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Known as the “Village Cemetery,” this was Berea’s main burial ground from 1834 to the 1880s. However, in 1886, the Cleveland Stone Co. purchased quarries adjacent to the cemetery, where Coe Lake is today. Quarrying had already caused flooding and landslides in the area. Local stories say that the company operated too near to the edge of cemetery, causing a landslide in the northwest corner that exposed some graves. Worried families moved their loved ones’ remains to other cemeteries, including those of five Civil War veterans. Pioneering families, 16 Civil War veterans, 3 mayors of Berea, several quarry owners, and many ordinary people still rest here. Of the original 589 burials, 40% were children. (Continued on other side)
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In 1817 twenty-two men, including future President William Henry Harrison, chartered Cincinnati’s first Episcopal parish, Christ Church. In 1835 members erected a Gothic Revival-style church on this site. The neighborhood evolved as the city grew with the influx of immigrants. Parish women raised funds to teach, feed, clothe, and shelter tenement families, and alleviate suffering during floods and disease outbreaks. In 1883 the women helped establish what became Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In 1909 members opened the Late Gothic-style Parish House, a community center with kitchen, classrooms, library, auditorium, clinic, gymnasium, and bowling alley. By the parish’s centennial in 1917, music had expanded beyond worship to public concerts. In 1940 the annual Boar’s Head Festival of music and pageantry began. Since the 1960s, members have collaborated with local agencies to advocate for social and economic justice, a mission continuing into the 21st century. (Continued on other side)
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The founding of the philanthropic organization Charity Newsies stems from a cold, blustery day in December 1907, when a small newspaper boy stood on the corner of Broad and High streets. Inside the nearby Billy’s Chophouse, entertainers George Baker and Harry Shunk talked to C.C. Philbrick, publisher of the new Ohio Sun Newspaper about the area’s poor children needing clothing. They noticed the newspaper boy and brought him to the Chophouse to get warm. On a spur of the moment they took his newspapers outside, shouting “It’s all for charity”, and sold all the papers. The money was given to the boy. Realizing potential, the men decided to raise additional funds for the poor by selling the Ohio Sun Newspaper and recruited others to help. On December 20, 1907, the Sunday before Christmas, 50 men sold a special edition of the paper and raised $702.42, 100% for charity.
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“Lifting As We Climb”: The Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (CFCWC) was organized May 6, 1904, during a meeting called by Mary Fletcher Ross at the Allen Temple A.M.E. Church. Gathering together eight existing African-American women’s clubs, the CFCWC sought to unite in their work promoting “the betterment of the community.” At a time when both government and private philanthropies overlooked the needs of Black Americans, CFCWC members helped to organize the city’s first kindergartens for Black children, taught in Cincinnati African-American public schools –including the Walnut Hills Douglass and Stowe schools—and raised money for the Home of Aged Colored Women. Since 1904, the Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs has ensured the civic and constitutional rights of all African Americans while meeting the needs of their city.
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Woodvale Cemetery was established in the mid-1800s, in Middleburgh Township, Ohio. The oldest marked grave holds Fred G. Klink (1835-1858), whose family donated a half acre of land for burials. In 1876, Frank M. Stearns (1832-1911) suggested the unnamed cemetery be called Woodvale, after the wooded vale beside it. In 1908, a fire destroyed the caretaker’s house and many cemetery records. Woodvale became a non-profit, union cemetery in 1931, owned by Berea and the Village of Middleburg Hts. and covering 35 acres at 7535 Engle Road. Pioneer families buried here: Fowles, Kraft, Lovejoy, Sprague, and Stearns. Also buried here: John Baldwin (1799-1884) founder of Baldwin University and James Wallace (1878-1953) founder of German Wallace College (merged in 1913 to become Baldwin Wallace College) (Continued other side)
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The Breathing Association was founded in 1906 as the Tuberculosis Society under the leadership of public health advocate Carrie Nelson Black. The society provided nutrition, medical care, and sanitorium services to people who could not afford proper medical care. A tuberculosis dispensary was operated at 40 South Third Street in Columbus for Ohioans needing consultation and treatment. Tuberculosis, known as the White Plague, killed one out of nine persons in Columbus during the early 1900s. An Open Air School was established on Neil Avenue in 1913 for children in homes where there were one or more cases of tuberculosis. In 1931, the Nightingale Cottage was opened on Brice Road as a tuberculosis preventorium for children. As tuberculosis became controllable, the agency became focused on emerging lung health issues. Today, The Breathing Association continues as a leading resource on lung health issues and preventing lung disease.
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Sarah Mayrant Walker was born enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, and sent to New Orleans as a young girl to study under a French hair specialist in the art of hair and scalp treatment, and goods manufacturing. Brought to Cincinnati around 1840, she used her networks to build a hair salon empire that catered to elite and wealthy women. In 1859, Sarah single-handedly desegregated the Cincinnati streetcars when she successfully sued The Passenger Railroad Company after a conductor refused her passage and pushed her off the moving car. As a result, Black women and children could ride inside a streetcar while men could ride on the platform. She and her husband, Peter Fossett, founded First Baptist Church of Cumminsville circa 1870. Both are buried in the Union Baptist Cemetery.
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Born in Connecticut in 1794, Leverett Johnson came to Dover Township with his brother-in-law and sister, Asahel and Rebecca Johnson Porter on October 10, 1810. In 1811 at the age of 16, he began clearing land in what is now Westlake. In 1814 he built a log house at Porter and Center Ridge roads for his bride Abigail Cahoon. They raised nine children and lived here the rest of their lives. Johnson was a prominent citizen of Dover Township, serving as a justice of the peace, a township treasurer and trustee, a Cuyahoga County commissioner and a five-term Ohio state legislator, and as the first director of Dover Academy, a local school. Leverett died on April 19, 1856 at home. He donated part of his land for Evergreen Cemetery, where he, Abigail, and many of the pioneers of Westlake are buried.