Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 114

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

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"Among the beautiful pictures That hang on memory's wall,

Is one of a dim old forest That seemeth the best of all."

5th. Recitation :

"Do your best, your very best ; Do it every day," etc.

6th. Recitation :

" One step and then another, And the longest walk is ended," etc.

After these preliminaries they went through exercises on the blackboards, and their pro- ficiency was surprising.

I then arose to go into some of the other rooms, when the teacher called out a little one as a guide. As the midget came to me I lifted him up under the arms. He was as light as a kitten, and as his little legs dangled in the air I kissed him, whereupon the other thirty-nine midgets burst forth with a simul- taneous laugh, in which their teacher, Miss Sarah Belle Dix, joined -- making forty laughs as the product of a single kiss.

The Cottages .- A little later I went ex- ploring the twenty cottages, each cottage with its family of thirty-four, presided over by a matron or cottage mother, thirteen cottages occupied by boys and seven by girls, and sixteen cottages in a straight line, facing the town of Xenia a mile away, with two others at each end facing at right angles.

A plank walk passes in front of the cot- tages, over which is a continuous roof, as shown in the engraving. This is a shelter from the rain and the sun when the children march out from their cottages to the great dining-hall in the main building.

The dining-hall has four long tables, with a seating capacity for 700 children. They march in with military tread, accompanied by the matrons. When seated, they repeat the Lord's Prayer in concert. The matrons wait on and serve the children under their con- trol.

When I approached the doors of the cot- tages I found them all open and no persons present but the matron of each, the children being at school and some in the shops at work. One matron after another invited me in, as I came to their open doors. None of the matrons are teachers in the school. Each matron simply has charge of her cottage as a mother does of her children at home ; in each the children are of about the same age. The matrons are fully occupied in school hours,

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having the rooms to look after and the chil- dren's clothing to mend. The older girls largely assist them, and learn housewifery after the very best kind of instruction.

The larger picture shows the form of each cottage, which are all on the same model. The general sitting-room is on the ground floor. I describe one of the several I en- tered, and they are mainly all alike. The

room was about thirty-three by eighteen feet. It was carpeted, with two rows of chairs run- ning lengthwise. On the walls hung pictures ; a table was in the centre, with a few books upon it. In front of this was a doll's table, with play-dishes and dolls sitting around. One mother doll was in a pleasure carriage on the floor, holding a baby doll in each arm. The toys for the children are supplied by

Frank Henry Howe, Photo., 1888.

SITTING-ROOM OF A COTTAGE, SOLDIERS' ORPHANS' HOME.

che Grand Army. Last Christmas there was a great celebration here, and a deputation from them who distributed presents. The pictures and ornaments on the walls are paid for by saving the rags and old papers of the Institution.

In the small picture are shown three doors. That in the centre leads up-stairs. That on the left is to the sitting-room of the matron; on the right is the children's store-room, where each child's clothes are laid away in a series of drawers against the walls, a drawer to a child, and each one with its name or number. Over these rooms is the wash-room and the matron's bed-room. The children's dormitory is over the sitting-room, and of the same size. The floor is uncarpeted, the walls white, the coverlets to the beds white ; the bedsteads are of oak, seventeen in number, arranged in rows. Two children occupy a single bed. Everything there is neat, sweet and clean, as it indeed is about everything connected with the Home. Many house- keepers might learn much in these regards by visiting the various State Institutions. The general tone of the bed-rooms is a snow-like whiteness and purity, with floods of light from ample windows.

The Matrons welcome visitors and take a just pride in showing them through their cottages. Among them one sees a variety of character. There is the large, fleshy

woman with rosy cheeks, who has charge of the smallest troop of boys. Her face is redolent with goodness and smiles, and it is pleasing to see the little ones clustering around her to be caressed and share the envied kiss. Then there is the tall, strong woman, some- what advanced in years. She has no especial call for the exercise of the softer motherly qualities. Her expression shows determina- tion and executive capacity : and she should have these. The question of strong govern- ment is ever before her, for her charge is a family of thirty-four boys from fourteen to near sixteen years of age. They all sleep in one room, are naturally full of the exuber- ance and strength of dawning manhood, and how she manages to keep them from occasion- ally engaging in a pillow fight and frolic on retiring. after the manner of boys elsewhere, is a mystery.

