Hidden away in plain sight, like the operations of the Underground Railroad itself, one finds Robert Dafford's mural honoring the heroic men and women who fled their enslavement in the southern…

A long-overlooked Kentucky lawsuit, known as McClain v. Esham, dating to 1856, provides important insight into the Ohio River operations of what might best be described as an Underground Steamboat. In…

On Friday, January 21st, 1831, the following notice appeared in the city’s paper: “The citizens of Portsmouth are adopting measures to free the town of its colored population. We saw a paper,…

In September 1904, Portsmouth, Ohio's Wurster Bros. Drug Store on Chillicothe Street made headlines in the New York Times when they refused to serve soda water to Bishop W. B. Derrick, a visiting…

The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 marked the culmination of a decades long struggle to end slavery and establish a new national republic that guaranteed equal rights to all its…

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…

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…

In 1927, George Remus, known as the "King of the Bootleggers," spent the last month of his three-year prison term, in the newly built Scioto County Courthouse Jail, which at the time was located on…

Portsmouth, Ohio, is renowned as a football town, a community with a deep and abiding love of the sport - a place where both team and stadium history intertwine with the early years of professional…

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.

The drive to build a sports stadium in Portsmouth, Ohio, was first launched in 1925, when the city's civic clubs all backed a city-wide referendum to construct a city-owned recreational center, which…

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…

Upon entering the "Art of the Ancients" exhibition an etched glass panel orients visitors to the prehistory of the Adena and Hopewell peoples who built the mounds, rock cairns, parallel embankments,…

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…

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…

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…

The Hebrew Section of Greenlawn Cemetery in Portsmouth, Ohio, was established in the early 1850s by members of the Portsmouth Hebrew Benevolent Society and its grounds have served as the final resting…