History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 13

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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In the spring or summer we hear anew from Jeremiah Butterfield, of whom mention is made in our notes on 1798. He came again down the river, this time with his brother and a brother-in-law, young Mr. Campbell, pros- pecting. They staid a little while at Columbia, and then came to Cincinnati, where they engaged in harvesting for Colonel Riddle, on his section near town. All were bright, strong, faithful young fellows, and obtained work without difficulty. Jeremiah was soon engaged by Colonel Ludlow as chain-carrier, during the survey he was or- dered to make of the boundary line established by the treaty of Greenville, during which the party went three months without seeing a white man's dwelling, and at one time came near starving, going without provisions for five days. When the public lands west of the Great Miami were opened to entry, in April, 1801, he formed a partnership with several Cincinnatians-Knoles Shaw and Albin Shaw, Squire Shaw, their father, Asa Harvey, and Noah Willey-and with them bought a large tract of land in the north part of the present Crosby township, extending into Butler county. He made his own home on the other side of the line, and died there, full of years and honors, June 27, 1863. Several of his sons con- tinue to reside in this county.

On the other hand, Cincinnati was called upon this year to part with one of her favorite sons, who remained away from the town and county for a series of years, en- gaged elsewhere in important public duties. William Henry Harrison was appointed governor of Indiana 'T'er- ritory, and went to take up his residence at Vincennes, while Mr. Charles Wylling Byrd was appointed to the sec- retaryship of the Northwest Territory. William McMil- lan, esq., was chosen by the territorial legislature delegate

to Congress, to fill the unexpired term of General Harri- son, and Paul Fearing, of Marietta, for the succeeding two years.

March 1Ith there was a meeting of citizens at Yeat- man's tavern, to consider the merits of an invention said to be "capable of propelling a boat against the stream by the power of steam or elastic vapor." This was, in one sense, a herald of the "New Orleans," which came proudly puffing down the Ohio eleven and a half years later.

No mails came for four consecutive weeks in January and February. There is now but one newspaper in the place, and that weekly; so that the failure of mail matter is seriously felt.

In March the Rev. James Kemper offers for sale his farm of one hundred and fifty-four acres upon the Wal- nut Hills, on which Lane seminary and many other valu- able buildings are now situated, for seven dollars per acre. He did not sell, however, and lived upon it over thirty-five years thereafter, when it had risen in value to five thousand dollars.

On the twenty-seventh of May a tremendous hail-storm visits this region, breaking out all the glass windows in town.

Independence day was observed this year by the mem- bers of a political party, the Republicans, who had a din- uer at Major Ziegler's, next door to Yeatman's tavern. The memory of Washington had been duly honored in February by a procession, in which were Captain Miller and his troops from the fort, the Hamilton county mili- tia, Captain James Findlay commanding the dragoon company, the civil authorities, the Masonic order, and citizens at large. An address was pronounced by Gov- ernor St. Clair.

About the middle of December a good deal of incen- diarism occurred, and the people were considerably alarmed. Fires broke out in various places about town, but nobody was caught and punished as the author of the mischief.

The business notes of the year are uncommonly inter- esting. Imperial or gunpowder tea was three dollars a pound; hyson, two dollars and twenty-five cents; hyson skin, one dollar and fifty cents; bohea, one dollar, and very poor stuff at that; loaf sugar, forty-four cents per pound; pepper, seventy-five cents; allspice, fifty cents. Andrew Dunseth begins business in November as the first gunsmith in Cincinnati. August 27th, Messrs. Wil- liam and M. Jones advertise that "they still carry on the bakery business, and as flower is getting cheap, they have enlarged their loaf to four pounds, which is sold at one-eighth of a dollar per loaf, or flour pound per pound, payable every three months." In September, Francis Menessier advertises a coffee-house at the foot of the hill, on Main street, open from two to nine P. M., also, differ- ent kinds of liquors, all kinds of pastry, etc. His sign is "Pegasus, the bad poet, fallen to the ground." He also teaches the French language. The same month John Kidd opened a bakery on the corner of Front and Main. In October William McFarland begins the manufacture of earthenware, the first of the kind in the place. James

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

White, the same month, advertises a day and night school, and R. Haughton puts himself in print as a pro- fessor of dancing. There was great demand for money from creditors afflicted with delinquents, and one pathetic appeal for his dues is sent out from the Hamilton county jail by an unlucky physician who is himself inimured for debt. Real property remained cheap, and Hezekiah Flint bought the lot upon which he lived, on Walnut street below Fourth, for one hundred and fifty dollars. Some of the Main street property below the upper level was injured in value by the overhanging of the brow of the hill, which depreciated the values of the threatened lots until it was removed. People now began to prefer to go to the hill, although it was further from the Land- ing; and settlement up there progressed more rapidly.

