idea also brings to mind this idea of, of contested space. You know, Ohio was a contested space among all of these different groups during this period. That place is still contested even today. There's still an active lawsuit going on, even though that's now a UNESCO site. The country club that owns that are still kind of, I wouldn't say fighting it, but they are still trying to deal with how that's going to end up in the court system. So that story isn't completely written yet.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:43):
Before we run out of time, I did want to talk a bit about the process of putting this book together, editing it, publishing it, et cetera. So this book is published by Ohio University Press, and we have a lot of listeners who are maybe more involved on the trade publication side, so novels and memoirs and things like that of the quote unquote popular kind of books versus academic publishing. So I think they would be really interested to hear about your experiences and maybe some of the differences that you see between academic publishing and trade publishing. So can you tell us a bit about what the process was like for getting this book through the publication process?

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (30:24):
Yeah, well we were lucky from the outset to be working with Ohio University Press editors and the folks who were working in marketing all of just done a fantastic job. And so I don't want to speak for Brian as well, but I think we had a really positive experience all around. I know that one of the differences between academic publishing and trade publishing is probably the editorial process. For example, chapters were sent to readers to get their thoughts on it. And I don't know that it always happens in trade publishing. So that's probably a major difference there. It has to be vetted, if you will, in that way.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (31:05):
Yeah, I think one of the goals that we set out, both in the nature of the conference and the book was we wanted to take academic experts in their field. I mean, these are leading scholars who work on the topics that they write about. And we really asked them to write this in an accessible way. We didn't want this to be sort of insider baseball, you know, write this for the 15 other experts in your particular subspecialty. We asked them to write this and pitch it, add a general audience. And I think that that really helped the accessibility of the book. And as Tim mentioned, you know, we sent this out to readers who anonymously review it for errors, for any concerns that they might have about the interpretive framing of it. And you know, edited collections are sometimes tricky because you have lots of different voices and you have people writing, in this case about interdisciplinary subjects.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (31:59):
You know, you've, we've got geographers and anthropologists and specialists in education and historians all adding their voice. But the readers, you know, I think really recognized that there was a coherence to the book that kept it hanging together. And for us that did include, you know, giving some feedback to individual authors on how they might either word things in a way that would make it more accessible or, you know, try to connect in some of the other themes that are developed in the book. But it all came together very well and relatively easy. I've done several edited collections now, and I think this is one that from start to finish came together as smoothly as any that I've been a part of. And that is in large part due to the great work that the Ohio University Press does in this area. And they do have a trade section to them, the Swallow Press. And I think some of that experience has probably came in handy in this book as well.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (32:53):
Yeah, I was going to say, that's one of the things I'm most proud about is that, about the book and, well, two things. One, I'll mirror what Brian was just saying about edited collections, right? I mean, this is a common critique of edited collections like this is that they don't flow together very well. But I think in this case they do. And the second is that I just love the look of the book from the cover to print type. Everything just looks great.

Laura Maylene Walter (33:16):
When you said you love the look of it. I almost held it up to the camera to show it to you, your own book. I don't know why...this is an audio only podcast,<laugh>, but listeners, you'll see the cover on our promotional materials. It's probably also worth just mentioning that we were discussing David McCullough's THE PIONEERS, which is a popular book, that's a trade book. And one of the reviews, I'll link to the Slate review. I believe the writer of that review discussed how there might be a misperception that the good stories are all in the popular books, right? And not academic books, but this author says, hey, I've read a lot of academic works that have great stories. And so that definitely made me think of SETTLING OHIO and how that applies here. So how did you two work together as editors of these chapters? Did you split them up? How did you collaborate to make it come together as seamlessly as it did?

