1836 tussle underscores Michigan/Ohio rivalry

Michigan won the only real skirmish with Ohio during “The Toledo War” on April 26, 1836. The Michigan Militia was under the command of Col. William McNair, the undersheriff of Lenawee County. 

McNair mobilized a posse of about 30 men. They marched a distance of 14 miles south from Adrian, the county seat, and encountered an Ohio surveying crew that was working in the rural Michigan countryside. The site was 30 miles west of Toledo. 

Ohio Gov. Robert Lucas had sent his surveyors into the Michigan territory to re-mark the boundary line between Ohio and Michigan, to ensure – by hook or by crook – that the planned Lake Erie port city of Toledo would have an Ohio address (although the land rightfully belonged to Michigan). 

McNair’s men intended to arrest the survey team and its guards for trespassing on the land of Col. Eli Phillips, also an officer in the Michigan Militia. (Phillips had established his home and farm here in 1833 at an intersection of two roads. He was the first settler, so the place was called Phillips Corners.) 

Historians named the confrontation as the “Battle of Phillips Corners.” When McNair’s posse moved in, the surveying party scattered. Nine Ohio guardsmen made a dash for the nearby woods. McNair’s men fired a volley over their heads, wounding none but capturing all. The Ohio guardsmen were bound and carted off to the Lenawee County jail.

 

McNair was hailed as a hero. The press noted that “his posse could have shot all them Ohio boys, had they had a mind to.” 

The boundary dispute was tied to Michigan’s petition for statehood. Ohio had been a state since 1803. Its congressional delegation had enough clout to block Michigan’s request to join the union…until Michigan conceded that the 468-square-mile “Toledo Strip” belonged to Ohio. 

Michigan’s territorial governor Stevens T. Mason complained bitterly. In an attempt to sweeten the pot for Michigan, U.S. President Andrew Johnson and congressional leaders agreed to let Michigan take 9,000 square miles of land on the Upper Peninsula between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior from the Wisconsin Territory. 

Early explorers issued a verdict that the Upper Peninsula was “a sterile region…destined by soil and climate to remain forever a wilderness.” 

Mason finally accepted the terms, as it was deemed to be Michigan’s only path to become the 26th state in 1837. At the time, pundits said Ohio got a “real diamond,” and Michigan got “a box of rocks.”

 Toledo was the planned end point of the Miami and Erie Canal. Construction had begun in 1825 to connect the Ohio River at Cincinnati to Lake Erie at the mouth of the Maumee River, a 274-mile project. Ohio had envisioned that Toledo would rise to become a major metropolis, connected via canals to the Mississippi River.

 That dream fizzled out. The canal system opened in 1845, but the arrival of the railroad era dramatically ate into the amount of freight moving through the canal. The catastrophic Great Dayton Flood of 1913 destroyed much of the canal’s infrastructure along the southern portion of the route, where it paralleled the Great Miami River. After that, the canal was permanently abandoned. 

Not only did Michigan lose Toledo, it lost Philips Corners, which became Seward in Fulton County, Ohio. (Seward was home to Czech Dancers Polka Club and its open-air Czech Hall pavilion.) 

But when Michigan opened that box of Upper Peninsula rocks, out jumped vast deposits of copper and iron ore.

‘Toledo War’ is one of U.S. history’s most bizarre conflicts

Michigan missed out on getting “Frogtown,” but it was the price that the territory had to pay to Ohio in order to attain statehood in 1837. 

This is the story of the “Toledo War,” which almost reached the boiling point in 1835-6. It was a heated dispute over the Ohio-Michigan boundary line. 

There were no fatalities, so it’s a skirmish that Michicologists don’t mind including in the middle elementary grades’ curriculum, as an example of political shenanigans. 

In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance stipulated that the vast territory surrounding the Great Lakes could be carved into a handful of new states. This land would become Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.

The law stated that the border separating Indiana and Ohio from Michigan was to run on “a west to east line” drawn from the southern-most point of Lake Michigan until it intersected with Lake Erie. 

However, the best available maps depicted Lake Michigan’s southern tip as being several miles north of its true location. As a result, the mouth of the Maumee River and the future city of Toledo ended up in northern Ohio, rather than in southern Michigan where it belonged. 

