Mary Allen is busy these days. The 74-year-old professional genealogy researcher is nearing the end of her third term on New Richmond's village council. She also serves on the village's historical society.
But she always finds time to talk about the town — and her family's integral part in it.
As she opens the door to the Second Baptist Church, a humble one-story brick building near the heart of the village, she talks about her great-great-grandfather Howell Boone.
Boone helped found the church in 1860. By that point, he'd already lived a remarkable life.
He was born to the brother of a plantation owner and an enslaved woman in Virginia. Allen says the details aren't clear — it might have been his status as the child of a white man — but after years in slavery, he gained his freedom as a young adult and was able to make his way north.
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By 1855, he'd settled in New Richmond and soon after established a bustling business.
"He came to Indiana first, but Indiana was sympathetic to slave catchers, "Allen says. "So within a year they ended up coming to Ohio. He opened up a grocery store and a livery."
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center researcher Novella Nimmo Black says it was rare for people leaving slavery to settle in Ohio in the days before the Civil War. Racism and pro-slavery attitudes didn't end on the north shore of the Ohio River and it often wasn't safe here.
"Ohio became a free state by one vote," she says. "So wherever you found pockets where people were working on the Underground Railroad, you're going to find a pocket close to them where slave catchers were at."
Allen says her great-great-grandfather and other Black residents likely felt safe in New Richmond because of the large number of abolitionists living there.
That made the village somewhat unique. Allen has done extensive research into the early families of New Richmond. She says in the decades immediately prior to and after the Civil War, about 1 in 5 of the people who lived in the village were Black.
"When I look at the Census records, you see like, five white families and two Black families, and five Black families and 10 white families," she says. "Just about on any street. That's integration — in the 1800s."
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Prominent Black residents like Boone advocated for racial justice and supported other Black families, starting a kind of proto-Civil Rights organization called the Union Association for the Advancement of the Colored Men of New Richmond.
The organization provided financial assistance and functioned as a savings and loan for Black residents, making the town even more welcoming. The union evolved into the town's two Black churches in the 1860s.
As the 20th century began, the village's Black population waned. Today, Census data shows New Richmond is about 98% white.
Allen has theories as to why this is.
"There are probably a number of reasons," she says. "My dad always said, 'People follow the work.' And we are kind of out in the middle of nowhere."
She points out during Boone's time, the village's steamboat construction industry, mills, foundries and nearby farms provided plenty of job opportunities for Black people fleeing the South. As time marched on, those opportunities faded away or moved to cities like Cincinnati.
Some say there were other factors at play as well. Greg Roberts serves with Allen as part of the village's historical society. When he gives tours of New Richmond's historic underground railroad sites, he points out that racial tensions rose up around the end of the 19th century. Those included a white mob that lynched a Black man in the village and activity by the Ku Klux Klan.
"On rare occasions I'll get someone who is listening enough to say, 'Where did all the Black people go?' " he says of those tours. "I can talk about the cross burnings, I can talk about the gatherings of people in white robes in this area and all throughout Southwestern Ohio."
Mary Allen is quick to note she feels very comfortable in New Richmond. Even though the Black population here had dwindled by the late 1960s, her high school experience was vastly different than her relatives in other towns. While cousins in Maysville, Ky., prepared to integrate into white public schools, Allen was attending parties with her white classmates.
"I had classmates inviting me over for sleepovers," she says. "At the school dances and parties we'd all dance and talk and no one cared. I always knew I was Black, but I never felt like I was treated differently. There were other neighboring communities where that wasn't going to be the case."
She says the village is diverse in other ways these days. Residents run the gamut in terms of political beliefs and economic situations. Allen has had no trouble getting elected to village council as a staunch, if moderate, Democrat, but you'll find plenty of Trump signs around town, too.
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But she also readily admits racial tension can crop up. She recalls controversy a few years ago around some villagers flying confederate flags. Some in town wanted the flags taken down.
"One used to be right outside. I'd pull out of my driveway and look to my left and I could see it every day," she remembers. "I said, 'No one hates those flags more than I do. But I can't make them take them down as a councilwoman.' We have free speech and people have the right to do and say — reasonably — whatever they want."
Allen says she mostly looks beyond the political and racial divides that have become so pronounced these days so she can stay focused on her role as an elected leader. She's excited about work on a massive new riverfront development in the village, for example.
"I have good friends in New Richmond and other places, and I would tell you, if we sat down here and started talking about how to fix X, Y or Z, we'd all come together and say, 'Yeah, that's what we should do,' " she says. "But when we vote, we're going to vote Democrat or Republican, or independents will vote however they decide that day."
Alongside her council role, Allen's also been involved in work to preserve the Second Baptist Church and turn it into a place where community members can hold meetings and events. She made a sizeable donation to that effort. She says it's an investment in her family's history as well as the village's future.