Pomeroy, Ohio was founded in 1816, 3 years before Meigs County (the county in which it stands) was officially formed. In 1840, the village was incorporated, and designated county seat only one year later in 1841. Pomeroy has a very early history tied to the production of coal and salt in Ohio. The first coal barges on the Ohio river were loaded here.

The first settler, Nathaniel Clark, arrived in 1816 and decided to name the town for Samuel Wyllis Pomeroy. Samuel was one of the earliest residents living in the village. Over the years, Pomeroy had seen rapid growth, mostly due to the large amount of coal in the region. As thousands of people made their living by mining coal, Pomeroy became an excellent place to reside. By 1846, about 1,600 people were living in the town, which now had four churches, one newspaper office, two iron foundries, one machine shop and ten other stores. Over the next 30 years, Pomeroy continued to grow. In 1880, the town’s population had peaked at 5,560 people, and most residents had found employment in salt or coal mining. By now, the town had expanded with two bromine factories, two newspapers, seventeen churches, and two banks. As coal and salt in the region began to dwindle (man, that’s a funny word), the population began a slight decline. By 1890, Pomeroy’s population had fallen to 4,726 residents.

As we welcomed the twentieth century, Pomeroy’s economic situation had begun to struggle. Salt and coal mining were almost non-existent here, and many residents were forced to move elsewhere if they wished to find employment. Many buildings were abandoned as people left, and things began to fall apart for the once-prosperous little town.

The population of Pomeroy today is 1,966 people; less than half what it was during the late 1800s.

Pomeroy has a few things that make it quite unique. The community has appeared twice in Ripley’s Believe it or Not: once for having a 3-story courthouse built into the side of a cliff, and a second time for being recognized as the only community in the country that doesn’t have a single four-way intersection. The unique thing about this 3-story courthouse is that, since it’s built into the side of the cliff, there is a ground entrance on each floor. The courthouse was built in 1848 for a total of $5,200.

Another interesting piece of history Pomeroy holds is one not to do with industry or production of goods in the early days, but actually two McDonald’s locations. The two McDonald’s in town were, up until August 31, 2017, the last two in the world that still served pizza. While McDonald’s had quit selling pizzas at their stores in the late 1990s, the locations in Pomeroy pushed on and kept at it for years after.

Finally, one piece of Ohio’s great history that is far too often neglected, and rarely talked about sits in Pomeroy, Ohio, unfortunately rotting away. One thing we can do is keep the stories alive.

During the late 1880s, a school was built in the oldest part of town in Kerr’s Run. The school was known as the “Kerr’s Run Colored School,” and was opened to educate children from the first to eighth grade. The school remained in operation from the late 1880s through the early 1900s. One of many students who would attend this school was James Edwin Campbell.

James had been a Pomeroy resident since his birth on September 28, 1867, and had grown up in the Kerr’s Run section of town – part of Pomeroy’s First Ward. Campbell was a childhood playmate of future West Virginia state auditor J. S. Darst. Darst cited Campbell as a person who rose to prominence in spite of his early unfavorable environment, and he described the “Bloody First” ward of Pomeroy as “tough.”

Through the quality education that Campbell was able to receive at this school, he grew to become a famous African American poet, editor, educator, and author.

After Campbell had completed 8th grade, he went on to complete his secondary education at Pomeroy Academy in 1884. He had begun teaching in Buck Ridge, Ohio and served as a teacher there for two years. After that, he relocated to West Virginia and served as the editor of The Pioneer and West Virginia Enterprise newspapers. He went on from 1891 to 1892 as principal of the Point Pleasant Colored School, later known as Langston Academy. He had become the first president of the West Virginia State University in 1892. He resigned from that position in 1894, shortly after receiving an honorary Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Shaw University in 1893.

Campbell had loved to write poetry from a young age, and went on to write poetry and stories throughout his careers as a schoolteacher and school administrator. In 1887, he published his first book, Driftings and Gleanings. The book was a volume of poetry and essays in standard American English.  In 1895, he moved to Chicago and had become a staff member of the Chicago Times-Herald, publishing his own poems and articles. He had also participated in the publication of Four O’Clock Magazine. In this same year, he published his second book, Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere; another collection of poetry in the southern African-American vernacular dialect.

