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 limits of Greenup, Kentucky. This is a story from the days of the interstate slave trade, when thousands of African Americans were sold "down-river" to the new cotton plantations of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

Revolts on board trans-Atlantic slave ships are common knowledge, but such is not the case with interstate slave trade rebellions. No definitive count exists of revolts along the Ohio River, but there is reason to believe that far more happen than have made it into the historical record. Whatever the case, the Greenup Slave Revolt of August 14th, 1829, has not received the attention it deserves.

Most recently, Stanley Harold makes brief mention of the Greenup Revolt in his book, Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War (2010), and he suggests that "enslaved African Americans recognized the significance of the boundary formed by the river in the region west of the Appalachian Mountains. .... Some black men, and lesser numbers of black women, fought and killed to cross these boundaries. They hoped to avoid sale south, leave masters and traders behind, and enjoy the limited degree of freedom available to them in the North."

In 1851, when Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, chose the location for the opening scene of her famous novel, she picked "the town of P--- , in Kentucky," not too far from the shores of the Ohio. "Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P----, in Kentucky." The most influential work of American fiction starts with a story of the interstate slave trade.

Before the abolition of slavery, the Ohio River may have separated free from slave state, it may have served as a border between the North and the South, but it also inspired resistance and revolt. The story of submissive Uncle Tom, being sold down river, was always meant to be counterposed to that of Eliza and George Harris, two enslaved persons who ran away to escape their fate on the interstate slave trade.

Julius A. Bingham, "the sole proprietor, editor and printer" of the Western Times of Portsmouth, Ohio, became the first to report the news of the Greenup Revolt. Located a short distance from the scenes of the revolt and executions, Portsmouth was a booming commercial and industrial hub, having been recently chosen as the southern terminus of the Ohio-Erie Canal. Portsmouth was a river town where freedom seekers could hop a ride on the Underground Railroad, if they could, first, make it across the river, and, second, if they could find one of the few "friends of the oppressed" who made their home in Ohio's Scioto county. Stations were safe houses and the transport of fugitives was secret business for a reason, but Portsmouth had a small black community and an active Underground, dating back to its earliest days. The residents of Portsmouth would have been very interested to read about a foiled slave revolt that had occurred just across the river in Kentucky.

Entitled, "Affray and Murder," Bingham's article proved so sensational that the Scioto Gazette in Chillicothe, Ohio, reprinted the story in their August 26th issue, and from there the story went viral. It would find its way to David Walker, one of the most radical abolitionists of the age, who included it, at the last minute, in his famous pamphlet, "Walker's Appeal; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America" (1829). More simply known as "Walker's Appeal," this pamphlet called on slaves to rise up in revolt in order to bring an end to slavery. Considering historians date its publication to September of 1829, it seems more than reasonable to argue that David Walker may very well have been inspired by the actions of the men and women who revolted in Greenup County, Kentucky.

As reported in the Portsmouth Western Times, and printed verbatim in David Walker's Appeal, "A most shocking outrage was committed in Kentucky, about eight miles from this place, on 14th inst. [August 14, 1829] A negro driver [trafficker], by the name of [James G.] Gordon, who had purchased in Maryland about sixty negroes, was taking them, assisted by an associate named [Gabriel] Allen [of Paris, Kentucky], and the wagoner who conveyed the baggage, to the Mississippi. The men were hand-cuffed and chained together, in the usual manner for driving those poor wretches, while the women and children were suffered to proceed without incumbrance. It appears that, by means of a file the negroes, unobserved, had succeeded in separating the iron which bound their hands, in such a way as to be able to throw them off at any moment.

"About 8 o'clock in the morning, while proceeding on the state road leading from Greenup to Vanceburg, two of them dropped their shackles and commenced a fight, when the wagoner ([William] Petit) rushed in with his whip to compel them to desist. At this moment, every negro was found to be perfectly at liberty; and one of them seizing a club, gave Petit a violent blow on the head, and laid him dead at his feet; and Allen, who came to his assistance, met a similar fate, from the contents of a pistol fired by another of the gang.

"Gordon was then attacked, seized and held by one of the negroes, whilst another fired twice at him with a pistol, the ball of which each time grazed his head, but not proving effectual, he was beaten with clubs, and left for dead.

"They then commenced pillaging the wagon, and with an axe split open the trunk of Gordon, and rifled it of the money, about $2,400. Sixteen of the negroes then took to the woods; Gordon, in the mean time, not being materially injured, was enabled, by the assistance of one of the women, to mount his horse and flee; pursued, however, by one of the gang on another horse, with a drawn pistol; fortunately he escaped with his life barely, arriving at a plantation, as the negro came in sight; who then turned about and retreated."

Did any of these sixteen brave men and women escape to freedom? Apparently not. Bingham concluded his account, explaining, "the neighbourhood was immediately rallied, and a hot pursuit given - which, we understand, has resulted in the capture of the whole gang and the recovery of the greatest part of the money. Seven of the negro men and one woman, it is said were engaged in the murders, and will be brought to trial at the next court in Greenupsburg."

They started out as the Greenup Eight, but ultimately five men and one woman were charged in the murders. One man, Daniel, would be acquitted, while the jury convicted all of the others. Circuit Court Judge William P. Roper would then sentence Jesse, John Hooper, Lazarus Fisher [otherwise called Fisher], Levin and Dinah to death. His orders read: "the said Defendants and each of them to be hanged by the neck ... until they be dead, dead, dead except the defendant Dinah," whose execution was delayed due to her being pregnant at the time.

Thus, it was only four men who would hang that late November afternoon. Dinah, in a twist of fate, would receive a pardon from Gov. Thomas Metcalfe. But Dinah would not be freed. Dinah and the forty-some others who were never charged in the "affray," it would seem safe to assume, were eventually sold at the auction block or, in private, either here in Kentucky or further down river. Their enslaver and trafficker, James G. Gordon, survived and according to later records in Maryland, he would continue in his nefarious business known today as the "interstate slave trade."

