Andrew Jackson Ellison, Company C 88th US Colored Troops

Andrew Jackson Ellison was born in Ohio March 4, 1835. He was one of 12 children of John and Sarah Ellison who were both born in Virginia. Sarah (born about 1810) migrated to Ohio at six years of age. Andrew and his younger brother George lived in Big Spring Twp. Seneca County, Ohio in 1860 with the Hyram Fish family. Andrew followed in the footsteps of his older brother Isaiah, enlisting in the Civil War as a private in Company C 88^th U.S. Colored Troops. He served from September 24, 1864 until September 25, 1865. 

On his return, he continued to work as a day laborer in Clyde, Ohio. Living with him were his mother and several siblings. He later married Belle Nelson of Toledo, Ohio but by 1900 Andrew was a widower living alone in Clyde. He died September 9, 1919 in Fostoria, Ohio at the home of his niece, Mrs. Edward Lee, where he had lived several years. Andrew Jackson Ellison is buried in the Fountain Cemetery in Hancock County, Ohio.

Pleasants Family of Mansfield, Ohio

James Pleasants

The nearby photographs are of James Pleasants (born 1851) and of James with brothers Thomas and Jasper. They are just two of many photographs in an album donated to the Hayes Manuscripts Department. 

Thomas, James, Jasper Pleasants

The Pleasants children were the sons of Isaac Pleasants and his wife Cassandra Harper. Isaac, born in Virginia in 1821, eventually crossed the Ohio River and lived in Cincinnati where he became a barber. Later, the family moved to Columbiana County. Following Cassandra’s death, Isaac brought his three sons and three daughters to Mansfield, Ohio, where he married a second time to Rose Amanda Abraham. Together, they had four children.  

According to Mansfield news articles, Isaac, who lived on East First Street, worked to recruit volunteers for Civil War service from the city’s Third Ward. He also headed the Union Colored Sabbath School and helped found the AME church in 1875.

James grew to manhood and worked as a foreman in a local box factory and then, like his father, became a barber. He spent time in Cleveland and Sandusky. However, he returned to Mansfield where he died of Bright’s disease at the early age of 36. Like his parents and several of his siblings, he is buried in the Mansfield Cemetery.

Clada Pleasants
Courtesy of Find a Grave

James’ youngest sister,Clada, a talented musician and newspaper correspondent, took part in an 1890 concert to help raise funds for John Brown’s daughter, Mrs. Henry Thompson, then living in California in near poverty.

More can be learned about the Pleasants family and Mansfield’s African American community at the Mansfield Memorial Museum.

Freedom's Pull Was Stronger than Ohio's Black Laws

Sarah Ellen Curtis

Granddaughter of Thomas Vincent Curtis
Sandusky County Ohio

The state of Ohio is often recognized as the first state formed from the Northwest Territory to outlaw slavery. Despite that, it did much to discourage African Americans from settling in the state. Only a year after statehood, it began passing a series of Black Laws. The reasons were two-fold. Many Ohio settlers were from southern states that allowed slavery. They were not inclined to grant equal rights. Others feared economic competition from African Americans whom they believed would work for lower wages

Among the laws was an 1807 provision that “black and mulattoes” must prove they were not slaves. The law also forced them to find two people to pay a bond of $500 who would testify to their good behavior and that they could support themselves Such laws, indeed, did discourage some African Americans from migrating to Ohio, but freedom’s pull was strong. Many risked everything to reach Ohio.

Township trustees rarely enforced these laws. The need for the skills that African Americans brought to pioneer communities outweighed all else. Men worked as plasterers, barbers, shoemakers, liverymen, carpenters, barge hands, tanners, and farmers. Women cooked, sewed, cared for children, and ran boarding houses.

In the 1840s, Ohio’s Black Laws became a political issue. For the first time, in 1841, Sandusky Township trustees warned 18 “Blacks and Mulattos” living in the township to present bond for their good behavior and support: Some were former slaves who had bought their freedom. Others had never been enslaved.

Regardless, trustees listed these individuals: John Lewis, Abraham Fine, Lewis Fontaine, Nancy Whetsel, Sarah Fine, Hannah Beardsley, James Whetsel, Penelope Demsey, William Davis, Thomas V. Curtis, William Thompson, James Curtis, Rachael Copeland, Jemima Hall, Robert and Sarah Handy, Richard Johnson, and Samuel Thompson.

Despite fear, hardships, and constant disruptions in their lives, many, like Thomas Curtis, remained in Ohio. A skilled tanner and currier, Curtis moved more than a dozen times after coming to the state as a boy in 1810. How many, if any, of these moves were the result of the Black Laws is not known. But once he reached Sandusky County, he made it his permanent home and raised children and grandchildren here while working for James Justice and Isaac Van Doren.

