THE MULTICULTURAL GENEALOGICAL CENTER
Chesterhill, Ohio
dedicated to the documentation of the contributions
of multicultural and multiracial families
our youngest member and our future
FROM WHENCE WE CAME
Because of Ephraim Cutler's deciding vote, Ohio entered the Union in 1803 a free state. Because slavery was illegal here, Ohio became a place of refuge for free and enslaved African-Americans.Free blacks such as Joseph Jones came to Ohio with his parents in the 1830s and worked to help slaves reach Canada. Jones family descendants became successful farmers, bankers, dentists, teachers, storeowners and, in general, good citizens and successful individuals. While Joseph Jones lived in Ohio River towns such as Gallipolis and Pomeroy in order to operate this leg of the Underground Railroad, his children and his cousins lived in Perry and Jackson Counties in Ohio. His descendants have roamed far and wide; but a few remain in the area of Columbus, Ohio and points south and east.
Michael Tabler, a white man who had fallen in love with one of his father's slaves, brought her and their children to safety in the mountains of western Virginia. In 1830 he manumitted their children and settled with them in Athens County, Ohio. Many of their descendants have chosen to remain in southeast Ohio.
Others seeking freedom have similar stories: the Mayles, the Normans, the Goins, the Woodsons and more. These are stories seldom heard in history classes.
HOW WE STARTED
Because the stories of free black men and women who settled before the Civil War in southeastern Ohio are seldom told, a couple of their descendants committed themselves to making the stories heard. Alvin Adams, who grew up in rural Athens County - a descendant of Michael and Hannah Tabler, was the first African-American graduate of Ohio University's School of Journalism. His distinguished career included covering the Civil Rights Movement in the South led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Al and his wife, Ada, who is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson through the Woodsons of Jackson County, Ohio and a native of Nelsonville, Ohio, decided to spend their retirement years on property Al owned in Broadwell, Athens County, Ohio. Al had told some stories of his youth in a self-published book, Hold Tight to the Hames. When he moved back to Athens County, he, Gracie Mayle Hill (who had been collecting family history documents for years), and others conferred about forming a group that would insure more such stories were told.WHERE WE ARE
The Multicultural Genealogical Center began in 2000 dedicated to documenting the contributions of multicultural and multiracial families to the social, cultural, political, religious, educational, and economic development of the Ohio River Valley. MGC is an incorporated non-profit organization holding such status under the Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3). Our purpose includes collecting records that document the genealogies of families in southeastern Ohio whose ancestors cross racial and cultural boundaries (African, European, Asian, and Native American), protecting these records for future generations, telling our stories in whatever ways we can, and promoting and improving public perception of the region's diverse, multicultural heritage. Some of the accomplishments of the Multicultural Genealogical Center to date include:
Community & Campus Day which we co-sponsored with Ohio University's African American Studies department in 2002 and 2003. This event is intended to promote harmony between the university and surrounding communities - especially communities of color - and it has been quite successful. Exhibits by community and campus people share artifacts, photographs, creative endeavors, and family histories with attendees. Others display their talents in story, song, dance, and speeches. Approximately 78 exhibits and 20 performances were part of the well-attended 2003 event. Community & Campus Day has been so successful that it will be part of Ohio University's Bicentennial celebration and Black Alumni Reunion in 2004. We are pleased that it has been such a successful collaboration with the university. We are also pleased that it has been so successful in telling our stories.
People of Color: A Multicultural Role in History exhibit at Ohio University's prestigious Kennedy Museum of Art was suggested by MGC board member, David Butcher. He and Al Adams worked with the Kennedy Museum staff to create one of the best-attended installations in the Museum's history. The exhibit chronicled the lives of Michael Tabler and Hannah and their descendants in southeastern Ohio. Using photographs and artifacts, it told the stirring story of these people who found freedom. Rendville Emancipation Day/Homecoming was revived as suggested by MGC members and we helped organize it (2000 - 2002). Rendville in Perry County, Ohio has a rich history of diversity. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. lived in Rendville as a coal miner and discovered religion there. MGC board members Henry Burke, Al Adams and Ada Woodson Adams helped organize the 2003 Friends of Freedom Society's Underground Railroad Summit in Marietta, Ohio.
Presentations have been given at Ohio University's Black History Month celebration, Ohio University graduate school of Social Work and African American History classes, Federal Hocking High School classes, the Western Washington County Historical Society, the Muskingum County Chapter, Ohio Genealogical Society, and more.
Conducted tours of underground railroad sites in Chesterhill, a Quaker village in Morgan County, Ohio and tours of historic sites in Martinsburg, Harpers Ferry, and Gettysburg and a West Virginia plantation where a prominent local family of color originated. These tours have added new meanings to our stories. An Ohio Bicentennial Event, the Wallpaper Project, will present, during Ohio's 2003 bicentennial celebration, plays in 40 Ohio counties. MGC members co-organized the Morgan County project. The plays are tailored to include local history compiled through oral history interviews. MGC members conducted numerous oral history interviews that will be used to produce the play and will be available for genealogical and historical study.
A research library has been established by MGC and is currently housed in the Chesterhill branch of the Morgan County Library. Thanks to donations by members our library houses the best collection on "tri-racial isolates" in this part of the country.
Monthly programs are presented for the public in the 1839 Quaker Meeting House in Chesterhill, Ohio. Attendance is good and the social time after the presentation is a highlight.
(photo of a program meeting and photo of the two ladies at the podium)
Publication of our stories has begun with our first book, the Multicultural Genealogical Center's Heritage Cookbook, Vol. 1 (2003) which tells some of our stories and includes many of our recipes. Money made from sales of this book and forthcoming Volume 2 will finance other publications. The first of those projected volumes will be As Long as Hearts Remember, which will contain memorials to deceased ancestors.
Members of our group were instrumental in getting an Ohio Historical Marker placed at the Quaker Meeting House in Chesterhill, Ohio.
WE HAVE A DREAM
When MGC was organized, we did not call it the Multicultural Genealogical Society but, rather, the Multicultural Genealogical Center because we were to be a part of the new Chesterhill Branch of the Morgan County Library. We were to have enough space for a library and a museum. Before the new branch was completed, funds were cut, and our space was reduced to a few shelves. Since then our library holdings have expanded and donations for a museum have made it difficult to find storage space much less exhibition space.Items waiting to be displayed include a collection of paintings of sites important to underground railroad history in Albany, Ohio. Albany is important to African American history on a national level since it was the site of the first black owned and operated school, the Enterprise Academy. Opened during the Civil War, it offered ex-slaves and others the opportunity for an education. Church pews from the historic Kilvert, Ohio Church of God are in storage. We are promised four fine examples of traditional Nigerian textiles from the collection of Judith Perani, African art scholar.
Besides housing a growing collection, which needs to be displayed, and a growing library, which needs to be open to researchers, this museum would dramatize the tenacity, grit, and achievements of multiracial and multicultural people of the region and of their ancestors. The museum, at Chesterhill, would, we think, be the first such museum of its kind. It would tell the stories of people of multi-races and cultures.
Scenes of Chesterhill, Ohio: The Quaker Meeting House and a log cabin that is a possible donation:
| a front view of the meeting house |  |
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a view of the back area of the meeting house |
| the log cabin |  |