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Rev. Samuel Crothers & the Abolition Society of Paint Valley
Coming soon! Learn about the founding of the Abolition Society of Paint Valley, one of Ohio's and the nations earliest abolition societies. In 1833, Rev. Samuel Crothers and the Greenfield…
Rev. James Gilliland & Red Oak Presbyterian Church
Coming soon! The story of Red Oak Presbyterian Church and the Rev. James Gilliland, who helped establish the Underground Railroad in southern Ohio. Gilliland moved to southern Ohio when church…
Rev. Edward Weed & the Piketon Anti-Abolition Resolutions: Piketon Courthouse Scene of Anti-Abolition Meeting in 1836
The Piketon Anti-Abolition Resolutions originated in a public meeting held on the 29th of July, 1836, not far from the banks of the Scioto River, at the original courthouse of Pike County, Ohio, in…
Raven Rock Nature Preserve
With its dramatic overlook, Raven Rock has long been an attraction for area residents and visitors. Its history is legendary, with some stories placing, at various moments in time, Daniel Boone and…
Portsmouth’s Third Synagogue and Contemporary Jewish Community
By 1974, Portsmouth’s Jewish community numbered no more than 120 people. The existing syngaogue at Eighth and Gay grew increasingly expensive to maintain and its size no longer fit the needs of the…
Portsmouth’s Basham Hill Reservoir: An Amazing (and Nearly Tragic) History
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the City of Portsmouth grew so to did its demand for clean and reliable drinking water. Constructed in 1913, the little-known Basham Hill…
Portsmouth's Second Synagogue and Jewish Life in the Mid-twentieth Century
Following the construction of Portsmouth's first synagogue, Portsmouth's Jewish population expanded further in the early 20th century. The Jewish community created a new organization called the B'nai…
Portsmouth's First Presbyterian Church and the Antislavery Movement in Southern Ohio
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the congregation now known as First Presbyterian of Portsmouth, Ohio, was a nexus of the antislavery movement in southern Ohio and it’s members, elders, and…
Portsmouth's Early Jewish Community and First Place of Worship
Beneh Abraham, located at the corner of Second and Union Street, is among Ohio's oldest organized Jewish congregations. Beneh Abraham was incorporated in 1858 at a time when the total Jewish…
Portsmouth's African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Underground Railroad
Portsmouth's African Methodist Episcopal Church (Allen Chapel - AME) is the city's oldest Black religious society. In March 1837, "Father Charleston" organizd the church in the "Old Wheeler Academy,"…
Portsmouth NAACP Protests Jim Crow at the Westland Theater: Screening of Joe Louis's “The Spirit of Youth” Sparks Controversy in 1938
In February 1938, Joe Louis was just starting his reign as heavy-weight champion of the world, having won the title the previous June when he knocked out James J. Braddock. Portsmouth, Ohio, like the…
Pond Lick Lake and CCC Camp Shawnee No. 1
The first of seven Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps to call Shawnee Forest home, CCC Camp Shawnee No. 1 was located on Pond Lick Run, a tributary of Turkey Creek. The enrollees who called this…
Picnic Point and Auto-tourism in Ohio's Little Smokies
With a spectacular view of the Ohio River, the hills of Kentucky, and the City of Portsmouth, Picnic Point in the Shawnee State Forest offers visitors a memorable experience. While there are a number…
Peerless Portsmouth and Detroit, the City of Champions: How the Portsmouth Spartans Helped the Detroit Lions Win the 1935 NFL Championship
The Portsmouth Spartans enhanced their rich NFL history when they moved to Detroit in 1934, became the Detroit Lions and won the 1935 NFL Championship. That Lions team was part of an amazing more than…
One Hundred Years of Conservation in Shawnee State Park: Gov. Harry L. Davis and the Dedication of Ohio’s Theodore Roosevelt Preserve
The Theodore Roosevelt Preserve was dedicated at 3pm on December 5th, 1922, by Governor Harry L. Davis. It began with 20,000 acres as a "game and reforestation preserve." At the time of its…
Ohio Stove Company Workers (30 January 1942)
The foundry workers pictured here in January of 1942 worked for the Ohio Stove Company, which was first organized in 1872. Perhaps the oldest manufacturer still operating in Portsmouth, they…
Nurses at Portsmouth General Hospital (December 1937)
Portsmouth has long been a center for medical care, beginning with the city’s first professionally trained physician, Dr. Thomas Waller, who also served as President of the first City Council in 1815.…
NFL Spartans Business Office in the Royal Savings & Loan Building: Harry N. Snyder and the Business of Pro Football in Portsmouth, Ohio
Room 25 on the second floor of the Royal Savings & Loan Company Building on Gallia Street was once the location of the business office of the NFL Spartans.
