History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 22

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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This was the Trollopean Bazaar, of course, which re- ceived many similar notices from travellers, especially foreigners.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE.

Population of the city, twenty-seven thousand six hundred and forty-five. Votes, three thousand nine hundred and ninety-five. New buildings, three hundred and twenty-one-two hundred brick, one hundred and twenty-one frame.

The cholera, as before stated, continued into this year. Its first re-appearance was about the middle of April. The most destructive month was July, when one hun- dred and seventy-six died. The total mortality from this visitation of the pestilence, from September, 1832, to September, 1833, inclusive, was eight hundred and thir- teen. The average deaths per day this year were far less than in 1832, but the disease staid four times as long, or nearly six months.

June 26th, the powder-mill owned by David D. Wade exploded, killing six persons.

On the eighth of August died Dr. James M. Stough- ton, one of the pioneer physicians.

December 26th, that being then supposed to be the right anniversary (the forty-fifth) of the landing of the Losantiville pioneers, the occasion was celebrated by a large party of natives of Ohio-chiefly, of course, young men, with many invited guests. Major Daniel Gano was president of the affair; William R. Morris, first vice- president; Henry E. Spencer, second vice-president; Moses Symmes, third vice-president. The address was delivered by Joseph Longworth, esq .; poems were re- cited by Peyton S. Symmes and Charles D. Drake, afterwards United States Senator from Missouri; and the chaplains were the Revs. J. B. Finley and William Burke. The committee of arrangements included a number of prominent young Queen Citizens of that day: George Williamson, William R. Morris, L. M. Gwynne, J. M. Foote, Alfred S. Reeder, G. W. Sinks, Joseph Long- worth, Daniel Gano, Henry E. Spencer, M. N. McLean, James C. Hall, George W. Burnet, R. A. Whetstone, and WV. M. Corry. The banquet was given in the Commer- cial Exchange, on the river bank, upon the site of the first cabin built in Losantiville. The dinner was pre- pared almost exclusively from native productions, and

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

only wine produced in the vicinity was imbibed. This was presented by Nicholas Longworth, in honor of the old pioneers and their descendants. Among the unique viands on the table was a roast composed of two uncom- monly fat raccoons. Responses to toasts were made by James C. Ludlow, son of Colonel Israel Ludlow; by Generals Harrison and Findlay, Majors Ganoand Symmes, Judge Goodenow, Nicholas Longworth, and . Samuel J. Browne, the latter then the oldest Englishman in the State. A part of General Harrison's address will be found in the military chapter, in the first division of this book.

Another foreigner of some note, Mr. Godfrey T. Vigne, visited the city in July, and thus recorded his impressions of it in his book on Six Months in America:

In appearance it differs from most of the larger towns in the United States, on account of the great improvement that has taken place in the color of the houses, which, instead of being of the usual bright staring red, are frequently of a white gray or a yellowish tint, and dis- play a great deal of taste and just ornament. The public buildings are not large, but very neat and classical; I admired the Second Presby- terian church, which is a very pretty specimen of the Doric. The streets are handsome and the shops have a very fashionable air.

The principal trade of Cincinnati is in provisions. Immense quan- tities of corn and grain are sent down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans. Part of it is consumed by the sugar planters, who are supposed to grow no corn, and part is sent coastwise to Mobile, or ex- ported to Havana and the West Indies generally.

Cincinnati has displayed more wisdom than her opposite neighbor in Kentucky. A speculative system of banking was carried on about the same time, and was attended with the same results as those I have be- fore noticed when speaking of that State. Credit was not to be obtained, commerce was at an end, and grass was growing in the streets of Cincinnati. But the judicature, with equal justice and de- termination, immediately enforced by its decisions the resumption of cash payments. Many of the leading families in the place were, of course, ruined, and at present there are not above five or six persons in Cincinnati who have been able to regain their former eminence as men of business. But it was a sacrifice of individuals for the good of the community, and fortune only deserted the speculators in order to at- tend upon the capitalists, who quickly made their appearance from the Eastern States, and have raised the city to its present pitch of prosper- ity.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR.

Votes this year in the city, four thousand and seven; new buildings, three hundred.

The cholera renewed its appearance, but less violently than in 1833. It prevailed to some extent, however, through all the warm season, to the sad depression of business and social affairs. Everything, in fact, was stagnant. It is said that the town had never before ap- peared so dull and apparently lifeless and inert as at the close of this summer. Property was sacrificed at low rates, and business was at times almost at a standstill. It was the last year of the visitation, however, until 1849, fifteen years afterwards.

The trustees of the Lane seminary had this year a serious difference of opinion with a number of their anti- slavery students, which resulted in a formidable secession from the school and an appeal to the public. A fuller account will be given in our historical sketch of that institution.

Cincinnati had some visitors of unusual interest this year. One who is still remembered tenderly and affec- tionately by the older residents, who were young men at the time, was Thomas S. Grimke, a prominent member

of the bar of Charleston, South Carolina, who came upon invitation to deliver the annual oration before the literary societies of Miami university, Oxford. While in Cincinnati he addressed the college of teachers, a literary society called the Inquisition, and the Temperance soci- ety, always speaking wisely and well, and sometimes ris. ing into rare eloquence .. He was here only a single week, yet in that time won universal recognition, love, and reverence, and was overwhelmed with social atten- tions. Remaining in Ohio a few weeks longer, he was overtaken by death while visiting in Madison county, October 12, 1834, at the age of forty-eight years; and with him expired, as many believed, the most brilliant intellectual light in the southern States.

Late this year came another American of genius, Charles Fenno Hoffman, author of that musical drinking song so much parodied by the temperance societies-

Sparkling and bright in its liquid light, Is the wine our goblets gleam in; With hue as red as the rosy bed The bee delights to dream in-

but unhappily during most of the last half-century an in- mate of an insane asylum in Pennsylvania. Some of his delightful paragraphs will be found under other heads in this book. One only is quoted here :

The population of the place is about thirty thousand. Among them you may see very few but what look comfortable and contented, though the town does not wear the brisk and busy air observable at Louisville. Transportation is so easy along the great western waters, that you see no lounging poor people about the large town, as when business languishes in one place and it is difficult to find occupation, they are off at once to another, and shift their quarters whither the readiest means of living invite them. What would most strike you in the streets of Cincinnati would be the number of pretty faces and stylish figures one meets in the morning. A walk through Broadway here re- wards one hardly less than to promenade its New York namesake. I have had more than one opportunity of seeing these western beauties by candle-light ; and the evening display brought no disappointment to the morning promise. Nothing can be more agreeable than the society which one meets with in the gay and elegantly furnished drawing- rooms of Cincinnati. The materials being from every State in the Union, there is a total want of caste, a complete absence of settishness (if I may use the word). If there be any characteristic that might jar upon your taste and habits, it is, perhaps, a want of that harmonious blending of light and shade, that repose both of character and manner, which, distinguishing the best circles in our Atlantic citics, so often sinks into insipidity or runs into a ridiculous imitation of the imperti- nent nonchalance which the pseudo-pictures of English "high life" in the novels of the day impose upon our simple republicans as the height of elegance and refinement.

About the same time appeared for a few days upon Cincinnati streets a shrewd foreign observer and repre- sentative of the French Government, Michel Chevalier, whose book of travels in the United States included the following pleasant notices :

The architectural appearance of Cincinnati is very nearly the same with that of the new quarters of the English towns. The houses are generally of brick, most commonly three stories high, with the windows shining with cleanliness, calculated each for a single family, and regu- larly placed along well paved and spacious streets, sixty-six feet in width. Here and there the prevailing uniformity is interrupted by some more imposing edifice, and there are some houses of hewn stone in very good taste, real palaces in miniature, with neat porticos, inhabited by the aristocratical portion of Mrs. Trollope's hog merchants, and several very pretty mansions surrounded with gardens and terraces. Then there are the common school-houses, where girls and boys together learn reading, writing, cyphering, and geography, under the simultane- ous direction of a master and mistress. In another direction you see a

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

small, plain church, without sculpture or painting, without colored glass or Gothic arches, but snug, well carpeted, and well warmed by stoves. In Cincinnati, as everywhere else in the United States, there is a great number of churches.

