History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 113

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

USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 113

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Vernon village, annexed with Mt. Auburn, was a small tract adjoining it, between the Lebanon road and Burnet avenue.

OTHER SUBURBS,

not yet embraced in the city, on the Ohio side, as Clif- ton, Avondale, and Riverside, are noticed with sufficient fullness in our chapters on the townships. Mr. Parton said, in his Atlantic article in 1869, that "no inland city in the world surpasses Cincinnati in the beauty of its environs." The party of the Prince of Wales, when here in 1860, thought the suburbs here the finest they had seen.

THE KENTUCKY SUBURBS.

The beginnings of Newport were made in 1791, when Hubbard Taylor, agent of General James Taylor, of Caro- line county, Virginia, the original proprietor of the tract including its site, laid out a small number of lots, upon a few squares extending back from the river. A sale was had in October. The ideas of a town site were enlarged in a year or two; and in August, 1795, the survey was extended to include one hundred acres. By act of the Kentucky legislature, December 14th, of the same year, Newport was incorporated, and the title to the lots was vested in seven trustees. It was the county seat for many years, and much of the county business is still transacted there. In 1791 -- 2 there was considerable ir- regular ferrying across to Cincinnati, in skiffs and small flatboats. Captain Robert Benham was the first author- ized ferryman, having received a license from the Terri- torial Government at Cincinnati, September 24, 1792. The next year, July 23d, John Bartle, the well-known Cin- cinnati merchant, had the right of ferriage between the two places, and also, October 28, 1794, across the Lick- ing, granted him by the Mason county court. Campbell was erected from Mason county in in 1795. These li- censes were declared void by the Kentucky court of ap- peals in 1798, and the rights vested in General Taylor, by whom and his heirs the ferry to Cincinnati has ever since been maintained.

December 22, 1798, the State legislature incorporated the Newport academy, and granted it a tract of six thou- sand acres south of Green river. This became the fa- mous school taught by Robert Stubbs, "Philom," of which colonel Taylor, of Newport, to whom we owe most of these facts, is said to be the sole surviving member.

Two years thereafter, the place having meanwhile ex-

perienced some growth, it was made the seat of justice for the county (now Campbell). In December, 1803, Newport had another "boom" in the selection of a site therein for a Government arsenal and soldiers' barracks, and the removal thither, the next year, of the garrison from Fort Washington.

Colonel Taylor contributes the following interesting ac- count of this famous Government work:

On the twenty-sixth of December, 1803, the commonwealth of Ken- tucky gave the United States exclusive jurisdiction over five acres and six poles of land at the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, sav- ing the right to the commonwealth to demand from the officer in com- mand any person or persons who had committed crimes against the commonwealth, and gone there to evade the laws. This five acres and six poles was in part a donation by General James Taylor (now de- ceased, and the trustees of the town, and a part acquired by purchase by the United States in the year 1803. The object of the United States was to erect a magazine for powder, and arsenal and barracks, which was erected thereon by order of General Henry Dearbon, then Secretary of War, in the year 1804, under the superintendence of General James Taylor, and has ever since been used by the Government as a military post, and was the main point, in the years 1812 and 1814, of rendez- vous of the troops that went to defend the northwest. Here troops drew their arms and supplies on their way to Detroit, Fort Meigs and other posts, and to Canada. It was from this post that General William Hull marched in 1812 to Detroit. General Boyd, in the year 18II, started with the Fourth regiment from this post also, when he went to fight the battle of Tippecanoe with General William Henry Harrison. On the fifteenth of June, 1848, the president and board of trustees of Newport, consideration one dollar, conveyed to the United States the Esplanade, or ground from Front street to the Ohio at low water mark between the east line of the barrack property and Licking river, reserving a right of travel and passway over the land by the pub- lic generally. The deed above referred to provides that if the United States sells the land occupied by the barracks, that the Esplanade with its improvements reverts to the town of Newport. The object of this deed was to enable the United States to erect a stone wall on the Esplanade in front of this ground, to stop the encroachment of the Onio river by washing away the. Esplanade. This wall and improvement was made and now stands and prevents the wash of the Ohio river.