Some curious illustrations appear in the newspaper files of this year of the morals of Cincinnati, or the want of them. A sergeant at the fort advertises that his wife has not only left his bed and board, but has taken up with another fellow. A citizen, with a charming frank- ness, quite uncommon nowadays, boldly announces that he has caught his wife Rachel and a male offender in flagrante delicto. Another cautions the public against a certain woman who calls herself Mary, "and has for a long time passed as my wife, but who is not, as we were never lawfully married," thus plainly indicating the rela- tions in which they had lived. Still another advertises his wife as having abandoned him for the second time, "without any provocation, in any possible shape what- ever."

A clear, graphic, and detailed picture of Cincinnati, as it appeared at the close of this year, is presented in a published address of Dr. Daniel Drake, who entered it on the eighteenth of December, 1800, as a boy of fifteen, coming from Kentucky hither to begin his medical studies. The address was delivered before the Cincin- nati Medical Library association January 9, 1852, in the hall of the Mechanics' institute :

In the first year of this century the cleared lands at this place did not equal the surface which is now completely built over. North of the eanal and west of the Western row there was forest, with here and there a cabin and small clearing, connected with the village by a narrow, winding road. Curved lines, you know, symbolize the country, straight lines the city. South of where the Commercial [later the Cin- cinnati] Hospital now administers relief annually to three times as many people as then composed the population of the town, there were half-cleared fields, with broad margins of blackberry vines; and I, with other young persons, frequently . gathered that delicious fruit, at the risk of being snake-bitten, where the Roman Catholic church now sends its spire into the lower clouds. Further south the ancient mound near Fifth street, on which Wayne planted his sentinels seven years be- fore, was overshadowed with trees which, together with itself, should have been preserved; but its dust, like that of those who then delighted to play on its beautiful slopes, has mingled with the remains of the unknown race by whom it was erected. The very spot on which we are now assembled, but a few years before the time of which I speak, was part of a wheat-field of sixteen acres owned by Mr. James Fergu- son and fenced in without reference to the paved streets which now cut through it. The stubble of that field is fast decaying in the soil around the foundations of the noble edifice in which we are now assembled. Seventh street, then called Northern row, was almost the northern limit of population. Sixth street had a few scattering houses; Fifth not many more. Between that and Fourth there was a public square, now built over. In one corner, the northeast, stood the court house, with a small market-place in front, which nobody attended. In the north- west eorner was the jail, in the southwest the village school-house; in

the southeast, where a glittering spire tells the stranger that he is approaching our city, stood the humble church of the pioneers, whose bones lie mouldering in the centre of the square, then the village ceme- tery. Walnut, called Cider street, which bounds that square on the west, presented a few cabins or small frames; but Vine street was not yet opened to the river. Fourth street, after passing Vine, branched into roads and paths. Third street, running near the brow of the upper plain, was on as high a level as Fifth street is now. The gravelly slope of that plain stretched from east to west almost to Pearl street. On this slope, between Main and Walnut, a French political exile, whom I shall name hereafter, planted, in the latter part of the last century, a sinall vineyard. This was the beginning of that cultivation for which the environs of our city have at length become distinguished. I suppose this was the first cultivation of the foreign grape in the valley of the Ohio. Where Congress, Market, and Pearl streets, since opened, send up the smoke of their great iron foundries, or display in magnificent warehouses the products of different and distant lands, there was a belt of low, wet ground which, upon the settlement of the town twelve years before, had been a series of beaver-ponds, filled by the annual over- flows of the river and the rains from the upper plains. Second, then known as Columbia street, presented some scattered cabins, dirty with- in and rude without; but Front street exhibited an aspect of consider- able pretension. It was nearly built up with log and frame houses, from Walnut street to Eastern row, now called Broadway. The people of wealth and the men of business, with the Hotel de Ville, kept by Griffin Yeatman, were chiefly on this street, which even had a few patches of sidewalk pavement. In front of the mouth of Sycamore street, near the hotel, there was a small wooden market-house built over a cove, into which pirogues and other craft, when the river was high, were poled or paddled, to be tied to the rude columns.

