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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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St. Vincent-St. Mary High School is the oldest continuously operating, public or private, high school in Akron. With roots extending to the late 19th century, St. Mary High School graduated its first three students in 1901. St. Vincent High School opened in September 1907 in an effort to extend educational offerings beyond the eighth grade. The first class, comprising four students, graduated in 1910. The two schools merged in late 1972 to become a single co-educational college preparatory high school. “In the spirit of the Gospel, we are committed to educate the whole person,” the St. Vincent-St. Mary High School mission statement pledges, “to lead and to serve, enlightening the mind, developing the body, touching the heart and inspiring the soul.”
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Japanese-American Buddhists, who resettled in the Cleveland area in 1943-44 after being released from World War II internment camps, established the oldest continually meeting Buddhist organization in Ohio. The organization was originally known as the Cleveland Young Buddhist Association and is now known as the Cleveland Buddhist Temple. Services were held in members’ homes until a building on East 81st Street was purchased in 1955. After extensive damage to the building during the Hough riots in 1966, the Temple’s current residence was acquired in 1968. Affiliated with the Buddhist Churches of America, the Temple serves the Jodo Shinshu Tradition of Buddhism. In 1979, the Temple under the direction of Sensei Koshin Ogui introduced the Zen Shin meditation practice in response to public wishes. The Temple welcomes all those wishing to study the teachings of the Buddha.
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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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Karamu House, Incorporated was established in 1915 as the Playhouse Settlement, one of Cleveland’s many settlement houses for migrant and immigrant communities. Initiated by the Men’s Club of the Second Presbyterian Church, in 1915 Oberlin College and University of Chicago social work graduates, Russell and Rowena Woodham Jellliffe were hired as the founding directors. Originally located at 2239 East 38th Street, the Playhouse Settlement offered children’s theater and other social, recreational, and educational activities. It soon developed a partnership with the Dumas Dramatic Club, a local African American theater company that later became known as the Gilpin Players. (continued on other side)
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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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Founded by Saint Elizabeth Bayley Seton in Maryland in 1809, the Sisters of Charity arrived in Cincinnati in 1829 to open a school and an orphanage, becoming the first permanent establishment of Catholic sisters in Ohio. In 1852 the group separated from its Maryland roots to form a diocesan community and called themselves the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. The sisters later served as nurses in the Civil War as well as operated and staffed a number of Catholic elementary and secondary schools. As membership grew, their ministries and educational, health care, and social service institutions expanded in Cincinnati and elsewhere, including out of state. They include the Good Samaritan Hospital, College of Mount St. Joseph, St. Joseph Infant and Maternity Home, Santa Maria Social Service Agency, and Seton High School in Cincinnati and Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton. Mount St. Joseph has served as the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity since 1884.