History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 115

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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Dr. Mussey's first settlement, after graduation, was at Salem, Massachusetts, where he practiced in partnership with the eminent Dr. Daniel Oliver, afterwards incum- bent of the chair of medicine in the New Hampshire medical institution, and also lecturer on physiology in the Ohio Medical college. These gentlemen, in addition to their regular practice, gave the local public the benefit of their large acquirements in the annual courses of lec- tures on chemistry. Dr. Mussey's business grew rapidly upon his hands, especially in the practice of surgery, his services in the treatment of the eye, as well as of other portions of the human anatomy, being frequently called into requisition. In the fall of 1814 he was elected to the chair of theory and practice of physic in the Medical school at Dartmouth college. He assumed the duties of the post, which were presently interrupted by the up- rising of legal questions, during which he occupied the time of an academic session with another notable series of chemical lectures, which was repeated, with additions, at Middlebury college, Vermont, in 1817. Upon the clearance of the legal difficulties, through the memorable aid of Daniel Webster, in his great argument before the supreme court of the United States, Dr. Mussey resumed teaching at Dartmouth, but this time as a professor of anatomy and surgery. This was a peculiarly laborious and responsible position, to whose duties he added a large professional practice, which had grown during his, as yet, short residence in the village. He went abroad in December, 1829, and spent ten months in travel, recreation, and the collection of facts and principles in his favorite science from the great hospitals and anatomi- cal museums of London and Paris. He doubled, and sometimes trebled, his work upon his return to Dart- mouth, in order to make good the time lost by his foreign tour. For four winters thereafter he also lectured upon anatomy and surgery in the medical school of Maine, at a time when the New Hampshire college was not in ses- sion. In 1836-7 he was lecturer on surgery in the col- lege of physicians and surgeons, at Fairfield, New York, and in the fall of the next year he determined to accept a more distant, and in some respects a more hopeful, ap- pointment, and add his great abilities to the staff of the medical college of Ohio. He came to Cincinnati in 1838, and for fourteen years was the highly successful

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and popular lecturer on surgery in that institution, and also the chief medical attendant at the Commercial hos- pital, while he also maintained an extensive private prac- tice. He was especially skilled in the grand operations of surgery, which he was frequently called to perform, and in which he won a high and wide reputation, patients coming at times long distances to receive his treatment. In 1850 he was made president of the American medical association, and discharged its duties with entire accept- ance. Two years thereafter he was called upon to aid in founding a new institution, the Miami Medical college, and was its professor of surgery until 1857, when the two institutions were united. He, however, was now seventy- seven years old, and amply entitled to the retirement which he sought. For two years longer he continued to practice in Cincinnati, and then returned to the east, where he spent his last years in Boston, visiting the hos- pitals and manifesting to the last an active interest in the advancement of his beloved profession. He died in that city June 21, 1866, having completed, within two days, his eighty-sixth year.

Dr. Mussey's is one of the great and venerable names in the history of medicine and that of the Ohio valley. Among the eulogies which have been passed upon his character and life, there is none, perhaps, more forcible or better put than the following from the Biographical Cyclopædia and Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Men, published in 1879:

To a most profound knowledge and skill in his profession, Dr. Mus- sey united the virtues and honorable qualities which reflect justice upon humanity. To his temperate living, and to the strict regularity of his habits, he seemed to be much indebted for the great length and the use- ful labors of his life. He took an active part in forming the Massachu- setts Temperance society, but in his own course of life he did not re- strict the meaning of temperance to the mere abstinence from the use of intoxicating drinks, and at this period he became distinguished as an advocate of total abstinence. In 1828 a severe fit of sickness caused him to change his views on diet, and he became a vegetarian, and re- mained so until his death. During the years dating from 1833 to 1840, he delivered a series of popular lectures on hygiene, including the effects of certain fashions in dress, peculiar habits of life, and varieties of food, etc., upon the human health. In 1860 he published a valuable work, entitled Health, its Friends and its Foes, which gained a wide circula- tion. Dr. Mussey was a man of such strong individuality and original- ity of character and ideas that he was a leader among men. As a sur- geon he was strictly conservative, religiously conscientious, and very thorough, as well in the treatment of his cases following operations as in the performance of them. In many of his surgical operations he was the pioneer, and the medical and scientific journals of Europe and America contain records of his valuable discoveries in surgical science. He was remarkable for large benevolence and generosity, not alone toward the poor among his patients, but to all institutions and enterprises of a be- nevolent and charitable nature. Untiring industry, perseverance, en- thusiasm, fidelity to principle, and his views of duty in his professional, moral, and social life, were the controlling influences in his eventful and brilliant career. While laboring for the good of humanity in this would, he was not forgetful of the concerns of the next. Ile was an elder in the Presbyterian church, and was very strict and observant of his religious duties. Ilc was universally beloved in the profession, as well as out of it.

