Ohio: Wilson Bruce Evans Home

A National Historic Landmark built in 1854-56 in Oberlin, Ohio, by freeborn African American abolitionist and underground railroad operative Wilson Bruce Evans (1824-1898), this elegant home still stands, now facing Oberlin’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Park, with its monuments to the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue for which Evans went to jail and to Oberlinians killed in the Harpers Ferry Uprising—specifically Evans brother-in-law Lewis Leary and nephew John Copeland. Born in this home, Evans’ daughters Julia (1859-1925) and Sarah Jane (1865-1929) both became educators. With husband Thomas Sewell Inborden (1865-1951) who boarded in the home while enrolled at Oberlin, Sarah Jane co-founded the Brick School in Enfield, North Carolina, the first accredited Black junior college in North Carolina. The Inbordens often summered in the Oberlin home, and their daughter Dorothy Inborden Miller (1897-1996), was born there. Among the first Black women to earn a graduate degree in home economics, Miller, who owned the house 1941-1996, supervised home economics education for Washington D.C.’s Black schools and was the principal of Margaret Murray Vocational school for 23 years. Evans descendants continued to own the home until 2021, when they deeded it to the Wilson Bruce Evans Home Historical Society.