The Majestic Theatre claims that it is “America's oldest continuously operating [movie] theater.” The theater opened in 1853 as the Masonic Hall and began showing motion pictures with the Edison Vitascope in 1896. Since then, the theater has exhibited films and live performances ranging from operas to vaudeville acts. Today, the Majestic operates as a non-profit and hosts community events, live performances, and movie nights.
The Ross County Courthouse was built in 1801. That same year, Chillicothe became the last capital of the Northwest Territory. In 1802, Ohio’s first constitution was written here, and on March 1, 1803, Ohio's first General Assembly made it the official statehouse. It continued to serve as the statehouse until 1810 when the capital of Ohio was moved to Zanesville. When Chillicothe became the capital again in 1812, the building was used as the statehouse until the capital moved for the last time to Columbus in 1816. The building was demolished in 1852 so a new courthouse could be constructed in its place. In 1940, a replica of the statehouse was built nearby for the Chillicothe Gazette, the oldest newspaper to continuously operate west of the Alleghenies.
The Chillicothe Gazette, originally called Freeman’s Journal and Chillicothe Advertiser, began publication on April 25, 1800. It is the oldest continuously operating newspaper west of the Alleghenies and the second oldest in the United States. Its first publisher and editor Nathaniel Willis was a Boston printer who supposedly apprenticed under Benjamin Franklin. He used the paper to advocate for westward expansion. The Gazette kept up with the times by reporting news transmitted by telegraph in 1847 and by publishing daily starting in 1849. In 1941, the Chillicothe Gazette moved into a replica of Ohio’s first statehouse.
Chillicothe’s Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest A.M.E. church in Ohio and the oldest west of the Allegheny Mountains. Before it was established, African American Methodists in the area attended church with white congregants. After years of discrimination in this church, the African American members left in 1821. Quinn Chapel was organized later that year, though it did not go by that name until 1857 when it moved to its present location. The current church building was completed in 1910.
David L. Nickens was born in Virginia as a slave. Although it is uncertain how he obtained his freedom, by the early 1800s, Nickens and his family arrived in Chillicothe. Nickens became one of the first African American ordained ministers in the state of Ohio, and he helped found the First Regular African Baptist Church of Christ in 1824. He and other members of the church were committed to ending slavery. According to multiple sources, he and other members of the church regularly helped slaves escape slavery by helping them find places to hide as they traveled north. Like many other African American families in antebellum Ohio, the Nickens family hid runaway slaves in their home and helped them get to another safe location as they made their way towards northern communities. The church was so dedicated to this movement, they changed the church name in the 1830s to the First Anti-Slavery Baptist Church of Chillicothe. It is important to recognize that Ohio barred African Americans from entering the state without documents proving their status as free people and a $500 bond, so each time Nickens and others assisted an African American refugee they were not only breaking the law, they were risking being arrested for being in Ohio as an illegal resident of the state despite being born in the United States.
Lucy Webb Hayes, the third child of Dr. James & Maria Cook Webb, was born in this small frame house on August 28, 1831. Lucy married Rutherford B. Hayes December 30, 1852. Lucy's kindness, great moral courage, and earnest religious convictions contributed greatly to her husband's success. The first in history to be called "First Lady" by the press, she was the also the first wife of a president to hold a college degree. The Lucy Hayes Heritage Center, which preserves the structure of her childhood home, also contains a number of furnishings, memorabilia, and artifacts relating to America's first "First Lady."
The Southern School was established in 1874 for Chillicothe’s African American children. Its principal, Joseph D. Hackley, and teachers, Sara K. Fidler, Jennie Gilmore, George Hackley, and Annie E. Nickens, taught children grades one through six. When the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional through Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, citizens of Chillicothe petitioned the board of education to integrate their schools. Southern School held its last day of class on June 1, 1956. The building was razed later that year, and the property is now a public park.
This Tour is a Walking Tour.
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This tour starts at the Majestic Theatre with stops at the former site of Ohio’s first statehouse and its replica as well as the birthplace of Lucy Hayes. The tour also features sites important to African American history, such as the David Nickens Historical Center.
