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Manchester was founded in 1791 by Nathaniel Massie as a base to survey the land warrants of American Revolutionary War soldiers in the Virginia Military District. This bank of the Ohio River provided a secure site for the last civilian stockade built in Ohio. The natural protection of this fortification included marshland to the west and north and the river on the south. The nearby three islands provided a safe place for retreat in dangerous circumstances and also supplied an area to raise food in its rich bottomlands. The invention of the steam powered paddle wheel boat allowed the river to become the city’s main source of shipping and commerce in the nineteenth century. Manchester was an important port of call for provisions; the export of agricultural products; and the manufacture of goods such as pottery, furniture, and leather goods.
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Wayman Chapel was dedicated in 1874 as part of Ohio’s Third District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The first Black church in Knox County, it began in 1870 under the guidance of Rev. James A. Ralls. The congregation met in local homes and church basements until completing their red brick church at 102 West Ohio Avenue in 1876. Additions made 1947-1948 included an upgraded facade. For more than a century, Wayman Chapel provided an educational, cultural, and spiritual hub for its members as well as the wider Black community of Mt. Vernon.
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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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The Snowden Family Band was an acclaimed African-American stringband who performed in and around Knox County for nearly seventy years, from the 1850s into the 1920s. Buried in Morris Chapel Cemetery are Thomas Snowden (1803-1856), his wife Ellen Cooper Snowden (1817-1894), and their nine children: Oliver, Sophia, Mary, Ben, Lew, Phebe, Martha, Elsie, and Annie. Born into slavery in Maryland, Thomas and Ellen separately relocated to Knox County and to freedom during the 1820s. They married in 1834. In the 1850s, the six surviving children formed a band under Ellen’s direction. Talented musicians, the Snowden Family performed banjo and fiddle music for public events and at their homestead near Mount Vernon. Many believe that the song “Dixie,” attributed to minstrel Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), originated with the Snowden Family Band.
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