Perhaps one of those unfortunate souls was sold as far south as the New Orleans market, where a kind Christian soul, like Uncle Tom, might end up in the hands of a murderous master, one who might even teach a lesson in sadism to Simon Legree. The depths of depravity generated within the American slave system are well documented thanks to the writings of Stowe and other activists who campaigned to awaken the conscience of their fellow Americans.

Once again, it is thanks to reportage of Julius Bingham's Western Times that we have a memorable account of the proceedings when four of the freedom seekers were put to their deaths. Reportedly, when the fateful hour arrived and a large crowd had gathered at the mouth of the Little Sandy, all four of the condemned -- Jesse, John Hooper, Lazarus Fisher, and Levin "maintained to the last, the utmost firmness and resignation to their fate. They severally addressed the assembled multitude, in which they attempted to justify the deed they had committed, on the principle implanted in the breast of every man by nature, to fight for freedom, and slay the tyrant who dares to deprive them of it. This only they had done, and having failed to accomplish the sole object for which they slew their merciless oppressors, traffickers in human flesh, it remained for them to pay the forfeit of that failure with their lives."

"They were willing to do so," reported Bingham. These heroic men, bound and standing before a crowd of patriotic white Americans, asserted that "they had done no more than their judges and executioners would have done under similar circumstances; and that too, with a solemn appeal to the Judge of heaven and earth, for the integrity of their motives, and the justice of their cause."

Julius Bingham then concluded his reportage by noting that one of the men, "while standing upon the cart, just ready to be launched into eternity exclaimed several times, ‘Death! Death, any time, in preference to slavery!’”

Sources:

Julius A. Bingham, "Affray and Murder," Western Times (22 August 1829), reprinted in Scioto Gazette (26 August 1829).

Julius A. Bingham, "Execution," Western Times (28 November 1829), reprinted in Ithaca Journal and General Advertiser (6 January 1830).

Stanley Harold, Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

"We are informed that Gabriel Allen, of this county, and a man by the name of Pettit were killed a few days ago near Greenupsburg," Louisville Public Advertiser (2 September 1829).

David Walker, Walker's Appeal; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America" (1829). For more on Walker visit davidwalkermemorial.org

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With its two large arched entryways facing Second Street, the Eclipse Livery Building (now the home of Wright's Farm Center) was constructed by T.M. Lynn in 1871 for his livery business.

Trustem Mearns Lynn, more commonly known as T.M. Lynn, was born in Londonderry county, Ireland, settled in Portsmouth in 1854. Lynn was politically active, identifying as a Democratic and representing the First Ward on City Council for thirteen years.

Originally three stories high, measuring 124 x 41 feet, with a capacity for forty-five horses, Lynn ran the city's largest livery in the 1870s, with twenty horses in regular service, offering use of "all styles of wagons, buggies and hacks, and boards."

Nelson Evans noted that between 1861 and 1887 Lynn "had the fast horse craze” and had “handled, bought and sold, made and lost money, on many fast horses." His most famous was "Dan Rice," a trotting stallion, whom he named for the Civil War era's most famous circus clown. According to Evans, Lynn bought the horse for $800 in 1862 and sold him for $16,000 in 1866. Adjusted for inflation, the deal was worth over $328,262 in 2022.

Currier & Ives would immortalize "Dan Rice" in a popular print, published in 1866, forever capturing the strength and beauty of Portsmouth's most famous horse.

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According to Harry Knighton, noted mycologist and founder of the Shawnee Nature Club, a crew of CCC Boys in the mid-1930s found the bones of a murdered pedlar when they were constructing Forest Road 2 in the Shawnee State Forest. The remains had been shoved up underneath a rock overhang many decades before, sometime in the mid-1800s. Reportedly, items that may have been part of the dead tinkerer's stock and trade were found nearby.

"The story," as Knighton tells it, "is that the man was a pack peddler who walked the ridges and valleys carrying pots and pans, tincups and needles, etc., to sell to the remote settlers who could not reach stores. These men often drummed on a tin pan with a stick or spoon and thus were called drummers by the natives. This man was killed and robbed of his money and his body placed under a small cliff-like outcropping where they were found more than a century later by the CCC workers. The bones were removed in the 1930s but pieces of combs and tinware were found in the area for some years later."

Knighton's account explains that the bones were removed, but by whom and to where is unclear. Some local lore that may be more speculation than fact claims the Dead Man was killed by the husband of an area woman after he had returned home unexpectedly to discover his wife in bed with the traveling salesman. Other stories suggest the Dead Man was murdered for interfering with the business of an area moonshiner during the Prohibition Era.

Whatever the origins of this hollow's name, over the years various signs have been erected to mark this historical spot, which is deep in the forest, but they have a tendency to disappear. Locals speak of ghosts and inexplicable screams and howls in the night. One "old timer," according to Knighton, "was using a draw knife to make hoops of hickory for wagon wheels when he heard the scream and cut his left leg badly with the draw knife, loosing much blood."

Sources:

Harry Knighton, "Shawnee Forest," undated typescript, Digital History Lab Collection, Clark Memorial Library, Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio.

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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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In 1938, during the North-West Territory sesquicentennial celebration, Portsmouth residents put on a "gigantic parade" through the city, carrying a large stone at the "head of the procession." The City Recreation Department placed the stone "in concrete at the base of the flag pole" and local dignitaries dedicated the new city park, which they named Alexandria Point. Located just outside the city's flood wall, the park provides visitors with a scenic view of the modern-day confluence of the Ohio and Scioto Rivers.

The stone, with its 1802 inscription, explained the Daily Times, had recently been recovered from the Westside bottoms of the Scioto River. Local historian Alfred Fagan believed it to have originated as a cornerstone from the now abandoned village of Alexandria, which area residents and the history books remembered as the first American settlement at the mouth of the Scioto.

The Alexandria Stone makes for an odd historical marker, as the date with which it is inscribed has no direct connection to anniversary of the adoption of the North-West Ordinance, which was being celebrated in 1938. Nor does it refer to the date of Alexandria's founding, which was first settled in 1796. And, lastly, it has been removed from its original historic location. It is, however, all that visibly remains of abandoned Alexandria.

