, OH
This Queen Anne style building with segmental-arched windows and steep hipped roof was Burton’s second high school. Completed in 1885 at a cost of $12,500, it is wood framed with a brick and stone exterior, modeled after an academy in River Falls, Wisconsin. Its basement and two upper floors contained 12,720 square feet of space, enough for all twelve grades. There were two separate entrances; girls entered on the left and boys on the right. Electricity was installed in 1921 by the superintendent and students. Classes met here until 1936. During its history, the building housed various organizations, including the Red Cross, Opportunity School of Geauga County (later Metzenbaum), Geauga County Historical Society, American Legion, and County Extension Office. In 1937, it became the home of the Burton Public Library and in 1983 was expanded with a north wing designed to be architecturally consistent with the original 1885 structure.
, OH
Author William Dean Howells (1837-1920) spent his boyhood from 1840 to 1848 in Hamilton. Called the “Dean of American Letters,” Howells wrote 35 novels, 35 plays, 34 miscellaneous books, 6 books of literary criticism, 4 books of poetry, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. He shaped the destiny of fellow writers by editing their works for Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. His autobiography entitled A Boy’s Town fondly recalls growing up in Hamilton. Throughout life, he broke in news pens by writing, “W. D. Howells, Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio.”
, OH
One of Ohio’s earliest proponents of women’s rights, Frances Dana Gage (1808-1884) was born in Marietta and married McConnelsville attorney James L. Gage in 1829. She immersed herself in the major social issues of the day – temperance, abolition, and universal suffrage – while raising eight children. At a women’s rights convention in 1850, Gage gained national attention by proposing that the words “white” and “men” be removed from Ohio’s constitution. She later served as the editor of an Ohio agricultural journal, as an educator for newly emancipated African Americans, and wrote children’s tales under the pen name “Aunt Fanny.” An enormously influential woman, Gage led the way for Ohio’s next generation of social activists.
, OH
Dr. Thomas William Burton, Springfield’s first Black physician, was born into slavery in a Kentucky log cabin on May 4, 1860. The youngest of 15 children, he was orphaned at 9, and his only education was the alphabet before age 21. Burton attended Kentucky’s Berea College and graduated from the Indianapolis Eclectic College of Physicians and Surgeons on March 24, 1892. Dr. Burton moved to Springfield and opened his medical practice on East Main Street the same year. In 1894, he established both the first Black-owned drug store and a shoe store. Additionally, he operated a newspaper, The Loyal Legion of Honor. Dr. Burton established the Ohio Mutual Medical Association (Ohio’s first Black medical society), and chaired its inaugural meeting in Xenia on August 27, 1897. (Continued on other side)
, OH
Reverend John Jay Shipherd and Philo Penfield Stewart envisioned an educational institution and colony dedicated to the glory of God and named in honor of John Frederick Oberlin, a pastor in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. Early colonists signed a covenant pledging themselves to the plainest living and highest thinking. Oberlin (known as the Oberlin Collegiate Institute until 1850 when it was renamed Oberlin College) was the first coeducational institution to grant bachelor’s degrees to women and historically has been a leader in the education of African Americans. In fact, African American and white children studied together in the town’s one-room schoolhouse, in defiance of Ohio’s “Black laws” forbidding this practice. The schoolhouse, built 1836-1837, is part of the Oberlin Heritage Center.
, OH
Organized in 1845, Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest congregation of African descent in Delaware, with Reverend Daniel Winslow serving as the first minister. In 1853 the cornerstone of the first church was laid, which was dedicated in 1855. Three former Pastors of Zion became Bishops in the AME Church–James A. Shorter, 1868; John Mifflin Brown, 1868; and Cornelius T. Shaffer, 1900. In 1876 the existing church was razed and carpenter, brick mason, and plaster church members built the present edifice. A fire destroyed the interior on December 19, 1983, and for two years the congregation met in the recreation building of the Londontown Apartments, undercroft of the William Street Methodist Church, and sanctuary of the Victory Seventh Day Adventist Church. On the first Sunday in October 1985, Presiding Elder Virgil Cummins, Pastor Rodney Thomas, and the congregation marched from the Adventist Church back into the restored sanctuary.
, OH
This classic Gothic Revival home built in the early 1850s, was one of Ohio’s early wineries with terraced hillside vineyards overlooking the city of Chillicothe. From 1919 until his death in 1966, it served as the home and working studio of noted American craftsman, artist, and historian Dard Hunter. A major artistic contributor to the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early twentieth century, Hunter gained international recognition when in 1916 he became the first individual in the history of printing to produce all aspects of a book by hand. Eight of the twenty books he wrote on the history of paper were printed at this site. Hunter is regarded as the world’s leading authority on the history of paper and his artistic achievements have had an enduring impact on American Graphic Arts.
, OH
In 1834, ministers gathered at Providence Church in Berlin Crossroads and organized the Providence Anti-Slavery Baptist Association; believed to be both the first African American Baptist Association in Ohio and among the earliest in the country. The Association’s name boldly reflected its stance: opposition to slavery and a commitment to freedom. Several affiliated churches and their members were known Underground Railroad safe houses and conductors. Providence Association grew to include member churches across Ohio—including Athens, Bidwell, Beaver, Blackfork, Burlington, Gallipolis, Glouster, Ironton, Middleport, Nelsonville, Rutland—as well as congregations in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Michigan.