History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 2

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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* American Cyclopædia.

+King's Pocket-book of Cincinnati.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

eries of Cincinnati."* About twenty-five thousand per- sons occupy this populous district. Some of the beer and wine cellars of the quarter will hold half a million gallons of liquor. It furnishes many famous places of resort, especially for Germans and on Sunday. The superb Music hall and Exposition buildings are situated here, on the block bounded by Elm, Plum, Fourteenth and Grant streets ; also Washington park, opposite Music hall, occupying four and one-third acres, and containing a bronze bust, heroic size, of Colonel Robert L. McCook, one of Cincinnati's dead in the late war. West of Music hall, on the other side of the canal, is the im- mense Cincinnati hospital-eight buildings in one, oc- cupying nearly two squares. In the old city are, of course, all the leading hotels, among which the Burnet, the Gibson, the Grand and the Emery are conspicuous; also the more costly and elegant church edifices, as St. Peter's (Catholic) cathedral, with its peculiarly graceful spire, its colonnade of Corinthian columns, and its musical chimes, several of the Presbyterian churches, St. Paul's Methodist, St. John's Episcopal church, the Hebrew temples, and many others; the buildings of St. Xavier's, the Wesleyan Female, the Cincinnati, and the several medical colleges; the Mechanics' institute, the Public library and others ; the great Government building going up on Fifth street, near Fountain square; the City build- ing and the County Court house; the singular Trollopean Bazaar, on Third, near Broadway;} several fine club houses ; Pike's, Robinson's, and the Grand Opera houses, and the Melodeon and Mozart halls ; and a number of small parks, as the Washington, the Lincoln, the Eighth- street, the City building, and the Water-works parks, all small; Fountain square, with the magnificent Tyler- Davidson fountain, the most notable work of art in the city, forty-five feet high, costing, with the spacious es- planade on which on which it stands, over two hundred thousand dollars; the Masonic temple, an imposing free- stone-front building in the Byzantine style; the Hughes and Woodward high schools, and most of the other pub- lic school buildings; and many more interesting and ele- gant structures. Most sites of historic interest are in this part of the city, as the site of Fort Washington, on and near the junction of Third street and Broadway, and others.

IN THE ANNEXATIONS.

Outside the older city, however, is Camp Washington, a place of rendezvous and equipment for troops in the Mexican war; beyond it is Cumminsville, where " Lud- low's Station" was situated during the early years of white settlement here; and at the extreme eastern part of the city is Columbia, where the first settlement in the Miami country was made. Upon the Camp Washington tract are the enormous buildings occupied by the Cincinnati Workhouse and House of Refuge ; upon the hillside at Fairmount, to the southwest, is the former Baptist Theo- logical Seminary, now the "Schutzenplatz," a German club-house, commanding a superb view of the Mill Creek,

Lick Run and Ohio valleys; and adjoining Cumminsville are the Wesleyan and Spring Grove cemeteries, the lat- ter of six hundred acres, the largest and otherwise one of the finest cemeteries of the country, considered by some the most picturesque large cemetery in the world. Cumminsville has also the Catholic orphan asylum. On the hills are the various large buildings and gardens, con- stituting the famous hill-top resorts, one at the head of each inclined plane. Many schools of note are on or near these heights-as the Cincinnati University, the Mount Auburn young ladies' seminary, Mount St. Mary seminary, Mount St. Vincent young ladies' seminary, and Lane theological seminary; charitable institutions-the Cincinnati orphan asylum, German protestant orphan asylum, the Widows' and Old Men's home, and others; some fine churches; the Zoological gardens, just beyond the city limits; one small park- Hopkins-on Mount Auburn, and the two great parks of the city-Burnet woods, containing one hundred and sixty-seven acres, nearly, with a lake of about three acres, and famous for its grand concerts of summer afternoons-also Eden park, east of the old town, largest of all the city's parks, comprising two hundred and six acres, on which are lo- cated the large reservoirs of the city water works, and a neat stone building called the Casino or Shelter House, from which, as well as from other spots in the park, many charming views may be had. At the further end of Pendleton, on the bank of the river, is a pleasant, finely-improved tract of twelve acres-private property, but used much by picnics and pleasure parties-which was formerly known as East End garden, but is now called Woodland park.

