Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1, Part 60

Author: Greve, Charles Theodore, b. 1863. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1020

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Another early settler who gave some account of the town was Hezekiah Flint who was one of the 48 that formed the settlement at Marietta in 1788. He came to Cincinnati on a flat-boat loaded with corn on April 7, 1794. He also speaks of the pond, the home of the alder bushes and the frogs. He bought a lot of James Lyon 100 by 200 feet on Walnut below Fourth street for $150 and the southeast corner of Fourth and Walnut streets, the same size, three years after- wards for a horse valued at $400. He was of- fered a lot at Fourth and Main streets, 100 feet on Main by 200 feet on Fourth (afterwards the Harrison drug store corner), in 1796 for $250. This was the same year that Francis Menessier of Gallipolis bought the lot 100 feet on Main and .200 feet on Third street, ( where the trust com- pany's bank afterwards stood) for an old sad- dle.

Flint cultivated the square opposite the Cin- cinnati College, that is the square between Fourth, Fifth, Walnut and Vine streets, from 1795 to 1800 as a corn field.

Judge Matson, as well as Flint and Stitt, speaks of the difficulty of communication be- tween the Hill and Bottom in the infancy of the city. Even at a later date he says wagons would stall going up Walnut street opposite the corner of Front. On Main from Front to Lower Market street, now Pearl, which was then many feet be- low its present grade from "Hill's store, No. 31, to Lower Market street, boat gunwales were laid as footways, part of the distance, and the citizens walked, in very muddy weather, upon the rails of the post and rail fences, which inclosed the lots of that street. When Pearl street was opened, some twenty-eight years ago, and the building extending from the corner to Neave & Son's store was putting up, in digging the foundations, a number of panels of posts and rail fence, the relics of those days, and which had been covered up for, probably, thirty years, were found and dug up absolutely sound. Causeways of logs, generally a foot in diameter, were laid in

various parts of Main street, and it was but a few years since, in re-grading Main from Eighth to Ninth street, that a causeway of such logs were taken up, sound, but water-saturated, which extended from near Eighth street to a spot above Pfau's tavern, probably one hundred and twenty feet in distance.

"As late as the year 1800, Broadway, opposite Columbia street, and for one hundred feet north of that point, was the centre of a pond, three or four acres in extent, to which the early settlers resorted to shoot plover. Another pond, of con- siderable size, spread on every side from the northeast corner of Fifth and Main streets, over which persons, still living, have crossed on de- cayed logs. A bluff gravel bank occupied the line of Third. street, for two or three squares east and west of Main street. This overhung the lower ground to the south, and was fre- quently caving in upon it. A faint idea only of tlie elevation of the bluff can be formed by ob- serving the ascent of Main street, from Lower Market to Third. The hill, at an early date, pre- sented its front below the line of Hopple's al- ley, nearly thirty feet above the present level, while Lower Market must have been thirteen or fourteen feet below its present grade. A swamp extended through Lower Market street its entire distance west of Ludlow street." ( Cincinnati in 1859, p. 14I.)

Judge Matson tells a curious anecdote about the erection of one of the first brick houses put up in the city, the well known tobacco establish- ment on Lower Market ( Pearl) street. This building, which was three stories high, although one of its stories was covered up in the repeated fillings of the street, "was built upon boat gun- nels." Casper Hopple, one of the early pioneers, superintended the building. "Fourteen feet above what then constituted the sill of his door, he placed the joists of the next story, and while that tier was laying, our old fellow-citizen, Jona- than Pancoast, passed by, and, after gazing at the improvement, without comprehending its de- sign, asked of Mr. Hopple what he meant by what he was doing? Mr. H. observed, that, as accurately as he could judge, that would be the proper range of the floor, when Lower Market street would be filled to its proper level, to cor- respond with what he supposed would prove the final grade of Main street opposite. When the first filling of Lower Market street took place, Mr. 11. was compelled to convert some five feet deep of the lower story into a cellar, to which he had access by a trap-door; and after the estab-

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lishment of the present grade, of that street, the level at which he had built his joists correspond- ed exactly to its purpose, giving him a sill at his door and a cellar of the ordinary depth with one, as already described, below it." (Cincinnati in 1859, p. 142.)

Another pioneer, Capt. Hugh Moore, had his store on the west side of Main strect erected with boat planks for the inside walls, lined with pop- lar boards and with boat gunnels for a founda- tion. "When he had bargained for the house, which he rented at one hundred dollars per an- num, and which, with the lot, one hundred feet on Main, by two hundred on Pearl street, he was offered, in fee simple, at three hundred and fifty dollars, he brought the flat-boat which was load- ed with store goods from the Ohio, via Hobson's Choice, not far from Mill street, up Second or Columbia streets, and fastened the boat to a stake near the door, as nearly as can be judged, the ex- act spot where the lamp-post now stands, at the southwest corner of Main and Pearl streets." (Cincinnati in 1859, p. 143.)

In 1797 Francis Baily, who afterwards be- canie president of the Royal Astronomical Soci- cty, visited the town. His life was afterwards written by Sir John Herschel and with it was included Baily's "Journal."

According to Baily, at this time Cincinnati contained about three or four hundred houses, mostly frame-built. "The inhabitants are chief- ly employed in some way of business, of which there is a great deal here transacted, the town be- ing (if you may so call it) the metropolis of the Northwestern Territory. This is the grand de- pot for the stores which come down for the forts established on the frontiers, and here is also the seat of government for the Territory, being the residence of the Attorney-General, Judges, etc., appointed by the President of the United States, for the administration of justice. On the second bank there is a block fort put up with two rave- lins ; and between the fort and the river, and im- mediately upon the borders of the latter, is the Artificers' Yard, where a number of men are kept continually employed in furnishing the army with incchanical necessaries, such as tubs, kegs, firearms, etc., etc. On the second bank, not far from the fort, there are the remains of an old fortification, with some mounds not far from it. It is of a circular form, and by walking over it I found the mean diameter to be three hundred and twelve paces, or seven hundred and eighty fcet, which makes the circumference very nearly half a mile. There are on the ramparts of it

the stumps of some oak trees lately cut down, which measured two feet eight inches diameter, at three feet from the ground. The mounds, which were at but a short distance from it, were of the same construction as those I have de- scribed at Grave creek." (Journal of a Tour in North America in 1796-97, p. 228.)

A little later description is that of Jeremiah Butterfield who in 1798, passing down the Ohio on a flat-boat, visited the town, "which was then but an inconsiderable village, composed mostly of log cabins, with few good brick or frame buildings, containing not more than one thou- sand inhabitants. It contained one bakery, at which Mr. Butterfield applied for bread to sup- ply the boat's crew; but without success, the baker having but three loaves on hand, and these engaged by other persons."

THE ARRIVAL OF DR. DRAKE.

The best description of the early town at the end of the century is of course that of Dr. Daniel Drake, who came to Cincinnati a boy of 15 years on December 18, 1800. In his address delivered many years later, January 9, 1852, before the Cincinnati Medical Association at the hall of the Mechanics' Institute at Sixth and Vine, he gives us a description of the settlement as he first saw it, which has ever remained the most vivid pic- ture of the city's early days :

CINCINNATI IN 1800.

"In the first year of this century the cleared lands at this place did not equal the surface which is now completely built over. North of the canal and west of the Western row there was forest, with here and there a cabin and small clearing, connected with the village by a nar- row, winding road. Curved lines, you know, symbolize the country, straight lines the city. South of where the Commercial Hospital now administers relief annually to three times as many people as then composed the population of the town, there were half-cleared fields, with broad margins of blackberry vines; and I, with other young persons, frequently gathered that delicious fruit, at the risk of being snake-bitten, where the Roman Catholic Cathedral now sends its spire into the lower clouds. Further south the ancient mound near Fifth street, on which General Wayne planted his sentinels seven years before, was overshadowed with trees which, to- gether with itself, should have been preserved : but its dust like that of those who then delighted to play on its beantiful slopes, has mingled with

