History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 26

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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March 25th, Messrs. Wright & Graff sold at auction seventy-five feet of ground, with buildings thereon, on the southeast corner of Third and Walnut, for fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars; and April 14th, there was a considerable sale of lots belonging to the Barr estate, at the West end.

April 17th, Miles Greenwood's foundry was burned, but he rebuilt promptly and reoccupied September 17th, just five months after the fire.

On the 9th of July the First and Second Ohio infantry regiments, commanded by Colonels O. M. Mitchel and Curtis, left Camp Washington for the theatre of war in Mexico.

August 10th, announcement was made that the Little Miami railroad would run its first train to Springfield. On the 14th, the Rev. Joshua L. Wilson, for many years pastor of the First Presbyterian church, dies.

September 7th, the Merchants' exchange is opened in the college building. On the 28th Edward Byington falls by the hand of violence, slain by Theodore Church.

New buildings to the number of nine hundred and eighty were erected.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN.

New buildings this year, one thousand one hundred and forty. The first five-story brick in Cincinnati was put up at the corner of Pearl and Walnut streets, by Ed- mund B. Reeder-the building afterwards occupied by Booth's hardware store. While the cellar was being dug, an old bystander gave the interesting information that he had once loaded a flat-boat on that very spot.

On the twenty-first of August, the first public tele- graphic dispatch wired to Cincinnati was received by the local press. It was justly accounted a very interesting event.

- In December another tremendous flood occurred in the Ohio, reaching its height about the seventeenth, when it stood only six inches lower than in the great freshet of 1832. The city was better prepared for it, however, and although there was much distress and loss, it did not entirely renew the excitement and unhappy scenes of fif- teen years before.

On the twenty-second of April, Levi Coffin and family moved to Cincinnati. This arrival is solely noticeable because it brought a strong reinforcement to the rather feeble band of abolitionists in the city, and because it in- troduced here a new branch of trade-a grocery store at which no products of slave labor were to be had. Mr. Coffin was of Massachusetts and Maryland stock, but a native of North Carolina, where he became thoroughly impressed with the ills of slavery, and a confirmed abo- litionist. He went in 1822 to Indiana, and taught school there awhile, returned to North Carolina, engaged in teaching again, but came west finally in the fall of 1826 and located at Newport, Wayne county, Indiana, where he remained for more than twenty years, engaged in store-keeping, pork-packing, making linseed oil, and managing a station of the Underground railroad. In the last named business-quite the reverse of profitable, in a pecuniary sense-he was exceedingly zealous, and assisted many fugitive slaves in the direction of the north star. He says in his volume of Reminiscences:

"This work was kept up during the time we lived in Newport, a period of more than twenty years. The num- ber of fugitives varied considerably in different years, but the annual average was more than one hundred."

It was to his house in Newport that the Eliza Harris of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin went, on her journey northward, and told her thrilling story of escape.

In 1844 he became convinced that it was wrong to sell, buy, or use any product of slave toil, and began the search for groceries and cotton goods that were, from first to last, solely the result of free labor. He found associ- ations already existing in Philadelphia and New York, manufacturing goods of free-labor cotton, and getting sugar and other groceries from the British West Indies and other localities where slavery did not exist. He bought a limited stock of these for his Newport store and sold them, necessarily to Abolitionists almost exclu- sively, and at a very small profit, compared with that he might have realized from slave-labor wares. He traveled in the south to find localities where slaves were not used in the production of cotton and sugar; and in one case,

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

where cotton was ruined for his purposes by being neces- sarily passed through a gin operated by slaves, he bought a three hundred dollar gin in Cincinnati and shipped it to Mississippi, relying upon his correspondent there to pay for it in cotton. It was thenceforth known as the "Abolition gin," and greatly stimulated the production of free-labor cotton.

Mr. Coffin came to Cincinnati in 1847, at the solicita- tion of a Union Free-labor convention, held at Salem, Indiana, the previous fall, to open a wholesale depository of free-labor goods. This he did, though at much pecu- niary sacrifice and in the face of much personal obloquy. Contrary to his expectation, he had also to remain in act- ive service as president of the Underground railroad, as he had come now to be generally considered. His Rem- iniscences say :

