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Hallie Quinn Brown (c. 1850) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to former slaves. She and her family moved to Wilberforce, Ohio in 1870, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree from Wilberforce University in 1873. Brown taught school in the South until her appointment as professor of elocution at Wilberforce University in 1893. A gifted elocutionist and author, Brown received national and international acclaim not only for her recitals and written works, but also for her passionate belief in civil rights and African American culture. (Continued on other side)
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Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. (July 1, 1877 – November 26, 1970), the nation’s first African American general in the Regular Army, was born in Washington, D.C. Davis first served as a temporary first lieutenant of the 8th U.S. Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War. Following that conflict, he enlisted as a private in the 9th U.S. Cavalry, serving in the Philippine Insurrection where he began to rise in rank. Davis was promoted to first lieutenant in 1905, captain in 1915, lieutenant colonel in 1920, colonel in 1930, and brigadier general in 1941. His military career took him around the world. In 1909, he was detailed as Military Attache to Monrovia, Liberia. During World War I, Davis was stationed in the Philippines. In 1938, he took command of the New York’s African American 396th National Guard Infantry, later known as the 369th Coast Artillery (Antiaircraft) Regiment. (Continued on other side)
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A fine example of the district school building common to Ohio in the early years of the twentieth century, this two-room, red-brick schoolhouse was completed in 1913. Accommodating elementary school children in east Berea and adjacent areas of Middleburg Township, the Berea “Little Red Schoolhouse” replaced an original wood-frame, one-room school built in the late nineteenth century on the same site. No longer active as a school, the building was used by the Berea Fine Arts Club from 1935 to 1980, and subsequently by the Berea Jaycees for meetings and community projects. This historic structure has been carefully restored and opened to public gatherings by the Berea Little Red Schoolhouse Foundation, Inc. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
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In April 1784, the Continental Congress adopted the Report of Government for the Western Territory, a broad plan drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson for organizing the United States’ new western lands that were ceded by the states and purchased from Native Americans. One of the most far-reaching legislative acts in American history, the resulting Land Ordinance of 1785, passed on May 20th, established the public land system by which all federal land was surveyed and distributed. The Ordinance established a rectilinear survey system that divided land into townships of six miles square aligned by north-south and east-west baselines, and set aside certain lands for Revolutionary War veterans and for public schools.
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The first Muslim immigrants arrived in the 1900s from Syria and Lebanon. They established the Syrian American Muslim Society in the late 1930s. In 1954, the first Islamic Center was built on East Bancroft Street. By the late 60s and early 70s, the growing Muslim community outgrew the Bancroft Street Center. The present Center, architecturally classic in Islamic style, was the first such mosque in North America. Its foundation was laid in October 1980 and was officially opened on October 22, 1983. In August 2001, the full time Islamic School of Greater Toledo opened. Today, the Center’s members represent nearly 30 nationalities, providing an important bridge of understanding between its members and the community at large.
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In 1862, less than a mile upriver from this marker, the John Lithoberry Shipyard in Cincinnati constructed the Sultana, a 260-foot, wooden steam transport. At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. Government contracted the Sultana to transport recently freed Federal prisoners north from Confederate stockades. During the night of April 27, 1865, while carrying over 2,300 Union soldiers – over six times its capacity of 376 passengers – a steam boiler aboard the Sultana exploded. The ship erupted in a massive fireball and sank in the cold, flood-swollen Mississippi River ten miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. Over 1,700 individuals died – some 200 more than those lost aboard the Titanic in 1912 – in what remains the worst maritime disaster in American history. Of the total casualties, Ohio lost the most of any state, with 791 dead. Indiana lost 491 persons, with Kentucky suffering 194 dead. It is estimated that, of the Ohio casualties, over fifty were Cincinnatians.
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William McKinley’s house, once located at this site, was the scene of his 1896 front porch campaign for President of the United States. During the campaign McKinley addressed about 750,000 people who came to his home in Canton. McKinley’s public service began when he volunteered at the start of the Civil War in 1861 as a private with the Union Army. He was discharged as a major after four years of service. Later McKinley became President of the Canton Y.M.C.A. and the Stark County Prosecutor. McKinley served in the United States House of Representatives between 1877 and 1891 and was then elected Governor of Ohio. He helped to found the Canton Public Library. McKinley won presidential elections in 1896 and 1900. His administration was characterized by high tariffs, money backed by gold, national prosperity, and the Spanish-American War. In 1901 an anarchist shot and killed President McKinley.
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One of America’s most inventive twentieth century writers, Kenneth Patchen was born in Niles and graduated Warren G. Harding High School in 1929. He first published his poetry while studying at an experimental college at the University of Wisconsin in 1929. A pacifist deeply concerned with the human condition in mid-twentieth century America, Patchen blended linguistic and visual elements to create avant-garde works that defied literary conventions of the period, presaging both the “beat” and “concrete” movements of the 1950s. The Journal of Albion Moonlight (1941) and Hallelujah Anyway: Picture Poems (1966) are among the best known of his more than forty works of poetry, prose, and drama.
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