Until their repeal after the Civil War, Ohio’s Black Laws were a frightening and threatening ordeal for African Americans. Ironically, today, the lists represent a positive. African Americans’ search for their roots before 1865 is challenging. With few records available, lists like those recorded by Sandusky Township trustees can provide descendants with their ancestors’ names - both men and women and certainty of the time and place of their residence in Ohio.

A version of this article appeared in Lifestyles 2000.

Lest We Forget: Remembering Sandusky County, Ohio's Veterans

CBS Sunday Morning

On Memorial Day 2010, CBS Sunday Morning featured the efforts of Wayne Van Doren and his family to place American flags beside the grave sites  of veterans in six Sandusky County cemeteries. From Revolutionary War soldiers to the highest ranking general killed in the Civil War, McPherson Cemetery in Clyde, Ohio, is the final resting place for nearly a thousand veterans. Wayne has meticulously mapped the location of each so that on every Memorial Day he and his family can continue their tradition of honoring those who have served in America's wars.

Wayne Van Doren 

Fremont, Ohio's Oakwood Cemetery
Courtesy of The News-Messenger

Wayne has extended his reach. He hopes to honor each veteran buried in Sandusky County, Ohio by placing an American flag beside each grave. Wayne stated that there are 64 cemeteries in Sandusky County where veterans are buried. Above is a picture of Wayne in Fremont's Oakwood Cemetery that appeared in the September 16th, 2011 issue of The News-Messenger.  Wayne has been walking Oakwood Cemetery all summer, attempting to locate all of the veterans' grave sites. It is one of the largest in the county. Sadly, in Oakwood alone, there are 357 veterans' graves that do not have bronze flag holders beside them. Flag holders and an American flag are issued to veterans' surviving family members when veterans die. Each flag holder has the emblem that identifies the war in which the veteran served.

After learning of my attempts to discover Sandusky County's African American Civil War soldiers, Wayne took photographs of their gravesites while walking Oakwood. Below is the photo he gave me of David J. Vance's tombstone. Others that Wayne shared with me are posted on the Hayes Presidential Center's Civil War Research page, where short sketches of each African American Civil War soldier appears. (With the help of Charles Weiker, we recently discovered the service of two additional soldiers.  Both have been added to the page.)

David J. Vance
Oakwood Cemetery, Fremont, Ohio

Coming North: Martha Laughinghouse Weiker

My search for photos of African American Civil War soldiers led to a conversation with Charles Weiker of Fremont, Ohio. He not only provided a photo, but also shared these photos and this fascinating story of another of his remarkable ancestors who came to Ohio, eventually settling in Sandusky County at the time of the Civil War…. 
  
Martha Laughinghouse Weiker holding son Charles. Son Walter stands at her side (ca. 1888)

Martha Laughinghouse Weiker was born in 1848 in New Bern, Craven County, North Carolina; the 2nd daughter of Ajax and Elizabeth “Patsy” Godette Laughinghouse. The family of freeborn mulattoes traces its history to Ajax’s great-grandfather, Andrew Laughinghouse, who actually wasn’t a Laughinghouse at all.

Around 1769, a shipwreck occurred along the treacherous shoals of the North Carolina coast. The only survivors of the vessel were a small boy and his small body servant. That child was Andrew, who along with his slave, was taken in by the family of Thomas and Patience Smith Laughinghouse of Beaufort County, North Carolina. When questioning the boy (who must have been well off because he traveled with a servant) neither he nor his servant, due to their young ages, could tell the Laughinghouse family what Andrew’s last name was. Andrew was raised as one of the family and adopted the Laughinghouse surname as his own.

Martha’s oldest family lineage is through her mother’s side, stretching to the saga of Margaret Cornish, who at the age of nine, was kidnapped from her homeland of African Angola in the Mbundu nation within the kingdom of Ndongo and was put aboard a Spanish slave ship. The ship was captured by an English pirate ship that took its selected human cargo to Jamestown in 1619.

Margaret Cornish, along with her generations of descendants, lived their lives through a myriad of changing laws in the English colonies that slowly and blatantly circumvented their rights because of their mixed bloodlines. But they persevered despite difficulties.

In time, laws and events would converge and create a situation for free people of color. Just before the start of the Civil War, unsettled and unsatisfactory conditions relative to slavery as practiced in the South, led to the organization of a group of 60 people who migrated to Ohio. Members settled in Oberlin, Pittsfield, and Kipton in Lorain County, Ohio; Fremont, in Sandusky County, Ohio; and Elmore in Ottawa County, Ohio. Patsy and her daughters eventually settled Fremont around 1863.