The stone's original inscription may have had included the initials, "E. L." inscribed over the date, 1802. It's possible the letters represented the initials of Elias Langham, who officially surveyed and platted the village in 1799. Langham did own at least one lot in Alexandria, where he built a residence, but it does not appear he ever lived there for any extended period of time. In short, whether the Alexandria Stone came from Langham's house, we will never know.

The stone was recovered in 1931 by Squire Oscar Foster, who acquired it from a family living near the mouth of Carey's Run, not far from where Alexandria had once been located. "He chanced upon it at the home of a West Side family who were using it as an outdoor step and who were not aware of its historical significance." Foster then gave the stone to Alfred Fagan, whom the Portsmouth Daily Times described as "the city's most ardent and knowledgeable historian" and a descendant of Judge John Collins, one of the first settlers of Alexandria. Thus, Fagan, the 80-year old great-great grandson of Collins, is the one who arranged to donate the stone to the City Recreation Department for its installation in Alexandria Point Park.

Interestingly, Robert Dafford's mural of Alexandria depicts a pioneer river town, with numerous stone houses. There were, in fact, very few such structures. Perhaps one could argue that the vision of Alexandria found on the Portsmouth flood wall reflects the aspirations of Alexandria's founders more than the reality of the pioneer settlement. Extent records suggest that the village had far more log cabins and framed houses than those made of cut stone. This, it should be noted, however, only makes the Alexandria Stone at Alexandria Point that much more rare and historically significant.

Sources:

Barbara Keyser Gargiulo, editor, "Early Reminiscences of Portsmouth," in Scioto County, Ohio Newspaper Abstracts and Historical Reminiscences, 1866-1869 (Milford, Ohio: Little Miami Publishing Co., 2006).

"Old Stone Is Landmark for New City Park," Portsmouth Times (2 November 1939).

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One need not refer to well-known bestseller lists to appreciate that more Americans are familiar with Allan Eckert’s telling of frontier history than with the writings of any dead or living, academic historian. Every generation has its own popular historians, the one’s whose writings feed a society’s desire to know their origins. And, if Eckert’s popularity is any indication, those writers who play loose and fast with historical detail and do so in the name of drama and narrative appear to be the most popular and influential. They are the writers of myth and legend as much as they are writers of history. Eckert’s tale of the conquest of the Scioto & Ohio Valleys speaks to the psyche of many Americans who came of age in the Cold War.

During the 1960s and 1970s, thanks largely to Eckert's influence, a popular myth arose that Tecumseh -- the great Shawnee leader -- had once fought and killed Americans near the Mouth of the Scioto. In October 2001, the Scioto County Commissioners dedicated the Allan W. Eckert Trail, which winds its way along the Ohio River through the Earl Thomas Conley Riverside Park. The trail offers the visitor with a view of the banks and bottom lands at the confluence of the Scioto and the Ohio. When the Moundbuilders and their Shawnee descendants after them built their villages and farmed these rich alluvial soils, the Mouth of the Scioto was not located where it is today. There is an Old and New Mouth to the Scioto. The Eckert Trail is located just down the Ohio River from the Old Mouth, which had been the location of Lower Shawnee Town in the 1740s and early 1750s. By the 1780s, when Tecumseh is said to have fought here, Lower Shawnee Town had long been abandoned, with a new growth of trees shading the lands where the village once stood.

In the 1830s, the Scioto River was given a new mouth. In an effort to facilitate trade at the southern terminus of the Ohio & Erie Canal, the strip of land, known as the Isthmus, was cut near the steep East Side bank of the Scioto at Portsmouth; the waters of the Scioto were thus diverted directly into the Ohio, creating the New Mouth. By this point, the American settlement of Alexandria, which had been located on the West Side of the Old Mouth (upon the very same grounds of the even older Lower Shawnee Town) was long abandoned and its streets turned into fields of corn. As Alexandria faded and the pioneer generation passed to their graves, the legends surrounding Tecumseh and the Mouth of the Scioto would only grow.

Back from the river, above the West Side of the Old Mouth, is Raven Rock and beneath it is where Eckert located the opening scene of his most successful work -- the outdoor drama "Tecumseh!" As legend has it, Raven Rock was one of the strategic overlooks, which enabled Indian warriors to see the approach of American boats (both up and down river). From these heights and distances, they had the time to set their river bank ambushes, with devastating consequences. Here, according to Eckert's telling, Tecumseh first proved himself in battle, helping kill and capture American settlers, only later to proclaim his opposition to the torture and execution of one of the American prisoners.

For Eckert the story of Tecumseh near the Mouth of the Scioto is a hero’s coming of age tale; it defines Tecumseh's character and establishes the narrative’s moral compass. Tecumseh is, at this point in his life, still a young warrior, one who lives in the shadows of his older brother, Cheeseekau. As the fates would have it, Simon Kenton and a small band of Americans are out scouting land and hunting near the Old Mouth of the Scioto when they are attacked by Shawnee warriors. The Indians run off the Americans, though one is taken prisoner and is being beaten, tortured, and is set to be killed when Tecumseh intervenes and chastises the other warriors for their “dishonorable” treatment of the American. Tecumseh wins over his brother Cheeseekau and with some resistance, the other warriors embrace Tecumseh's position -- they will no longer torture and kill prisoners in their fight to stop the encroachment of Americans onto their land. Simon Kenton, Eckert’s eponymous “frontiersman,” comes to respect Tecumseh because of this, and, at the end of the drama, when Americans kill Tecumseh during the Battle of the Thames, it is Kenton who purposely misidentifies Tecumseh’s body to protect it from mutilation, the ultimate dishonor inflicted upon the Indian dead, at hands of savage American warriors.

In Eckert’s telling, the nobility of men like Tecumseh and Kenton were no match for the more common land-hungry, racist, and violent American settlers and their well-armed, though frequently poorly trained soldiers. It was men like future U.S. president William Henry Harrison and future Ohio governor Thomas Worthington, who wrestled these lands and waters from the hands of Native Americans, and the tragedy of it all, of course, is that the characteristics so celebrated by Eckert, the very aspects of the drama that ensures the story of Tecumseh remains popular in the region, were not enough to ensure an indigenous victory in their efforts to block the western expansion of the United States.