THE RIVER

makes a great bend and two small ones in front of the city, and thus affords a very extensive river front. Most of this is private property, and is considerably occupied, not only for steamboats, but for coal-boats, barges, log- rafts, and other water-craft. The city owns the landing from near the water-works, east of the Little Miami de- pot, to Mill creek, and leases the larger part to steamboat lines, ferry companies, and other parties. The Public Landing, so-called, which has been such from the earliest period of the city's history, extends from the foot of Broadway to the foot of Main street; and it is here most of the river steamers, some of them very large and ele- gantly appointed, are to be found moored. A wharf master and wharf register collect dues from vessels for the privileges of this landing, and otherwise look after the city's interests on the river. The Ohio is liable to great and sudden freshets, particularly in the spring, when it has sometimes risen fifty to fifty-five feet above low- water mark, and formerly did immense mischief. The flood of 1832 marked sixty-two and a half feet, and that of 1848 fifty-seven feet above low-water. These were very destructive, and are memorable in the annals of the city. About twelve hundred acres in the Mill creek val- ley were formerly subject to inundation; but that tract has been considerably narrowed by "making land" above high-water mark for manufactories, dwellings, and other improvements demanded by the growth of the city. The

* American Cyclopædia.

+ Torn down in February, 1881.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

bottom-lands are rendered highly fertile by the annual overflows, and are in great request, so far as they are still available, for market gardening; also, in the lowest spots, for brickmaking. The deposit of fine clay in these places from a single inundation is sometimes four inches deep, is very smoothly laid, and when removed is almost ready, without further preparation, for the mold. The river has been, as will be shown further in this volume, an extremely important factor in the growth of the city.

CANALS.

The Miami & Erie canal was one of the first projects of the kind to be executed in the State. Its history has been detailed in the first division of this book. It enters the city at Cumminsville, on the east side of Mill creek and some distance from it, and proceeds in a winding but generally southeasterly course, with a right angle at. the intersection of Canal street, to the basin at the cor-

ner of Canal and Sycamore streets. From this point to the river, just east of the Little Miami depot, it has been abandoned, or rather converted into a huge closed sewer called Eggleston avenue sewer, which occupies in part the bed of the former Deer creek, and discharges through a spacious tunnel into the river at the point named. The remainder of the canal, extending to Toledo, is still in use.

The excavation and abandonment of the Whitewater canal, the only other canal which Cincinnati has had, have been related in the history of Hamilton county.

STEAM RAILROADS.

The railway connections of Cincinnati are exceedingly numerous, far-reaching, and important, as has been seen in the chapter on this subject in the previous part of this work. The railways entering this city upon their own or others' tracks, are the New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio (formerly the Atlantic & Great Western), the Balti- more & Ohio, the Cincinnati Southern, the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, & Indianapolis (popularly known as the "Bee Line"), the Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Day- ton, the Marietta & Cincinnati, the Cincinnati & Muskin- gum Valley, the Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Indianapolis, the Cleveland, Mt. Vernon, & Columbus, the Dayton Short Line, the Louisville Short Line, the Little Miami, or Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, & St. Louis ("Pan Handle"), the Ohio & Mississippi, the Whitewater Valley, the Fort Wayne, Muncie, & Cincinnati, the Cincinnati, Wabash, & Michigan, the Cincinnati, Richmond, & Chicago, the Grand Rapids & Indiana, and the Indianapolis, Cincin- nati, & Lafayette; besides the narrow-gauge roads-the Cincinnati & Eastern, the Cincinnati & Portsmouth, the Cincinnati & Westwood, and the College Hill railways. All of these, except the railways from the south, come in by the narrow strips of land left in the Ohio valley on each side of the old city, or by the Mill Creek valley; and most of them enter three depots-the Plum street, the "C., H., & D.," at the corner of Fifth and Hoadly streets, and the Little Miami, at the corner of Front and Kilgour. The Cincinnati Southern has its own depot, at the corner of McLean avenue and Gest street. All the depots are near the river, and those in the castern

and western parts of the city proper are connected by a track for limited use in transferring freight. The Ken- tucky Central, which has its northern terminus in Cov- ington, may also be considered as in the Cincinnati system.

