ANNA — Those who didn’t have the chance to learn about the history of Rumley, Ohio, a once thriving settlement in the flatlands of western Shelby County, and current wide spot on Hardin-Wapakoneta Road, populated by a half-dozen homes and the Rumley Baptist Church, will have another chance next week.

Hosted by the Anna District Historical Society, Dr. Roy Finkenbine will give a lecture on the thriving mid-19th century, mostly black, community.

This time the lecture will be held in the basement of St. Jacob Lutheran Church, in Anna. The historical society would like attendees to RSVP so they have an idea if they need to move into the bigger space upstairs in the church.

At the first lecture in April, they didn’t have enough room for all the people who wanted to attend in the Wagner School House on Amsterdam Road, so they are hosting Finkenbine again in the hopes everyone who wants to learn about the town may.

Finkenbine will spend about an hour tracing Rumley’s rise and fall in the mid-nineteenth century from its initial founding in 1837 to its virtual disappearance in the 1880’s.

Finkenbine, an Anna native, has spent an academic lifetime researching the black abolitionist movement prior to the Civil War. Over the past several decades, he and his colleagues have assembled the Black Abolitionist Archive, a compilation of over 800 speeches and 1,000 editorials written in the ante-bellum period by black Americans fervently denouncing slavery and calling for its immediate end.

After stints at Florida State, Murray State, and Hampton, Finkenbine took his work to the University of Detroit Mercy in 1996, and he remains there today to continue his research.

His lecture will be held on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. RSVP with Kathie Eshleman at 937-394-7251.