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On December 21, 1818, The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ohio granted a Charter to Middlebury Lodge No. 34 marking the beginning of Freemasonry in Summit County. The Lodge was located on Case Avenue, then known as Water Street. Two members of this early lodge had much to do with the pioneer history of Akron, Brothers Amos Spicer and Eliakim Crosby. [Masonic Emblem]
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The Hopewell Associate Reformed Church and Cemetery, now known as Historic Hopewell, was founded in 1808 in a log building that was replaced in 1826 with the present building. It was built by the area’s first settlers, mainly Scotch-Irish who left Kentucky and South Carolina because of their opposition to slavery. The church encouraged worship by African Americans and played an important role in the Underground Railroad. It became the parent church for four “Daughter” Presbyterian congregations: Fairhaven in 1835, Oxford in 1837, College Corner in 1849, and Morning Sun in 1876. Reverend Alexander Porter, the first pastor, was committed to education and constructed a school near the Hopewell Spring that still produces clear water. “Old Hopewell” was completely refurbished in 1880, but by 1915 the membership declined and regular services discontinued. Today Hopewell holds Sunday services in the summer and is maintained by a generous and devoted group of volunteers.
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Israel Harrington (1779-1841) established a tavern at Lower Sandusky (now Fremont) shortly after the War of 1812. As a judge and land speculator, Harrington influenced the organization of much of northwestern Ohio. In 1824 he traded the tavern for land a short distance from this site, where an Indian trail crossed the Portage River. Elmore grew from this settlement. Harrington and his father (also Israel Harrington, a veteran of the American Revolution) are interred here, along with many of the pioneers who transformed this section of the Black Swamp into productive farmland.
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The Grenadier Squaw Village was located between this area and Scippo Creek, upon the Pickaway Plains, the primary Shawnee settlement in Ohio. Non-hel-e-ma, born circa 1722, was the sister of the Shawnee Cornstalk and Silver Heels. Known as Grenadier Squaw because of her imposing stature, she spoke four languages, serving as peacemaker and interpreter. After the peace treaty with Lord Dunmore in 1774, and in spite of Cornstalk’s murder, she remained allied with the Americans. On October 1, 1978, Non-hel-e-ma was honored with a marker in Logan Elm Park near to those for Chief Cornstalk and Chief Logan. The “Burning Ground,” used as a site to burn captured prisoners at the stake, was located on the elevated hill just south of Grenadier Squaw’s Village. The Council House was located slightly to the northwest.
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In 1870, African American men in Circleville attempted to vote in municipal elections. Despite the recent ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, pollsters refused their votes on the basis that state law forbade them from receiving the ballots. The Second Baptist Church was the site of a meeting of 147 African American men seeking redress. Together with Republican leaders these men produced petitions that were sent to the United States Senate and House of Representatives. These petitions gave the Republican Party the grounds to introduce bills to enforce the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The passage of the Enforcement Act of 1870 imposed criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote and also helped to shift power and authority from the individual state legislatures to the centralized Federal government.
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In the early 1800s, William and Eleanor Kendall owned this land, known for its natural springs, beauty, and farmland. In 1850, Elias Drake, lawyer and former speaker in the Ohio General Assembly, purchased the property and named it Tawana or Xenia Springs. He developed a health resort hotel surrounded by summer cottages, all of which were completed the following year. “Tawana” is believed to be Shawnee for “clear or gold water,” alluding to the clear, mineral-rich springs. From its beginnings, the resort did not fare well as it was popular among southern planters who, much to the consternation of nearby antislavery sentiment, brought slave entourages whenever they came. In October 1855, negotiations for its sale opened with the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which purchased Tawana Springs, including 54 acres and the hotel and cottages, for $13,000 to establish a university for African Americans. (Continued on other side)
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This cemetery stands as evidence of a once thriving African American farming community established in the 1820s. With the aid of community leader, Alexander “Sandy” Harper (c.1804-1889), Captina, originally called Guinea, became a stop on the Underground Railroad, a national network, shrouded in secrecy, of volunteers who directed slaves northward. Harper is buried in this cemetery, along with Benjamin Oliver McMichael (1865-1941), an educator who taught for twelve years in Captina/ Flatrock at a segregated schoolhouse. There are 113 known burials in the cemetery, including nine Civil War veterans. At this site in 1825, an African Methodist Episcopal Church was established to serve the community. Many of its members left Captina to work in cities, but the church continued services until 1962. The building then fell into disrepair and collapsed during a windstorm in 1978.
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The first African-American to achieve prominence as a poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar was born and raised in Dayton, the son of former slaves. Working as an elevator operator while he established himself as a writer, Dunbar published his first book of poems, Oak and Ivy, in 1893. His third collection, Lyrics of a Lowly Life (1896) with an introduction by another Ohio-born author William Dean Howells, gained Dunbar widespread critical acclaim and popular recognition. Widely published in contemporary journals and literary magazines, Dunbar employed both turn-of-the-century African-American dialect and standard English verse to give a voice to the themes of everyday discrimination and struggles for racial equality. Tuberculosis cut his life short at age 33. Dunbar’s body of work includes twelve volumes of poetry, four books of short stories, a play, and five novels.