Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 134

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

USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I > Part 134

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in -- making of the power of the astronomer, he said :

"By the power of an analysis created by his own mind the astronomer rolls back the tide of time and reveals the secrets hidden by countless years, or, still more wonderful, he predicts with prophetic accuracy the future history of the rolling spheres. Space withers at his touch, Time past, present and future become one mighty NOW."

Up to the ontbreak of the war the ob- servatory remained the best equipped in the

United States, and the reputation of Mitchel as an astronomer was alike high in Enrope and America. Then came the rebellion, when he threw himself unreservedly into the conflict. At the fall of Sumter, at the great Union meeting in New York, he was the most effective speaker. When he closed the scene that followed was indescribable. Men and women were moved to tears, voices from all parts of the vast ball re-echoed the sentiments of the speaker.

In August Mitchel was appointed Brig- adier-General of Volunteers, head-quarters Cincinnati, where he at once plunged inte his new work with his old zeal, put the city in a posture of defence, supervised the erec- tion of earthworks and drilled the gathering troops.

Mitchel was popularly known in the army as "Old Stars." Whitelaw Reid says of him, "Amid the stumblings of those early years his was a clear and vigorons head. While the struggling nation blindly sought for leaders his was a brilliant promise. But he never fought a battle, never confronted a respectable antagonist and never commanded a considerable army. Yet what he did so won the confidence of the troops and the admiration of the country that his death was deplored as a public calamity aud ho was mourned as a great general.

One day, just before the war, standing on our office steps in Cincinnati, there passed by a young man about thirty years of age. He was alone, and as he approached we looked at him with un- usual interest. He was rather short in stature, thin in the flanks, but broad, full-chested. His complexion was very fair, and beard long, flowing and silky, and his face frank and genial. He walked erect and, as was his wont, very leisurely, and with a side-to-side swing. As his eye met ours a slight smile flit over his face, not one of recognition for there was no acquaintance. Probably his mind was far away and he did not see us, and it was the memory of a happy incident that had lighted his face with the momentary joy. Possibly it was the earnestness of our gaze, if perchance he noticed it, but that was pardonable. His fellow-citizens were proud of him and liked to gaze upon WM. H. LYTLE. him, being, as he was, to the manor born and a man of poetic genius, WM. HAINES LYTLE, the author of "Antony and Cleopatra," whose name was to go down to posterity as the "Soldier Poet." His reputation at the time was that of being highly social and possessed of winning politeness, a modest bearing and chivalrous spirit. One by our side who was under him, as we write, says : "My regiment was marching as an escort to some baggage wagons when an aid

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galloped up to me and said, 'General Lytle sends his compliments to Col. Beatty with the request to send a company to the rear to guard against guerillas.'" To be ever courteous seems to have been as a sort of intuition with him, and showed the high refinement of the man. It is said that just before the fatal charge at Chickamauga he drew on his gloves with the remark, " If I must die I will die as a gentleman." Whether true or a myth it matters not : if a myth its in- vention shows it was characteristic and, therefore, spiritually true.

Wm. Haines Lytle came from a Scotch- Irish stock, and noted for warlike qualities and experiences. He was born in the old Lytle mansion on Lawrence street, November 2, 1826, graduated at Cincinnati College at twenty years of age, following his naturally military instincts became a Captain in Second Ohio in the war with Mexico, studied and practised the law, was a member of the Ohio Legislature, in 1857 was Major-General of the State militia. When the rebellion broke out he was commissioned Colonel of the Tenth Ohio, the Cincinnati Irish regiment, which he led into Western Virginia, and fell wounded at Carnifex Ferry while leading a desperate charge ; was again badly wounded and taken prisoner at Perrysville. where his regiment suffered terrible loss. He was com- missioned General and commanded the First Brigade of Sheridan's division on the fatal field of Chickamauga, where he fell at the head of his column while charging, pierced by three bullets. "Captain Howard Green, a volunteer aid, sprang from his horse, re- ceived the General in his arms, and was rewarded with a smile of grateful recognition. Several officers and orderlies attempted to bear him off the field. The peril of this undertaking may be imagined since two of the orderlies were killed, and Col. Wm. B. Mc- Creary wounded and left for dead on the field.

"General Lytle repeatedly opened his eyes and motioned to his friends to leave him and save themselves. Finally, upon coming to a large tree upon a green knoll, they laid him down. He then handed his sword to one of the orderlies, and waving his hand toward the rear, he thus tried to express with his last breath that his well-tried blade should never fall into the hands of the enemy. So closed the life of the poet-soldier, Lytle. His death found him, as he prophetically wrote years before :

"On some lone spot, where, far from home and friends,

The way-worn pilgrim on the turf reclining, His life, and much of grief, together ends."

Lytle had many friends in the Southern army, and his remains were treated with every mark of respect, his mourners being alike his friends and foes. His body was tempo- rarily buried in a coffin until they could be sent home. Until the outbreak of the war poetry was to him a frequent occupation and amusement. That on which his fame will permanently rest, "Antony and Cleopatra," was originally published, in 1857, in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

ALICE.

PHŒBE.

THE CARY SISTERS.

When preparing for our first tour over Ohio we passed a few days in the rooms of Dr. Randall, Secretary of the Cincinnati Historical and Philosophical Society. The Doctor then mainly constituted the society. A few years later he was shot while dodging somewhere in California behind a counter to avoid the ire of a

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pursuing ruffian : but the society still survives. He had as an office mate L. A. Hine, then youthful, large and handsome, who was trying to reform a deceptive and deceiving world by publishing a magazine called "The Herald of Truth," wherein was duly set forth a nice project for "Land for the Landless :" and then later he established his permanent home with his family at a spot properly named for domestic felicity; it being Love Land.

The rooms were on East Fifth street, opposite the old Dennison House, where the well-fed, portly form of Landlord Dennison, father of a then-to-be war Governor, was a daily object for pleasing contemplation. Alongside was the horse market, where for decades were daily sales of horses, sold amid crowds of coarse-grained men, unearthly, confusing yells and poundings of auctioneers, and the scampering to and fro on bareback horses of stable boys through the street to show their points. On looking upon the spot, its vulgarity and coarseness, its yells and shouting, and often oaths, it seemed as though the gates of heaven must be afar: at least there appeared no one in search of them in that vicinity. To enhance the attractions it was at a time when the city was termed Porkopolis, its citizens Porkopolitans, for swine had full liberty of the streets, living upon their findings, or going in huge droves stretching from curb to curb to temporary boarding places in the suburbs on Deer creek.

One day, while there in the rooms of the society, in bounced two laughing, merry country girls. Some jokes passed between them and the Doctor and Hine, and then they bounced out. They were from a rural spot eight miles north of the city, and well named Mount Healthy, their names Alice and Phoebe Cary, girls then respectively 26 and 22 years of age, and just rising into fame.

The portraits as published are not at all as they were then. Phoebe had a round, chubby face and seemed especially merry. Alice we again saw and but once years later at a con- cert by Jenny Lind in the old National Thea- tre on Sycamore, near Third street. She was then small and delicate with an oval face, expression sedate and thoughtful. She was attired in Quaker-like simplicity, her dark hair parted in the middle and combed smooth over the brow. No maiden could look more pure and sweet than she on that evening. Her appearance remains as "a living picture on memory's wall." By her sat that most superb-looking, rosy-cheeked old man, Bishop M'Ilvaine, whose resemblance to Washington was of almost universal remark. Robert Cary, the father of the Cary sisters, came in 1803 to the "Wilderness of Ohio" from New Hampshire, and in 1814 married Eliza- beth Jessup and made a home upon the farm afterwards known as the "Clovernook " of Alice Cary's charming stories.

Their mother, a sweet woman of literary tastes, died in 1835, and two years later their father married again. Alice was then 17 and Phoebe 13 years of age. Their step- mother was unsympathetic with their literary aspirations, which at this time were budding. Work with her was the ultimatum of life, and while they were willing and aided to the full extent of their strength in household labor, they persisted in studying and writing when the day's work was done, while she re- fusing the use of candles to the extent of

their wishes, they had recourse to the device of a saucer of lard with a bit of rag for a wick after the rest of the family had retired. Alice began to write verses at 18, and Phoebe some years after her. For years the Cincin- nati papers formed the principal medium by which they became known, then followed the Ladies' Repository of Boston, Graham's Magazine. and the National Era of Wash- ington. Recognition from high authorities at the East then came to their Western home. John G. Whittier and others wrote words of encouragement, and Edgar Allan Poe pro- nounced Alice's "Pictures of Memory " one of the most musically perfect lyrics in our language.

In 1849 a great event occurred to the sisters -a visit to their home from Horace Greeley. The philosopher had come to the city and wanted the pleasure of an acquaintance with these rural maidens whose simple, natural verses of country life had touched a sympa- thetic chord, and so went out to their home and gladdened their hearts. We presume after that visit the stepmother wished she had been less close with her candles.

We remember that time well ; the philoso- pher was an old acquaintance; the weather had turned intensely cold, and he said to us he was unprovided with a sufficiently warm clothing for a return by stage coach over the mountains.

A winter fashion at that time in the Ohio valley was a huge coarse blue blanket with a black border of about six inches. These shawls were extensively made into overcoats, whereon their black zebra-like stripes had full display. A more uncouth appearing gar- ment could not be well imagined either as a shawl or overcoat. It was warm, but ab- sorbed rain like a sponge. The shawls had struck the philosophic eye, they were so pe- culiarly what was then known as " Western," and to an inquiry we replied we had one not in use to which he was welcome He grate-

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fully accepted the gift and wore it home as a specimen of Cincinnati fashions, carrying, too, in its meshes a generous quantity of the city's soot, for which the garment had an es- pecial retaining adaptability. To have thus ministered in that long ago to the comfort of an old-time philosopher bent on reforming mankind and inviting young men "to go West " is another pleasing picture on " Mem- ory's walls." Nearly thirty years elapsed ere we again saw the sage-he was on his Presidential canvass, riding through Fourth street in an open barouche. His white, benevolent face had broadened, and he was bowing and smiling to the people, looking "for all the world" like some good old grandmamma when bent on dispensing to the

youngsters some good warm gingerbread just . dows to admit the sunlight, she filled her out of the oven.

Having obtained recognition from the East- ern literati and some pecuniary success by a volume of their poems, in 1852, the sisters, first Alice and then Phoebe Cary, removed to New York to devote themselves to literature. They established themselves in a modest home, and by their habits of industry and frugality had success from the very start.

Occasionally they visited their old home and resumed the habits of their girlhood days. When they had obtained literary emi- nence they established on Sunday evenings weekly receptions, when for a term of fifteen years were wont to gather the finest intellects, the most cultured characters of the metropo- lis and the East. Assemblies so comprehen- sive in elements, so intellectually varied and harmonious, were never before seen in the metropolis. They were quite informal and

not especially gratifying to the mere butter- flies of fashion whom -curiosity sometimes prompted to attend.

Alice was frail, and in her last sickness, prolonged for years, she was tenderly nursed by her stronger sister, bearing her great suf- ferings with wonderful patience and resigna- tion. She died February 12, 1871, and five months later Phoebe followed her. She was naturally robust in health, but she had been weakened by intense sorrow, and then becom- ing exposed to malarial influences quickly fol- lowed her sister. Both were buried in Green- wood cemetery.

It had been pitiful to see Phobe s efforts to bear up under her dreadful loneliness after her sister's death. "She opened the win-

room with flowers, she refused to put on mourning and tried to interest herself in gen- eral plans for the advancement of woman. All in vain. Her writings were largely poems, parodies and hymns."

One of her poems, written when she was only eighteen years of age, has a world-wide reputation. Its title is "Nearer Home," and it has filled a page in nearly every book of sacred song since its composition opening verses are :

One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er : I am nearer home to-day Than I ever have been before.

Nearer my Father's house Where the mansions be ; Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the crystal sea.

The Cary Homestead, " the old gray farm-house," is still standing, in a thick grove about 100 feet back from the road, on the Hamilton pike, just beyond the beautiful suburb of College Hill, eight miles north of Fountain Square. The sisters were born in a humble house of logs and boards on a site about a hundred yards north of it. It is of brick, was built by their father about 1832, when the girls were respectively eight and twelve years of age. It is a substantial, roomy old-fashioned mansion, and is just as the sisters left it when they went to New York to seek their fortune. It has many visitors attracted by memories of the famous sisters, a brother of whom, Warren, a farmer, still lives there. After their decease Whittier, in writing of their original visit to him, thus alluded to it :

Years since (but names to me before) Two sisters sought at eve my door, Two song-birds wandering from their nest, A gray old farm-house in the West.

Timid and young, the elder had Even then a smile too sweetly sad ; The crown of pain we all must wear Too early pressed her midnight hair.

Yet, ere the summer eve grew long, Her modest lips were sweet with song ; A memory haunted all her words Of clover-fields and singing birds.

One of the attractions of the region is the old family graveyard.

The most interesting single object in this region is what is known as "the Cary tree." It is the large and beautiful sycamore tree on the road between College Hill and Mount Pleasant. The history of this tree is very interesting, as given by Dr. John B. Peaslee, ex-superintendent Cincinnati public schools.

In 1832, when Alice was twelve years old and Phoebe only eight, on returning home from school one day they found a small tree. which a farmer had grubbed up and thrown into the road. One of them picked it up and said to the other : "Let us plant it." As soon as said these happy children ran to the opposite side of the road and with sticks -for they had no other implement-they dug out the earth, and in the bole thus made

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Dr. Arthur Le Boutellier, Photo.

THE "GRAY OLD FARM-HOUSE."

they placed the treelet ; around it, with their tiny hands, they drew the loosened mold and pressed it down with their little feet. With what interest they hastened to it on their way to and from school to see if it were growing ; and how they clapped their little hands for joy when they saw the buds start and the leaves begin to form ! With what delight did they watch it grow through the sunny days of summer ! With what anxiety did they await its fate through the storms of winter, and when at last the long looked-for spring came, with what feelings of mingled hope and fear did they seek again their favorite tree !

When these two sisters had grown to wo- manhood, and removed to New York city, they never returned to their old home with- ont paying a visit to the tree that they had planted, and that was scarcely less dear to them than the friends of their childhood days. They planted and cared for it in youth ; they loved it in age.

Mr. Peaslee was the first person anywhere to inaugurate the celebration of memorial tree-planting by public schools, which he did in the spring of 1882 by having the Cin- einnati schools plant and dedicate with mu- sical, literary and other appropriate exercises groups of trees in honor and memory of emi- nent American authors. The grove thus planted is in Eden Park and is known as "Authors' Grove." At that time the above description was used as part of the exercises around the Cary tree, planted by the Twelfth district school of the city.

The school celebration of memorial tree- planting was the outgrowth of the celebration of authors' birthdays, which had been in- augurated by Mr. Peaslee in the Cincinnati schools some years previously. He had simply carried the main features of anthors' birthday celebrations into Eden Park and united them with tree-planting.

The planting of trees and dedicating them to anthors, statesmen, scientists and other great men have from this Cincinnati example been adopted by public schools in nineteen States of the Union, the Dominion of Canada, and the beautiful custom has crossed the ocean to England, and as a consequence millions of memorial trees have been planted by school- children.

On our first coming to Ohio, in 1846, the praises of a young Whig orator, then thirty- two years old, Gen. SAMUEL F. CARY, were in many mouths. He was born in Cinein- nati, educated at Miami University and the Cincinnati Law School, and then became a farmer. He served one term in Congress, 1867-9, as an Independent Republican, and was the only Republican that voted against the impeachment of President Johnson. In 1876 he was nominated by the Greenback party for Vice-President on the tieket with Peter Cooper for President. He has been interested in the temperance and labor reform movements, and there are few men living who have made so many speeches. Hon. Job E. Stevenson, in his paper on "Political Reminiscences of Cincinnati," truly describes him as "a man of national reputation as a

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temperance and political orator, endowed with wonderful gifts of eloquence, highly de- veloped by long and varied practice in elocu- tion, of fine presence, and a voice of great power and compass." To this we may say, one may live a long life and not hear a public speaker so well adapted to please a multi- tude. In his case the enjoyment is height- ened by seeing how strongly he enjoys it himself. In a speech which we heard him deliver at the dedication of the Pioneer Monument, at Columbia, July 4, 1889, we saw that at the age of seventy-five his power was not abated. We, however, missed the massive shock of black hair that in the days of yore he was wont to shake too and fro, as he strode up and down the platform, pouring forth, with tremendous volume of voice, tor- rents of indignation upon some great public wrong, real or imaginary, with a power that reminded one of some huge lion on a ram- page, now and then relieving the tragic of his speech by sly bits of humor.

On our original tour over Ohio we hap- pened once in the office of the Cleveland Herald, when there came in a youth of scarcely twenty years. We were at once in- terested in him, though we had never before met, for our fathers had been friends, and he was a native of our native town, New Haven, Conn., where he was born July 31, 1825. The young man was pale, slender, with keen, dark eyes, nimble in his movements, quick

GEORGE HOADLY.

as a flash with an idca, and enthusiastic. This was GEORGE HOADLY ; upon his high history, blood and training have since asserted their power. He is of the old Jonathan Edwards stock ; his great-grandmother, Mary

Edwards, who married Major Timothy Dwight, was a daughter of the great divine. His father, George Iloadly, was a graduate of Yale ; was for years mayor of New Haven ; moved in 1830 with his family to Cleveland, where he was elected five times mayor, 1832- 1837, during which time he decided 20,000 suits ; mayor again in 1846-1847. He was a horticulturist, arborist, botanist, and learned in New. England family history-a gentleman of unusual elegance and accomplishments. His mother was a sister of the late President Woolsey, of Yale.

George Hoadly graduated at Western Re- serve College and Harvard Law School, and in 1849 became a partner in the law-firm of Chase & Ball, Cincinnati. In 1851, at the age of twenty-five, he was elected a judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, and was city solicitor in 1855. "In 1858 he succeeded Judge Gholson on the bench of the new Superior Court. His friend and partner, Gov. Salmon P. Chase, offered him a seat upon the Supreme Court bench, which he declined, as he did also, in 1862, a similar offer made by Gov. Tod. In 1866 he re- signed his place in the Superior Court and resumed legal practice. He was an active member of the Constitutional Convention of 1873-74, and in October, 1883, was elected governor of Ohio, defeating Joseph B. For- aker, by whom he was in turn defcated in 1885. During the civil war he became a Re- publican, but in 1876 his opposition to a pro- tective tariff led him again to affiliate with the Democratic party. He was one of the counsel that successfully opposed the project of a compulsory reading of the Bible in the public schools, and was leading counsel for the assignee and creditors in the case of Arch- bishop Purcell. He was a professor in the Cincinnati Law School in 1864-1887, and for many years a trustee in the University. In March, 1887, he removed to New York and became the head of a law-firm."

GEORGE ELLIS PUGH was born in Cincin- nati, Nov. 28, 1822, and died July 19, 1876. He was educated at Miami University ; be- came a captain in the 4th Ohio in the Mexi- can war; attorney-general of Ohio in 1851 ; and from 1855 until 1861 served the Demo- cratic party in the United States Senate. In the National Democratic Convention, in Charleston, S. C., in 1860, he made a most memorable speech of indignation, in reply to William L. Yancey, in the course of which, alluding to the demands of the ultra pro- slavery partisans upon the Northern Democ- racy, he said (we write from memory) : " You would humiliate us to your behests to the verge of degradation, with our hands on our mouths, and our mouths in the dust." His plea in behalf of Clement L. Vallandigham was regarded as one of his ablest efforts. This was in the habeas corpus proceeding before Judge Leavitt, involving the question as to the power and the duty of the judge to relieve Mr. Vallandigham from military con- finement. Mr. Pugh was gifted with a very strong voice, a power of vehement, earnest

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utterance, and with a marvellous memory that was of great advantage over all oppo- nents, enabling him, as it did, to cite author- ity after authority, even to the very pages, so that he could at any time. when prepared, go into court without any yellow-arrayed breast- works, in the form of piled-up law books. His last years were greatly marred by exces- sive deafness.

At the age of seventy-one, on July 14, 1883, on his beautiful place at North Bend, there died Dr. JOHN ASTON WARDER, a

DR. JOHN A. WARDER.

most beneficent character. He was born in Philadelphia of Quaker parentage, and in early life saw at his father's house and asso- ciated with those eminent naturalists, Andu- bon, Michaux, Nuttal, Bartram, and Dar- lington, from whom he acquired great fond- ness for nature, and how to woo her sweet delights. He studied medicine in Philadel- phia, practised eighteen years in Cincinnati, and then moved to North Bend to give his entire attention to horticulture. Meanwhile he did everything in his power to advance education and science, and was a leader through his capacity and love. The public schools, the Astronomical Society, Western Academy of Natural Sciences, Horticultural Society, Ohio Medical College, and Natural History Society all felt his guiding power.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 134

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