Transcript

Here today to show show uh share more

about this initiative is longtime

Franklin County resident, educator,

historian, and member of the America 250

undertold stories committee, Dorene Yuas

Sauer.

Dorian, if you would like to come up to

the podium. Um would somebody please uh

um Eugene, if you could somebody please

Yeah, thank you.

I think adjusting it would be great.

Good morning.

>> So, I was I was sharing with Dorene when

I when I was out there. Uh she's been a

part of um these WOSU

uh the history of central Ohio, the

neighborhoods. uh I've been watching her

on uh YouTube for the last I don't know

month and a half, two months and the

stories that that WU's told and she's

been a part of telling those over the la

I don't know it's been what more than a

decade uh all the stories of central

Ohio. I really enjoyed watching those.

So, thank you for coming today to help

us tell this story. No, I it it is truly

a pleasure on my part and I I um am so

happy to be I'm honored to be invited.

So I do want to wish uh uh the

commissioners of Grady and Boyce and

Crowley uh a good morning and thank you

for the invitation. Uh I was asked to

speak briefly on those historic promises

of the Northwest Territory and the

contemporary challenges of local

government in Ohio. Uh, and I will you

stole all my thunder, so I'll just

repeat everything you just said. I'm so

glad you mentioned about the stories,

some being known and some being unknown.

So, it may or may not surprise you that

as counties were beginning to be carved

out of the federal land uh, west of the

Alaganis by the terms of the Northwest

Ordinance, the new state of Ohio in 1803

had only two promises they had to keep.

Every school child knows them. no

slavery and free public education, which

also means when you think about it that

the average Ohio citizen only knows as

much as a fourth grader. Um, Franklin

County was founded in July 17, 1787,

only two months after Ohio became a

state in 1803 and only 11 years and

three days after we the people, the

Declaration of Independence was actually

uh uh delivered. And there will be no

quiz following this on dates. History is

not about the dates. Um, issues for

Franklin County Commissioners, even by

the 1830s, would look remarkably like

the issues of 2026. I don't know if this

is good news or bad news, but I will

read some of them that were a top of the

priority in the 1830s.

affordability of housing and food.

Migrations and immigrations, the

unhoused, victims of illness from

travel, school funding, transportation

upgrades, shortfalls of taxation to

address local government needs, the

unanticipated effect of rapid

industrialization and technology, lack

of funding for women, children, and

public health, and local solutions to

safety and security. They knew that

there would be a coming war in some form

or another in the War of 1812, which is

considered the Second American

Revolution. And there were already Ohio

treaties that were very fairly dealing

with the indigenous peoples of Ohio,

only to be overturned overnight by

federal or presidential decisions. So

that was 1830 and I think you can

recognize through that some of the same

challenge that are still here. This

doesn't mean that issues can't be

solved, but the two I'd like to focus on

for a minute are the two enlightenment

goals of the Northwest Ordinance because

we never asked, "So, what happened?" Uh,

they were already starting to unravel.

The money for education meant that the

general assembly was not mandated to

keep a schoolhouse or to build a

schoolhouse, but rather Ohio could sell

the 116th of the township land marked

for free public education, which it did

quickly. It spended on other needs. It

went into a general pool and the money

was simply spent and it was gone by the

1830s. The promise of no slavery

continued to be problematic,

excuse me, and largely not to known

today, especially for Franklin County

because, as we know, the Virginia

military district is a large part of

what was actually the land that was

given to Virginia soldiers as payment as

they fought in the American Revolution.

And what the Virginia military district,

not everyone, but it was creeping into

Ohio, was they wanted to be able to

permit to allow indentured servants,

which is just servitude, just another

name for slavery, all the way up to the

Civil War until the terms of essentially

the abolitionists were so strong that

people were reticent to continue to

pursue the argument. But they wanted it

and it would have stretched indentured

servitude from essentially uh around

Ripley, Ohio uh all the way from the

Ohio River literally up the west side of

the Sciota River into Franklin County.

Not all Kuckians and Virginiaians were

in agreement about this. People like the

Neils, which is a pretty famous name in

Columbus, left Kentucky because they did

not agree with with owning other people.

