The Fostoria Free Press

Before glass and cars, Fostoria made the wooden spokes, bent rims and buggy bows that kept America's wagons rolling. An 1884 photo of the Cunningham & Co. Spoke and Bending Works crew opens a look at the town's wagon-wood industry.

On Feb. 16, 1903, an explosion and fire destroyed a small South Main Street factory that made the explosive for the Fox Magazine Cane. Eight people died in what the local paper called "Fostoria's most awful tragedy."

From 1903 to 1977, the John B. Rogers Producing Co. sent directors, scripts and costumes from Fostoria to towns across America to stage home-talent shows and huge outdoor historical pageants. Here is the story of the firm and its West Center Street headquarters.

Where Main, Perry and Sandusky streets meet, an old postcard shows a dirt street, rail tracks, an Oil Well Supply Co. sign and a flour mill. Here is the story of Times Square, the Franke brothers' Fostoria City Mills and the Sandusky Street mill around 1900.

In 1905 Indiana machinist Emsley O. Grose brought his roofing-nail machine to Fostoria, where a 1908 history credits him with organizing Seneca Wire. His Independent Tack Co. later opened a Fostoria plant in 1915. Here is what the record shows, and what is still unknown.

In 1915 the Fostoria YMCA staged the city's first municipal Halloween celebration, with a King Corn costume review, membership prizes and confetti handed out in place of cabbages. The Exchange Club took it over in 1922.

In 1915 four Fostoria businessmen launched the Fostoria Light Car, a $675 touring car billed as "The Surprise Car of 1916." Bad engines sank it within about a year, but the company came back as the Seneca Motor Car Co. and shipped cars around the world until 1924.

The Allen brothers ran Fostoria's biggest buggy maker, the Peabody Buggy Co., then switched to automobiles in 1913. For six years Allen cars were built in four plants and tested on Wood Street. Here is the story, and what stands on those sites today.

Log schoolhouses in Rome and Risdon, a four-room brick school after the 1854 merger, the 18-room Central School on High Street and the new junior-senior high that opened in 2020: here is how Fostoria's schools grew.

From a log Methodist church on Portage Creek in 1833 to St. Wendelin's first Mass in a log cabin and the fountains and Doughboy of Fountain Cemetery, here is how Fostoria's oldest congregations and burial grounds took shape.

Buggy makers, a carmaker, glass factories and the Main Street shops of the 1900s: here is a look back at some of the businesses that built Fostoria, from the Fostoria Area Historical Society's history columns.

Capt. Roger Alcott, a militia captain and former telegrapher, built the turreted Alcott Block at Main and Center in 1893. It survived an 1897 explosion but not the 1962 fire that also took the Hays Hotel. Here is the building's story and what is on the corner now.

The Alcott Block, the Hays Hotel, the Andes building and the shops in between: here are stories of downtown Fostoria's old buildings from the Fostoria Area Historical Society's columns, including the 1962 fire that changed Main Street.

From 1898 to 1932, electric interurban cars ran from Fostoria to Tiffin, Findlay, Toledo and Fremont. Here is the story of the three lines that served the city and why they disappeared.

In the 1880s, natural gas strikes in Findlay and near Fostoria set off a boom that filled the area with glass factories and new residents. Here is what happened, why it ended and what it left behind.

Fostoria's first railroad arrived in the 1850s, and line after line followed until the city became one of the busiest rail crossings in Ohio. Here is how the railroads came, what became of them and where to see the history today.

Natural gas brought more than a dozen glass companies to Fostoria between 1887 and 1920. The most famous, the Fostoria Glass Company, started here in 1887, moved to West Virginia in 1891 and kept the Fostoria name for nearly a century.

Fostoria was born in 1854 when the rival villages of Risdon and Rome joined and took the name of Charles W. Foster. Here is what the historical record says about the founding and the Foster family, including a governor and Treasury secretary.

From two rival villages platted in 1832 to a railroad crossroads, a natural gas boomtown and a manufacturing city, here is a short, sourced history of Fostoria, Ohio.

Alpheus Weaver's dry goods business opened on North Main Street in 1875, survived a suspicious 1892 fire, moved three times in one block and gave way to Kiebel and Wilson and finally the Ahlenius Co. Here is a century of dry goods in downtown Fostoria.

From the G.F. Weaver Drug and Book Store of the 1880s to the soda fountain at Edison Cut Rate Drugs and Whitney Drugs on Elm Street, here is a look back at the drugstores that served Fostoria for more than a century, and what fills those storefronts today.

A little wooden depot built in 1878 on West North Street, a web of crossing rail lines and a livestock yard on South Poplar Street helped make Fostoria the Iron Triangle. Here is how the railroads built the town, and what stands on those sites today.

From a log cabin Mass in 1844 and a gift of land from Charles W. Foster to the 1909 school, the Countyline high school and the closings of 2017 and 2019, here is the story of St. Wendelin parish and school, and what stands on those sites today.