Making their Mark: Local Ohio Historical Markers

By Mary Casey-Sturk

We’ve all driven by historical markers on our journeys, be it on a road trip or just a trip home,    perhaps you’ve even stopped to read one or two. Here, we’ll examine several in our community and share a bit more.

The Ohio History Connection administers the Ohio Historical Markers program which is meant to commemorate, identify, and honor important people, places, things or events that contribute to the history of Ohio.  Conceived in 1953, the first marker was placed in 1957 in Akron. Currently, there are over 1,700 numbered markers across the state with around 25 added annually.

Along Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills, you will find two Ohio Historical Markers. One is in front of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the other in front of an auto dealership (Cincinnati Cadillac). While the dealership has been serving the community for a long time, this Marker celebrates the Lane Seminary which was once on this property.

Marker #29-31 honors Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), most famously the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  In 1832, Stowe moved to Cincinnati with her father, step-mother and other siblings when her father, the minister Lyman Beecher, accepted a job. Stowe lived in Cincinnati for 18 years and it was in Cincinnati that Stowe met her husband, Calvin, started her family and her writing career.

Executive Director of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Christina Hartlieb, shares more about Stowe’s time in Cincinnati, “Harriet Beecher Stowe actually wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin after the Stowe family moved to Maine.  Harriet was a white woman who grew up in New England.  And yet she wrote the most important antislavery book – how?  Her book was based on the people she met and the experiences that she had while living in Cincinnati – a border city – for 18 years.  It’s really a matter of timing.  She had to live in Cincinnati in order to be able to write the story and she had to move away from this volatile area along the Ohio River to safely write what she had learned.” 

Today, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic house museum open for tours. The Stowe House also has a bookstore and hosts a wide range of programs annually focusing on the Power of Voice, a nod to Harriet using her Power of Voice for positive social change.

Once a series of structures that were the Lane Theological Seminary stood in the general area that Thomson-MacConnell Cadillac calls home today. Did you know there is a connection with the Stowe House and the Lane Theological Seminary?

HPL asked Hartlieb to explain the connection the Lane Theological Seminary/The Lane Seminary Debates Marker (#56-31) has with the Stowe House. “The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is the only remaining building of the Lane Theological Seminary.  (The main campus was located on Gilbert Avenue where Thompson McConnell Cadillac stands today).  The House was actually the residence of Harriet’s dad, Lyman Beecher, who was the first president of the seminary.  Classes began there in 1832 and the House was completed in 1833.  Harriet herself lived at the home briefly but continued to live in the neighborhood after her marriage and visited the House frequently.  Other buildings associated with her in Cincinnati have long since disappeared.” Hartlieb continues to explain the significance of the Lane Seminary Debates noted in the Marker, “The Lane Seminary debates took place in February 1834.  Led by student organizer Theodore Weld, the seminary students debated two types of antislavery – Immediate Emancipation (or Abolition) and Colonization.  After 18 nights of discussion, the students overwhelmingly voted to support Abolition.  However, they clashed with the Lane Board of Trustees, who did not want such controversial topics to be on display at the school.” Hartlieb adds, “subsequently the students lived in and ministered with the African American community of Cincinnati.  After months of negotiation on the part of Lyman Beecher, most of the students left Lane to attend Oberlin College.  These “Lane Rebels” brought light to the situation of enslavement and spurred the exponential growth of abolitionist societies throughout the North in the 1830s.  As the only physical structure left from the Lane Seminary, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House now carries on their legacy of advocating for freedom and justice. “

Just off Gilbert Avenue at 1010 Chapel Street in Walnut Hills you will find Marker #99-31. This is the home of the Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (CFCWC). Organized during a meeting called by Mary Fletcher Ross at the Allen Temple A.M.E. Church on May 6, 1904, they brought together eight existing African American women’s clubs and united in their work to assist with the needs of Black Americans in the community. They helped to organize the city’s first kindergartens for Black children, raised money for the Home of Aged Colored Women and much more.  

Their work, then and now, has helped to assure the civic and constitutional rights of all African Americans in the city are protected while meeting the needs of the community, living their motto, “Lifting As We Climb”. Added to the National Register for Historic Places in 1980, the Queen Anne mansion (1888) housing the CFCWC was designed by architect Samuel Hannaford (who designed Music Hall among other local buildings) for C.H. Burroughs as a residence and the CFCWC purchased it in 1925. Beyond being a gathering place, the building served as housing for young African American women seeking employment in the north.  

Did you know that next to the CFCWC is the former Manse Hotel?  The hotel and its annex now serve as apartments for older adults, but during its life as hotel, it was very important to the local African American community and beyond. Listed for many years in The Negro Motorist Green Book, it hosted many important visitors who were not welcomed elsewhere, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Jackie Robinson.  An Ohio Historical Marker is planned for this location. Additionally, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House for a time was known as the Edgemont Inn which was a tavern and boarding house for African Americans also listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book.  

The Cincinnati Observatory in Hyde Park is celebrated on Marker #23-31. Text from one side of the Marker reads, “Prompted by response to his popular lectures, astronomer Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel (1809-1862) founded the Cincinnati Astronomical Society (CAS) in 1842. With CAS funding, Mitchel traveled to Munich, Bavaria, to acquire the optical elements for what became the world’s second largest refractor telescope. In 1843 former president John Quincy Adams laid the cornerstone of the observatory building, located upon the hill since known as Mount Adams. The Cincinnati Observatory was completed and opened for study in 1845. Mitchel, who died in service during the Civil War, was among the first to popularize astronomy in America. The telescope he brought to Cincinnati remains in daily use, the oldest such instrument in the United States.”

Did you know that locals from all walks of life also contributed to efforts to buy the telescope? Many people gave $25 each-equal to a month’s salary at the time! And while the Observatory started in Mount Adams, it was relocated in 1873 to avoid pollution.

Today we know the Cincinnati Observatory as a beloved local institution featuring events and classes, reminding all of us to “look up”.

Miss Doherty’s Preparatory School for Girls was established in 1906 by Mary Harlan Doherty. Cincinnati-born Doherty attended Woodward High School during a time when young women were not expected to go to college. Their task was to marry, raise children and manage the household. Miss Doherty didn’t see it this way, she felt strongly that women should have solid social skills and be prepared for college. She herself graduated from Cornell University in 1899. The school opened in the former home of Superior Court Judge and Ohio Governor George Hoadley with 125 students. By 1920, enrollment had doubled! Clearly, she was on the right track. Today, the school is part of Seven Hills School’s Doherty Campus on Johnstone Place off Madison Road. As an educator, we hope Miss Doherty will still give a passing grade to her Marker even though it was misnumbered. The Marker should be #57-31 but was accidently given a number allocated for another county, #57-9.

Historic Markers are numbered as such: the first number being the order in which the Marker was placed within a certain county, the second number representing the county it is located in. Hamilton County is #31 and currently there are 90 in Hamilton County with others under review.

Did you know another progressive educator of women started a school in Cincinnati? Catharine Beecher, a sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, also once called the Harriet Beecher Stowe House home. Beecher (1800-1878) and her sister Mary had founded the Hartford Female Seminary in 1823 in Connecticut. Beecher made sure girls were taught a full range of subjects, and she was a pioneer of physical education for girls. While in Cincinnati, she opened the Western Female Institute with the same mission. She also lectured and wrote textbooks as well as books focused on women’s central role and mother and educator including these works, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), The Duty of American Women to Their Country (1845), and The Domestic Receipt Book (1846).

Cyclists are likely to be familiar with the next Marker (#89-31) noting the Columbia Presbyterian & Fulton Cemeteries and William Brown. Located on the Ohio River Trail (but easy to walk to from Carrel Street just off Eastern Avenue). The cemetery (in the woods, east of the Marker) dates to 1794 and is comprised of two cemeteries. Many veterans of the Revolutionary War are buried here. One such grave belongs to William Brown. Brown settled in the area in 1789 and served in the Revolutionary War himself having enlisted in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army after the War began in 1775. He saw much combat including the battle at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781. Rising to the rank of sergeant, he was honored by George Washington with the Badge of Military Merit. Brown died in 1805.

Did you know? While President George Washington is famously buried at his home, Mount Vernon in Virginia, he has a relative at rest in Northern Kentucky. The great-great-grandson of Samuel Washington, George’s brother, was also named George and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate, Kentucky. George Washington, Jr. was born in Newport in 1843 and died in 1905.

The next time you pass a Marker, stop and take a look at the history in your own back yard. You might find the information you learn, remarkable.

To find a list of historic markers in Ohio, with a county-by-county listing, visit www.remarkableohio.org

Harriet Beecher Stowe House marker (provided). All other photos by Mary Casey-Sturk.