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 South Portsmouth and South Shore, Kentucky. The history of Mound Park spans over 2000 years of human activity at the mouth of the Scioto River.

All that survives today is a horseshoe-shaped mound, which was one of a pair that were the focal point of the earthworks complex. Caleb Atwater produced the first known sketch map of the earthworks in 1820, which caught the general scale and design of the complex, but omitted any reference to horseshoe-shaped mounds. In 1847, the archaeologists Ephraim Squier and Dr. Edwin Davis, working with Dr. Giles S.B. Hempstead, a local guide and expert on the mounds, recorded the first formal survey and description of the earthworks, which was published in their pioneering work Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. They recorded the earthworks as stretching along eight miles on either side of the Ohio River at the mouth of the Scioto River, with three groups visually connected by parallel alignments of earthen embankments.

Squier and Davis labeled these as Groups A, B, and C on their map, a naming convention that has been retained by archaeologists to the present. Group A is the rectangular works on the Kentucky side of the river on the first terrace above the floodplain, also known as the “Old Fort” by nineteenth century observers. Group B is the central complex on the high terrace on the Ohio side of the river, surrounding modern Mound Park. Group C is the concentric circle earthworks on the Kentucky side, east of the rectangular works, and on the first terrace over the floodplain (known as the "Temple Mound").

Squier and Davis made special note of a defining feature of this set of earthworks, which were the sets of parallel walls that apparently served to link the three groups. As recorded by Squier and Davis, the main element of Group B was a pair of horseshoe-shaped mounds situated within a semi-circular embankment. The horseshoe mounds opened to the south, and there were wide openings in the semi-circle to the east and southeast, with smaller openings at the west and northwest.

Two smaller U-shaped mounds were situated at the large openings, with their open ends oriented towards the openings of the large horseshoe mounds. A circular embankment was present directly east of the southern U-shaped mound. To the northeast of the eastern U-shaped mound, a short set of parallel embankments led northeast for a brief distance, with a mound at the northeast end of the southern embankment. Another mound was present to the northeast of the eastern horseshoe mound, outside the semi-circular embankment.

Further removed to the north, across a farm lane that is now 17th Street, was a circular embankment with an opening on the south side and centered on the center axis of the eastern horseshoe mound. Southeast of this circle was a long, singular, arcing embankment, leading southwest to the northwest set of parallel walls.

Another circular embankment was present to the west of the junction of the two sets of parallel embankments, with an opening to the east and on a central alignment that passes through the middle of the two horseshoe mounds and the eastern U-shaped mound.

A natural rise on the terrace is east of the horseshoe mounds, with one circular embankment south of the rise and another at the toe of the rise to the east. This second embankment enclosed a central mound and had an opening oriented to the east. Squier and Davis noted they thought the natural rise had been artificially modified, likely for use as an elevated platform overlooking the central earthworks.

The development of Portsmouth throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century removed nearly all visible traces of this complex earthworks. Today, only the horseshoe mound in Mound Park remains of the Portsmouth portion of the earthworks to remind us of this once-massive ritual center.

Adena and Hopewell Construction of the Mounds and Earthworks at the Mouth of the Scioto River

Earthworks served specific functions in Hopewell society, although this is the subject of robust debate amongst archaeologists. Most scholars tend to agree the general function of these constructions served as ritual centers for local, and perhaps regional, Hopewell communities, while there must have been variability in the ways that earthworks and mounds served local and regional communities. Earthwork construction by the Hopewell is linked to the earlier mound and simple geometric earthwork construction practiced by Early Woodland people (1000-100 BC), particularly the Adena cultural groups. Adena mounds range from low rises to large conical mounds highly visible on the landscape, often including multiple burials. Adena earthworks are usually circles with a single opening and an interior ditch, often with a central mound, and are often found in groups.

The archeaological record suggests that the Portsmouth Earthworks originated in the Early Woodland period as such a group of circles and mounds, then was expanded during the Middle Woodland by Hopewell people. The link between Adena and Hopewell cultures is not completely understood but it is probable that the Hopewell culture is an evolution of earlier Adena customs and practices.

The exact purpose of the Portsmouth Earthworks is unknown, but it is clear they were a major component of the ritual life of the Middle Woodland Hopewell Culture (ca. 100 BC-500 AD). The earthworks are the southernmost earthworks complex along the Scioto River. This complex likely had a special association with the junction of the Scioto River and Ohio River, perhaps serving as a gateway into the heart of the Ohio Hopewell homelands.

Like other earthworks complexes further up the Scioto River valley, the Portsmouth Earthworks probably served as a gathering place for both local families scattered across the landscape in small hamlets and for larger congregations of people from other river valleys across the region. Recent archaeological excavations at the park have recovered exotic materials from distant locations, including mica and crystal quartz from the North Carolina mountains and obsidian from the Yellowstone region, along with massive quantities of Ohio Flint Ridge chert.

Exotic material brought back from distant lands was used to make iconic works of Hopewell art, such as mica cutouts, huge obsidian blades, conch shell dippers and beads, copper panpipes and body ornaments, and necklaces of grizzly bear and fossil shark teeth. While none of these artifacts are currently known from Mound Park, it is likely that similar artifacts were made and used here.

Early Historical Occupation

Mound Park was originally part of the John Simpson farmstead, established sometime before 1819. John Simpson and his wife Mary Noel were among the first settlers of Portsmouth. They set up their farm just north of the large semi-circular embankments that enclosed the horseshoe mounds. As a carpenter, Simpson likely had a hand in the construction of many early buildings in Portsmouth. Later, in 1846, Azel Glover sold six acres of this parcel to the County Commissioners for use as an "Infirmary Farm."

In the 1860s and 1870s, the County Fair would be held on the site of the farm. In 1871, the Portsmouth Times reported on the preparations for the annual fair, noting that there were “several ancient mounds of peculiar formation” on the grounds. The main exhibition hall was built within the interior of one of the horseshoe mounds, and a racecourse was set up east of the mound, with a music stand on the rise where the WPA-built Shelter House is now located. A Dr. Straight was noted as the owner of the grounds at the time and had his residence there.

In 1871, the County Commissioners transferred the Infirmary Farm to the West Side, near Carey's Run, clearing the way for a new chapter in the site's history. 

Scioto County Children’s Home

The Scioto County Children’s Home was the county orphanage. The Portsmouth City Council set aside part of the City Hospital for the home in 1874.

And, in November of 1875, the Portsmouth Times noted that the old fairground buildings were being repaired for temporary use by the county's Children’s Home. The fairgrounds are shown south of Robinson Avenue on the 1889 map of Portsmouth, showing their movement away from Mound Park.

In November 1875, the orphanage was moved to the old infirmary farm and fairgrounds property on the current grounds of Mound Park. The old infirmary and fairground buildings were repaired for temporary use, while plans were launched to construct a new building to serve as Children’s Home.

Built atop the natural rise, overlooking the Horseshoe Mound, the new home burned in early 1876 before it was finished. After rebuilding, a three-story brick structure opened in 1877 in the same location. By 1892, seventy-five children occupied the Home, and the buildings on the grounds included the residence, a one-story schoolhouse, a laundry, a playhouse, two other outbuildings, and a windmill. All these buildings were in the southeast corner of Mound Park, where the 1930s shelter house and equipment shed are now present.

An early, undated nineteenth-century photograph of the home also shows what must be the small U-shaped mound that was on the property. Towards the end of the 1880s, city officials discussed the possibility of constructing an addition to alleviate crowding. By 1909, there was talk of relocating the facility, and with it was the first mention of converting the property to a city park, with the special notation to preserve the earthworks. Other options including selling the whole property for residential lots or building a new city hospital on the site.

Interestingly, a 1915 article discussing the disposition of the Children’s Home mentions “historical horse-shoe mounds” – so it is possible that the smaller U-shaped mound as seen in the undated photograph was still present. In 1917, the county commissioners resolved to divide the Children’s Home property into four lots and sell them to raise funds for a new home located in a more rural setting. However, this plan ran into resistance from residents of the Hilltop neighborhood and community groups who supported transforming the grounds into a public park.