In recent years, John Sugden's research into the life of Tecumseh has challenged Eckert's and earlier accounts of this eventful moment. Sugden returned to the original source of the story, an account of Tecumseh life by Stephen Ruddell, an American who had been taken prisoner and adopted by Tecumseh's family when he was a young boy. In Ruddell's telling of the tale, no date or specific location was given, except that Tecumseh was 15 years old at the time and it involved flat boats on the Ohio. It turns out that Benjamin Drake, Tecumseh's first biographer, had erroneously claimed, without any additional evidence, that the attack occurred above Maysville on the northern shores of the Ohio. Relying on newspaper accounts from the time and Tecumseh's approximate age, Sugden made the case that the attack occurred further down the Ohio, near the Mouth of the Great Miami in March of 1788.

Eckert's literary fabrication begs the question: Did Tecumseh ever visit Raven Rock? We may never know for sure, but, in all probability, he did, at some point, stand atop this "Indian lookout," but there is just no historical record to establish the fact.

At the time of his death in 2011, at the age of eighty, Eckert had published over forty books. He was a native of Buffalo, New York, and was raised near Chicago. Eckert attended the University of Dayton and Ohio State University and went onto became an Emmy Award-winning script writer for "Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom."

According to his own accounting, Eckert received some 1,100 rejection letters before he published his first book, "The Frontiersman: A Narrative" (1967). This book brought him everlasting fame and became the first volume in his “Winning of America” series, upon which he was still working at the time of his passing. When he last attended an opening night of his outdoor drama in the summer of 2010, he told the cast and crew that the legendary Tecumseh “was the embodiment of what a human being should be.”

Visitors to the Riverside Park should consider combining a walk along the Allan W. Eckert Trail with a hike up to the top of Raven Rock. Imagine the Ohio River bottoms here covered in Old Growth forest, with a large maple grove near the foot of Raven Rock. Picture a Shawnee village and an American frontier settlement being washed away by flood waters.

Please note, however, that a free permit from the Ohio Division of Natural Resources is needed to visit the Raven Rock Nature Preserve.

Sources:

Allan Eckert, The Frontiersmen: A Narrative (Ashland, Kentucky: The Jesse Stewart Foundation, 2007).

Allan W. Eckert, Tecumseh! A Play (New York: Little Brown & Company, 1974), 4.

Benjamin Drake, Life of Tecumseh and his Brother the Prophet with a historical sketch of the Shawanoe Indians (Cincinnati: H. M. Rulison, Queen City Publishing House, 1856), 68-69.

John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998), 48-52.

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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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Spock Memorial Dog Park was officially opened August 9th, 2019. The park was named after Scioto County Sheriff’s first K-9 dog Spock who was killed in the line of duty while pursuing a suspect with his handler, Alan Lewis. A memorial plaque at the park states, “On an early Tuesday morning, The Scioto County Sheriff’s Office K-9 Spock was shot and killed in the line of duty while in pursuit of an armed robber. End of Watch. February 15, 1994. May we honor Spock and all faithful K-9’s for their selfless service and sacrifice”.

In 2017, Shawnee State Sociology Professor Sean Dunne ran to represent the First Ward on Portsmouth City Council, and one part of his platform called for the development of the first dog park in Portsmouth. Others had previously advocated for creating a dog park in Portsmouth, including local businessman Ben Davis, and Community Development Director Tracy Schearer. Based upon those earlier attempts, it was clear that there was strong interest in having a dog park in the city. Working with students at Shawnee State University, Dunne circulated a petition amongst residents in the First Ward during his campaign asking the city to locate a dog park at an empty lot on Second Street adjacent to the city municipal building located on 728 Second Street.

The proposed site had long been associated with public education, having first served as the location of the Second Street Elementary School and then as Griffin Hall, the home of the Ohio University – Portsmouth Branch, which in time would become Shawnee State University. The successful petition campaign gathered signatures of many residents and helped demonstrate the demand for a dog park.

Following his election to council in November 2017, Portsmouth City Council was able to quickly move forward with plans for the park in 2018. This was made possible by the work of then County Engineer, and now City Engineer, Nathan Prosch, who provided a survey of the lot, as well as Tracy Shearer and Ben Davis, who created the design for the park. Following Shearer’s successful application for a Natureworks Grant through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and an additional grant from the Scioto Foundation, the project was able to secure a majority of the funding required.

Portsmouth City Council allocated the remaining funding and development began in 2019. Since its opening, the park has been used by a number of Portsmouth residents and visitors. The park has also hosted several events, including a Paws n Treats Halloween Event, Doggies and DORA Day, and Barks, Beers and BBQ.

Sources:

"Portsmouth’s first off-leash dog park could open this spring," Portsmouth Daily Times (28 January 2019).

"Off-leash dog park may formally open mid-July," Portsmouth Daily Times (2 July 2019).

"Portsmouth gets new dog park named after K9 who died protecting partner," WQRC - Chanel 12 (9 August 2019).

"Spock Memorial Park attracts large crowd for grand opening," Portsmouth Daily Times (11 August 2019).

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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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“The Kricker family’s long-term faith in the economic strength of Scioto County is a matter of historical record,” noted the Portsmouth Daily Times in May of 1978. Edmund J. Kricker, the seventy-nine year old chairman of the board and chief executive officer at First Federal Savings & Loan Association, had just kickstarted the first fund raising campaign for the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center. Clay Johnson, a founding board member of the Museum who has been credited with soliciting Kricker’s $100,000 challenge gift, told the Daily Times, “It is wonderful that the involvement of the Kricker name in this city block will be perpetuated forever as a result of this outstanding contribution to the Southern Ohio Museum.”

The Portsmouth city block that will forever be associated with the Kricker family is that upon which the museum now stands, on the north side of Gallia Street, just off the Esplanade. The story of the Museum and its home, the old Security Central Bank Building, illuminates the industrial and banking past of southern Ohio. The structure’s survival and its repurposing as the region’s premier museum of art, Native American artifacts, and historical photographs, points to the critical role of local philanthropy, such as that of an Edmund Kricker, in the preservation and exhibition of the art, culture, and history of Portsmouth and its environs.