I met with an incident in Cincinnati, which I shall long remember. I had observed at the hotel table a man of about the medium height, stout and muscular, and of about the age of fifty years, yet with the ac- tive step and lively air of youth. I had been struck with his open and cheerful expression, the amenity of his manners, and a certain air of command which appeared through his plain dress. "That is," said my friend, "General Harrison, clerk of the Cincinnati court of common pleas." "What! General Harrison of the Tippecanoe and the Thames?" "The same; the ex-general; the conqueror of Tecumseh and Proctor; the avenger of our disasters on the Raisin and at Detroit; the ex-governor of the territory of Indiana, the ex-senator in Congress, the ex-minister of the United States to one of the South American re- publics. He has grown old in the service of his country, he has passed twenty years of his life in those fierce wars with the Indians, in which there was less glory to be won, but more dangers to be encountered, than at Rivoli and Austerlitz. He is now poor, with a numerous family, neglected by the Federal Government, although yet vigorous, because he has the independence to think for himself. As the opposition is in the majority here, his friends have bethought themselves of coming to his relief by removing the clerk of the court of common pleas, who was a Jaekson man, and giving him the place, which is a lucrative one, as a sort of retiring pension. His friends in the east talk of making him President of the United States. Meanwhile we have made him clerk of an inferior court." After a pause my informant added, "at this wretched table you may see another candidate for the Presidency, who seems to have a better chance than General Harrison; it is Mr. Mc- Lean, now one of the judges of the supreme court of the United States."

The town was also visited, in the course of the year, by two clerical gentlemen from abroad, delegates from the British Congregational Union-the Rev. Drs. An- drew Reed and James Matheson, on a tour in behalf of Protestant religion, which they afterwards described in A Narration of the Visit to the American Churches. We extract the following concerning Cincinnati:

There is a great spirit of enterprise in this town; and, with an ardent pursuit of business, there is a desire for domestic comfort and a thirst for scientific improvement, not equaled in such circumstances. They have libraries and good reading societies; they have lectures on art and science, which are well attended. They sustain a "scientific quarterly" and a "monthly magazine," with a circulation of four thousand; and they have newspapers without end. Education is general here; the young people, and even the children, appear to appreciate it. They regard it as the certain and necessary means of advancement. I over- heard two fine children, in the street, remark as follows. The younger one, about nine years old, speaking of her sister, said, with concern, "Do you know, Caroline says she will not go to school any more?" "Silly girl !" replied the elder, about thirteen; "she will live to repent of that !" It must be admitted that this is a very wholesome state of feeling.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE.

Population, thirty-one thousand. New buildings, three hundred and forty. Bills of mortality, nine hundred and twenty-six, or one in thirty-four of the population.

The cholera did not return this year, and as soon as it was reasonably certain that the scourge had departed, business and public and social affairs in Cincinnati awak- ened to more vigorous life than ever. Mr. Mansfield says, in the Drake Biography :

A season of extraordinary activity ensucd. The mind sprung up clastic from the pressure, and all was accomplished that mind could do. Enterprise, business, growth, the reality of active energy, and the ide- ality of a growing and prosperous future, sprang up, as the conse- quence of an elastic and invigorated public mind. The general trade of the country had been safe and profitable-hence there was little tim- idity to strengthen prudence or restrain extravagance. In the cast commenced that series of enormous speculations whose centre was at New York, and which, in some respects, has never been surpassed in

this country. It spread to the west, but prevailed comparatively little at Cincinnati. The speculations here were on a small scale, and it is doubtful whether they did more than give a necessary and healthful excitement to the business community, which had so long been in a dull, quiescent state. Certain it is, that Cincinnati now owes half her growth and prosperity to plans of public works and usefulness then formed and undertaken.