And William Neil himself, which is

unknown to many people, actually put up

the $500 bond that the black laws

required. All he had to do was to say

that he would be in a goodstead for it.

If there was a problem, the $500 would

have to be paid. $500 was the equivalent

of 800 $88,000 at the time. The black

laws that eventually came into Ohio were

often used as warning signals about

migration rather than actually

enforcement. And this is borne out in

other statistics we know today that

others would not have always known at

the time and place. Lucas Sullivan, the

founder of uh Franklin of Columbus, his

household contained, and I'm assuming

this is a pretty familiar story,

the future uh mother of Arthur Boke. Uh

Arthur Boke uh has long been disputed

about his own genealogy. Uh his father,

however, was a free man uh from

Kentucky, the same town that the

Sullivan and Sarah Sullivan, Lucas's

wife, came from. Um in fact, she was

essentially always ministered to by

plantation slaves. It is on that part of

Kentucky. Um but the mother of Arthur Bo

and Arthur's father were married in

Kentucky. Uh when Sarah came uh she was

much younger than Lucas. Um she brought

with her uh an indentured woman. The

indentured woman however and this is

where the controversy has always been is

that she abandoned her child. She

abandoned Arthur uh just as soon as

pretty much as soon as he was born. But

the problem with it is is that that was

recorded purposely as abandoned by

Joseph Sullivan Lucas's youngest son who

was nearest in age to him because that

she did it purposely. She relinquished

parental rights. It was not an

abandonment as a foundling in a basket.

It was saying if I am captured my child

will not be a slave. Literally her act

was we do not know what happened to her

but her act freed her child. Um so

despite the reputation of Ripley and

other uh uh Manchester and other

Pomemeroy on the Ohio River as a beacon

for the Underground Railroad uh slavery

continued to be present. uh can Kentucky

plantation owners rented out their

slaves to harvest tobacco and cotton

crops took the money of course and the

cotton crops they uh Ohio farmers took

advantage of this particular thing. It's

was a controversial issue that brewed

and brewed under the surface for a very

long time. So today we and some historic

groups still rely on the early histories

of Franklin County like um William

Martin who wrote the history of Franklin

County in 1848. But they weren't

historians. They were chronicers. They

were writing down as quickly as they

could every name, date, fact, and uh uh

essentially of uh sort of direction at

that particular time being mostly of

other white men of the same class and

the same civic-mindedness, but they were

trying to capture what they thought was

important at the time. Um today we know

now because we can research, we can

archive, and we can document. And that

is precisely why it is so important that

it happen now especially in the age of

artificial intelligence which is already

permeating resources in libraries and

schools and whatnot with madeup stories

about many things and they're skewed in

certain ways. Uh it is amazing that the

Columbus Metropolitan Library as well as

other libraries are actually answering

the Clarion call with very strong

statements as our historic organization

to try to make sure that people may use

artificial intelligence as a tool but

not believe what's in what suddenly pops

up on the screen. So for instance, when

Ohio became a state, there were over 255

already small African-American

settlements in Ohio. usually in rural

areas but connected to each other by

family and churches. Imagine 255 that

are all across Ohio. They know each

other and that really is the Underground

Railroad. Very few people who lived in

the the nice houses who were supposedly

a stop had any idea where the next stop

was. One, they couldn't be trusted and

two, they were always being watched. So

that network is something that we are

just really learning the tip of right

now. We know some of them the Franklin

County the the Lichfords which is upper

Arlington the places there were two

places named Mudsock the Blackberry

patch the American edition and even many

more but by the m uh by the mid 19th

century along with improved

transportation such as it was national

road in the canal system also

transported chalera and typhoid in

Franklin County this is the co of their

generation uh exacerbated by Columbus's

geographical pecul peculiarities of

being an elevated plateau with a high

water table created a major public

health crisis of contaminated wells uh a

co-mingling with the outhouse drainings

that were maybe less than 10 ft away on

South High and I did this purposely

thinking about this neighborhood when

you walk out of the door today uh in

front of Dempsey's there was a young

woman who was a bride to be the next day

who is gathering water from a city well

at the side of the street and by uh the

next morning she was a corpse in her

father's parlor. Kalera works that

quickly. Um Mike Curtain and I used to

exchange I think you probably all know

Mike Curtain in some ways with the

dispatch and back to his own politics.

