History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 11

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

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On the first day of June my father was killed by them. He was stabbed in five places, and scalped. Two men that were at the out-lot with him when the Indians showed themselves, ran before him towards the town. He passed them at about three hundred yards, the Indians being in pursuit behind; but another, as it was supposed, had con- cealed himself in the brush of a fallen tree-top between them and the town. As my father was passing it, a naked Indian sprang upon him. My father was seen to throw him; but at this time the Indian was plunging his knife into his heart. He took a small scalp off and ran. The men behind came up immediately ; but my father was already dead.

There was not much increase in the population of Cincinnati this year-about half of the male adult pop- ulation was out in the army, and many were killed in conflicts with the Indians, while the successive defeats of Harmar and St. Clair had discouraged immigration, and frightened some of the settlers away from "the Miami slaughter-house," a number going over into Kentucky. No new manufactures were started in the place, except a horse-mill for grinding corn. It stood below Fourth street, near Main, and the Presbyterians sometimes held their meetings in it, when they could not meet in the open air, their house not yet being built. Prices were high-flour ten dollars per barrel, salt eight, and town property was still very low. Lot thirteen, on the original town-plat, was sold this year to Major Ferguson for eleven dollars. It comprised one hundred feet on Broadway by two hundred on Fourth, at the southwest corner of these streets.

The apparently slight tenures by which property now of enormous value was held by some of its early posses- sors-tenures becoming strong enough, however, when confirmed by twenty-one years' undisputed possession- are illustrated by the following exceedingly brief warranty deed and assignment. It will be observed that the as- signment made by Mr. Cook does not even name the as-

signee, and that the year of date is not given in the lead- ing instrument. The property thus simply conveyed comprises one hundred feet by two hundred on Sycamore street between Third and Fourth, and is now, of course, exceedingly valuable :

Know all men by these presents that I, Jonathan Fitts, do hercby bind myself, my heirs, etc., to hold and defend to Peyton Cook my right, title, and claim to a town lot in Cincinnati, viz: No. 61. The right of said lot to said Fitts have by these presents vested in said Cook, for value received, this 28th August.

Test. John Vance. JONATHAN FITTS.

(Endorsed)

I do hereby assign my right and title to the within said lot for value received, as witness my hand and seal this 25th Jan., 1791.

Testas, B. Brown. PEYTON COOK.

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO.

On the twelfth of February occurred the first serious affray which disgraced the town. Lieutenant Thomas Pastern, of the garrison, had a quarrel with Bartle, the storekeeper, whose place was where the old Spencer house now stands, and beat him severely. Bartle prosecuted his assailant; and his attorney, one Blan- 'chard, was so severe upon the officer and showed him up in such a contemptible character that his ire was excited anew, and he brought a sergeant and thirty soldiers from the fort to whip the lawyer and his defend- ers. An affray of some magnitude was the result. It occurred on Main street, in and about the office of the justice, William McMillan. The soldiers were met by about eighteen citizens and a number of the militia, the squire and Colonel John Riddle being prominent in the melee, and were driven away after a sharp contest. The affair caused great excitement in the village and at the fort. General Wilkinson, then commandant, reduced the sergeant to the ranks, and issued a general order deprecating the unhappy occurrence. The lieutenant was tried at the next quarter-sessions, and fined three dollars. But for his orders to the soldiers to make the attack, they would have been included in the punishment inflicted by Williamson.

This year is rather celebrated for "first things." The First Presbyterian church, or church of any kind here, was put up, as will be more fully related hereafter. The first execution under sentence of the courts occurred- that of James Mays, for murder, executed by Sheriff John Ludlow. The first school was opened, with thirty pupils. The first ferry between Cincinnati and Newport was opened, by Captain Robert Benham, whose license from the territorial authorities may be found in Chapter XIX, Part I. The first great flood since the settlement began occurred, flooding the entire Bottom to the average depth of five feet, and drowning out many of the inhabi- tants. The Fourth of July was celebrated by thirteen rounds from the cannon of the fort in the morning and again at noon; the troops were paraded and had a special drill; there were adinner and toasts, with more cannon- firing; and at night a brilliant exhibition of fireworks and a ball.

