No wonder students don’t value history

On a recent weekly trip to Sherman School, I learned that the third grader I mentor didn’t know a whole lot about the Underground Railroad.

She knows some black history, but the book I chose for that day’s session was about the Underground Railroad, and she was intrigued by the history lesson. She was disgusted that slaves needed written permission to visit one another. She frowned about family members being sold to satisfy a slave owner’s debts and about slaves being beaten, sometimes to death, for addressing a white man as "mister" instead of "master."

Escaping and living in the open, exposed to the weather, going hungry, and crossing waters on the Underground Railroad was the better choice. When I see the Sherman pupil again, I’ll tell her we live in an area with deep roots in the Underground Railroad.

But many buildings where slaves were hidden are gone. The Perrysburg Journal building on West Front Street was destroyed about 50 years ago, and a barn on the Harroun family farm where Flower Hospital is now in Sylvania once housed slaves, too.

Yet among the few remaining buildings is the House of Four Pillars on East Broadway in Maumee. Slaves entered to rest using a basement door before continuing to a ravine to the Maumee River.

Another is the Lathrop House, also known as the Vogt House. Slaves sought refuge in the basement before going to Ten Mile Creek to freedom.

The Lathrop and the House of Four Pillars were built in about the 1830s. The latter isn’t in jeopardy, but St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, across from the Lathrop house in the 5300 block of North Main Street in Sylvania, wants that house gone so it can expand its school.

The house wouldn’t be there now if those who understand its historical significance had not made an issue about the church’s plans to raze it. The church already had a demolition permit. The attention helped raise funds to at least move the house because St. Joseph’s insists it must go. Indeed, moving the house is better than razing it. Yet moving the house will absolutely compromise the integrity of the historical site.

Why the church doesn't appreciate the house's historical significance isn’t clear. Sylvania played a vital role in helping to end slavery. Doesn't the church understand it's key to not only keep the house but to keep it on the current site?

Granted, nobody has documents that say just how abolitionists and fugitives used these structures. The stories come to us through oral tradition; no valid efforts have been made to refute them.

White churchmen were important abolitionists. Why wouldn’t a church today embrace that, point to those ancestors with pride, and try to preserve that history for future generations? That they don’t is an example of the general disregard for history.

When I see the Sherman third grader again, I’ll tell her the history of the Lathrop House, and that fugitives slaves hid there. And I’ll tell her that some people have so little regard for the house's history that although they won't tear it down now, they think moving it is OK, and that they think doing so is not a compromise of its history.

Is it any wonder that students don’t value history?

Rose Russell is a Blade associate editor.