Rumley was a thriving African American community in Shelby County that was surveyed on May 19, 1837, for Amos Evans, who built a hewed log dwelling and store. That same year, brothers Joel and George Goings, also known as Goens, freed black men from Monongalia County, Virginia, purchased 80 acres of land and settled with their families near Rumley in Van Buren Township along with other free men and women of color, including former slaves. Joel Goings built the first brick house in 1841 using bricks from his own brickyard. By 1846, the community extended over 7,000 acres and included the Collins, Redman, Williams, Davis, Lett, and Brown families. Rumley stood on the stagecoach route from Lima to Piqua and had a hotel, sawmill, grocery store, grist mill, brick factory, livery stable, blacksmith shop, post office, and three saloons, as well as three schools, three churches—African Methodist Episcopal, Wesleyan Methodist, and Baptist—and three black cemeteries: Barnett, Collins, and Redman. Before the Civil War, nearly 400 free men and women of color lived in the village and surrounding area, and although many families moved to larger nearby cities in the 1870s, Rumley represented a model of racial diversity for much of the 19th century. Only the brick one-room schoolhouse built in 1897 and the Lewis Chapel A.M.E. Church built in 1885 remain.