Erie County African American Soldiers in the First World War

 The book Honor Roll of Ohio: Erie County Edition is a compilation of Erie County residents who served in military or civilian activity during World War I. Soldiers and sailors who served during the war are listed in the book, with photographs, brief personal information, and service summaries included for each man. 

As in the service itself, the African American servicemen were segregated from the rest of the men into two pages of the book. Those pages are shown here.

 Although we do not have additional information for all of the soldiers depicted here, we are able to gather brief biographical data on some of these men. 

Reading the descriptions, you will notice that two of these men died in overseas service. Corporal Clarence Howard was featured in a previous blog post. He was noted as a star pitcher for the Sandusky Crescents baseball team before the war. He was killed by an accidental weapon discharge on October 12, 1918.

Private Robert Adkerson died in service in France on October 22, 1918, at age 25. He was initially buried in France, but in 1921 his remains were returned to his native Tennessee for reburial.

Three sons of William and Mary Alexander performed military service during the war. Sergeant Robert Alexander served overseas with Co. H of the 802nd Pioneer Infantry. Private Charles Alexander was in France with Co. L of the 365th Infantry, 92nd Division. The youngest brother, Private Earl Alexander, served in the Student Army Training Corps at the Ohio State University, beginning September 1918.

The Honor Roll of Ohio is available in the Genealogy book collection at the Sandusky Library.

Women's History Month Wrap-Up: Finding Information about Your Female Ancestors in Erie County

March is Women’s History Month, and in honor of the women of our area, here are some tips on how you can locate information about your female ancestors in Sandusky and Erie County. 

For the earliest settlers in Erie County, you can check the index of the Firelands Pioneer. There is a general index arranged by surname, and a separate index for obituaries. In the June 1865 issue of the Firelands Pioneer, Truman Taylor recounts his grandmother’s account of  how several families moved from Glastonbury, Connecticut to Perkins Township in Erie County, Ohio in 1815, by oxen train.

The women had to wash clothes along the way, sometimes hanging the wet laundry on a brush pile to dry. The families camped at night, stopping in a location with pastures for the cattle and horse. They took provisions along with them, consisting of bacon, bread, butter and cheese. Once they settled in Erie County, the pioneers had to clear the land, build cabins, and till the tough prairie sod.

Two sources that provide information are Mothers of Erie County, by Marjorie Cherry Loomis, and Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve, edited by Mrs. Gertrude Van Ressselaer Wickham. These books are anecdotal in nature, and provide biographical information about the earliest female residents of Erie County. The Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve was originally written in five parts, and is housed in a bound two volume set, shelved in the genealogical section of books in the lower level of the Sandusky Library.  The pages devoted to women from Sandusky are found in Part 1, pages 158 to 164. Mrs. Jane Hartshorn, daughter of William Kelly, recalled that when her family settled in Sandusky in 1818, there were only five frame houses in Sandusky at that time. All the rest were built of logs. The family stayed in a small log house that had been used as a cabin for fishermen. It had no fireplace, just a stone hearth, and very little furniture or dishes. Though times were difficult, she remembered those early days with fondness. Jay Cooke remembered his mother, Martha Simpson Carswell Cooke, working at her spinning wheel, to prepare material for the children’s clothing and stockings. When Martha’s husband, Eleutheros, brought back cans of oysters from the east, she shared liberally with her neighbors. Jay Cooke recalled that his mother had wise counsel and unfailing Christian love. There are indexes in the back of volume two of Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve arranged by the surname of the pioneer women, as well as an index to towns and counties.

For genealogical information about your female ancestors, the Sandusky Library has access to Ancestry Library Edition and Heritage Quest. An outstanding online resource, available to anyone with computer access, is FamilySearch.org. This database is particularly strong in Ohio information, such as birth, marriage, and death records and some census data.  Sources available inside the Sandusky Library include school yearbooks, Sandusky city directories, Erie County directories and histories, obituaries in the microfilmed copies of the Sandusky Register, and church records, also on microfilm. Hundreds of historical photographs are housed at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center. Inquire at the Sandusky Library for more information.

A fun way to learn a bit more about women from Sandusky and Erie County, search for  women ​in the Labels list to the left. In these links, you can read, for example, about women working for the war effort in World War II.

Sarah Howard was the first African-American female to graduate from Sandusky High School.

The Woman’s Endeavor was a newspaper published by Sandusky women in 1908. In 1920, there was an all-women jury in a courtroom at the Erie County Courthouse. Dr. Carrie Chase Davis was one of the first female physicians in Sandusky, and was also known for her active involvement in women’s rights.