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (34:06):
Brian and I, when we first really got to know each other at this conference in Michigan and then working together, organizing the conference here at Ohio University, that was really the genesis of the book project. I think we just kind of meshed. It was clear we had similar interests and we were able just able to work together very well without really having to try hard to, to make that happen. That was really a positive, pleasant experience. In essence, we split up the work kind of 50/50 in terms of, you take these chapters, you take these chapters. So for like half of the chapters, I was the kind of point person and working with the authors and the other half, Brian was, yeah, then we kind of took it from there and dividing up the work equally.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (34:53):
I think also one of the things that can sometimes be seen, at least by academics as a negative, we really turned into a positive. And that's that we have different disciplinary backgrounds, but we also both know something about the topic that this book was covering. And we brought our different viewpoints and perspectives into our editing of that. And so we were able to kind of make sure that like the geographer's chapter and the anthropologist chapter read well for somebody who maybe used some more narrative accounts and that the historical narrative would speak towards some of the framing of this. Yeah, it was just a real joy to work through these things with Tim. And it was, as I said earlier, just a very comparatively smooth process whereby things kind of came into place. You know, we enjoyed, we learned a lot from each other, I think. And yeah, it was a good process.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (35:43):
Yeah, I love the interdisciplinary of it. That actually, you know, was one of the most time consuming aspects on my part was the interdisciplinarity is great, but those disciplines have different publishing norms, right? In terms of citation styles and such. Geographers almost exclusively never use footnotes anymore, right? And so I think the geographers to be able to write in that way, that took some time, but in the end it came out well.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:10):
Well, I always love to hear when any writer or editor has a smooth experience and it all comes together. I feel like that needs to happen more often. Well, we're about almost out of time, but before we go, since we were talking a lot about Ohio's history today, since you're both professors at Ohio University, you're both of Ohio, I thought maybe we could end with each of you sharing maybe a place or a part or an aspect of Ohio that you really enjoy today. It could be a landmark, it could be a city, a location, natural, anything that you'd like to share.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (36:45):
I think for me, and this is the academic in me, the historical geographer in me, I think one of the most interesting places is this area just to the south of Columbus, kind of in between Lancaster and Chillicothe and Circleville that area. That to me, I would argue, and I think I could back this up...This is where the Midwest really began because these different systems that were brought by these different groups kind of all met right there in that area. So this is for readers who might know this area, listeners who might know this area, Western Fairfield County, Eastern Ross County, that area, that's an area that feels, some of the landscapes feel kind of Pennsylvanian, some of them feel very southern Virginian. And you can see this in the houses, you can see this in the barn types, especially in the rural landscape, but also in places like Lancaster and Chillicothe, in In Circleville.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (37:46):
You can see a lot of these early in the architecture of those places, the civic architecture. You can see this idea of the country kind of getting going, right? The republic really getting going west, north, and west of the Ohio River, all of these groups coming together. And this landscape that emerged out of that is this lack of a better word, palimpsest, right? This mix of different ideas and ideals. And that's a place where you can really see it. That's a place I love traveling around, like, and poking around in cemeteries, for example. So you know, you can find rural cemeteries where everything's in German, right? Someone who was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania. But then five miles down the road there's a cemetery and all those folks were born in Virginia. It's quite interesting to me.

Laura Maylene Walter (38:34):
I love cemeteries as well. I was just, I just led a little tour of writers at Riverside Cemetery here in Cleveland.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (38:40):
Yeah, that's a great.

Laura Maylene Walter (38:40):
It's beautiful. Some of our literary figures who are buried there. All right Brian, what about you?

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (38:46):
Tim gave me some time to think of a good answer.

Laura Maylene Walter (38:48):
<Laugh>I know I put you both on the spot.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (38:49):
His was so, you know, historically minded, mines a little bit more recreational. I like going over to Marietta. McCullough's book did open up new ways of me thinking about Marietta as a place and as a site. And that's probably a place close to Athens that I like to visit. Athens of course, is a wonderful college town, but I had the chance, and I know Tim did as well, partly due to this book to go visit Lakeside Chautauqua last summer. And I, I really like the lake area. I like being up there and around there. Wish I could go up there more regularly. It's just sort of peaceful, I find. And one of the beauties of Ohio is that it is a microcosm of so many different parts of America. It was in the early 19th century and it is now too, right? So cities like Columbus, which my father-in-Law lives in, you see just all the growth and development there. The State House, there's so many great sites in Ohio, it's hard to choose one. So I guess I just, I won't.

Laura Maylene Walter (39:44):
That is fine. You're allowed to not choose. I love the lake area as well. I just asked that question on the fly, but I realized the first thing that came to my mind, even though I love a lot in Cleveland, was Kelly's Island actually. So glacial grooves that might be applicable here, but I love Kelly's Island and I think it's just so peaceful and beautiful. Listeners, wherever you are in Ohio or beyond, I hope you will pick up SETTLING OHIO and give it a read. Tim and Brian, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing a bit more about this book and your process, and congratulations again on being named a Great Read from Great Places. Thanks so much for being here today.

Brian Shoen, Ph.D. (40:26):
Thank you, Laura.

Timothy G. Anderson, Ph.D. (40:26):
Thank you so much Laura.

Laura Maylene Walter (40:37):
Page Count is presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review for Page Count wherever you get your podcast. Learn more online or find a transcript of this episode at ohiocenterforthebook.org. Follow us on Instagram @ohiocenterforthebook or find us on Facebook. If you'd like to get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org and put "podcast" in the subject line. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks for another chapter of Page Count.