History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 15

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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The commerce at present is conducted by about the keepers of thirty stores. The merchants make an exorbitant profit. Those of four years' standing, who came with goods obtained at Philadelphia and Baltimore on credit, have paid their debts, and now live at their ease.

In general the people of Cincinnati make a favorable impression; they are orderly, decent, sociable, liberal, and unassuming; and were I compelled to live in the western country, I would give their town a

decided preference. There are among the citizens several gentlemen of integrity, intelligence, and worth.

He names with special commendation Generals Find- lay and Gano, Dr. Goforth, and Messrs. Dugan and Moore.

The amusements consist of balls and amateur plays, the former of which going to literary and humane purposes, disposes me to think them both entertaining and good.

On the sixth of February, the brig Perseverance, from Marietta for New York, via New Orleans and the Gulf, dropped anchor at Cincinnati. Commerce with domes- tic and foreign ports, from the Ohio Valley over the high seas, is obviously looking up.

On the nineteenth of the month rumors are heard that excite considerable alarm concerning the movements of the Indians at Greenville, where the artful Tecumseh has. his lodge, and is daily stirring up strife between the red and white men. It is this time, however, a harmless alarm.

March 31st, the United States gunboats, built by the order of President Jefferson with some reference, it is supposed, to the stoppage of Burr's expedition, were launched from the shipyards at Columbia.

From May 4th to August 22d no rain falls, and a great cry goes up for showers. The whole Miami country is athirst; the river threatens to disclose the lowermost stratum of its rocky bed. A great eclipse of the sun occurs, in its gloomiest movements making the objects in a room almost invisible.

A graphic picture of the effect in Cincinnati of the Burr conspiracy is furnished in the journal of Mrs. Israel Ludlow (Charlotte Chambers), under date of September 28, 1806 :

A report has been circulating that Aaron Burr, in conjunction with others, is forming schemes inimical to the peace of his country, and that an armament and fleet of boats are now in motion on the Ohio, and that orders have actually arrived from headquarters for our military to intercept and prevent its progress down the river. In consequence of these orders, cannon have been planted on the bank and a sentinel stationed on the watch. The light horse commanded by Captain Fer- guson have gallantly offered their services, and Captain Carpenter's company of infantry are on the alert. Cincinnati has quite the appear- ance of a garrisoned town. A tremendous cannonading was heard yesterday, and all thought Burr and his armament had arrived; but it was only a salute to a fleet of flatboats containing military stores for the different stations on the river.

Mr. Joseph Coppin, one of the few survivors of the Cin- cinnati of the second decade, in his inaugural address, March 27, 1880, as President of the Pioneer association, gives the following amusing reminiscence :

We had plenty of snow, but no pleasure sleighs; so the old pioneers thought that they must have a ride, and they procured a large canoe or pirogue, with a skiff attached behind and seated for the ladies. To this pirogue-sleigh were hitched ten horses, with ten boy-riders to guide them, the American flag flying, two fiddlers, two flute-players, and Dr. Stall as captain. They did not forget to pass the "old black Betty," filled with good old peach brandy, among the old pioneers, and wine for the lady pioneers-God bless them! And here they went it, merrily singing "Gee-o, Dobbin; Dobbin, gee-o!" When the riding ended, both old and young pioneers wound up the sport with a ball-linsey- woolsey dresses in place of silk on ladies, many buckskin suits on pioneer men, and moccasins on their feet in place of shoes.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVEN.

Herr Schultze, a German tourist who found his way to the Ohio Valley this year and afterwards published his

6 r

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Travels on an Inland Voyage, thus remarks upon Cincin- nati:

It contains about three hundred houses, among which are found sev- eral very genteel buildings ; it has a bank, market-house, printing-office, and a number of stores well stocked with every kind of merchandise in demand in this country. The markets are well furmshed, both as to abundance and variety. Superfine flower [sic] is selling at three and a half and four dollars by the single barrel, and other articles are pro- portionally cheap. Ordinary manufactures they have likewise in plenty; and the country round, being rich and level, produces all the necessaries of life with but little labour. Fort Washington is situated immediately at the upper end of the town; and although, from the increased popu- lation of the country, it is at present useless, yet, in the early settlement of this place, it was a post of considerable importance in checking the incursions and ravages of the Indians.

