The Butler County Historical Society hosts its first traveling exhibition with “The Big Shake,” an exploration of how the 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes rocked the Ohio River valley.

The exhibition originated at the Betts House, Ohio’s oldest brick house, located in the Betts-Longworth Historic District near downtown Cincinnati.

“We originated the exhibit because the Betts House because it was built in 1804 and the family was in the house at the time of the earthquake,” said spokesperson Julie Carpenter. “The summer kitchen was damaged badly enough that it was no longer usable. We think it was because the chimney toppled.

The exhibit includes a model seismograph, shake-table demonstrations, hands-on experiments, period letters, newspaper articles and accounts from amateur scientists.

After the exhibition closed at the Betts House museum, they made it available for libraries and historical societies around the area, and the Butler County Historical Society jumped at the chance. The exhibit has at least two local connections in that Charles Richter and James McBride are featured characters, according to Executive Director Kathy Creighton.

Richter created a scale to measure the magnitude of earthquakes while working at the California Institute of Technology in 1935.

“He moved to California when he was a child, but he was born in Overpeck (in 1900), so we claim him,” Creighton said.

James McBride (1788-1859) was an early Butler County pioneer, a surveyor by trade who made some of the earliest maps of the county. He was Hamilton’s first mayor and the fifth Butler County Sheriff, and a proponent of the Hollow Earth Theory of John C. Symmes.

“The Big Shake” features a notebook with reproductions of some of McBride’s documents, including a letter to an aunt in which he describes the earthquakes of 1812, which occurred while he was traveling down the Mississippi River with a load of whiskey and flour to sell in New Orleans.

The exhibition will remain on view in the Emma Ritchie Auditorium through mid-August. For more information, call (513) 896-9930. The Butler County Historical Society Museum is located at 327 N. Second St. in Hamilton.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.