Between forty and fifty immigrants arrived in Cincin- nati this year, and several more cabins, with three or four frame houses, were put up. In this year Mr. James Fer- guson, who had been out in Harmar's campaign as a vol-

* This did not occur until the next year.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

unteer, opened a store on the corner of Third and Syca- more streets, for general merchandizing. Nearly all kinds of goods were then procured from Philadelphia. They were sent for or gone for by the merchant in per- son over the only road to that city which then existed to Cincinnati, by way of Lexington, Danville, and Crab Orchard to Cumberland Gap, thence northwest through Abingdon, Stanton, Winchester, and Baltimore, and were received by wagons to Brownsville and thence by the river to Cincinnati; taking a month or little less for each way, going and returning. Four to five months were usually required for the procurement of stocks from Philadelphia.

James Smith, or "Sheriff Smith," as he was commonly known, came this year from Cumberland county, Penn- sylvania, with James Findlay, and continued the associa- tion with him by forming the well-known pioneer mer- cantile firm of Smith & Findlay, which was maintained until about 1802. Their store was in the old quarter, on Front street, near the foot of Broadway. Mr. Smith was appointed sheriff some years after his arrival, and held the office until the State was formed, when he was elected to it by the people, and held this important post in all about eight years. He was also, for a part of this time, collector of taxes in the county, and of the Fed- eral revenues for the Northwest Territory. He further acted as Governor St. Clair's private secretary, was cap- tain of the first company of light infantry formed in Cin- cinnati, and a paymaster in the War of 1812-15, and was in Fort Meigs during the siege by the British and In- dians. McBride's Pioneer Biography says: "Indeed, he was among the foremost of the early settlers as respects character, influence, and capacity for business, and pos- sessed in a large degree that public confidence most highly prized by gentlemen, the trust reposed in an hon- est man." He removed from Cincinnati in 1805, to a farm near Hamilton, and died there in 1834. He was the father of the Hon. Charles Killgore Smith, who was born here February 15, 1799, and lived a highly distin- guished career in Butler county and Minnesota Territory, of which he was secretary, and for some months acting governor.

Mr. Findlay was a native of Pennsylvania, and a man of unusual strength of mind and character. After the land office was established here in 1801, he was ap- pointed receiver, and served for many years, until his resignation. He was made, a few years after the date given, major general commanding the first division of Ohio militia, but served as colonel of one of the Buck- eye regiments in the War of 1812, and was at Hull's surrender. In 1825 he was elected to Congress and re- mained in the House until 1833. He also held accept- ably a number of minor offices under the State and gen- eral Governments.

Mr. Asa Holcomb, a well-known citizen of the early day, was among the arrivals of this year; also, Captain Spencer.

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE.

In March came another freshet, inundating the whole plain below the hill. Another disaster fell by and by, in

a terrible visitation of the small-pox, after the encamp- ment of Wayne's army at Hobson's Choice and its de- parture for the north. Nearly one-third of the citizens and the soldiers left in the garrison died of the scourge.

One of the early traders in Cincinnati-who had, how- ever, but a transient residence here-was Matthew Hues- ton, who landed on the seventeenth of April, in this year. He was a Virginia tanner, and had accumulated a small property, which he invested in wares, principally leather goods, for a trading voyage down the Ohio. He left part of them to be sold in Cincinnati, and pushed on to the falls with the rest. Returning here shortly, he sold out what stock he had left, about three hundred dollars, worth, to a 'Mr. McCrea, who cleared out a few days after, carrying all the goods with him, and leaving Mr. Hueston without either goods or the money for them. Hueston took work for a few weeks in the tannery after- ward Jesse Hunt's, and then engaged with Robert and William McClellan, pack-horse masters for Wayne's army, to assist in conducting a brigade of pack-horses to Fort Jefferson. He subsequently served as commissary in the army, resigning in 1795 and for a year pursuing the business of a sutler and general trader. He had stores at Greenville and Cincinnati, the one here being in charge of Mr. John Sayre, with whom he had formed a partnership. The business was very lucrative, one to two hundred per cent. profit being realized on many articles. Mr. Hueston's property soon amounted to twelve or fif- teen thousand dollars, which was swept away, as he alleged, by the misconduct of Sayre, who squandered the means of the firm by intemperance and gambling , and finally sold the remaining stock and ran away, leav- ing Hueston to pay the partnership debts. This he did, so far as he was able, and began the world anew by driv- ing a large herd of cattle through the wilderness to Detroit, at two dollars and fifty cents a head. He got all through safely, and returned to Cincinnati within forty days. Other gains here enabled him to pay the remain- ing debts of Hueston & Sayre, and to buy a two hundred acre tract of land, near Hamilton, upon which he settled and kept a tavern for several years. He died at his later residence on Four Mile creek, Butler county, April 16, 1847.