February third the Territorial Legislature passes an act authorizing the imposition of a tax to the amount of six thousand dollars, for the pecuniary foundation of a Cin- cinnati University.

March eleven, the office of General Findlay, the re- ceiver of public moneys at the land office, is robbed of fifty thousand dollars, which creates a prodigious sensa- tion. The perpetrators are found, tried, and sentenced to be publicly whipped, but are pardoned through the clemency of Governor Looker.

The third of September brings the first purchase of fire-engines-hand engines, of course-for the village; one to be used on the bottom, the other on the hill.

November third, Judge Burnet, having been peppered with paper bullets from the Rev. John W. Browne, ed- itor, in turn castigates him, but with a more material weapon. Another first-class sensation for the quid- nuncs of the village.

Mr. Coppin, the pioneer before referred to, says that in this year the first barges were built in Cincinnati for the New Orleans trade, by Richardson & Nolan, for whom he worked. They were built for Messrs. Martin Baum, James Riddle, Henry Bechtle, and Captain Sam- uel Perry, and were rigged like schooners, with two masts, and the cabins finished like those of a ship.

Another rather notable arrival occurred this year, June first, in the landing, from a flatboat at the foot of Main street, of Evans Price, an enterprising Welshman, his wife and four children, and the large amount, for that period, of ten thousand dollars' worth of store goods. He had thenceforth a long and active business career in the city.

In November dies the Hon. William Goforth, sr., the first judge named for Hamilton county, and a prominent member of the first State constitutional convention.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHT.

Mr. F. Cuming, a Philadelphian, came down the Ohio in May, and in his Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country says :

We stopped at Cincinnati, which is delightfully situated just opposite the mouth of the Licking river. This town occupies more ground and seems to contain nearly as many houses as Lexington. It is on a double bank, like Steubenville, and the streets are in right lines, inter- secting at right angles. The houses are many of them of brick, and they are all in general well built, well painted, and have that air of neatness which is so conspicuous in Connecticut and New Jersey, from which latter State this part of the State of Ohio is principally settled. Some of the new brick houses are of three stories, with flat roofs, and there is one of four stories now building. Mr. Jacob Burnet, an emi- nent lawyer, has a handsome brick house, beautifully situated, just out-

side the west end of the town. Cincinnati, then named Fort Washing- ton, was one of the first military posts occupied by the Americans in the western country, but I observed no remains of the old fort. It is now the capital of Hamilton county, and is the largest town in the State.

By this time, according to Mr. Cuming, the remains of the fort must have been thoroughly cleared away. The building and other material had been sold in March by order of the Government, and had probably by this time all been broken up and carted off. The reservation on which it stood had also been cut up into lots, and sold through the land office.

On the twentieth of April, in that one day, two brigs and two "ships" passed Cincinnati, on their way to New Orleans.

The vote in Cincinnati this year was two hundred and ninety-eight; in Hamilton county one thousand one hundred and sixteen.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINE.

There is much excitement and alarm a part of this year, under the belief, which is general through the Ohio and Indiana country, that Tecumseh and the Prophet, still at Greenville, are about to lead the confederated tribes to another war of devastation and massacre. The movements in the southwest part of the State are re- counted in another chapter on the military record of Hamilton county.

The tax levy for this year is but one-half of one per cent .; for the next year but two-fifths of one per cent., and for 1811 but thirty-five cents on the hundred dollars.

In the early afternoon of Sunday, May 28th, a terrible tornado swept through the eastern part of town. Dr. Drake says, in his Picture of Cincinnati, that "it demol- ished a few old buildings, threw down the tops of several chimneys and overturned many fruit and shade trees." Another gale swept the central part of the village, and a third the west end. The last was the most destructive of all, blowing down, wrote Dr. Drake, "a handsome brick edifice designed for tuition, in con- sequence of having a cupola disproportioned to its area ; and various minor injuries of property were sustained, but the inhabitants escaped unhurt." The tornado made a broad track of devastation through the forest on the hill northeast of town. It was accompanied by copi- ous showers of rain and hail, with much thunder and lightning.

