In the 1840s, a group of almost 400 Freedpeople traveled to Ohio from the Virginia plantation where they’d been enslaved. John Randolph, a lesser known but well-connected politician in the early United States, released them in his will, but Virginia law at the time demanded newly freed slaves leave the state. In addition to their freedom, Randolph’s will set aside money to purchase land for his former slaves.
The Ohio Department of Health is reporting the state’s first probable human case of influenza A(H5), also known as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), or bird flu.
On the eve of Juneteenth Tuesday, Ohio state Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, announced plans for a resolution acknowledging the story of the Randolph Freedpeople. It’s a dark but largely forgotten incident in Ohio’s history, and Jarrells hopes his effort can be the first step toward restitution.
During the height of summer in 1846, a mob of white Mercer County residents surrounded a group of nearly 400 Freedpeople who’d just taken a boat up the Miami Canal to New Bremen. The former slaves had been traveling for more than a month, making a nearly 300-mile trek across Virginia and the Allegheny mountains on foot, before taking a boat to Cincinnati and following the canal north.
The National Weather Service in Wilmington has confirmed that tornadoes touched down in Auglaize, Butler, Clinton, Darke, Licking, Mercer and Warren counties in Ohio, as well as Franklin County, Ind., during a severe weather event Tuesday, May 7.
