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Horsehead Bottom & the Origins of Dunmore's War: Major Frontier War Triggered by Looting of “Thirty Horse Loads of Skins" and Killing of Shawnee Indians
Explore the obscure and forgotten origins of Dunmore's War of 1774, which began with an attack on a long-forgotten Shawnee Indian Village known as Horsehead Bottom, located just north of modern-day…
How Pee Pee Creek Got Its Name: Peter Patrick, Squatter Rights, & the First Attempted American Settlement in the Scioto Valley
Modern-day Lake White is located near the old confluence of Pee Pee Creek and the Scioto River. In the 1930s when the waters of Pee Pee were dammed by the state of Ohio and the WPA, its flow was…
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…
General Jacob H. Smith & the Philippine War’s Samar Campaign: American Imperialism at the Washington Hotel
“A monster public reception followed by a complimentary banquet was last night tendered to Gen. Jacob H. Smith, by local Grand Army men and citizens. The reception was from 8 to 9 o’clock, held in the…
Gradual Emancipation & Colonization: Antislavery Moderates in Southern Ohio: The Chillicothe Colonization Society Meets at St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The operators and station masters of the Underground Railroad in southern Ohio may have all opposed slavery and supported its abolition, but the antislavery movement was not united as it regarded the…
Innovation at the Sanford, Varner & Co. Building
The Sanford, Varner & Co. factory building at the southwestern corner of Third and Chillicothe streets has its origins in America's Gilded Age, when clothing manufacturing took place in small cities…
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…
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…
Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
Portsmouth, Ohio’s only city-owned, public pool was built to memorialize the drowning death of fourteen-year-old resident Eugene McKinley, the son of George and Ruth McKinley, who lived at 1212-E…
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…
The Iron Man Game of 1932
: The NFL Spartans Defeat the Green Bay Packers
in the Greatest Football Game in Portsmouth Sports History
On Sunday, 4 December 1932, the reigning NFL champion Green Bay Packers faced off the Portsmouth Spartans in what has come to be popularly known as the Iron Man Game. Played in Portsmouth’s Universal…
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,"…
Booker T. Washington School on Eleventh Street: Public Education and Racial Segregation in Portsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth City Schools opened their first segregated facility for African American students in 1859, marking the first time that black residents were able to receive a public education. The school…
Dr. James F. Scott, the First Elected Black County Coroner in the United States
James Forrest Scott was born in Porter, Ohio located in Gallia County, on 29 July 1903. He graduated from Bidwell Porter High School in 1921. Despite being the only black member of his class, he was…
Jim Thorpe and the Shoe-Steels: Portsmouth, Ohio's First Professional Football Team
In Portsmouth, Ohio, the birth of professional football involved one of America’s greatest athletes of all time — Jim Thorpe — and one of the city’s most forgotten civic leaders — Jack Creasy. Jim…
B. Glockner on Market Street: The Hardware Store Origins of an Automobile Empire
The B. Glockner Building at 206 Market Street illustrates the contribution of German immigrants to the nineteenth century development of Portsmouth, Ohio. And the building's restoration -- following a…
How the Boneyfiddle Got Its Name: Historic Preservation and Economic Redevelopment in a “Land of Good Faith”
In the spring of 1993, Portsmouth Murals Inc, launched plans for their first mural, a birds-eye-view of Portsmouth in 1903. Imogene Howland chaired the Art Committee, which included Carl Ackerman,…
The Eclipse Livery and T.M. Lynn's "Dan Rice"
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…
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…
Thomas Gaylord and the Beginning of Portsmouth's Iron Industry
Thomas Gould Gaylord provided the capital and entrepreneurial drive to establish Portsmouth as a major center for iron manufacturing, securing his pig iron from the numerous charcoal furnaces in what…
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…
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…
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…
Tremper Mound and Earthworks
Of the many peoples inhabiting the Great Eastern Forest in what is now the United States, the Hopewell Culture, spanning 50 BCE to 400 CE was one of the most artistic and geographically influential.…
James M. Ashley and the Underground Railroad in Friendship, Ohio
In 1841, a seventeen-year-old James M. Ashley conducted a group of seven African American freedom seekers from Greenup County, Kentucky, down the Ohio River, past Portsmouth, Ohio, to the West Side of…
Integrating Portsmouth, Ohio’s Dreamland Pool: Non-violent Direct Action at the Terrace Club
By the summer of 1964, the Civil Right’s Movement had picked up momentum and direct actions aimed at integrating white-only public accommodations and places of amusement, such as swimming pools, had…
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…
Excavation and Destruction of the Waller-Heinisch Mound
Portsmouth High School (PHS) is built upon the location of what was first known as Waller Mound, and later became known as the Heinisch Mound, the earthen structure taking its name from the land's…
Union Mills and Lock 50 of the Ohio & Erie Canal
Ideally located, where the Ohio and Eric Canal turned to make its final descent across the Scioto River bottoms to its terminus at Portsmouth, Union Mills was developed to take advantage of the large…
Runaway Slave Advertisements in Portsmouth, Ohio: Recovering the Story of Harriet's Escape on the Underground Railroad
As a river town, bordering the slave state of Kentucky, the newspapers of Portsmouth, Ohio, would occasionally publish runaway slave advertisements, paid for by slaveowners in Kentucky, Virginia, and…