HORSE RAILROADS.

These include four lines to Covington, one of them through Newport; another Newport line; the Elm street and the Vine street lines, connecting with the Clifton line by the inclined plane near the head of Elm street; the Main street line, using another incline at the head of Main street to reach its track to the Zoological gardens; the Baymiller street line, connecting at the foot of Mt. Adams with an incline to the summit, up which cars, horses and passengers are taken as they drive upon its carriage from the street, and at the top connecting with the Eden Park, Walnut Hills and Avondale line; the Eighth street line, connecting with the inclined railway at Price's Hill; the Cumminsville and Spring Grove line, which has recently been extended to Fountain Square, furnishing the longest ride in the city, between five and six miles, for a single fare; the Walnut Hills line up Gil- bert avenue; the Third street line; the Seventh street line; the John street line, and the Riverside and Sedams- ville line. A recent extension on Liberty street gives a new line to Brighton by Fourth and Main streets. The Elm street line, at its eastern terminus in Pendleton, connects with steam dummy lines for Columbia and Mount Lookout. The direct Newport line makes con- nection with a dummy line for Bellevue and Dayton. All the down-town horse railways start from or near Fountain Square. Most of the lines are consolidated, so that tickets sold by one line are usable upon others.

OTHER FACILITIES

of transportation are abundant. A number of omni- buses and stage lines run to points in the country from five to thirty miles distant, not reached by the steam or horse railways, and several lines of river steamers ply between Cincinnati and other points on the Ohio, Cum- berland, Mississippi, Arkansas, White and Red rivers. The bridges and ferries also supply great public needs nearer home. The Miami stockyards, on Eggleston avenue, covering three acres, and furnishing accommo- dations for ten thousand animals, facilitate the delivery of cattle, hogs, and sheep to several of the railroads. The United Railroads Stockyard company occupies a larger tract, fifty acres on Spring Grove avenue and Mill creek, near Cumminsville, where the land and improve- ments, affording accommodations for five thousand cat- tle, ten thousand sheep, and twenty-five thousand hogs, have cost over three-quarters of a million of dollars.

The completion of the canal at Louisville around the falls of the Ohio, some years ago, now allows the largest Mississippi river steamers to come up to this city.

TELEGRAPHS AND TELEPHONES.

These are sufficiently numerous for all public and pri- vate needs. The Western Union and the Atlantic & Pacific undertake the far-away communications; the city and suburban telegraph association, the board of trade

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

telegraph, the police and fire telegraphs, have important local uses; as also the Bell telephonic exchange, with which the former Edison telephone exchange has been consolidated.

MISCELLANEOUS.

We have aimed in this opening chapter of the history of Cincinnati to present mainly the things which appear outwardly, to give a bird's-eye view of the city. Other and less apparent matters, as the city government, the police and fire departments, the water and gas works, the manufactures, trade and commerce of the city, its re- ligious, educational, literary and charitable institutions, its newspapers and periodicals, the public libraries, and many other subjects, will be 'set forth under their appro- priate heads hereafter.

CHAPTER II.

ANCIENT WORKS UPON THE CITY'S SITE.

Lonely and sad it stands; The trace of ruthless hands Is on its sides and summit, and around

The dwellings of the white man pile the ground; And, curling in the air,

The smoke of twice a thousand hearths is there; Without, all speaks of life, within, Deaf to the city's echoing din,

Sleep well the tenants of that silent mound, Their names forgot, their memories uncrowned.

Upon its top I tread, And see around me spread Temples and mansions, and the hoary hills, Bleak with the labor that the coffer fills, But mars their bloom the while,

And steals from Nature's face its joyous smile; And here and there, below, The stream's meandering flow

Breaks on the view; and westward in the sky The gorgeous clouds in crimson masses lie.

The hammer's clang rings out Where late the Indian's shout Startled the wild fowl from its sedgy nest, And broke the wild deer's and the panther's rest. The lordly oaks went down

Before the ax-the canebrake is a town; The bark canoe no more Glides noiseless from the shore;

And sole memorial of a nation's doom, Amid the works of art rises this lonely tomb.

