Berlin Heights Historical Society
Meetings monthly at 7:30 pm on the third Tuesday
Fowler Room - First Congregational United Church of Christ
BOOKS FOR SALE
HISTORY BUFFS
If you have any questions about history or genealogy:
berlinhtshistory@yahoo.com
• Free Lovers of Berlin Heights, learn more about their history in Berlin Township.
• Names of Berlin veterans in the four wars before 1900.
• Streetcars: Berlin Heights had two lines which ran through town.
• Over 3,000 obituaries of Berlin Heights citizens on file.
• Many books on newspaper articles from 1830 - 1906.
• Berlin Heights Historical Society new members are welcomed.
STORIES NEEDED
We are still looking for stories about life in Berlin Heights that will be published in the same format as our earlier books. Society members and non-members alike are encouraged to submit personal stories or tales that have been handed down from relatives and friends.
Berlin Heights Streetcar $17.00 plus postage
The Way We Were $15.00 plus postage
Then and Now $17.00 plus postage
Veterans of Four Wars $5.00 plus postage
Picture of Old Berlin Heights $1.25 plus postage
Berlin Heights Tote Bag $15.00 plus postage
BERLIN HEIGHTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
Artist/art teacher Henry George Keller was a world traveler even before he was born and as an adult he made numerous trips across the Atlantic as his fame grew. But his favorite place in the whole world may have been Berlin Heights.
Keller was born in 1896 on a ship off the coast of Nova Scotia as his family migrated from Germany to Cleveland. They were living near Kent when Henry first explored art after he found some of his mother's wallpaper scraps. "The colors were soluble with spittle," he said. "And by chewing a strip of whalebone until it frayed, it made a tolerable brush. But a still greater wonder was that I escaped poisoning. The reds were cochineal, the yellows arsenic and the greens copper oxides."
The Kellers had moved back to Cleveland when at age 12 Henry took paint from a neighborhood house painter and painted his first oil painting, Oriole on Blue Ground.
In 1887 Henry began his formal art education at what is now the Cleveland Institute of Art. He would be an active member of the Institute for 62 years, including 43 years on the faculty.
In 1903, Keller married artist Imogene Leslie, a Clyde resident with
family in Norwalk. That March Henry and Imogene bought four acres on Humm Road from Keller's sister Anna and Robert Humm Jr. that summer Henry launched his Berlin Heights Art School. In addition to artists, students included photographers and writers.
Students were quartered at three hotels in Berlin Heights, with the Frank Lowry family in the stone house on Mason Road, with the Hildebrants, also on Mason Road, and in a tent on Happy Hill.
The school continued through 1915, but the Kellers maintained their home on Humm Road until 1947 when health problems forced them to sell it to Earl Boone (it was destroyed by fire in the 1970's). Imogene died in 1948 at age 77, Henry in 1949 at age 80. They are buried in Berlin Heights' Riverside Cemetery.
In 1948 the Keller family donated three original watercolor paintings to the Berlin Township Library. They were: a large snow scene given by Keller; Hast Cider Mill , donated by Rudolph and Dorothy (Humm) Albert; and The Old Fowler Mill, given by Florence and Karl Humm. Sometime in the 1990's these paintings were returned to Bill Humm, who lives in New Hamphsire.
October 18, 2011
Our Shari Bowers will take us back to The Voice, our newspaper up to the late 1980's. she will access articles and show how they are obtained via digitalization.
Eileen Wike and Gene Darby will provide refreshments.
November 15, 2011
"Let's Take a Look at the Air War in the Middle East" by Diane Moyer (Col. USAF retired). Moyer graduated from Edison High School and was in the first class admitted to the USAF Academy that included women.
Patricia Van Scoy will provide refreshments.
Ann Heckleman presents a check to Main Street Cafe chef Sharon Glass, who won the Society's 50-50 Basket Festival drawing.
Lest We Forget Berlin Heights Graduates , The Society's lastest book, which already has sold 144 copies, still has growth potential, although it's a long shot, but we need help.
No surprise: we have no class pictures from 1887 through 1913. We have pictures for the next three years, but are missing 1917, 1918, 1919, 1923, 1924 and 1925.