Dr. Mussey's first wife was Miss Mary Sewall, of Maine. He had no children by this marriage. After her death he was again married, his second wife being Miss Hetty, daughter of Dr. John Osgood, of Salem, Massachusetts. They had nine children, most of whom have risen to distinction, or occupy prominent positions in society. The roll is as follows: John,

who died in 1872; Joseph Osgood, who died in 1856; William Heberden, an eminent surgeon of Cin- cinnati, who is the subject of further notice below; Francis Brown, another able physician, residing in Ports- mouth, Ohio; Maria Lucretia, now Mrs. Lyman Mason, of Boston, Massachusetts; Catharine Stone, now Mrs. Shattuck Hartwell, of Littleton, Massachusetts; the Rev. Charles Frederick, D. D., a Presbyterian minister, of Blue Rapids, Kansas; Edward Augustus, died in 1831; and Reuben Dimond, a prominent lawyer in Washington city.

DR. W. H. MUSSEY.

William Heberden Mussey, M. D., M. A., third son of Reuben D. Mussey, above noticed, and Hetty Osgood Mussey, is a native of Hanover, New Hampshire, born September 30, 1818. His middle name is that of an eminent Scotch physician. He received general training in the academies of New England ; in 1848 read medi- cine with his father, and graduated from the medical college of Ohio, and subsequently finished his professional educa- tion also in the superior schools of the French capital. He was for a short time previously in mercantile life, but found the occupation uncongenial. He began practice with his distinguished father, but was soon diverted from it by the oncoming of the great storm of rebellion. He foresaw the struggle clearly, and even before the out- break, wrote to Governor Chase, then secretary of the treasury, urgently asking permission to convert the old and unused Maine hospital building at the cast end, into an army hospital, in preparation for coming emergencies. Consent being obtained, the necessary funds were raised by private contribution, the hospital was fully organized and set in operation, and was soon one of the most effi- cient and useful volunteer hospitals ever turned over to the Government, and the pioneer institution of the kind. Dr. Mussey was also greatly influential in the formation of the munificent benefaction known as the Cincinnati branch of the United States sanitary commission, which was organized in the rooms occupied by his office at No. 70 West South street. The story of the work done by the commission and of the wonderful sanitary fair in its aid, is told in our military chapter, as also, to some ex- tent, that of Dr. Mussey's further services to the Union cause. He offered his abilities as an uncommissioned surgeon gratuitously to the Government, to serve till the war ended, which was declined ; he was commissioned brigade surgeon, became medical director of a division in Buell's army, was in service in the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, and was finally promoted to be medical inspec- tor, one of the very highest positions on the medical staff of the army. During service in this capacity, he inspected every Federal regiment on duty from Washing- ton to Florida. It is said of him by competent authori- ties that, in the various military duties assigned to him, he was considered one of the most efficient medical of- ficers in the service. During the year the Rebellion was crushed he received the appointment of professor of surgery in the Miami Medical college, which he still

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holds. In 1863 he was appointed surgeon to the Cin- cinnati hospital; in 1864, was elected vice-president of the American Medical association; has been surgeon of the St. John's hotel for invalids in 1855, surgeon general on the staff of the governor of Ohio in 1876, and the same year president of the Cincinnati society of natural history. He has written and published much on profes- sional topics, and has made a permanent and invaluable contribution to the medical and scientific reading acces- sible to students in Cincinnati, by the foundation of the Mussey collection in the public library, upon the basis of a large number of rare volumes left by his father, to which he has made great additions. The collection al- ready counts five thousand six hundred volumes and three thousand six hundred pamphlets ; he is constantly recruiting its goodly numbers. The Encyclopædia and Portrait Gallery, from which we have already quoted, says of Dr. Mussey :

He resembles his father in some of his most striking characteristics. Like him, he is severely honest. If, in his opinion, the condition of a patient is such as to render medical treatment unnecessary, or if, through the utter hopelessness of the case it seems to him that no hope of recovery can possibly be entertained, he promptly and plainly states the fact, and advises that further expense for medical aid shall not be incurred. He is also religiously careful and thorough in his operations, and distinguished for his sound judgment, fertility of resources, inge- nuity of contrivance, and gentleness of manipulation. A man of method, he is always rather slow, but very sure, prepared for emergen- cies and mishaps. Frankness being one of his chief virtues, he is ever willing and anxious to acknowledge and atone for an injustice he may have unwittingly caused another. Politically, he attends strictly to the observance of his duties as a citizen. Socially, he is a Christian gen- tleman-charitable, genial, and hospitable; and again, like his father, he possesses a large and benevolent heart, which dispenses substantial benefits to persons and purposes needing professional or pecuniary as- sistance. The Second Presbyterian church of Cincinnati, in which he is an elder, has counted him among its liberal supporters, and regar- ded him as one of its best members. He is generally ac- knowledged to rank among the highest of the profession in Cincinnati as a surgeon.

On the twenty-fifth of May, 1857, Dr. Mussey was united in marriage with Miss Caroline W. Lindsley, of Washington city. They have one surviving son, William Lindsley (named from his maternal grandfather), a recent graduate of the Woodward high school, and about to matriculate in Yale college.

MAJOR PETER ZINN.

This well-known citizen of Hamilton county, in his day one of the most useful and reputable men of the Miami country, was of Pennsylvania German stock, born upon a farm now in part included in the lands of the State Agricultural college, near Columbus, Ohio, Febru- ary 23, 1819. His father is said to have owned and driven the first mail-coach which ran out of that city. After some schooling and much work at the paternal home, he entered, in 1833, the office of the Western Hemisphere, one of the early newspapers of the State capital, to learn the printer's trade, and finished his ap- prenticeship in the Ohio Statesman office, which was afterwards established in Columbus. Mr. Samuel W. Ely, the veteran agricultural editor of the Cincinnati Ga-

zette, who was a fellow-workman with him upon the Hemisphere, said, in a communication to the Gazette after death :

He was as faithful then, as a printer's devil, as he was throughout a long and busy life, in its manifold and weighty duties. .

I knew Mr. Zinn twenty-five years ago as a strong advocate and helper in the cause of popular education, as encouraged by the Ohio school system. He was, in all respects, a steady, good citizen.

I deen it worth while to add that in all my long acquaintance with him [forty-seven years] I never saw him angry nor heard him use a profane or improper expression.

When about eighteen years old he set his face toward Cincinnati, to tempt the fates in the Queen City as a journeyman printer-little thinking, probably, how large a space he was destined to fill in its history and in that of Hamilton county. He readily found work, and after two years at the case began, February 8, 1839, in com- pany with Mr. William P. Clark, afterwards a physician in the south, the publication of the Daily News, or rather a new series of a journal of that name, which had been unsuccessful. The salutatory of Mr. Zinn in the open- ing issue is a wonderfully bright and racy production for a youth of not yet twenty years. Mr. Clark withdrew from the paper within thirty days, and Mr. Zinn at the end of four months, although his paper was still alive, and apparently prosperous. Its appearance and contents are every way creditable to the Cincinnati journalism of that day. He was afterwards reporter for the Daily Times, but presently determined to enter the legal pro- fession, and began his studies in the office of that re- nowned advocate and judge, the Hon. Bellamy Storer, paying his way by alternating law study with type-setting in the Methodist Book Concern and afterwards clerical labor in the county court-house. He finished his prepar- ation in the office of the Hon. William M. Corry-hav- ing taken ample time, five years, for thorough initiation into the mysteries of the law-and was admitted to the bar. Some account of his professional career may be found in the next volume, in our historical Sketch of the Bar of Cincinnati. He formed, with Charles H. Brough, brother of the governor, the law firm of Brough and Zinn, which John Brough, subsequently chief execu- tive of the State, himself joined after a time. The part- nership was a fortunate one, as were nearly all the con- nections and enterprises into which Mr. Zinn entered; and in 1848 he had accumulated enough means to en- able him to spend six months abroad, during which he visited the British Isles and also France, improving faith- fully his opportunities for observation of the Revolution- ary movements then rife. He returned to practice in Cincinnati the next winter, and remained a lawyer, with an interval of about two years in the early part of the late war, until the engrossing cares of other business in which he had invested took him practically out of the profes- sion. His most notable case --- now celebrated in the English and American courts-affording him the most triumphant success of his life and one of the most re- markable victories known to the annals of the American bar, was that of the Covington & Lexington railroad vs. R. B. Bowler's heirs et al., in which Mr. Zinn appeared for the road. In the elaborate obituary notice given by