The Labold family eventually purchased the entire plot and transferred the deed to the City of Portsmouth to explicitly transform the grounds into a new city park. Construction on a new Children’s Home near Wheelersburg began in 1920. The Children’s Home remained in this location until 1921, after which the location was converted to a public park, following the desire of many Portsmouth citizens.

The outbuildings of the Children’s Home began to be removed by 1922. For a time, various uses were considered for the residential building, such as conversion into a Community Club House for use by the various community organizations of Portsmouth. The Boy Scouts planned to convert the building to their local headquarters in 1923. In 1928, the Portsmouth Lions Club floated a proposal to demolish the old Children’s Home building and use the materials for a city museum on the same location, but it was razed later that year without any immediate rebuilding on its footprint.

Establishment of Mound Park

The park opened in 1921, serving mainly as an open green space at first. Although a nearby business named itself “Mound Park Pharmacy” the park was generally referred to as the Children’s Home Park in the early 1920s. Early improvements at the park include the construction of shelter houses and equipment sheds. In 1933, a shelter house was built on the old location of the Children’s Home, replaced in 1937 by a WPA-built stone veneer shelter house, and followed in 1938 by a stone workshop building. A stone “tool house” was noted as built near the roque court, itself installed in 1935.

The CCC sent men to assist with flood recovery in 1937 and they camped at Mound Park. In By 1939, a bandstand for concerts was built somewhere on the grounds, possibly within the horseshoe mound. In 1941, a 46-foot-tall flagpole was erected in the park just north of the shelter house.

Public Gatherings at Mound Park

Even when it was still the Children’s Home grounds, the park area was used by local groups for gatherings, such as picnics. In 1920, the Girl Scouts had a May Day festival attended by 150 girls from around Portsmouth. The Boy Scouts followed with their own Scout Show in 1923, which returned in 1924 and 1925 before moving to Labold Field in 1926 to take advantage of better facilities for handling crowds and events. However, the Boy Scouts still used Mound Park for smaller field events.

The Highland School inaugurated an annual Field Day at the park in 1921, with around 2,000 people in attendance. Portsmouth’s Community Chorus held free concerts in the park in the 1920s. The city held its own memorial service in Mound Park for the death of President Harding in 1923. During the warm weather months, many local churches held open-air services and picnics at the park and family reunions were a common occurrence.

In 1928, a band platform was erected in a shady section of the park for concerts; newspaper accounts suggest this platform may have been erected within the horseshoe mound, as concerts were held at the corner of Grant and Hutchins streets. However, a new band shell was proposed in 1942 to be erected between the mound and shelter house, which is another plausible location for the original bandstand.

Not all assemblies were benign. The Ku Klux Klan met for a rally and march through Portsmouth at Mound Park in late 1923; however, they were quickly arrested after refusing an order to disperse.

The park is still a focal point of outdoor activities for the surrounding neighborhood. Tennis, softball, and basketball games are played in the warmer months and the play structure is popular with local children. The 1930s shelter house is still used for gatherings and activities. Most recently, a park improvement project completed a paved walking path and the installation of several park lights to improve safety and access for the park. The ancient history of Mound Park is commemorated by a new monument and plaza northwest of the mound along Hutchins Street.

Sources:

Portsmouth Daily Times (1870-1941)

Evans, N. W. 1903 History of Scioto County. Self-published, Portsmouth, Ohio.

Holt, R. B. 1878 The Earthworks at Portsmouth, Ohio, U.S. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 7:132–137.

Inter-State Publishing Company 1884 History of Lower Scioto Valley, Ohio. Inter-State Publishing Company, Chicago.

Portsmouth Public Library 2019b Henry A. Lorberg Telegram, 1928. Local History Digital Collection, https://www.yourppl.org/history/items/show/2093, accessed June 7, 2019.

Squier, E. G., and E. H. Davis 1847 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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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, and other earthworks of the Portsmouth Complex.

“When the last Ice Age ended in the Ohio valley about 14,000 years ago, the people who wandered into this area found flood prone rivers winding through hills of hardwood forests filled with animals to hunt and plants to gather. Starting more than 3000 years ago and lasting about 1500 years, the people we call Adena (1000 BCE-100 CE) and Hopewell (200 BCE-500 CE) prospered throughout southern Ohio and northern Kentucky, settling primarily along the streams and rivers feeding the Ohio River.  

“While many details about these two cultures remain unknown, it is possible to uncover clues about their lives by closely examining the objects of stone, bone, shell, and other durable materials recovered from home sites, fields, and burial grounds throughout the area. While you are imagining the lives and stories the objects have to tell, consider that the Adena and Hopewell people were much like us, valuing stability, hard work and family life amid the hills and floodplains of this river valley.”

The exhibition displays over 10,000 items, all of which were collected locally by William V. Wertz (1913-2002) and his father, Charles V. Wertz (1872-1936). Following the death of Charles in 1936, the Portsmouth Daily Times noted that “Mr. Wertz collected relics out of scientific interest rather than a source of profit. W. C. Mills, late director of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, was a close friend and H. C. Shetrone, present director of the society, also was a great admirer of the local student of archaeology.” In 1915 and 1916, Charles V. Wertz assisted Mills and Shetrone in their excavations of Tremper Mound and the Feurt Village and Mounds.

Charles’ fascination with the prehistoric inhabitants of the Ohio Valley was sparked as a child when his father worked on the construction of the Sanford, Varner & Co. Building (known today as the Kricker Innovation Hub) at the corner of Third and Chillicothe Streets. While digging the foundation, workers discovered “an Indian boat” thirty feet below the surface. The mystery captured his imagination and inspired his interest in the local earthworks and mounds and the people who built them. This interest, along with his collection, would be passed down to his son, William V. Wertz, who continued to add items to the collection until his own death in 2002.

Madeline A. Wertz, William’s wife, then donated the collection to the Southern Ohio Museum. At the time, Sara Johnson, the museum’s long-serving Director of Visual Arts, told the Community Common newspaper that “it seems fitting that these remarkable objects remain in proximity to the same lands where they were made. We accept these objects in humility and with reverence for their makers, whom we will honor with a quiet, sensitive installation as we hold them in trust for the public good.”

Following Madeline’s death in 2014 a previously unknown catalog to the Charles V. Wertz Collection was discovered by the Salvation Army, which had received, as a donation, the remaining contents of her house. The catalog had been created in the mid-1940s by Aurelia Hucksoll, a trained archeologist who volunteered her services when the collection was on display at the Portsmouth Public Library. Hucksoll was the wife of Rev. Laurence L. Hucksoll, who served as the minister of Portsmouth’s First Presbyterian Church from 1939 to 1947. Aurelia had received a Master’s degree in Archeology from Columbia University. The Hucksoll catalog was based upon a meticulous inventory, which included item numbering, a physical description, hand-drawn illustrations, and, when known, the item’s site-specific provenance.

“The true significance” of the Wertz Collection, “as a record of sophisticated civilization with a continental trade network tied to the Portsmouth Earthwork Complex, was not fully revealed until the discovery of the Hucksoll Catalog,” notes Emily Uldrich. It is thanks to the provenance recorded by Hucksoll, as well as additional records associated with items added to the collection by William V. Wertz, that it is possible today to associate artifacts with specific mound and village sites that were part of the Portsmouth Earthworks Complex. Uldrich, in her study of the collection and its associated records, explains that although the collection provenance is site specific, “there is no detailed information about the context of the artifacts within the site or mound in which they were found. The artifacts could have been cached below ground level, near the surface, or found on the surface. Unfortunately, this is information we will never know, but we are indebted to the Wertz’s for preserving the artifacts, as most of the sites … are now destroyed.”

Historian Margaret Jacobs in After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands, writes that “Indian grave desecration grew out of brutal Indian massacres." Over time, from the earliest days of European colonization, "it morphed into a pseudoscientific enterprise and then a tourist bonanza. A huge number of settlers took part in this desecration of graves, as they appropriated the land of Native peoples, up to the late twentieth century. The effect has been to eliminate the physical evidence of indigenous people from the land, to make it possible to narrate American history as if it begins with European settlement.”

