Week 9: Montgomery County

Montgomery County was created from parts of Ross and Hamilton Counties in March of 1803, and is named after Revolutionary War General Richard Montgomery. Montgomery County, whose seat is Dayton, was once home to several famous people and industries such as: The Wright Bicycle Shop, owned and operated by Wilbur and Orville Wright; The National Cash Register Company (NCR), opened by John Patterson; Ohio Governors James Cox and Charles Anderson; African American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar; Orville Wright; John Patterson; Charles F. Kettering; and many, many more. Perhaps the most historically memorable moment for Montgomery County, and Dayton, was the Great Flood of 1913.

Downtown Dayton as seen from the lookout at Woodland Cemetery.

The Great Flood is well outside the parameters of my research, however. This week I was in downtown Dayton at the Reibold Building to search the Montgomery County Records Center and Archives, located on the 6th floor, for traces of free Blacks in the county. The Montgomery County Archives consists of two floors - the 6th and the 9th - the 6th floor being where the general records are as well as the archivist, Tina Ratcliff, and her extraordinary team.

Inside the Montgomery County Archives.

I began my search in the deed records. The vast amount of deed records housed in the archives in unsurprising considering how populated, and how industrialized, Dayton became once the Miami and Erie Canal was complete thus connecting Dayton to Cincinnati. While the deed records had been carefully transcribed I found no entries for Blacks being freed via deed so I began searching the Clerk of Court minute books.

Inside the Montgomery County Archives.

I scoured through page after page of minute books and found nothing. Tina Ratcliff, archivist for Montgomery County, gave me some advice as to where I might find some entries, telling me that I should check individual township books. She also mentioned that anything could have happened to Montgomery County's Black and Mulatto Registry, including being destroyed in the 1913 flood. Once again, I needed to make my way back to Wright State University's Special Collections and Archives.

Before I left, however, Ms. Ratcliff pulled out an archival box from a shelf and sat it down on a table in the reading room. In it was some historical documents, a probate record for John Dillinger (not THE John Dillinger), a couple of photographs, and a photocopy of a stray animal record book. I read the small, tattered label on the photocopied cover and realized the book's importance. The label read, "Stray Book A No. 1 & Record of Free Negros Montgomery Common Pleas."

Montgomery County Common Pleas Stray Animal and Free Negro Record.

Scribbled in the back of the book like an afterthought was the names of fourteen African Americans who had come to the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas to enter their names as free Blacks. All these men and women had come from different parts of Virginia between 1804 and 1805, right after the county was created, and were choosing to make their homes in Montgomery County, Ohio.

A page inside the registry.

As heartbreaking as it is to see the names appear in a stray animal registry, it is comforting to see them appear at all. Well, that's all I have for this week. I hope you enjoyed, and please join me next week as I make one final return to Wright State University's Special Collections and Archives.

Thanks, and be good!