Nelsonville, just a 15-minute drive from Athens, is no stranger to history. It is one of the oldest cities in Ohio, dating back to the start of the 19th century. It has been home to thousands of families and faces in those 200 hundred years, and continues to be home to just over 5,000 people, according to the 2020 census.
Many different veins of history converged in Nelsonville on Saturday. Little Cities of Black Diamonds Day took place in Stuart’s Opera House, bringing together speakers, performers and Athens County residents for a sweeping look at Southeast Ohio history and Appalachian cultural heritage.
“The first (Little Cities of Black Diamonds Day) was in October of ‘94 at Southern Local School District,” Tyler McDaniel, Little Cities of Black Diamonds president, said. “It was in the cafeteria of the elementary and middle school. They had kind of what we have today; smaller, but speakers on a stage presenting different things, and they had folks who collect history, like artifacts.”
Little Cities of Black Diamonds is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to preserving the history of Southeastern Ohio. Formed in the early 1990s, it started with a goal of promoting community development in Perry County. Today it has the same goal, just with dozens more cities to promote.
“I think the more people know about the region, the more respect that they feel for themselves in the place that they call home, or the place that their ancestors are from,” McDaniel said. “From that, I think it just builds respect for people and a feeling of place.”
After over two decades of planning its flagship event, Little Cities of Black Diamonds has grown its annual day to include 20 tables from organizations, live singers and a slate of local presenters all from across Appalachian Ohio.
Mount Zion Black Cultural Center was one of the organizations present at Little Cities of Black Diamonds Day. Regis Saxton, a research administrator at George Mason University and Ohio University graduate, said Black history is an integral part of Southeastern Ohio history.
“We've always been here, and we will continue to be here, and we have a place here to be able to share that with other people,” Saxton said.
Little Cities of Black Diamonds supports cities, villages and unincorporated towns across the region through cultural and historical preservation efforts. One of the supported places is Rendville, a village in southern Perry County that is the smallest incorporated town in Ohio with a population of 28, according to the 2020 census.
Despite its size, the town has a deeply-important history that deserves to be remembered, Harry Ivory of the Rendville Historic Preservation Society said.
Rendville was founded in 1879 and quickly became a town where labor rights and racial integration were particularly important issues. The town’s founder, Colonel William P. Rend, was a Chicago-born mine owner who advocated for miners’ rights until his death in 1915.
“W.P. Rend brought in some African American miners from Virginia and West Virginia and paid them the same wages as the white miners,” Ivory said. “Once the coal ran out, people started moving away, and the history started disappearing, and that's one thing that we don't want to happen.”
Rendville is home to many of historic firsts in Ohio, Ivory said. Sophia Mitchell was appointed mayor of Rendville in 1969, becoming the first Black woman to hold the position of mayor in Ohio. Dr. Isaiah Tuppins, the company doctor for W.P. Rend’s mines, was the first Black man to graduate from Ohio State University’s medical school and the first Black mayor of in the northern U.S. after becoming Rendville’s mayor in 1886.
“Once we start telling people about it, they're like, ‘man, we didn't know that,’” Ivory said.
There were several people at Little Cities of Black Diamonds who, like Ivory, had bounties of knowledge about places in the region. One of these people in attendance was Nyla Vollmer, the vice president of the Hocking County Historical and Genealogical Society. She shares this knowledge via the society’s Facebook page and in the Hocking County Museum where she works as the curator.
“We have got six buildings full of history, and we have got history on all kinds of things and everything is Hocking County,” Vollmer said
Vollmer, a native Southeast Ohioan, has been preserving Hocking County history for most of her life.
“Well, if we don't share (our history), we lose it and no one will know it,” Vollmer said.
Throughout the event, casual talks of the old times were abound. Nancy Devol Rose, a folk and bluegrass singer, performed her song “Ode to Haydenville,” a twangy track about her childhood in the unincorporated community. Many of the people who shared the history of their towns at Little Cities of Black Diamonds Day were people who had spent decades in the region and were now grandparents or great aunts and uncles.
“I'm trying to find some younger people to take my place,” Ivory said. “I need to find them because I don't have much time left. I'm an old man. God's got to get some young people interested. The problem is the descendants of the people from Rendville, those kids don't have any connection to Renville anymore. They moved away, and, you know, they basically never come back.”
The Appalachian region as a whole has suffered from declining populations for years. Central and Northern Appalachia, which includes parts of states such as Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, have experienced population losses of at least 3%, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.
McDaniel sees Little Cities of Black Diamonds Day and what Little Cities of Black Diamonds does — preserving oral history, collecting and documenting stories — as a solution to keep people who grew up in the Appalachian region home.
“I've had so many people reach out to me that said that they look at this region or their hometown differently and with more respect, because they have learned more about the history,” McDaniel said.
Understanding the history of the region kept McDaniel in Southeastern Ohio, but it also brought some new people in. Saxton, who was originally from Cleveland before he attended OU, said his experience in Appalachian Ohio made him fall in love with the place.
“I was gone for 20 years, and then I came back because the hills always call me back,” Saxton said. “I think part of this is people coming back and reconnecting with their history and knowing how they fit into the story, and then advancing the story.”
Despite the many challenges Appalachia faces, at Little Cities of Black Diamonds Day there was an abundance of pride to be from the region.
“I was born in Appalachia, raised in Appalachia, and people in Appalachia get a short stick,” Ivory said. “So to me, it's special. It's a family. Everybody knows everybody, everybody loves everybody.”
