H. William Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, stands outside of the Tyler History Center, one of the major accomplishments during Lawson’s 37 years with the historical society. MVHS kicks off its 150th anniversary celebration with an open house Sunday.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning Valley Historical Society will kick off a yearlong celebration of its 150th anniversary Sunday.

“We have a public open house here at the Tyler History Center, so they’ll learn about our organization,” H. William Lawson, the society’s executive director said. “We’ll also be doing some walking tours downtown. What we want to do is give people a sense of what downtown was like in 1875.

“There’s only, maybe, two buildings in downtown that were around then, but we can point them out, and through our script and some photos, we can show them what the city looked like at that time period.”

There will be a history fair with area organizations and hands-on activities. And since the Tyler History Center is located in the building where confectioner Harry Burt manufactured his Good Humor bars, there will be ice cream as well.

Sunday’s event from noon to 4 p.m. is open to the public. There also will be a Founders Day event on Tuesday for society members, and activities are planned throughout the next year.

“We have dedicated our upcoming schedule of Bites and Bits of History programs, which we do on the third Thursday of every month here at Tyler, (to) looking at our organizational history and also looking at Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley in various decades between the 1870s and 2020s,” Lawson said. “We will be doing a lot on our social media and websites as far as adding blog posts and regular updates on what happened in our institutional history and also the community’s history. It will all culminate in September 2025 with another open house to mark the anniversary and another member event on the actual anniversary date.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to not only tell people more about our local history, but also the very important role that we play in this community in preserving community memory and celebrating all the people who have lived here.”

It all started with a dance.

A committee was formed to organize a Pioneer Reunion Ball on Sept. 10, 1874. By that time, iron mills and other industry were thriving in the Mahoning Valley, but some of the first pioneers who settled in the area and their descendants still were alive to remember the city’s rural beginnings. They shared their stories at the event, and other early settlers, including Jesse and Roswell Grant (the father and uncle, respectively, of President Ulysses S. Grant), shared their memories through letters.

“It was a huge success,” Lawson said. “It was held at the Youngstown Opera House, which was down on the southwest corner of Central Square, and it was so popular they decided to do it again the following year. And it was at that event that the group decided they wanted to do something more permanent, and it was during that second pioneer reunion that the historical society was formed.”

The U.S. centennial in 1876 inspired local residents to begin chronicling the Valley’s history. Members began compiling the histories of townships and villages in Mahoning and Trumbull counties and published them in a book that centennial year.

“That was a very ambitious publication for a brand new organization,” Lawson said.

Interest waned in the late 1800s, and the group was largely dormant until Joseph G. Butler Jr. became involved with the organization around 1908.

“We know him as an art collector and for founding a museum (the Butler Institute of American Art), but he was also one of the best, if not the best, local historians that we ever produced,” Lawson said.

The society was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Ohio in 1909, and the following year the Reuben McMillan Free Library Association opened its new building at the corner of Wick and Rayen avenues (current site of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County), and the society had a room on the second floor of the building where its artifacts and records were kept.

The society almost didn’t make it to its centennial. Membership fell off significantly after World War II.

“(Newly appointed President James L. Wick Jr.) looked around and he thought, ‘I don’t know that we have an organization anymore,’ and he seriously considered taking the historical society out of existence and transferring the collection to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland (in the mid-1950s),” Lawson said.

Grace Heath Butler, daughter in law of Joseph G. Butler Jr, encouraged Wick to talk to Olive Arms. She was interested in donating her Wick Avenue home and many of her possessions to the society. Arrangements were made, and when she died in 1960, Arms also established through her estate two trust funds to operate what became the Arms Family Museum.

Lawson has been with the society for nearly a quarter of its history, starting there 37 years ago and serving as executive director for the last 33 years. The creation of the Tyler History Center and the establishment of the Stewart Media Archives are among the accomplishments Lawson is most proud of during his tenure, and one of the goals during this 150th anniversary celebration is to start the fundraising campaign to renovate the former IBM building acquired last year and transform it into an exhibition and storage space.

That’s not the only goal.

“We definitely want membership to increase,” Lawson said. “We want the next generations of people who live here to be part of our future, not only in telling their families’ stories, but also being involved as members and as future board members.”

If you go …

WHAT: Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s Founders Day Open House.

WHEN: Noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: Tyler History Center, 325 W. Federal St., Youngstown.

HOW MUCH: Admission is free. MVHS’s Arms Family Museum will be closed Sunday for the open house. For more information, go to mahoninghistory.org or call 330-743-2589.