The public works named by Mr. Mansfield as among the local projects of this year were the great Southern railroad route to Charleston; the Cincinnati & St. Louis railroad, by Lawrenceburgh; the Little Miami railroad, which was chartered the next March; the Cincinnati, Co- lumbus, & Cleveland railway, also chartered the next year; the Mad River & Lake Erie, and Covington & Lexington railroads; and the Whitewater canal. All these works, though not in all cases under these names, were afterwards built.

April 4th, a grand celebration was held at the First Presbyterian church, of the forty seventh anniversary of the settlement of Ohio, where William M. Corry pro- nounced one of his finest orations. The dinner was at the Commercial Exchange, and was principally from the products of Ohio, with no wine or ardent spirits what- ever.

On the eighteenth of the same month, the Young Men's Mercantile library association was founded. Its history will be duly told elsewhere. Forty-four years af- terwards Mr. John W. Ellis, of New York, one of the illustrious forty-five who founded this noble institution, wrote a letter at some length to Mr. Newton, the libra- rian, containing reminiscences of 1835 which will bear transcription here:

It must be borne in mind that Cincinnati at that period, in 1835, com- pared with the present Cincinnati, was a very insignificant place in re- spect to wealth, population, business, and everything which constitutes a modern city. The population then was less than forty thousand. Its wholesale business was done entirely by the Ohio river, and by the canal as far north as Dayton; but for the interior trade almost entirely by wagons. For the size of the place, it had a respectable wholesale business, extending in a small way to the upper and lower Mississippi, along the Ohio, from its mouth as far east as what is now West Vir- ginia; but a large proportion of the business with the interior in dry goods, groceries, and the other numerous wants of al interior com- munity was supplied by wagons, which brought in their products and carried out merchandise. There were no railroads whatever at that period in the west. The grocery trade was supplied entirely by steam- boats from New Orleans. Lighter goods were wagoned by the Na- tional road, over the Alleghany mountains, to Wheeling or Pittsburgh, and thence by steamboat down the river. When the water in the upper Ohio was low, these goods were brought from New York by the Hud- son river and Erie canal to Buffalo, thence by lake and Ohio canal to Portsmouth, and thence down the river. All these means of convey- ance will seem now to the active young men of Cincinnati as very prim- itive.

Nearly all the retail business of the city was done on Main street, from Third street to Sixth street; the wholesale business almost entirely on the lower end of Main street and on Front street facing the river. Pearl street had just been opened, but extended no further west than Walnut street, and a few wholesale stores had begun on that square. Fourth, Walnut, Vine, and other streets, now filled with an active busi- ness, were then the seat of residences, nearly all built with detached houses, surrounded with shrubbery, and the streets lined with trees. Central avenue, then Western row, and the Miami canal on the north, were the boundaries of population.

An article contributed by B. D. (Benjamin Drake?) to the Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, also helps to the understanding of Cincinnati this year. More than ordinary attention was given to the Southern

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

railroad project, as was seen in our chapter on railroads. The manufactures of the year were estimated at five millions. With Newport and Corrington, the population was thirty-five thousand. Exports were estimated at six millions or more. There were fifty stages and sixty mails a week; the steamboat arrivals were two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven; the imports included ninety thousand barrels of flour and fifty-five thousand of whiskey. The public improvements in hand were the extension of the Miami canal from Dayton to the Maumee bay, near Toledo, a part to be completed early the next summer; the macadamized turnpike from Chillicothe to Cincinnati; extensions of the Cincinnati, Columbia, and Wooster, and the Cincinnati, Lebanon, and Springfield turnpikes; the Cincinnati and Harrison turnpike, to be finished early in 1836, and extend to Brookville, Indiana; the Whitewater canal, the Little Miami railroad, etc.

Many of the houses erected this year would do credit to any city in the Union. A number of warehouses were put up; also St. Paul's church, two banking-houses on Third street, and ten or twelve large, commodious, and for the time elegant school buildings, "contributing in a high degree to the advancement of our beautiful city," says Mr. B. D. A population of one hundred thousand was predicted by 1850-which prophecy, glowing as it might have seemed, was exceeded by nearly sixteen thou- sand. Real estate is mentioned by B. D. as lower in price, in Cincinnati and its Kentucky suburbs, than in any other city of the Union having population, business, and permanent local advantages of equal magnitude.

