Reminisce

Ernie Robison found part of William Siegel’s gold pocket watch in the spring of 1933, some 29 years after an explosion at a nitroglycerin magazine shattered windows in nearby Spencerville and rained bits of dirt, wood, horse flesh and…

The Standard Oil Company, the Allen County Democrat wrote, “are not of the class who allow a matter of a few thousand dollars to stand in the way of accomplishing a purpose.”Standard Oil’s purpose, in the late summer of 1886, was buying…

LIMA — The Jones Brothers Mortuary was a landmark in Lima. At a time when segregation was the norm, it was a black-owned and -operated business that held its own for several decades at 1302 Oakland Parkway.After selling the business…

Dr. Ralph E. Latimer practiced dentistry in his office at 119 E. Spring St. and promoted the study of Black history everywhere else in the community.As founder and leader of the Lima chapter of the Association for the Study of African…

By 1880, many of those who had arrived in Allen County a half century earlier, when the forest was full of wolves, wildcats, and the occasional Shawnee or Wyandot hunter, were passing into history.In November 1879, Jacob Ridenour,…

On Feb. 4, 1930, barely three months after the stock market crash triggered the Great Depression, The Lima News in a front-page story announced that “the most pretentious exhibition of products made and sold in Lima that has ever been…