All Stories: 107
Stories
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.”…
B. Glockner on Market Street
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 fire in January 2016 -- has contributed to…
Jim Thorpe and the Shoe-Steels
At the end of the 1926 season, Jacques 'Jack' Creasy, at the age of 25, purchased the equipment of the Studebaker Presidents -- an amateur football team that had enjoyed moderate success and ignited the excitement of football fans in Portsmouth --…
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 elected class orator by his peers. An…
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…
The Iron Man Game of 1932
Packers coach Curly Lambeau entered the game with the NFL’s best record, 10-1-1, with only two games left in the season. If the Packers defeated the Spartans they would clench their fourth league championship. The Spartans sat at 5-1-4 in the…
Portsmouth’s Basham Hill Reservoir
Portsmouth’s first water works plant was built in 1871 on the banks of the Ohio River. It was located in an area that is, today, just outside the floodwall behind Shawnee State University. That original water plant left much to be desired in terms…
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…
Peerless Portsmouth and Detroit, the City of Champions
Detroit native and sports historian Tom Eurich knows the story better than anyone. Eurich explains that when the team moved to Detroit, with thirteen of the twenty-five Spartans -- highlighted by one of the greatest players ever, Earl "Dutch" Clark,…
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…
Horsehead Bottom & the Origins of Dunmore's War
In early April 1774, a 22-year-old George Rogers Clark arrived at the Mouth of the Little Kanawha, where modern-day Parkersburg, West Virginia, is located. This site had been chosen months earlier for the rendezvous. Eighty or ninety male settlers…
Fourteenth Street Community Center: "The Heart of the North End"
The black civic movement led to the formation of the Portsmouth Welfare League in May 1928, organized in the auditorium of the Washington School, with Dr. W. H. Lowry as President. The League organized committees that would go onto establish various…
Nurses at Portsmouth General Hospital (December 1937)
Portsmouth has long been a center for medical care, beginning with the city’s first professionally trained physician, Dr. Thomas Waller, who also served as President of the first City Council in 1815. Nursing in Portsmouth, one can then argue,…
Ohio Stove Company Workers (30 January 1942)
The foundry workers pictured here in January of 1942 worked for the Ohio Stove Company, which was first organized in 1872. Perhaps the oldest manufacturer still operating in Portsmouth, they originally cast heating and cooking stoves, their most…
Portsmouth's First Presbyterian Church and the Antislavery Movement in Southern Ohio
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the congregation now known as First Presbyterian of Portsmouth, Ohio, was a nexus of the antislavery movement in southern Ohio and it’s members, elders, and ministers represented a wide spectrum of…
The White Front Restaurant on Chillicothe Street (c. 1965)
In 1936, Nicholas Sainopulos purchased the “White Lunch Car,” a diner that was housed in an old Portsmouth street car. Sainopulos “walled in the structure" and rechristened it the “White Front Restaurant.” His son, Charles, joined his father…
Glick’s Furniture and the Damarin Block (c. 1965)
“Buy your furniture at Glick’s on Second Street,” so sang Zeke Mullins on WPAY. Glick’s Furniture opened its doors in 1936 and closed in 1976, having made the Damarin Block at Court and Second Streets its home for some forty years. Named for…
Masonic Temple at Sixth & Chillicothe Streets
Taken from atop the Martings Building on Chillicothe Street, this photo captures the majesty of the Masonic Temple, which is offset by the plain red brick facade of the then new Montgomery Ward Department Store. The new and the old were frequently…
Selby Shoes & WPAY on Gallia Street (circa 1952)
WPAY pioneered Portsmouth radio, beginning its broadcasts on April 15th, 1933. By the early 1950s the station’s offices and studios were to be found on the north side of Gallia Street, next door to the Selby Shoe factory outlet store. The old…
Grand Opera House at Fourth & Chillicothe Streets (c. 1910)
In 1895, Lodge No. 154 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks laid the cornerstone of Portsmouth’s Grand Opera House in the name of “Charity, Justice, and Brotherly Love.” Before the rise of the moving picture show and a devastating fire in…
Tracy Shoe Company Building
Built in 1891 for the Tracy Shoe Company, this structure has recently been restored and repurposed by the YEI Corporation, a locally owned firm specializing in software solutions and other digital technologies. YEI’s success and the Tracy…
James M. Ashley and the Thirteenth Amendment
Born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, James Ashley moved with his parents and siblings to Portsmouth in the spring of 1826 at the age of four and grew to manhood here. His father, John Clinton Ashley was a minister in the Disciples (Campbellite)…
"Where Southern Hospitality Begins" by Carl Ackerman (5 September 1964).
In the early 1960s, City Manager Frank Gerlach and others championed a new slogan for the City of Portsmouth — “Where Southern Hospitality Begins.” In the summer of 1964, a welcome sign with the slogan was painted on the then bare concrete flood…
Southern Ohio Museum & Cultural Center
“The Kricker family’s long-term faith in the economic strength of Scioto County is a matter of historical record,” noted the Portsmouth Daily Times in May of 1978. Edmund J. Kricker, the seventy-nine year old chairman of the board and chief…