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Sully Jaymes was an African American lawyer and tireless activist for equal rights in Springfield during the first half of the twentieth century. Born on March 30 sometime between 1875-1880, he graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1901. By 1903, he opened a Black-owned law practice at 17-1/2 Main Street in Springfield. Working primarily with the city’s Black residents, Jaymes offered his services free of charge if clients were unable to pay. He was a long-time member of North Street A.M.E. Church. Jaymes served on the first Board of Directors of the Center Street YMCA (a safe-haven for young Black people), on the Board of Trustees at Wilberforce University, and as a Grand Chancellor of Ohio for the Grand Lodge, Knights of Pythias. (Continued on other side)
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To provide direction and stability to the economy, Congress created the nation’s largest lending agency in 1816, the Second Bank of the United States. Branch banks were established around the country, two of them in Ohio-Chillicothe and Cincinnati. The Chillicothe branch was located in a building on this site. The presence of these branches adversely affected the ability of state chartered and independent banks, which had long printed and lent their own money without the backing of species. When the Secretary of Treasury forced the state chartered and independent banks to redeem their notes in specie, at a time when a sharp recession hit the nation in 1819, a wave of protest arose from those connected with those banks. In February 1819, Ohio’s General Assembly levied a tax of $50,000 on each of the two branch banks, and bank officers were given until September 1 to comply with the law. (continued on other side)
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From the 1770s until 1832, the Logan County area was the homeland to much of the Shawnee Nation. Ten villages known as the Upper Mad River towns included the homes of influential leaders Moluntha, Black Hoof, and Blue Jacket. The West Liberty area contained three villages: Moluntha’s Town, Wapakoneta, and Mackachack. To the northeast stood Wapatomica, the Shawnee’s political center and site of several intertribal councils. To the north sat Blue Jacket’s Town, Kispoktha Town, and Reed Town. To the west were Pigeon Town and Stony Creek, site of one of Tecumseh’s first pan-Indian confederacy councils. From 1817 to 1832, many Shawnees were relocated to Indian Territory, which in 1907 became the state of Oklahoma. These Shawnees are now the Eastern Shawnee of Oklahoma.
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The first Blaine Hill Bridge was constructed in 1828 as part of the National Road, the nation’s first federally funded highway. This three-arch S-shaped structure, 345 feet in length, spans Wheeling Creek (a tributary of the Ohio River) and is the longest original “S” bridge in existence on the old National Road. At a gradient of approximately 6.3 percent from east to west, it significantly eased, for the first time, the arduous 500-foot western climb out of the valley. Crumbling and in poor condition, it was saved from demolition in 1999 and in 2001 was designated Ohio’s official Bicentennial Bridge. Now tucked between the 1933 U.S. 40 viaduct and Interstate 70, it illustrates the earliest of Ohio’s three eras in national highway transportation.
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Dr. Charles Elmer Holzer came to Gallipolis in 1909, as a resident surgeon at the Ohio Hospital for Epileptics. Recognizing the need for a community hospital, he returned in May 1910, after completing his training. With a local loan, he opened a seven-bed hospital. In 1913, he furthered his training in surgery, closing the hospital temporarily to study in Europe. He returned to Gallipolis in 1914, married nurse Alma Vomholt and resumed his practice. In 1916, he began construction on the First Avenue Holzer Hospital, the first general hospital in southeast Ohio. In 1949, the Holzers gave the growing hospital to the citizens of the five county area, to be administered by the Holzer Hospital Foundation. After outgrowing its downtown location, Holzer Medical Center opened on Jackson Pike in 1972 with 269 beds. (continued on other side)
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Established in 1879 by Chicago industrialist William P. Rend as a coal mining town, Rendville became a place where African Americans broke the color barrier. In 1888, Dr. Isaiah Tuppins, the first African American to receive a medical degree in Ohio, was elected Rendville’s mayor, also making him the first African American to be elected a mayor in Ohio. Richard L. Davis arrived in Rendville in 1882 and became active in the Knights of Labor. He was one of the labor organizers from the Little Cities of Black Diamonds region who helped found the United Mine Workers of America in 1890. An outstanding writer and orator, Davis was elected to UMWA’s national executive board and organized thousands of African Americans and immigrants to join the union. (continued on other side)
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During World War II, forty of Troy’s teenage girls, their mothers, and volunteers operated a free canteen service for troops on the platform of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad station. The group began as a few neighborhood girls providing magazines to soldiers while trains were stopped. With support and donations from Miami County communities and six additional counties, thousands of food baskets and countless drinks were given to approximately 600,000 soldiers trackside. Books, games, cigarettes, and other sundries were made available to soldiers on their trips to and from Europe or the Pacific. The volunteers of the Junior Girls Canteen served every train and soldier that came through the station, whether it was in the dead of night or the coldest day of winter. Throughout World War II, many other canteens were created across the nation, including eleven other canteens in Ohio.
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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.