Since its opening as a museum in 1979, it has hosted hundreds of temporary exhibits and sponsored thousands of hours of educational programing. Yet, it is the museum’s three main permanent collections that are its greatest strengths and which give the museum its historical significance. The Wertz Collection’s Art of the Ancients exhibit displays over 10,000 objects and transports visitors to the time of the Adena and Hopewell and even earlier to the Paleo Indian era, when the Ohio and Scioto Valleys were first inhabited by humans. Art historians, the general public, and students from nearby Shawnee State University regularly visit the museum to study the life and work of Clarence Carter, the most famous painter of Portsmouth origins. The museum’s collection of Carter paintings resonates with the city’s more recent past, the years of the Great Depression and the Flood of 1937, before deindustrialization transformed the city and region. The museum’s acquisition of the Carl Ackerman Historic Photograph Collection in December 1996 rounded out the museum’s holdings and marked the fulfillment of its multifaceted mission. The Ackerman Collection encompasses the photographic record of Portsmouth from the early 1860s through the 1980s, capturing in black and white, and color, the rise and fall of industry in this Ohio River city. The Ackerman Collection is a treasure trove of images that will long shape our vision of life in mid-twentieth century Portsmouth.

Carl Ackerman began his collection in 1948, when he acquired “four old postcards of Portsmouth street scenes.” By the time he and his wife Dorothy donated the collection to the museum, it had come to include early area maps, advertisements, theatrical programs, handbills, books, and newspapers. Beginning in 1952, Ackerman also began photographing the city, adding a couple thousand negatives and prints from his own camera work to his photographic records. In an interview from 1972, Ackerman discussed his work and lamented the fate of much of the city’s past: “Time and neglect, floods and fires, and this thing we call progress have destroyed much of our Portsmouth area history.” In hopes that “generations of tomorrow can see what Portsmouth looked like in the past,” Ackerman explained, he went door to door collecting old photos from area residents; he climbed to city roof tops and overlooks to photograph the city from a bird’s eye view. Ackerman added hundreds, if not thousands of his own photos to the collection, which now totals over 10,000 items.

While much may have been lost and is gone forever, thanks to Ackerman and the Southern Ohio Museum we are able to envision the past of Portsmouth. In the 1990s, when area residents combined their resources again in another major effort of public art and history — the creation of the city’s famous flood wall murals — the artist, Robert Dafford, worked with Carl Ackerman to bring many of his photos to life on the city’s downtown flood wall. Ackerman, who died before the completion of the murals, was painted into a panel, just next to the one immortalizing Clarence Carter.

Without a building to house the museum, however, there never would have been a repository for these priceless collections, nor would there have been a place for their further development and display. The story of the museum is thus inseparable from the story of the building it calls home.

The Southern Ohio Museum is located within a magnificent example of the beaux arts style of architecture, dating to 1918, when it was erected by George D. Selby — the city’s most famous shoe manufacturer. The building was originally designed and constructed specifically to house Selby’s Security Savings Bank & Trust Company. His likeness, along with his hero, Abraham Lincoln, can be found in friezes on the building’s ceilings. The Portsmouth Daily Times, which once offered its take on the building’s appearance, noted that "the exterior gives an impression of massive strength, while the interior is suggestive of quiet dignity combined with every facility devised by modern ingenuity for the efficient conduct of the business.”

In 1904, Selby had joined with others in the local shoe industry, including members of the Williams and Heer family, to organize the bank. Its first location was on Gallia Street, across from the museum’s current location, in a building that stands to this day. Its first floor, where the the old teller cage once stood, is now the bar of the popular Royal Lounge, or what is more commonly known simply as “The Royal.”

It was here, around the Esplanade that Portsmouth’s banking firms established their offices at the turn of the twentieth century, during the city’s Gilded Age. Portsmouth’s first banks had been located in the Boneyfiddle District, on Market Street, between Front and Second. In the years following the Civil War, the expansion of the city’s shoe, steel, firebrick, and other industries shifted the city’s central business district out of the Boneyfiddle and up Chillicothe Street to the intersection of Sixth and Gallia Streets. The “Esplanade,” formerly “Gallia Square,” emerged as the new town center. This was a time when capital was local, a time when control of industry and financial institutions was largely local, with local boards of directors. Some companies, like Selby Shoes began selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange, but most shares were regionally, if not locally traded and owned. It was a time of rapid industrial growth, large influxes of German immigrants, a time that saw the rise of commercial and investment banking, a time of incredible technological change.

Just after the stock market crash in 1929, George D. Selby’s Security Savings Bank merged with Central National Bank of Portsmouth, the first bank to establish its headquarters on the Esplanade. In June of 1893, James W. Newman, the former proprietor and editor of the Portsmouth Daily Times, became president of the newly formed Central Savings Bank, which opened its business in what was then the brand new Kricker Building, named for its owner and builder George E. Kricker — the father of museum benefactor Edmund Kricker. Newman’s bank presidency was followed by that of Levi D. York, the former owner of Portsmouth's Burgess Steel Mill. Eventually, after reorganizing under a federal charter in 1905, George E. Kricker became president of Central National Bank, and it would be Kricker who presided over the newly merged Security Central National Bank during the Great Depression.

George E. Kricker, it must be noted, was a second generation native of Portsmouth. His father, Mathias Kricker, had come to the city in 1840 and bought the northwest corner of Chillicothe and Gallia Streets (the land fronting the northern side of the Esplanade), the spot upon which now stands the 5/3 Bank Building. And, so, here is where the story’s thread comes back around to Security Central Bank and creation of the Southern Ohio Museum.

Back in 1974, Harry Kuhner, the president of Security Central National Bank decided to move out of Selby’s and Kricker’s old beaux arts building and into a modern, remodeled former department store, the old Montgomery Ward building. Like with so many other Ohio Valley downtowns in the 1970s, deindustrialization had begun to take its toll. Kuhner and the board of Security Central hoped that the redevelopment of the Montgomery Ward building would help spark the redevelopment of the Esplanade and, in turn, help boost Portsmouth’s downtown business district.

