Hubler history W. R. Hubler, Jr., M. D

The HUBLER Family in Ohio

Ohio

About 12,000 BCE, Paleo-Indians (descendants of small clans of Ice Age humans who crossed ice bridges connecting present-day Alaska and present-day Russia) inhabited the Ohio country when ice sheets still covered northern and western Ohio. Like their forefathers, these nomads followed the migratory herds of mastodons, mammoths and other prehistoric animals that fed on the vegetation growing at the edge of the ice. They hunted them with spears and on foot. As the Ice Age ended and global warming caused the glaciers to retreat and hardwood forests to grow, the Paleo-Indians spread north to the Great Lakes. About 8,000 BCE, a semisedentary people survived in the area by hunting, fishing, and gathering. Sedentary residents, the Mound Builders, who domesticated crops and established trade networks, followed them in 100 BCE. Many prehistoric Amerindian tribes disappeared in the mists of the past. By 1,000 AD, the Mississippian traditional Amerindians were well established, including such cultural groups as the Fort Ancient people in southern Ohio, the Whittlesey in northeastern Ohio and the Sandusky in northwestern Ohio. Their villages were stockaded; they hunted with bows and arrows, and they cultivated corn, beans, and squash. The Mississippians were frequently at war with other native peoples from the south and east. The powerful Iroquois, finally drove the remaining Mississippians from Ohio in the late 1650s, leaving the area mostly uninhabited.

By the late 1690s, Native Americans from other areas began migrating to Ohio for the plentiful game and to escape encroaching white settlers and other native groups. From the north came the Huron and the Ottawa peoples; from the northeast came bands of mixed-blood Iroquois (Mingo); from the east came the Delaware; from the south came the Shawnee, and from the west came the Miami.

By 1640, French cartographers drew maps of North America showing the detentions and size of Lake Erie, but the first European known to have reached the Ohio country was the French explorer Adrien Jolliet in 1669, and the European discovery of the Ohio River was in about 1670 by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. France soon established dominance over the Great Lakes region, the Mississippi Valley, and the western part of the Ohio region, building forts and sending fur traders and missionaries to work with the Native Americans.

The English first reached the Ohio country through fur-trading expeditions from New York, traveling to Lake Erie as early as 1685 and to the Ohio River in 1692. In 1748, the British constructed a fort and trading post at the Miami people’s village of Pickawillany in the heart of French-controlled territory. Many of the local Native Americans became allies and trading partners with the British. Then after an attempt to cajole the errant Native Americans, in 1752 the French sent a force of about 250 Native Americans to raid Pickawillany, and they killed many and partially demolished the British fort. The use of force increased French prestige among the Ohio tribes, who sided with France when it fought Britain for control of the North American colonies in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). However, Britain won the war, and under the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French ceded to Britain most of their territory and forts in North America, including all of the Ohio country.

Immediately after the French ceded the Ohio country, Native Americans led by the Ottawa chief Pontiac tried to drive the British out and to restore the native peoples’ autonomy. Pontiac’s forces were successful, but when they learned that they would not get help from the French, Pontiac signed a treaty ending the war. Later, the Amerindians of Ohio sided with the British during the American Revolution (1775-1783). American troops attacked Native American settlements in the Ohio country, and the native peoples retaliated by attacking American settlements across the Ohio River in Kentucky. When the war ended in 1783, Britain ceded Ohio to the United States, along with the area that now forms Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota.

The Congress of the United States organized the region stretching from Ohio to Minnesota as the Northwest Territory. Before that time, only a few squatters had settled in the Ohio country, but more came. In 1788, the Ohio Company of Associates established the first permanent settlement at Marietta, Ohio. The influx of settlers into southern Ohio aroused the hostility of the Native Americans. They raided outlying settlements, killing pioneers and driving others back to the larger settlements along the Ohio River. In 1792, General Anthony Wayne, a Revolutionary War veteran, was put in command of the frontier forces, and he created an efficient army and built headquarters at Fort Greenville, about halfway between Cincinnati and the major native settlements on the Maumee River. In 1794, Wayne defeated the Native Americans, burned their villages and cornfields and dictated peace terms. Under the Treaty of Greenville, the Indian chiefs ceded to the federal government extensive areas of the Northwest Territory, including all of southern and eastern Ohio.

Another wave of migration to the Ohio country occurred after the succession of the Native American-white American settler conflict. Most of the new settlers came from Virginia, which at that time extended all the way to the Ohio River, and Connecticut. By December 1798, the number of free adult males across the Northwest Territory had reached 5,000. In 1800, Congress divided the Northwest Territory so that the eastern area, approximately the present state of Ohio, remained the Northwest Territory and the western area was named the Indiana Territory. By 1802, the population of the Northwest Territory was nearly 60,000.

Becoming a state did not calm the populace though. Soon after Ohio became a state, a new conflict began between Native Americans and white settlers. The Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, and his brother, the Prophet, formed an alliance of native peoples to resist further white settlement and regain former native lands. Although they received help from the British, but their forces were defeated. However, many Ohio residents believed that the threat of conflict with the Native Americans would not be permanently eliminated until the British were driven out of Canada, and they enthusiastically supported the War of 1812 (1812-1815), which the United States declared against Britain. Ohio became the staging area for the northern theater of the war. Supply routes crossed the state, and blockhouses and stockades were hastily built in northern Ohio to defend the area that bordered on British-held Canada.

