Stories by author "Andrew Feight, Ph.D.": 45
Stories
"Art of the Ancients" Exhibition at the Southern Ohio Museum
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, and other earthworks of the Portsmouth…
Raven Rock Nature Preserve
From its height and location on a bend in the Ohio River, Raven Rock offers views of modern-day Portsmouth at the Confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers. In frontier times, Shawnee and Cherokee warriors could look up and down the Ohio River for…
Spartan-Municipal Stadium
Today's Spartan-Municipal Stadium began its life as Universal Stadium in the summer of 1930, when Harry Snyder, the largest share owner of the Portsmouth Spartans, began its construction as part of the deal that brought an NFL franchise to the…
NFL Spartans Business Office in the Royal Savings & Loan Building
Harry N. Snyder, the largest share owner of the Spartans, was the sole proprietor of the Universal Contracting Company. Snyder had prospered in the 1920s with major road, bridge, and dam construction projects on the Ohio River and in Portsmouth and…
Stanton and McMahon's Smoke House
As early as 1912, Frank Stanton and George McMahon, co-owners of the Smoke House (a popular Portsmouth tobacco shop), had sponsored an amateur football team that traveled the Ohio-Kentucky-West Virginia Tri-State region, playing its home games at…
George Remus - 'King of the Bootleggers' - in the Boneyfiddle
Remus completed the first two years of his sentence in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. For the last year of his sentence, however, he was allowed to return to Ohio, where he was first lodged in the Miami County Jail in Troy, Ohio.…
The Birth of the NFL Spartans at the Hotel Hurth
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 five weeks after the tragic death of Jack Creasy,…
Fifteenth Amendment Ratification Celebration in Portsmouth, Ohio
On Wednesday, the 27th of April 1870, a coalition of white and black residents turned out for a celebration hosted by Allen Chapel of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. With ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, there was much to…
Jim Crow at Wurster Brothers Drug Store on Chillicothe Street
The New York Times reported: "The African Methodist Conference, in session here to-day, was thrown into confusion when it became known that its presiding Bishop, W. B. Derrick of New York City, had been unable to obtain a drink of soda water." As…
“Black Friday”: Enforcing Ohio’s “Black Laws” in Portsmouth, Ohio
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, yesterday, with between one and two hundred names,…
Capt. William McClain's Underground Steamboat
Eliza Esham of Nicholas County, Kentucky claimed Joshua as her property and sued Capt. McClain, seeking damages. During a jury trial, witness testimony established that Joshua "at the time [had] no written pass or authority from his mistress ... and…
“The Crossing”: Robert Dafford's Underground Railroad Mural in Portsmouth, Ohio
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 states, as well as those (white and black) Scioto…
Runaway Slave Advertisements in Portsmouth, Ohio
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 other states to the south. As a major intermodal…
Union Mills and Lock 50 of the Ohio & Erie Canal
The Ohio and Erie Canal connected Portsmouth to Cleveland and the eastern markets via New York's more famous Erie Canal, which had opened in 1826. While Cleveland, on the other end of the canal, experienced far more dramatic growth, both…
Excavation and Destruction of the Waller-Heinisch Mound
We owe much of the history of the exploration and ultimate destruction of the Waller-Heinisch Mound to Clara Waller, who grew up on the property where it was located. She was the daughter of George A. Waller and the niece of Francis Cleveland, an…
Portsmouth NAACP Protests Jim Crow at the Westland Theater
Capitalizing on Joe Louis's new won fame, Hollywood movie director Harry L. Fraser would cast Louis to star in "The Spirit of Youth," which told the story of the boxer's rise from poverty and obscurity to world champion and Jazz Age celebrity life.…
Integrating Portsmouth, Ohio’s Dreamland Pool
Discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was now banned by federal law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically outlawed racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. Private clubs, however,…
James M. Ashley and the Underground Railroad in Friendship, Ohio
Marked today as the intersection of US Highway 52 and Ohio State Route 125, Friendship is the southern gateway to the Shawnee State Forest and Park, and is recognized as the site of the first permanent American settlement in Scioto County. In the…
Kennedy & Ashton's Feed Store
Built in 1852 by Milton Kennedy, Portsmouth's most outspoken abolitionist, the building first housed Kennedy's feed store, which was an auxiliary to his dealings as a grain merchant. Before some major financial reverses in 1855, Kennedy was…
Julia Marlowe and Madame Brough's Saloon on Front Street
Indeed, just over ten years earlier, in October 1878, the Times reported "there was a terrible row at Madame Brough's Saloon on Front Street, last Thursday night, and beer glasses flew around in a lively manner. It appears that John McCarthy came in…
How the Boneyfiddle Got Its Name
Robert Dafford’s mural was dedicated on 27 May 1993, “with a large gathering of over 150 people. Robert Morton served as the master of ceremonies and announced plans for a total of 50 murals, which would be completed over the next “4 to 6 years.”…
Booker T. Washington School on Eleventh Street
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 and teaching was run by a "Mrs. Weaver," a member…
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," which was located on the southwest corner of…
Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
On Friday, June 9th, 1961, McKinley and a group of other African American school boys went swimming in a flooded sand and gravel pit that had recently been dug in the bottoms of the Scioto River. It was the last day of school and the students were…
Mitchell-Morrison Cemetery at Moore's Run
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 back to the first decades of the…
Innovation at the Sanford, Varner & Co. Building
Portsmouth may be best remembered for its shoe and steel manufacturers, which dominated the city from the 1830s to the 1970s, but in the years after the Civil War, when the city was first connected into the national rail network, Portsmouth had a…
Gradual Emancipation & Colonization: Antislavery Moderates in Southern Ohio
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 means of achieving their vision of an end to…
General Jacob H. Smith & the Philippine War’s Samar Campaign
“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 Washington hotel. The factories closed early and…
Rev. Edward Weed & the Piketon Anti-Abolition Resolutions
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 the village of Piketon. By the summer of 1836,…
How Pee Pee Creek Got Its Name
Pee Pee Creek, whose waters fill Lake White, derives its name from one of the settlers who, just before the deadly attack, carved his initials into the trunk of a large beech tree. Years later, when the threat of Indian attack had ended, and…