Africa Community
Orange Township, Delaware County, Ohio
Marker Inscription
Africa Community 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 communities.
Erected by The Ohio Historical Society
The Story
On the eve of the Civil War, enslaved people from an Alston family plantation in North Carolina were freed and sent north by a mistress who opposed slavery, finding refuge in a central Ohio settlement pointedly called Africa. There they built log homes, worked for antislavery farmers, and worshiped in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, a denomination born of abolitionist conviction. After emancipation the community dispersed to Delaware, Westerville, and other Ohio towns.
Why it matters
Africa is a small but vivid chapter in the story of free Black communities and the antislavery North, showing how ordinary people turned freedom into a new life on the Ohio frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Conway Colony
Yellow Springs, OH
In the second year of the Civil War, as the future of slavery hung in the balance, the abolitionist minister Moncure Conway did something few Southern-born sons of slaveholding families ever attempted: he arranged for the people his family held in bondage in Virginia to travel north to freedom. Their destination was the countryside near Yellow Springs, Ohio, a corner of the state already known for its reform-minded, antislavery convictions. Guided by Dunmore and Eliza Gwinn, the group made a long and dangerous overland journey to build new lives as free people while the war still raged around them.
Virginia Hamilton
Yellow Springs, OH
Virginia Hamilton grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a small town with deep roots in the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist tradition of nearby Antioch College. Over a career spanning the late 20th century, she wrote more than forty books that placed African American history, folklore, and family memory at the center of children's literature. She called her project "Liberation Literature," and her honors made her one of the most decorated authors ever to write for young readers.
Payne Theological Seminary
Xenia Township, OH
Born from the African Methodist Episcopal Church's determination to educate Black Americans at a time when law and custom denied them schooling, this institution began as Union Seminary in 1844. Its story became entwined with nearby Wilberforce University, which Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne helped revive in 1863 as one of the first colleges owned and operated by African Americans. By 1895 the university's theology department had grown into a distinct seminary bearing Payne's name, dedicated to training a homegrown Black clergy.
Colonel Charles Young House
Xenia Township, OH
This was the Ohio home of Colonel Charles Young, one of the most distinguished African American soldiers of his era. Young was the third Black graduate of West Point and rose to become the highest-ranking Black officer in the U.S. Army, leading Buffalo Soldier cavalry and serving as an acting national park superintendent. His home near Wilberforce, a center of Black education, is preserved as a National Historic Landmark.