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When inventor and entrepreneur Garrett Augustus Morgan sold his Traffic Signal patent to General Electric in 1923, he used the $40,000 to purchase a 121-acre farm in Huron County in 1924. Advertising “a village of our own,” Morgan established the Wakeman Country Club — one of Ohio’s early African American recreation clubs — and offered 247 lots for $60 each in “Wakeman Heights.” Located near the intersection of State Route 60 and Chenango Road, the development provided country pleasures to Blacks excluded from the Country Club lifestyle. Club membership, included in the purchase of a lot, offered fishing, hunting, swimming, and horseback riding. A restaurant, dance hall, and amphitheater provided cultural and boxing events. The club waned during World War II and no buildings from the once-thriving Wakeman Country Club remain.
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The Quaker village of Harveysburg was founded in 1829 on land originally a part of Colonel Abraham Buford’s Revolutionary War Land Grant. Levi Lukens, a Virginia Quaker, purchased the 1000 – acre survey in 1812 and sold a portion to Rhoden Ham in 1815. Ham then sold a portion of his holdings to William Harvey, a Quaker originally from North Carolina, who developed 47 lots for a village which thrived from its beginnings. Early businesses included grist mills, a tin shop, hardware store, blacksmith shop, a large pork packing plant, a bank, and a dry goods store owned by William Harvey. Its first post office opened in 1839. Harveysburg was incorporated in 1844. The village received its name from a merchant in Cincinnati who told William Harvey that he should add burg to his name and call the place Harveysburg.
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This Italianate-style house is the former home of noted educational leader Thomas W. Harvey. Here he wrote A Practical Grammar of the English Language, as well as a series of language texts and readers. First published in 1868, Harvey’s Grammar was a fixture in primary schools across the Midwest for more than fifty years. As State Commissioner of Common Schools, Harvey advocated legislation that greatly increased state support of local school districts. He also served as superintendent of Painesville schools, founded the Northeastern Ohio Teachers’ Association, and served as a trustee of Lake Erie Seminary (now Lake Erie College). Painesville’s high school, located one block southeast, is named for him.
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In 1907, the Goshen School Building, later known as both Goshen Intermediate School and Sheila Green Elementary, was erected. The two-story, buff-colored, pressed-brick building was the first attempt at school consolidation in Goshen Township. The last of twelve one-room schools was closed in 1916 and students transferred to the Goshen School Building. As a result of the consolidation, four rooms were added. In 1930, a free-standing auditorium/gymnasium was built next to the 1907 building. Approval of the first bond issue, in 1937, made possible twelve new classrooms and the renovation of the building. (Continued on other side)
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Ulysses Brooks Lawrence was born in Springfield on January 30, 1925. Nicknamed “The Bull,” he broke numerous color barriers throughout his baseball career. In 1976, Lawrence was the first Black player inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. An all-around athlete at Springfield High School, Lawrence lettered in basketball, track, and football (the school’s first Black starting quarterback). After graduation in 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and earned a Bronze Star in Guam during World War II. Lawrence enrolled at Ohio’s Miami University, becoming that school’s first Black baseball player (1947-1949), before signing with the Cleveland Indians. Acquired by the St. Louis Cardinals (1954), he was assigned to the Columbus Red Birds Triple-A farm team, breaking another team’s color barrier. (Continued on other side)
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Built in 1886 by direct descendants of slaves, the Black and White schoolhouse provided education for local youth until 1928. Denied admission to white schools in the area, local African-American families first built a log schoolhouse across the road in 1883 in which to educated their children. Three years later, this brick building was constructed. The black families allowed white children to attend and, as a result, the school became known as the Black and White school. It is an early integrated school in Ohio.
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The United States’ declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 resulted in a tragic display of hysteria directed against everything and anything German. In Cincinnati, German teachers were dismissed from public schools, German professors were censored, German collections and publications were removed from circulation at the Public Library, businesses with German names had their names “Americanized” and, by police order, only English language public meetings could be held. (Continued on other side)
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Through the terms of his will, absentee British landowner Samuel Gist (c. 1723-1815) freed his 350 slaves in Virginia. Gist intended that these freed people would remain on the land and receive instruction in Christianity and that schools would be established for their children. The settlement of Gist’s estate funded the relocation of the freed slaves to Ohio. Gist’s executors acquired over 2,200 acres of land in Ohio. These lands included two large tracts in Scott and Eagle Townships in Brown County in 1819 and another 207 acres in Fairfield Township (now Penn Township) in Highland County in 1831 and 1835. As of 2010, no descendants of the freed Gist slaves lived in the original Scott Township settlement.