Once upon a time in Ada
Things you didn’t know about your own hometown
By Lee Crouse
[email protected]
The Ada Herald, Ada, Ohio, March 2, 1982
A cloth banner was found by The Ada Herald recently. A very well done painting is on each side of the banner, but the reason for either side being painted is unknown. Does anyone of our readers remember anything of the ONU Club, or what American Tin and Honest Dollars could stand for?
The Ada Herald, Ada, Ohio, March 10, 1982
Banner history furnished
The banner was identified as a banner used in 1891 when two gubanatorial candidates, James Campbell and William McKinley, held a debate in Ada, October 8, 1891.
The ONU Club evidently was the sponsor of the event, and McKinley was elected Ohio’s governor in the 1891 election. It is his picture shown on the banner.
Excerpts from “Tempered by Crises” by Prof. G.E. Belch
A FLAIR FOR PUBLICITY
Always alert for any opportunity to publicize his school, Lehr seized upon the Ohio gubernatorial campaign of 1891 and turned it into a publicity coup for Ohio Normal University.
An event that is now a mere footnote to the political history of Ohio generated intense excitement in Ada on October 8, 1891. This was the political debate between then Governor James Campbell (Democrat) and his republican challenger, Major William McKinley.
Little Ada bristled with the usual trappings of American politics: bands, banners, placards, and leather-lunged partisans of the candidates. The little village was swelled to many times its usual size when crowds estimated at 15 to 20 thousand gathered to hear the debate. Bands blared, cannon roared, crowds cheered, and politicians pontificated, all because an enterprising little schoolmaster wanted to advertise his college. Lehr not only organized the debate, he dreamed up the whole idea, put his proposal to each candidate, and jawboned the candidates and their satraps until they agreed. Lehr arranged the whole gaudy production, served as publicity chief (with heavy emphasis upon the site), and lastly, served as host to both candidates at an elaborate dinner at his home.
Lehr had met Campbell in Washington while doing some politicking for his Ohio Normal University. Although a loyal Republican, Lehr never let mere partisanship interfere with a worthy goal- and in Lehr’s eyes, no goal was more worthy than furthering the cause of his little college he had founded in 1871 and guided for 20 rocky years.
Lehr sensed opportunity knocking when Campbell, then governor of Ohio, agreed to address the class of ’91. After Campbell had been recommended for governor by his party, Lehr cagily proposed that instead of simply commencement address, Campbell engage in a joint debate with his Republican opponent, William McKinley. Lehr knew this would stir up a great deal more publicity for his college than a canned commencement address.
Campbell agreed to Lehr’s proposal amiably enough, but McKinley and his advisors were not so easily persuaded. McKinley personally didn’t care much for joint debates in the first place, and his associates were frankly hostile, on the reasonable enough grounds that Ada was too small and remote, and that the crowd wouldn’t be worth the effort. However, Lehr was insistent and persuasive, and they finally came around, reluctantly.
All this was quite a coup for Lehr, as the Columbus, Ohio, Press noted, somewhat waspishly:
Joint debates between candidates are usually arranged between the respective party committees. That enterprising Normal School professor, who has tried to work some advertising for his school out of the matter, has done gratuitous work. As an advertiser he is a great success. Not in the history of Ohio politics has a political campaign been so successfully turned into an advertising scheme by any individual concern.
Having successfully planted his crop, Lehr was not about to have it wilt for lack of cultivation. He laid on a gala reception for the candidates, and the little village was brave with flags and bunting and arches of welcome over the main street. As they arrived, the candidates were met by bands and a military escort of cadets from the university and escorted in style to Lehr’s home, where an out-of-town caterer had laid on a luncheon for 150 guests. McKinley, Campbell, and their chief aides ate at the first table, of course, in the Lehr dining room, but Lehr didn’t forget the reporters and lesser fry, who were served an equally sumptuous meal on the lawn.
Although the weather had been threatening on the day before, the 8th was chilly but clear, and the parties left the luncheon, to adjourn to the Fair Grounds where the debate was to be held, in good spirits. As the parties passed Lehr’s university, the military companies boomed out salutes to them, and the bands of the various political clubs raised a cheerful din.
The debate was scheduled tp begin at 2 p.m. and was to consume three hours, each candidate being allowed and hour and a half for the argument. A gratifying crowd of 15 to 20 thousand had turned out and there were thundering cheers for each speaker.
The candidates manfully addressed themselves to such topics as free silver and farm prices, each man shyly suggesting the superiority of his party on the issues. During the debate Lehr had runners recruited from his student body dashing to the railroad depot, which had been turned into a press center, with newspaper copy happily datelined “Ada.”
At the end of the speaking period, the candidates and their entourages returned to the Lehr home for an elaborate dinner of nine courses. True to his prohibitionist leanings, Lehr had declined to have wine served with the meal. However, when the caterer protested that the trout demanded a good wine sauce, Lehr did relent and permit this culinary requisite. The speakers, after a long and dry afternoon, may have had some reservations about Lehr’s choice of beverages, but at any rate, they voiced none. Their silence just could have been due to the charitable insubordination of the caterer. (Who, by the way, was so jealous of his art that he refused to have the Lehr womenfolk in the kitchen, lest they purloin his recipes.) As Lehr was to recount in later years, “The caterer served fine red lemonade instead of cider. The Major (McKinley) sat at my side and as I now remember, drank six glasses. I well remember that I drank at least three. The next morning before breakfast Mrs. Lehr said, “I thought you said you would not serve wine. “My reply was that there was no wine served. She said “Come and see the empty bottles,’ and there they were-two bottles and a half of claret left.” One suspects that the caterer knew the dehydrating qualities of political speeches and took steps to rectify the matter, for surely no human being short of Diamond Jim Brady, who customarily drank gallons of orange juice with his meals, could consume six glasses of unfortified lemonade, even red lemonade.
To help his guests digest their nine course dinner, Lehr had laid out 400 cigars “for which I paid $25.00.” (Lest the reader think Lehr was cutting corners a bit on the smokes, remember that the dollar in 1891 was worth at least five times the 1971 buck and that a two-bit cigar was plenty good foe politicians and reporters.)
All in all, Lehr did his guests proud and as he remarked, the lunch and dinner cost “a right smart sum.” For Lehr it was money well spent, for Ada and Ohio Normal University made virtually every newspaper in the state. As the Mansfield Daily Shield and Banner commented, “The University did not suffer any by the joint debate; there is a very Lehr-ned (sic) as well as shrewd man at its head.
This sort of thing was the very stuff of life to Lehr and his school.
History does not record which candidate got the better of the debate on that chilly October day in 1891. However McKinley did win the governor’s election in 1891, and from this base went on to become President of the United States. He was still in this office when he was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901.
It is not suggested that the debate in Ada had any pivotal influence on the 1891 election, but it is interesting to note that McKinley won by just over 20,000 votes that year, and that there were about 20,000 people in Ada that day to hear the debate. Perhaps, just perhaps, if McKinley had turned down Professor Lehr and not come to Ada, he might not have become governor of Ohio, and if he hadn’t become governor of Ohio, he almost certainly wouldn’t have become… but then speculation of this sort profits little-and the McKinley-Campbell debate was a red-letter event in the history of Ada and Ohio Northern University.
