Africa, Ohio

Africa community historical marker

Africa is named after the Underground Railroad and is thought to be the only town in the world named after the Underground Railroad. Its first church is thought to have been a Methodist church that was established on the east side of Alum Creek in approximately 1828. In 1843, the slavery question separated its congregation. The antislavery portion organized the Wesleyan Church on the east side of Alum Creek. The first services were held in a cabin on the Alum Creek flats near the Patterson residence. In 1876, members of the congregation built a church, located in present-day Africa.

A historic marker in the area recounts the history of how the community was divided by the slavery question and of how Africa received its name:

Samuel Patterson arrived in East Orange in 1824 and, within a few years, began to hide runaway slaves in his home. He also invited anti-slavery speakers to the pulpit of the East Orange Methodist Church, which brought Patterson and his neighbors into conflict with the bishop. Following their consciences, they became the Wesleyan Methodists and built a new church. A pro-slavery neighbor mocked them by calling their community Africa, and so East Orange was renamed. The village has disappeared but several homes owned by Patterson and his neighbors still stand in this vicinity.

The reverse side of the marker adds the following information:

In 1859 slaves from a North Carolina plantation owned by the Alston family were sent north. The plantation's mistress had disapproved of slavery and made arrangements for the slaves to travel to Ohio and freedom. These slaves moved to the community of Africa, lived in log homes, were employed by the anti-slavery farmers and joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church. After the Civil War the freed slaves left Africa and settled in the communities of Delaware and Westerville, and Van Wert and Paulding counties.

The Patterson family built their original double log cabin in the 1820s. Sometime near the year and 1840, family members built a mansion on the east side of Alum Creek. This and additional homes built by the Pattersons still stand, and these buildings were important Underground Railroad stations.

This particular Underground Railroad route assumed national importance because of its relationship to two famous songwriters. A station north of the Patterson farm was in Mt. Vernon, the home of Dan Emmett. In 1842, Emmett and three other men formed the Virginia Minstrels. Emmett wrote "Old Dan Tucker," "Dixie," "Turkey in the Straw," and "The Blue Tail Fly."[2] "Dixie" became popular immediately and, as the Civil War began troops of both North and the South armies marched to this tune, but by the end of 1861, Dixie had become a Southern song. Emmett was not a Southern sympathizer and was not pleased when the Confederacy adopted his tune as its unofficial "National Anthem." The Virginia Minstrels are today considered the nation's first true minstrel troop. Around the turn of the 20th century, this form evolved into vaudeville and later into Broadway productions.

Africa is adjacent to the Alum Creek State Park, an Ohio recreation area, on Africa Road, which roughly follows the Underground Railroad route that escaping slaves took before the American Civil War. Africa began as Orange Station, and some early accounts described the area as the "East Orange Post Office." Orange Station at one time had a post office, a general store, and a saloon.

• Buckingham, Ray, E. Delaware County Then and Now. History Book, Inc., 1976
• History of Delaware County and Ohio. Chicago: O. L. Baskin & Co., 1880
• Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993
• Lytle, A. R. History of Delaware County Ohio. Delaware, 1908
• Memorial Record of the Counties of Delaware, Union and Morrow, Ohio. Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1895