To one such I carelessly remarked, "I sup- pose you have an easy time here in managing your charge." The moment I uttered this I wished I hadn't. I saw by the change of countenance, half comic and half anguished, I had made a mistake, for she at once cjacu- lated : "Humph ! I should think so !- Boys are not angels ; did you ever see any boys that were angels ?"

The Soldier's Widow .- Then there is the short, small, delicate matron. She is a blonde about forty-five years old, and her face

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ineffably sweet and gentle, and very sad ; oh, so sad ! There is a history of suffering in that face. Instinctively you are drawn toward her as to the face of the suffering Christ as portrayed by the genius of Raphael or Da Vinci. You inquire, and maybe learn she is a soldier's widow and now motherless. Her husband fell upon no battle-field in the heat and glory of patriotic conflict to find a grave of honor upon Southern soil. Worse than that. He was one of the thousands of victims to the horrors of Andersonville ; was ex- changed and came home to die, a mere skele- ton, wasted by starvation, his mind gone, a hopeless driveling crying idiot. Then her two little ones were taken from her, and she is alone in the world. She is here and fills out her life in ministering to the little waifs of the departed heroes.

Religion offers to her its cup of anticipatory

bliss in the expectation of again meeting her children and the love of her youth as he was when he left her one bright spring morning early in the sixties-left her in his manly strength and beauty, and marched away under the beautiful flag. And she is happy, though suffering-happy in her ministering, happy in her faith. "God loves those whom he chastens," and to such, while the tears fall, the heart of the bereaved swells with the bliss of heavenly love.

"Her faith shows a new world, and the eyes Of saints look pity on her. Death will come: A few short moments over, and the prize Of peace eternal waits her, and the tomb Will become her fondest pillow: all its gloom Be scattered. What a meeting there will be To her and those she loved while here."

FOUR LITERARY MEN.

Four literary men of note and now living come under notice in connection with Xenia-William D. Gallagher, Coates Kinney, William D. Howells, and White- law Reid. WILLIAM DAVIS GALLAGHER was born in 1808, in Philadelphia, and when a lad of eight years came with his widowed mother to Mount Pleasant, Hamilton county, Ohio, and was for forty-seven years a resident of the State ; his home is now Peewee Valley, near Louisville, Ky.

He learned the printing business in Cincinnati, and, in 1830, when but twenty- two years of age, came to Xenia, and started a campaign newspaper, which he entitled the Backwoodsman, giving it that name because it was peculiarly Western, a strong characteristic of his being an ardent affection for the West. Mr. Gallagher was an enthusiastic Whig, and the main object of his sheet was "to hurrah for Clay and to use up Jimmy Gardner, editor of the Jackson organ of Xenia."

After the lapse of a year he returned to Cincinnati and took the editorship of the Cincinnati Mirror, which had a life of several years, and his prose and poetic writings were of so much merit that he was soon regarded as the leading imaginative writer of the West. Later he edited two other literary journals, was for a time on the Ohio State Journal, of Columbus, and from 1839 to 1850 was associate editor on the Cincinnati Gazette, when he went to Washington with Thomas Corwin in a confidential capacity, Corwin having been appointed Secretary of the Treasury : again in the civil war he was em- ployed in the United States Treasury Depart- ment at Louisville by Mr. Lincoln. In 1853 he was on the editorial staff of the Louisville Courier.

Mr. Gallagher's father, Barnard Gallagher, was an Irish Roman Catholic, a participant in the rebellion in 1803, that cost Robert Emmet his life; and his mother, Abigail Davis, daughter of a Welsh farmer, who lost his life in the American Revolution. Com- ing from a liberty-loving stock, Mr. Gallagher inherited the spirit of freedom and philan- thropy and could not be otherwise than an opposer of slavery. His biographer, Prof.

Venable, in the Ohio Archeological and His- torical Quarterly for 1888, says of him in his early days : "He sang the dignity of intrinsic manhood, the nobleness of honest labor and the glory of human freedom. Much he wrote was extremely radical. . . Such lines as these, and as compose the poems · Truth and Freedom,' 'Conservatism,' 'The Laborer,' 'The New Age,' 'All Things Free,' went to the brain and heart of many people, and it is not to be doubted but that they exercised a deep and lasting influence.