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the Daily Gazette, November 18, 1880, occurs the fol- lowing notice of this episode in his life:

The history of this case is still fresh in the minds of many, it having been decided in favor of the company by the court of appeals of Ken- tucky at the winter term of 1872. The records of the suit itself and the history of the case are almost romantic, and would fill volumes. The Covington & Lexington railroad had been sold in 1859 to R. B, Bowler and associates. About the close of the Rebellion, Major Zinn as attorney for the stockholders of the company, undertook the recovery of the road, and very soon litigation was commenced. At the beginning of the suit the stock of the company was not worth one penny on the dollar, and in most cases was regarded as no more valuable than so much waste paper. Although the case was decided as above stated in 1873, a petition for rehearing and a modification of the court's decree entailed further delay, and the case was not finally settled till 1875. This settlement resulted in a compromise and a readjustment of the company upon the basis of preferred and common stock under the name of the Kentucky Central Railroad company. Among other stockhold- ers, the city of Cincinnati owned stock to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars for money loaned the company at its first organization. By the terms of the compromise, Cincinnati received in preferred stock one hundred thousand dollars, and ever since 1875 the city has been drawing semi-annually thereon a dividend of three per cent. The com- mon stock has also drawn ever since a dividend of a less per cent. Major Zinn, since the compromise and up to the time of his death, has been actively and earnestly identified with the management and welfare of the road and was a member of the board of directors of the company. At present the Kentucky Central is one of the best roads, financially, and in every other respect, leading out of Cincinnati. It is true that in the extended litigation attending the case, Major Zinn had associated with him a number of the most distinguished lawyers of this and the Kentucky bar, But surely none will deny that the burden and heat of the battle fell upon Mr. Zinn, and that but for his sagacity, persever- ance, energy, and good judgment, such a suit would never have been undertaken, much less prosecuted to an end so victorious. He ex- pended his own means when others thought that to contribute would be throwing money into the fire. Of his time he expended well nigh ten solid years, a rounded block out of the prime of life, in this litigation. The entire railroad and. franchises would have been small compensation for such labor and thought as Major Zinn gave to the work.

As a result of the wide and minute study necessary to the mastery of this cause, the public and profession became indebted to Major Zinn for his book of "Lead- ing and Select Cases on Trusts," published in 1873 in a handsome volume of six hundred and fifty pages by Robert Clarke and company. At the bar, as everywhere else, his energy and industry were tireless. He never knew an idle, and scarcely ever a thoroughly restful moment. He delighted in grappling with difficulties, which he seldom failed to overcome by his indomitable tenacity and perseverance. The Gazette writer says:

He knew no such word as yield or fail. It was a common matter among the older members of the bar to designate these qualities by saying that when Peter Zinn had once taken hold of anything he could never let go. These characteristics seemed to grow rather than decrease with his years.

The services of Major Zinn to the State and Nation were even more conspicuous and eminent. He had been a con- servative Democrat in his earlier manhood, and had been elected in 1849, by the party with which he was then affiliated, as a representative in the State legislature. In that position he gave special attention to the interests of Cincinnati, still the city of his residence, particularly her corporate investments in railroads and other specula- tive enterprises that pressed upon her. Upon the rise of the Republican party he found his anti-slavery sympa- thies more closely allying him with it than with the Democratic organization, and he joined himself to its banners. In 1857 he stood upon the Republican ticket

