By: Bailey S. & Karly P.

Hannah Ashton played a big part in our school. Hannah grew up on a big farm and she loved farming. She lived with her parents who were both farmers and two brothers, Joe and Pete. Joe was her twin brother.

This is a picture of Hannah and her twin brother when they were just toddlers.

When she went to school, everyone had to dress up, including her. She graduated in 1920 from the Reynoldsburg High School (later to be named Hannah Ashton Middle School). The school wasn’t officially named after her while she was here, it was renamed in 1982.

After high school she went to Wooster College, Capital University, and Ohio State. She worked at an all African American school in North Carolina, where she began teaching shorthand writing. Shorthand writing is when you write quickly by using symbols for sounds, words and phrases.  In 1928 she was hired in Reynoldsburg and it was her first year of teaching. Hannah taught for 12 years and then she became the principal in this very building.   She spent almost 46 years of her life working for our school.

Hannah and her students had a really close relationship. Though she never married, Hannah thought of the school kids as children of her own. Her students called Hannah by her first name, and she called the students by their last names. Hannah took her students on school trips to New York and Washington. Hannah opened the Library for everyone to use, including not only the students but the entire community, because back then Reynoldsburg didn’t have a public library.  Hannah was a very interesting person and great role model.  

Hannah Ashton died in 2000 at the age of 99.  She was and will remain a big part of Reynoldsburg’s history.