703 Ohio Avenue

Fremont, Ohio

1901

Back Row (standing l to r ) Charles Weiker, unknown, Walter Weiker, Sarah Weiker Willey, William Dixon, Clara Weiker Dixon, Charles Cooper, Catherine Weiker Cooper, Gardner Willey

Second Row (seated l to r) unknown, unknown, Philip Weiker, Catherine Smith, Martha Laughinghouse Weiker, daughters of Clara Dixon Weiker, Clara Cooper

First Row (boys seated: l to r) Tom Weiker, Fred Cooper

In 1874, Martha married Philip Weiker at the Four Mile House. Following their marriage they located to a farm in Riley Township. Years later they moved into Fremont, where they built a house on the corner of Ohio Avenue and Mulberry Street. The residence still stands today. Philip and Martha had 10 children of their own. They also raised 2 other children.

Martha was a devoted member of the A.M.E. Church on Second Street for more than 50 years. She took an active part in church work, becoming an honorary member of the Missionary Society. After living a full life with family and friends, and perhaps, sometimes pondering over the miles and years before and after the migration that brought her family North, she passed away in 1932 at the age of 84.

A version of this article appeared earlier in Lifstyles 2000.

Sarah Ellen Drew, 1838 - 1940

Documenting the lives of African Americans of Sandusky County, Ohio is not an easy task! In depth research by Charles Weiker of Fremont, Ohio has identified some of the families. Many were related either before coming to Sandusky County or by marriage after their arrival.

One of the most well known in the community was Sarah Ellen Drew, wife of Thomas Drew, who came to Fremont in 1880. In March of 1933, Sarah, was interviewed by Juel Reed of the Fremont News Messenger. That interview provides a rare glimpse into the life of a child born into bondage in Frederick County, Maryland and enslaved in Loudon County, Virginia as a young woman during the Civil War.

At the time of the interview, Sarah, 95 years of age, was living alone at the home she and her husband had built at 541 Second Street in Fremont. Her husband had died 25 years earlier. She had also lost a son and a daughter.

Sarah was born into slavery on a plantation owned by the Crummel family of Frederick County, Maryland. She said, “I did everything around the farm – milked cows, rode horses, did all kinds of general work.” Sarah stated that later she “went into service across the Virginia line. There were lots of tobacco fields there – no cotton – they don’t raise it there – not far enough south.”

Sarah frequently went with her master and mistress to Baltimore and Washington, D. C. Shortly after President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, she attended an affair at which he was present and had the privilege of shaking his hand. She recalled, “He was a wonderful man – not handsome – but so kind looking. We all loved him.”

Two months after the firing on Fort Sumter, Sarah heard the first rumblings of guns near the Loudon County, Virginia plantation, where she lived. “I can still see them bringing the wounded men in – wagon load after wagon load. Some of them were screaming and praying for someone to shoot them and put them out of their misery. Every church was full and they quartered them in every house. Even the place where I was in service had some. I remember seeing 15 of them on the floor of one room. And the way they were buried! They died like flies, and even yet I can see them burying men in boxes that weren’t fit to put a dog in they were so rough. They died so fast they had to get rid of the bodies in some way, I guess.”

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Sarah returned home to her father, her mother having died the previous year. “We were crazy with joy. Remember, we were in bondage all those years, and the thought of being free was almost too much.”

Sarah’s three brothers fought in Union regiments. Immediately after the surrender, she received a letter from one of her brothers stating. “We ate breakfast in Richmond this morning and not a shot was fired. But the panic was awful. Women and children ran all over screaming. We had to order them inside the houses.”

When freedom came, her father moved on a small farm of his own, and a few years later, Sarah married Thomas Drew, who had come from Jefferson County, Virginia. Three months each winter, Sarah did housework for wealthy families in the vicinity. When one of them, the Raifsnyders, came to Fremont in 1880, Sarah came with them.

Recalling her arrival in Fremont, Sarah laughed, saying, “It was the furtherest I’d ever been up north. Do you know what impressed me the most – the board walks! I’d never heard they had them up here, but I never saw them before. Down south we had flagstones.”

Sarah recalled the celebration in Fremont the following spring when the Hayes family returned to Spiegel Grove. A short time later, her husband Thomas and their children joined her in Fremont. When the Raifsnyder family moved away, Sarah worked for the Stanley Thomas and Grund families.

She later worked for the Hayes family. She recalled, “They were grand people. I don’t know as there were any nicer white folks any place. Whenever they were short handed at the Grove they always called me. Sometimes I cooked for them and some times when they had big affairs I’d usher. And Mrs. Hayes! She was the most wonderful person to work for you could imagine. Why, I remember that several times she drove me home. They had a white horse – his name was Nimrod – and the carriage would bring me right up here to my door.” Henry Drew, Sarah’s son, also worked for the Hayes family. Application for probate of will of Thomas Drew by his widow Sarah Ellen Drew
She remembered the days when Colonel Webb Hayes and Fanny Hayes, children of President and Mrs. Hayes, were young. “After Miss Fannie married and went to Washington, she used to come back here to visit real often. She had a colored nurse for the baby, and she used to bring the nurse over here to visit me.”

