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The Civil War created orphaned and impoverished children across the nation. To establish a home for area children, a group of Hamilton women met with Reverends Thane Miller and Benjamin W. Chidlaw in January 1869. By May, the women had rented a house on North C Street. Five years later, a new house was needed. Local businessmen Clark Lane and Elbridge G. Dyer pledged a combined $10,000 to purchase the property at 425 South D Street. One condition of the gift was that home’s operators had to raise an additional $2,000 to cover expenses. The newer, larger home opened in September 1875. In 1902, Robert and Eleanor Beckett McKinney donated funds to build a hospital on the property, named Ruth Hospital, to honor their deceased infant daughter. Mrs. McKinney and her mother, Martha Beckett, had long supported the home’s work. (Continued on other side)
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One of America’s most admired women, pioneer television newscaster Dorothy Snell Fuldheim (1893-1989) began her career as a lecturer in the 1920s and entered broadcasting with a biographical series on WTAM radio in Cleveland. In 1947, Fuldheim joined Ohio’s first commercial television station, WEWS, becoming the first woman in the United States to anchor a news show. Her later work included the long-running “One O’clock Club” live interview show and regular news commentary. During her six-decade career in an often youth-dominated profession, Fuldheim conducted over 15,000 interviews-including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, the Duke of Windsor, Albert Einstein, and Helen Keller-in a unique and erudite style. She retired in 1984 at the age of 91.
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On January 9, 1919, a group of eight men and three women, being led by the Holy Spirit, met at a house on Wallace Street to form a new black Missionary Baptist Church in Hamilton, Ohio. The group quickly raised $150 to make the down payment on a two-story brick building at 333 Chestnut Street being sold for $1,850. The building was occupied on March 25, 1919, and the name Pilgrim Baptist Church was suggested and accepted. On May 11, 1919, a special council requested admittance into the Western Union Baptist Association, a district association now affiliated with the Ohio Baptist General Convention. Requirements for admission were met and Pilgrim Baptist Church was recognized as a Missionary Baptist Church. In 2019, Pilgrim Baptist Church celebrated a centennial of faithfulness in Hamilton.
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Among the first in America, Cincinnati’s public library dates from March 14, 1853. A public reading room opened in 1856, but funding remained a problem until 1867, when local school board president Rufus King II secured legislation for a renamed Cincinnati Public Library. In 1869, King lured leading librarian William Frederick Poole to organize Cincinnati as a national model for the growing public library movement. Poole designed 19th century America’s most advanced library at 629 Vine Street, which fully opened in 1874. Becoming a countywide system in 1898, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County was a pioneer in the 20th century with special services for the blind and for children, bookmobile services, and circulation of audiovisual materials. (continued on other side)
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The Lanes, Baptist merchants from New Orleans, and the Kempers, a Presbyterian family from Cincinnati, gave money and land respectively for Cincinnati’s first manual labor theological seminary and high school, which opened in suburban Walnut Hills in 1829. The Reverend Lyman Beecher came from Boston as its first president. The president’s house, now known as the Stowe House after Beecher’s daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, still remains at Gilbert and Foraker. Lane Theological Seminary, bound by present day Gilbert, Chapel, Park, and Yale streets, continued to educate Presbyterian ministers until 1932, when it was merged with McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.
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Mary Harlan Doherty was born in 1862 in the Dayton Street neighborhood of Cincinnati. She graduated from Woodward High School in 1880 at a time when women were not expected to go to college, but rather to marry, raise children, and take care of household duties. Miss Doherty, as she was known, saw the world differently. She felt strongly that women should not only possess solid social skills, but also be prepared for college. She graduated from Cornell University in 1899. In 1906 she established the College Preparatory School for Girls in the former home of Superior Court Judge and Ohio Governor George Hoadley, with a class of 125 students. Enrollment doubled by 1920, with Miss Doherty guiding her students under the school’s motto, Ad Summum, meaning “To the Highest Point,” or, as she viewed it, to strive for excellence, hard work, and service.
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Juliette Gordon Low (1860-1927) had a dream that young women could be independent, help others in need, and be responsible leaders in their communities. Low founded Girl Scouts of the United States of America with 18 girls on March 12, 1912 in her native Savannah, Georgia. On May 6, 1917, Low signed the charter making the Toledo Council the first official Girl Scout Council in the nation. There were about 550 Girl Scouts in Toledo at that time. Over 50 million girls, women, and men have been members of Girl Scouts of the USA in the last century.
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The first women’s college chartered in the state of Ohio, Ursuline College opened in 1871 in downtown Cleveland as part of the educational mission of the Order of St. Ursula (O.S.U.). Founded in Italy in 1535 with an early presence in North America, this order established its first religious teaching community in Cleveland in 1850, led by foundress Mother Mary of the Annunciation Beaumont, O.S.U. The college’s growth prompted four moves in Cleveland and subsequently to the Pepper Pike campus in 1966. Ursuline holds the distinction as one of the first catholic women’s colleges in the United States organized and chartered explicitly for college education.