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The village of Albany was established in 1838 as a market center for the surrounding agricultural area, which saw its first white settlement in the early years of the nineteenth century. Education was always a major concern of Albany’s citizens. Since public schooling was minimal, private academies provided the community various levels of education from the 1840s to the 1880s. Anti-slavery sentiment also was strong in Albany, and many of its citizens participated in the “Underground Railroad.” Because of educational opportunities and sympathetic white neighbors, free African-Americans came to Albany, but most had moved away by the 1930s. After World War Two, the village lost its status as a center for commerce and business.
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African-American history began in Piqua with the settlement of Arthur Davis in 1818 and expanded with the settlement of the freed Randolph slaves of Virginia in 1846. African-American religious heritage in Piqua began with the Cyrene African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1853 and the Second Baptist Church (Park Avenue) in 1857. Segregated education started in 1854 at the Cyrene Church and ended in 1885 at the Boone Street School. Several Piqua African-American men circumvented Ohio’s early ban against Civil War military service by joining the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. Following the Civil War an African-American Co-operative Trade Association established Piqua’s first African-American retail store. Continued on/from other side)
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Ripley was incorporated as the village of Staunton in 1812. Its name was changed in 1816 to honor General Eleazer Wheelock Ripley, a hero of the War of 1812. In the years before railroads, Ripley was a principal Ohio River shipping center. Also important were its extensive boat-building, tobacco, pork, and timber industries. Ripley too was the home of saw and planing mills, iron foundries, and a piano factory. Such varied commerce enabled Ripley to remain vibrant throughout the nineteenth century. Although noted as a port, Ripley is best remembered as an abolitionist stronghold. Many of its citizens, including Rev. John Rankin and John P. Parker, served as conductors on the famed “Underground Railroad.” The notoriety of Ripley’s anti-slavery network perhaps eclipsed that of nearby Cincinnati, earning the town a reputation as the “Black Hole of Abolitionism.” (Continued on side two)
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The first African-American elected to government office in the United States, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) won the office of Clerk of Brownhelm Township on April 2, 1855. Born in Virginia and raised in Chillicothe, Langston graduated from Oberlin College in 1849 and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1854, becoming Ohio’s first black attorney. He served as the first president of the National Equal Rights League in 1864, and subsequently as professor of law, dean, and acting president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1890, he became Virginia’s first black congressman. Throughout his career Langston set a personal example of self-reliance in the struggle for justice for African-Americans.
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Quincy Adams Gillmore, considered one of the greatest military engineers and artillerists of the Civil War, was born to Quartus Gillmore and Elizabeth Reid Gillmore at this location in 1825. He attended Norwalk Academy and taught high school in Elyria before embarking on a military career. Graduating first in his class at West Point in 1849, he entered the Corps of Engineers. In August 1861, he served in the Union’s Port Royal expedition in South Carolina and later in the reduction of Fort Pulaski, which defended the water approach to Savannah, Georgia. The fort, considered impregnable to artillery, fell to Gillmore’s rifled cannon on April 11, 1862, after a two-day bombardment. His success effectively ended the use of large masonry fortifications. (Continued on other side)
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Author Toni Morrison was born, Chloe Ardelia Wofford, in Lorain on February 18, 1931. Her passion for language was nurtured by her family and while working at the Lorain Public Library during high school. Then housed in the Carnegie Center, the library hired her to reshelve and catalog books. Morrison said that she “was slow because I kept reading the books instead of putting them back fast.” Graduating Lorain High School (1949), she attended Howard University (BA 1953), Cornell (MA 1955), and she was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. During college she took the name “Toni,” shortening her saint name Anthony. Morrison worked as a literary editor and professor while also writing award-winning novels. She maintained a lifelong connection with Lorain. Morrison died August 5, 2019.
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Born in Richmond, Virginia, Powhatan Beaty moved to Cincinnati in 1849, where he spent the majority of his life. Beaty enlisted as a private in the Union Army in June 1863, and two days later was promoted to first sergeant, Company G, 5th United States Colored Troops (USCT). All the officers of Company G were killed or wounded during an attack on Confederate forces at New Market Heights, Virginia, in September 1864. Beaty took command of his company, and for his valor received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Beaty was one of two African-Americans buried in Ohio to receive the Medal of Honor for service in the Civil War. He died on December 6, 1916, leaving two sons, attorney and state representative A. Lee Beaty and John W. Beaty. He is buried in Union Baptist Cemetery along with nearly 150 USCT veterans.
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John T. Crawford (1813-1880), was a white Union soldier. In gratitude for the kindnesses he received from African-Americans during the Civil War, Crawford willed his 18 1/2-acre farm to be used as a “home, for aged, indigent worthy colored men, preference to be given to those who have suffered the miseries of American Slavery.” The Crawford Old Men’s Home opened in 1888 and operated until 1964 under the trusteeship of prominent African-Americans such as lawyer William Parham, newspaper editor Wendell Dabney, and Ambassador Jesse D. Locker. It merged with the Progressive Benefit Society’s Home for Colored Women to become the Lincoln Crawford Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Pleasant Hill Academy, College Hill Library, and Crawford Commons are all on the site of the Crawford farm.
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