Description: This is a photograph along the Muskingum River at McConnelsville, Ohio taken from an elevation. Alongside the river farm houses and farmland can be seen in the distance. The Muskingum River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 111 miles long, in southeastern Ohio in the United States. An important commercial route in the 19th century, it flows generally southward through the eastern hill country of Ohio. Via the Ohio, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed. McConnelsville is a village in Morgan County, Ohio, United States. It is the county seat of Morgan County. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B11F10_019_001
Subjects: Muskingum River (Ohio)--1930-1950; Morgan County (Ohio)--History; McConnelsville (Ohio)
Places: McConnelsville (Ohio); Morgan County (Ohio)
 

Description: An image of McConnelsville showing a bridge extending over the Muskingum river. McConnelsville was first known as Old Town, before it had its current name which comes from one of the men who lived there in the early days of the community. Through the 19th century the town expanded, partly thanks to its strategic placement right by a body of water. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL06731
Subjects: McConnelsville (Ohio); Morgan County (Ohio); Bridges--Ohio; Muskingum River (Ohio)
Places: McConnelsville (Ohio); Morgan County (Ohio); Ohio
 

Description: This photograph is a black-and-white image of a colorful mural titled "Mail—The Connecting Link’," painted in 1938 by artist Sally F. Haley (1908-2007). The mural depicts the significant role that mail (and the postal service) plays in the life of individuals and of the entire nation. Three human figures (a mail carrier, a woman, and a little girl) occupy the center of the image, forming a triangular space that divides the background between urban and rural settings. The mail carrier is delivering a letter to the woman as the little girl watches. Bags of mail travel to distant locations via trains (rural areas and small towns) and boats (large urban areas). On the left side the mural, a railroad signal bears the number “1938,” the year that Haley painted the mural. The mural, painted in oil on canvas, is located in the McConnelsville, Ohio, post office. It measures 5 feet high by 17 feet wide. The mural was funded by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, one of the department’s three visual arts programs instituted during the Great Depression. Established in 1934, the Section of Painting and Sculpture commissioned artists to create paintings and sculpture that would decorate new federal buildings. The commissions were awarded competitively. Unlike other cultural programs of the New Deal, the Section’s primary goal was to procure art for public buildings, not to provide work relief. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Sally Haley was the daughter of Elizabeth Akers Haley and John P. Haley, a portrait photographer. John Haley was a friend of photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Two of Sally’s brothers also became artists. In 1931, Sally Haley graduated from Yale University with a bachelor of fine arts degree. She taught art in a Bridgeport high school for two years, studied art in Germany for a few months, and then returned to the U.S. to paint full time. In 1935 she married artist Michele Russo, and the couple lived in Connecticut until 1947, when they moved to Portland, Oregon. Haley was very active in the Portland art scene, and her paintings were widely praised. She died in 2007 at age 99. In 1988 photographer Connie Girard took color and black-and-white images of this mural for an article in "Timeline" magazine (June/July 1989). View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL04495
Subjects: Mural paintings (visual works); Post office buildings--Ohio; United States. Department of the Treasury. Section of Painting and Sculpture; Great Depression and the New Deal; McConnelsville (Ohio)
Places: McConnelsville (Ohio); Morgan County (Ohio)
 

Description: Photograph showing crowds waiting as Red Cross relief supplies are unloaded in McConnelsville, Ohio, following the flood of 1913. In late March 1913, an unusually heavy rainstorm moved into Ohio. It rained steadily for five days and the water levels rose rapidly. By the third day of the downpour, levees were overtopped and many towns suffered disastrous flooding. When the flood waters receded, tons of mud and debris covered the streets, homes, businesses and factories of towns like McConnelsville, along the Muskingum River. The death toll for the disaster stood at 361, and property damages were well over $100,000,000 and 65,000 were forced to temporarily leave their homes. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SC330_F01_01
Subjects: Climate and Weather; Floods--Ohio; Natural disasters; American Red Cross; McConnelsville (Ohio);
Places: McConnelsville (Ohio); Morgan County (Ohio);