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The Carthagena Black Cemetery (Union Cemetery) is a remnant of approximately 70 documented rural black and mulatto settlements established in Ohio before the Civil War. In the charged atmosphere following race riots in Cincinnati in 1829, Quaker abolitionist Augustus Wattles led 15 black families north in 1835. In 1837 Wattles purchased 189 acres where the cemetery is located. Headstones date from 1840, the year mulatto Charles Moore, platted the Village of Carthagena. Wattles and mulatto clergymen Sam Jones and Harrison Lee were Underground Railroad conductors. Wattles moved to Kansas in 1855. By 1860, more than 100 black and mulatto families, totaling 600 people, owned over 10,000 acres. (Continued on other side)
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Irish railroad workers founded the Catholic community in Washington Court House in the 1850s, with the first Mass being held in a local shanty in 1852. In 1871, Father John B. O’Donoghue purchased three and 5/8 acres of land adjoining Washington cemetery on the outskirts of Washington Court House to build the St. Colman Church and adjacent cemetery. In 1885, much of Washington Court House, including St. Colman Church, was destroyed by a tornado. To mark the site of the church, a stone monument was erected on June 19, 1916. Over thirty-five veterans from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War I are buried in St. Colman Cemetery, and at least sixteen of these veterans were Irish immigrants. The cemetery’s highest decorated veteran, James Aloysius Ducey, served in World War I and World War II, earning numerous awards, including the Silver Star and the French Croix de Guerre.
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In 1839, Bishop John Baptist Purcell recruited European priests to minister to his Ohio flock. Father Louis Navarron, a young French missionary, was appointed to the French Catholic population of Darke and Shelby Counties in the area now marked by the villages of Russia, Versailles, and Frenchtown. St. Valbert, a centrally-located log church, was dedicated in December 1840 by Bishop Purcell to serve the region. In Russia, a log chapel was dedicated on Jean Jacques DeBrosse’s farm in 1846. Parish boundary lines were established in 1850, Precious Blood priests arrived, and a new church was dedicated to Saint Remigius in August 1852. As the congregation grew, so did the church buildings. The current Saint Remy Catholic Church, built between 1891-1892, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
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St. Boniface Catholic Church began in 1834 as a mission of several area churches and in 1836, the parish built its first church. In 1844 Bishop John Purcell commissioned Swiss born, Father Francis de Sales Brunner, a Missionary of the Precious Blood, to take pastoral charge of St. Boniface. Under the leadership of Father Brunner, the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, established in Italy in 1815, and the Sisters of the Precious Blood, founded in Switzerland in 1834, began ministry here in New Riegel (Wolfscreek) in 1844. Over two hundred acres of land were purchased for the priests, brothers, and sisters. The Missionaries brought spiritual support, farm labor, and education to the German immigrants of New Riegel. The sisters began their ministry of prayer in the convent, Mary at the Crib, on December 22, 1844. (Continued on other side)
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Saints Peter and Paul Church, Petersburg (1835), was the mother church for St. Joseph, Wapakoneta; St. John the Evangelist, Fryburg; St. Lawrence, Rhine; and Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Botkins. All were founded by German-Catholic immigrants to west-central Ohio. After the removal of the Wapakoneta Shawnee in 1832, the land became available for purchase. The 1830s and ’40s saw a wave of devout German settlers who wished to practice their faith in their new home, a desire served by missionary priests such as Father Wilhelm Horstman. Father Horstman first visited the settlement at Petersburg on May 8, 1835, presiding at Mass, baptizing, and blessing a marriage. In April 1836, immigrants John and Anna Mary Ruppert sold 40 acres of land in Pusheta Township to the trustees of the Catholic Church and a log church was built at the Petersburg site. (Continued on other side
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Daniel Arthur Rudd was born into slavery on August 7, 1854, in Bardstown, Kentucky. He became a newspaperman, lecturer, publicist, and tireless advocate for the Roman Catholic Church. After the Civil War Rudd moved to Springfield. Baptized and raised in Catholicism, he joined St. Raphael Parish, where the philosophy of racial equality offered by the church solidified his vision of justice. By 1885 he had established his own weekly newspaper, The Ohio State Tribune. He rebranded it The American Catholic Tribune (ACT) after moving to Cincinnati. Rudd claimed ACT was the only Catholic newspaper owned by an African American. At the height of its popularity in 1892, the publication had a circulation of 10,000. In 1893 Rudd was asked to chair the Afro-American Press Association, representing more than 200 black-owned newspapers.
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Soldier, engineer, and statesman, W.S. Rosecrans was born in Delaware County in 1819 and grew up in Homer. He graduated from West Point in 1842. During the Civil War, Rosecrans commanded the federal Army of the Cumberland. Popular with his troops, who called him “Old Rosy,” he was a cautious commander and, though victorious at, Corinth, Murfreesboro, and Chattanooga, he suffered major defeat at Chickamauga in 1863. A skilled engineer, Rosecrans developed coal properties in western (now West) Virginia before the war and helped design St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Columbus for his brother, Bishop Sylvester Rosecrans. Following the war he served as minister to Mexico and represented California in Congress from 1881 to 1885. He died in 1898 and is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
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On July 21, 1845, eleven Ursuline sisters from Boulogne-sur-Mer and Beaulieu, France, arrived in St. Martin, Brown County, Ohio. A Catholic order of sisters known for providing quality education to young women, the Ursulines were invited by Cincinnati Archbishop John Baptist Purcell (1800-1883) to establish a school in the diocese and granted approximately 400 acres in St. Martin for that purpose. Led by Mother Julia Chatfield (1808-1878), the sisters quickly established their convent, a day school, and, within the year, admitted their first boarders. Originally known as The Saint Ursula Literary Institute, the school operated for the next 136 years. The Ursulines educated local students from their adopted Brown County as well as many who came from across the U.S. and farther abroad to board on campus. (Continued on other side)
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