The progress of Newport was nevertheless slow, and in 1815 Dr. Drake, the indefatigable Cincinnati writer, was moved to say in his second book :

Notwithstanding its political advantages, proximity to the Ohio and Licking rivers, early settlement and beautiful prospects, this place has advanced tardily, and is an inconsiderable village. The houses, chiefly of wood, are, with the exception of a few, rather indifferent; but a spirit for better improvement seems to be recently manifested. Two acres were, by the proprietor, conveyed to the county for public buildings, of which only a jail has yet been erected. The building of a handsome brick court house has, however, been ordered. A market house has re- cently been put up on the river bank, but has not yet attracted the at- tention of the surrounding country. Two acres of elevated ground were designated by the proprietor for a common, but, upon a petition of the inhabitants, the legislature of the State have lately made it the site of an academy, which at the same time they endowed with six thou- sand acres of land. This land is not productive at present, and the academy is not in operation; but arrangements are made for the erection of a brick school-house and the organization of a school on the plan of Joseph Lancaster. In this village there is a Baptist and Methodist congregation, but no permanent meeting-houses. It has had a post office for several years. The United States arsenal is erected immedi- ately above the confluence of Licking with the Ohio. It consists of a capacious, oblong, two-story armory of brick; a fire-proof, conica magazine, for gun-powder; a stone house for the keeper, and wooden barracks sufficient for the reception of two or three regiments of men, the whole enclosed with a stockade.

Of late years Newport has grown rapidly. Its popula- tion, about sixteen thousand in 1870, was twenty thou- sand four hundred and thirty-three ten years afterwards. The street cars and bridges give its people ready access

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

to the great city on the opposite shore, and make it what it really is, a suburban town, but with a city charter and organization.

Covington was long known as Kennedy's Ferry, from the Scotchman, Thomas Kennedy, one of two brothers who settled on opposite sides of the Ohio, probably in 1792 or 1793, and ran a ferry across the river. The land (two hundred acres) was originally entered in 1780 by Hubbard Taylor, son of General James Taylor, who made a gift of it to Colonel Stephen Trigg. It was subse- quently once traded for a keg of whiskey, and once sold, in 178I, for one hundred and fifty pounds of Buffalo meat and tallow. It was little else than a cornfield, owned by Kennedy, until the village was established, February 8, 1815, upon one hundred and fifty acres of Kennedy's farm, by John S. and Richard M. Gano, and Thomas D. Carneal, proprietors, and named from General Covington. It was so surveyed and platted that its streets should ap- pear to be continuations of the streets of Cincinnati, as may now be seen. The first sale of lots was at public vendue March 20, 1815, and they brought very good prices, better in some cases than were realized ten years afterwards. Dr. Drake wrote of Covington the same year it was laid out :

The great road to the Miami country, from the interior of Kentucky, from Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas, passes this place, and will be a permanent advantage. It is in contemplation to connect this place and Newport by a bridge across the mouth of the Licking-a work that deserves an early execution.

Covington had a population of twenty-four thousand five hundred and five in 1870, and of twenty-nine thou- sand seven hundred and twenty by the tenth census. It

received a city charter February 24, 1834. After Louis- ville it is the largest city in Kentucky. A very elegant Government building, for the post office, custom house, and Federal courts was completed in 1879, at a cost of near three hundred thousand dollars.

West Covington is a village next west of the city just before named, and South Covington is a hamlet two miles south of the city. About the same distance beyond it is Latonia Springs. A mile west of Covington, at the Kentucky end of the Southern railroad bridge, opposite the mouth of Mill creek, is Ludlow, a place of about one thousand five hundred people, occupying pretty nearly the site of the extinct village of "Hygeia." One mile further down the river is Bromley, which had a population of one hundred and twenty-one in 1870.

East Newport is in the location indicated by its name. It was laid out in 1867 by A. S. Berry, who, the year be- fore, had laid off Bellevue, just beyond this place. Nei- ther is yet large. The latter had a population of three hundred and eighty-one in 1870.

Dayton, a mile further up the river, was originally Jamestown, platted in 1847 by James T. Berry, and Brooklyn immediately above, the creation of Walker and Winston in 1849. The two were united as Dayton by an act of the Kentucky legislature in 1868. It has a population of about one thousand. Those of its citizens who did business in Cincinnati reach it by horse rail- roads from the city through Newport.