We would sometimes try to make lists

with people as to what do you think are

the 10 most things that define uh

Columbus, Ohio. And Mike's first two

were always the best. And that was

geography is destiny. And the destiny of

g of Columbus was um that it's flat and

it's geographically like a tabletop

almost impermeable in some cases and it

has Ohio State University and the

football team hadn't even created yet in

1851 because I work at Rick and Bacher

Woods uh with uh Michael Aaron.

We discovered that the correct date of

Granville T. was African-American

inventor of all the the safety devices

that made inner urbans and trains and

everything work. Uh was born in

Columbus. His family is buried in

Greenland. And as a trustee of

Greenland, all of a sudden you suddenly

know all the secrets of of pretty much

Columbus history as a textbook. Uh and

his mother is buried there and some of

his siblings. Um and this would have

been Columbus's ward one, but the birth

date had been constantly told as 1856.

And it was an it was that spincy

handwriting. Every scholar just said the

same thing somebody else did and said

it's 1856. Well, it was 1851 which meant

that Granville T. Woods was actually

only four years difference in age than

Thomas Edison. And Thomas Edison, I want

to point out actually lost two lawsuits

to Granville T. Woods and tried to hire

Granville T. Woods who said no. He

wanted to protect what essentially was

his own integrity of thought and his own

uh uh

I want to say uh ability to be able to

invent and not be uh uh somebody with

somebody else as a boss. Um, so what was

around this area was ward one and ward

one uh we're in it today was a racially

and economically integrated community of

nextdoor neighbors. They were Welsh,

they were African-American and they were

German and they all got along. They

formed the laboring class. But Columbus

prospered in the Civil War and suddenly

things changed. early industrialization

and frankly plundering of the resources

of southern Ohio of gas, oil, timber,

coal, they made money. They were able to

buy the railroads that the federal

government was abandoning after the

Civil War. uh and they moved just blocks

away, still in Ward 1, but what's

sometimes called the new fad of early

suburbanization,

which is studied by Kenneth Jackson, a

New York historian, about the beginning

of what he would have called the um crab

grass frontier. You move a few blocks

away because you have a little bit more

money, you have a little bit bigger

house. And so a 12 room house with

actual hot and cold running water in the

oldest part of Columbus, which is Ward

One and Livingston Avenue on Oak Street

sold in 1871 within 20 years for $77,600

when the owner relocated to Chicago,

having made his fortune in saloons and

restaurants only three blocks the other

way toward the state house right around

here. That would be the equal of a house

selling at that time for two thou

$2,130,000

today. And the hot and cold indoor water

pipes were called Holly water, not holy,

holly water because it was a Holly pump

that actually made the water pressure

possible to have cotton cold running

water in a house in 1871. And it becomes

available that very year that I'm

talking about. And suddenly there are

571

customers in the neighborhood who are

wealthy enough to get Holly water.

Wealth creates prosperity, opportunity,

innovation, but not everyone moves

forward. We think of redlinining as the

coffin in the nail for housing

historically. But in that same date and

with that house sale, effort was made uh

in the Ohio legislature again to somehow

organize what were called, we would call

them nonprofits today. How do you

control the charitable organizations in

the 1870s, 1880s that were actually

doing the work that we see the

government has had to adopt to today for

sure human need. And one of the most

outstanding and under the radar

organizations is one by its very ancient

name, the Female Benevolent Society,

which was founded in 1848, the same time

William Martin is saying the Greenland

Cemetery will not admit any

African-American burials. And people

believed that that was true then, and

they believed that it was true into the

20th century, which it never was.

Hannah Neil was not exactly a club woman

as women of that time period are

portrayed. Nor did she raise her

daughters and Dennison married to a

governor and uh her other daughter who

was married to somebody who became

actually a carpet beggar in the south.