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the remains of the unknown race by whom it was erected. The very spot on which we are now assembled, but a few years before the time of which I speak, was part of a wheat field of sixteen acres owned by Mr. James Ferguson and fenced in without reference to the paved streets which now cut through it. The stubble of that field is still decaying in the soil around the foundations of the noble edifice in which we are now assembled. Seventh street, then called Northern row, was almost the northern limit of population. Sixth street had a few scattering houses; Fifth not many more. Between that and Fourth there was a public square, now built · over. In one corner, the northeast, stood the Court House, with a small market place in front, which nobody attended. In the northwest cor- ner was the jail, in the southwest the village school house; in the southeast, where a glitter- ing spire tells the stranger that he is approaching our city, stood the humble church of the pio- neers, whose bones lie mouldering in the centre of the square, then the village cemetery. Wal- nut, called Cider street, which bounds that square on the west, presented a few cabins or small frames ; but Vine street was not yet opened to the river. Fourth street, after passing Vine, branched into roads and paths. Third street, running near the brow of the upper plain, was on as high a level as Fifth street is now. The gravelly slope of that plain stretched from east to west almost to Pearl street. On this slope, between Main and Walnut, a French political exile, whom I shall name hereafter, planted, in the latter part of the last century, a small vine- yard. This was the beginning of that cultiva- tion for which the environs of our city have at length become distinguished. I suppose this was the first cultivation of the foreign grape in the valley of the Ohio. Where Congress, Market, and Pearl streets, since opened, send up the smoke of their great iron foundries, or display in magnificent warehouses the products of different and distant lands, there was a belt of low, wet ground which, up to the settlement of the town twelve years before, had been a series of beaver ponds, filled by the annual overflows of the river and the rains from the upper plains. Second, then known as Columbia street, presented some scattered cabins, dirty within and rude without ; but Front street exhibited an aspect of consider- able. pretension. It was nearly built up with log and frame houses, from Walnut street to Eastern row, now called Broadway. The people of wealth and the men of business, with the Ho-

tel de Ville, kept by Griffin Yeatman, were chiefly on this street, which even had a few patches of sidewalk pavement. In front of the mouth of Sycamore street, near the hotel, there was a small wooden market house built over a cove, into which pirogues and other craft,' when the river was high, were poled or paddled, to be tied to the rude columns.

"The common then stretched out to where the land and water now meet, when the river is at its mean height. It terminated in a high, steep, crumbling bank, beneath which lay the flat-boats of immigrants or of traders in flour, whiskey, and apples, from Wheeling, Fort Pitt, or Red- stone Old Fort. Their winter fires, burning in iron kettles, sent up lazy columns of smoke, where steamers now darken the air with hurried clouds of steam and soot. One of these vessels has cost more than the village would then have brought at auction. From this common the fu- ture Covington, in Kentucky, appeared as a corn field, cultivated by the Kennedy family, which also kept the ferry. Newport, chiefly owned by two Virginia gentlemen, James Taylor and Richard Southgate, but embracing the May- os, Fowlers, Berrys, Stubbs, and several other respectable families, was a drowsy village set in the side of a deep wood, and the mouth of Lick- ing River was overarched with trees, giving it the appearance of a great tunnel.

"After Front street, Sycamore and Main were the most important of the town. A number of houses were built upon the former up to Fourth, beyond which it was opened three or four squares. The buildings and business of Main street extended up to Fifth, where, on the north- west corner, there was a brick house, owned by Elmore Williams, the only one in town. Beyond Seventh, Main street was a mere road, nearly impassable in muddy weather, which at the foot of the hills divided into two, called the Hamilton road and the Mad River road. The former, now a crooked and closely built street, took the course of the Brighton House; the latter made a steep ascent over Mount Auburn, where there was not a single habitation. Broadway, or Eastern row. was then but thirty-three feet wide. The few buildings which it had were on the west side, where it joins Front street; on the site of the Cincinnati Hotel there was a low frame house, with whiskey and a billiard table. It was said that the owner paid seven hundred dollars for the house and lot in nine pences ; that is, in small pieces of "cut money" received for drams. North of this, towards Second street, there were sev-

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eral small, houses, inhabited by disorderly per- sons who had been in the army. The sidewalk in front 'was called Battle row. Between Sec- ond and Third streets, near where we now have the eastern end of the market house, there was a single frame tenement, in which I lived with my preceptor (Dr. Goforth ) in 1805. In a pond, directly in front, the frogs gave us regular ser- enades. Much of the square to which this house belonged was feneed in, and served as a pasture ground for a pony which I kept for country practice. ** *

"Between Third and Fourth streets, on the · west side of Broadway, there was, in 1800, a eorn field with a rude eorn-field fence, since replaced by mansions of such magnificence that a Russian traveler, several years ago, took away drawings of one as a model for the people of St. Peters- burg. Above Fourth street, Broadway had but three or four houses, and terminated at the edge of a thick wood, before reaching the foot of Mount Auburn.