Amateur excavations and salvage operations during construction projects occurred regularly over the decades, but the area mounds and village sites were also systematically dug by credentialed archeologists from across the United States. Thousands of indigenous artifacts, mortuary objects, and human remains were removed, sold, and dispersed in private and public collections, located far from the Portsmouth area. Looking back now, considering the known history of the mistreatment of Native American peoples, the methods and practices of our predecessors are really not surprising, however disturbing they may be to our present-day moral senses and professional standards.

Thanks to the Wertz Collection, however, it is possible to narrate and illustrate the long history of humanity at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, a history that began thousands of years before European settlement. We know that over the millennia, many different indigenous peoples of different cultural traditions have made their home here, leaving their own mark upon the land and only adding complexity to the surviving archeological record.

The destruction of the mounds and earthworks, along with the unscientific archaeological methods used by local collectors at the time, have only added to the mystery, reminding us today of the importance of preserving what remains. As one of the panels in the “Art of the Ancients” exhibition explains: “We will never know the intricacies of the culture and daily lives of the region’s prehistoric people. Because they left no written language, the knowledge we have of North American prehistory comes from the objects that remain. The purpose of many of these artifacts remains a mystery. However, we do have a shared humanity, evident in our continued interest in tools, ornaments, jewelry, music, games, paint, and figurines.”

The entire Wertz Collection is on public display in an admission free gallery, open to all. For more information on the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, including their hours of operation visit the museum website at https://somacc.com.    

Sources

Richard Bussa, ”At SOMACC: Golden Age of Native American History,” Community Common (16 October 2002): 1.

Margaret Jacobs, After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Aurelia C. Hucksoll, "Indian Lore Student Cites Wealth of Relics Displayed in Portsmouth's Library," Portsmouth Daily Times (31 March 1951).

“Late Realty Operator Known as Foremost Archaeologist. Charles V. Wertz Made Hobby of Studying and Exploring Mound Builders Earthworks,” Portsmouth Times (31 July 1936).

“Rev. Hucksoll to Leave City,” Portsmouth Daily Times (17 Oct. 1947).

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From its height and location on a bend in the Ohio River, Raven Rock offers views of modern-day Portsmouth at the Confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers. In frontier times, Shawnee and Cherokee warriors could look up and down the Ohio River for miles, in search of American flat boats and canoes. The distance by which they could observe the unwanted intruders, allowed time for Indian warriors to set ambushes on the riverbanks below.

As the historical marker atop the rock notes, “Whether or not settlers died after having been first spotted from Raven Rock can never be known. However, it is almost certain that warriors stood in this very spot and watched the endless stream of settlers with a sense of foreboding over what it would mean for their families and their future.”

Stories vary as to the origin of the site’s name. Some claim it is named for an Indian warrior named Raven, who jumped to his death, rather than submit to his foe. Others, such as Timothy A. Snyder, claim the name comes from “the imagined resemblance of the cliff to a large bird, Raven Rock itself being the head and beak, and the cliff walls on either side representing the outstretched wings.” And, according to Charles V. Wertz, whose collection of American Indian artifacts are on exhibition at the Southern Ohio Museum, the name actually originates from an effigy pipe in the shape of a raven that was found during an excavation of a 15-foot-high rock cairn burial mound, which had long stood on the crest of the hill, just north of the lookout point.

Dr. G.S.B. Hempstead and other “older settlers” had told Wertz that when the Mound had first been opened, they had found “a large stone pipe shaped like a bird … among the rock at this point.” According to Wertz, the effigy pipe was found in a burial chamber, which included “eight badly decayed skeletons,” along with “some 30 rough spears or digging tools made of pieces of obsidian or volcanic glass. These were rough and showed signs of usage. Forty-two flint knives and arrows were also found scattered among the burials in the mound.”

While the obsidian blades and tools have all been lost in the looting of this burial mound, eighteen of the “leaf-shaped” flint pieces are believed to have been preserved in the Wertz Collection and are now on exhibition at the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth, Ohio, and available for viewing in Scioto Historical’s image gallery.

Hempstead and Wertz believed the Rock Cairn Mound had also been used since its first construction for signal fires. Wertz explained that “on the summit of the mound for a space of some 12 or 15 feet had been leveled off and in a depression near the center on the top of this mound of rock showed evidence of having been subject to a great deal of heat. Evidently it had been used for signal fires as a view of the river, both above and below, could be seen for many miles.” Unfortunately, Wertz also tells us that “many of the rocks used in building this mound later were taken down the hill and used in making a fill on the farm.”

The Raven Rock Nature Preserve is also the site of rare rock arches, the most prominent taking the name of Raven Rock Arch, as it is located less than 30 feet from the famous lookout point. From atop or below this small arch, visitors can enjoy views of the Ohio River and the hills of Kentucky, rolling off into the distance. Immediately below, on the Ohio River bottoms, one sees the Earl Thomas Conley Riverside Park with its picnic shelters, bike track, and splash park, and the campus of the Washington-Nile School District, where the Portsmouth West Senators make their home.

In 1996, Charles Asa Brown donated 95 acres of land surrounding Raven Rock to the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, thus protecting for generations to come this natural and historic landmark.

A permit is required to access Raven Rock State Nature Preserve. For more information on obtaining a permit, visit the ODNR Division of Natural Areas and Preserves website at State Nature Preserve Access Permit.

Sources:

Timothy A. Snyder, Rainbows of Rock, Tables of Stone: The Natural Arches and Pillars of Ohio (McDonald and Woodward Publishing, 2009).

Charles V. Wertz, “Ancient Man and His Works in and Around Scioto County,” Ohio Indian Relic Collectors Society Bulletin, No. 24 (June 1950): 20-29.

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Today's Spartan-Municipal Stadium began its life as Universal Stadium in the summer of 1930, when Harry Snyder, the largest share owner of the Portsmouth Spartans, began its construction as part of the deal that brought an NFL franchise to the Peerless City. When a stadium referendum lost for a third time, Harry N. Snyder, owner of Universal Contracting Co., proposed to build the stadium with private funds and profits from ticket sales. Snyder, however, insisted that he could only move forward with the project, as its primary investor, if the Spartans organization secured a franchise from the National Football League.

The Portsmouth Daily Times reported, "The fate of the stadium was hanging in a balance as the Stadium Corporation announced that they would not go ahead with the project unless the Spartans entered the National League. They were of the opinion that without National League teams to play here the Spartans would not be able to draw sufficient of a crowd to support a stadium. As soon as the agreement was made to sign a note as an entrance fee to the league, the stadium people, who attended the meeting, stated that they were ready to go the limit with their plans and that as soon as the city awarded them the lease on the field they would begin work. The granting of the lease on the Labold Field will mark the close of more than a three-year fight for an athletic stadium here. At first popular subscriptions to build a stadium failed, then three bond issues failed when the matter was brought before the voters. A private enterprise has agreed to go ahead with the work and accept the responsibility."

On 23 July 1930, "city officials, officials of the stadium company, heads of the Portsmouth school systems and heads of many other organizations interested in athletics," were on hand when Mayor Robert G. Bryan turned the "first dirt," marking the start of the stadium's construction. Various delays, however, meant that Universal Stadium was largely a "wooden structure" when it first opened in September, 1930. 

Coleman Grimes of the Times reported, "The only concrete that will be poured will be in the box seats and for the footers. Twenty tiers of wooden stands will be erected before the first game, September 14, and the stands will be so erected the super-structure will be turned into forms for pouring the concrete."

Snyder assured the Times that before the next season, baseball diamonds, a track, and an additional ten tiers of seating would be built. For the season opening, Universal Stadium would be ready to hold 8,000 visitors. "The south end of the field will be enclosed and will be reserved for children. Youngsters up to 14 years of age will be admitted to all games for twenty-five cents."