The "edifice designed for tuition" was the "Cincinnati University" building; and its destruction extinguished the hopes of the enterprise it represented. Some smaller buildings were razed to the ground, and the roof of Win- throp Sargent's house was blown off "like a piece of paper," as Mr. Mansfield records it. This house, he says, was nearly in the centre of the square north of Fourth street and east of Broadway, with McAllister street on the northwest. He thinks it was the only house then in that part of the city. In the same storm, large oak trees were torn up by the roots, and some were thrown bodily across the roads. Mr. Mansfield's account, however, locates this storm in 1812; but he was probably mistaken for once.

William D. Bigham came this year, from Lewiston,

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Pennsylvania, with his wife and family, four sons and two daughters. Two other daughters-wives, respectively, of James Patterson and James Reed-had already removed to Hamilton county, and were living near the city. He had made two trips through this country, one in 1795, and the other in 1801, during the latter of which he bought three hundred and fifty acres of land a mile and a half from the town (now, of course, in the city), sev- eral town lots here, and a tract in Butler county. He re- mained but about a year, and then moved to his place near Hamilton, where he died in 1815. Two of his grandsons, William D. and David L., sons of David Big- ham, became residents of Cincinnati; the former died here November 23, 1866. Several of his sons became public officers and otherwise prominent men in Butler county.

CHAPTER X. CINCINNATI'S THIRD DECADE.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TEN.

This was the year of the third United States census- the second for Cincinnati. It gave the place two thou- sand three hundred and twenty inhabitants-an increase of nearly three hundred and ten per cent., and the great- est in the history of the city in one decade, excepting the marvelous jump in the sixth decade from forty-six thou- sand three hundred and thirty-eight in 1840 to one hun- dred and fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty-eight in 1850. The white males numbered one thousand two hundred and twenty-seven, white females one thousand and thirteen, negroes eighty. Children under sixteen years counted one thousand and fifteen; and there were but one hundred and eighty-four over forty-five years. The vote of the town was three hundred and eighty-eight; of the county, two thousand three hundred and twenty.

The first book relating to the place was published this year-a unique fact for a village of but twenty-four hun- dred people and twenty years' growth, and one which seemed to foreshadow the future greatness of the town. Drake's Notes concerning Cincinnnati is now a very rare and valuable book, and still reflects honor on the scien- tific and literary attainments, as well as the enterprise of the young physician who prepared it. It is a thoroughly original work, upon which many Cincinnati books have since, in part, been built. To the fourth and fifth chap- ters of that little work we owe the notes upon the village for this year that follow :

About two-thirds of the houses were in the Bottom, the rest upon the Hill. No streets were yet paved, and the alleys were still few. There was no permanent com- mon, except the Public Landing. The primitive forest having been thoroughly cleared away, trees had been planted along some of the sidewalks; but, says the good doctor, "they are not sufficiently numerous. The absurd clamor against the caterpillar of the Lombardy poplar

caused many trees of that species to be cut down, and at present the white flowering locust very justly attracts the most attention." The place contained about three hun- dred and sixty dwellings, chiefly brick and frame, and a few of stone. Scarcely any were so constructed as to afford habitations for families below the ground, and not many had even porches. There were two cemeteries -one for the dead of all denominations on the Public square, between Fourth and Fifth streets, "nearly in the center of the Hill population," and was, says Dr. Drake, "a convenient receptacle for the town, for strangers, and for. the troops in Fort Washington, previous to the erase- ment of that garrison." Its area was something less than half the square. The other cemetery was opened by the Methodists about 1805, in the northeast quarter of the town, and also on the Hill. Eight brickyards were in operation in the western part of the Bottom, on the low- est part of the town site, near the second bank. That quarter abounded in pools, formed by water drained from almost every part of the village. The butchers' shambles were on the bank of Deer creek, north and northwest of town. The tanneries were in the same region.

