The school was built on the Indiana-Ohio state line in the early 1800s. The settlement also included the Union Literary Institute, a school of higher education for students of any race. Clemens also established a church and a school, where Longtown residents worshipped and educated their children. The original Clemens family farm eventually grew into the settlement later called Longtown. “The Quakers left the south also because of their displeasure with slavery, and so you had African American farmers living next door to Quakers or abolitionists,” Smothers says. Whites and Native Americans also called Longtown home. While Longtown is mostly known today as an early African American settlement, from the beginning, Smothers says, it was a mixed-race community. In 2001 he got the settlement listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Longtown has been a passion for Smothers for more than a decade. WYSO The Union Literary Institute was founded by anti-slavery Quakers and free blacks who lived near the Greenville Negro Settlement, also known as Longtown. Such was the case with James and Sophia, who purchased land in Ohio with the help of Sellers' father, he says. Smothers says some slave owners not only acknowledged the children they bore with slaves but also provided them with financial support. “They were the sons and daughters of slave masters,” says historian and Longtown descendant Roane Smothers. In 1818, James Clemens, a freed slave from Rockingham County, Virginia, settled in Darke County, Ohio, with his wife Sophia Sellers and their five children, and began to farm. Now, descendants of those pioneering settlers are working to bring Longtown back to life for others to experience. The settlement grew into a thriving mixed-race community and a major stop on the Underground Railroad. Longtown was established nearly 200 years ago in what is now Greenville. In southwest Ohio, about a mile from the Indiana state line, a long-forgotten town with a special place in African American history is struggling to be reborn.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |