History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 21

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 addition to their pecuniary troubles, sickness afflicted the Trollopes much during their second season here, and finally, seeing that "our Cincinnati speculation for my son would in no way answer our experience," they deter- mined to go back to England. The party left in early March, 1830, and she says, "I believe there was not one of our party who did not experience a sense of pleasure in leaving it. The only regret was that we had ever entered it; for we had wasted health, time, and money there." Her experiences in this city, un- doubtedly, had much to do in imparting gall and venom to the celebrated book which she published shortly after her return to the old home.

Dr. Caldwell, a phrenologist, sometimes called in that day "the Spurzheim of America," delivered a course of lectures in the city this year, and created much sensa- tion. Some twenty or thirty citizens were led to form the Phrenological society of Cincinnati, with an elaborate constitution, numerous officers, and other details of equipment; but it hardly survived beyond the third meeting. Miss Fanny Wright, the famous English Rad- ical and Socialist, also lectured here to crowded houses. She was an intimate friend of Mrs. Trollope and Her- vieu, and was just then trying the experiment of coloniz- ing negroes upon a tract called "Nashoba," in Tennessee ; which of course proved a failure.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE.

Population of the city this year, twenty-four thousand one hundred and forty-eight ; whites twenty-one thousand

eight hundred and ninety-males eleven thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, females ten thousand and thirty- five; colored two thousand two hundred and fifty-eight. New buildings, two hundred and seventy. Deaths for the year ending July I, six hundred and forty-seven, or one in thirty-seven and one-third of the population.

The Washington Ball of this year, February 22d, is said to have been a very brilliant affair.

February 27th General Jackson passed through Cincin- nati, on his way from his home in Tennessee to Washing- ton, to be inaugurated as President of the United States. Three steamers were in the Presidential fleet, all crowded with passengers. They reached the landing amid can- non-firing and other demonstrations of applause, passed the city about a quarter of a mile, and then rounded in the stream and swept grandly down to the landing, the escorts falling back a little, to let the steamer with the President first touch the shore. "All the maneuvering," says Mrs. Trollope, who was an eye-witness of it, "was extraordinary well executed, and really beautiful." Car- riages were in waiting for the General and his suite; but he walked in a simple, democratic way through the crowd to the hotel, uncovered, though the weather was cold. He was clad in deep mourning, having but lately lost his wife. He remained quietly at the hotel a few hours, while the steamer transacted its business, and then pro- ceeded with it to Pittsburgh.

.In the spring of this year, beginning April 13th, the notable public seven-days' debate occurred between the Rev. Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciple Church, and Mr. Robert Owen, of the New Harmony (Indiana) and other communities, in pursuance of Owen's challenge to the Christian ministry that he would show publicly the falsehood of all religions ever propa- gated, and would undertake to prove all equal, and nearly all equally mischievous. The challenge was accepted by Mr. Campbell, who was then in the prime of his strong powers; and the debate was attended by audiences that thronged to overflowing the spacious Methodist church, which held about one thousand people. It was regulated by a presiding committee, in which were Major Daniel Gano, Judge Burnet, Rev. O. M. Spencer, Timothy Flint, and other leading citizens. Fifteen sessions for debate were held, and the vote at the close showed that the sympathies of a very large majority of their hearers were still in favor of Christianity. The addresses of the disputants were afterwards published in book form.

A Young Men's Temperance society was organized this year, starting off with about one hundred members.

About the middle of this year the office of the sur- veyor general of the public lands in the northwest came back to Cincinnati, by the worthy appointment of Gen- eral William Lytle to that post. Ex-Governor Tiffin, the last previous incumbent, was early removed upon the accession of General Jackson to the Presidency, under the new principle then brought into application in Fed- eral appointments, that "to the victors belong the spoils;" although Dr. Tiffin had held the place most acceptably during the successive administrations of Presidents Madi- son, Monroe, and J. Q. Adams. On the first of July

Very July Durbin Grand

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

General Lytle visited the office at Chillicothe, exhibited his commission and an order for the delivery of the records, and at once removed the office to Cincinnati. Dr. Tiffin had long been struggling with disease, and was now near his end, closing a long and honorable public career August 9, 1829.

