Lancaster, Ohio’s First Black Business Owner Honored With Statue

Lancaster, Ohio’s very first Black business owner, Scipio Smith, is being honored by the city with a statue that was just completed.

According to NBC 4I, the city of Lancaster is celebrating the first Black business owner, Scipio Smith, who achieved the status in the 1800s. The location of the statue is along Main Street, which isn’t too far from where the businessman’s tinsmith shop was. A former slave, he is memorialized with him holding an open shackle with the day he was emancipated inscribed.

Michael Johnson, a local historian and the marketing director for the Fairfield County Heritage Association, stated that after finding an entry about Smith in a history book, he looked further into the former slave, who was enslaved in Virginia before being brought to Ohio.

“That was his way of showing you can’t stop me, even this chain didn’t hold me down,” said Johnson. “You can’t get much more of an underdog than being born a slave and losing your leg as a child.”

While finding out more information about Smith, he discovered that four years after he was freed, he founded the AME church, which is now Allen Chapel.

“To know he was right here, to know he was responsible for this church,” said Evan Saunders, Pastor of Allen Chapel. “You don’t even know the lives he’s touched, but yet here 2025, we realize he’s touching a whole community with that, so his legacy still continues to live on.”

Two years after opening the church, Smith opened his tinsmith shop in Lancaster.

“He was pretty quick to act once he got his freedom. He knew what he wanted,” Johnson said. “Opened door for other Black business owners.”

After Johnson wrote a story about Smith, wanting to honor him more, he started a fundraiser two years ago that led to the statue being made.

“For me, I think statues are celebrations, they are people we should be looking up to, the ideals they represent, and Scipio, you can’t beat his work ethic, his faith, his tenacity, the ability to overcome unbelievable obstacles. You can’t beat that story,” Johnson said.

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