The boundary discrepancy became a heated debate after Ohio was admitted to the union in 1803. Ohio claimed it owned all the land around the Maumee River.

Michigan was still just a territory at the time, but officials contended that a 468-square-mile slice of land rightfully belonged to Michigan. This piece of geography later became known as the “Toledo Strip.” 

The Ohio-Michigan border is about 8 miles out of whack at the point today where I-75 crosses from one state into the other. Most all of Toledo, north of its Rossford suburb, could and should be part of Michigan, historians say. 

Back in the early 1800s, the Maumee River basin was called the Great Black Swamp, and the village that sprung up there was originally known as Frogtown, because of all the croaking frogs that inhabited the swamp. 

(Frogtown became Toledo…apparently for no good reason other than that Toledo sounded better to attract industrial development.) 

When Michigan sought admission to the union in 1833, Ohio’s congressmen said the only way Michigan would be voted in as a state was for it to back down on its claim for ownership of the “Toledo Strip.” 

At the time, former U.S. President John Quincy Adams supported Michigan, saying, “Never in the course of my life have I known a controversy of which all the right is so clearly on one side and all the power is so overwhelmingly on the other.”

Stevens T. Mason, who was the territorial governor of Michigan, wasn’t about to cede the “Toledo Strip” to Ohio. Ohio’s governor Robert Lucas appealed to President Andrew Jackson, who had succeeded Adams, to step in and validate Ohio’s preferred boundary line. 

Robert Lucas

The situation was a hot potato. Jackson didn’t want to lose any political points in Ohio, but his Attorney General Benjamin Butler said that “until Congress dictated otherwise, the territory of Michigan has the legitimate legal claim to the land.” 

Hence, Jackson implored Congress to approve the North Ohio Boundary Bill of 1836. Ohio got the Toledo Strip. Michigan got the “Upper Peninsula,” which was fondly referred to as “a region of perpetual snows.” 

The deal included the guarantee that Michigan would be inducted as the nation’s 26th state on Jan. 27, 1837.

Okra in a can is yummy, too

Some families get their okra out of a can, and one of the South’s preferred brand names is “Margaret Holmes,” which was founded in the early 1930s by farmer Ed Holmes of Sandersville, Ga. He began by canning white acre peas and squash, working out of his kitchen. 

He named the company after his wife, Margaret, who helped oversee the operation. The Holmes family’s canning business was acquired in 1985 by McCall Farms of Effingham, S.C., which is dedicated to manufacturing a wide variety of Southern-style food products. 

In addition to Margaret Holmes, major McCall Farms brands include Glory Foods, Peanut Patch boiled peanuts and Bruce’s Yams (sweet potatoes).

 

Susan Slack, a cookbook author and culinary commentator in Charleston, S.C., said: “The Margaret Holmes’ line of canned goods are “some of the tastiest canned goods I have ever eaten. Although my motto is, ‘fresh is best,’ Margaret Holmes offers cooked veggies ‘almost’ as delicious as your grandmother can make.” 

“I was surprised at their excellent quality and flavor,” Slack said. She has taste-tested the three okra products offered – plain okra, okra and tomatoes and the okra-tomatoes-corn combo. “All would make nice additions to a pot of homemade soup.” 

“Margaret Holmes canned vegetables can be heated on your stovetop or in the microwave,” Slack said. “I was prepared to add additional seasoning to improve the flavor, but found it unnecessary.” 

Okra is a ‘sock-o’ college mascot

 Sports opponents of Delta State University fear getting smacked by “The Fighting Okra” mascot that lives on the Delta State campus in Cleveland, Miss.

The Fighting Orka is lean, mean and green…and wears boxing gloves. Whap. Ka-Pow. Bam. Bop. Bonk.

Delta State teams compete in the Gulf South Conference within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II level.

About 4,000 students are enrolled at the university. In 1985, they decided their Delta State “Statesman” mascot may talk (or orate) a good game, but he did little to get the school’s athletic teams and fans jacked up to punch out the competition. 

Hannah Kistemaker of Mooresville, N.C., who was co-editor in chief of the Delta State student newspaper in 2017, said a member of the varsity baseball team came up with the okra idea, because the vegetable was “fuzzy and tough.” 

