Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Visitors to Genoa’s historic town hall will soon notice some changes in the old council chamber.
Over the last year, the walls of the room have been stripped of the old wallpaper and given a fresh coat of paint, and some of the surfaces now feature significant pieces of Genoa’s rich history.
“We want to hang as much of Genoa’s history on the walls as we deem worthy and what will fit,” Genoa’s village administrator and historical society founder Thomas Bergman said.
For now, on one wall behind the council chamber’s bench is a display of Civil War reunion banners, well over a century old and believed to have been used during the town hall’s official dedication ceremony in September 1885, when the building was dedicated by Civil War General Patrick Slevin.
The Genoa Historical Society members, which discovered the once forgotten banners before restoring and getting them professionally framed, believe they were created by the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the area’s Union veterans of the Civil War who helped promote the construction of the town hall building and its use as their meeting place for many years.
One of the first banners framed reminds those 1885 ceremony attendees to patronize the GAR lunch stand “For a good lunch and a fine smoke,” while another indicates the location of the 100th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment headquarters.
The largest restored sign is about 15 feet long and was used to denote the location of the headquarters for visiting soldiers. Its red letters, on a faded canvas backdrop, are still quite vivid after more than a century hidden in a dusty attic from which the banners were discovered in the wood-framed 1856 building on Washington Street across from the town hall, now known as Heritage Hall.
Bergman said these items have a special meaning for the town’s legacy, as they are “rare remaining links we have to the Civil War veterans who really founded the community after they returned from the war.”
Another eye-catching historic treasure found in the same attic is a 38-star American flag, signifying the 38 states of the nation at the time of the Genoa Town Hall construction in the 1885. Although somewhat ragged and smudged by the years, it is now framed and under glass, displayed proudly in the council chambers.
The Genoa Historical Society plans to add more items to the walls of the town hall in the months and years to come.
“This project will take a decade or more to complete and will likely always be a living project as more items are found,” Bergman said. “Every so often someone will contact us saying that they have a Genoa item they would rather donate than throw away. So, we take it off their hands and determine if it is ‘wall worthy’ or not.”
The framing effort will include a wide variety of photos, artwork, vintage Genoa uniforms, posters, and newspaper articles. The organization has been accumulating a growing collection of artifacts and items, donated by local residents that Bergman believes can be displayed in what would become a passive museum of sorts in the town’s council chambers.