In the same month arrived David McCash, a Scotch- man from Mason county, Kentucky. He bought a settler's right to a log-cabin on Walnut, near Third street, and also an out-lot, paying four dollars for the latter. It was of the usual size, four acres, and covered the ground where Greenwood's foundry and the Bavarian brewery afterwards stood. His oldest son, William, contrived a rude water-cart of two poles, with a cross-piece in the middle, the upper ends for shafts, and pegs upon the lower parts to keep the barrel on. With this apparatus he furnished the first water-supply of the city of Cincinnati. Mr. McCash also made a wheeled cart, which was a curiosity, even in those days, the wheels being of wood, about two and a half feet in diameter and six inches thick. They were fastened to an axle, which revolved in large staples. This was the first of Cincinnati drays.

On the ninth of November appeared the first newspa-

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

per in the city-the Centinel of the Northwest Territory, edited and published by William Maxwell. The next month Mr. Maxwell was made postmaster for the office established here December 12th, and opened the office on the west side of Sycamore, near the river bank.

February 7th, came the well-known Colonel John Johnston, who was forty years in the service of the Gov- ernment as Indian agent, etc. He survived until the winter of 1860-1, dying then at the age of eighty-six. Griffin Yeatman came June 20th. He was the father of Thomas H. Yeatman, who was born here July 8, 1805.

The first jail was built early this year, on Water street, just west of Main.

Lot seventy-seven, one hundred feet on Front by two hundred on Main street, bought in 1789 for two dollars, was this year offered by Colonel Gibson for one hundred dollars. It was accounted worth two hundred thousand dollars in 1840, and is of course worth much more now.

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR.

So late as this year, the daring and successful Cincin- nati hunter, John S. Wallace, killed bears and an elk on the Kentucky side. In those days the breasts of wild turkeys were salted, smoked and chipped up for the table like dried beef.

On the twenty-second of February the only celebration of the day seems to have been the starting of the first through mail for Pittsburgh, in a canoe. On the first of August the first line of keel-boats was established between Marietta and Cincinnati. On the twenty-seventh of December the first Masonic lodge here-Nova Caesarea Harmony, No. 2-was organized. On the twenty-seventh of May dangerous fires in the woods were threatening the town, and the citizens had hard work to save their dwell- ings and clearings.

In the spring of this year a detachment of Kentucky volunteers, accompanied by about a hundred friendly Indians, encamped on Deer creek, on their route to join Wayne's army. The savages had with them a young woman who had been captured in Western Pennsylvania, and was supposed to have relatives in this place. It proved not to be so; but a man from near Pittsburgh, who happened to be here, knew her, and gave the Indians a barrel of whiskey as a ransom for her. The exchange was effected at a tavern on Broadway, near Bartle's store, and the redskins were soon engaged in a grand drunken frolic. The next day they declared themselves dissatis- fied with the trade, and threatened to take the girl again by force and arms. They were resisted peaceably, but firmly and successfully, by the friends among whom she had taken refuge, principally Irishmen. A short time afterwards, about fifty Indians came surging down Broad- way, and met the crowd of whites opposite Bartle's store. They were assailed by a shower of loose rocks, followed by an attack with shillelahs, which drove them up the hill. In the thick of this fight was Isaac Anderson, a leading citizen, who had been taken by the Indians in Lowry's de- feat, and had a mortal grudge against the race. Captain Prince sent out a force from the garrison to quell the disturbance; but it was over before the soldiers arrived.

Thenceforth the cabins on the east side of Broadway, along the front of which the tide of conflict poured, were known as Battle row, until 1810, when they were pulled down. The girl was restored to her family as soon as possible.

At this time a large tract of out-lots, with some in-lots, extending from about Sixth street to the present Court, and from Main street west to the section line, about one hundred acres in all, were enclosed in a Virginia rail fence, with no building whatever upon the entire piece except a small office for Thomas Gowdy, the first lawyer in the place, which was not occupied by him, as being too far out of town. In May one of the lot owners, while burning brush, set fire to the whole clearing, burn- ing the deadened timber and also nearly all the rails of the fence, and threatening closely Gowdy's office. This is reckoned the first fire in Cincinnati.

