About
60 Eaker Street in Dayton, Ohio
The photo above is the 1870’s home of Charity Davis Broady, located on 60/62 Eaker Street in Dayton, Ohio, the second home on the right. The Broady's home was located near the Eaker Street AME Church.
1802-1899
Charity Davis Ceasar Broady
Mrs. Broady is one of Dayton’s most iconic and historical figures as an abolitionist, suffragist and co-founder of the First Wesleyan Church, a major location in the Underground Railroad and a site selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “1,000 Places Where Women Made History.” The vision of TLCC includes a multi-phased plan that seeks a place of permanence for cultural enrichment and community engagement, including exhibits, genealogical research and special events for artistic expression and development.​
Family, oral and written histories state that around 1803/1804 formerly enslaved John Isaac Davis left the Louisville, Kentucky, area and brought his family, including his infant daughter, to the Miami Valley. Little is known of Charity Davis' mother except that she was a Cherokee woman who gave birth to Charity in 1802. Charity was free born because of her mother's indigenous nativity. Yet, to further insure the child's freedom, John Davis journeyed across the Ohio river to the first free state, settling on the banks of the Miami in the village of Dayton.
Dayton, Ohio
The Underground Railroad
In her youthful twenties, under the threat of criminal prosecution, Charity worked with Sojourner Truth on the Underground Railroad to guarantee safe passage of the fugitive slaves to Canada.
Charity became a conductor in Dayton's Underground Railroad. Known as the "Colored nurse or Negro nurse," Charity trained and worked with Dr. Hibbert Jewett and abolitionist Major Luther B. Bruen.
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"Auntie" Broady,” as she was known by her beloved Dayton community, was a defining pioneer, a child bride and wife to two husbands, mother to thirteen children, a freedom fighter, washer woman, nurse and early suffragist. C. C. Broady is listed among the attendees at the 1851 Women's Right Convention in Akron, Ohio where Sojourner Truth delivered the famed “Ain't I A Woman Speech.”
An Underground Railroad Station
First Wesleyan Church
As a survivor of several Dayton pro slavery mob attacks
that understandably forced many Black citizens to leave the area, Charity’s commitment to stay in the city, to reclaim and rebuild, became the tie that bound a “mob- torn town.”
Charity was a charter member and trustee of the United Daughters of Zion who founded the "Mother Church," First Wesleyan. Dayton's first Black church was born, "out of the smoke and ashes" of the 1841 pro slavery mob attacks on that city's Black community called Africatown.
The United Daughters of Zion - Mrs. Harriett E. Wade, Mrs. Elizabeth Jackson, Mrs. Maria Robinson, Mrs. Peggie Anderson, and Mrs. Charity Davis Caesar Broady - purchased the land, built two churches, in 1842 and 1854, then gifted the deed to First Wesleyan.
The "Mother Church" gave birth to the city’s first school for Black children and was the place where James Davis founded the abolitionist organization, The American Sons of Protection. The Church, became the epicenter of interracial worship and reform and over 180 years later, continues to serve.
Jewelia Galloway Higgins
Charity's Lasting Legacy
The enduring impact of Charity Davis Caesar Broady on the Dayton community cannot be overstated and may likely be unmatched. She was a pillar dedicated to the protection of the Black citizenry and the unification of her treasured community.
Within our family archives is Jewelia Galloway Higgins' handwritten story detailing the life of her great-grandmother, Charity. She writes of the little girl who "grew up with the city of Dayton.” She writes of Mother Charity’s love and adoration for her many friends in the village she watched become a metropolis.
It is quite likely that without the dedicated efforts of Charity Davis Caesar Broady, the 1800s mob-torn community of Dayton may not have survived the terror of hate to become the shining gem of not just Dayton, but the entire state of Ohio.