In the late 19th century, Gertrude Dorsey-Brown covered society news in Newark, Coshocton

The local memory of early 20th-century African American author Gertrude Dorsey-Brown is as forgotten as her unmarked grave at Cedar Hill Cemetery.

On Aug. 1, 1876, in Coshocton, Clement and Martha Dorsey welcomed another girl to their family. They named her Gertrude Hayes Dorsey.

Dorsey discovered she had a gift as a writer. When she was in high school she contributed stories to the Cleveland Gazette, the first African American-owned newspaper that supplied weekly news for the Black community. It was founded in 1883 and had a circulation of about 5,000 at the time Dorsey contributed. She reported society news in Coshocton and Newark. Her older sister Dora married Daniel Guy, who was a schoolteacher at Newark’s first Black school on Hoover Street. On occasions that Dorsey visited her sister, she submitted articles on the happenings there.

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Before the invention of the internet, newspapers were where people looked for the type of information they find on X and Facebook today. Society columns were filled with the happenings of who had dinner with whom, including what they ate, where someone vacationed, family reunions and the achievements and failures of people in the community. These were the types of things Dorsey wrote about, and of course her family sometimes received a line or two.

In her article that appeared Dec. 17, 1892, she reported: “The (Coshocton) high school honor roll for the past term contains Miss Ora and Blanche Henry, Jessie and Gertrude Dorsey and Mr. Isaac Dorsey. This is surely ‘comme il faut.”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary translation of this is conforming to accepted standards. When you read the short stories she wrote later in life, her use of this French term to accentuate her article is classic Dorsey.

One week later, on Dec. 24, 1892, she reported that she was elected president of the Pope Literacy Society at Coshocton High School. The article states she was then chosen to present to the professor, who was noted as being white, a paper in the form of New Year’s resolutions. Unfortunately, no copies of this exist today.

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In the Feb. 25, 1893 Cleveland Gazette, Dorsey reports: “She chose as the subject of her inaugural address, ‘Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.’ She made mention of instances in the lives of several of our great men whose houses of intellect contained golden rooms.”

In the fall of 1896, she graduated with honors from Coshocton High School, the only African American in the senior class of 11. A few months later, on Jan. 16, 1897, the Cleveland Gazette reported that “Miss Gertrude Dorsey left last Wednesday to take charge of a school in Sutton, West Virginia.”

The 20-year-old Dorsey was ready to start making a name for herself.

Doug Stout is the Licking County Library local history coordinator. You may contact him at 740.349.5571 or dstout@lickingcountylibrary.org .

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: In the late 19th century, Gertrude Dorsey-Brown covered society news in Newark, Coshocton