By Steve Kemme As the early morning fog lifted, a steamboat carrying the first load of Confederate soldiers and their horses crossed the Ohio River at Brandenburg, Ky., and stepped out of the boat onto Northern soil. The two captured steamboats made countless trips back and forth across the Ohio that day and night, July […]

By Brent Coleman HAMILTON — Dick Scheid knows the Benninghofen family history about as well as anyone. Afterall, he and John W. Benninghofen’s great-great-grandaughter, Christin Carroll, wrote the book on it. When asked about a ghost named “Sarah” being connected to the 19th- and 20th-century Hamilton wool manufacturing family, he balked – not because of […]

By Brent Coleman FAIRFIELD – Donna Garrett is an enthusiastic storyteller, and she’s got a hairy-dog tale to spin that’s fascinating, surprising and seemingly never-ending. Garrett called the other day to talk about a photo of her old fireplace she submitted in the “Is it Rookwood?” project The Enquirer is doing with American pottery expert […]

By Jim Rohrer His nickname was “The Hawk.” “Hawk Time” was that ear-splitting entrance, the amped-up anthem that reverberated through boxing arenas when he entered the ring, his toadies in tow, one carrying his championship belt aloft once he had earned it. But he might have better been called “The Whirlwind,” because Cincinnati kid Aaron […]

By Jim Rohrer Aaron Pryor may have been the flashiest boxer with Cincinnati roots, but only steady Ezzard Charles was champion of the heavyweights, boxing’s most prestigious division. But if there wasn’t a street named after him, he might be forgotten in his hometown. The mists of time have closed in around a man whose […]

By John Johnston LEBANON — Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t contact the Warren County Historical Society with a question like this: My great-great-grandfather attended National Normal University. Do you have his photo? The staff’s answer has always been: We don’t know. “We’ve been collecting (materials) for 71 years,” said Vicky Van Harlingen, […]

By Gary Agee When activist and civil rights leader Daniel A. Rudd arrived in Cincinnati in 1886, it was to begin publication of the American Catholic Tribune, the country’s only black-owned Catholic newspaper. Who could have then imagined the impact this visionary leader would have on the Catholic Church and the Queen City? Rudd was […]

By John Johnston HAMILTON — Amos Lukens, a reporter for the Hamilton Evening Journal, was standing alone in the lobby of the Butler County Courthouse when he noticed the lights go out in the rotunda dome high above him. It was shortly before 11:30 the morning of Thursday, March 14, 1912. Barney Ellers, the courthouse […]

By Jim Rohrer Carrie Culberson will not come back. Vincent Doan will never haunt his old Clinton County village again. That village, Blanchester, population about 4,300, is forever changed. It remains a sleepy village in farm country along Ohio 28, but one with a memorial that testifies to unimaginable tragedy. If ever there was a […]