Um she went into jails to protect women

and uh to rescue them because women at

that time were actually put in jails in

men's cells. they they cohabited

themselves together. They were

trafficked. They were abused. And she

went to court to essentially uh be able

to save them. So that oldest charity

still operates today under the rules

that were established in the in the

1800s uh by the Columbus Foundation.

Still only there for women, children,

orphans. It's a women's organization

because of the the largestness of

William Dashler to support it all. A

million and a quarter acres of Ohio had

already been uh purchased by New England

businessman Jonathan Dayton. He

purchased much of Franklin County. It

has no relation to Dayton, Ohio or to

other families that are Dayton, but he

divi he never came here. He divided and

resold all of the land that he made

making even more money. And as a

property owner, his name appeared in

early maps. Today he is best remembered

only by a st small street Dayton Avenue

having nothing to do with any of the the

other Dayton where the Dairy Queen is in

the University District at Indianola and

Arcadia and county commissioners in

retrospect had few clues in those times

as to what was yet to come. So history

is a conversation. I love that quote

from John Meechum historian. We have the

conversation in the present about the

past, but we really do not know the

context fully of every part of what that

conversation would entail. And history

does not necessarily repeat itself in

patterns. It can be very synchronistic.

It is not uh we use metaphors and

similes, but America and what's

happening is was never a melting pot. It

was a popularized term by Ronald Reagan.

And if we do say it's a melting pot, it

speaks to the lowest common denominator.

It it smacks more of we like each

other's cuisine and we like the variety

of being able to eat in various ways and

we love taste. But it would never

require and in fact it would fear being

considered rude if it's centered

centered around the conversation like

well who don't you want your children to

marry? There's no deep culture that we

ever explore. It's all self surface

culture when you say it's a melting pot.

>> Commissioners, thank you so much for

this this history. Um um and we're going

to make this available for everyone.

Commissioners, um if you could just wrap

up in the next 30 seconds or so so that

we can go forward, but this is

absolutely absolutely wonderful uh

context and history for all of us. And

we are so pleased to have this on our

general session video for all to see and

to be able to come back to. So uh 30

seconds and we'll keep going. We have a

long agenda today, but we're so pleased

to have you here today.

>> Right to the last line. So, our timing

is perfect on this point.

>> Um, most historians now see movement and

immigration as a river. We flow into it

at various different times. We pick up

speed, we change, but the the pattern of

the river swings. When James Baldwin

said, "We carry our history with us." I

think the important meaning for that and

I read to the Franklin County

Commissioner's notes all the time and I

know this happens. We mean all of us. Uh

we carry our own history. We carry our

neighbors history. If we grow closer by

understanding the tragedies, the

accomplishments, the celebration and the

hopes. That's why we have faith in the

Franklin County Commissioners and the

work you do today because it is so

evident in all that you produce. And

because I knew I would run out of time,

but it's the 4th of July. I'm giving you

a gift.

>> Shameless promotion here.

>> Um,

>> it is the last book that um,

>> greatly.

Um, that

>> I go with Tom Daddy

>> and the context of Columbus history and

the downtown especially through the

buildings we saw as landmarks that were

saved and the ones that we saw who were

not saved. And the the crux of the of

the whole book really revolves uh on

such an extensive bibliography that it

had to be carried on a website. There

was no more room for publishing. So,

thank you very much. Thank you.

>> If I can say one last thing,

>> Commissioner Boyce, every time I see

your name, I remember you in a specific

incident at U Beach um Brook, excuse me.

Brook Haven High School sitting for

breakfast with a group of high school

students with the Annenburgg Foundation

in Columbus. Oh, sure.

>> And I was part of it. And you listen to

students what they were going to present

and study of the problem to be solved.

And all high schools were doing this and

that's what I directed and they um they

solved their problems and um they were

never used the history textbook at all.

They never looked at the history

textbook and they taught their teachers

how not to do it. You did it by doing it

and you were wonderful. You changed

lives that day and I still remember you

doing that. And at some other high

school over by cause Shannon Harden was

doing the same thing. So, thank you.

Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you, Dory.