Notes & Comments

as opposed to Southwest, Northwest, or Southeast Ohio.  Indeed, this is the basis for our name and the research areas we promote.  Perhaps the only immediate problem with this method is that some counties will be split, and the historian or geographer must make a choice: does, for example, Tuscawaras County belong in Northeast or Southeast Ohio?  But is this quadrant system merely a way to make editorial decisions easier by rejecting or accepting submissions based on lines drawn over a map?  Can we define cultural practices, environmental factors, social or economic data that can be used to define Northeast Ohio?  Here are few tentative suggestions, sketches of a limited nature that might generate dialogue among readers on the nature of regionalism in Ohio and beyond.

Writers, historians, and those living in the region have long noted the "Yankee" (read white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) influence in what was once called the Western Reserve, the area claimed by Connecticut and ceded to the United States in creating the Northwest Territory, from which Ohio emerged as the 17^th state.  In cities such as Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron, though, industrial development in the 19^th century brought noticeably non-Yankee peoples to these places, including Southern blacks, as well as immigrants from Europe.  Later patterns of mobility would add those from Africa, Asia and Latin America.  All parts of Ohio with urban centers witnessed migration patterns similar to those in the Northeast, perhaps differing in degree and timing.  Architecturally, many places in Northeast Ohio witnessed town construction that mirrored those in New England; and while mass consumption and production have transformed urban space, there yet remains the New England heritage in the built environment in many parts of the region.  Immigrants from other areas have altered the built environment as well, for example the working class neighborhoods in Youngstown and other cities have witnessed their own types of built environments, influenced not only by immigrant workers but also by powerful businesses.

Regarding the environment, there are characteristics that make for a stronger case of regional identity.  Northeast Ohio is the area largely based on the glaciated Appalachian plateau, one of 5 distinct topographical areas in the state.  Moreover, the continental divide through Akron might also be a regional divide, placing those communities in the Tuscawaras Valley outside the realm of Northeast Ohio, whose streams flow north into Lake Erie as well as into the Ohio River.  In addition, the Northeast area is that which contains most of the border with Lake Erie.

In terms of the political economy, perhaps the counties included in Northeast Ohio witnessed a greater concentration of urban and industrial development than other parts of the state, with places such as Youngstown, Akron, and Cleveland becoming industrial centers in the 19^th century and all feeling the effects of deindustrialization in the years after the post-WWII boom.  The region also has a reputation for being more "liberal" than other parts of the state.  Perhaps it is the presence of several large urban centers in the region, with the connected factors of unions as well as ethnic and racial diversity that have given the region this reputation.  Certainly, the greater presence of socialist activity in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries has also helped create this legacy.  At the same time though, political leaders who have been considered conservative have also faired well in the region, and the powerful industrial leadership has been a conservative force in political economy for a century or more.

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