The Spartans made their NFL debut with their home opener and they won, defeating the Newark (New Jersey) Tornadoes. Soon the Spartans would host their first night game, though not the first in the history of the NFL -- that honor belongs to the Providence, Rhode Island Steam Rollers. Nevertheless, Universal Stadium hosted the first night pro football game in Ohio and one of the first in all of the National Football League. And, would be the scene of the greatest football game ever played in Portsmouth, Ohio -- the Iron Man Game of December 4th, 1932.

It was here that Potsy Clark's immortal eleven defeated the Champion Green Bay Packers 19-0 with out making a single substitution. Eleven Spartans played both offense and defense, the full sixty minutes of the game. The Iron Man Game, as it has since become known, marked the largest crowd to ever attend an event at the stadium, with an estimated 13,000-plus in attendance. Such gate numbers, however, were extraordinary.

The well-laid plans of Harry Snyder and the Spartan organization, however, did not pan out as expected. Ticket sales were never enough to cover the team's and the stadium's operating expensives, let alone the completion of the stadium's construction. In 1934, when Snyder explained why he and the board of directors had decided to sell the team franchise to Detroit, he noted that "the team lost $27,000 in 1930, $16,000 in 1931, $5,000 in 1932 and $14,000 in 1933."

On April 5th, 1934, the Portsmouth National League Football Corp. held a stockholders meeting at the Selby Auditorium, where a vote was taken on whether to sell the team's NFL franchise to "a group of Detroit men, headed by George A. Richards." The Times reported that Detroit would pay $10,000 "for the team and all of its equipment." When the ballots had been counted, 49 favored the sale and 31 opposed it.

Snyder explained that $3,000 would be used to pay salaries of the players, $3,300 to pay federal taxes, and $1,058 to pay a debt owed the Chicago Bears for their share of the gate "for what turned out to be the last National league game in Portsmouth." The remainder was "used to pay a few commericial bills and the rest applied to payment of $6,000 in notes held here."

The Works Progress Administration Completes Construction of Stadium

Long before the sale of the Spartans to Detroit, Snyder and Portsmouth officials were pursuing an alternative means to complete the construction of the stadium, one that would not rely on ticket sales, but rather an infusion of Federal moneys via Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA).

As early as June 1933, the City’s Engineering Department began working on a new set of blueprints that would be part of a WPA project proposal — Universal Stadium would be finished as a part of a larger recreational center that could be used by the public and the local high schools, and also serve as the possible home of a professional baseball team. This was a return to the original vision of 1925, when the City first voted down the stadium levy.

The Engineering Department revised Snyder’s original plans for the Stadium and the City Manager submitted the new drawings as part of the larger WPA project. The final design work was all done with the NFL Spartans in mind. The Daily Times would announce in late September 1933, during the last season of the Spartans: “Portsmouth’s municipal stadium project has won the approval of the Ohio public works administration and the plans have been forwarded to Washington for approval or rejection.”

Even though the Spartans met with great success on the field, ticket sales disappointed and Harry Snyder found the Spartans facing bankruptcy. While Snyder was consulting with potential buyers in New York City and Detroit in January 1934, the Times reported that City Manager Frank Sheehan had received word from Columbus that the “stadium project” would be funded through the “public works program.” The Federal government would provide $27,000 and the city, $63,000 for the improvement. To pay for it the city would “issue bonds to cover its portion of converting the stadium into a recreational center and the government would take the bonds under a loan proposition. The city would retire the bonds from the revenues collected at the stadium. City officials said Saturday that no tax levy of any kind would be necessary.” 

WPA construction of what became then known as Portsmouth Municipal Stadium began in December 1935, with a total cost of $99,114. The Times reported, "with the addition of 10 rows, the seating capacity was increased from 4,200 to 6,500. It contains 30 rows instead of 20 when originally built by Harry N. Snyder, former head of the Portsmouth Football Corp."

"The stand is 300 feet long, 72 feet wide and 39 feet high. Materials in the stand included 2,000 tons or 1,481 cubic yards of gravel; 1,200 tons or 889 cubic yards of sand; 2,300 barrels of cement and 350 barrels of prepared mortar; 53 tons of steel and 210,000 brick. The concrete mix was one portion of cement, two portions of sand and four portions of gravel. The stand was designed to carry a load of 3,500 pounds per square inch. The concrete tested 3,850 pounds per square inch. The fence required 300,000 brick. There is a quarter-mile track inside of the stadium. The seating capacity can be increased to 9,000 or 10,000 by erection of bleachers. .... The promenade beneath the stand is so roomy that automobiles and trucks may be driven through it with ease."

The original Universal Stadium was designed by Arthur Wall, assistant city engineer. The Times noted that "a large portion of the plan" was used by the WPA in their final design. Wall had been "commissioned by Mr. Snyder to draw the plans and prepare the estimates." Erik Strindberg, working for the City, would revise the designs in November 1935 and these would be used by C. H. Samson, the WPA's general foreman. 

Thus, thanks to the WPA, Universal Stadium would be completed in 1936, alongside the construction of a baseball stadium, which has since become known as Branch Rickey Park. The new complex and fully-concreted stadium would be dedicated on September 25th, 1936. The ceremony was organized by the Civic Forum and opened with "a concert by the Portsmouth High School State Championship Band." Mayor Joseph L. Kountz and Forest Williams, president of the Portsmouth City School Board, made opening remarks, with Francis Schmidt, the coach of The Ohio State University football team delivering the primary address.

Following the ceremonial opening, the Portsmouth High School Trojans played their first game in the new Municipal Stadium against the Hamilton High School Big Blues, with the teams battling it out to a 7-7 draw. PHS would play their games here until the construction of their new sports facilities, including the Portsmouth Collosium, in 2009. Today, Spartan-Municipal Stadium is home to the Notre Dame Titans, Portsmouth's private Catholic higheschool, and the Shawnee State University Bears NCAA Division 2 football program. It remains a popular venue for public sporting and entertainment events.

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Harry N. Snyder, the largest share owner of the Spartans, was the sole proprietor of the Universal Contracting Company. Snyder had prospered in the 1920s with major road, bridge, and dam construction projects on the Ohio River and in Portsmouth and New Boston. It was Snyder who located the office of Universal Contracting in Room 25 of the Royal Savings & Loan Company Building and thus it was Room 25 that became the official business address of the Portsmouth National League Football Corporation -- the NFL Spartans.

Here, from their office in The Royal, Snyder and Harold Griffen, the Spartans’ business manager, would run the back office of the Spartan organization. And, ultimately, it was not victories on the playing field, but rather gate returns that would determine the fate of the NFL franchise in Portsmouth.

Ever since the sale of the team to Detroit in 1934, residents of the city and sports historians have speculated as to the causes of the Spartan's business failure. There have been those who point to Green Bay and the Packers' ability to survive in a small town environment, suggesting that it was the Packer's national championships that ensured their financial success. Spartan fans would like to believe that history would have turned out differently, if only the Spartans had won the Championship in 1931 and 1932.

Others blame the Great Depression for driving down attendance and ticket sales, ensuring that smaller towns and ticket markets simply could not turn a profit, especially as the cost of fielding a team of top notch professionals became only possible in the larger cities, where tens of thousands of tickets could be sold for each game. The Spartans needed to sell between 6,000 and 7,000 tickets at their home games in Universal Stadium to ensure profitability and the completion of the stadium's construction. This, however, was rarely ever the case, with more typical attendance hitting the 3,000 to 4,000 mark and sometimes significantly less.

In 1934, when Snyder explained why he and the board of directors had decided to sell the team franchise to Detroit, he noted that “the team lost $27,000 in 1930, $16,000 in 1931, $5,000 in 1932 and $14,000 in 1933.”

In the end, as the National Football League matured in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the smaller cities that had once been so common in the League were giving way to the larger cities, where the ticket sales could support the rising cost of star player contracts. In the end, the success of the Spartans on the field was testament to a time in the NFL's history when places like Portsmouth, with some 40,000 residents and a dedicated group of boosters, could put together a team capable of dominating the league. But the story of the Spartans' struggle to break a profit and complete the construction of Universal Stadium is one that foretells the emergence of the modern NFL, where only the largest cities (with Green Bay as the exception that proves the rule), with large ticket and media markets, can turn a profit.