The American emigration to this time had been chiefly from the States north of Virginia; but representatives were on the ground from every State then in the Union and from most of the countries in the west of Europe, espe- cially from England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany. The inhabitants were generally laborious, most of them mechanics, and the rest chiefly merchants, professional men, and teachers. Very few, if any, were so independ- ent in means as not to engage in some business. Most of the inhabitants were temperate, but some would get "daily but quietly" drunk, and "no very inconsiderable number had been known to fall victims to the habit." Whiskey was most in request by the tipplers, but beer and cider were the beverages of the more sober. Well water furnished the plain, summer drink; but for domestic pur- poses river water was supplied in barrels, and at least half the inhabitants also drank it during six months of the year. The use of tobacco by the male inhabitants, from the age of ten up, was almost universal. The aver- age food was similar to that eaten in the middle and eastern States; fresh meats were consumed in large quan- tities. Beef, fermented wheat bread, and Indian corn bread were common; but hot bread of any kind was rarer than in the southern States. Rye flour was almost unknown as a breadstuff. Fish was not a leading article of diet, although abundant in the streams.

The dress of the people by this time did not vary greatly from that worn by the corresponding classes in the middle States. The ladies, thought the doctor, injured their health by dressing too thin, and both sexes were not sufficiently careful to adjust their clothing to the fre- quent changes of weather. Female health was further endangered by the balls and dancing parties prevalent here then, as elsewhere, though not to great excess. Mineral waters, either natural or artificial, or artificial baths, were not yet known in the place. Bathing in the river was practiced by some, but was less regular and general than comports with health and cleanliness.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

The back part of the bottom, through its entire length, is described by the doctor as "a hot-bed" of animal and vegetable putridity. Some spots, but only of small area, had been artificially raised to make them cultivable. At the east end of a strip of low ground was a kind of broad, shallow canal, which conveyed water from all parts of the town site to the pits of the brickyards, where "it could not escape, save as gas or malaria. For its escape in this manner the heat of our summer sun, increased by the reflection from the contiguous high bank, is amply sufficient." The principal febrile diseases, notably ty- phus affections, which had scourged the people the year before, especially in December, 1809, were most probably due to this cause. The "drowned lands" in the valley of Mill creek were also mentioned as a fertile source of fever and ague; likewise the tall forest trees that still overshadowed large spaces between the valley and the town, the cemetery in the heart of the population, and the shambles and tanneries when winds blew from the northwest. Sunstroke was then unknown here, and death from the inordinate use of well water, which in those days killed many thirsty ones in Philadelphia, was very rare in Cincinnati. Few diseases could be traced directly to the heats of summer.

This year General Lytle, an extensive and enterprising land operator, removed to Cincinnati from Williams- burgh, Clermont county. He was, as is well known, the father of Colonel Robert T. Lytle, who represented the Cincinnati district in Congress 1833-5, and the grand- father of General William H. Lytle, who was killed in the late war.

On the twenty-sixth of October arrived the families of L'Hommedieu, Fosdick, and Rogers, after a tedious journey from Sagg Harbor, on Long Island, having con- sumed sixty-three days in coming from New York city. Hon. Stephen S. L'Hommedieu, then a boy in one of these families, says, in his Pioneer Address of 1874:

Cincinnati was then a village, containing about two thousand inhab- itants. The houses were mostly frame or log cabins, located generally on the lower level, below what is now Third street. The principal street was Main, and was pretty well built upon as high as Sixth and Seventh streets, the latter being the northern boundary of the village. It had its Presbyterian meeting-house, a frame building on the square between Fourth and Fifth, Main and Walnut streets; its graveyard, court house, jail, and public whipping-post, all on the same square. Upon the same ground, between the court house and meeting-house, bands of friendly Indians would have war-dances, much to the amuse- ment of the villagers; after which the hat would be passed around for the benefit, it may be, of the pappooses.

And here I may mention the fact that the pew and pulpit sounding- board of that same old pioneer meeting-house, built in the years 1792-3, whose pulpit was, in 1810, occupied by that able, fine-looking, hospit- able, brave old Kentucky preacher, Dr. Joshua L. Wilson, are still in use in a small German Lutheran church, on the river road, within the present corporate limits of the city.

