Ross Frazier, Farmer and Businessman

According to K.P. Williamson, “Ross Frazier was a schrewed and brilliant businessman, who knew how to make money.” Mr. Frazier, founder of Frazier Estates in 1958, was a farmer, who on his Plain City land raised black angus cattle, turkeys, chicken, eggs, rabbits and sold them at two markets in Columbus. In addition, he built single family homes on Columbus’ Eastside, off of Taylor and Emerald Avenues, near Pilgrim Elementary School.

Mr. Williamson’s father, A.D. Williamson, was a skilled carpenter and close friend with Mr. Frazier when Frazier decided that he would liquidate his farmland for housing to Black families who couldn’t purchase land in Central Ohio for home building. Frazier sold the first eight lots on the front of his property for $800.00. With A.D. Williamson’s help, he had a road engineered and sold the other thirteen lots for $1000.00 to $1500.00.

K.P. said that Mr. Frazier had entered and won prizes with this black angus cattle during the Ohio State Fairs during the 1940s. He sold his produce and livestock at the Central Market in Downtown Columbus and the East Market on Mt. Vernon Avenue, next to Carl Brown’s IGA Grocery.

When the Williamson’s moved into the Frazier’s farmhouse they bought it for $8000.00. The water was pumped in from a well and there was a potbellied stove, along with a fireplace to warm the house. K.P. said he then installed a furnace in the upstairs.

The Fraziers, Ross and his wife Mamie, moved to Columbus and lived on Douglas Street, just east of Douglas School. Mrs. Frazier died about 1961 or ’62 and the last place that K.P. Williamson saw Mr. Frazier was at the single family homes that he built on Taylor Ave. The date of his death is still to be determined.

Ross and Mamie Frazier, Founders of Frazier Estates

By Arnett Howard


I wish that I knew more about the founders of our community, Ross and Mamie Frazier. The Frazier Community was founded in 1958 on the farm that was owned by the Fraziers, who wanted to retire and they sold their thirty acre truck farm in one acre plots, beginning in 1955 through Hillman Realty in Dayton, OH..

Our Howard Family home was completed in November, 1959 and it was very soon that I started to go to Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church, in Marysville, Ohio, with Mr. Frazier. He had a 1953 Studebaker Starliner, a pretty sporty car for a fellow in his seventies. He had two barns behind the family home and we used to play in the barn’s hay loft.

Mamie Frazier was a lovely woman, she liked us kids. Ross was a small man and his voice is very clear in my mind, but I have not much to draw on, since I was eleven when I last saw them. I can just slightly remember sitting in their home, by a fireplace.

The home was built by a man named Weldon, a White fellow who had the home built for a bride that never arrived. There is a Weldon Road located a mile east of when the Weldon/Frazier home is. When the Fraziers moved into their home is unknown.

Mr. Frazier used to truck his produce, chicken and turkeys to Columbus to the Central Market, south of Downtown and the East Market, located on Mt. Vernon Ave. I have been told about their children, Jack, Barbara, Edith and Artist, who were all graduates of Tuskegee University in Alabama. Artist was a tremendous athlete who lost his life in an auto accident.

It was likely 1962 when the Fraziers moved to Columbus and into obscurity. K.P. Williamson’s family bought and moved into the farmhouse. K.P.’s father, A.D. Williamson, had helped Mr. Frazier develop the neighborhood. So next week I’ll see K.P. Williamson and he’ll fill me in on Mr. Frazier.

Yvonne Williamson Myrick on The Fraziers

I'm writing to tell what I know of the Frazier's home; this home seems to always pick its owner. Before my parents brought the home my mom, Victoria Williamson, kept having a dream every night of an old women in a bed with a green headboard. My parents were living in California at the time. My grandfather, Arthur Williamson, had helped Mr. Frazier set up rules for Frazier Estates and helped with dividing the lots up years before.

Apparently, Mrs. Frazier had a dream that Mom was to have the farmhouse. So, Mr. Frazier contacted my grandfather and told him that Karlton and Victoria were to have the house and to contact them. When my parents came back to see Mr. and Mrs. Frazier, she was ill and was in a bed upstairs. The bed had a copper head board that had turned green. My mom had found the woman she kept dreaming about. Mr. Frazier told my parents he would sell it to them for whatever they could afford. We lived there until my parents built their home in Frazier Estates around 1968.

About sixteen years ago, I started dreaming of that house. The way I fixed it is what I saw in these dreams. So, fifteen years ago I brought it from my Father.

Also, Mr. Frazier told my grandfather that the reason he wanted to divide his property up was because when the Black men came back from World War II, nice neighborhoods like Arlington would not sell to Blacks. Even though they had served their country, they still could not raise their families in nice neighborhoods. Mr. Frazier decided he'd divide the property in one acre lots so these young men could build nice homes with some land for their families.

Originally, Mr. Frazier was going to put a small store on the front of his property for the neighborhood he was developing. A man (and I don't remember the name) came and begged Mr. Frazier for a lot, but they were all spoken for. So he finally agreed to sell him the front acre. The man, for whatever reason, did not build, but sold the acre to Mr. Early. Even though the lots were spoken for, not everyone brought the lots that they said they would. That's why there were three lots that didn't develop until later.

George Howard, The Producer

  George Howard was a producer. He took his acre in Frazier Estates, Plain City, Ohio and made it work in the amount of food that came off of the land. Strawberries grew by six rows of one hundred feet, as did corn, cabbage, string beans, onions, tomatoes, etc.

  Mr. Roy Winston would bring his plow down each spring and turn over ground for everyone in the neighborhood; Mr. Thompson, Mr. Davidson, Mrs. Leftwich, Mr. Estis, Mr. Crump, Mr. Pace, Mr. Morrison and Mr. Abercrombie. After the ground was turned, George would get out his rototiller and chop it into rows, except for the strawberries, which were perennials. Seeds and fertilizer were dropped and then covered, onion bulbs were planted. And of course, Dad had four sons who reluctantly were drafted into the planting and harvesting process.

  Weeding the huge garden was accomplished usually by hand, which meant bending a back to reach the strawberries. My brothers and I would throw clods of dirt at each other while we worked, causing Dad to fuss, but he would keep us out there, on the job until nearly dark, every day.

  Of course, late summer and early fall would bring the harvest and picking, as the preparation would start; snaping beans, gathering tomatoes for canning, shucking corn, collecting onions to store in the garage. He had a pressure cooker and would can beans, beets, corn, tomatoes, jellies and jams. Then he would freeze some items, like strawberries and blackberries, which we would pick along the railroad tracks and in the woods. We had a variety of apple trees that would produce apple butters and sliced apples for Saturday breakfasts.

  Aside from fruits and vegetables, Dad would purchase chickens, sides of pork and beef. He would hunt and fish with the seasons and would freeze bountiful amounts of game, like rabbit, squirrel and pheasant. He and Mr. Estis would load up a vehicle with coolers, drive to Fremont, Ohio and catch walleye when they were running up to Lake Erie. Then they would stalk perch and white bass in Sandusky during their seasons, bringing back hundreds of fish to put in our freezers. 

  So Dad made sure that we were well nourished as kids. He likely learned his production skill from growing up in rural North Carolina during the depression in a family of eight. His father, Noli, was a cook for the railroad and his mother, Nancy, was raising the family. 

  He continued the production even as we grew up and left home for college and service  in other cities.