In the spring of 1840, the Ohio Whig newspaper touted a future presidential campaign stop at Fort Meigs by candidate General William Henry Harrison. Readers may be familiar with Harrison’s slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, coined due to his victory at the War of 1812 Battle of Tippecanoe, with John Tyler playing second fiddle as the hopeful vice president.

The campaign was also known as Harrison’s Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign with images of log cabins emblazoned upon memorabilia and advertisements showing a stoic Harrison in front of a log cabin, insinuating that he not only lives there but that it was built by his own hand. A vision of true Americana. The depth to which this image still clings to our minds today, or at least my own borne from several iterations of American History classes throughout middle and high school, is a testament to political subversion in media.

As Harrison was 67 years old at the time, the oldest candidate to have run for presidential office, his political rivals in the Democratic Party and it's radical subsect, the Locofocos, clung to concerns over his presumably fragile state. One such detractor, Baltimore Republican editorialist John de Ziska, wrote,

Shortly after the Ohio Whig announced the Fort Meigs campaign stop, a committee was established to oversee the expedited construction of a log cabin on the grounds of the fort prior to the June 11th rally.

Each township in Lucas and Wood counties was solicited to send one log, measuring no less than 25 foot long by 1 foot in diameter, to Fort Meigs.

In early May, the first log arrived, naturally accompanied by three barrels of hard cider, and local Whigs gathered to celebrate and revel in anticipation.

The revelry was soon replaced by fury as politically motivated hijinks ensued the following night. An article in the Ohio Whig exclaimed,

"LOCOFOCO MEANNESS!"

The Locofoco political platform was made up of mostly unskilled workmen who were vocally pro-union, liberally economic, and known to appear in headlines for their political activism.

As you can see from the accompanying illustration, members were thought of as being especially crazed or brutish.

Their stronghold didn't stray far outside of New York City, and they would be completely irrelevant to this story if not for another twist of ingenuity on the part of the Whigs.

Because of their radical nature, as well as being a perceived faction of the Democratic Party - a fact contested by both the Dems and the Locofocos themselves - the Whigs gleefully took advantage of their unusual name and derisive nature.

And so the Democrats were exclusively referred to as Locofocos in all Whig-produced media during this era.

Under the cover of night, local Locofoco members hoisted the hefty log into an old well located just north of the Grand Traverse at Fort Meigs (see the included map, above). Given that the well was no longer in use, a slurry of thick mud had accumulated at the bottom and so the end of the log stuck out by roughly eight feet. The log was unable to be removed, though the Whigs sarcastically boasted that the log was instead left as a,

"monument of the noble and brilliant achievements of the Locofocos."

Still, more logs continued to be furnished by Whig Party supporters. And, again, Locofoco meanness struck Fort Meigs for a second time.

According to C.W. Evers' 1897 Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio, local Locofoco members, again obscured by darkness, entered Fort Meigs and took to sawing each log in half, rendering them useless in the construction of the log cabin.

Undeterred, the Whigs again bolstered their call for logs, hired armed security to patrol the grounds - successfully warding off the meddling Locofocos - and completed the log cabin right on time for Harrison's July 11th rally.

Archaeological investigations, and the discoveries made, press us to take a closer look into the past and reconsider the stories exclude from the historical narratives we tell. One example is the on-going archaeological research conducted at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello which examines the lives and living quarters of enslaved people, expanding our collective understanding of the historic plantation and farmstead.

In the case of Harrison's rally at Fort Meigs, primary newspaper articles published in the 1840s were some of the only resources available which document the rally and include the Locofoco story. Despite seven comprehensive volumes covering the history of Fort Meigs, Wood County, and the Maumee River Valley published between 1858 and 1908, only two even mention the rally.

In fact, this 1902 image taken from John E. Guncket's The Early History of the Maumee Valley clearly shows the Locofoco log sticking from the defunct well but is only included in the context of the well's use in the War of 1812.

And therein lies the beauty of archaeology, if we dig just a little bit deeper - literally and figuratively - the nearly forgotten past comes to light.

A special shoutout to Perrysburg's Way Public Library Online Newspaper Archives. With over 117,000 pages of newsprint digitized from two dozen historic and modern newspapers, this archive proved to be an indispensable resource throughout my research. Give their page a visit!