"Mr. Gallagher first became known as a writer in 1828 by the publication of 'A Jour- ney through Kentucky and Mississippi' in the Cincinnati Chronicle. His first poetical contribution that attracted general attention was 'The Wreck of the Hornet ;' this was reprinted in a collection of his poems entitled 'Errato' (3 vols., Cincinnati, 1835-7). He edited 'Selections from the Poetical Litera- ture of the West' (Cincinnati, 1841). In 1849 he delivered the annual address before the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society, of which he was President, on The Progress and Resources of the Northwest.' One of the most elaborate of his agricultural essays

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is his 'Fruit Culture in the Ohio Valley.' His latest volume is 'Miami Woods: a Golden Wedding and Other Poems' (Cin- einnati, 1881). Venable says : 'Gallagher's verse paints the forest and field with Nature's

own eolor, and glows with the warmth of hu- man love and joy. 'Miami Woods' is a sort of Thomson's ' Seasons' adapted to the Ohio Valley."

FIFTY YEARS AGO. A Song of the Western Pioneer. BY WM. D. GALLAGHER.

No man was ever more thoroughly imbned with a love of the West than Mr. Gallagher. The memories of his boyhood were rich with the glow of enthusiasm for its free and manly life, when everything was so rapidly expanding and pros- perity scemed to be so assured to the humblest who would but exert his powers. Annexed is one of his songs that was widely published in the papers of the West forty years ago :

A song for the early times out West, And our green old forest home,

Whose pleasant memories freshly yet Across the bosom come :

A song for the free and gladsome life In those early days we led,

With a teeming soil beneath our feet, And a smiling heaven o'erhead !

O, the waves of life danced merrily And had a joyous flow,

In the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago !

The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase, The captured elk or deer ; The camp, the big, bright fire, and then The rich and wholesome cheer ; The sweet, sound sleep at dead of night By our camp-fire blazing high -- Unbroken by the wolt's long howl And the panther springing by. O, merrily passed the time, despite Our wily Indian foe,

In the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago.

We shunn'd not labor ; when 'twas due We wrought with right good will, And for the home we won for them Our children bless us still. We lived not hermit lives, but oft In social converse met ; And fires of love were kindled then That burn on warmly yet. O, pleasantly the stream of life Pursued its constant flow,

In the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago !

We felt that we were fellow-men ; We felt we were a band, Sustain'd here in the wilderness By heaven's upholding hand. And when the solemn Sabbath eame, We gather'd in the wood, And lifted up our hearts in prayer To God, the only good. Our temples then were earth and sky ; None others did we know

In the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago !

Our forest life was rough and rude, And dangers closed us round, But here, amid the green old trees, Freedom we sought and found. Oft through our dwellings wintry blasts Would rush with shriek and moau ;

We cared not ; though they were but frail, We felt they were our own ! O, free and manly lives we led, Mid verdure or 'mid snow,

In the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago !

But now our course of life is short ; And as, from day to day, We're walking on with halting step, And fainting by the way, Another land, more bright than this, To our dim sight appears, And on our way to it. we'll soon Again be pioneers ! Yet while we linger we may all A backward glanee still throw To the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago !

Many of his songs were set to music and sung in theatres, and in 1845 was pub- lished his famous ballad, "The Spotted Fawn," which became immensely popu- lar, being sung everywhere. The Spotted Fawn was the beautiful daughter of an Indian chief, who dwelt in the valley of the Mahketewa, who, with her bridegroom, White Cloud, was slain on her bridal night by the cruel white man who in time of peace stole in upon them in their slumbering hours. The Mahketewa is the Indian name for a stream that empties into the Ohio at Cincinnati, commonly called Mill Creek and largely at that point inhabited by frogs. Some wicked wag.

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wrote a parody upon the ballad under the title of " The Spotted Frog," which paralleled the fate of the Indian maiden with that of a young frog stoned to death by boys. This ever after spoiled the ballad for popular use. A verse from each follows :

By Malketewa's flowery marge The Spotted Fawn had birth, And grew as fair an Indian girl As ever blessed the earth. She was the Red Chief's only child, And sought by many a brave ;

But to gallant young White Cloud Her plighted troth she gave. Oh, the Spotted Fawn ! Oh, the Spotted Fawn !

The light and life of the forest shades With the Red Chief's child is gone.

By stagnant Mill Creek's muddy marge The Spotted Frog had birth, And grew as fair and fat a frog As ever hopped on earth. She was the Frog Chief's only child, And sought by many a frog ;

But yet on one alone she smiled From that old rotten log. Oh, the Spotted Frog !

Oh, the Spotted Frog !

The light and life of Mill Creek's mud Was the lovely Spotted Frog.