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As early as 1912, Frank Stanton and George McMahon, co-owners of the Smoke House (a popular Portsmouth tobacco shop), had sponsored an amateur football team that traveled the Ohio-Kentucky-West Virginia Tri-State region, playing its home games at Millbrook Park in nearby New Boston, Ohio.

Regarded as “one of the finest ‘weed dispensaries’ in the state," the Smoke House had originally opened in 1906, under the ownership of Pete Schilling and Chalmer Davis, who sold the business to Stanton and McMahon in March 1912. The shop was located inside the Grand Opera House on Chillicothe Street, but following a fire in September 1914, Stanton and McMahon re-located to what was known as the Richardson Block, on the northwest corner of Fifth and Chillicothe Streets, overlooking the city’s Esplanade (what was then known as Government Square).

The new shop included a major expansion, with the cigar store on the ground floor and a second floor set up as a "pool and billiards hall." The Times reported that "the handsome fixtures down stairs are of the very latest design, the show cases are of an unique and attractive make, the plate glass front is counstructed along new lines and the poolroom with its 12 tables on the second floor is ideally equipped. .... The Smoke House is a veritable club house and is sure to be well patronized by lovers of the weed and those who like to show their skill as a pocket billiardist."

The Smoke House also provided its patrons with the latest sports news and scores for baseball and football games from across the nation, which they pulled from the news wires and radio. On election night, the Smoke House would also be the first place to post returns on local, state, and federal races.

The Emergence of Semi-Professional Football

In the region’s smaller industrial towns, as well as its larger cities, former high school stars (now making a living in their hometown factories and businesses) joined with recent college graduates to form the first semi-professional teams. They worked their regular day jobs and during their free time, they practiced and played ball, traveling to nearby cities to do battle on the gridiron.

The teams attracted commercial backers including members of the chamber-of-commerce and other city-boosters (whom themselves were fans of the game). Team sponsors helped offset the cost of fielding a traveling team and local rivalries helped fuel the competition as teams vied for both financial backing and regional league championship titles.

City boosters came to view successful professional sports teams and associated sports infrastructure — playing fields and stadiums — as key elements in their city’s economic development. Civic and business groups, such as Kiwanis and the Rotarians, backed ballot initiatives to build stadiums and youth sports complexes.

The N & W Smoke House Football Team

The first truly semi-professional football team in Portsmouth can be traced back to 21 September 1920, when the Smoke House hosted a meeting of interested players and boosters. August Putzek would manage and coach the team, which was co-sponsored by the Norfolk & Western Railway. The N & W was a major local employer, managing the city's railyard and running the company's repair shops. As in other cities, Portsmouth's early semi-professional teams were often named after their primary business sponsors.

Coach Putzek and the new N & W Smoke House team would establish the longstanding footbally rivaly with the Ironton Tanks, with the two teams playing their first contests in 1920.

After the Tanks won the first game, the Times reported "the rivalry was so intense that the game will be an annual affair in each city, in fact negotiations are already on for the Tanks to play in Millbrook next fall and the Smoke House team to play a return engagement in Ironton." (29 November 1920).

From 1920 to 1925, the Smoke House teams enjoyed moderate success, with an overall record of 19-16-8. And, while they won against teams from Wellston, Chillicothe, Jackson, Ashland, Columbus, Lancaster, and Huntington, they could never defeat their greatest rivals - the Ironton Tanks. In October 1925, the Smoke House suffered a humiliating 34-0 loss at the hands of the Huntington Boosters and the team fell apart, disbanding after playing only two games of the season.

Jacques 'Jack' Creasy

According to football historian Carl Becker, author of Home & Away: The Rise and Fall of Professional Football on the Banks of the Ohio, “no one in Portsmouth mourned the passing of the team. They never held the heart of Portsmouth, emotionally or materially, never came near becoming a team of the town. The community had to await the coming of a new venture in football for that to happen.” A new football venture was indeed on the way. And it was spearheaded by twenty-five year old Jack Creasy.

William Jacques Creasy was born on October 9th, 1901, the son of William L. Creasy, who worked as the Assistant Superintendent of the Pocahontas Consolidated Coal and Coke Company. Jacques attended Portsmouth High School (PHS) and graduated in 1922. While at PHS, he worked on the school newspaper and served as senior class president. He made a name for himself as an excellent athlete and team leader, having been chosen captain of both the football and basketball teams.

His senior Yearbook notes: “As captain of last year’s varsity (football squad), Jack finished up his fourth and most successful season for P.H.S. His defensive and offensive work was excellent, and his passing sure and swift.” Creasy was a local football star and, by all accounts, he was fun-loving and well-liked by all who knew him.

After his high school graduation, Creasy took a job with the Portsmouth Daily Times circulation department and eventually found work as a clerk in the Department of Public Service. In his free time, Creasy trained as a boxer and refereed bouts, while also playing center and serving as the captain of the Smoke House team.

In the fall of 1924, Creasy left Portsmouth, hitch-hiking his way to the University of Arizona, where he hoped to play ball under Coach Pop McKale. Creasy, however, never made the team and returned home to Portsmouth in June of 1925 after completing one year of study.

“Look Who is Here!” read the headline in the Times. “No it was not a senatorial candidate nor a beer baron from Canada that was drawing crowds last night. The center of the handshaking group was one Jacques Creasy, brown and smiling with his broad sombrero suggesting the far southwest. For Jacques has just returned from a winter in Tucson, Arizona where he attended University…Buenos dios, Jacques.”

Creasy would join the Smoke House roster for what would be its last season in the fall of 1925. But while the Smoke House team collapsed, he would go on to greatly impact football in Portsmouth helping to form the Portsmouth (Studebaker) Presidents, the Portsmouth Shoe-Steels, and then setting the stage for the creation of the Portsmouth Spartans.

The Studebaker Presidents vs. the Portsmouth Merchants

In the summer of 1926, Portsmouth football fans and backers formed two separate teams, each competing for local talent and financial backing. Jack Creasy would join the squad organized with the primary backing of W.R. Fundenberg, owner of the Scioto Motor Company, a local Studebaker auto-dealer. Creasy was chosen as captain of the new team, which took the name of the Studebaker Presidents. Jack Walters of the Hurth Hotel served as business manager, handling contracts and booking games.

The second team was fielded by members of the Portsmouth Retail Merchants Association and given the uninspired name of the “Portsmouth Merchants.” Pat Shoemaker served as coach and manager. Their uniforms and equipment were donated by various local supporters, including the Dunham Meat Market, Taylor Universal Motor Company, Service Drug Company, Harley Davidson Motorcycle Shop, Ferrell Bros. Confectionery, the Senate Cafe, Gibson Music Shop, Kings Lunch Room, Home Vulcanizing Company, Cannonball Company, Terminal Lunch Room, Horchow Furniture Company, the Play House, Glockner Chevrolet, and the McDonnell Buick dealership.

The Merchants would complete the season with a mixed, but losing record, which failed to rally local fans and financial boosters. Both teams would play on the new Labold Field, which the city had acquired by donation in 1925 from one of the city’s most wealthy businessmen and most generous philanthropists -- Simon Labold. Located at the foot of Brown Street on the banks of the Ohio River, behind a newly constructed floodwall in the city’s East End neighborhood, Labold Field was to be used by the city schools and general public, as well as professional sports teams.

Previously, the Smoke House had practiced at Mound Park and played their home games in New Boston’s Millbrook Park. But in September of 1925, local Boy Scouts and city workers cleaned up and leveled the ground for football and baseball fields. These improvements were spearheaded with $7,500 in donations from area businesses, and included the erection of temporary bleachers, steel wire fencing, steel goal posts, and a new paved city street to the field.

Jack Creasy and the Studebaker Presidents would win their home-opener at Labold on September 26th, 1926, defeating the Ironton Panthers, 7-0. The Times coverage of the game was surprisingly critical, perhaps hoping to goad the team to improve their play. “Although the Presidents opened their season with a victory,” reported the Times, “they should not feel very elated over the game as they outweighed the Panthers considerably and should have had no trouble in beating them to a standstill.”

