Many of you already know about H. H. Hain’s History of Perry County, the thousand page tome that was published in Harrisburg in 1922 and is still a standard reference.
It’s a fairly rare book and expensive, if you can even find it. I had my eye on a copy on eBay last week that went for forty-two dollars, which is apparently on the low end of prices you can expect.
What you may not know is that Hain’s History of Perry County was recently digitized by Google and is available, in its entirety, for free, online. The exact address is somewhat cumbersome, but all you have to do is go to www.google.com and type “H. H. Hain History of Perry County” into the search window. The very first hit should be the book itself.
Even better, Google’s digital version of the book is searchable by keyword. You can type in a place name, or a family name, or an event, and all of the instances of those words are neatly displayed.
I love Google books. It’s like something out of science fiction: “We will make every book ever published available to you, for free, from the comfort of your desk. Then we will destroy your world.”
Only without the “destroy the world” part.
On the other hand, as an author, I hate Google books, which threatens to make my books instantly available to anyone in the world, for free, from the comfort of a desk.
There’s a whole “free content” movement afoot. Apparently, some people have the crazy idea that they’re entitled to free movies, music, books—basically any online content they want—because…
These people are evil grasping weasels? That’s just a guess. I don’t really understand their argument, which has something to do with free speech, and privacy, and feeling entitled to steal the hard work of humble filmmakers, musicians, and authors.
Well, maybe not the last part. Although that’s how it feels to me.
So Google books is a mixed blessing, but nevertheless a great blessing, because if you’re curious, like I was, about how Perry County got its name, you can open up Hain’s History in your browser window, and, with a bit of keyword searching, find on page 215 that in 1820 the county had just split from its evil grasping weasel of a neighbor to the south, Cumberland County (Boo! Hiss!). The celebrity headlines of the day were about Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the naval battle of Lake Erie in the war of 1812, who’d just died at the Port of Spain, Island of Trinidad. (Which is a real place, despite sounding like a setting from a James Bond movie.)
Of course, I knew nothing about the battle of Lake Erie. Commodore Perry rang a bell, but then I discovered that I was thinking of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s younger brother, Commodore Matthew C. Perry (not to be confused with the Canadian actor Matthew L. Perry, aka “Chandler Bing” on the sitcom Friends). Commodore Matthew C. Perry was the sour-faced man who, with his fleet of steam-powered warships, opened Japan to the West in 1854.
See how helpful the internet can be?
Anyway, the elder Perry, Oliver—the “Perry County” Perry—was a great naval officer who not only defeated the British on Lake Erie, but actually built the fleet that defeated the British on Lake Erie. Which would be like asking American troops to head over to say, Afghanistan, and whip up a few Blackhawk helicopters once they got there.
Perry’s greatest claim to fame was the way he and a few cohorts rowed half a mile across open water, through cannonfire, musketfire, grape shot, nasty insults, and anything else the British could throw at them, to a new flagship, once his old flagship had been pounded to pieces, taking his famous battle flag that said, “DONT GIVE UP THE SHIP” with him. (They weren’t big on apostrophes back then.)
Safely installed in his new flagship, Perry went on to “cross the T” of the British fleet, which is naval-speak for outmaneuvering enemy ships so you can blast them to smithereens.
Commodore Oliver Perry was the kind of fellow you’d be proud to pick for naming a county. Aside from Pennsylvania, nine other states felt good enough about Perry to name a county after him. There are towns named after him, too, including Perryville, Perrysburg, and my favorite, Perryopolis.
Oliver Hazard Perry was one of America’s greatest naval heroes.
Or was he…?
[to be continued next week]
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 23 July 2009
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