Mr. Gallagher is rather tall in person, with blue eyes and rather proudly bear- ing. He was a delegate to the National Convention which nominated Mr. Lin- coln, whereupon, on his return home, a mob assembled at Beard's Station, near by, to warn him to leave the State, and his position was a dangerous one. Inde- pendent, outspoken and with the keenest sense of honor he had won the warm respect of his rebel neighbors, some of whom put arms into his hands for self-de- fence. A stalwart young mechanic took upon himself to champion the cause of free opinion. "I hate Gallagher's politics as much as any of you," said this chivalrous young Kentuckian to the crowd, " but he has as good a right to his opinions as we have to ours, and "-with a string of terrible oaths, added-" who- ever tries to lay a hand on him or to give him an order to leave the State must first pass over my dead body." This put a quietus upon the mob, the excitement died away and the stars and stripes floated over Fern Cliff Cottage during the five gloomy years of the war.

On Tuesday, September 4, 1888, the opening day of the Ohio State Centennial Exposition at Columbus, a tall, finely- formed and ereet gentleman, with flashing dark eyes, and with the most silvery head in that multitude of thousands, arose on the platform and delivered the "OHIO CENTENNIAL ODE." The Coliseum, in which it was given, rises about 100 feet in the air, springing from the ground in form a half globe, with scats for some 10,- 000. Behind him were 1,500 children on the platform in tier above tier, arrayed in red, white and blue, whose patriotic songs had just filled the vast auditorium and the simultaneous fluttering of their hand-held flags had made for a few mo- ments a bewildering, brilliant scene of gayety and beauty.

COL. COATES KINNEY. Most poets have fine, delicate voices, that nullify their public-spoken utter- ances, from dwelling, we suppose, so greatly in the light, high regions of an at- tennated etherealized idealism. Not so with the poet of Ohio's Centennial, COL. COATES KINNEY, of Xenia, for his voice is clear, strong and sonorous, and the audience signified their appreciation of a masterly production with rounds of ap- plause. It was a great topic, the sublime occasion of an hundred years, and here we gladden and render more patriotic our pages by its presentation :

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OHIO CENTENNIAL ODE.

BY COL. COATES KINNEY.

Delivered in the Coliseum, Columbus, O., on the Opening Day, September 4, 1888, of the State Cele- bration of the Arrival of the Centennial Year.

In what historic thousand years of man

Has there been builded such a State as this ?

Yet, since the clamor of the axes ran

Along the great woods, with the groan and hiss

And crash of trees, to hew thy groundsels here,

Ohio ! but a century has gone,

And thy republic's building stands the peer Of any that the sun and stars shine on.

Not on a fallen empire's rubbish-heap,

Not on old quicksands wet with blood of wrong,

Do the foundations of thy structure sleep,

But on a ground of nature, new and strong. Men that had faced the Old World seven years

In battle on the Old World turned their backs

And, quitting Old-World thoughts and hopes and fears,

With only rifle, powder-horn and axe

For tools of civilization, won their way

Into the wilderness, against wild man and beast,

And laid the wood-glooms open to the day. And from the sway of savagery released The land to nobler uses of a higher race ;

Where Labor, Knowledge, Freedom, Peace, and Law

Have wrought all miracles of dream in place And time-ay, more than ever dream fore- saw.

A hundred years of Labor ! Labor free ! Our River ran between it and the curse, And freemen proved how toil can glory be. The heroes that Ohio took to nurse

(As the she-wolf the founders of old Rome)-

Their deeds of fame let history rehearse And oratory celebrate ; but see

This paradise their hands have made our home!

Nod, plumes of wheat, wave, banderoles of corn,

Toss, orchard-oriflammes, swing, wreaths of vine,

Shout, happy farms, with voice of sheep and kine,

For the old victories conquered here on these

The fields of Labor when, ere we were born,

The Fathers fought the armies of the trees,

And, chopping out the night, chopt in the morn f

A hundred years of Knowledge ! We have mixt

More brains with Labor in the century Than man had done since the decree was fixt That Labor was his doom and dignity.

All honor to those far-foreworking men

Who, as they stooped their sickles in to fling,

Or took the wheat upon the cradles' swing, Thought of the boy, the little citizen

There gathering sheaves, and planned the school for him,

Which should wind up the clockwork of his mind

To cunning moves of wheels and blades that skim

Across the fields and reap, and rake, and bind !

They planned the schools-the woods were full of schools !

