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10 Things Everyone who grew up here has in common
For those of us who grew up in Coshocton, we share a common history and culture unique to our area. It comes from the immigrants who settled here, the Native Americans who were already here and the rolling hills that were at one time filled with coal. I hope this list brings back fond memories as you read it. Writing it made me long for a trip home and some waffles from the fair.
Coshocton Style Entertainment
- You not only go to the county fair, you actually look forward to it
The fair seems to be declining in popularity in the last few years but for as long as I can remember, the Coshocton County Fair was the most important event of the year. We even got 2 days off of school for it.
As younger kids, we went for the rides and to find our school projects in the Education Hall. As teenagers, we walked the midway and met up with our friends. If we were in 4-H, we showed our animals and spent time in the livestock barns.
Most kids and parents volunteered at the “eatstand” for their school, selling sandwiches, cooking and cleaning tables. As an adult, I go for the nostalgia.
Smokey Bear is still in the same place in the commercial building and I remember talking to him as a child. The games in the midway remind me of when my uncle from out of town played a dart game until he won stuffed animals for both my sister and me. I think about how badly I wanted to play the goldfish game but was never allowed to, because my mom was afraid I’d actually win.
Even though Coshocton has drastically changed in the past 30 years, in good ways and in bad, the fair is largely the same as it always was.
2. You’ve peed outside at a party.
Living in a rural county means having miles and miles of township roads that lead to lots of remote areas. Those remote places made great spots to party for teenagers without the risk of getting caught.
But, obviously, there’s no bathrooms at Burger Rock, so learning how to pee outside without falling down or peeing on your pants is a necessary skill.
I always found holding onto the bed of someone’s pickup truck was the best method- it offered privacy and helped improve your aim. Maybe this isn’t a skill you can put on your resume, but it’s useful none the less!
3. You got excused absences from school to go deer hunting.
I don’t know if this happens anywhere else but when I tell my friends from different cities about this, they think it’s strange. But, there are a ton of deer in Coshocton and someone needs to hunt them, right?
Coshocton county has the largest public hunting area in Ohio and for the last past 10 years, has had the largest deer harvest in the state. Hunting brings the most visitors to Coshocton each year, second only to the Three Rivers Wine Trail.
4. You’ve taken an ATV to a restaurant made of particle board with a stuffed beaver inside. But the food is good!
Wills Creek Grub and Pub may be a newer addition to the Coshocton area but I think it’s a pretty awesome one. It literally has particle board walls and a dead beaver inside and does not look like a place anyone would ever voluntarily eat.
But as we know, looks can be deceiving and the food is actually quite good. In the summer months, people from all over the county ride ATVs on the township roads to the pub and gather on the patio. If you haven’t been there, it’s worth the trip; if for nothing else than to take a selfie with the beaver. Check them out on Facebook HERE.
5. There is only one radio station and it signs off the air at 11:00pm
Growing up, WTNS was part of the culture of Coshocton. We listened to the news and weather in the mornings and hoped to hear that our school was closed due to inclement weather.
At noon, we found out who died, who had been admitted to the hospital and who had a baby. We bought, sold and traded all sorts of junk on “The Trading Post.” On Sundays, we listened as teenagers dedicated love songs to one another on “Dedications.”
And we relied on WTNS to air all the local high school sporting events for Coshocton, Ridgewood and Riverview schools. Once we heard the national anthem play, we knew it was either time to go to bed or time to wakeup in the morning.
Coshocton History
6. You don’t think there’s anything weird about a street named “White Woman” street.
To me, it’s just a street in Roscoe named after some Native American legend. To everyone else, they wonder what kind of racist place we are from. In reality, the street is named after Mary Harris, the first white person presumed to have lived in Ohio.
Harris was captured during a raid on her village in Massachusetts by Mohawk Indians and French soldiers in 1704. Around 100 captives, including 9 year old Harris, were taken 300 miles north to a Mohawk settlement in Canada. Harris was later adopted by a Native American family.
As an adult, she and her Mohawk husband settled in the Ohio Country in what would later become Coshocton County. Her presence was so unusual in the area that several places were named after her, including: White Woman’s Rock, White Woman’s Town and White Woman Street.
7. You know who Mary Stockum is.
There are a few different versions of this legend. One being that one of Mary’s nine children was killed by her husband. Her husband was hanged for his crime and as retribution, Mary started killing off the rest of her children one by one.