The Ohio Anti-Slavery society was formed this year, with headquarters in Cincinnati, and began the issue of a weekly paper, of which we shall hear more in 1836. By 1840 the society was employing nine travelling agents and lecturers, and had become a great power in political agitation.

December 11th, John W. Cowan was hanged in Barr's woods, near the spot where the Atlantic & Great Western railway depot was afterwards situated, for the brutal mur- der of his wife and two children on Smith street.

In the summer of this year the city was honored with a visit from the renowned English authoress and thinker, Miss Harriet Martineau. She spent some time here; and in her subsequent book of Retrospect of Western Travel gave to the city the ablest chapter, in the judg- ment of the present writer, that has ever been written upon it. We make room for a few short extracts :

There is ample room on the platform for a city as large as Philadelphia, without encroaching at all on the hillsides. The inhabitants are already consulting as to where the capitol shall stand whenever the nation shall decree the removal of the general government beyond the mountains. If it were not for the noble building at Washington, this removal would probably take place soon, perhaps after the removal of the great south- ern railroad. It seems rather absurd to call senators and representatives to Washington from Missouri and Louisiana, while there is a place on the great rivers which would save them half the journey, and suit almost everybody else just as well, and many much better. The peril to health at Washington in the winter season is great, and the mild and equable temperature of Cincinnati is an important circumstance in the case.

From this, the Montgomery road, there is a view of the city and sur- rounding country which defies description. It was of that melting beauty which dims the cyes and fills the heart-that magical combina- tion of all elements-of hill, wood, lawn, river, with a picturesque city

steeped in evening sunshine, the impression of which can never be lost nor communicated. We ran up a knoll and stood under a clump of bushes to gaze; and went down, and returned again and again, with the feeling that if we lived upon the spot we could nevermore see it look . so beautiful.

Wc soon entered a somewhat different scenc, passing the slaughter- houses on Deer creek, the place where more thousands of hogs in a year than I dare to specify, are destined to breathe their last. Deer creek, pretty as its name is, is little more than the channel through which their blood runs away. The division of labor is brought to as much perfection in these slaughter-houses as in the pin manufactories of Birmingham. So I was told. Of course I did not verify the state- ment by attending the process.

A volume might presently be filled with descriptions of our drives about the environs of Cincinnati. There are innumerable points of view whence the city, with its masses of buildings and its spires, may be seen shining through the limpid atmosphere, like a cloud-city in the evening sky. There are many spots where it is a relief to lose the river from the view, and to be shut in among the brilliant green hills, which are more than can be numbered. But there is one drive which I almost wonder the inhabitants do not take every summer day, to the Little Miami bottoms. We continued eastward along the bank of the river for seven miles, the whole scenery of which is beautiful; but the unfor- gotten spot was the level about the mouth of the Little Miami river, the richest of plains or level valleys, studded with farmihouses, enlivened with clearings, and kept primitive in appearance by the masses of dark forest which filled up ail the unoccupied spaces. Upon this scene we looked down from a great height, a Niphates of the New World. On entering a little pass between two grassy hills, crested with wood, we were desired to alight. I ran up the ascent to the right, and was start- led at finding myself on the top of a preeipice. Far beneath me ran the Little Miami, with a narrow, white, pebble strand, arrow-like trees springing over from the brink of the precipice, and the long evening shadows making the current as black as night, while the green, up to the very lips of the ravine, was of the sunniest, in the last flood of western light. For more reasons than one I should prefer Cincinnati as residence to any other large city of the United States. Of these rea- sons not the least would be that the "Queen of the West" is enthroned in a region of wonderful and inexhaustible beauty.

Another English traveller, the Honorable Charles Au- gustus Murray, was also here this year, and made the fol- lowing notice in his Travels in North America :

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 22

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