The Native American uprising and the war with Britain had slowed the stream of settlers migrating to Ohio, but it resumed after peace was established in 1815. By 1820, the population of Ohio rose to 581,434, and during the following decade, it reached 937,903. Settlement continued to be concentrated along the Ohio River and in the valleys of its major tributaries. The completion of the Erie Canal in New York in 1825 provided a link between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic seaboard, and by 1850, settlements had spread over all of Ohio.

Moses HUBLER (1803-1855) and his family settled in Coitsville, Mahoning Co (then Trumbull Co), Ohio in 1833. Other HUBLERs had settled earlier in other counties.

The overwhelming majority of settlers in Ohio in the early 1800s were farmers. Initially, they cleared the land and raised crops to fill their own needs. By the early 1820s, however, many farmers in the state’s rich river valleys were raising substantial surpluses of cattle, hogs, and grain (much of which was converted into whiskey at local stills). Most of the surplus agricultural produce was shipped along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, and livestock was driven eastward over Appalachian trails to be sold. By the early 1820s, it was clear that Ohio’s potential for agricultural production could not be fulfilled without better transportation. The state’s navigable waterways served only a fraction of the farmland, and although a network of unpaved roads crisscrossed the state, overland transportation was difficult, slow, and expensive. Two major canals (the Ohio-Erie and Miami-Erie) and several smaller canals were constructed spurring settlement and cultivation of vast interior regions of Ohio. Also, farming became more efficient with the use of newly developed farm machinery. [Moses HUBLER was a farmer, and according to his son (James Newberry HUBLER), he also was a good mechanic.] Railroads were first built in Ohio in the 1830s, and by the end of 1851 lines connected most of the state’s major cities. The largest industry in the state before 1860 was meatpacking, and major industries included salt making, ceramics, iron working, lumbering, and paper manufacturing. In 1860, with a population of 2.3 million, Ohio was the third most populous state in the nation.

In the years before the American Civil War (1861-1865), Ohio was home to many antislavery publications and an elaborate Underground Railroad network, which helped fugitive slaves escape to Canada. When war broke out, more than 30,000 Ohio residents, more than twice the state’s quota, volunteered to fight in the Union Army. However, as the war dragged on, support for the war declined, and many Ohioans resisted draft calls. However, Ohio remained firmly on the side of the Union throughout the war, and Ohio lay outside the active theater of war. [A.W. HUBLER and other HUBLERs enlisted and fought in Ohio regiments in the Civil War.]

In the decades after the Civil War, the most important development was the enormous growth of manufacturing. Northern Ohio became a major center for producing iron, steel, and related products such as machinery, machine tools, and fabricated metal items. [A.W. HUBLER and other relatives were involved in the steel industry in the late 19^th century.] Ohio’s industrial growth also brought growth of a strong labor movement. [A.W.HUBLER was the president of his local labor union until his retirement.] The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in December 1886, during a period of widespread strikes by workers seeking an eight-hour day. Its purpose was to organize skilled workers into unions, support legislation beneficial to labor, reduce working hours, and improve working conditions and wages. In 1937, violent strikes occurred in 1937 in Youngstown and Cleveland after the steel companies refused to negotiate with workers, several strikers were killed, and hundreds were injured. Union-organizing rights were guaranteed in 1935 when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, and in 1947, the Labor-Management Relations Act, known as the Taft-Hartley Act, emphasized the right of employees to refuse to join a union or participate in collective action.

During the late 19th century, the state’s giant industrial interests dominated politics in Ohio. On the state and local levels, the industrial interests controlled both major parties through political machines. Corruption, graft, and fraudulent election practices flourished.

With the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) in Europe in 1914, Ohio’s progressive era came to a close, as concern over international affairs overshadowed domestic issues. Most Ohioans were sympathetic to the neutral stance taken by President Woodrow Wilson early in the war; however, Germany’s submarine attacks on neutral shipping early in 1917 caused sentiment to shift, and a majority of the state and nation supported America’s entry into the war. The 1920s were marked by economic prosperity and continued industrial growth in Ohio, but the stock market crash of 1929 precipitated the period of nationwide economic hardship known as the Great Depression in the 1930s. More than a million Ohio residents lost their jobs. The Depression was particularly severe in the centers of heavy industry, such as Youngstown, Akron, Toledo, and Cleveland. In those areas, where there was little diversification, it was claimed that one-third of the wage earners were unemployed. But, full recovery came only with the onset of World War II (1939-1945).

To meet the demands of war, Ohio’s agricultural production was increased by 30 percent, the mining of bituminous coal was increased 82 percent, and industrial employment rose by 68 percent, particularly in the production of iron, steel, rubber, aircraft parts, ships, tanks, jeeps, and other motor vehicles. The industrial boom of the war years continued into the 1950s and 1960s. Old industries expanded and new industries developed. Beginning in the early 1970s, the state’s older industrial base began to crumble. Many Ohio plants had become old-fashioned and obsolete, and labor costs in the heavily unionized state were well above those in the South and West and far higher than those overseas. Energy costs soared as Ohio’s high-quality coal and natural gas were depleted and crude oil prices tripled. Steel plants in Youngstown and Cleveland shut down. Across the state, industry after industry closed or drastically cut production, and unemployment soared. The term “Rust Belt” was increasingly applied to Ohio and the other older industrial states of the Northeast and Midwest.

Ohio’s industrial decline bottomed out in the 1980s as the older, heavier industries were modernized, replaced, or supplemented with newer, high technology industries. By the 1990s Ohio again ranked among the top five manufacturing states, producing automobiles, machinery, computers, chemicals, paper products, plastics, primary and fabricated metal products, soaps, and processed food.