“At the next basketball game in 1985, the baseball players lined the bleachers. They were ready to fill in where the Statesman could not – chanting. ‘Okra! Okra! Okra!’” 

Kistemaker quoted student Raven Allison, who said: “Everyone loves The Okra, from little children to adults. The party does not start until The Okra shows up.”

“The Fighting Okra” is already ranked fourth among the all-time list of “weird college mascots,” according to FirstPoint USA, a sports scholarship and university admissions agency, based in Manchester, Mich. 

With a bit of a 2020s makeover, “The Fighting Okra” could leap to the top of the heap, replacing “Sammy the Slug” at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as the weirdest...yet adorable.

Here's Sammy!

‘Growing up, There Was Never Enough Okra’

Corbie Hill is a freelance writer who lives in the woods in Chatham County, near Pittsboro, N.C. He once wrote about okra for Our State magazine. 

Hill figured he was highly qualified for the assignment, having grown up in Pamlico County eating okra and loving it. 

“We had okra in stews and soups and spaghetti sauces; we had it boiled. Mostly, though, we ate it fried,” Hill said. “There was something irresistible about okra after it had been chopped, breaded and pan-fried to within a shade of blackened.” 

“Trouble is, there was never enough,” he said. 

To complement the yield from the Hill family garden, more fresh okra pods had to be purchased from Paul’s Produce, an iconic roadside stand, located on N.C. Route 55, about halfway between Oriental and Stonewall. 

Today, Corbie Hill finds his okra on a fancy plate, served by Angelina Koulizakis-Battiste of Angelina’s Kitchen in Pittsboro. 

She prepares okra “slightly sautéed in olive oil – which is what she thinks is ‘fried’ okra,” Hill said with a laugh. 

 

‘What is that green stuff?’

 Liz Biro, a columnist for the online newsletter produced by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, is a former food editor. She remembers that she got her first glimpse of okra as an 8-year-old.

Her family had just moved from New Jersey to eastern North Carolina, and they were invited to a big covered dish spread in their new community.

“What’s that green stuff?” Liz quietly asked her mother who replied with a hushed voice: “I have no idea.” 

What is was…was okra.

“Okra doesn’t make friends easily. People don’t mind when it’s hidden in the Creole gumbos,” Biro said. “On its own, though, okra is an old-timer’s favorite that has never charmed the masses.”

“Yet, there’s much to love about okra,” she said. “Some southern cooks boil, fry, sauté or grill whole okra, the stem barely trimmed, to keep the mucilage contained.”

“My mother fried sliced okra, sans cornmeal, in a heavy skillet, adding fresh, chopped hot pepper and plenty of salt.” The mucilage browned the okra, “making it almost crunchy,” Biro said. “I still crave the flavor and recreate the dish as soon as fresh okra season arrives, late summer in eastern North Carolina.” 

“These days, I also like to slowly pan roast whole okra over low heat in a cast-iron skillet to which I add a little grapeseed oil. I turn the okra now and then to brown all sides and sometimes pour a small amount of water into pan to help steam-soften the pods as they brown.” Biro said.

“During the last few minutes of cooking, I sprinkle on Indian spices like turmeric, cumin and whole black mustard seeds. Prepared this way, okra has a nice chew and welcomes a cool yogurt dipping sauce.” 

Okra is tasty Southern food delicacy

Okra is a maligned Southern food. Tom and Barbara Womack, owners of Homestead Hill Farm near Middlebrook, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley, say: 

“Okra is one of those things you either love or you hate. There are few who have tried it who feel truly ambivalent about it. Since okra is a member of the mallow family, there is a mucilaginous quality of which to be aware. It means ‘it might be slimy!’” 

No, no, no. In the Carolinas, where okra is considered to be a fine Southern delicacy, we might describe okra as naturally and wholesomely “slippery or slick.”

Southern cooks know that okra’s mucilage, “a compound of sugars and proteins in the plant, is what makes okra a great thickening agent for dishes like gumbo and succotash” as well as okra stews, said Paige Burns of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension office in Rockingham, N.C., which serves Richmond County.

 Two late, great Southern writers added to the mystique of okra. One was poet and novelist James Dickey, a native of Atlanta, once told an interviewer: “If God had made anything better (than okra), He’d have kept it for Himself.”

