Below is a complete listing of all Ohio Historical Markers. To find a detailed marker listing including text, photographs, and locations, click on a county below. Our listing is updated by the markers program as new markers are installed and older markers are reported damaged or missing.
Marker dedication Saturday, September 21, 2024 (2 p.m.)
10-39 Garrett Morgan’s Wakeman Country Club / Garrett Augustus Morgan (1877-1967)
Side A: 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.
Side B: Garrett Morgan, born in Kentucky, made Cleveland his home in 1895. Famous for his inventions, Morgan blazed a trail for African Americans with practical social activism. In 1908, frustrated by Cleveland’s racial climate, he joined with Black businessmen to form the Cleveland Association of Colored Men that later merged with the NAACP. When Morgan rescued two men during the 1916 Cleveland Waterworks Tunnel Disaster using his patented Breathing Device, military and fire departments across the country purchased what later developed into the gas mask. In 1920, he founded the African American newspaper The Call. Using the profits from his traffic signal patent, Morgan established a community free from the racial inequities of the city. Morgan and his wife, Mary Hasek, happily spent their remaining weekends and vacations in Wakeman.
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