Chestnut Hill

53 Jacob E. Yoder

Jackson St. at Second St. Jacob Eschbach Yoder (22 Feb. 1838–15 Apr. 1905), reared a Mennonite in Pennsylvania, came to Lynchburg after the Civil War to teach former slaves in the Freedmen’s Bureau’s Camp Davis School. Following Reconstruction, Yoder served as supervising principal of Lynchburg’s African American schools for more than 25 years and helped start the College Hill Baptist Church Sunday school. When he died, black teachers declared that “he had devoted his life unselfishly, and unstintingly to our race, and wore himself out in service to us.” In 1911, the Lynchburg School Board named the new Yoder School for blacks, which stood here, after this public school pioneer. Q-13

54 Augustus Nathaniel Lushington, VMD (ca. 1861–1939)

1005 Fifth St. Dr. Augustus Lushington, veterinarian, practiced in Lynchburg for nearly four decades. A native of Trinidad, he attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1897 he became one of the first Black men in the U.S. to earn a degree as a doctor of veterinary medicine. By 1900 he had moved to Lynchburg and opened his practice as a large-animal veterinary surgeon, primarily caring for horses and cattle on nearby farms. He served as a statistical reporter to the federal Bureau of Animal Industry, charged with combating disease in livestock. He also worked as a probation officer and was president of the Lynchburg Negro Business League. Lushington lived here at 1005 5th St. Q-6-59