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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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Tah-gah-jute, the Mingo chief named Logan, was a native of Pennsylvania. Logan moved to Ohio in 1770, and settled at the Pickaway Plains. Logan and his father, Shikellimus, had long supported friendships between Native Americans and white men; however, in the spring of 1774, his tribesmen and family were murdered at Yellow Creek, along the Ohio River. Once an advocate of peace, Logan went on the warpath and raided frontier settlements. These and similar raids along the Ohio frontier precipitated Lord Dunmore’s War in October 1774. After the Shawnees and their allies were defeated at Point Pleasant, Virginia governor Lord Dunmore marched up the Hocking River to the Pickaway Plains. Dunmore asked his interpreter, Colonel John Gibson, to assist in negotiations with Cornstalk and other Indian leaders, including Logan. Logan declined to attend the conference, but spoke to Gibson about his anger and betrayal.
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In 1918, Charles Young made a desperate attempt to convince the U.S. Army that he was fit for duty. The Army’s highest-ranking Black officer, he had been medically retired and not given a command during World War I. To demonstrate his fitness, he rode 497 miles from his home in Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, D.C. Leaving on June 6 he made the journey in 17 days, 16 on horseback and 1 resting. Averaging 31 miles each day, he rode 45 minutes and walked 15 minutes every hour. Upon his arrival, Young met with Secretary of War Newton Baker. Pressured by the Black press and the White House, Baker hedged. He recalled Young to active duty a year later and assigned him to Camp Grant, Illinois, just five days before the end of the war.
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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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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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In the early 1800s, Jabez Wright, an early Huron County judge, purchased a large tract of lakeside land on the north side of what is now Cleveland Road. There Wright built an eight-room farmhouse that later served as a “station” on the fabled Underground Railroad, playing a vital role in aiding fugitive African-American slaves to freedom. Beneath Wright’s farmhouse was a sixteen foot-wide and ninety foot-long tunnel. Escaped slaves entered the passage through a trap door in the home’s basement and exited into a corn crib located a mere one hundred feet from Lake Erie. There the slaves awaited the arrival of rowboats transporting them to vessels heading north to Canada. (Continued on side two)
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This church, founded in 1866, is the oldest Black congregation in Akron. After worshiping in several locations, the congregation held a fund-raiser to help finance the construction of a permanent home. The person collecting the most money had the privilege of renaming the church. That honor went to Mrs. Belle (Smith) Wesley. Completed in 1928, the current structure is a Neo-Classical Revival style building, featuring a classical pedimented portico, or porch, and four distinctive ionic columns. An education wing was added in 1963 by the late Rev. Dr. E. E. Morgan, Jr. Akron Black architects Herbert L. Wardner and John O. Somerville designed the church, and then a Black contractor, Samuel Plato, completed the structure. The church has long been a vital religious and social focal point for Akron’s Black community. The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was organized at Wesley Temple. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places 3/19/94.
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Unsatisfied by the terms of the treaty that ended the French and Indian War, Ottawa chief Pontiac led a confederacy of Native American tribes in attacks against British frontier forts during 1763, a campaign known as “Pontiac’s Conspiracy.” In October 1764, Colonel Henry Bouquet led a 1500-man army into the Ohio country from Fort Pitt (present-day Pittsburgh) as a demonstration of British force and to free captives held by several tribes. Informed of possible attack, Bouquet diverted his army overland from his Tuscarawas River valley route and here deployed his forces into three lines: a group of scouts on each ridge and the main force along present Route 93. Evidence of artillery emplacements and infantry breastworks remained visible for many years.