In May, 1829, the city had a visit from Caleb Atwater, of Circleville, the first historian of Ohio and one of the first writers to publish a book upon American antiquities. He was on his way to fulfill some commission for the Government in the far northwest, and records the follow- ing of Cincinnati, in the book which he subsequently published :

In this city are one hundred, at least, mercantile stores, and about twenty churches. Some of the stores do business in a wholesale way, though quite too many of them are occupied by retailers on a small scale. There are a great many taverns and boarding houses. Among the churches, the First and Second Presbyterian, one belonging to the Unitarians, and the Roman Catholics, and perhaps two or three belong- ing either to the Episcopalians or the Methodists, are the best. There are two museums, in either of which more knowledge of the nat- ural history of the western States can be obtained in a day than can be obtained in any other place in a year. These collections are very well arranged, and kept by persons of taste, science, and politeness. No traveller of learning should ever pass through the city without calling to see them both, and, having once seen them, he will never neglect to see them as often as he visits the place.

There are nine book stores, and a greater number still of printing establishments, that issue newspapers. The two principal publishers of newspapers issue eaclı a daily paper.

The mechanics of this city are numerous and very excellent in their several trades. Manufactures of iron, of wood, of stone, of all the metals indeed, are carried on with zeal, industry and talent. The build- ers of houses are unrivaled in the rapidity with which they do their work, and they exhibit genius, skill, and taste.

There are nearly sixty lawyers, who, for learning, zeal, fidelity, indus- try, morality, honor, honesty, and every other good qualification of the heart and head, are equal to a like number of the same honorable and highly useful profession, in any city in the United States.

The number of physicians and surgeons in the city must be, I pre- sume, nearly eighty, who are skillful, learned, and highly respectable in their profession.

There are probably about forty clergymen in the city; and from the morality of the place I give them credit for a considerable degree of usefulness.

It will with great ease increase to a population of about fifty thou- sand inhabitants. Its increase beyond that number depends on so many causes, not yet developed, that human foresight cannot now scan them. It will, however, continue to be the largest town in the State, unless Zanesville or Cleveland should exceed it. [!]

There is but one evil hanging over this city- the price of land is ex- travagantly high, and so are house and ground rents. Every material used in building is cheap, mechanical labor is low in price, and so is cvery article of food and raiment.

Main strect, for a mile in length from north to south, presents a scene as busy. as bustling, as crowded, and if possible more noisy, especially about the intersection of Fourth street with Main street, and also any- where near the Ohio river, as can be found in New York. If the ear is not quite so much afflicted with strange cries as in Philadelphia or Baltimore, yet for drumming and organ-grinding I should suppose some few spots in Main street, Cincinnati, would exceed anything of the sort in the world-at least I should most heartily and charitably liope so.

CHAPTER XII. CINCINNATI'S FIFTH DECADE.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY.

It was an important decade in the growth and annals of events in the Queen City. The population had grown in the ten years 1820 -- 30, from nine thousand six hun- dred and forty-two to twenty-four thousand eight hun- dred and thirty-one, or two hundred and sixty per cent .; it was to continue to grow in this decade in satisfactory ratio, though not relatively so fast, from twenty-four thousand eight hundred and thirty-one to forty-six thou- sand three hundred and thirty-eight, or eighty-five per cent. The number of new buildings this year was two hundred and five.

The following notices of local improvements are con- tained in the directory for 1831 :

During the past year a new street was opened, extending Lower Mar- ket street from Main to Walnut; and both sides of it are now, or soon will be, wholly built up with brick warehouses and other buildings, all of which are beautiful and substantial. The hotel on the corner, where the new street enters Walnut, will be one of the most splendid edifices in the western country. It is five stories high above the basement, and is to be covered with marble columns. The new street has received the name of "Pearl street," and promises to be to Cincinnati what its cele- brated namesake is to New York.

Among the best buildings erected in 1830 we would mention, in addi- tion to the above, Greene's splendid row on Front street; Cassilly's & Carter's on the corner of Broadway and Front; and Moore's on the southeast corner of Main and Fourth streets. Much more taste has been displayed in the models of private dwellings than heretofore, espe- cially in those erected on Fourth street. Of the public buildings fin- ished during the past year, we would mention the Catholic Atheneum, the Unitarian and the Second Presbyterian churches. The latter is considered by good judges one of the best models of the Doric in the United States. It is of brick, but its front, pillars, and sides are cov- ered with cement, in imitation of marble. The cost of this church was more than twenty thousand dollars. On its cupola has been placed a public clock, which belongs to the city. *

This year the Miami canal was extended from the then head of Main street, where it had stopped tempo- rarily, across Deer creek, which it spanned by a large culvert. The canal commissioners proposed another halt here for a time, and the leasing of the water-power along the borders of the new line. The improvement was finished in July, 1834. The business of the canal was now rapidly increasing. During three months of 1829, the tolls at Cincinnati amounted to but three thousand five hundred and fifteen dollars; while in a single month, the first of navigation in 1831, they ag- gregated two thousand ninety-five dollars and sixty-five cents.

In the spring of this year a young attorney came to Cincinnati, who was favorably introduced under the name of Salmon P. Chase. He came from Washington, where he had been keeping a classical school for boys. His edition of the Statutes of Ohio, published soon after- wards, with a preliminary sketch of State history, at once gave him wide and permanent fame, and brought him large practice. In 1834 he became solicitor of the Branch Bank of the United States, and also for a city bank. In 1837 he had a very celebrated case, in which he de-

* This church stood on the south side of Fourth street, between Race and Vinc, abont where the Mitchell & Rammelsberg company now have heir furniture warehouse.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

fended a colored woman, claimed as a slave under the law of 1793. In the same year he made an argument in defense of James G. Birney, indicted for harboring a fugitive slave, that won him great praise, and was also widely noticed.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE.

Some notable men, more or less identified with the history of Cincinnati, were in public office this year. John McLean was a justice of the supreme court; Peyton S. Symmes register, and Morgan Neville receiver of the land office, which was still maintained here; Micajah Williams was surveyor general, Charles Larabee surveyor of the port of Cincinnati, and Colonel William Piatt paymaster in the army.

Two hundred and fifty new buildings were put up this year. Population, twenty-six thousand and seventy-one. Bills of mortality, eight hundred and twenty, or one in thirty-four of the population.

The first macadamized road was built into the city this year, and others speedily followed.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO.

The city made some progress, despite many drawbacks. Three hundred buildings were erected, and the total number in the city was now four thousand and sixteen. The population increased nearly two thousand, or to twenty-eight thousand and fourteen. Nevertheless, it was a sad year for Cincinnati. It was scourged by flood, fire, famine, and cholera. The freshet of the year is memorable in the river and local annals. The Ohio began to rise about the ninth of February, and was at its maximum height on the eighteenth, when it touched the extraordinary level of sixty-two feet above low-water mark. Great suffering and loss of property and in some cases lives were experienced all along the river, but es- pecially at Cincinnati. The whole of the old-time "bottom" was flooded so deep and so far up that the ferry boats landed at the corner of Main and Pearl streets. The Mill creek bridge was swept off, and that over Deer creek badly damaged. Thirty-five squares were inunda- ted, many buildings damaged or wrecked, or swept off bodily, and thousands of people were turned out of house and home. Two lives were lost in the raging waters. A town meeting was held February 15, and measures of relief to the distressed and homeless were devised. Vigilance committees to prevent theft and wanton destruction of property, also committees of relief and of shelter, were appointed. All public buildings, school-houses, the basements of churches, and every available place of refuge, were surrendered to the refu- gees, and relief afforded as rapidly as possible. Benefits were given the sufferers by Mr. Letton of the Museum, Mr. Frank, with his gallery of paintings, Mr. Brown, of the amphitheatre, and the Beethoven society, which gave a concert of sacred music Many weeks elapsed before, the waters having subsided, the city below Third street resumed its wonted aspect, and then many injured build- ings or desolated spots told of the ruin that had been wrought.

Most of the provision stores and groceries were then

kept in the drowned districts; and few had time to re- move their stocks before the flood reached them. There was consequently a scarcity of food, and a partial famine added to the miseries of the situation. Mr. L'Homme- dieu says of this and other calamities of the year.

The greater portion of flour and other provisions had been kept below high-water mark. Some few, more successful than others, had suc- ceeded in raising their stocks of flour to upper stories. But, then, what exorbitant prices they demanded, and would have obtained but for the denunciation of an independent press ! Later in the year, and follow- ing the fire, flood and famine, came the dreaded pestilence, the Asiatic cholera, which carried more of our population to their graves than have any of its visitations since, notwithstanding our then small population of twenty-five thousand.

One of the results of the cholera was a large number of orphans. The ladies of Cincinnati found an occasion for their efforts in caring for the unfortunates: With funds placed in their hands by the Masonic lodges, and others of the city, they founded the Cincinnati orphan asy- lum. The city gave them the use of a building on the ground now occupied for the beautiful Lincoln park.

The great fire occurred the early part of the year, and devastated the tract from below Third street to the Com- mercial bank.

The cholera came on the thirtieth of September, and staid for thirteen months. The board of health for some time denied the presence of Asiatic cholera, but on the tenth of October published an official list of deaths from that cause. In that month died here four hundred and twenty-three persons-over half of all who fell from the scourge during its prevalence in the city. Forty-one died in one day-the twenty-first of October. The dreadful epidemic continued until late in the year, and was re- newed the next season. Says a paragraph in the Life of Bishop Morris :

The city, during the prevalence of this dreadful epidemic, presented a mournful aspect. Thousands of citizens were absent in the country; very many were closely confined by personal affliction or the demands of sick friends; hundreds were numbered among the dead; the transient floating population had entirely disappeared; the country people, in terror, stood aloof; business was almost wholly suspended; the tramp of hurrying feet was no longer heard on the streets; the din of the city was hushed, and every day appeared as a Sabbath. Instead, however, of the sound of church-going bells and the footsteps of happy throngs hastening to the house of God, were heard the shrieks of terror-stricken victims of the fell disease, the groans of the dying, and the voices of lamentation. For weeks funeral processions might be seen at any hour, from early morning to late at night. All classes of people were stricken down in this fearful visitation. Doctors, ministers, lawyers, merchants and mechanics, the old and the young, the temperate and the intemper- ate, the prudent and the imprudent, were alike victims. Seventy-five members of the Cincinnati station died that year, and fifty of them were marked on the church records as cholera cases.

This year, on the fourth day of November, was to oc- cur the semi-centennial celebration of the temporary occupation opposite the mouth of the Licking, by a por- tion of General George Rogers Clark's force, in 1782, as agreed by the officers and men at that time. General Simon Kenton, Major James Galloway, of Xenia, John McCaddon, of Newark, and a few others, were still living, and they caused extensive advertisement of the proposed celebration to be made in the western papers, for several months beforehand. It was intended, on the third or fifth of November (the fourth coming on Sunday this year), among other observances, to lay the corner-stone of a suitable monument at the intersection of several streets on the site of old Fort Washington ; but when the day came, cholera was stalking with awful presence

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

through every street and by-way of Cincinnati, and only a handful of the venerable survivors met in the city, sadly exchanged greetings and reminiscences, uttered their laments for the honored dead, and partook of a din- ner at the expense of the city. The following address, pre- pared by General Kenton, to awaken interest in the oc- casion, will still be read with pleasure :

ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF THE WESTERN COUNTRY.