Like Portsmouth, Ironton sported two football teams in 1926. The Ironton Panthers were considered the B-Team and derisively described as the “Junior Tanks.” H. Coleman Grimes, the City Editor at the Times, who wrote much of the paper’s coverage of local football, concluded: “All in all, the game was very disappointing, instead of working like a well-oiled machine as they should, the Presidents showed up poorly, their line failed to hold when it should have, only one [pass] was thrown and received and the backfield men received little or no interference from their team mates.”

For all the criticism, the Presidents, it turned out, were just getting warmed up. Their win over the Panthers at Labold Field kicked off a run of six victories, including a 12-0 defeat of their Portsmouth rivals, the Merchants. The weather for the game was awful. “A small crowd of spectators paid their admission, but several hundred sat in their cars outside the enclosure and viewed the game,” reported the Times. “The sparkling red jerseys of the Presidents were in contrast to the brand new gray ones of the Merchants as the first whistle blew, but within five minutes there was little difference in the colors.” The game had been “a titanic struggle in the mud” whose results ensured the Presidents would “retain the right to use Labold Field for Sunday games for the remainder of the season.”

Local interest reached a fever pitch after the Presidents vanquished the Merchants. Captain Jack Creasy and team boasted an undefeated record (6-0) heading into the next away game against the Ironton Tanks, the city’s biggest and longest standing rival. “The locals are eager to get into the battle, which will either make them or break them,” reported the Times. “The team went through its last workout last night on the Mound Park. …. Indications are that close to a thousand Portsmouth fans will make the trip with the team to the Iron City. Enthusiasm here is at a breaking point. Fans have been talking about the Presidents-Tanks game for the past month and within an hour after 250 tickets for the game arrived at the Smoke House to go on sale most of them were sold.”

Unfortunately, the Presidents lost the grudge match, 0-to-9. It was certainly disappointing to Portsmouth fans. Local press coverage was muted, focusing on interviews with Ironton football fans who only praised their defeated river city rivals. One commentator opined that “the Portsmouth club has really developed remarkably this season. They organized early in the fall with no thought that they soon would be in position to meet with the leaders of valley football and play them almost on even terms.”

Creasy and the Presidents rebounded for their next two games, with two shut out victories over the Columbus Bobbs (12-0) and Cincinnati Friars (31-0). They dropped their next match (0-6) to the Armcos in Ashland, Kentucky, before preparing to meet the Tanks for one last game before the season’s end.

Again, the Presidents would travel to Ironton to play at the Tank’s Beechwood Stadium. And again, they would fall -- this time by a score of 33-0. Portsmouth press coverage was completely silent. The Presidents had been humiliated. At the end of the season, both the Presidents and the Merchants would dissolve. But, while fans were licking their wounds, Jack Creasy was putting together a new football organization, one that would give the city a fully-professional team that could dominate the region and propel Portsmouth to the highest levels of national sporting leagues.

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Remus completed the first two years of his sentence in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. For the last year of his sentence, however, he was allowed to return to Ohio, where he was first lodged in the Miami County Jail in Troy, Ohio. After complaining "he was being discriminated against" by his Miami jailers, Remus successfully petitioned a Federal magistrate to have himself relocated to the Scioto County Jail, where it appears he had good reason to believe he'd be more comfortable under the care of Sheriff Elza Canter.

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 five weeks after the tragic death of Jack Creasy, who had been the leading force behind the Portsmouth Shoe-Steels team, which had been led by the legendary Jim Thorpe, as player and coach. The success of the Shoe-Steels had demonstrated the possibilities of a professional football team in Portsmouth. But, without Creasy to take the lead, a new organization was needed.

Behind the scenes Howard Graf, the recently elected President of Portsmouth’s First National Bank, worked with Coleman Grimes and the Portsmouth Daily Times to promote the meeting at the Hotel Hurth: “It is a foregone conclusion that Portsmouth will support one of the greatest professional teams in history this year. …. Eighteen of the best players in the country, practically the same team that lined up against Ashland Armco [in] the last game of the last season, have been tentatively signed up. .... Walter Jean, who so successfully took charge of the Shoe-Steels last year after Thorpe left and who had charge of a great deal of coaching during the time Thorpe was here, will again coach the Portsmouth team.” Grimes concluded that “the citizens want a good football team in Portsmouth this year and are willing to support it.”

With fifty businessmen in attendance, the city’s diverse commercial interests stepped forward, more united than ever. Upon the suggestion of Howard Graf, it was agreed to organize a “stock company” with a regular board of directors and elected officers who would oversee the management of the new team’s affairs.

Ultimately, Dr. George B. Brown was elected president; William N. Gableman, vice-president; H. Coleman Grimes, secretary; and Howard Graf, treasurer and business manager. The organization would take the name of the Portsmouth Football Association. The board also announced its support for a $80,000 bond referendum to construct a modern stadium and public sports complex at the site of Labold Field.

It was also determined that a new team name should be selected, one that did not reference a local business or manufacturer, a name that all supporters could rally behind — the Portsmouth Spartans. On September 6th, following a public contest, over one-hundred names were considered. The Times reported: "Spartans was chosen as the handle for the professional eleven of 1928, pending approval of the president and board of directors. ... The author of the name is Bert Hurth, son of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Hurth, of Second street. If this name is finally chosen, young Hurth will be presented with a season ticket as a prize. Another fan suggested a name similar to the Spartans; it was ‘Peerless Spartans,’ but was not selected because of the fact that it carried two names and the committee decided to narrow it to one name."

While a mere coincidence, Bert Hurth was the son of the owner of the Hotel Hurth and his last name and the hotel itself will long be associated with the history of the Spartans and pro football in Portsmouth. The Times explained that "a number of reasons entered into choosing Spartans as the name for the team. One of the reasons was that it corresponded with the name Trojans, given the High School teams. It is suggestive of no organization or business house, and is suggestive of 'fight,' with a capital F."

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On Wednesday, the 27th of April 1870, a coalition of white and black residents turned out for a celebration hosted by Allen Chapel of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. With ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, there was much to celebrate for those who had long championed the cause of equal rights in Portsmouth, Ohio. The gathering was a who's who of the old local abolition movement, which following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment had become what today is recognized as the Civil Rights Movement. Many of those in attendance had been involved in local politics, the abolition movement, and the Underground Railroad as far back as the 1820s.

The host congregation of the program -- Allen Chapel -- had been intimately tied to the Underground Railroad, with many of its members engaged in the secretive work, tracing their church's roots to 1837, when African American Methodists began meeting on their own in the old Wheeler Academy building on Market Street. In 1868, the congregation purchased the old Methodist Spencer Chapel on Seventh Street, between Chillicothe and Gay Streets. This church structure originally had been built in 1853 by the city's German Methodist society and was named for Rev. R. A. Spencer, who had donated the lot on Seventh Street.  In 1868, Spencer Chapel was re-dedicated as Allen Chapel in honor of the Rev. Richard Allen, who is remembered as the founder of the AME Church. This was the location of Portsmouth's celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.

As the congregation grew and the city's black residential area of the city shifted northward, above the railroad tracks into what is now known as the North End, the location of Allen Chapel would move, as well. In 1920, the congregation built their present structure at Twelfth and Waller streets. 