The common then stretched out to where the land and water now meet, when the river is at its mean height. It terminated in a high, steep, crumbling bank, beneath which lay the flat-boats of immigrants or of traders in flour, whiskey, and apples, from Wheeling, Fort Pitt, or Redstone Old Fort. Their winter fires, burning in iron kettles, sent up lazy columns of smoke, where steamers now darken the air with hurried clouds of steam and soot. One of these vessels has cost more than the village would then have brought at auction. From this com- mon the future Covington, in Kentucky, appeared as a cornfield, culti- vated by the Kennedy family, which also kept the ferry. Newport, chiefly owned by two Virginia gentlemen, James Taylor and Richard Southgate, but embracing the Mayos, Fowlers, Berrys, Stubbses, and several other respectable families, was a drowsy village set in the side of a deep wood, and the mouth of Licking river was overarched with trees, giving it the appearance of a great tunnel.

After Front street, Sycamore and Main were the most important of the town. A number of houses were built upon the former up to Fourth, beyond which it was opened three or four squares. The buildings and business of Main street extended up to Fifth, where, on the northwest corner, there was a brick house, owned by Elmore Williams, the only one in town. Beyond Seventh Main street was a mere road, nearly im- passable in muddy weather, which at the foot of the hills divided into two, called the Hamilton road and the Mad-river road. The former, now a crooked and closely built street, took the course of the Brighton house; the latter made a steep ascent over Mount Auburn, where there was not a single habitation. Broadway, or Eastern row, was then but thirty-three feet wide. The few buildings which it had were on the west side, where it joins Front street; on the site of the Cincinnati hotel there was a low frame house, with whiskey and a billiard table. It was said that the owner paid seven hundred dollars for the house and lot in nine- pences; that is, in small pieces of "cut money" received for drams. North of this, towards Second street, there were several small houses, inhabited by disorderly persons who had been in the army. The side- walk in front was called Battle row. Between Second and Third streets, near where we now have the eastern end of the market-house, there was a single frame tenement, in which I lived with my preceptor in 1805. In a pond, directly in front, the frogs gave us regular serenades. Much of the square to which this house belonged was fenced in, and served as a pasture ground for a pony which I kept for country practice. . .

Between Third and Fourth streets, on the west side of Broadway, there was, in 1800, a cornfield with a rude fence, since replaced by man- sions of such splendor that a Russian traveller, several years ago, took away drawings of one as a model for the people of St. Petersburgh. Above Fourth street Broadway had but three or four houses, and ter- minated at the edge of a thick wood, before reaching the foot of Mount Auburn.

East of Broadway and north of Fourth street, the entire square had

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

been enclosed and a respectable frame house erected by the Hon. Win- throp Sargent, secretary of the Northwest Territory. He had removed to Mississippi Territory, of which he was afterwards Governor; and his house and grounds, the best improved in the village, were occupied by the Hon. Charles Wyling Byrd, his successor in office. Governor Sargent merits a notice among the physicians of the town, as he was the first who made scientific observations on our climate.

Immediately south of his residence, from Fourth street to the river, east of Broadway, there was a military reserve. That portion of it which laid on the upper plain was covered by Fort Washington, with its bastions, port-holes, stockades, tall flag-staff, evening tattoo, and morn- ing reveille. Here were the quarters of the military members of our profession, and for a time for one of its civil members also; for, after its evaeuation in 1803, my preceptor moved into the rooms which had been occupied by the commander of the post. In front of the fort, where Congress street now runs, there was a duck pond, in which ducks and snipes were often shot: and from this pond to the river, the tract through which East and Front streets now run was overspread with the long, low sheds of the commissaries, quartermasters, and artificers of the army.