"East of Broadway and north of Fourth street, the entire square had been enclosed and a respectable frame house ereeted by the Hon. Winthrop Sargent, Secretary of the Northwest Territory. He had removed to Mississippi Ter- ritory, of which he was afterwards Governor ; and his house and grounds, the best improved in the village, were occupied by the Hon. Charles Wylling Byrd, his suceessor in office. Governor Sargent merits a notiee among the physicians of the town, as he was the first who mnade scientific observations on our climate.

"Immediately south of his residence, from Fourth street to the river east of Broadway, there was a military reserve. That portion of it which laid on the upper plain was covered by Fort Washington, with its bastions, port-holes, stock- ades, tall flag-staff, evening tattoo, and morning . reveille. Here were the quarters of the military members of our profession, and for a time for one of its civil members also; for, after its evacu- ation in 1803, my preceptor moved into the rooms which had been occupied by the command- er of the post. In front of the fort, where Con- gress street now runs, there was a pond, in which dueks and snipes were often shot ; and from this pond to the river, the tract through which Sec- ond and East Front streets now rinn was over- spread with the long, low sheds of the commis- sarie's, quartermasters, and artificers of the army.

"The post office was then and long after kept on the east side of this military common, where

Lawrence street leads down to the Newport ferry. Our quiet and gentlemanly postmaster, William Ruffin, performed all the duties of the office with his own hands. The great Eastern mail was then brought once a week from Mays- ville, Kentucky, in a pair of saddle-bags.

"East of the fort, on the upper plain, the trunks of large trees were still lying on the ground. A single house had been built by Dr. Allison where the Lytle house now stands, and a field of several aeres stretehed off to the east and north. On my arrival this was the residenee of my preceptor. The dry cornstalks of carly win- ter were still standing near the door. But Dr. Allison had planted peach trees, and it was known throughout the village as Peach Grove. The field extended to the bank of Deer ereek ; thence all was deep wood. Where the munifi- cent expenditures of Nicholas Longworth, Esq., have collected the beautiful exotics of all climates -on the very spot where the people now go to wateh the unfolding of the night-blooming eere- us-grew the red-bud, erab-apple, and gigantic tulip tree, or the yellow poplar, with wild birds above and native flowers below. Where the Catawba and Herbemont now swing down their heavy and luscious clusters, the climbing winter vine hung its small, sour branches from the limbs of high trees. The adjoining valley of Deer creek, down which, by a series of locks, the eanal from Lake Erie mingles its waters with the Ohio, was then a receptaele for driftwood from the back water of that river, when high. The boys aseended the little estuary in canoes during June floods, and pulled flowers from the lower limbs of the trees or threw elubs at the turtles, as they sunned themselves on the floating logs. In the whole valley there was but a single house, and that was a distillery. The narrow road which led to it from the garrison-and, I am sorry to add, from the village also-was well trodden.

"Mount Adanis was then clothed in the grand- eur and beauty which belongs to our own prim- itive forests. The spot occupied by the reservoir which supplies our city with water, and all the rocky precipices that stretch from it up the river, were buried up in sugar-trees. On the western slope we collected the sanguinaria Can- adensis, geranium maculatum, gillenia trifoliata, and other native medicines, when supplies failed to reach us from abroad. The summit on which the Observatory now stands was crowned with lofty poplars, oaks, and beech; and the sun in sumner could scarcely be seen from the spot where we now look into the valleys of the moon

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or sec distant nebulae resolved into their starry elements. .

"Over the mouth of Deer creek there was a crazy wooden bridge, and where the depot of the railroad which connects us with the sea has been erected, there was but a small log cabin. From this cabin a narrow, rocky, and stumpy road made its way, as best it could, up the river, where the railway now stretches. At the distance of two miles there was another cabin-that from which we expelled the witch. Beyond this all was for- est for miles further, when we reached the resi- dence of John Smith, who was afterward mixed up in Burr's conspiracy, and died in exile in Pen- sacola. The new village of Pendleton now cov- ers that spot. Then came the early, but now ex- tinct, village of Columbia, of which our first physicians were the only medical attendants." (Drake's Discourses, p. 31.)