Another, columnist and storyteller Julia Reed of Greenville, Miss., contended: “So few people eat okra that it never even makes it onto the lists of Top 10 hated foods.”

 

Cookbook author John DeMers, who is a native of New Orleans, is an okra food expert. He wrote: 

“Historians tell us that okra originated…in the part of Africa that today includes Ethiopia, Eritrea and the eastern, higher part of the Sudan. The vegetable found an early following among the Egyptians living in the fertile valley of the Nile.” 

Okra thrives in the southern U.S. climate, soaking up heat and humidity. Paige Burns said that “okra is in the mallow family, along with its cousins – ornamental hibiscus and cotton and cocoa. The okra flower is quite ornamental itself.” 

Okra’s ribbed pods are generally green and delicately finger-shaped. “Okra is best when picked when small and tender,” she said. “Under an inch long, it can be eaten raw or cooked with its cap on. Larger than that, you may want to slice off the cap high enough up so that the inner seeds don’t spill out.”

 

“As with any other vegetable,” Burns said, “there is a peak point at which to harvest. If you want to use the okra for boiling, it must be tiny…no more than two inches long. Fried okra and some other applications allow for larger fruits.” 

Did you hear that? Burns’ flip-flop choice of words here poses the ultimate question: Is okra a vegetable or a fruit? 

Sarah Toney, co-owner of Free Range Farm near Fayetteville, W.Va., in the New River Gorge, said scientists consider okra to be a fruit, but chefs call it a vegetable. 

“In the culinary world, okra is described as a vegetable,” Toney said. “Chefs use a less scientific criteria to classify fruits and vegetables, one that is based on sweetness and sugar content.”

“Fruits have a more delicate flavor. They have a softer texture and are sweet or tart in taste. Fruits are more likely to be featured in desserts, jams, smoothies or other sweeter dishes. Whether or not you can make a pie from it can be a big deciding factor as well,” she said. 

“Vegetables are harder, with a somewhat bitter taste. They are used in savory dishes and soups. In the kitchen, okra is a vegetable as it is low in sugar and usually used in more savory dishes. Like my southern favorite – fried okra,” Toney said. 

“Okra is delicious and has a lot of nutritional value. Okra is rich in fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate and thiamine. It is also low in calories, has next to no fat and is a good source of antioxidants, so no matter if you think okra is a fruit or a vegetable, keep on eating it and keep on growing it,” she advised.

But heed Paige Burns’ final words of wisdom: “If the okra pods are bigger than your hand, give them to the chickens (or add the okra to the compost pile); they’ll be too tough, stringy and woody for people to eat.”

Early on, billiards struggled to gain respect

Billiards was both an “exercise and amusement” for U.S. President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who was regarded as America’s first “cue sports” chief executive. 

Adams was inaugurated as the sixth president in March 1825, and soon thereafter, he picked up a billiard table at a second-hand store and had it set up inside the White House. 

On top of this story is Shannon Selin, born in Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada, a top-flight historian and writer. She said Adams was “a hardworking and studious man, and the game was a pleasant distraction.” He would typically play billiards for an hour or two each evening before retiring.

John Quincy Adams

 In 1826, U.S. Rep. Stephen Van Rensselaer of New York filed a report in Congress that brought into question expenses for “furnishings” at the White House. Circled were outlays of $50 for the pre-owned billiard table, $43.44 for new cloth and repair work as well as $11 for cues and billiard balls. 

Adams asserted that the report was incorrect. He had paid the sum of $104.44 out of his own pocket, plus another $23.50 for “new chessmen.” 

That was only the beginning, however, of an onslaught of criticism directed toward Adams, according to Selin. He was an easy target for zealous editorialists. One wrote: 

“Can it be that the President’s House is to be converted into a place where gamblers may idle away an hour? Is it right that the President, as the head and father of moral, religious…people, should set such an example? 

Adams was repeatedly chastised for turning the White House into a “gambling den.” He was unable to deflect the barbs, which were encouraged by his opponent in the 1928 election, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. 

“The issue of the billiard table contributed…to Adams’ defeat in 1828,” Selin said.

 Moving forward, the archivist at The White House Museum said that Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, also enjoyed a game of billiards…which he described in 1861 as a “health inspiring, scientific game, lending recreation to the otherwise fatigued mind.” 

