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…