Recent Stories
Wells A. Hutchins and the Thirteenth Amendment
In February 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment passed the US House of Representatives with a very slim margin of votes, thanks to a few northern Democrats who just happened to be absent at the time of the vote, and a handful of other northern Democrats…
John J. Minor's Boneyfiddle Barbershop
Born in 1828 in Albemarle County, Virginia, John James Minor settled in Portsmouth in the mid-1830s, not long after the city had expelled many of its black residents during its infamous “Black Friday” enforcement of Ohio laws requiring…
Recovering Portsmouth's Past in Huston's Stone Front Building
Coming Soon! The story of the Huston Stone Front Building, the first three-story building constructed on Second Street. Since its original construction in the early 1850s by Milton Kennedy and Joseph Ashton it has played a role in the history of the…
Portsmouth National Bank & the Elk Building
Coming Soon! The story of the Elk Building and Portsmouth National Bank. Built in 1892 by the Elks fraternal order, this signature Boneyfiddle commercial building was home to the Portsmouth National Bank, which had been originally organized in 1866…
Albert McFarland's Tribune Building
Coming Soon! The story of the Tribune Building. Albert McFarland constructed this two story commercial structure to house the office and pressroom of the Portsmouth Tribune, one of the city's oldest newspapers, which traces it origins to the Scioto…
Eliza Trotter Building on Second Street
Coming Soon! The story of Eliza (Denison) Trotter, a pioneering Portsmouth businesswoman, who launched her millinery retail store in 1858 and constructed the "Trotter Building" on Second Street in the early 1870s.
Over the years and at…
Featured Stories
Lower Shawnee Town & Céloron's Expedition
Beginning in the late 1730s, the Shawnee Indians established one of their principal villages here. Some sixty years earlier, in the 1670s and 80s, the Shawnee had been expelled from the Scioto and Ohio valleys by the Iroquois in what historians…
The Greenup Slave Revolt and David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States of America
On a Friday afternoon, November 27th, 1829, with the Ohio River and the hills of the northern shore as backdrop, four rebel slaves were executed near the Greenup County, Kentucky, courthouse. This is a story from the days of the interstate slave…
The Iron Man Game
Packers coach Curly Lambeau entered the game with the NFL’s best record, 10-1-1, with only two games left in the season. If the Packers defeated the Spartans they would clench their fourth league championship. The Spartans sat at 5-1-4 in the…
Featured Tours
Scioto Historical
A project by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.Scioto Historical is an educational mobile app and website that puts the history of southern Ohio at your fingertips. Learn about American and local history through map-based, interactive, multimedia presentations and experience professionally curated virtual historical tours on your laptop, tablet, or on a screen in your classroom. With its mobile app, Scioto Historical can guide you to historical locations and augment any walking or driving tour.
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