Our learning has not soared, but it has spread :

Ohio's intellects are sharpened tools

To deal with daily fact and daily bread. The starry peaks of knowledge in thin air

Her culture has not climbed, but on the plain,

In whatsoever is to do or dare

With mind or matter, there behold her reign.

The axemen who chopt ont the clearing here Where stands the Capital, could they to- day

Arise and see our hundred years' display- Steam-wagons in their thundering career- Wires that a friend's voice waft across a State,

And wires that wink a thought across the sea,

And wires wherein imprisoned lightnings wait

To leap forth at the turning of a key-

Could they these shows of mind in matter note,

Machines that almost conscious souls con- fess,

Seeming to will and think-the printing press,

Not quite intelligent enough to vote-

Could they arise these marvels to behold, What would to them the past Republic seem-

The State historified in volumes old, Or prophesied in Grecian Plato's dream ?

A hundred years of Freedom ! Freedom such No other people on the earth had known Till our America the world had shown

What Freedom meant. No slave might touch

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Our earth, no master's lash outrage our heaven :

The Declaration of the Great July,

Fired by our Ordinance of Eighty-seven,

Flamed from the River to the northern sky ;-

Ay, that flame rose against the Arctic stars, And shone a new aurore across the land.

A Body scored with stripes of whip and scars

Of branding-iron seemed to understand- Soulless though reckoned by our Union's pact-

That It was Man, for whom that heavenly sign

Lit up the North ; and while the bloodhounds tracked

Him footsore through Kentucky, stars be- nign

Befriended him and brought him to our shore. A stranger, frightened, hungry, travel- worn ;

And we laid hands on him and gave him o'er Again to bondage, as in fealty sworn.

So rich in Freedom, we had none to give !

While we might quaff, we could not pass the cup :

No slave should touch foot to our soil and live Upon it slave-he must be given up !

When that first man was wrested from our State,

Then slavery had crossed the Rubicon ;

Then Freedom was the whole Republic's fate ; Then John Brown's soul began its march- ing-on ;

Then the Ohio Idea had to go Where'er the banner of the Union flew, From northmost limits in Alaskan snow

To southmost in the Mexic waters blue.

A hundred years of Peace ! Yes, less the four

(Our little Indian squabbles were not war), The four when we, in battle's shock and roar, Declared that Freedom was worth dying for. Ohio gave to that great fight for Man

Her Grant, her Sherman, and her Sheri- dan,

And her victorious hundred thousands more. Victorious, yes, though legions of them sleep In garments rolled in blood on foughten fields-

Though still the mothers and the widows weep For the slain heroes borne home on their shields.

Their glorious victory this day behold :

They conquered Peace ; and where their manly frays

Across the land of bondage stormed and rolled.

Millions of grateful freedmen hymn their praise.

Ohio honors them with happy tears :

The battles that they braved for her, The banner that they waved for her, The Freedom that they saved for her,

Shall keep their laurels green a thousand years.

A hundred years of Law ! The people's will, The might of the majority,

The right of the minority, The light hand with authority,

We promised, with the purpose to fulfil ; But the contagion of the border-taint

Blackened our statues with its shameful stain,

And left the color of our conscience faint

Till freshened by the hattle-storm's red rain.

Ay, war has legislated ; it has cast

The " White Man's Government " out into night,

And Labor, Knowledge, Freedom, Peace, at last Stand color-blind in Law's resplendent light.

Now hail, my State of States ! thy justice wins-

Thy justice and thy valor now are one ; Thou hast arisen, and thy little sins

Are spots of darkness lost upon the sun. Thy sun is up-O, may it never set !-

These hundred years were but thy morning- red :

It shall be forenoon for thy glory yet

When all who this day look on thee are dead.

O, splendor of the noon awaiting thee !

O, rights of man and heights of manhood free !

Hail, beautiful Ohio that shalt be !

Hail, Ship of State ! and take our parting cheers !

Ah, God ! that we might gather here to see Thy sails loom in, swoln with a thousand years ..

A hundred years of Freedom! Freedom such No other people on the earth had known Till our America the world had shown What Freedom meant. NO FOOT of slave might touch

Our earth, no master's lash outrage our heaven.

Col. COATES KINNEY was born in Yates county, N. Y., in 1826 ; came to Obio in 1840; studied law with Judge Wm. Lawrence and J. W. and Donn Piatt; soon adopted journalism as a life profession ; was paymaster in the army through the war and brevetted Lieut .- Colonel.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 114

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006