The Portsmouth Tribune, a Republican party affiliated newspaper, reported on the Ratification Celebration, providing both a description of the chapel's decorations and the crowd that had assembled. Their detailed description was republished in the columns of the Portsmouth Daily Times and read as follows:

"The colored people of Portsmouth together with a number of their white friends, held a ratification jubilee on Monday evening last in Allen Chapel. The room was handsomely decorated with flags and portraits of John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Grant and Colfax. John Cooper, (colored) was called to the chair, and G.W. Holland, (colored) appointed Secretary. The meeting was opened with singing by the choir, led by Mrs. Weaver and music on the organ by Miss Steele, followed by prayer by Rev. Jas. Mitchell, of Bigelow Chapel. The proclamation was then read by Miss Lizzy Baker (colored). The speaking was limited to twenty minutes each, and Milton Kennedy, the old Free Soiler, who has held on through evil as well as good report, opened with a very effective and appropriate speech. Remarks were then made in succession by Wm. E. Ross, (colored), H. W. Farnham, Capt. Isaac Fullerton, Hon. E. Glover, Rev. P. Tolliver, (colored), Rev. Summonds and Judge Searl. A song entitled 'The Colored Volunteer' was sung by Wm. E. Ross, the audience joining in the chorus. After the speaking, all united in singing 'John Brown's body lies mouldering in the tomb.' The colored folk were out en mass, men, women, and children, and the whites were sandwitched [sic] among them, all enthused with the spirit of the occasion. The celebration was a pleasant success. Everything was done with decency and in order, and no word spoken calculated to reflect upon political opponents."

John Cooper, a longtime member and trustee of Allen Chapel, served as the presiding officer of the program. At the time, Cooper managed a popular restaurant in the Biggs House on Front Street, Portsmouth's most luxurious hotel. In 1875, Cooper would open his own restaurant on Second Street in what was then known as the Huston Stone Front, but which had been originally built by Milton Kennedy in 1853.

A community choir was directed by a Mrs. Weaver, while a Miss Steele played on the Chapel's organ. "The old Free Soiler" Kennedy had been Portsmouth's most outspoken abolitionist, who, along with his brother-in-law Joseph Ashton, assisted runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. William E. Ross, another Civil War veteran, who led the singing of "The Colored Volunteer" would soon become Portsmouth's first African American city council member, when elected in 1894. The other speakers included black and white ministers, veterans, and other elected officials, most notably, Judge F. C. Searl of the Scioto County Probate Court, and the Honorable Elijah Glover, who then represented Scioto County in the Ohio House of Representatives.

Searl had been first elected Probate Judge in 1860 and served multiple terms. During the Civil War he served as the Chairman of the Military Committee of Scioto County, supervising the enlistment of volunteers. And, according to Nelson W. Evans, the noted Scioto County historian, Searl had been an abolitionist since the age of eight years old and as "a friend of the negroes, he believed in recruiting them for service and did so. He put them into service and secured them bounties from $150 for single men to $250 for married men."

Elijah Glover is often remembered as the founding editor of the Portsmouth Courier (what in time became the Portsmouth Tribune). He had a long career in Portsmouth politics, beginning as a Whig and then as a Republican. In early 1870, when the Ohio Legislature voted on the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Glover turned out to be one of the critical votes that had ensured its adoption. The amendment passed by one vote.

When news of Ohio's ratification first broke, James Newman, the editor of the Portsmouth Times, the city's Democratic Party alligned newspaper, penned an editorial that credited Scioto County with its ratification. As the leader of the local Democratic Party and his party's candidate who had recently lost the election to Elijah Glover, Newman blamed ratification in Ohio on his own electoral defeat, demonstrating just how closely divided local residents were on the question of equal rights for African Americans. Glover had won the race by a mere twenty-three votes.

Newman told his readers: “Scioto County is responsible for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment upon the part of Ohio.  The vote of the member from this county, in the House of Representatives, decided its fate. The change of one vote would have made the result a tie, and thereby defeated the ratification. Twenty-three votes in this county would have turned the scale. We can call the names of more than that many Democrats in Scioto county who did not vote at the last election. They can certainly never forgive themselves for this inexcusable dereliction of duty. Let this fact be a warning in the future, and prompt every Democrat never to forego exercising the right to the ballot.”

Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment may have marked a new era for Ohio and the larger United States, but it did not mark the end of the struggle for equality and voting rights. The supporters of civil rights that gathered in Allen Chapel would go on to fight racial segregation and other forms of what became known as Jim Crow discrimination.

Sources

Nelson W. Evans, A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902): 299-301.

"Responsible," Portsmouth Times (5 February 1870).

"The Fifteenth Amendment in Portsmouth:  Grand Ratification and Speeches by White and Colored Speakers!," Portsmouth Times (30 April 1870).

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The New York Times reported: "The African Methodist Conference, in session here to-day, was thrown into confusion when it became known that its presiding Bishop, W. B. Derrick of New York City, had been unable to obtain a drink of soda water." As soda fountains grew in popularity in the late nineteenth century, fueled in some degree by the temperance movement and the popularity of caffeinated drinks like Coca Cola, it became common for drug stores with largely white clientele to restrict their drink service to white customers only, thus reflecting and reinforcing the discriminatory practice of racial segregation that spread in the decades after the US Civil War.

The operation of whites-only soda fountains in Portsmouth had become a point of contention prior to the meeting of the Ohio Conference of the AME, six months earlier in April 1904. Frank White, a popular black barber and member of Allen Chapel, had made headlines in the Portsmouth Daily Times, when he publicly complained: "I think I'm as clean and dress as well as any white or colored man, yet (raising his voice) I can't go into certain places in town and get a glass of soda water. I can't sit down at a fountain, while the lowest kind of white man is permitted to."

White's comments were made at a "mass meeting of representative colored citizens," which culminated in the passage of a resolution that lamented the existence of various "hindrances to the full exercise of the rights of colored citizens in several states and ... [that] prejudicial measures and acts continue unnecessarily and brutal and inhuman methods of punishment are perpetrated on colored citizens without just course of law." In short, discriminatory laws, police brutality, and extra legal lynchings were all violating the rights of African Americans. The meeting "resolved that we the representative colored citizens of Portsmouth" call out such "uncivilized and inhumane acts of legislation and unjust discrimination" and "maintain our dignity by cultivating a higher moral standard."

With Frank White and other members of Allen Chapel backing this resolution, it is reasonable to assume that six months later, when Bishop Derrick personally experienced the enforcement of Jim Crow at a Portsmouth soda fountain, the host congregation was well prepared to support the Ohio AME Conference in their official condemnation of racial discrimination in the city.

During a break between conference sessions, Bishop Derrick and the Rev. Dr. C. M. Tanner of Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta, Georgia, went for a walk on Chillicothe Street and were directed to Wurster Brothers by a reporter for the Portsmouth Daily Times. There, according to the Times reporter, the ministers "asked if they handled ginger ale, and ordered a bottle. They were told that they had no ginger ale. One of the men then said that they would take soda water. Upon this they sat down. The young lad who was on duty at the soda counter quietly said that they did not serve colored people at the fountain. The two ministers thereupon arose and after conversing a minute left the place."

Indignant over the experience, Bishop Derrick took to the floor of the conference and complained bitterly, with Dr. Tanner following the remarks with the introduction of a resolution denouncing the "bitter prejudice" of the white-only soda fountain of Wurster Brothers.

According to the Daily Times, Bishop Derrick spoke as follows:

"I was considerably taken aback by something that happened to me this evening. Born in a foreign land I have traveled all over Europe and met the greatest and best of the Old World's people and was always treated with the greatest civility, my race cutting no figure. It remained to Portsmouth to deny me the privilege of drinking a glass of soda water on account of my color. I was surprised to learn so unpleasantly that the narrow spirit of caste could have a lodgment in the great state of Ohio. But then this is Portsmouth. Again I say I am surprised, and again I will remark -- this is Portsmouth."

The Daily Times reported that the Bishop's "remarks made a deep impression upon every one." Dr. Tanner then introduced his resolution, with a preamble that read, in part,"Whereas, our eminent presiding officer, Rt. Rev. William Benjamin Derrick, Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Laws, was refused a most ordinary and commonplace accommodation that might be given to the poorest self-respecting and ordinary citizen of Portsmouth, that is the blank refusal of Wurster Bros. to furnish him a drink of soda water; .... whereas, we recognize that the refusal was based as he was informed purely upon color and not upon condition, and whereas, we recall that in all the battles of this country, from Bunker Hill to San Juan Heights, the Negro has fought, bled and died in the defense of the country and the flag, our distinguished prelate [Bishop Derrick] himself, giving three years of his life to the cause in the war of the rebellion. Therefore, be it resolved, ... that we resent the un-called-for, un-christian and inhuman treatment, and hurl back its odium into the faces of our traducers. .... We pray that God will hasten the time when our people, as other races, may be judged upon their individual merits, and the distinctions of condition and work may be recognized."

