Featured Stories: 26
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"Art of the Ancients" Exhibition at the Southern Ohio Museum
Upon entering the "Art of the Ancients" exhibition an etched glass panel orients visitors to the prehistory of the Adena and Hopewell peoples who built the mounds, rock cairns, parallel embankments,…
“Black Friday”: Enforcing Ohio’s “Black Laws” in Portsmouth, Ohio
On Friday, January 21st, 1831, the following notice appeared in the city’s paper: “The citizens of Portsmouth are adopting measures to free the town of its colored population. We saw a paper,…
B. Glockner on Market Street: The Hardware Store Origins of an Automobile Empire
The B. Glockner Building at 206 Market Street illustrates the contribution of German immigrants to the nineteenth century development of Portsmouth, Ohio. And the building's restoration -- following a…
Capt. William McClain's Underground Steamboat: McClain v. Esham (1856) and the Escape of Joshua onboard the Steamer Bostona
A long-overlooked Kentucky lawsuit, known as McClain v. Esham, dating to 1856, provides important insight into the Ohio River operations of what might best be described as an Underground Steamboat. In…
Dr. Chaboudy and the Origins of the Portsmouth Flood Wall Murals
Visit the Scioto County Welcome Center and view Robert Dafford's large canvas portrait of Ava and Louis Chaboudy. Dr. Louis Chaboudy is remembered as "the person who originated the idea of having…
Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
Portsmouth, Ohio’s only city-owned, public pool was built to memorialize the drowning death of fourteen-year-old resident Eugene McKinley, the son of George and Ruth McKinley, who lived at 1212-E…
Excavation and Destruction of the Waller-Heinisch Mound
Portsmouth High School (PHS) is built upon the location of what was first known as Waller Mound, and later became known as the Heinisch Mound, the earthen structure taking its name from the land's…
James M. Ashley and the Thirteenth Amendment: Author of Thirteenth Amendment Abolishing Slavery Edited Newspaper on Portsmouth's Market Street
Before there was the Washington Hotel at Second and Market Streets, the residents of Portsmouth knew this as Micklethwaite Corner. It was on this block that James Ashley, the author of the Thirteenth…
Jim Thorpe and the Shoe-Steels: Portsmouth, Ohio's First Professional Football Team
In Portsmouth, Ohio, the birth of professional football involved one of America’s greatest athletes of all time — Jim Thorpe — and one of the city’s most forgotten civic leaders — Jack Creasy. Jim…
John J. Minor's Barbershop and "New Light" on the Underground Railroad: Recovering the History of Portsmouth's Underground Railroad
Born in 1828 in Albemarle County, Virginia, John James Minor settled in Portsmouth, Ohio in the mid-1830s, not long after the city had expelled many of its Black residents during its infamous “Black…
Kennedy & Ashton's Feed Store: The Politics of Slavery and Abolition in Southern Ohio
Since its construction in the early 1850s, what was originally known as Milton Kennedy's Feed Store and City Hall building has become arguably the city's most historic structure, having played a…
Lower Shawnee Town and Céloron's Expedition of 1749
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…
Mound Park and the Preservation of the Portsmouth Earthworks
Portsmouth's Mound Park lays claim to the lone remnant of the central complex of the Portsmouth Earthworks that once spread across the Ohio River over the modern communities of Portsmouth, Ohio and…
Picnic Point and Auto-tourism in Ohio's Little Smokies
With a spectacular view of the Ohio River, the hills of Kentucky, and the City of Portsmouth, Picnic Point in the Shawnee State Forest offers visitors a memorable experience. While there are a number…
Portsmouth's African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Underground Railroad
Portsmouth's African Methodist Episcopal Church (Allen Chapel - AME) is the city's oldest Black religious society. In March 1837, "Father Charleston" organizd the church in the "Old Wheeler Academy,"…
Portsmouth's First Presbyterian Church and the Antislavery Movement in Southern Ohio
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the congregation now known as First Presbyterian of Portsmouth, Ohio, was a nexus of the antislavery movement in southern Ohio and it’s members, elders, and…
Raven Rock Nature Preserve
With its dramatic overlook, Raven Rock has long been an attraction for area residents and visitors. Its history is legendary, with some stories placing, at various moments in time, Daniel Boone and…
Robert Dafford & the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals
The City of Portsmouth, located at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, has a history of public murals, from those painted in the 1930s by Clarence Carter in the lobby of the Post Office on…
Roosevelt Lake and the CCC Stone Memorial: Memorializing the Men Who Built Shawnee State Park and Forest
In 1934, a segregated, all-black Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) unit of enrollees, known as Company 1545, dammed the waters of Mackletree Run and Turkey Creek, creating Roosevelt Lake, the…
Runaway Slave Advertisements in Portsmouth, Ohio: Recovering the Story of Harriet's Escape on the Underground Railroad
As a river town, bordering the slave state of Kentucky, the newspapers of Portsmouth, Ohio, would occasionally publish runaway slave advertisements, paid for by slaveowners in Kentucky, Virginia, and…
Spartan-Municipal Stadium: Original Home of the NFL Spartans (Detroit Lions)
The drive to build a sports stadium in Portsmouth, Ohio, was first launched in 1925, when the city's civic clubs all backed a city-wide referendum to construct a city-owned recreational center, which…
Stanton and McMahon's Smoke House: The Beginnings of Semi-Professional Football in Portsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth, Ohio, is renowned as a football town, a community with a deep and abiding love of the sport - a place where both team and stadium history intertwine with the early years of professional…
The Birth of the NFL Spartans at the Hotel Hurth
On August 20th, 1928, Portsmouth, Ohio football fans and civic leaders gathered at the Hotel Hurth for a dinner meeting and the launch of a new professional football venture. The meeting came just…
The Greenup Slave Revolt and David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States of America: Resisting the Slave Trade near the Banks of the Ohio River
On a Friday afternoon, November 20th, 1829, with the Ohio River and the hills of the northern shore as backdrop, four rebel slaves were executed at the mouth of Little Sandy, just outside the town…
The Iron Man Game of 1932
: The NFL Spartans Defeat the Green Bay Packers
in the Greatest Football Game in Portsmouth Sports History
On Sunday, 4 December 1932, the reigning NFL champion Green Bay Packers faced off the Portsmouth Spartans in what has come to be popularly known as the Iron Man Game. Played in Portsmouth’s Universal…
Tremper Mound and Earthworks
Of the many peoples inhabiting the Great Eastern Forest in what is now the United States, the Hopewell Culture, spanning 50 BCE to 400 CE was one of the most artistic and geographically influential.…