It, too, must pass away; Barbaric hands will lay Its holy ruins level with the plain, And rear upon its site some goodly fane. It seemeth to upbraid

The white man for the ruin he hath made. And soon the spade and mattock must Invade the sleepers' buried dust,

And bare their bones to sacrilegious eyes, And send them forth some joke-collector's prize.

-"To the Old Mound," by Charles A. Jones, son of an old Cincin- nati family, who died at Cumminsville in 1851.

THE ANCIENT PEOPLE.

The settlers of Losantiville, and afterwards the immi- grants to Cincinnati for more than a generation and a

half, found the plainest indications that a numerous and intelligent people had been here before them. The red man had left few tokens of his occupancy, and those of but the most insignificant character; but beneath the deep shades of the luxuriant forest, overgrown by trees of centuries' growth, upon both the upper and lower ter- races, it is said, were the unmistakable remains of struct- ures erected there by a strange, mysterious race, whose very name, to say nothing of their history and tribal relations, had long been covered by the dust of oblivion. As Professor Short remarks, in his North Americans of Antiquity :

The same sagacity which chose the neighborhood of St. Louis for these works, covered the site of Cincinnati with an extensive system of circumvallations and mounds. Almost the entire spacc now occupied by the city was utilized by the mysterious Builders, in the construction of embankments and tumuli built upon the most accurate geometrical principles, and evincing keen military foresight.

ENCLOSURES AND EMBANKMENTS.

Almost every one of the leading classes of Mound Builders' remains was represented in the Cincinnati works. The chief work was probably a sacred enclosure, since it had no ditch, and occupied a position offering no special advantages for defence. It was an earth wall or embankment, encircling the entire blocks now bound- ed by Fourth and Fifth, Race and Walnut streets, and including some fractions of adjoining blocks. Its figure was not mathematically exact, and was probably not intended to be so. It was a very broad ellipsis, eight hundred feet in diameter from east to west, and about. six hundred and sixty from north to south. An opening or gateway ninety feet wide appeared on the east side of the wall, upon or near the line of Fourth street. The height of the work, as found by the pioneers, was scarcely a yard, but the base of the embankment averaged ten

yards in thickness. It was heaped up with loam similar to that found in its immediate vicinity, and was of quite uniform composition throughout, as discovered by subse- quent excavation and removal. Nothing found inside the main work indicated that manual labor had been expended therein, the ground being somewhat irregular and uneven, and evidently left by the Builders pretty nearly in a state of nature. There was no ditch within or without the walls. From each side of the gateway, and exterior but contiguous to the wall, stretched away a broad elevation or parapet, of somewhat indeterminate figure. From that on the line of Fourth street could be traced a bank of only twelve inches height, but with a nine-foot base. It extended southward fifty to seventy- five yards, until within a few yards of the edge of the upper plain, or the "hill," as it was then called, when it turned to the east, and ended in a mound at the present junction of Main and Third streets, about five hundred feet distant from the point of departure. No similar wall from the other side of the gateway was observable; but at a short remove north of it were two other eleva- tions, isolated though near each other, over six feet high, and probably artificial, though of shapeless form.

More than four hundred yards east of the work just described, between Broadway and Sycamore streets, was

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

a bank of about the same dimensions as to height and thickness, which reached in a slight curve from Sixth nearly to Third. The circle of which it was a segment, whether ideal or embodied in earthwork, was an im- mense one. "It was evidently," says Judge Burnet, in his Notes, from which many of these facts are derived, "a segment of a very large circle, with its centre just south of the other work described." The remainder had been left unfinished. or was leveled after construction. From a point near the south end of the segment formed a low wall could be traced to the river, and was found to correspond in a remarkable way, in height, extent, and direction, with another embankment, about half a mile distant, in the western part of the village site. Both of these had disappeared by the year 1815.

Mr. Robert Clarke, in his pamphlet on the Pre-historic Remains at Cincinnati, printed in 1876, is not inclined to give credence to the story of this extension to the river, "as it would extend the works to the bottom-land, on which Mound Builder's works are seldom anywhere found. It is more probable that this embankment turned westward and joined the other embankment at the mound."

