Wheeling Gaunt Day is a series of events celebrating the life and legacy of a Black man born into slavery in ~ 1815 in Kentucky, who purchased his freedom in the 1840s, and at the beginning of the Civil War moved to Yellow Springs. While delivery goods with a horse and wagon, he used his savings to invest in real estate across Yellow Springs which enabled him to donate substantial funds to Wilberforce University, sell some of the homes he owned for $1, and in 1894, months before his death, to sell 9 acres of farmland to the Village of Yellow Springs for $1. In the transaction, he stipulated that the rents collected from the farmers who used the land, be used by the Village to provide flour to widows at Christmastime, a practice that continues to this day. The Village added to the land he sold to them, and in the 1950s installed a swimming pool and ball fields that are now Gaunt Park. Events:
10am: Remembering Wheeling Gaunt through the Gaunt Statue and Plaza
11:30am: Wheeling Gaunt’s Yellow Springs Walking tour leaving from the plaza;
1:00 pm: Screening of documentary on the making of the Gaunt statue, Yellow Springs Arts Council, 111 Corry Street;
2:00pm: The History of Gaunt Park walking tour (West South College Street between Greene and Wright Streets)