The post office was then and long after kept on the east side of this military common, where Lawrence street leads down to the Newport ferry. Our quiet and gentlemanly postmaster, William Ruffin, per- formed all the duties of the office with his own hands. The great Eastern mail was then brought once a week from Maysville, Kentucky, in a pair of saddle-bags.

East of the fort, on the upper plain, the trunks of large trees were still lying on the ground. A single house had been built by Dr. Alli- son where the Lytle house now stands, and a field of several acres stretched off to the east and north. On my arrival this was the resi- dence of my preceptor. The dry cornstalks of early winter were still standing near the door. But Dr. Allison had planted peach trees, and it was known throughout the village as Peach Grove. The field ex- tended to the bank of Deer creek; thence all was deep wood. Where the munificent expenditures of Nicholas Longworth, esq., have col- lected the beautiful exotics of all climates-on the very spot where the people now go to watch the unfolding of the night-blooming cereus- grew the red-bud, crab-apple, and gigantic tulip tree, or the yellow poplar, with wild birds above and native flowers below. Where the Catawba and Herbemont now swing down their heavy and luscious clusters, the climbing winter vine hung its small, sour branches from the limbs of high trees. The adjoining valley of Deer creek, down which, by a series of locks, the canal from Lake Erie mingles its waters with the Ohio, was then a receptacle for drift wood from the back water of that river, when high. The boys ascended the little estuary in canoes during June floods, and pulled flowers from the lower limbs of the trees or threw clubs at the turtles, as they sunned themselves on the floating logs. In the whole valley there was but a single house, and that was a distillery. The narrow road which led to it from the garrison-and, I am sorry to add, from the village also-was well trodden.

Mount Adams was then clothed in the grandeur and beauty which belongs to our own primitive forests. The spot occupied by the reser- voir which supplies our city with water, and all the rocky precipices that stretch from it up the river, where buried up in sugar-trees. On the western slope we collected the sanguinaria Canadensis, geranium maculatum, gillenia trifoliata, and other natural medicines, when sup- plies failed to reach us from abroad. The summit on which the ob- servatory now stands was crowned with lofty poplars, oaks, and beech; and the sun in summer could scarcely be seen from the spot where we now look into the valleys of the moon or see distant nebulæ resolved into their starry elements.

Over the mouth of Deer creek there was a crazy wooden bridge, and where the depot of the railroad which now connects us with the sea has been erected, there was but a small log cabin. From this cabin a narrow, rocky, and stumpy road made its way, as best it could, np the river, where the railway now stretches. At the distance of two miles there was another cabin-that from which we expelled the witch. Be- yond this all was forest for miles further, when we reached the residence of John Smith. The new village of Pendleton now covers that spot. Then came the early, but now extinct, village of Columbia, of which our first physicians were the only medical attendants.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND ONE.

On the twentieth of February, Dr. William Goforth, first of the physicians of Cincinnati to do so, introduced vaccination as a preventive of small-pox.

March 20th, the Republicans met and had a jollifica- tion at Menessier's coffee-house, to celebrate the election of Jefferson to the Presidency. There is a touch of Red Republicanism in the published report of the proceed- ings, that "Citizen John C. Symmes" was in the chair. When, however, the Fourth of July observances came to be noticed, it was again Citizen J. C. Symmes as presi- dent, Citizen Dr. William Goforth vice-president of the day; and so on. There were two celebrations of the Fourth this year-one at Yeatman's,* and one at the big spring on the river-bank, just above Deer Creek bridge, where a broad rock served as a table.

April 27th, the brig St. Clair, Whipple commander, came down from Marietta, where it had been built, and anchored off the village. It was the first vessel of the kind to appear at this port.

In May, upon the expiration of the term for which Mr. McMillan was elected to Congress, and his return, a public dinner was given him by his friends, as a testi- monial of appreciation of his valuable services.

On the nineteenth of August, the first public recog- nition, probably, of the omnipotent and lucrative Cincin- nati hog is made in the shape of the following advertise- ment :

For Sale .- A quantity of GOOD BACON. Inquire at the office.

For a week, beginning the twenty-third of September, the remarkable migration of squirrels from Kentucky across the river at this point was going on. Large num- bers were killed by the settlers-as many as five hundred in one day - between Cincinnati and Columbia. The invasion of these little animals was thought to portend an uncommonly mild winter.