as a candidate for the State senate with a view mainly to the promotion of the candidacy of Judge Salmon P. Chase for the governorship, in which his canvass was successful, although he was himself defeated at the polls. He was again in the legislature, however, but as an ardent Republican and loyalist, in the trying sessions of 1862-3, and gave his adhesion, his voice and vote, to every measure that promised to aid the cause of the Union. Not content with this, he offered his services as a soldier to Governor Tod, when the latter called for three-months volunteers, and was appointed major in the Fifty-fifth Ohio infantry. About the time of the expi- ration of this service, the famous "siege of Cincinnati" occurred, and Major Zinn, who was at Camp Chase when the alarm broke out, promptly led a battalion of two hundred and forty men, all of them soldiers of ex- perience and some who were officers waiving rank and serving as privates, to the relief of the threatened city. He then organized four companies of "Governor's Guards" for duty at Camp Chase, who are reported to have been a superior body of citizen soldiers. He was placed in command of the Camp, and remained on patriotic duty there and in the State legislature until the spring of 1863, when he declined further service for the time being, in order to give needed attention to his family and profession. He had now for some years been residing in Delhi township, where he laid off the sub- division known as Delhi, at the place of his residence, and readers of our chapter on the John Morgan raid through Ohio, in the first division of this work, will remember that the officers of the militia called out during the fright produced by that inroad, from Green, Miami, and Delhi townships, were instructed to report to Major Peter Zinn, at Delhi. This was his last active service as a military officer, he thenceforth was devoted to his profession and other private business. In 1865 he removed to a delightful home on the bank of the Ohio, at West Riverside or "Collum's Station," where he made great improvements, and interested himself also in the extension of the river turnpike from that place to Muddy creek, setting out one thousand trees along its route only the season before he died. He was anxious always for the betterment and growth of every community in which he lived, and was, in the best sense of the term, a public- spirited citizen. He sought no honors for himself, how- ever, and was satisfied with private station. A man of remarkable modesty, he detested brazen show and osten- tation in others. He wore no jewelry, was entirely plain in his tastes, dress and bearing, and in all things observed a truly admirable republican simplicity.

Here, at his home in West Riverside, November 17, 1880, Major Zinn departed this life, in the sixty-second year of his age. His death awakened the liveliest ex- pressions of regret in the local community, also in Cin- cinnati, in the city press and in the resolutions of numer- ous societies and public bodies.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

REES E. PRICE,

of Oak Thorpe, Derbyshire, England, was born August 12, 1795. His father, Evan Price, an enterprising Welsh merchant, was a fine specimen of manly beauty, endowed with more activity and strength than men ordinarily pos- sess. His early life had been passed among the sterile hills of his native Cambria, whither his ancestors had fled from the fruitful plains of Monmouth and Hereford- shire for refuge during the Saxon conquest. At the age of twenty-five he turned his back upon his mountain home and wended his way into London, in 1781. He obtained employment in a dry-goods store, where by five years of close application to business he acquired a good reputation and sufficient means to become a trading merchant. About this time he married a Miss Sarah Pierce, of Welsh and England descent. She was born in London, and was a blue-eyed English blonde of re- markable beauty, and was entering her nineteenth year when married. She left her pleasant home and accom- panied her husband in his toilsome perigrinations, to assist him in his business. She bore her husband six children, two of whom died in infancy. The children were born at different places, where our trader happened to stop, and it is due to this fact that Oak Thorpe, Derbyshire, England, is the birthplace of our subject, Rees Price, the oldest son of his parents. On the first of July, 1801, they sailed from the Liverpool docks to cast their fortunes in the young republic of America, and on the thirtieth day of the following August they safely landed at the wharves of Baltimore, Maryland. He at once made his way over the mountains to the valley of the Miami, to carry out a long-cherished scheme of entering upon a business for himself. This was at a time when the star of empire seemed to have settled over Cincinnati. He brought with him his stock of goods in three five-horse wagons, he and his family following in a gig. Their journey over the mountains was long and tedious, but at last a part of the wagon train arrived at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and the other two wagons had gone forward to Pittsburgh. Our trader followed the first part of the train, and on arriving at Brownsville pur- chased a flat-boat in which he stowed his family and goods and gig; the balance of the goods was then taken on at Pittsburgh, and in a few days the precious freight was landed in Cincinnati in the foot of Main street, June I, 1807. He had then his wife, four children, and about ten thousand dollars' worth of store goods.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 115

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