Apart from whatever miscellaneous whaling relations there may have been among the Connecticut families who came to Ohio with the Putnams and settled the Western Reserve in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, we have been able to find only a few whaling connections to the Buckeye State.

Roswell A. Button, farmer of Mesopotamia, Ohio, was born in 1822 at Preston, Connecticut, and made four whaling voyages in his youth (1833-51), rising quickly through the ranks from green hand in the ship Lowell of New London, to first mate of the New London whaler Clematis; then, from 1851 to 1853, he was captain of the merchant bark Clara Winslow on the run from New York to Santo Domingo. He settled in Mesopotamia in 1853 and married a local woman.

Whaling was evidently so exotic to Ohioans in the 19th century that, two decades later, a beautifully-illustrated county atlas featured an impressive whaling scene in honor of this distinguished citizen (the title elevates his position far above his actual lowly station at the time: he never was the captain of a whaler): "View of the whale ship "Lowell" of New London, Capt. R.A. Button [sic], Exhibiting the process of catching, cutting-in and boiling out."

There were actually many whalemen who came from Ohio. Theodore D. Bartley, from Norwalk, in Huron County, served as a seaman in the ship California of New Bedford, 1851-54. His journal of the 43-month voyage to the North Pacific (in the KWM collection) is rendered in a strong and well-tutored, though occasionally careless, hand and contains an interesting collection of drawings, sketches, and songs.