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The North Olmsted Historical Society was founded in 1953 and became incorporated as a non-profit association in 1961. A year later, Frostville Museum opened in the Prechtel House. The society took on the challenge of preserving the history of the entire original township and became the Olmsted Historical Society in 1969. The Frostville Museum has grown from one house to a small village. Volunteers are dedicated to preserving the past and the present for the future. In August 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama designated the society as a Preserve America Steward. Frostville is an affiliate of the Cleveland Metroparks.
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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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In 1911 local doctors founded the St. Clair Hospital. The home adjacent to the hospital served as a residence home and training school for nurses. In 1940, the hospital was converted into a convalescent home. In 1948, Mr. and Mrs. William J. Garrett, an African-American couple, transformed the facility into a hotel. The Hotel St. Clair, which closed in 1976, accommodated African Americans who were not permitted to stay in white hotels. It also served as a social gathering place for members of Columbus’ black community.
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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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Walnut Hills has been home to a significant middle- and working-class Black community since the 1850s. In 1931, African American entrepreneur Horace Sudduth bought 1004 Chapel Street and then the row of buildings across Monfort, naming them the Manse Hotel and Annex. Throughout the 1940s, hotel dinner parties could move to the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs house next door for dancing. A large addition to the Manse in 1950 created its own ballroom, 24-hour coffee shop, upgraded Sweetbriar Restaurant, and more guest rooms. It appeared in the Negro Motorist’s Green Book between 1940-1963, providing local, transient, and residential guests both catered meetings and top entertainment during the last decades of segregation. It closed in the late 1960s when the economic need for a first-class segregated hotel disappeared in the age of Black Power.
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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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United Colored American Cemetery is among the earliest in situ African American cemeteries in Hamilton County. The 11.6 acres in Madisonville were purchased by the United Colored American Association (UCAA) after the legislated closure of their earlier Avondale cemetery. Many Avondale burials and headstones were moved prior to the new cemetery’s dedication on May 30, 1883. Designed by Adolph Strauch, United Colored American Cemetery features the looping roads and picturesque elements typical of his designs at Spring Grove and Eden Park. After the dissolution of the UCAA, Cincinnati mayor Charles P. Taft asked Union Baptist Church to take ownership and maintenance of the cemetery. Union Baptist assumed ownership in 1968 and burials continued until 2019. United Colored American Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022.
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On April 29, 1879, using arc carbons from the forerunner of The National Carbon Company, the City of Cleveland was illuminated by the world’s first practical electric street lamp. The National Carbon Company was established in Cleveland, Ohio in 1886 by Brush Electric Company executive W.H. Lawrence in association with future Ohio Governor Myron T. Herrick, James Parmelee, and Webb Hayes, son of United States President Rutherford B. Hayes. Well known for its batteries, The National Carbon Company also earned recognition for breakthrough research and products, including lifesaving carbon-filtered gas masks used by soldiers in World War I and reentry parts on the spacecraft that captivated the nation in the 1960s.
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