Thus, if one is looking for original causes, if one is telling an origins story, one could argue the closure of Portsmouth’s Montgomery Ward department store in 1971 set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the creation of the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center in 1977. It was then that Clay Johnson arranged for Edmund J. Kricker to make the Museum’s most important charitable donation. His promise to "donate one dollar for every two dollars raised, up to $100,000" ensured the success of the initial capital campaign, which brought in some $300,000. With funding now secured, the museum’s board and directors could then remodel the interior of George Selby’s and George Kricker’s old bank building and begin acquiring, developing, and displaying top quality temporary exhibitions, alongside the museum’s growing permanent collections.

But how was it that the museum came to make its home in the old Security Central Bank Building? The Wertz, Carter, and Ackerman Collections undoubtedly draw the most attention and interest of scholars and the general public, but a good case can be made that one of the museum’s smaller and lessor known collections — the Russell Leiter Collection — deserves recognition for its critical role in the museum’s origins. Dr. Russell Leiter, a native of California, served as Chief Psychologist at the Portsmouth Receiving Hospital from 1955 to 1964 and taught at the local branch campus of Ohio University, the predecessor of today’s Shawnee State University. Leiter’s obscurity in Portsmouth history is striking as he continues to be well-known in psychological studies as the developer of the Leiter International Performance Scale, a non-verbal method for testing intelligence. Dr. Leiter’s decision to place his estate (which included a small collection of relatively rare silverware) in a trust to be managed by Security Central unexpectedly helped trigger the creation of the Southern Ohio Museum.

“Dr. Leiter had reached an advanced age,” writes Clay Johnson. “He had no natural heirs, no spouse, children, or grandchildren. He was not a wealthy person, but he had accumulated property which was meaningful to him and felt some intangible obligation to dispose of that property prudently.” When Leiter died in November 1976, his estate was in the hands of Dale Sielaff, the new trust officer at Security Central. Sielaff had been handed a nut to crack and he wisely sought the advice of Sara Johnson, Clay’s wife, who had, among other achievements, “founded a volunteer program to teach art to public school students.”

Dr. Leiter’s last will and testament, it turned out, had stipulated: “My trustee may, in its sole and unqualified discretion, make an outright gift of all or any part of the foregoing items to the Columbus Academy of Fine Arts, or to a Portsmouth or Scioto County gallery, should one be established and which could guard, protect and provide the public an opportunity to appreciate such items, on a permanent basis.” Sielaff had determined that there was actually no such institution as the “Columbus Academy of Fine Arts” and he wondered, as there was then no gallery or museum per se in Portsmouth, whether the Leiter Collection might be donated to a new entity, “should one be established.” Thus the fates and muses intervened when Central Security donated their now vacant property to the city for use by the Southern Ohio Museum.

Thanks to the founding board members of the museum, whose vision was only matched by the civic spirit of Edmund Kricker, and those who met his challenge, the Russell Leiter Collection found a permanent home, as intended, and Portsmouth and the residents of the region, as well as future generations, benefited greatly from the museum’s establishment.

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Explore the history of the sole-surviving remnant of Portsmouth, Ohio's once mighty shoe industry, Mitchellace, Inc. This "narrow fabrics" company emerged from the Panic and Great Recession of 2008 with new ownership and a new name - Sole Choice, Inc., marketing itself as "the SOLE choice for your shoe care and foot care needs."

Sole Choice now occupies what was originally the Excelsior Shoe Factory and its history is intimately tied to that of Sole Choice. Excelsior began in 1889 under the visionary leadership of Portsmouth native, John E. Williams, who had worked as a laster in the Drew-Selby Shoe Company from 1882 until 1888. In May 1914, Excelsior moved into their newly built factory on Murray Street, where they specialized in the manufacture of men’s and boy’s shoes, particularly their popular line of “Boy Scout” boots. At the time, the factory employed more than one-thousand workers. Today, the Excelsior origins of the factory can be seen emblazoned in the brick smoke stack of the facility's original dedicated power station.

In the 1922, Forest L. Williams, Sr. and his brothers, A. Graves Williams and Paul Grant Williams - three nephews of John Edwards Williams, the founder of Excelsior - reorganized the company, which would later be known as Williams Manufacturing, Inc. During the Depression, Williams’ business would actually grow, as they produced cheap shoes for children and adults. Over the 1930s and 40s, the company saw substantial growth, while Selby Shoes, the city's other large (and older) shoe manufacturer, went into decline. Selby's management found their high end lines of women shoes losing marketshare, and the once thriving company fell victim to a hostile takeover in 1957. While the exodus of Drew Shoes in 1937, following that year's devastating flood, marks the start of the industry's decline, the closure of Selby, in retrospect, now clearly heralded doom for the area shoe workers. Selby's machines were unbolted and relocated, the former factory used as a warehouse before its demolition in the early 1990s.

But, back in 1950, at what could be argued was the height of the city's shoe industry, 16% of the Portsmouth work force was in shoes – 1,900 at Selby and 2,000 at Williams. By the mid-1970s, all that remained was the shoelace company that the Selbys and Williams had first set up in 1902 as Mitchell Manufacturing.

This company's roots can be traced back to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where A. E. Hume, one of Selby's traveling salesmen, made a stop at a retail store owned by Charles Mitchell. As it turned out, Mitchell had recently designed and installed a dispensing machine for dispensing shoe-laces. "Put a nickel in, pull a nob, and a shoe lace fell out," is how Kerry Keating, the former company president, once explained its operation. Struck by the business potential, the Hume convinced Charlie Mitchell to visit Portsmouth and discuss his invention with George Selby, the leading manufacturer of shoes in the city.

Thanks to Selby, an invitation to meet with Mitchell was also extended to John E. Williams and W. G. Williams of Excelsior. These four men struck a deal and formed a new entity, the Mitchell Manufacturing Company. Mitchell then set up a factory to produce shoelace dispensing machines, which the company planned to stock with their own manufactured shoe laces. The laces were first bought by Excelsior and Selby, and other local factories, and were later marketed and sold to other shoe makers around the nation. In 1912, Mitchell moved their operations

In 1921, Charles Mitchell retired from the company and his younger brother D. D., or "Dave," Mitchell became superintendent of the factory, while Mark W. Selby, George Selby’s son, became its president. The company was reorganized in the depths of the Great Depression and rechristened Mitchellace, Inc. In the 1950s, Mitchellace began selling laces on a large scale to the retail market, or what is known as the self-service trade. This shift in operations away from the shoe factory business coincided with the overall decline in the American shoe industry, enabling Mitchellace to grow at a time when the rest of Portsmouth's shoe makers went under.

The key to Mitchellace's success in the 60s and 70s was their development of the blister pack for marketing laces in the mass retail shoe and variety store markets. Sylvan Orloff of Des Moines, Iowa, is credited with the concept of putting one-to-three pairs of laces into a blister pack for sale and distribution. In 1959, Orloff pitched the concept to D. D. Mitchell and he embraced it, forming a partnership with Orloff's Tye-Rite, Inc. Orloff and Mitchell then tasked Neville Trimble, a longtime machinist at Mitchellace to put the concept into practice. It was Trimble who designed and built the original blister shoelace packing machines. Mitchellace shoestrings would then be marketed under the brand name, "Tye-Rite Laces." D. D. Mitchell would run the business until his death in 1962, when the presidency passed to Kerry Keating, the twenty-six year old husband of D. D. Mitchell's grand-daughter, Vicky.

Keating formed a partnership with Orloff and by 1970, they had acquired control of the company through Keating's purchase of the Selby and Williams families' stock, whose issuing dated back to the earliest days of the company. Keating succeeded in buying back all but six shares, which were kept for sentimental purposes by two descendants of the Williams.

In the words of Dennis Breen, who wrote a piece on the company in 1999, "Under Keatings management, Tye-Rite and Mitchellace went on a buying spree, purchasing competitors in Los Angeles and Tarpon Springs, Fla., then moving their equipment and manufacturing capacity to Portsmouth."

In 1976, Williams shut down and the last Portsmouth shoe factory fell silent. Two years later, Kerry Keating moved Mitchellace from its 8th Street factory north one block, thus bringing life back to the old floors of the Excelsior and Williams factory. A "booming national market in jogging and running shoes" in the late 1970s and early 1980s brought on "a corresponding surge in the demand for laces." Yet competition for market share was stiff, as the factory trade for laces in the United States plummeted in 1980.

Orloff was fond of telling people, "We call them laces and say our competitors make shoestrings." Call them what you will, product demand was all that really mattered. "About a year after the company moved to the larger facility," noted Breen, "the bottom nearly dropped out from under Mitchellace. Shoe companies throughout the United States rapidly began moving production overseas, mainly to developing East Asian countries with cheaper labor. The industry's sudden shift caused wild fluctuations in shoelace sales throughout the 80s. 'Lets put it this way,' Keating says, '85 percent of all shoes sold in the United States are imported, a reversal of the way it used to be.' Mitchellace lost 700 to 800 customers (U.S. shoe manufacturers) in the process."

"In the early Eighties, that's when it all changed. People started sourcing overseas - Far East," explained Keating. "There was a big adjustment for us because our customer-base was eroding. .... The Chinese came into the picture. They just take something, duplicate it for you, and ship you the product at their cheap prices." According to Keating, "It snowballed in the 80s. Certain people became very adept in going over there, making the contacts, importing the shoes and American shoe manufacturers began dropping off like flies because they weren't competitive."

Keating bought out Sylvan Orloff in 1985 and took full ownership of Mitchellace. In 1991, he began to diversify its lines, introducing Shine Rite Shoe Polish and other shoe care products. Then, in 1997, Mitchellace acquired property in Honduras, where the company built a 37,000 square foot shoelace factory at Zip Bufalo, an Export Processing Zone (EPZ), or free trade industrial park. Located in Villanueva, Zip Bufalo markets itself and nearby Port Cortes as "the main gateway to the Atlantic side of Central America." Its significance, their website points out, shown by the "permanent US Customs office" that has operated there "since the beginning of 2006."

Eventually, Mitchellace would transfer most of their production to Honduras, with the Portsmouth factory focusing on packaging a portion of their Zip Bufalo-made laces. Thus, in one of those odd twists of modern international trade, the Honduran factory began shipping tipped and paired laces back to Murray Street, in Portsmouth, Ohio, where Neville Trimble's machines blister-packed the shoestrings for sale in what remained of Mitchellace's US market.

In further illustration of the globalization of the shoe industry, Mitchellace also began shipping laces manufactured at Zip Bufalo to China, where old American shoe companies, like Field & Flint of Brockton, Massachusetts (doing business as FootJoy) had outsourced their production. Before the economic crisis of 2008, FootJoy golf shoes, with Honduran-made Mitchellace shoestrings, were shipped across the Pacific and sold into the US market.

Mitchellace, like FootJoy, was a survivor. These two companies, whose origins can be traced back to the earliest days of America's shoe industry, help tell the tale of deindustrialization. Their recent international business dealings in Honduras and China illustrates the perfect storm of the 1970s and 80s that wiped out American shoe manufacturing. Cheaper labor and production costs in Central America and Asia, fast and inexpensive shipping of product to ports on the Pacific, Gulf, and Atlantic coasts of North America, combined with low tariff barriers and, perhaps, the occasional bad management decision to wipe out thousands of good paying jobs in towns like Portsmouth.

The depiction of the city's shoe industry in the murals of Robert Dafford and Clarence Carter capture the local factories at their zenith, when thousands of shoes and millions of shoelaces were manufactured monthly for shipment across the United States and abroad. Today, like a sun dial, the old Excelsior brick smokestack casts its shadow on a largely empty Sole Choice factory building, marking the time of day and the decline of American manufacturing.

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In the 1930s, Snake Hollow in Shawnee Forest became the location of a wildlife and forestry research station, which received its funding through state and federal conservation programs. One of the station's major cooperative projects involved the Ohio Division of Conservation, the Ohio State University, the American Wildlife Institute and the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey.