Upon the present track of Fifth street, still east of all the works mentioned, and about four hundred feet from the segment, was a circular enclosure of sixty feet diam- eter, bearing evidence of construction by heaping up earth from the ground within. It was, when found, but one foot high, on a twelve to fifteen-foot base.

In the north part of the old town, between Elm and Vine streets, and six hundred yards from the great ellip- sis (now between the canal and Fourth streets), were two extensive earth walls, also of convex shape, but not con- stituting an enclosure. They were each seven hundred and sixty feet long, about two feet high, and ran in exact parallels in a general east and west direction, forty-six feet apart, measuring from the middle of the embank- ment, for two-thirds of the way, when they converged slightly to forty feet width, and so continued to the end. At about the point where the convergence began, there was an opening of thirty feet in the southern bank.

Many other inequalities of surface, upon sites more or less irregular, were observable in the early day; but by the time the attention of antiquaries had been much di- rected to them, twenty-five to thirty years after settlement, they had become too obscure and ill-defined to warrant detailed description. Strange to say, the plains on the other side of the river, in Kentucky, did not present, ac- cording to Judge Burnet, the slightest vestige of ancient earthworks.

TUMULI.

Upon the upper plain on which the principal part of Cincinnati is located, were found several large mounds or pyramids. The largest of these was due west of the great ellipsis, and five hundred yards distant from it. It was situated just where the alley between Fifth and Long- worth streets intersects the west side of Mound street, to which it gave the name; and was formed, it is believed from its composition, simply by scooping earth from the surrounding surface and heaping it up smoothly. The

composition and structure of the mound were thus de- scribed by Mr. John S. Williams, editor of the American Pioneer, in volume II of that magazine:

The earth of the mound is composed of light and dark colored lay- ers, as if it had been raised, at successive periods, by piling carth of different colors on the top. This appearance might have been pro- duced by successive layers of vegetation and freezings, which were allowed to act on each layer before the mound received a second addi- tion to its height. In some parts the layers are completely separated by what appears to have been decayed vegetable matter, such as leaves and grass, as the earth is in complete contact, except a very thin divis- ion by some such substance. In some places through the mound there are vacancies, evidently occasioned by the decay of sticks of wood, leaving a most beautiful, impalpable powder. Throughout the mound there are spots of charcoal, and in some places it is in beds. In one or two places which we observed, the action of fire upon the clay had left marks of considerable intensity.

The shape of its base was that of a regular ellipsis, with diameters about in the ratio of two to one, and the longer diameter in a line about seventeen degrees east of north. It is described by one of the early local writers as "a considerable mound of great beauty, about fifty [?] feet high, constructed with great exactness, and standing upon a base unusually small compared with its height." The long diameter of the base was about seventy feet ; the shorter thirty-five. Its circumference was four hun- dred and forty feet, and its height was twenty-seven feet so lately as 1815, though about eight feet had been cut from the top of it in 1794 by General Wayne, who posted a sentinel, with a sentry-box, upon it, while his army was encamped in the Mill Creek valley. From its summit, it is said, a view of the entire plain could be commanded; and it is a very interesting fact- wholly unique, so far as we know, in the history of the mounds-that this order of General Wayne restored the structure for a time to what was doubtless its ancient character and use in part, as a mound of observation. Some superficial excavations were early made in this mound, resulting in the finding of a few scattered human bones, probably from intrusive burials, a branch of deer's horn, and a piece of earthenware containing muscle shell. Long afterwards (1841) the removal of the mound in the grading of the street and alley, brought to light one of the most interesting memorials of antiquity ever discov- ered, which willl be noticed at some length below. The lines "To the Old Mound," quoted at length at the beginning of this chapter, were addressed to this ancient remain. Three smaller mounds stood in the close neighborhood of this, also containing human remains. Five hundred feet north and somewhat eastward of this work, near the northeast corner of Mound and Seventh streets, was another, a platform mound, probably about nine feet high, circular, and nearly flat on top. In this were found a few fragments of human skeletons and a handful of copper beads that had formerly been strung on a cord of lint.

Northeast of this eminence, and several hundred yards distant, on the east of Central avenue, opposite Rich- mond street, near Court, was another circular mound but three feet high, from which were taken unfinished spear- and arrow-heads of chert or flint.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 2

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