Nathaniel Massie and Indentured Servitude at Buckeye Station, Adams County, Ohio
Buckeye Station, the one-time home of Nathaniel Massie and his brother-in-law, Charles Willing Byrd, lays in ruins, marked now by a cell phone tower on what was once known as Hurricane Hill. An…
Mound Park and the Preservation of the Portsmouth Earthworks
Portsmouth's Mound Park lays claim to the lone remnant of the central complex of the Portsmouth Earthworks that once spread across the Ohio River over the modern communities of Portsmouth, Ohio and…
Mitchell-Morrison Cemetery at Moore's Run: A Forgotten Pioneer Era Cemetery in the Shawnee State Forest
Where Moore's Run exits the river hills of Shawnee State Forest, just off modern-day US Highway 52, near the "100 Mile House," one finds a particularly significant pioneer era graveyard, which dates…
McKendree Chapel & the Grave of Jonas "Am" Cooper
At the McKendree Methodist Chapel, near the mouth of Upper Twin Creek, one finds the graves of key players in the Shawnee Wilderness Area's history of moonshine and murder.
Of particular note is…
Masonic Temple at Sixth & Chillicothe Streets
Taken from atop the Martings Building on Chillicothe Street, this photo captures the majesty of the Masonic Temple, which is offset by the plain red brick facade of the then new Montgomery Ward…
Major John Belli and the First American Settlement on Turkey Creek
In the summer of 1787, John O'Bannon surveyed a one-thousand acre parcel at the Mouth of Turkey Creek in what would become Scioto County, Ohio. O'Bannon selected these lands for Larkin Smith, a…
Lower Shawnee Town and Céloron's Expedition of 1749
Beginning in the late 1730s, the Shawnee Indians established one of their principal villages here. Some sixty years earlier, in the 1670s and 80s, the Shawnee had been expelled from the Scioto and…
Lookout Trail and Rocky Hollow: In the Footsteps of Dr. E. Lucy Braun
Hike or ride the Mackletree Bridle Trail, which runs up Rocky Hollow and contemplate the life's work of Dr. E. Lucy Braun, the pioneering female naturalist who first comprehended the significance of…
Logan's Elm & Commemorating Dunmore's War
At the Logan Elm State Memorial, near Circleville, in Pickaway County, Ohio, visitors can read the frontier history of the Scioto Valley written in bronze and stone. First conceived in the fall of…
Kennedy & Ashton's Feed Store: The Politics of Slavery and Abolition in Southern Ohio
Since its construction in the early 1850s, what was originally known as Milton Kennedy's Feed Store and City Hall building has become arguably the city's most historic structure, having played a…
Julia Marlowe and Madame Brough's Saloon on Front Street: The Boneyfiddle Childhood of a World-Famous Actress and Women's Voting Rights Activist
In December 1888, when Julia Marlowe's star was first rising in the national firmament, the Portsmouth Daily Times published an account of Marlowe's scandalous childhood in the Boneyfiddle District of…
John J. Minor's Barbershop and "New Light" on the Underground Railroad: Recovering the History of Portsmouth's Underground Railroad
Born in 1828 in Albemarle County, Virginia, John James Minor settled in Portsmouth, Ohio in the mid-1830s, not long after the city had expelled many of its Black residents during its infamous “Black…