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East Toledo, early home of Ottawa Indians and originally part of Oregon Township, was annexed to the city in 1853. Peter Navarre, fur trader and War of 1812 scout, was a well-known pioneer resident. A post office named Utah was established in 1851 and located on Front Street near Oak Street, then the commercial center of the East Side.
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Maryland Park was opened in 1921. It served as the site of the annual Emancipation Day Celebration until 1933. The first Columbus public pool was constructed here in 1929 as the Center of Eastside Social and Recreation Activities. It was home to many black athletes who brought pride and distinction to themselves and to the city.
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Considered a bold experiment in community planning, Greenhills was intended to relieve an acute housing shortage and to provide jobs during the Great Depression. In 1935, the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the construction of three greenbelt communities: Greendale, Wisconsin; Greenbelt, Maryland; and Greenhills, Ohio. The construction of Greenhills began on December 16, 1935. The project generated thousands of jobs and, ultimately, 676 units of housing for working people. On April 1, 1938, the first Greenhills “Pioneers” moved into homes on Avenell Lane. Greenhills reflects the town planning principles of the English “garden city” movement. Planners clustered homes around a common green space and a community shopping area was within easy walking distance. Like the original greenbelt of forests and farms, today Winton Woods Park serves as a buffer for the Village. The original federally built center of Greenhills was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
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A direct descendent of original settlers in Jackson Township, Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel was born in 1876. Throughout his life he was a natural born showman, teacher, eccentric, anarchist, and “possibly the grandfather of American Pop Culture.” At a young age and tired of the routines of Farmersville, he declared that, “He would live by his wits while his brothers lived by the sweat of their brows.” He and a friend bicycled first to New York City and then turned around to head west and eventually the world. Later his home would overflow with items collected while traveling the world. Outside was a similar story. While chiding the American people for their wastefulness and abusing their environment, his 22 acres of farmland became his artist’s canvas filled with the thousands of items he collected from the “wasteful.” [continued on other side]
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Ebenezer Sheldon (1754-1825) was born in Suffield, Connecticut. On April 19, 1775, he answered the “Lexington Alarm,” fought in the Revolution, and, in 1789, was appointed a captain in Connecticut’s militia. Following the Revolution, Sheldon, like many others, suffered financial hardships and sought a new beginning in the Western Reserve. In 1799, he established a homestead in Aurora and returned to Connecticut the following year to bring his wife Lovee and their six children to the area. A family legend relates that when Lovee saw the family’s home she “shed a few tears over the cheerless prospects” of her new life in the wilderness.
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Oscar D. Boggess (1832-1907) was born in Virginia, the son of a slave and her master. He and his family were granted freedom in the will of his father and master. The will was contested up to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld Boggess’ freedom. Boggess moved to Pennsylvania at age 20, and during the Civil War, joined the 43rd United States Colored Troops. He earned the Butler Medal of Honor for bravery at the Battle of the Crater near Petersburg, Virginia, in July 1864. Boggess moved to Youngstown after the war, and worked as a stonemason. He was a charter member of Tod Post 29, Grand Army of the Republic, in Youngstown, and a co-founder of the Oak Hill Avenue African Methodist Episcopal Church, the city’s first African American religious congregation. The Boggess home, formerly located near this site, hosted the church’s first meetings in 1870.
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Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, the lone religious property within the Mt. Vernon Downtown Historic District, served what became only the second African American congregation in the city. The cornerstone for 13 South Mulberry Street was laid October 17, 1915, and a dedication service was celebrated in March 1916. Mt. Calvary grew out of the Black Baptist traditions brought by Southern refugees during the Great Migration. Although dwindling membership and resources closed the building, it provided Mt. Vernon’s African American community with a vital space of worship, communion, mutual assistance, asylum, social support, and community celebration for almost a century.
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Congress passed Fugitive Slave Laws in 1793 and 1850, allowing federal marshals to arrest slaves that had escaped to the North and take them back to their southern owners. They could also arrest northerners suspected of aiding runaway slaves. These laws were contested throughout the North, including Ohio where one case received national press. It involved escaped slave Addison White who arrived in Mechanicsburg in August 1856. There he met abolitionist Udney Hyde and stayed at his farm while Hyde recovered from a leg injury. White’s master Daniel White learned of his location and went to Mechanicsburg in April 1857 with federal marshals. When attempting to take Addison and arrest Hyde on grounds of violating the Fugitive Slave Law, Hyde’s daughter ran to town and brought back residents with pitchforks and shovels to fight the marshals. Fearing for their lives, the marshals left, but came back to arrest the men who protected White. [continued on other side]
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