The village also had its stone Methodist meeting-house, built in 1805- 6, situated on East Fifth street, a little west of Eastern row, then the castern boundary of the village, now Broadway. It also had its post office, on the corner of Lawrence and Front streets, and its David Em- bree brewery, on the river bank, below Race street.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND ELEVEN.

This year the residents of this region, and indeed all through the western country, were much in alarm through fear of the renewal of Indian depredations and hostili-

ities; which fear, happily, was not realized in any part of the Miami valley. After the battle of Tippecanoe, in November, the Fourth regiment of United States infan- try, commanded by Colonel Boyd, an uncle of Judge Bellamy Storer, which had marched away from Fort Washington to the campaign, returned flushed with vic- tory, and was received with great acclamation by the people of Cincinnati. The next June, we may mention here, when it moved northward to join the army under General Hull, the military companies of the city met it as it landed after crossing from Newport Barracks, and acted as an escort of honor on the march up Main street. From the northeast to the northwest intersection of this street with Fifth, a triumphal arch had been erected, bearing in large letters the inscription, "To the Heroes of Tippecanoe." Three hundred soldiers, all that re- mained of this gallant regiment from the inroads of dis- ease and the casualties of service, passed under the arch. One soldier marching in disgrace as a prisoner, for deser- tion or cowardice, was compelled to go around the arch, as a further stamp of ignominy. Upon reaching its first camp north of Cincinnati, about five miles out, the regi- ment was bountifully supplied with provisions from the city, as gifts of its citizens. Upon arriving at Urbana, where Hull's army was then encamped, it was honored with another arch, inscribed: "Tippecanoe-The Eagle -Glory." Lieutenant Colonel Miller, now command- ing the regiment, was the hero of the celebrated reply at the battle of Chippewa, to the question of General Scott; "Can you take that battery?" "I will try, sir"-words which, except the last, were worn upon the buttons of the regimental uniform.

In August of this year, the first in the long and costly list of Cincinnati breweries was established on the river bank, at the foot of Race street, by Mr. David Embree. On the twenty-seventh of the same month the hearts of the people were made glad, and they were finally relieved from Indian alarms, by the notification of Colonel John- ston that he had made peace with all the savage tribes on the frontier. Mourning came September 24th when Major Ziegler, the gallant old Prussian sol- dier, and the first of Cincinnati's executive officers, died. He was buried with military honors .* The Farmers' & Mechanics' bank, of Cincinnati, was established this year, at a public meeting held October 12th. Nicholas Long- worth was secretary of the commissioners of the bank.

* The descendants of Major Ziegler, and all who revere the memory of the gallant soldier, will be interested in the following extract from the military journal of Major Denny, a fellow officer of the First regi- ment of the army :

"22d. | February, 1789.] Married, this evening, Captain David Ziegler, of the First regiment, to Miss Sheffield, only single daughter of Mrs. Sheffield, of Campus Martius, city of Marietta. On this oc- casion I played the captain's aid, and at his request the memorandums made. I exhibited a character not more awkward than strange at the celebration of Captain Ziegler's nuptials, the first of the kind I had been a witness to."

This was at Fort Harmar, near Marietta. Captain Ziegler was sta- tioned with his company at Fort Finney, near the mouth of the Great Miami, more than two years before Losantiville was founded. Major Denny elsewhere records a high compliment to Ziegler's soldiership and the hearing of his company "always first in point of discipline and appearance."

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

The first steamboat ever seen in Cincinnati, and the first built on western waters, the New Orleans, arrived on the twenty-seventh of October, naturally exciting great curiosity. She is noted at the time as actually making thirteen miles in two hours, and against the current at that! Liberty Hall of October 30, 1811, gives a still better account of it. After noticing the departure, on the previous Sabbath, of two large barges rigged as sloops and owned in Cincinnati, for New Orleans, the editor includes this in his "ship news" :

Same day .- The STEAMBOAT, lately built at Pittsburgh, passed this town at five o'clock in the afternoon, in fine stile, going at the rate of about tên or twelve miles an hour.

Only these three lines-no more-to chronicle the greatest commercial event that ever occurred at Cincin- cinnati!

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 15

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