The old pioneers, eitizen-soldiers and those who were engaged with us in the regular service in the conquest of the western country from the British and savages fifty years ago, have all been invited to attend with the survivors of General George Rogers Clark's army of 1782, who purpose the celebration of a western anniversary, according to their promise made on the ground the fourth day of November in that year.' Those also who were engaged in like service subsequently, and in the late war, have been invited to attend and join with us in the celebration on the said fourth of November, at old Fort Washington, now Cincinnati. I propose that we meet at Covington, Kentucky, on the third, the fourth being Sabbath, to attend divine service, on Mon- day meet our friends on the ground where the old fort stood, and then take a final adieu, to meet no more until we shall all meet in a world of spirits.

Fellow-citizens of the West! This is a meeting well worthy your very serious consideration. The few survivors of that race who are now standing on the verge of the grave, view with anxious concern the wel- fare of their common country, for which they fought against British oppression and savage cruelty to secure to you, our posterity, the bles- sings of liberty, religion, and law. We will meet and we will tell you what we have suffered to secure to you these inestimable privileges. We will meet, and, if you will listen, we will admonish you "face to face," to be as faithful as we have been, to transmit those blessings unim- paired to your posterity; that America may long, and we trust forever, remain a free, sovereign, independent, and happy country. We look to our fellow-citizens in Kentucky and Ohio, near the place of meeting, to niake provision for their old fathers of the West. We look to our patriot captains of our steamboats, and patriotic stage contractors and companies, and our generous innkeepers, to make provision for the going and returning to Cincinnati, from all parts of the West. We know that they will deem it an honor to accommodate the gray-headed veterans of the West, who go to meet their companions for the last time; for this may be the only opportunity they will ever have to serve their old fathers, the pioneers and veterans of the West.

Fellow-citizens! Being one of the first, after Colonel Daniel Boone, who aided in the conquest of Kentucky and the West, I am called upon to address you. My heart melts on such an occasion. I look forward to the contemplated meeting with melancholy pleasure. It has eaused tears to flow in copious showers. I wish to see once more, before I die, my few surviving friends. My solemn promise, made fifty years ago, binds me to meet them. I ask not for myself ; but you may find in our assembly some who have never received any pay or pension, who have sustained the cause of their country equal to any other service, wlio in the decline of life are poor. Then, you prosperous sons of the West, forget not those old and gray-headed veterans on this occasion. Let them return to their families with some little manifestation of your kindness to cheer their hearts. I add my prayer. May kind Heaven grant us a clear sky, fair and pleasant weather, a safe journey, and a happy meeting, and smile upon us and our families, and bless us and our nation on the approaching occasion.

SIMON KENTON.

Urbana, Ohio, 1832.

This city was visited this year by Colonel Thomas Hamilton, author of Cyril Thornton and other popular novels of that day, who made the following notes upon Cincinnati in his anonymous and agreeable work upon The Men and Manners of America :

In two days we reached Cincinnati, a town of nearly thirty thousand inhabitants, finely situated on a slope ascending from the river. The strects and buildings arc handsome, and certainly far superior to what might be expected in a situation six hundred miles from the sea and standing on ground which, till lately, was considered the extreme limit of civilization. It is, apparently, a place of considerable trade. The quay was covered with articles of traffic; and there are a thousand indi- cations of activity and business which strike the senses of a traveller, but

which he would find it difficult to describe. Having nothing better to do, I took a stroll about the town, and its first favorable impression was not diminished by closer inspection. Many of the streets would have been considered handsome in New York or Philadelphia; and, in the private dwellings, considerable attention had been paid to external decoration.

The most remarkable object in Cincinnati, however, is a large Græco- Moresco-Gothic-Chinese-looking building, an architectural compila- tion of prettiness of all sorts, the effect of which is eminently gro- tesque. Our attention was immediately arrested by this extraordinary apparition, which could scarcely have been more out of place had it been tossed on the earth by some volcano in the moon. While we stood there, complimenting the gorgeousness of its effect and specu- lating "what aspect bore the man" to whom the inhabitants of these central regions could have been indebted for so brilliant and fantastic an outrage on all acknowledged principles of taste, a very pretty and pleasant-looking girl came out and invited us to enter. We accord- ingly did so, and found everything in the interior of the building had been finished on a scale quite in harmony with its external magnifi- cence.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 21

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