Two other notable Sandusky women we cannot forget are Marie Brehm, the first legally qualified female candidate to run for the vice-presidency of the U.S., and Jackie Mayer, Miss America of 1963, now a motivational speaker. Jackie Mayer speaks about her recovery from a near-fatal stroke when she was 28.

Clarence Howard, Sandusky Crescents

In the Sandusky Library's collections are two photo postcards showing the Sandusky Crescents baseball team in 1912. We don't know much about the Crescents, but it appears that they were one of several baseball teams that played in the area at the time. The Crescents players were all very young men -- the few that we were able to successfully research were age 15-17 at the time of these photos. There were other teams from Castalia, Bay Bridge, Fremont, and other nearby places, who seemed to play not in a league, but as individual teams challenging each other on weekends.

What makes these photographs historically interesting, however, is the Crescents' star pitcher, Clarence Howard, an African-American on an otherwise all-white team. (It is a strange pleasure to see that Sandusky baseball was integrated some thirty-five years before the Major Leagues.) He also pitched for a team called the Sandusky Giants; an article in the July 19, 1912 Sandusky Register reported that he pitched a no-hitter for the Giants against a team from Fremont at an A.M.E. church outing at Rye Beach. (The only run that Fremont scored was when the Sandusky second baseman let the ball go by because he found a pocketbook on the ground; after the game, he was reported as saying "it was a good thing he found that purse, as it would have been scandalous to bring the boys all the way from Fremont and then shut them out.")

Sadly, Clarence Howard's life ended tragically and prematurely while a soldier in France during the First World War, when he was killed by the accidental discharge of a weapon in the barracks. He was 22 years old. His body was eventually returned to Sandusky, where he received a military funeral and burial in the American Legion plot in Oakland Cemetery.

The Crescents players are: Joe Schmitt, Bill Nottke, Larry Clark, Paul Mielke, Art Mielke, Ray Diehl, Gus Fehr, "Irish" Connors, Clarence Howard.

Sandusky High School Class of 1884

Through the generous donation of local donors, the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library has a complete set of photographs of the Sandusky High School graduating class of 1884. The students’ photographs were taken by the studio of Bishop & Veitch. Willard A. Bishop and James H. Veitch had a photography studio opposite the Post Office in the Stone Block.

Charles F. Selkirk was the son of Clerk of Courts George O. Selkirk. When Charles passed away April 1931, his obituary was headlined with the words “Poet and Friend of Poets.” Charles F. Selkirk wrote many poems, some of which were published in the Sandusky Register by the pen name of “Solkirke.” You can read more about Charles F. Selkirk in Helen Hansen’s book AT HOME IN EARLY SANDUSKY, available at the Sandusky Library.

Sarah Howard was the first African American female graduate of Sandusky High School. She was born in Perkins Township to John and Abby Howard. Sarah taught school in Kentucky and Texas for seventeen years. She married Thomas Lawson and they moved to Ontario, Canada. Sarah died in Windsor at the age of 54, survived by her husband Thomas and son Clarence. You can read Sarah Lawson’s obituary in the Sandusky Star Journal of September 26, 1917.

Evelina Ball was the daughter of Katharine Follett Ball and Flamen Ball III, and the granddaughter of Oran and Eliza Follett. She married George Walbridge Perkins, a partner of J. P. Morgan. In 1903 G. W. Perkins purchased the Wave Hill House, a former summer home of the Theodore Roosevelt family. Wave Hill House is now part of a botanical garden in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. Evelina was born at The Follett House in 1865, and lived in Sandusky while she attended Sandusky High School. When Katharine Follett Ball was dying in 1909, news of Evelina rushing to be near her mother’s side was printed in the New York Times.

James M. French was a very successful businessman in Sandusky, active in the insurance business, real estate, the local Red Cross, and many other civic activities. Mr. French’s obituary is found in the 1922 Obituary Notebook, located in the Archives Research Center. The community was greatly saddened at the death of James M. French. Classmate Charles F. Selkirk was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral, as was Congressman James T. Begg. There were so many attendees at the funeral that the First Congregational Church could not hold them all. The African American Boy Scout troop, which Mr. French helped to organize, stood at attention as the casket was taken to the hearse.

These are just a few profiles of the many graduates of Sandusky High School. Visit the Sandusky Library to learn more about early residents of our community.