He was the first African-American poet to write in this dialect, though Paul Laurence Dunbar is credited with popularizing it some time after Cambell had published his works.

Thanks to funds from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, the Meigs County Historical Society and the Ohio Historical Society were able to erect a historical marker in Campbell’s honor in Pomeroy in 2007. In 2019, the Meigs County Historical Society unveiled a Meigs County Bicentennial Marker at the site of the Kerr’s Run Colored School, and concluded the unveiling ceremony with a reading from one of Campbell’s books.

Actor George Dale Jr. portrays Campbell in the 2020 film River of Hope. The film tells the story of Samuel I. Cabell, his wife Mary Barnes Cabell, and how their children helped to found the West Virginia State University at the location of their family’s farm.

Campbell had accomplished quite a lot by the age of 29. Unfortunately he never made it to 30, as he died of typhoid pneumonia on January 26, 1896.

In 1973, the West Virginia College named its vocational building Campbell Hall in honor of James and all he did. In addition, when the former home economics cottage was converted to a conference center, the school named it the Campbell Conference Center.

Unfortunately, like James’ story, the history of many other great people of color who played a very important part in the history of our country is rarely talked about, or worse, forgotten. It’s sad to know that thousands of great men and women who played such important roles in American history often go unrecognized by so many. Their accomplishments and successes are being tossed aside, forgotten further and further with each generation. Let’s not let these pieces of our history fade away.

Another notable student to attend the school was James McHenry Jones. He, like Campbell, had also completed first through eighth grade at this school, and had gone on in life to become a teacher, preacher, author and orator. Campbell and Jones had also gone on to become the first and third presidents of what is now West Virginia State University (formerly called West Virginia Colored Institute). They had, through incredible odds at the time, become some of the first educators of African Americans in West Virginia.

Among the many notable students in history to gain an education from this school, some others include: 

• Joe Spears, one of the leading orators of the Ohio and Kanawha Valleys

• Flemming B. Jones, principal of Wheeling School, teacher, banker, first African American in the U.S. to secure a charter for a national bank
• Calvin Morton, merchant
• John L. Jones, writer of the history of the Jones Family
• Ollie Wilson, teacher, orator
• John R. Jefferson, teacher and principal of Parkersburg schools for 25 years
• Edward Morton, teacher and scholar
• Miss Bertha Morton, teacher
• Irene Chilron Moats, teacher, scholar, advisory board of the state of West Virginia in 1929
• C. E. Jones, scholar, teacher for 32 years in West Virginia
• Harry Hagelwood, scholar, teacher, principal in Huntington, West Virginia

And of course the two mentioned earlier:

• James McHenry Jones, teacher, preacher, author, orator, at the time of his death the third President of West Virginia Collegaite, now West Virginia State College
• James E. Campbell, teacher, poet, orator and first President of West Virginia Collegiate.
  
  

We need to appreciate, and give credit to those in our country’s history that deserve it. We can’t keep letting these important pieces of our history as a country be forgotten generation after generation.

Former student John L. Jones wrote about the school in his book, saying:

“No town in the state of Ohio has produced and sent out into the world more outstanding men and women as came out of this class.”

Some other notable people from Pomeroy include:

• Mike Bartrum, an NFL long snapper/tight end
• Norman “Kid” Elberfeld, a Major League Baseball shortstop and manager
• Reverend Fr. John Joseph Jessing, founder of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio
• Benny Kauff, Major League Baseball player
• Livia Simpson Poffenbarger, newspaper owner/editor, civic leader
• Charlie Slack, NCAA basketball record holder for single season rebounding average
• Ambrose Bierce, American journalist, short story writer, editorialist, fabulist and satirist.
• Jorma Kaukonen, Guitarist, singer, songwriter of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame

I’ll end this post with one of James Campbell’s earlier poems, “The Pariah’s Love”:

Owned her father all the fact’ries

Which their black’ning smoke sent up,

Miles and miles all ’round the country,

From the town by hills pent up.

Traced he back his proud ancestry

To the Rock on Plymouth’s shore,

Traced I mine to Dutch ship landing

At Jamestown, one year before.

Thus was she of haughty lineage,

I of mongrel race had sprung;

O’er my fathers in the workfield

Whips of scorpions had been swung.

