An Early Black Family in Tiffin - Part II
Last week we left the story of the Bibb family just as they were married on March 2nd, 1848. We learned of the early childhood of Dennis Bibb in slavery and his escape from his master in 1837. This week we shall begin with the early history of Mrs. Bibb’s family, the Janeys
Emeline’s maternal grandmother had been a slave, the property of a Governor Worthington from Kentucky. The story is told that Ohio’s first governor, Edward Tiffin, noticed her sadness as she came to his well for water. He asked her the cause of her weeping and she told him that Governor Worthington had beaten her daughter.
Governor Tiffin then told her that she did not have to submit to these indignities as she was as free as he was. He explained that the law provided that if a slave-owner brought his slave into a free state, that slave became freed. Overjoyed, she returned home, took her child and left. Governor Worthington was in a rage and cursed, “Who was the impudent Yankee who put such an idea in my slave’s head?” His anger was of no avail - his slave was beyond his reach.
Emeline’s father, Joseph Janey, came to Seneca County in the 1820’s from a French Canadian province. His heritage was a mixture of the red, white, and black races. He was a cabinet-maker, farmer and trader with the Indians. He prospered and deed records show that he owned half a section known as the Cottage Park addition in Tiffin, a farm known as the Downy Farm and other farm properties.
His earliest home was south of Tiffin on Negrotown Road which is a continuation of Sycamore Street. His home was perhaps as far south as the Wyandot County line. Negrotown was thought by local historians writing in 1920 to be an area where several Negro families had farms. It was not a village or crossroads. Located near the Sandusky River, the farm of Joseph Janey was a well-known station on the Underground Railroad. Joseph Janey was an ardent Abolitionist and his shrewdness, courage, strong arm and rifle thwarted many a slave hunter in their efforts to regain Negro slaves escaping from Kentucky. This was in the 1820’s and 30’ s. Their route was through Tiffin where a prominent citizen, Truman Bagby, hid them. They then went on to Lower Sandusky, as Fremont was known then and finally to Portland, the name then of Sandusky.
Mr. and Mrs. Janey and their son, Thomas, and daughter, Emeline, moved to Oberlin in 1837 so that their children could attend Oberlin College. There Dennis Bibb and Emeline Janey were married in 1848.
City directories show that in 1859, Dennis Bibb operated a coffee house on the south side of Market and Washington Streets. In 1873 he had a barbershop where the Presbyterian Church is now and had built his brick house on the corner of South Monroe and Circular Streets.
It is as a barber and faithful member of St. Paul’s Methodist Church that Dennis Bibb is remembered. He never lacked for something to say. He would talk to his customers from the moment they got into his chair until they got out.
After a shave, with an eye on business to promote a haircut or shampoo, he would say, “Hair cut?”
“No, I guess not, today,” the customer would say
“Hair’s ‘orful long, Judge. Better have it cut.”
“No” again came the answer.
“Shampoo? Head’s terribly dirty. Ought to have it cleaned. It’s wonderfully cheaper than getting pillar case washed every few days.”
He was well posted on the current topics of the day, national and international, on politics, on religion, and about everything else that enters into the everyday conversation of men and women. He seemed to know the Bible by heart. In an argument on some question of a religious nature he could quote chapter and verse and he was seldom wrong.
The story is told that one day a well known country lawyer, a man who was addicted to the drinking of intoxicating liquor, frequently to excess, was in Bibb’s barber chair, and the two got into an argument about the Bible.
“You don’t believe everything in the Bible, do you, Bibb?” the attorney asked. “Yes, sah! Believe every word of it.”
“But you don’t believe the story of Jonah and the whale?”
“Yes, sah!”
“What, do you actually believe that, as the Bible says, Jonah swallowed the whale?”
“De Bible don’t say that! But if it did, I’d believe it,” replied Bibb. “I’ve knowed men who have swallowed a brewery, and dey hain’t a thousand mile away from me at this very moment, either.”
Bibb was constant in his attendance at church, at Sunday worship, at prayer meetings and class meetings. He was great at public prayer and seldom missed an opportunity to give an earnest and voluminous prayer.
He was a devoted husband and kind father. He and Emeline had seven children. One of his daughters, Katie, was an honor student and the first colored student to graduate from the Tiffin High School.
At some point the Bibb family moved to 145 Sycamore Street and it was there that their fiftieth wedding celebration was held. Mr. Bibb died in 1899 within a year of the celebration and Mrs. Bibb in 1903. He and his wife and two children are buried in Greenlawn Cemetery on the west side about 75 yards from General Gibson’s grave.
I thank Mike and Nancy Grandillo for sharing their clippings from 1920’s Tiffin Daily Tribunes and other records.
– Mary