The conference resolution may have secured the attention of New York City and Portsmouth newspapers, but it did not change the policy of Wurster Bros., or other local soda fountain operators. Like other forms of segregation in the city, the historical record suggests that Jim Crow at the soda fountains of Portsmouth continued until the 1940s, or perhaps, later.

At the time of Bishop Derrick's visit to Portsmouth in 1904, the Daily Times explained, "it has been an established rule for years at the Wurster pharmacy that no one but white customers shall be served at the fountain. .... Mr. John Wurster said that there was a sentiment among their white customers against colored citizens drinking at the fountain. They derived their main patronage from white people and expects to cater to their wishes and desire."

The anti-Jim Crow resolutions adopted in April and September of 1904 reminds us that black residents of Portsmouth resisted the development and perpetuation of racial discrimination in the city long before the modern Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Ohio Conference's denunciation of Wursters Drug Store clearly reflected this on-going local resistance, while also encouraging residents to support future efforts at ending Jim Crow in the city.

Sources

"Col. F. White Gets Sore. Can't Go Into Certain Stores in Town after Soda Water While Lowest Kind of White Man Can Do So," Portsmouth Daily Times (19 April 1904): 3.

"About Col. White's Kick," Portsmouth Times (23 April 1904): 3.

"Turned Down: Bishop Derrick Refused Glass of Soda Water at Wurster Bros. Fountain," Portsmouth Daily Times (29 September 1904): 1.

"Lauds the President as the Greatest Friend of the Negro Race," Portsmouth Times (30 September 1904).: 1.

"Negro Methodists Indignant. Drug Store Refused to Sell Soda Water to Bishop Derrick," New York Times (30 September 1904): 5.

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Complying with the request of city officials, Elijah Glover, the editor of the Portsmouth Courier, dutifully placed this notice prominently in the columns of his newspaper. According to the oldest historical accounts of the controversy, eighty African American residents of the city were expelled under the threat of enforcement of Ohio "Black Laws."

Among other discriminatory requirements, the "Black Laws" stipulated that all African-American residents were to register with their county clerk, proving their free status. In Portsmouth, that meant that African Americans were to visit the Scioto County Court House, which was originally located in middle of Market Street, between Front and Second Streets. 

Runaway slaves who decided for various reasons to make a go at it here -- rather than seek greater security and freedom in Canada -- as well as those who may have been born free but did not have proper papers, made Portsmouth their home, often finding employment on the margins of society, scrapping by in the shadows of the law. Few however, it appears, ever registered.

Nelson Evans, the author of A History of Scioto County, Ohio (1902), provided the now memorable name for the event -- "Black Friday" -- recording the first historical account of this dark chapter in local and American history, under the heading of “Relics of Barbarism.” Evans account reads: ”A Black Friday. On January 21, 1830[sic], all the colored people in Portsmouth were forcibly deported from the town. They were not only warned out, but they were driven out. They were forced to leave their homes and belongings. Between one hundred and two hundred householders had signed a paper to the effect that they would not employ any black person who had not complied with the law. The town authorities had been worked up to the point of agreeing to enforce the savage and brutal ‘Black Laws’ of Ohio."

Evans noted that "the law referred to had been passed January 19, 1804 (Chase, Volume 1, 393). It forbade any black or mulatto person to reside in the State unless they had a certificate from the Clerk of the Court that they were free. Any one was forbidden to hire or employ any black or mulatto person without such certificate, under penalty of $10 to $50, one-half of which went to the informer and other half to the State. Under the law of January 25, 1807 (Chase, Volume 1, 556), no black or mulatto person was allowed to settle in the State without giving bond in $500 for good behavior and against becoming a township charge. If such bond was not given, it was the duty of the Overseer of the Poor, of the respective townships to drive them out. The harboring, employing or concealing of a Negro who had not given such a bond was $100 penalty, one-half to the informer and one half to the great State of Ohio. The same law forbade a Negro to be a witness against a white person."

Evans was notably outraged by the event, writing, “Just think of it! There were over one hundred men in Portsmouth, in 1830, who determined to enforce these laws, and who did enforce them, and then attended the great Fourth of July celebration on July 4, 1831, listened to all the crimes imputed to poor, old, silly, crazy George III, and then thanked God they had never done anything as bad as that, when they had on the previous January 21, 1830, done much worse. The editor [Nelson Evans] does not know the names of the one hundred or two hundred householders in Portsmouth who signed that infamous paper, and hopes he may never know, and that the paper is destroyed. It was not published in the newspapers of that time. As near as we can now determine, eighty black people were deported by the town authorities in 1830 [sic].”

Whatever errors may have crept into Nelson Evan’s account, we can say with confidence that the expulsion notice appeared on a Friday in the year 1831, not 1830 as initiatially claimed by Evans, but beyond that without other documentation we must trust his claims that eighty African Americans -- “all the colored people in Portsmouth” -- were expelled under threat of enforcing Ohio’s discriminatory “Black Laws.”

Working off of Evans’ account, Carter G. Woodson, the father of "Black History Month," probably did more than any historian in popularizing the story of Portsmouth's Black Friday. Woodson included the story in three of his books, A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (1915), A Century of Negro Migration (1918), and The Negro in Our History (1922). Woodson concluded that “despite the 'Black Friday' upheaval of 1831, the Negroes settled down to the solution of the problems of their new environment and later showed in the accumulation of property evidences of actual progress.”

“Black Friday” of 1831, it turns out, was actually the second recorded expulsion of African-Americans from Portsmouth. The earlier expulsion having been lost to time, overlooked by Evans, is to be found in the records of Wayne Township, where Portsmouth was located at the time. Here, one finds the story of the “first negro exodus” in the minutes of the Township Trustees.

At their meeting on the 2nd of March 1818, the Trustees authorized a special payment to Warren Johnson, the township’s constable. The treasurer was ordered to pay him “$4.18 for the fees in warning out blacks and mulatto persons of the township….” At the time, enforcement of the “Black Laws” fell to the local police force, the township constable.

Portsmouth’s history of expulsions was not an isolated incident in the history of the region; the majority of its white residents were no more racist and heartless than those living in other Ohio River cities. Enforcement of Ohio’s Black Laws appear to have been generally episodic and arbitrary, lightly enforced on the whole, but occasionally used to threaten and intimidate black residents of the state.

The most notorious purge occurred not in Portsmouth, but in Cincinnati, in August 1829. There, as in Portsmouth, Cincinnati officials announced that on a certain date they would begin to enforce the “Black Laws.” What followed was a race riot, the destruction of many homes in the black section of the city, and the forced exodus of nearly half of the city’s black population, some of which migrated to Canada.

The expulsions in Portsmouth, however, contributed to the establishment of a black community in Huston Hollow, which proved to be a critical link in the secret and illegal network of area residents, white and black, who helped the runaway slave reach freedom in Canada and other black commuities to the North.

Sources

“The citizens of Portsmouth are adopting measures to free the town of its colored population,” Portsmouth Courier (21 January 1831), Ohio History Center, Vault Newspaper Hardcopy, PORTSMOUTH N287, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio.

“Early History of Wayne Township. Number Five” Portsmouth Times (5 July 1879).

“J. J. Minor account of abolitionist activities, Portsmouth, Ohio, Sept. 1894,” Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio History Connection.

Nelson W. Evans, "A Black Friday" in A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902), p. 613.

Rebecca D. Jenkins, “Forgotten: Scioto County’s Lost Black History” (Bowling Green State University, MA Thesis, 2015).

Nikki Marie Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802-1868 (Ohio University Press, 2005).

Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2005).

Carter G. Woodson, The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 − A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915).

Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (Washington, D.C., 1918).

Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (Washington, D.C., 1922).

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