In the preparation of this chapter we have derived much aid from Colonel Sidney D. Maxwell's interesting publication of 1870, on the Suburbs of Cincinnati.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

CHAPTER XLIV.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. JOHN CLEVES SHORT

was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in March, 1792, being the son of Peyton and Mary Short, the latter being the daughter of John Cleves Symmes, the grantee of the fam- ous Symmes purchase, which embraced a large tract of land lying between the Little and Great Miami rivers, and including the present site of Cincinnati. He was educated and graduated at Princeton college, New Jer- sey. Most of his early life was spent with his grandfather, Judge Symmes, near the present villages of North Bend and Cleves, Hamilton county, Ohio.

Having a predilection for the study of law he entered the office of Judge Burnet in Cincinnati, and in that city successfully engaged in the practice of his profession after he was admitted to the bar.

During the War of 1812 he accompanied General Har- rison (who afterwards became President of the United States) as aid-de-camp in one of his northwestern cam- paigns, and on his return to Cincinnati was elected judge of the common pleas court. During the time of his law practice and judgeship he resided in Cincinnati near the corner of Fourteenth and Main streets, in a house sur- rounded by a large yard and garden.

Although he did not take a particular part in politics, he was greatly interested in all enterprises that affected the well-being of his fellow citizens, and in recognition of this and of his thorough qualifications, he was elected a member of the legislature of Ohio. In 1817 he erected a dwelling house on the site of the present homestead of his descendants, on the banks of the Ohio about twelve miles west of Cincinnati, into which he moved on the seventeenth of November of that year, and lived there forty-seven years. This place was known as "Short Hill." The greatest portion of his time was oc- cupied in attending to his adjacent farms, in building numerous additions to his house, and in literary pursuits he loved so well.

Previous to his being elected judge he married Miss Betsey Bassett Harrison, daughter of President Harri- son, by whom he had one daughter who died in infancy. In 1846 he experienced the loss of his wife, and in 1849 married Miss Mary Ann Mitchel, who survived him about seven years. He died at his residence above men- tioned on the third of March, 1864, after a long period of suffering from disease of the heart. He left two sons by his second marriage-John C. and Charles W .- but lost one son who died very young.

A memorial chapel to his memory and that of his sec- ond wife has recently been erected on his estate, and on the twenty-ninth of December, 1877, it was consecrated to the use of the Protestant Episcopal church. Of his two sons, John C. died on the third of May, 1880, Charles W. was married, first of February, 1872, to Miss Mary W. Dudley, of Lexington, Kentucky. She is the daughter of W. A. Dudley, a prominent citizen of that town, and a granddaughter of Dr. B. W. Dudley, an em- inent surgeon, well known throughout that State.

HON. STANLEY MATTHEWS,

justice of the Supreme court of the United States, is a native Cincinnatian, born July 21, 1824, son of Thomas J. and Isabella (Brown) Matthews. His father was a native of Leesburgh, Virginia ; his mother a daughter of Colonel William Brown, a well-known pioneer of the Mi- ami country. She was a second wife, and Stanley was the first-born of this marriage. While he was yet an infant, the elder Matthews received an appointment as professor of mathematics in the Transylvania University, at Lex- ington, Kentucky, and removed thither, where he was al- so engaged as a civil engineer in some of the early rail- way enterprises of that State. In 1832 he was chosen a professor in the Woodward high school, and returned to Cincinnati. Young Matthews, although now but in his ninth year, became a pupil in the school, and remained an assiduous student there until 1839, when he ma- triculated as a junior in Kenyon college, from which he was graduated, after a single year's study, in August, 1840, when only seventeen years old. He began a course of law study in Cincinnati soon after, but in 1842 went to Spring Hill, Maury county, Tennessee, where he resided in the family school of the Rev. John Hud- son, a Presbyterian clergyman, which was known as the Union seminary, in whose management and instruction he assisted. Here he was united in marriage to Miss Mary, daughter of James Black, of the same county. While in this State he was admitted to practice at the bar, and opened an office at Columbia, on the Duck riv- er. He also engaged in political and general editorial writing for a weekly newspaper in that place called the Tennessee Democrat, his opinions then being in accord- ance with those indicated by its title. He remained in Columbia but a short time, however, returning to his native city in 1844. He was there again the next year admitted to practice, and formed a partnership with Sam- uel B. Keys and Mr. Isaac C. Collins, he, although as yet scarcely of age, becoming the head of the firm of Matthews, Keys & Collins. He was soon, through the influence of Judge W. B. Caldwell, then on the bench, appointed assistant prosecuting attorney for a single term of court, which proved a somewhat important stepping stone in his early advancement. He had become thor- oughly converted to the principles and policy of the an- ti-slavery agitation through the writings of Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, who was then conducting the Cincinnati Daily Herald, and when Dr. Bailey went to Washington to es- tablish the National Era in 1846, Mr. Matthews suc- ceeded to the editorial management of the Herald, re- maining in charge until the winter of 1848-9. His journalistic career had naturally given him some influ- ence and prominence in politics, and at the legislative session of that winter-the same at which Governor Sal- mon P. Chase was elected United States Senator-he was chosen clerk to the House of Representatives. In 1850 he returned to the practice of his profession in the Queen City, and the next year, while still less than thirty years old, was elected a judge of the court of common pleas. This position he resigned on the first of January, 1853, from inadequacy of salary, and joined his former preceptor

