“Trust thyself.”

Yes, Mr. Emerson, after learning and forgetting and learning again and again, Self-Reliance is a wonderful thing.

After sitting at home with the cause for far too long, I ventured to the Ross County Heritage Center on my own steam. Following my own instincts resulted in making a perfectly timed visit to Chillicothe for its celebration of Statehood Day.  

The center’s praises have been sung to me, mostly for its collections and the excellent ways in which they are presented. Verses have included the charms of dioramas, a model railroad, dolls, toys, needlework and early Ohio decorative arts. The refrain always capitalized on displays that would tug at my heartstrings, due to my fondness for three Chillicothe legends: Camp Sherman of World War I training camp fame; librarian Burton Stevenson, whose book, The Girl from Alsace: A Romance of the Great War, calls my name; and Columbus Dispatch editorial cartoonist and “Passing Show” creator Billy Ireland, who also penned Teck Haskins at Ohio State, a tale of the adventures of a youth from Yellowbud in Ross County.

Well, those displays were all captivating, but here’s what I found worth crowing about most.

In 1932, the daughter of the Ross County Historical Society’s first president left the family home to the society for use as a museum; the parlor of this house is now filled with Victorian-era furniture, decorative art and portraiture. Who can resist a cushion with the Great Seal of the State of Ohio and buckeyes rendered so realistically, all in shimmering shades of silk embroidery?

Leaving the parlor, I passed the home’s elegant staircase and entered into exhibit galleries in which artifacts, scale models and maps tell the story of Chillicothe’s early years in the Virginia Military District of the Northwest Territory and as a military headquarters in the War of 1812. It was there that I was transfixed by a black walnut table.

Historical society trustees on hand in full force proudly showed off the table, better known as Ohio’s original Constitution Table. It was playing a supporting role that day as the vehicle for displaying a special exhibit of original Ohio statehood documents, including future Ohio Governor Thomas Worthington’s personal draft of the 1802 Ohio Enabling Act.

From those devoted gentlemen, I learned that in January 1802, Worthington was accompanied by a fellow Chillicothean named Michael Baldwin to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress for statehood. The trip was successful; in April of that year, Congress passed the Enabling Act, which allowed for a constitutional convention and the forming of a state government that November.  After the men discussed and debated the constitution’s provisions, they signed their names on the document that was resting on top of the table made by wheelmaker William Guthrie that year. 

Worthington then carried the signed constitution back to Washington for Congressional approval in January 1803. On February 19 of that year, President Thomas Jefferson signed the bill making Ohio the first state created by the Northwest Territory and the 17^th state to join the Union. The first state legislature convened on March 1 in Chillicothe, which served as the state’s official capitol until the capital moved to Columbus in 1816.  Ever since, Ohioans have celebrated Statehood Day on March 1.

In 1946, the house next door was purchased and given to the society to house a library containing a collection of rare books, archival documents and photographs ready for local historians to delve into. On this occasion, the highlight was a thoughtfully tended display of vintage Valentines.

Outside, military re-enactors were having a grand time in a log house built near Chillicothe during the early 1820s. Disassembled, moved twice, and reconstructed next door, it recreates life in early Ross County. Nearby, an Arts and Crafts home designed by Columbus architect Frank Packard includes beautiful stained-glass windows and period furnishings.

But best of all was being reunited with two long-lost loves in the gift shop: The Fowler Family Gets Dressed: Frontier Paper Dolls of the Old Northwest Territory and The Fowler Family Celebrates Statehood And A Wedding: An Illustrated History With Paper Dolls, both by Mary K. Inman and Louise F. Pence, with paper dolls by Norma Lu Meehan, published by Texas Tech University Press. These out-of-print must-haves tell the story of how Ohio symbolized the American Dream, transforming itself from an outpost on the Western frontier to a place offering abundant land, resources and opportunity. The storytelling medium is an accurate, enticing picture of period dress, based on frontier diaries, newspapers and historic artifacts of clothing.