In her final years, Sarah Drew lived for a time at the Sandusky County Infirmary. Benefiting from an “old age pension,” Sarah moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where she resided with her granddaughter, Sadie Whiteside. Sadie (born Sarah Ellen Drew) was the daughter of Thomas and Sarah’s son, Cornelius Henry Drew.

Sadie had married Leander Dixon, a son of William M. and Elizabeth Dixon. William M. Dixon was a Civil War veteran and member of Fremont’s Eugene Rawson G.A.R. Post. After the death of Leander, Sadie Drew Dixon married William Whiteside. Sarah Ellen Drew died at Sadie’s home in Oberlin in January of 1940 at the age of 102. Services were held at the Warren A. M. E. Church in Fremont, Ohio, where Sarah Drew had been a devoted and active member. She is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Fremont.

Digital Diaspora Family Reunion

While working to compile the names and service records of Sandusky County, Ohio Civil War soldiers, I uncovered nearly two dozen African Americans, who served in the conflict. Some were born free; others escaped the bonds of slavery. From GAR membership rolls; the research project of Washington Courthouse High School students; cemetery records; and obituaries, I was able to piece together fragments of their lives. (You can read about them by following this link.) My great frustration was my inability to locate even one photograph!

I am hopeful that in the coming weeks, all that will change. This month Digital Diaspora Family Reunion goes live! The project is the brain child of New York documentary filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris. While working on Through a Lens Darkly, a documentary about professional African American photographers, Harris decided to explore broader themes. He has developed a web-based multi-media project, where individuals will be able to upload their family photos to a central archive. They will also have the opportunity to explore other family stories, make comments, and add data.

Using an “Antiques Roadshow” format, Harris held events in Georgia, Maryland, and other states, where he has already gathered and archived thousands of African American family photographs. He hopes that photographs lying hidden in shoeboxes and attics will be shared, allowing African Americans to explore the lives and history of their ancestors. Further, he believes that his initiative “will document moments in African American history that have been lost or overlooked - such as the inter-racial communities that flourished briefly but were later stamped out by Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan.”


Harris is correct in stating that “museums, historical societies, and archives have rarely preserved and interpreted the work of professional and amateur African American photographers.” One of the few African American photographs preserved at the Hayes Center is this cabinet card of Lizzie Breckenridge. Sadly, I have been unable to find much information on her. But I remain hopeful that through the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, I will have the opportunity to learn more about the life of Lizzie Breckenridge and those of other African Americans who lived in Sandusky County. Most especially, I would like to see the faces of brave Civil War soldiers like Edwin Leonard who, along with his African American comrades of the 54th Massachusetts, launched the Union attack on Fort Wagner.

Madame Marie Selika: First African American to Perform at the White House

Madame Marie Selika Williams

When President Teddy Roosevelt invited the Tuskegee educator Booker T. Washington to the White House in 1901, there was a storm of media protest. But years earlier, the first African Americans had been invited to the White House without incident. Introduced to President Rutherford B. and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes by Frederick Douglass, soprano Madame Marie Selika, known as the "Queen of Staccato" became the first African American to perform at the White House. On the evening of November 13, 1878 Marie Selika and her husband, opera singer Sampson Williams, entertained the President and the First Lady and their guests in the Green Room. Her performance included Verdi's "Ernami, Involami," Thomas Moore's "The Last Rose of Summer." "Ave Maria," and Richard Mullard's "Staccato Polka." Williams then sang "Far Away" for the more than fifteen guests who had been invited by the Hayeses to join them that evening.

The following year, First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes accepted Madame Selika's invitation to attend her concert at St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church. (It would be another 17 years before another First Lady attended an African American church.) After separating from St. Mary's, a mission church, St. Luke's became the first independent African American church in Washington, D. C. Madame Selika's performance was in support of the construction of the new church built in 1880 on 15th Street NW.

St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C.

Born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1849, Marie moved with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio shortly after her birth. Through the patronage of a wealthy benefactor, she began studying music as a child. Selika eventually moved to San Francisco where she studied with Signora Bianchi. In 1876, Marie made her debut as a concert soprano. Following her White House performance, Selika toured the nation, performing for all-black audiences. During her career, she made two European tours that included command performances for Queen Victoria at St. James Hall.

A leading soprano, Selika nevertheless, did not reach her full potential because of racial prejudice. During the 1890s, she opened a music studio in Cleveland, Ohio. Following her husband's death in 1911, Selika retired from the stage. At the age of 67, she accepted a teaching position at the Martin-Smith School of Music in New York, one of the most important musical institutions for African Americans in the United States. Madame Marie Selika Williams died in New York in 1937.