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

417

at the law in the formation of the firm of Worthington & Matthews, which partnership lasted about eight years. At the fall election of 1855 he was elected to the State senate, and served through his two-years term. In 1858 he was appointed by President Buchanan United States attorney for the southern district of Ohio, but resigned soon after the accession of President Lincoln. To the outbreak of the war of the Rebellion he had been a consistent Democrat, with anti-slavery convictions; but thereafter identified himself with the Republican party, in whose faith he has since steadily reposed. Soon after the great conflict began he tendered his services to the Government through Governor Dennison, and was by him appointed lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-third regiment Ohio volunteer infantry, the same notable com- mand of which W. S. Rosecrans was colonel and Ruther- ford B. Hayes major. The regiment was then equipping and drilling at Camp Chase, but soon took the field in western Virginia. Lieutenant Colonel Matthews re- mained with it through the summer and fall campaign of 1861, and in October was promoted to a full colonelcy, and assigned to the Fifty-first Ohio infantry. With this he reported to General Buell at Louisville, and served under him and other commanders of the Army of the Cumberland until April, 1863, when, while absent in the field, he was elected by his fellow-citizens at home a judge of the supreme court of Cincinnati, and resigned his commission to accept this distinguished office. This he also resigned about a year thereafter, for the same cause which induced him to leave the bench of the common pleas. While in the Superior court, his colleagues were the eminent Judges Storer and Hoadly. Judge Mat- thews now remained a private practitioner, in large and lucrative business, until the summer of 1876, when he was nominated for Congress, but defeated at the fall election by a very small majority. This, it was confidently believed, had been obtained by fraud, and he served notice of contest upon his competitor, General Henry B. Banning. Greater things were in store for him, however, than success in a contest for a seat in the lower house of Congress. Upon the appointment of Senator John Sher- man to the Secretaryship of the Treasury, in the cabinet of President Hayes, Judge Matthews was triumphantly elected to his seat in the United States Senate, General Garfield and other prominent gentlemen in the canvass withdrawing in his favor. Meanwhile, however, in Feb- ruary, 1877, Judge Matthews was called to make one of his most noteworthy public appearances, either profes- sionally or politically, as counsel for President-elect Hayes, before the electoral commission, in session at Washing- ton, to determine the questions raised by the election of the preceding year and the meetings of the electoral college. His argument on this occasion was one of the most masterly submitted to the commission,, and justly added to the fame of its author.

At the expiration of his senatorial term, the Demo- crats having returned to power in the State Legislature and chosen the Hon. George H. Pendleton as his suc- cessor, he returned to private life, from which he was again summoned in the early part of 1881, by an ap-

pointment, first by President Hayes and then by Presi- dent Garfield, to a place upon the Federal Supreme Bench. After some delay, caused mainly by the mem- orable dead lock in the United States Senate in the spring of that year, he was confirmed, and took his seat among his peers as a worthy representative of the first lawyers of the land. In his own State, it is needless to say, Justice Matthews has long shone as a luminary of the first mag- nitude at the bar, as well as in political and social life. For logical power, profound and varied learning, rare abilities of argument and persuasion, and high personal character, his has for more than a generation been clarum et venerabile nomen. A Presbyterian in his faith and de- nominational connection, he has upon occasions been eminently serviceable to the church and the country, as when, at the general assembly of 1864, in session at Newark, New Jersey, he wrote, presented, and secured the adoption of a committee report, with appended reso- lutions, which placed the Presbyterian church of the north squarely upon the platform of emancipation. The Queen City is justly proud of his character, his record, his name and fame.

