Africa, Ohio | |
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  Africa Location of Africa in Ohio  Africa Africa (the United States)  Africa Africa (North America) | |
| Coordinates: 40°10′56″N82°57′26″W / 40.18222°N 82.95722°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Ohio |
| County | Delaware |
| Township | Orange |
| Elevation | 856 ft (261 m) |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| GNIS feature ID | 1064302 [1] |
Africa is an unincorporated community located in Orange Township of southern Delaware County, Ohio, United States, by Alum Creek.
Africa is named after the Underground Railroad and is thought to be the only town in the world named after the Underground Railroad. Its first church is thought to have been a Methodist church that was established on the east side of Alum Creek in approximately 1828. In 1843, the slavery question separated its congregation. The antislavery portion organized the Wesleyan Church on the east side of Alum Creek. The first services were held in a cabin on the Alum Creek flats near the Patterson residence. In 1876, members of the congregation built a church, located in present-day Africa.
A historic marker in the area recounts the history of how the community was divided by the slavery question and of how Africa received its name:
Samuel Patterson arrived in East Orange in 1824 and, within a few years, began to hide runaway slaves in his home. He also invited anti-slavery speakers to the pulpit of the East Orange Methodist Church, which brought Patterson and his neighbors into conflict with the bishop. Following their consciences, they became the Wesleyan Methodists and built a new church. A pro-slavery neighbor mocked them by calling their community Africa, and so East Orange was renamed. The village has disappeared but several homes owned by Patterson and his neighbors still stand in this vicinity.
The reverse side of the marker adds the following information:
In 1859 slaves from a North Carolina plantation owned by the Alston family were sent north. The plantation's mistress had disapproved of slavery and made arrangements for the slaves to travel to Ohio and freedom. These slaves moved to the community of Africa, lived in log homes, were employed by the anti-slavery farmers and joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church. After the Civil War the freed slaves left Africa and settled in the communities of Delaware and Westerville, and Van Wert and Paulding counties.
The Patterson family built their original double log cabin in the 1820s. Sometime near the year and 1840, family members built a mansion on the east side of Alum Creek. This and additional homes built by the Pattersons still stand, and these buildings were important Underground Railroad stations.
This particular Underground Railroad route assumed national importance because of its relationship to two famous songwriters. A station north of the Patterson farm was in Mt. Vernon, the home of Dan Emmett. In 1842, Emmett and three other men formed the Virginia Minstrels. Emmett wrote "Old Dan Tucker," "Dixie," "Turkey in the Straw," and "The Blue Tail Fly." [2] "Dixie" became popular immediately and, as the Civil War began troops of both North and the South armies marched to this tune, but by the end of 1861, Dixie had become a Southern song. Emmett was not a Southern sympathizer and was not pleased when the Confederacy adopted his tune as its unofficial "National Anthem." The Virginia Minstrels are today considered the nation's first true minstrel troop. Around the turn of the 20th century, this form evolved into vaudeville and later into Broadway productions.
The station to the south of the Patterson place was in Westerville, Ohio. Here Benjamin Hanby, an Otterbein College student, heard the story a sick slave had told about his sweetheart, Nelly Gray, who had been sold down the river. He wanted to get to Canada and earn money to buy Nelly's freedom, but he died. Hanby began to write a song. Later a Kentucky slave auction stirred him to compose more stanzas and he added a chorus. This song became the well-known "Darling Nelly Gray." [3] The song recounts the tale of Nelly, who white men bound in chains and took to Georgia, working her in the cotton as she slowly died.
Hanby also wrote the Christmas carol "Up on the House Top," and the Christian hymn "Who Is He In Yonder Stall?" As a result of his thematic emphasis, Hanby has been dubbed the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of song. Songs such as these and writings, such as those of Ohioan Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin , sensitized northerners to the conditions of slavery and helped to initiate the anti-slavery movement. Hanby's home is now a historic landmark standing adjacent to the Otterbein University campus. Hanby's grave is in the nearby Otterbein Cemetery in Westerville, Ohio. [4]
Alum Creek State Park is an adjacent recreation area in this region of central Ohio, and the park receives over three million visitors annually. Because the town of Africa is located next to this park and located within sight of the Alum Creek Dam, many visitors will recognize the town and the road, but may not be aware of the area's historic significance.[ citation needed ]
Africa, Ohio was "saluted" on the country music television show "Hee Haw" in 1973. At that time it had a population of 16.
Africa is adjacent to the Alum Creek State Park, an Ohio recreation area, on Africa Road, which roughly follows the Underground Railroad route that escaping slaves took before the American Civil War. Africa began as Orange Station, and some early accounts described the area as the "East Orange Post Office." Orange Station at one time had a post office, a general store, and a saloon.
Delaware County is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 214,124. Its county seat and largest city is Delaware.
Rushville is a village in Fairfield County, Ohio, United States. The population was 304 at the 2020 census. Much of the village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Rushville Historic District.
Westerville is a city in Franklin and Delaware counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. A northeastern suburb of Columbus as well as the home of Otterbein University, the population was 39,190 at the 2020 census.
The Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB) was a North American Protestant denomination from 1946 to 1968 with Arminian theology, roots in the Mennonite and German Reformed, and communities, and close ties to Methodism. It was formed by the merger of the Evangelical Church and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. The United Brethren and the Evangelical Association had considered merging off and on since the early 19th century because of their common emphasis on holiness and evangelism and their common German heritage. In 1968, the United States section of the EUB merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church, while the Canadian section joined the United Church of Canada.
Daniel Decatur Emmett was an American composer, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie".
Samuel Green was a slave, freedman, and minister of religion. A conductor of the Underground Railroad, he was tried and convicted in 1857 of possessing a copy of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe following the Dover Eight incident. He received a ten-year sentence, and was pardoned by the Governor of Maryland Augustus Bradford in 1862, after he served five years.
"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a song about the Southern United States first made in 1859. It is one of the most distinctively Southern musical products of the 19th century. It was not a folk song at its creation, but it has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely rooted the word "Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the Southern U.S.
Benjamin Russell Hanby, sometimes spelled Benjamin Russel Hanby, was an American composer, educator, pastor, and abolitionist. He is known for composting approximately 80 songs and hymns, most notably "Darling Nelly Gray" and the Christmas songs "Up on the Housetop", and "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas".
Alum Creek is 58-mile (93 km) long creek that runs north to south in central Ohio. The creek originates in Morrow County and then flows through Delaware County and finally into Franklin County, where it ends at Big Walnut Creek, which drains into the Scioto River. Alum Creek is a source of drinking water for the city of Westerville, Ohio.
Samuel D. Burris was a member of the Underground Railroad. He had a family, who he moved to Philadelphia for safety and traveled into Maryland and Delaware to guide freedom seekers north along the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania.
"Darling Nelly Gray" is a 19th century anti-slavery ballad written and composed by Benjamin Hanby in 1856. It is written as from the point of view of an African-American male slave in Kentucky whose sweetheart has been taken away by slave-owners. The man mourns his beloved, who has been sold South to Georgia. He eventually dies and joins her in heaven. The song became popular in the years preceding the Civil War and helped promote support for the abolitionist cause.
Otterbein University is a private university in Westerville, Ohio. It offers 74 majors and 44 minors, as well as eight graduate programs. The university was founded in 1847 by the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and named for United Brethren founder the Rev. Philip William Otterbein. As a result of a division and two mergers involving the church, it has been associated since 1968 with the United Methodist Church. In 2010, due to an increasing number of graduate and undergraduate programs, its name was changed back from Otterbein College to Otterbein University.
The Alkire House is a historic residence in the Columbus suburb of Westerville, Ohio, United States. Constructed during the middle of the nineteenth century and used both as a residence and as a slave-smuggling safehouse, it retains much of its original fabric, and it has been designated a historic site.
The Underground Railroad in Indiana was part of a larger, unofficial, and loosely-connected network of groups and individuals who aided and facilitated the escape of runaway slaves from the southern United States. The network in Indiana gradually evolved in the 1830s and 1840s, reached its peak during the 1850s, and continued until slavery was abolished throughout the United States at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. It is not known how many fugitive slaves escaped through Indiana on their journey to Michigan and Canada. An unknown number of Indiana's abolitionists, anti-slavery advocates, and people of color, as well as Quakers and other religious groups illegally operated stations along the network. Some of the network's operatives have been identified, including Levi Coffin, the best-known of Indiana's Underground Railroad leaders. In addition to shelter, network agents provided food, guidance, and, in some cases, transportation to aid the runaways.
Alum Creek State Park is a 4,630-acre (1,870 ha) Ohio state park in Delaware County, Ohio, in the United States. Alum Creek Lake was constructed from 1970 to 1974 as part of the Flood Control Act of 1962. Alum Creek Dam was constructed on Alum Creek, a tributary of Big Walnut Creek, which drains into the Scioto River. Alum Creek Reservoir holds 3,387 acres (1,371 ha) of water and is open to fishing, boating, ice fishing, ice boating, and swimming. The park is just north of the state capital of Columbus and contains the remnants of a settlement by freed slaves that arrived in Ohio from North Carolina.
Bethel AME Church, now known as the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church at 119 North 10th Street in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania. It was originally built in 1837, and is a 2½-storey brick and stucco building with a gable roof. It was rebuilt about 1867–1869, and remodeled in 1889. It features a three-storey brick tower with a pyramidal roof topped by a finial. The church is known to have housed fugitive slaves and the congregation was active in the Underground Railroad. The church is now home to a museum dedicated to the history of African Americans in Central Pennsylvania.
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in Springtown, New Jersey, United States. The church was part of two free negro communities, Othello and Springtown, established by local Quaker families, like the Van Leer Family. The congregation was established in 1810 in Greenwich Township as the African Methodist Society and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817. A previous church building was burned down in the 1830s in an arson incident and the current structure was built between 1838 and 1841.
The Rushville Historic District is a historic district in Richland Township, Fairfield County Ohio which bounds the original village of Rushville. The district is considered both historically and architecturally significant due to the preservation of many houses and commercial buildings representing a period from the 1820s to the early 1900s. It features examples of log construction, Gothic Revival, Federal, Italianate, and Queen Anne style architecture.
Municipalities and communities of Delaware County, Ohio, United States | ||
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| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |