YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - February is Black History Month and the Mahoning Valley Historical Society joined WFMJ Today to highlight some individuals from the Valley who made an impact on local history. Including the founder of Youngstown's first African American religious congregation, the brick layer of several significant downtown buildings, and the first African-American woman to hold the position of president of a local PTA. 

Oscar and Elisha Boggess

• Oscar D. Boggess (1832-1907) was born in Virginia, the son of an enslaved woman and her master.  He and his family were freed after his father and master died.  Boggess moved to Pennsylvania at age 20, and during the Civil War enlisted in the 43rd United States Colored Troops.  He earned the Butler Medal of Honor for bravery at the Battle of the Crater near Petersburg, Virginia, in July 1864. 
• Boggess and his brother, Elisha, moved to Youngstown after the war, and worked as bricklayers and stonemasons.
• He purchased 2.78 acres of land for his home on Edwards St. after he arrived in 1866, and lived there until his death in 1907.  Boggess quarried sandstone on his property, and removed the stone by building fires against the rock face, and then doused the red-hot rock with water, causing it to break free. 
• Oscar was a charter member of Tod Post 29, G.A.R., and a co-founder of the Oak Hill Avenue A.M.E. Church, the city’s first African American religious congregation.

Ross Berry

• P. Ross Berry (1835-1917) was the masonry contractor for many of the most significant buildings in the Mahoning Valley during the late 19th century.
• Born a free man in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, he began his career as a bricklayer at the young age of 16. At that time, Berry was commissioned by Lawrence County to do the brickwork for a new courthouse in New Castle, Pennsylvania.
• Ten years later, Berry moved to Youngstown after he was awarded the brickwork contract for the Rayen School (now the Youngstown Board of Education building.) During his forty-year career in Youngstown, Berry became recognized as a master builder and respected citizen of the Mahoning Valley.
• With his partner, Lemuel Stewart, Berry built a legacy that would last into the present. Stewart was a building contractor who moved to the Mahoning Valley after Berry. Berry’s own four sons were trained as brick masons and later became union organizers of the Brick Masons Local #8.

Fletcher F. Armstrong & Maggie E. Harth Armstrong

• Fletcher F. Armstrong, a native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina came to Youngstown from Cleveland in 1915. A graduate of Virginia State College with a strong background in economics and business, he mustered enough cash and credit and opened the F.F. Armstrong’s Haberdashery at 424 W. Federal Street in 1916.
• He was the first and only African-American owned and operated store of its kind in the city. His business closed in 1926 in part to Klu Klux Klan activity in and around Youngstown.
• Armstrong’s wife, Maggie E. Harth Armstrong was a very versatile and learned woman whom he met at Virginia State College. She assisted with the Haberdashery, and in 1926 opened a beauty school in her home on Belmont Avenue where she manufactured and sold her own beauty products under the label of the “Forestyne” System.
• In 1929 she opened the first African-American owned and operated Beauty Shop and School in Youngstown which were the first to be licensed by the State of Ohio Department of Cosmetology.
• Mr. & Mrs. Armstrong were among the founders and charter members of the Centenary ME Church, and active in the Belmont Branch YWCA.
• Mrs. Armstrong was also the first African-American woman to hold the position of president of a local PTA during the early 1930’s.

Edward and Johnnie Mae Stonework

• They owned and operated the Neighborhood Grocery on Wilson Avenue in Campbell from the 1930s through the 1950s.  In addition to running the store, Stonework served as the City of Campbell’s Water Commissioner in the 1930s, worked in the Steel mills, and became an ordained Baptist minister in 1948.  He was also involved in many civil organizations including the Mahoning County Council on Aging and the Youngstown Area Community Action Council.
• Mrs. Stonework served as a teacher with a degree from Wilberforce University.
• Store front image: The Stoneworks had 3 children, Saundra, Horace, and Edward – shown here in front of their family’s store.
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Mary Ella Lovett Belton

• Belton was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and came to Youngstown at a very young age.  She received her teacher’s certificate from Ohio University and her degree from Morgan State College.  She would also earn a Master’s Degree from Ohio State do additional graduate work at the Teacher’s College in Columbia University, Miami University, and Westminster College.
• Mrs. Belton made local history several times in her life.  In 1940 she became the first African American woman to be hired as a teacher in the Youngstown school district, teaching at the Butler School for almost twenty years. 
• She then became the first African American elementary school supervisor and in 1968 became the first woman principal in the city.