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Walnut Hills has been home to a significant middle- and working-class Black community since the 1850s. In 1931, African American entrepreneur Horace Sudduth bought 1004 Chapel Street and then the row of buildings across Monfort, naming them the Manse Hotel and Annex. Throughout the 1940s, hotel dinner parties could move to the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs house next door for dancing. A large addition to the Manse in 1950 created its own ballroom, 24-hour coffee shop, upgraded Sweetbriar Restaurant, and more guest rooms. It appeared in the Negro Motorist’s Green Book between 1940-1963, providing local, transient, and residential guests both catered meetings and top entertainment during the last decades of segregation. It closed in the late 1960s when the economic need for a first-class segregated hotel disappeared in the age of Black Power.
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To furnish the needs of the early settlers, then to furnish ordnance for a nation at war, and finally to furnish merchant iron to the steel mills, 100 iron producing blast furnaces were built within these 1,800 square miles of the lower coal measures to become known as the Hanging Rock Region. Lawrence County, centrally located within the Region, had 23 blast furnaces constructed between 1826 and 1909.
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The first overland route between Dayton and Cincinnati was cut by Daniel Cooper in 1795 to provide access to the new town of Dayton, located at the mouth of the Mad River in the Symmes Purchase. The survey, entered into the record by Cooper and Dr. John Hole, extended Harmer’s Trace north from near Cunningham’s Station on the Mill Creek to the mouth of the Mad River, establishing the earliest road between Cincinnati and Dayton. This five-mile segment between David Road and State Route 725 is the last remaining traceable portion retaining this name. Cooper, a miller, was instrumental in the early settlement of Dayton, and Dr. Hole, the first physician in Montgomery County, established his cabin in 1796 on this part of Mad River Road.
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The Champion Paper Company began production here April 15, 1894, with nine employees under the direction of Peter G. Thomson (1851-1931), a Cincinnati businessman, who had incorporated the firm in November 1893. Thomson, previously a bookseller and publisher, recognized that recent progress in half-tone printing would increase the demand for coated paper. In 1891 he purchased 187 acres west of the Great Miami River to develop into subdivisions. When a recession contributed to a housing slump, Thomson used some of the land along Seven Mile Pike (now North B Street) to build the plant which coated paper produced by other paper mills in Hamilton. The first coated paper was shipped from the mill May 4, 1894.
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Robert Reily, founder of the village of Wyoming in 1861. He was born June 1, 1820, the son of John and Nancy Hunter Reily of Butler County. He served as a major, lieutenant colonel and colonel of the 75th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. At the battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, on May 2, 1863, he was killed in action.
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Francis McCormick (1764-1836), who fought under Lafayette at the siege of Yorktown, founded Methodism in the Northwest Territory. His evangelical and pioneer spirit led him from his Virginia birthplace to establish churches in the wilderness, first at Milford, Ohio, then here, at his village of Salem. He rests with his family and followers in the nearby churchyard.
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Asa Bushnell, former Governor of Ohio, encouraged by the light grade of the land, decided to establish the Springfield, Troy, and Piqua Railway (ST&P) in July 1904. The interurban traction line utilized sixty-pound rail and traveled over only one bridge. With direct current electricity generated in Springfield, the ST&P used four double-ended fifty-foot cars, each with a railroad roof, arch windows, GE-57 engines, and fifty-horsepower motors. The ST&P traveled from Springfield’s Fountain Square to Maitland, Hill Top, Lawrenceville, Bushnell, North Hampton, Dialton, Thackery, Proctors, Christiansburg, Brights, and Casstown and ended at Troy’s North Market Street Bridge. Later rights were granted to travel over the Great Miami River into Troy in conjunction with the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railway. The northwest right-of-way from Casstown to Piqua was secured but never built.
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