Historic Spring Hill Section 31

Samuel Dandridge (1845-1893) was born a slave and worked for his ‘old master’ after emancipation. He was ‘lucky’ with real estate speculation and also became a restaurant keeper.  He left an estate valued at $50,000.

Jane Ferguson was Booker T. Washington’s mother and is a heroine of the Reconstruction.  She put her small children’s lives in jeopardy twice to give them lives of dignity and respect.  First, she took them on a perilous barefoot march of 210 miles from their slave home in Virginia to Malden and, four years later, by purchasing a home to integrate all-white Malden, despite a Ku Klux Klan ban on Black people living in town.  As a cook for the Ruffner household she directed the young Booker in his formative years there and elevated her church community to respected middle class, rising up from slavery. 

William H. Davis (1848-1938) enlisted in the U. S.  Army at age 15 and served in the Light Guard company that guarded President Abraham Lincoln. After the Civil War he settled in Malden. Since schools were still segregated and there were little funds for a black public school, Reverend Lewis Rice asked Davis—then just 18—to become a teacher for Malden’s African American population. Davis’s most famous pupil was Booker T. Washington, who cited Davis as an example of how teachers change lives. Davis later moved to Charleston where he continued serving as a Black educator for 24 years. Discontented with the political parties of the day, in 1888 forty-nine African American delegates nominated their own ticket and named Davis their candidate for Governor, the only African American to date to be so honored. Davis died at age 89 at his home on Court Street and is buried in his  Army uniform.

Dr. Henry Floyd Gamble (1862-1932) was born a slave in Virginia, one of 13 children. He had mixed ancestry, white, red and Black and faced financial hardships after his father's bank lost his savings. Despite challenges, he worked with a night teacher and saved to attend Lincoln University, graduating in 1888. He earned his M.D. from Yale in 1891 and began practicing medicine, initially in Charlottesville before moving to Charleston, West Virginia, where he focused on surgery.
Gamble helped establish the West Virginia State Medical Association for African Americans and served as president of the National Medical Association from 1911-1912. He was described as an avid reader, spoke German and Hebrew and was an independent thinker.  He was married three times and had four children. Tragically, he was killed when his car was struck by a train at age 70. He was  still practicing medicine.

Reverend Lewis Rice (1820-1902) was born a slave in Halifax County, Virginiia. He was one of over 1500 slaves working in the salt industry. He set up a school and church in his quarters-an act that was punishable by 39 lashes. By 1865 the African Zion Baptist Church established a permanent church and school with encouragement and assistance of salt entrepreneur General Lewis Ruffner.  By 1872 the church had moved to Malden where it is still located. The most famous congregant was Booker T. Washington who taught and was married in the church known as the state’s oldest Black Baptist Church.

Rev. J. Eullan Bullock  (1854 -1909) was born in the West Indies and came to Charleston via Scotland. He served as pastor of First Baptist Church, where he was held in great affection. He was an orator, an organizer and a financier, possessed of genius and a remarkable combination of faculties. Eloquence was his steppingstone to success, but of all his faculties, that of making friends was the most remarkable. During his tenure he cleared all the debts of the Church and added a pipe organ. He was the first African American Minister invited to open a session of the State Legislature with a prayer that included calling on divine assistance to defeat the proposed legislation to separate the races in railway trains, which he declared was "conceived in the lowest depths of infamy." He passed after a long illness that congregants for a long time suspected was caused by food poisoning.

Albert Grant Brown (1880-1924) was born in Campbells Creek. He started his education at Black Hawk Hollow Negro School for primary school and continued his studies at West Virginia Colored Institute, now known as West Virginia State University, and Tuskegee Institute,  now Tuskegee University, in Alabama. He taught architecture classes at West Virginia Colored Institute (WVSU) and served as the athletic director.  He was West Virginia’s first registered African American architect. He designed the first Knights of Pythias Hall, now demolished, and the still standing St. Paul`s Baptist Church in St. Albans. Mr. Brown does not have a grave marker but his sister, Bessie Brown, has a marker in front of the C.H. James plot.

Charles H. James (1862-1929) began his business career in 1883 as a foot peddler with his brothers. The death of President Garfield boosted their business as demand for his pictures allowed them to expand into wholesale goods, selling to rural customers and bartering for produce. The James Produce Company went on to become the oldest and largest Black-owned business in America. James was politically affiliated with the Bull Moose Party and met with Theodore Roosevelt, (C.H. James cont.)….. who praised him for addressing the race problem. “I think I have spoken of you at least a hundred times, pointing to you as the man who actually is, by his actions and not merely by words, solving the race problem in this country.”    He gained national recognition in the National Negro Business League, founded by his friend Booker T. Washington. His father, F.C. James, was the first minister of First Baptist Church and started Charleston's first private school in Chappell Hollow.

Dr. Bernard A. Crichlow (1873-1939), born in Barbados. In 1913 he established the Crichlow Hospital believed to be Charleston's first Negro hospital. The Hospital closed when he became the superintendent of the West Virginia State Colored Tuberculosis Sanitarium, established on February 16, 1917, in Denmar, Pocahontas County. The town was repurposed from a mill town for the sanitarium with various buildings converted for hospital use and patient accommodations. The facility opened on January 31, 1919, during a time when tuberculosis was often fatal and many patients died there. He remained there until 1935 when he returned to Charleston to open a private practice.