Beginning in June 1935, Floyd B. Chapman lived here and carried out research on the wildlife resources of the forest, documenting the work of the Southern Ohio Wildlife Sanctuary and Demonstration Project, which benefited from the assistance of the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps. It was from this location that the first published studies of the flora and fauna of Shawnee Forest were conducted. Today, only the poured concrete foundation and ruins of two small stone bridge abutments remain to mark its location at the mouth of Snake Hollow on Forest Road 6. The forest has reclaimed the site and its significance has been lost to time.

On maps and in local lore, the station has gone by various names. These days, if anyone even knows of its existence, its referred to as the Old Forest Experiment Station. In 1939, the Ohio Division of Forestry published the first map of the area that marked its location, labeling it as the "Central States Forest Experiment Station Cabin." The "Central States" part of its official name points to the cabin's origins in an earlier Federal forest conservation program.

Under the McSweeny-McNary Act of 1928, Congress authorized and financed a national program of forest experiment stations. The stations were chartered "to conduct silvicultural, forest fire, dendrological, and other experiments and investigations, independently or in cooperation with other branches of the Federal Government, and with States, universities, colleges, county and municipal agencies, associations, and individuals, to determine the best methods for the growing, management, and protection of timber crops on forest lands and farm woodlots." Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, the Central States' Forest Experiment Station helped fund and staff the research facility in Snake Hollow, where the Ohio Division of Forestry had set aside 125-acres for Station use.

Visit the ruins of the Forest Experiment Station on Forest Road 6 and hike the beautiful Snake Hollow. Contemplate the history of state wildlife and forestry programs, as well as the conservation programs of the Federal government, which played a key part in saving the Shawnee Forest.

Source:

William H. Alexander, "Report of the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Ohio Academy of Science," Ohio Journal of Science Vol. 39, no. 4 (July 1939): 187-212.

Floyd Barton Chapman, "The Development and Utilization of the Wildlife Resources of Unglaciated Ohio," Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1938.

Robert William Merz, "A History of the Central States Forest Experiment Station, 1927-1965," North Central Forest Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1981.

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WPAY pioneered Portsmouth radio, beginning its broadcasts on April 15th, 1933. By the early 1950s the station’s offices and studios were to be found on the north side of Gallia Street, next door to the Selby Shoe factory outlet store. The old Selby factory building, which long stood behind these store fronts, is now long gone, torn down in 1999, but the building that once housed WPAY and the Selby Shoe store still stands, just east of Kirby’s flower shop.

Pictured here is the rear of a 1941 Plymouth, which has been turned into a mobile billboard for the station. WPAY broadcast first on 1400 AM and then beginning in June of 1948 on 104.1 FM. Local talent dominated the programing, with Zeke Mullin’s morning show developing a strong following among the listening area’s dairy cows. Once, when management decided to take Mullins off the FM stream and relegate him to the original AM stream, the station received “hundreds of letters from dairy farmers complaining that there cows stop giving milk with the new guy and they wanted Zeke back on.” The protest worked and Mullins continued his broadcasting career on the FM. After Selby closed in 1957 and the larger American shoe industry collapsed in the wake of new free trade laws and cheap foreign competition, the old factory building went the way of the once famed Selby Arch Preserver shoe. Zeke Mullins would then pen and perform one of his most memorable songs.

Selby Shoe, Selby Shoe

A hundred years, tall and true

When times got hard and jobs were few,

lucky ones were working at Selby Shoe

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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 other states to the south. As a major intermodal transportation hub, connected by river, canal, turnpike, and eventually railroads, Portsmouth developed a significant black population as early as the 1820s, one that attracted runaways and would facilitate the transportation of freedom seekers on what became known as the Underground Railroad. Advertisers had good reason to think their runaways might be spotted in the city.  

Nelson W. Evans was the first local historian to examine Portsmouth's history of runaway advertisements. In an essay entitled, "Relics of Barbarism," published in 1902, Evans wrote that "fugitive slave notices ... were usually headed 'Runaway Slaves,' and had a rough cut of a Negro, with a stick across his shoulder and a bundle at the end of the stick, in the act of running. The bloodhounds and the human dogs, who made a business of hunting the poor creatures, were not inserted in the picture."

As Evans made clear, much of the horrors of slavery were left out of "the picture," but the text of these advertisements are now valued for the important details provided of lives lived by courageous individuals who fled their oppression, seeking freedom in Ohio and beyond. Often they are the only historical records we have today that provide any biographical detail of the men, women, and children who escaped on the Underground Railroad.

In his research, Evans identified twelve examples of these "odious advertisements," which dated from 1820 up to 1855. He found that "the first notice of a runaway slave appeared in the Scioto Telegraph, of April 4, 1820. Thomas B. King advertised a runaway Negro from his place four miles above Portsmouth. The slave's name was Gabriel, and he was twenty-one years of age. A reward of $50 was offered." And, the last notice appeared on January 2, 1855, offering "one hundred dollars reward for George, property of Mrs. Hannah Parker. He was twenty years of age and five feet seven inches high."

Evans' research missed an unknown number of advertisements, including one from January 1854, which involved a nineteen-year-old woman named Harriet, whose notice in the Portsmouth Daily Evening Tribune led to a long-forgotten editorial controversy involving the morality of such advertisements and the operations of the Underground Railroad.

Within a week of Harriet's disappearance, her enslaver, Hannah Warner of Greenup County, Kentucky, visited Portsmouth and placed an advertisement for her “recovery” in the columns of the Tribune. At the time, the paper was printed at the Tribune's "Publishing Office On Front Street, over S. D. Bishop's Store.” Edited by Albert McFarland, the Tribune was known for its Whig Party politics in the 1840s and 50s and would back Lincoln and the Republican Party in the 1860s.

Soon after the advertisement's publication on January 10, 1854, Harriet’s notice caught the eye of George M. Swan, the editor of a Free Soil Party newspaper in Columbus, Ohio. “We hope Mr. McFarland gets well paid for services scrupulous men would refuse to perform,” declared Swan’s Elevator.