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Salmon Portland Chase, a renowned lawyer and statesman, was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, on January 13, 1808. He came to Ohio in 1820 and attended Cincinnati College (1822-23). Chase returned to New Hampshire and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1826. He studied law under U.S. Attorney General William Wirt in Washington D.C. and was admitted to the bar in December 1829. He then moved back to Cincinnati and in September 1830 established his law office and residence on the first floor of a brick building that stood at the northeast corner of 3rd and Main Streets. Chase gained national recognition as an anti-slavery attorney and politician and by aiding in the organization of the Liberty, Free-Soil, and Republican parties. He served as a Cincinnati city councilman (1840-41), U.S. senator from Ohio (1849-55), and was the first Republican governor of Ohio (1856-60). (continued on other side)
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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.
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The West Park African American community began in 1809 with the first black settler and one of the earliest residents of the area, inventor and farmer George Peake. With the growth of the railroad industry, African Americans were encouraged to move into the area to work at the New York Central Round House and Train Station located in Linndale. First among these, in 1912, were Beary Frierson and Henry Sharp. As more and more African Americans came, African American institutions followed. In 1919, Reverend Thomas Evans and the families of Herndon Anderson and Joseph Williams founded St. Paul A.M.E. Church, the first black congregation on Cleveland’s West Side. Reverend D.R. Shaw, the Ebb Strowder family and Iler Burrow established the Second Calvary Baptist Church in 1923. Both became pillars of the community.
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Opened in July 1862, the 35 1/2-acre site here in Brooklyn Township’s University Heights served as the largest Civil War army camp of rendezvous, organization, and training in northeast Ohio. It was bordered by Hershel (now West 5th) and University (now West 7th) streets and Railway and Marquard avenues. A wartime high of 4,151 volunteers occupied the barracks here on December 5, 1862. Lieutenant William Dustin of the 19th Ohio Volunteer Artillery wrote, “It was a table land above the city and admirably suited to the use of a camp of instruction. It was as level as a floor and carpeted with grass. The capacious pine barracks held about 25 each of the battery’s men.” A total of 15,230 men trained here during the war–4.9 percent of the 310,646 enlistments in Ohio. More than 11,000 soldiers were discharged here at war’s end. It closed in August 1865. (continued on other side)
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Despite exclusionary laws preventing U.S. citizenship, Asians served in the Union and Confederate armies and navies during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Many of these soldiers were denied citizenship following their services due to the anti-Asian sentiment, which culminated in the Naturalization Act of 1870 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The exclusionary laws continued until 1943, and all restrictions on national origin or race were abolished in 1965. In April 2003, House Joint Resolution 45 was introduced to Congress to posthumously proclaim Civil War soldiers of Asian descent to be honorary citizens of the United States as recognition of their honorable services. (continued on other side)
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In 1812, the Ohio legislature designated Columbus as the state capital, with local landowners contributing land and resources for a capitol building and penitentiary. The first Columbus statehouse, a Federal-style structure completed in 1816, stood on the northeast corner of State and High streets. By the 1830s, the need for a more substantial structure was apparent. Cincinnati architect Thomas Walter won the 1838 capitol design contest, though the final design incorporated several designers’ ideas, including prominent Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole. Construction proceeded slowly between 1839 and 1861, weathering political fights, prison labor disputes, and a cholera epidemic. Interior work was sufficiently complete by January 1857 for the legislature to hold its first session in the new capitol. A National Historic Landmark, the Ohio Statehouse stands as one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in America.
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With five army camps in Columbus, Capitol Square was a military crossroads from 1861 to 1865. Ohio troops were mustered, paid, and on some occasions garrisoned at the Statehouse. Three of every five male Ohioans between the ages of 18 and 45 served in the Civil War. Ohio’s contribution to the war effort was enormous, supplying almost 320,000 soldiers to the Union Army, representing 230 regiments and 26 independent artillery batteries. More than 35,000 soldiers died during the war, and 30,000 more were disabled. One hundred forty-eight Ohio soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor. Perhaps Ohio’s greatest contribution to the war was to the Union leadership that won it: Generals Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, and James B. McPherson, as well as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, were all Ohioans.
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John T. Crawford (1813-1880), was a white Union soldier. In gratitude for the kindnesses he received from African-Americans during the Civil War, Crawford willed his 18 1/2-acre farm to be used as a “home, for aged, indigent worthy colored men, preference to be given to those who have suffered the miseries of American Slavery.” The Crawford Old Men’s Home opened in 1888 and operated until 1964 under the trusteeship of prominent African-Americans such as lawyer William Parham, newspaper editor Wendell Dabney, and Ambassador Jesse D. Locker. It merged with the Progressive Benefit Society’s Home for Colored Women to become the Lincoln Crawford Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Pleasant Hill Academy, College Hill Library, and Crawford Commons are all on the site of the Crawford farm.
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