Years of freedom were her race’s,

Years of cruel slavery mine;

Years of culture were her race’s,

Years of darkest ign’rance mine.

She a lily sought by all men,

I a thistle shunned by all;

She the Brahmin, I the Pariah

Who must e’er before her crawl.

Fair was I as her complexion,

Honest came my fairness, too,

For my father and my mother

Were in wedlock banded true.

Yes, this mixing of the races

Had been years, long years ago,

That you could not trace the streamlet

To the fountain whence the flow.

Like an eagle long imprisoned

Soared I into realms of light,

Scorning all the narrow valley,

Where my wings had plumed for flight.

In the Sun of modern science

I had soaring bathed my wings,

And rose higher, higher, higher,

‘Bove a world of narrow things.

Then on proudly soaring pinions

I forgot my lowly birth,

When Caste’s arrow, venom laden,

Struck me, shot me down to Earth.

Kind and friendly had she ever

Seemed and acted unto me,

Till of late a cold restrainment

Seemed to bar her manners free.

Then my sens’tive soul quick thinking

That the Pride of Caste was born

In her mind, grew cold and distant,

Though it pricked me like a thorn,

And my thoughts grew dark and bitter,

Bitter as the wild aloe.

I became a sneering cynic,

Deeming every man a foe,

Scorning books while scorning people.

In their pages naught I saw

But I libelled, but I censured,

Every sentence found a flaw;

Till one night the mad mob gathered,

Called in voices wild and loud

I should quickly come before them,

And address the raging crowd.

They were strikers, who were workmen

For her father stern and proud,

And they threatened to destroy him

And his works in curses loud.

At the call I stepped before them,

And they greeted wild and strong,

And my heart grew hot with hatred

Of Oppression, Caste and Wrong,

While the words poured out like lava

From the crater of my brain —

Burning, seething, hissing, raging

With the years of pent-up pain.

They had gathered by the great works,

With their blazing furnace doors,

And the lofty, flaming chimneys,

Up whose throats the hot blast roars;

And the furnace threw its hot light

‘Pon their toilworn, swarthy faces,

While the flames from out the chimnies

Painted heaven with their blazes.

In their hands they held their weapons —

Tools for toil, and not for war;

On the great mill rolled and thundered,

Shaking heaven with its jar.

And their brows were dark with hatred,

And their cheeks were hot with rage,

And their voices low were growling,

Like wild beasts penned in a cage.

And the tiger rose within me

With a growl that was a curse,

And I breathed his breath of passion,

And I felt his awful thirst.

But her image came before me,

With her sad, reproachful eyes,

And her locks of sunset splendor

When the summer daylight dies.

Then banished was hot Passion,

While Mercy pleaded low,

And I cooled their angry fury,

As hot iron is cooled in snow.

And she comes and stands before me

As I gaze into the stream,

And I see her, I behold her

As some vision in a dream,

And the waves of love come surging

And they sweep my will away,

For I love her, O I love her —

Aye, forever and a day!

And I called her: “Edie! Edie!”

As I’d called her oft before,

When as little guileless children

We plucked lilies from this shore.

Oh my voice sobbed like a harp string

When the rough hand breaks a chord,

And it wailed and moaned as sadly

As some broken-hearted bard.

And she came up to me quickly

When I thus wailed out her name,

All her soul rose in her blue eyes

There was ne’er a look of shame,

And she threw her arms up to me

And I caught her to my heart,

While the whole earth reeled beneath me

And the heavens fell apart!

Faint and trembling then I asked her

What the cruel world would say,

While she blushed but spoke out bravely:

“We’ll forget the World to-day.

This I only know, I love you,

I have loved you all the while;

What care I then for your lineage

Or the harsh world’s frown or smile.

Men are noble from their actions,

From their deeds and theirs alone,

Father’s deeds are not their children’s —

Reap not that by others sown.

They are naught but dwarfish pigmies

Who would scorn you for your birth;

Who would scorn you for your lineage,

Raise they not their eyes from Earth.

What is blood? The human body?

Trace it back, it leads to dust,

Trace it forward, same conclusion,

Naught but vile dust find you must.

But the soul is sent from heaven

And the Sculptor-Hand is God’s

Part and parcel of his being,

While our bodies are but clods!”

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You can find more of Campbell’s poetry here