Kerr’s Run Colored School

Kerr’s Run Colored School was a former educational institution in Kerr’s Run, a mostly forgotten community in Meigs County, Ohio.

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Kerr’s Run Colored School was a former educational institution in Kerr’s Run, a mostly forgotten community in Meigs County, Ohio.

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History

The school educated black Americans from the first to the eighth grade. 1

It was listed in the June 1893 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map and in the revised September 1908 edition, which listed the building as containing heat and stoves but with no light. By the September 1916 edition, the school had ceased to exist.

Notable Graduates

Notable graduates include James Edwin Campbell, poet and first president of the West Virginia Colored Institute, and James McHenry Jones, educator and third president of the same institution. ¹

James Edwin Campbell

Campbell began his educational career as a teacher before becoming the principal of the Point Pleasant Colored School. ^{2 3} In 1892, he was selected as the first principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute guided the establishment of the school’s initial curriculum and delivered its first commencement address.

Campbell was among the earliest writers to give voice to African American experiences and to write in African American vernacular dialect. His two volumes of poetry, Echoes From the Cabin and Elsewhere and Driftings and Gleanings, are considered significant contributions to early African American literature. ^{2 3}

James McHenry Jones and Family

The First Ward of Pomeroy was a diverse community composed of immigrants from Germany, Wales, and other European nations, along with local blue-collar workers and African Americans, who constituted 22 percent of the ward’s population according to the 1870 census. ² In 1869, Joseph Jones, his wife, and their six sons settled in the First Ward, near the Kerrs Run Colored School.

One of Joseph’s sons, John Jones, served for sixteen years as principal of Lincoln School in Wheeling, one of the first African American public schools in the United States. ² He was an active member of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, the most significant African American fraternal organization of the period. In 1897, he attended the British Odd Fellows international meeting in London, where he was invited to 21 banquets, including three hosted by Members of Parliament, at which he spoke. That same year, he participated in the royal procession during Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Before his departure for the United Kingdom, John Jones had been appointed the third principal (now president) of the West Virginia Colored Institute.

In 1896, Jones published the acclaimed novel Hearts of Gold, which is notable as the first American work to feature a main character born of a lawful marriage between a white woman and an African American man. ² Two additional works, A Strange Transformation and The Bluevaynes, were never published and are now lost.

Several of Jones’s brothers also achieved distinction. Fleming B. Jones became a teacher in Rendville, Ohio, and later served as principal in Middleport, Chillicothe, and at Lincoln School in Wheeling. ² He subsequently joined the faculty of the Creek and Seminole University in Oklahoma and became the first African American involved in chartering a national bank: the First National Bank of Boley, Oklahoma. Alexander Jones entered the Baptist ministry in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Charles Jones was an instructor at the West Virginia Colored Institute for 32 years, becoming its longest-serving faculty member. Thomas Jones practiced dentistry in Cleveland and later in Mobile, Alabama. John L. Jones, author of The History of the Jones Family, settled in Rendville, where he helped establish a grocery cooperative before becoming its sole proprietor. In 1897, Ohio Governor William McKinley appointed him Postmaster of Rendville, making him the first African American to hold that position in the state.

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Gallery

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Sources

1. “Kerrs Run Colored School.” Historical Marker Database, 13 Nov. 2024.
2. Walker, William. “Throwback Thursday – In Remembrance of the Kerrs Run Colored School.” Athens Messenger, 8 Oct. 2025.
3. Pickens, Jordan D., and Calee M. Pickens. “James Edwin Campbell.” Historic Tales of Meigs County, Ohio. Arcadia Publishing, pp. 79–84.