On the thirtieth of this month there was a meeting of citizens at Yeatman's, to secure an act of incorporation for the village. The same day an announcement ap- peared of horse races and the Cincinnati theatre-both the first amusements of their species here. The Thes- pians gave their performance in Artificers' Yard, below the fort.

On the nineteenth of December the Territorial legisla- ture gave Cincinnati a sad stroke, by passing a bill on a vote of twelve to eight, for the removal of the seat of government from this place to Chillicothe. The resi- dence of the governor and other officers of the terri- tory had been here since 1790, and had contributed not a little to the prosperity and fame of the place. Novem- ber 24th, however, some consolation was afforded by the passage of the act desired for the incorporation of Cin- cinnati. At the same time Chillicothe and Detroit were incorporated by this legislature.

During the same month several fires occurred, and measures began to be considered for the procurement of a fire engine.

Some time this year General Findlay was appointed United States Marshal for the district of Ohio, and Wil- liam McMillan district attorney. They were the first incumbents of these offices.

* This famous old tavern, which makes so conspicuous a figure in the early annals of Cincinnati, was situated on lot twenty-seven, east side of Sycamore street, corner of Front.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Business this year was not specially noticeable, save the formation of a company of Cincinnati gentlemen for the purchase of a silver mine in some locality not stated, but "situated at a convenient distance from the Ohio." Mining engineering, we fear, then or since, has failed to discover or develop that bonanza of the precious metal. Salt was bringing two dollars a barrel, powder seventy-five cents a pound, lard twelve and one-half cents; tar fifty cents per gallon-"for ready money only." Joseph Mc- Henry, the first flour inspector, was appointed near the close of 18cI.

Among the immigrants of the year were Robert Wal- lace and John Whetstone. Among the others known to

have arrived by this time, and not heretofore noticed, di- rectly or incidentally in these annals, were Robert Park- halter, Ephraim Morrison, William Austin, C. Avery, Thomas Frazer, Levi McLean, Dr. Homes, Thomas Thompson, Michael Brokaw, James and Robert Cald- well, Aaron Cherry, Daniel Globe, Andrew Westfall, Nehemiah Hunt, Thomas Williams, Benjamin Walker, Edmund Freeman (a plasterer), John C. Winans, James Conn, Uriah Gates, Richard Downes, Lawrence Hilde- brand, D. Conner and company, Larkin Payne, Henry Furry, George Fithian, Lewis Kerr, Joseph Blew, Isaac Anderson, William McCoy, James Wilson, and Andrew Brannon.

F.M.G.

CINCINNATI IN 1802.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWO.

The great event of this year was the erection of Cincin- nati as a village under the act of incorporation of the ter- ritorial legislature. The limits were Mill creek on the west; the township line (now Liberty street) about a mile from the river at the furthest point of the river bank, on the north; the east boundary line of fractional section twelve, on the east; and the river on the south. Tem- porary officers were provided by the act of incorporation ; but the first municipal election was held the first Monday in the month. April 3, Major David Zeigler, formerly commandant of Fort Washington, who had settled as a citizen in Cincinnati, was elected president of the village ; Charles Avery, William Ramsey, David F. Wade, John Reily, William Stanley, Samuel Dick, and William Ruffin, trustees; and Jacob Burnet, recorder. Other officers, elected or appointed, were: Joseph Prince, assessor; Abram Cary, collector; James ("Sheriff") Smith, marshal. Ten of these twelve "city fathers" had previously held local offices, under the dozen years of territorial or town- ship rule that had prevailed. Among the candidates for constable was the versatile Levi McLean, who issued an electioneering address "to the free and candid electors of the town of Cincinnati." This was the first and only election of officers in the village under territorial govern- ment, Ohio becoming a State November 19th of this

year, upon the adjournment of the Constitutional Con vention at Chillicothe, after its members had signed the Constitution.

The first court house for the county was built this year, near the northwest corner of the public square; and one of the first uses of it was for a meeting of citizens, to gravely determine as to the proposed expenditure of forty- six dollars by the city council, of which twelve were to go for fire-ladders and as much more for fire-hooks. Things changed seventy years later, when millions at a dash were being voted away for a railroad project.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 13

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