Justice Matthews has had ten children, of whom but five survive-William Mortimer, Jeanie, Eva, Grace, and Paul Matthews.

COLONEL JOHN RIDDLE,

of Cincinnati, was one of the most notable characters of the early day in the Miami purchase. He was of Scotch descent, but was a resident of New Jersey, whence he emigrated to this country in 1790, settling first in the little hamlet of Cincinnati. His earlier career in this place is noticed with some fullness in the annals of Cin- cinnati in this volume. He was five feet ten inches high, large and strong-boned, weighing two hundred and twenty-five pounds, and a man of herculean strength and great firmness of purpose, but withal of gentle disposition and rare kindness to the poor, as many persons still liv- ing can testify. He died at his homestead in the Mill Creek valley, near (the site of it now in) Cincinnati, on the old Hamilton road, at the age of eighty-seven, mourned by all who knew him. He left a brief memoir of the principal events of his life, which was printed in a pamphlet. It is now very scarce, and the following has been kindly copied for this volume by his grandson, Mr. John L. Riddle :

MEMOIR OF COLONEL JOHN RIDDLE.

In the month of April, 1778, I was called out, and entered the service of the United States at Elizabeth- town, New Jersey, on a tour of six weeks; also a cam- paign in the months of June and July the same year, when the British retired from Philadelphia, and passed through New Jersey to Sandy Hook. Was in a skirmish at the draw bridge below Trenton, and at the battle of Monmouth, where there were six or seven hundred dead and wounded laid on the ground ; I was com- manded by Colonel Frelinghuysen, afterward General Frelinghuysen, in the months of September and October. The same year I served another campaign at Elizabeth-

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

town, under Colonel Frelinghuysen and Captain William Logan. In the year 1782 I followed privateering under Captain Hiler (a brave and patriotic man), and sailed from New Brunswick, coasting around Sandy Hook and Long Island, as far as Cape May. The first vessel we captured was a sloop-of-war carrying two guns, having boarded her in the night and ransomed her for four hundred dollars. Same night boarded and took a six- teen-gun cutter, mounting ten eighteen-pounders and six six-pounders, having captured her in the midst of the British fleet, then lying at Sandy Hook ; after running the prize past the guard-ship, up the bay towards Amboy, we ran her aground on a sandbar in the night. The next morning took off her fifty prisoners, and everything else we could, and then set fire to her magazine and blew her up. She was a double-decker, fitted out with provisions, ammunition, etc., for a cruise, with the in- tention of harassing and destroying our vessels. As we understood from the prisoners a hundred men were to have been put on board the day after we captured her; thirty of us boarded her. On another night the captain and fourteen of us, who had volunteered our ser- vices, sailed up the Narrows in New York bay, in a whale- boat, and on our return boarded a schooner, which we ransomed for four hundred dollars, and returned to our gunboats in Solsbury river, without injury or the loss of a single life. We had two skirmishes on Long Island; during the contest one man fell backward in my arms, mortally wounded. In one of these affairs, in our at- tack and defence, we came across a store of dry goods, etc., belonging to the British, the whole of which we car- ried away. On another occasion Captain Story, from Woodbridge, with a gun and whale boat, fell in with us in Solsbury river. Captains Hiler and Story, ascending the heights, observed four vessels at a distance, moored close to the Highlands, termed London traders-one of them, however, being an armed schooner, carrying eight guns, used as a guard-ship to protect the other three. There being a calm, and the tide being against thein, we ran out on them, within a short distance of the British fleet. A severe cannonading commenced on both sides ; at last the schooner having struck we captured the other two without difficulty. The guard-ship by this time coming up, poured her shot on us like hail, one shot cutting off the mast of our whale-boat, just above our heads; but at last we succeeded in running the schooner on a sand- bar, where we burnt her in view of the fleet ; the others were bilged and driven on the beach. Not long after the commander of the whale boat, myself and another man, in the night, took a craft laden with calves, poultry, eggs, butter, etc., going to the British fleet. A prize of this kind, at the present day, would be considered of small amount ; but at that time it was far otherwise to troops in a starving condition. After running out of Solsbury river, we attacked a large sloop and two schooners, one of them armed with two three-pounders. They gave us a warm reception. After a running fire of some time we came up with the schooner, and, when about to board her, Captain Hiler, damned the captain, said that if he put the match to another gun he should

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 113

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