The other version is that Mary started killing her children one by one but not her husband. Both versions end the same way, though- with Mary being burned at the stake for witchcraft and buried on her family’s land in Linton Twp.
Later, the townspeople dug up Mary’s remains, cut her head off and buried it in a separate grave. Since then, Mary has wandered the cemetery at night in search of her head.
Growing up, we told ghost stories about Mary’s exploits and tried to summon her in seyances. There was even a phone number that supposedly belonged to her. When you called it, there would be screeching sounds on the other end of the line.
As teenagers, we visited the cemetery off of County Road 123 to look for her and drink beer. One night on the way there in the late 80’s, a group of us saw a flash of white off the side of the road. At the time, we were scared to death and convinced we’d spotted Mary, at least part of her anyways.
8. An eccentric steeplejack made your town famous in the ’40’s by getting married on a flagpole.
Marshall Jacobs was part philanthropist, part daredevil, part showman and part craftsman who left his mark on Coshocton while earning his nickname, “Mad Marshall.” In 1946, he decided to attempt to break the pole sitting endurance record.
Apparently, flag pole-sitting had been a thing in the ’20’s and Marshall wanted to revive it. As a steeple jack, he regularly climbed flag poles to paint them, so sitting on one didn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
He built a 176 foot tall flag pole at the fairgrounds and on Memorial Day, climbed to his 16″ perch. His ascent and corresponding, “Fairwell to Earth” program was viewed by a crowd of townspeople and televised nationally.
Jacobs ate, slept, bathed, read and spoke to the daily crowds of curious onlookers from his flagpole. His girlfriend, Lonnie Cosmar even joined him there for dates. She would become his fiancé during his stint on the flagpole when he proposed to her via walkie talkie.
Since Lonnie wanted to be a June bride and Jacobs planned to stay on his perch until July 4th, he told her they’d have to get married on his platform.
They wed on June 30th, with a blimp hovering overhead to film the nuptials and 1700 paying spectators on the ground
Over the years, Mad Marshall raised money for polio research and other charities by scaling buildings and riding a bicycle on a high wire.
One of the most enduring legacies he left to Coshocton was the Monticello II. The first canal boat to arrive in Coshocton was the Monticello 1 in 1830. When restoration efforts began in Roscoe in the late 1960’s, Jacobs, a skilled craftsmen, built a replica of the first canal boat using reclaimed wood from the feed mill in Orange. The boat was in operation until 1990, when it was replaced with the Monticello III.
Later in life, Jacobs had a dream to open a ski slope in Oxford Township. He had been clearing trees before his death in 1977.
Coshocton Slang
9. A green pepper is called a mango.
I think I was probably in high school before I figured out these 2 words did not mean the same thing. At the time, I assumed a mango was a type of green pepper and that’s why we called them mangoes. It took me a few more years to realize that wasn’t right either. So why in the hell do people from Coshocton call them that?
I did some research and the most popular theory seems to be that when mangoes (actual mangoes) were shipped to the colonies in the 1600’s, the colonists pickled them to preserve them.
Eventually, they began pickling green peppers, too and at some point, mangoes and green peppers came to mean the same thing. Apparently we aren’t the only ones who call them this either! It’s fairly common in other parts of the Midwest.
10. You or some of your relatives say “hamburg,” “worsh,” and call knit caps “tobboggans.”
Similar to our peculiar name for green peppers, Coshoctonians, especially older ones, speak with a midland accent, born out of our Scotch-Irish and German heritage. The most obvious representation of this accent is adding an “r” to all forms of the word wash.
I learned about George Worshington in school and still have church cookbooks that use “hamburg” in place of hamburger. While researching this post, I found out that the use of “tobbogan” to describe a knit cap isn’t unique to Coshocton.
There isn’t actually a consensus on what it should be called. Our term for the cap is used because it’s the type of hat people on sleds wore.
Like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, Coshocton has gone through a period of decline. Factories have closed, places we grew up with are long gone and parts of town have fallen into disrepair. But in some ways Coshocton County is better than ever. There are new restaurants, wineries, a brewery, a whole facility dedicated to youth activities, a community college and festivals for hot air balloons and sunflowers. If you grew up here and moved away or if you’ve never been to Coshocton, it’s worth a visit. Especially at fair time.
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