A distinguished addition to local business and society was made this year, in the advent of Francis Menessier, formerly a prominent Parisian jurist and member of the French parliament. He had been banished from France in 1789, in the troubles that preceded the revolution, and joined the Gallipolis colony, whence he came to Cincinnati, where he became a pastry baker and inn- keeper on the southeast corner of Main and Third streets, where the Life and Trust company's building afterwards stood.

Hezekiah Flint, one of the original forty-nine who set- tled Marietta, came to Cincinnati April 7, 1794, and spent the rest of his life here. He bought a lot one hundred by two hundred feet on Walnut, below Fourth, of James Lyon, for one hundred and fifty dollars. Three years thereafter he sold the same sized lot on the south- east corner of Fourth and Walnut for a stallion worth four hundred dollars. From 1795 to 1800 he cultivated the square between Fourth, Fifth, Walnut and Vine, op- posite the college building, as a cornfield.

Daniel Gano and Jonathan Lyon were also among the prominent arrivals of the year.

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE.

The town this year contained about five hundred in- habitants, and increased but two hundred and fifty from this time until 1800. It is described at the close of the year as a small village of log cabins, with about fifteen rough, unfinished frame buildings, some of them withi stone chimneys. More statistical statements say there were then here ninety-five log cabins and ten frames. A new log jail had been put up at the corner of Walnut and Sixth streets. Not a brick house was yet to be seen here, and it is said that none was put up until 1806, when the St. Clair dwelling, still standing on St. Clair alley, between Seventh and Eighth, was erected with brick brought from Pittsburgh. A frame school-house. had been put up, which, with the new Presbyterian church and the new log jail, constituted the public build- ings. The inhabitants were subjected, every summer and fall, to agues and intermittent fevers from the malaria of the swamp still existing at the foot of the upper level, about Main and Sycamore streets. The intersection of

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Main and Fifth streets was still a shallow frog-pond, full of alder bushes, and crossed by a rude causeway of logs. It remained for a number of years longer.

The officers at the fort, according to Judge Burnet, who came early the next year, were much given to heavy drinking; and he was afterwards able to recall, of all the officers here under Wayne and St. Clair, only Harrison, Ford, Clark, Strong, Shomberg, and a very few others, who were not habitual tipplers. They of course greatly affected the tone of society; and Judge Burnet left on record the statement that, of the lawyers in first practice with him here, nine in number, all ex- cepting his brother died of intemperance.

Benjamin Perlee, a Jerseyman, and Jonah Martin were among the immigrants of this year whose names and dates of arrival have been preserved. In the winter Isaac Anderson came, with his family. He had been here long before, having passed this point with Colonel Laugh- ery's force, in which he was a lieutenant, in 1781, on the way to their terrible defeat ten miles below the mouth of the Great Miami, in which every man of the expedi- tion was killed or taken prisoner by the Indians. Ander- son was carried to Canada, but escaped in a remarkable manner, and reached his home after many wanderings. He is the one who described Cincinnati, as he saw it up- on arrival, as a small village of log cabins, including about fifty rough, unfinished frame houses, with stone chimneys. There was not a brick, he said, in the place. He bought a lot near the northeast corner of Front and Walnut streets, on which there was already a cabin. He afterwards built a large house on the lot, in which he kept a store and tavern, the latter familiarly known to the old settlers as "the Green Tree." He also engaged in brick-making, and in the business of transporting emi- grants and freight into the interior. In 1801, when the public lands west of the Great Miami came into market, he bought a section above the mouth of Indian creek in Butler county, to which he removed about ten years later, and there spent the rest of his life. He lived to an advanced age, dying December 18, 1839, in his eighty- second year.

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-SIX.

