Explore two-hundred years of history in Portsmouth’s Boneyfiddle District, where the community’s oldest churches, residences, retail stores, and factories were located in the 19th Century. See the results of a fifty-year effort at historic preservation and economic redevelopment and visit sites connected to the beginnings of the city’s iron and steel industry, the Underground Railroad (UGRR), the abolition of slavery, innovative businessmen and women in the Gilded Age, and a successful NAACP protest against segregated movie screenings during the Great Depression. Complete the tour in person or virtually using the Scioto Historical mobile app and website.

Begin at the foot of Market Street, in front of Robert Dafford’s flood wall mural that captures a bird’s-eye-view of the Boneyfiddle in 1903, when commerce and manufacturing were booming in the “Peerless City.” Learn about the origins of the neighborhood’s memorable name, “the Boneyfiddle,” and how Carl Ackerman’s photo collection shaped Dafford’s vision of the city.

Travel back in time to the steamboat and canal days when Portsmouth newspapers published runaway slave advertisements and freedom seekers caught rides on the city’s Underground Railroad. Visit First Presbyterian Church, whose membership and ministerial leadership included the full spectrum of antislavery thought and action. Learn about John J. Minor’s barbershop, where a black barber with a white clientele served as ticket agent and conductor, helping freedom seekers arrange passage to the next station. Imagine Portsmouth’s riverfront in the 1850s, when Capt. William McClain operated an Underground Steamboat, delivering runaways to the Market Street Landing. Gain “new light” on Portsmouth’s most prominent abolitionists and consider the careers of Milton Kennedy, James Ashley, and Wells Hutchins, three Portsmouth residents who played critical roles in the final abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment.

Learn about Boneyfiddle’s history of business innovation and discover the influence of German immigrants on Portsmouth’s economic development. Visit the location of B. Glockner Hardware on Market Street, which (thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of Bernard and Magdalene Glockner and their descendants) developed into “the oldest continuously owned and operated” Chevrolet franchise in the nation. Explore the history of the Sanford, Varner & Co. Building, which was originally designed as a clothing factory, with a ground floor retail storefront, and which has been recently reborn as Shawnee State University’s Kricker Innovation Hub.