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Social Institutions

Boys and Girls Clubs of America

The roots of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Toledo can be traced back more than a century to the Toledo Newsboys Association begun by John Gunckel in 1892. [Exhibit link]

The History of the Toledo and Lake Erie Boating and Fishing Association and The Middle Bass Club

The Original Club consisted of the Toledo and Lake Erie Boating and Fishing Association (1874-1894) and the renamed Middle Bass Club (1894-1922).  The prominent Toledo families that started the Original Club and remained members for a number of years include: Barbers, Barbours, Baumgardners, Berdans, Bodmans, Bonds, Burdicks, Childs’s, Collins’s, Coltons, Curtis’s, Cummings, Davis’s, Dodges, Doyles, Goslines, Hamiltons, Hardees, Isherwoods, Kelseys, Ketchams, Lockes, Poes, Potters, Rodgers’s, Shoemakers, Smiths, Standarts, Stars, Stevens, Swaynes, Taylors, Waites and Youngs to name a few. [Exhibit link]

Medicine on the Maumee: A History of Health Care in Northwest Ohio

Clara Church, 8 years old, tetanus, January 29, 1859. Chris Fall, 35 years old, laborer, drinking ice water, May 15, 1860. Avery McCarthy, 19 years old, fits, September 20, 1860. John Ayers, 32 years old, bad whiskey, June 3, 1863. Theodore Hansen, 27 years old, soldier, starved in Rebel prison, April 3, 1865. Ada Meeker, 1 year old, cholera infantum, September 24, 1865. Susanna H. James, housewife, 23 years old, typhoid fever, January 23, 1866. These brief entries recorded in the pages of the Record of Deaths in the City of Toledo are more than just statistics. Individually, they hint at lives tragically cut short. Collectively, they tell the story of life in Toledo in the middle of the 19th century, and help to document the state of medical care (or lack thereof) in the city at the time. [Exhibit link]

Rotary Club of Toledo

The Rotary Club of Toledo was founded on May 3, 1912. The Club, which was the forty-fourth in the world, was initially sponsored by the Detroit Rotary Club. The first Rotary meetings were held at the Toledo Chamber of Commerce, as well as at the Boody House in Toledo. In the first years of its existence, the Toledo Rotary Club helped the Rotary Club grow in Northwest Ohio and Southeastern Michigan, sponsoring new clubs in Lima, OH (1915), Fostoria, OH (1920), Findlay, OH (1920), and Defiance, MI (1920), and Adrian, MI (1921). [Exhibit link]

The Toledo Club 1889-1989

As 1989 was the 100th anniversary of the founding of The Toledo Club, it was felt that it would appropriate to publish a commemorative book.  As the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Club approached, a committee was formed to celebrate the event.  I [Carl N. White] volunteered to write the history book with the intention of distributing copies to all who attended The Toledo Club's 100th Anniversary celebration on September 9, 1989. [Exhibit link]

Toledo Hearing and Speech Center: A Century of Service

The Toledo Hearing and Speech Center served Toledo's deaf and hearing impaired community for nearly a century. Originally founded in 1920 as the Toledo League for the Hard of Hearing, the organization provided hearing tests, sign language lessons, speech therapy and hearing aids until 2014. [Exhibit link]

Toledo Humane Society

The Toledo Humane Society formed on January 29, 1884 and incorporated on February 14, 1884 , following meetings held at the Richard Mott's Home and Toledo Produce Exchange in Downtown Toledo in December of 1883.  A few prominent business and city leaders, including Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Exchange, met to propose the formation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Animals “to provide for the care and support of innocent children; for the protection of helpless children from the brutal-minded; for the care and comfort of aged parents; for over-worked, underfed and abused horses; and for the protection of all dumb animals.” [Exhibit link]

Toledo Sister City Digital Heritage: A Virtual Exhibition

This virtual exhibition aims to take the sister-city a little further by shifting the focus towards the cultural and intellectual dimensions in the relationships of participating communities. It brings together digitized cultural heritage materials from libraries, museums, and archives in Toledo's sister cities. Some were possible through direct linking to such collections with generous assistance from librarians, archivists, and museum curators in the sister cities. Elsewhere, images from Pinterest and links to local libraries were as far as this exhibition could go, realizing that not all municipalities and their community libraries may have the interest, means, and personnel to prepare digital heritage collections. [Exhibit link]

Toledo State Hospital, 125th Anniversity

January 6, 2013 marked the 125th anniversary of the Toledo State Hospital (TSH), now known as the Northwest Ohio Psychiatric Hospital. The last 125 years have witnessed many changes including various names, buildings that have come and gone, shifting philosophies of insanity, and a variety of treatment methods and applications. Although it has seen many changes, since 1888 the hospital has consistently provided mental health care to patients.[Exihibt link]