THE FIRST WHITE CHILD BORN IN CINCINNATI.

The names of inany of the carly settlers and the times of. their arrivals have already been given in the descriptions of the town, but it may be well to note particularly some of them. One. of the earliest arrivals in the first year of the village was that of William Moody ( the son of a baker from Marietta) who is said to have been the first child born here. The date of his birth was St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, and the place a cabin on the southwest corner of Fourth and Main. Julius Dexter, than whom no one was more accurate in statement, in his brief note of introduction to King's "Hand Book of Cincin- nati,", says: "A single lifetime has covered the existence of Cincinnati; for the first white child born in the place ( William Moody, March 17, 1790), died in 1879."

Moody's. claim to the honor mentioned was recognized in many other ways and when he was sergeant-at-arms to the City Council he was re- ferred to both in the city reports and in the di- rectories as the first white child born in Cincin- nati. At the time of his death in 1879 he was referred to by the mayor in his message as fol- lows :

"Within a few days has died, on Barr street, William Moody, who, as extraordinary as it may appear, was generally accredited with being the first white child born in this city. Mr. Moody was born in a log cabin which stood not far from the corner of Fourth and Main streets. Cincin- nati, or Los-anti-ville, as it was then called, con- sisted of a few log cabins mostly located south of Third street, and had a population of less than two hundred people, the soldiers stationed in

Fort Washington included; yet this child grew to manhood and lived long enough to see Cin- cinnati become the Queen City of the West, teeming with an active, energetic, thrifty popula- tion of over three hundred thousand people. How hard it is to realize the fact that such wonderful. marvelous changes could take place within the lifetime of a single citizen."

We have already seen that others laid claim to the same distinction. Dr. Drake in the ad- dress already referred to, while enumerating the early practitioners of medicine, puts in a claim for David Cummins in the following words :

"But truth and gallantry alike demand, that in this enumeration, I should not omit the first Sage-femme of the infant village, which in its first year, began to be a village of infants. The eldest-born, of a broad and brilliant succession, was DAVID CUMMINS, whose name is appropri- ately perpetuated in our little neighbor-Cum- minsville, the site of which was then a sugar- tree wood, with groves of papaw and spicewood bushes. I have not been able to learn the native place of the venerable Mrs. McKnight. The scene of her first professional achievement, in the young village, was an humble log cabin, in front of where the Burnet House now stands. I do not know when she died, but this 1 do know. and record with pride, that her night-errandry was not only professional but chivalrous, for the cry of Indians did not frighten her to the other side of the river." (Drake's Discourses, p. 20.)

Another claimant for this distinction is Maj. Daniel Gano (born May 27, 1794), for many years clerk of the old Court of Common Pleas and Supreme Court and afterwards clerk of the old Superior Court. Judge Carter says: "He was, I believe, among the first white children, if not the very first white child born in the city. of Cincinnati. He was born and grew up here, and he lived here, and he died here. Near four- score years of age, he departed this life, which had been rewarded through the whole long line of it, by the highest regard and esteem of his fellow citizens. He was a worthy, clever man, and most efficient officer, and was certainly one of the best looking men in the city and country. He was distinguished for wearing a large per- fectly white, cambric ruffle, down the open bosom of his shirt adorned with a beautiful breastpin, and the old-fashioned Revolutionary plaited cue of his hair, tied with black ribbon in a bow, and hanging down his back between his shoulders ; and even for modern times, he never gave it up, and retained in his toilet this mark of the old

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Revolutionary forefathers of this country, to the clay of his shroud and coffin. He was buried with it, and no doubt, it is in his grave, and flour- ishing still. His ancestors were among the first settlers of Cincinnati, clear back in the closing years of the eighteenth century, and his poster- ity are still with us, in respect and esteem, and long will the name of GANO be remembered anel respected in this Queen City of the West." (The "Old Court House," p. 59.)

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Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1, Part 60

Author: Greve, Charles Theodore, b. 1863. cn Publication date: 1904 Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1020

Author: Greve, Charles Theodore, b. 1863. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1020