Jacob Burnet came with his brother, George W. Burnet. Another brother, Isaac G. Burnet, came later, and was for many years editor of Liberty Hall-was also mayor of the city. David G. Burnet was still another brother who came early. It is a famous family in the annals of Cincinnati. All were fine scholars, well read in literature, and otherwise liberally educated. George died here after a few years' residence. David emigrated to Texas and rose to distinction, becoming the first president of the Texan Republic. Jacob was then a young man fresh from his professional studies; but soon achieved success at the bar, and early rose to important official stations, becoming finally a senator of the United States and judge of the State supreme court. Soon after his lamented death Mrs. Sigourney, the poetess, wrote of him, in Past Meridian:

The sunbeams of usefulness have sometimes lingered to a late period on the heads of those who had taken part in the pioneer hardships of our

new settlements. I think of one recently deceased at the age of eighty- five-Judge Burnet-who was numbered any ang the founders of Ohio, the State which sprang from its cradle with vigor of a giant. . . His health had been originally feeble; but the endurance of hardship, and, what is still more remarkable, the access of years, confirmed it. At more than fourscore he moved through the streets with as erect a form, an eye as intensely bright, and colloquial powers as free and fas- cinating as at thirty. When, full of knowledge and benevolence, and with an unimpaired intellect, he passed away, it was felt that not only one of the fathers of a young land had fallen, but that one of the bright and beautiful lights of society had been extinguished.

Judge Burnet remarked of the town, when he arrived, that it had made but little progress, either in population or importance, though it contained a larger number of inhabitants than any other American village in the ter- ritory, excepting Marietta; and if the soldiers and others attached to the army were included in the population, it would much exceed that of the older town. He notes his share in the severe sickness of August, 1796, when he lay in a room in Yeatman's tavern, which was at the same time occupied by fifteen or sixteen other persons, all sick.

Samuel Stitt, an Irishman from County Down, came in May and settled on the river bank, on the spot afterwards occupied by Thirkield & Company's and Shoenberger & Company's works. He became purchaser of this lot, sixty by one hundred, with a double frame house there- on, in 1800, for one thousand two hundred dollars. Thirty-three years subsequently he rented the premises on a perpetual lease, for the same sum per year. Before Stitt's purchase it had been bought of Scott Traverse by Colonel Riddle, 1790, for sixty-six dollars and sixty- seven cents. Mr. Stitt said there was not even a horse- path then on Main street, but a very steep wagon road went up Sycamore, and a cow-path up Broadway. The timber on the town plat had been all cut down. There were no houses between Front and Second streets, except a few one-story frames, as Gibson's store, at the corner of Main and Front, and Ludlow's house on the opposite corner, which was rented to D. C. Bates. Above Resor's place George Gomer kept a tavern. William Ramsey had a store on the corner of the alley below Main, where Kilgour & Taylor were long after. Isaac Anderson and Samuel Dick owned and occupied lots west of Front as far as Walnut. William McCann kept a tavern at . "Liverpool's corner," and Freeman, the printer, resided between Walnut and Vine. On a pas- ture lot on Deer creek, a little north of Fox's saw-mill, was a large hollow sycamore, which was used as a shel- ter or dwelling by a woman who did washing for the gar- rison. A broken limb, also hollow, served for a chim- ney. General Wilkinson, commandant at the fort, had a handsome carr' ge and pair, the only turnout of the kind in the place.

Colonel Taylor, the venerable Newport citizen, still living, says that James Ferguson, who had been a ser- geant in Wayne's army, was also a merchant here this year.

J. W. Browne had a store where Manser's iron estab- lishment was afterwards, and William and Michael Jones had a store across the alley; Duffy had the store next east, and Martin Baum was said to be already here, and

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

in business at Shoenberger & Company's subsequent stand. Major Zeigler had a store adjoining Yeatman's tavern, on the corner of Front and Sycamore.

Governor St. Clair this year bought sixty acres in and adjoining the town for fifty dollars an acre, later measured from the canal to Mrs. Mener's line, and from Main to Plum streets. The half of lot seventy-six, on Front, near Main, sold on the thirtieth of September for four dollars. The corner of Main and Fifth, the old drug store corner, was offered for two hundred and fifty dollars. Menessier bought the Trust company lot on Main and Third, one hundred by three hundred, for an old saddle, hardly worth ten dollars. Another lot at the corner of Main and Lower Market, one hundred by two hundred, was offered at two hundred dollars, payable in carpen- ters' work. Salt was six to seven dollars per barrel ; powder one to one dollar and a half per pound; wheat seventy-five cents to one dollar a bushel; corn thirty- seven and one-half cents; pork fifty to seventy-five cents per hundred, and wild turkeys twelve and one-half to fif- teen cents a pound.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 11

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co. Number of Pages: 666

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666