The game’s undisputed greatest spokesperson was author Mark Twain of Missouri (born in 1835 as Samuel Langhorne Clemens). He declared billiards to be “the best game on Earth.” 

 Twain’s favorite time was when he was doting on his cats (as many as 32) while playing billiards. He wrote:

 “One (kitten) liked to be crammed into a corner pocket of the billiard table – and there he watched the game…and obstructed it…by the hour, spoiling many a shot by putting out his paw and changing the direction of a passing ball.”

Twain opened a speech in 1906 with a story about his time in Virginia City, Nev., working as “an underpaid newspaper reporter,” from 1862-64. “One day a stranger came to town and he looked like an easy mark,’ Twain said. A game was arranged. 

“‘Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait,’ he said; and when I had done so, he remarked: ‘I will be perfectly fair with you. I’ll play you left-handed.’” 

“I determined to teach him a lesson,” Twain said. “He won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got was the opportunity to chalk my cue.” 

“If you can play like that with your left hand,” I said, “I’d like to see you play with your right. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m left-handed.’”

Leather tips on pool cues was a game-changer

French Army Capt. François Mingaud, who was imprisoned in Paris in 1804 for speaking out in opposition to Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor, is widely regarded as a pioneer who helped popularize “cue sports.” 

Allie Leigh Adams, a billiards historian, said: “There was not much to do at the prison, but there was a billiard table. Mingaud, who was a keen player, would pick up a cue every day to practice.” 

In those days, “miscues” were common, because of the degree of difficulty in executing the perfect stroke. It was necessary for the wooden cue stick to precisely strike the center point of the cue ball.

 François Mingaud

It was here, while being held captive, that Mingaud discovered that a small circle of leather, when glued to the tip of a cue, added an element of texture, also referred to as grip, giving “more purchase on the ball.” Whatever – there was a marked decline in Mingaud’s frequency of miscues. 

Adams said the cue tip “innovation changed the sport of billiards forever.”

Kristina "Kiki" Grim of Karlsruhe, Germany

Mingaud also knew it was important to regularly dab the cue’s tip with a white, powdery substance known as calcium carbonate (commonly referred to as chalk). This helped preserve the life of the leather.

 His experimentations enabled him to apply twist, side-spin, topspin and backspin to the cue ball. After he was released from prison in 1807, Mingaud parlayed his trick shot artistry into “routine,” performing in the best Parisian cafes. 

His repertoire of 40 shots, dazzled patrons. They were astonished by his manipulation of the cue ball, a sight that they had never seen nor imagined possible. 

He feigned that his cue ball was “tormented by Satan himself” – all part of the act. 

One of the most notorious hustles in the history of the game of billiards was perpetrated by Jack Carr, who was employed as a billiards marker (scorer/referee) at a parlor in Bath, Somerset, England. Carr was an excellent player and won the first all-English championship in 1824. 

Carr “invented” blue chalk in about 1825. Carr led patrons to believe the product was “magic twisting chalk.”

When players chalked up with Carr’s blue chalk, they were suddenly able to make the cue ball spin and twist. He demonstrated Mingaud’s trick shots and claimed them as his own, and Carr’s side-spin shot was executed by applying “English” to the ball.

 Carr charged an exorbitant price for a box of his “magic chalk” – a half crown (two shillings and six pence), about the average weekly wage during that time. Sources say Jack Carr made a small fortune with his ingenious swindle – selling what amounted to a “powdery form” of snake oil.

 Eventually, players caught on that Carr’s chalk was ordinary, standard white chalk that had been colored blue and had zero magical properties.

Andy Janquitto of Towson, Md., an attorney and billiards enthusiast, said that in the latter part of the 19th century, the rage was Italian chalk. “It was mined in Sicily from porous volcanic rock deposits found near Mount Etna. The volcanic rock was pulverized, mixed with a blue coloring agent and formed into blocks,” Janquitto said.

In Chicago, William A. Spinks, an entrepreneur, partnered with inventor William Hoskins to formulate a chalk product to mimic the Italian chalk. They received a patent in 1897.

Their product claimed to “provide a cue tip friction enhancer that allowed the tip to better grip the cue ball.” Spinks’ Billiard Chalk became the best-selling brand in the land.