I am using the Troy, Ohio library system and I have found a book titled, Ohio and Her Western Reserve, by Alfred Mathews. It is still a custom for an individual to produce a poem to commemorate an event or a battle of some type and present it to the crowd. Lewis J. Cist was a poet, insurance agent, bank teller, and autograph collector.
On page 51 and 127, are listed two poems that he produced.
Page 51 reads:
Through a long warfare rude,
With patient hardihood,
By toil, and strife, and blood,
The soil was won.
Lewis J. Cist
On page 127:
New England well may boast
The band that on her coast,
Long years ago,
Their Pilgrim anchor cast--
Their Pilgrim bark made fast--
Mid winter's howling blast
And driven snow.
Long since hath passed away,
Each Pilgrim hoar and gray,
Of that lone band;
Yet where their ashes lie
Sprang seeds that shall not die,
While ever yon blue sky
Shall arch our land!
Sons of that Pilgrim race
Were they from whom we trace
Our Buckeye blood.
Lewis J. Cist