I was personally acquainted with all the active and reliable workers on the Underground railroad in the city, both colored and white. There were a few wise and careful managers among the colored people, but it was not safe to trust all of them with the affairs of our work. Most of them were too careless, and a few were unworthy-they could be bribed by the slave-hunters to betray the hiding-places of the fugitives. . We were soon initiated into Underground railroad matters in Cincin- nati, and did not lack for work. Our willingness to aid the slaves was soon known, and hardly a fugitive came to the city without applying to us for assistance. There seemed to be a continual increase of run- aways, and such was the vigilance of the pursuers that I was obliged to devote a large share of time from my business to making arrangements for the concealment and safe conveyance of the fugitives. They some- times came to our door frightened and panting and in a destitute con- dition, having fled in such haste and fear that they had no time to bring any clothing except what they had on, and that was often very scant. The expense of providing suitable clothing for them when it was neces- sary for them to go on immediately, or of feeding them when they were obliged to be concealed for days or weeks, was very heavy. Added to this was the cost of hiring teams when a party of fugitives had to be conveyed out of the city by night to some Underground railroad depot, from twenty to thirty miles distant. The price for a two-horse team on such occasions was ten dollars, and sometimes two or three teams were required. We generally hired these teams from a certain German livery stable, sending some irresponsible though honest colored man to pro- cure them, and always sending the money to pay for them in advance. The people of the livery stable seemed to understand what the teams were wanted for, and asked no questions.

Learning that the runaway slaves often arrived almost destitute of clothing, a number of the benevolent ladies of the city-Mrs. Sarah H. Ernst, Miss Sarah O. Ernst, Mrs. Henry Miller, Mrs. Dr. Ayde- lott, Mrs. Julia Harwood, Mrs. Amanda E. Foster, Mrs. Elizabeth Coleman, Mrs. Mary Mann, Mrs. Mary M. Guild, Miss K. Emery, and others-organized an anti-slavery sewing society, to provide suit- able clothing for the fugitives. After we came to the city, they met at our house every week for a number of years, and wrought much prac- tical good by their labors.

Our house was large, and well adapted for secreting fugitives. Very often slaves would lie conccaled in upper chambers for weeks, without the boarders or frequent visitors at the house knowing anything about it. My wife had a quiet, unconcerned way of going about her work, as if nothing unusual was on hand, which was calculated to lull every suspicion of those who might be watching, and who would have been at once aroused by any sign of secrecy or mystery. Even the intimate friends of the family did not know when there were slaves secreted in the house, unless they were directly informed. When my wife took food to the fugitives she generally concealed it in a basket, and put some freshly ironed garment on the top, to make it look like a basket- ful of clean clothes. Fugitives were not often allowed to eat in the kitchen, from fear of detection.

The interest of these statements, as part of a mem- orable chapter of local and political history, justifies the space we have given to them. Mr. Coffin remained in Cincinnati, successfully but modestly conducting his business as an Abolition storekeeper and underground

railway manager so long as necessary; and after the war, at a meeting of the colored folk of Cincinnati and vicin- ity, to celebrate the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, he formally and humorously resigned his office as President of the Underground railroad, de- claring that "the stock had gone down in the market, the business was spoiled, the road was of no further use"; and retired amid niuch applause. During the war and afterwards, he did much good work among the destitute and suffering freedmen. He since published his Remin- iscences in a thick volume, abounding in interesting nar- ratives. After his death a second edition was published, with an added chapter giving an account of his closing years. He died at his residence in Avondale, September 16, 1877, at the advanced age of seventy-nine, leaving his widow still surviving.

A terrible riot occurred at the county jail this year, resulting in the death of eleven persons, some of whom were wholly innocent of any complicity with the mob. Two soldiers in the Mexican war had been discharged at its close and returned to the city with their land war- rants. They were soon after accused of an outrage upon the person of the little daughter of the family with whom they were boarding, near the Brighton house, and were lodged in the old jail, on Sycamore street, the officers taking them thither fighting their way with the utmost difficulty through an infuriated mob. Toward evening an immense crowd gathered about the place, which was guarded by the finest military companies in the city-the Greys and the Citizens' Guards-and several rushes were made upon the building. At first the assailants were re- pulsed by the firing of blank cartridges; but at last, when the soldiers were pressed back, and the ringleaders were actually within the doors of the jail, it became necessary to fire with ball, which was done with terribly fatal effect, stretching eleven persons lifeless at the first fire, some of them at a distance from the mob, and not participating in it. The people were unarmed and dispersed at once in haste, not to return; and the prisoners were saved from the threatened vengeance. After a little time for . reflection, popular feeling settled in favor of the action of the officers and soldiery, and finally in favor of the prisoners themselves. They were not even brought to trial, the grand jury unanimously refusing to bring a bill of indictment against them; and there is little doubt that the infamous charge was part of a scheme to dispossess them of the land-warrants which they had honestly earned by hard and dangerous service. Public opinion was turned so strongly against their persecutors, indeed, that they found it advisable to disappear from the com- munity, to escape possible lynching themselves.

Number of new buildings this year, one thousand three hundred and five.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE.

The number of names upon the directory this year is twenty-one thousand five hundred and forty-five, exceed- ing the number upon the directory of 1846 by six thou- sand nine hundred and forty-five. The addition was made this year of Fulton, a tolerably large and densely

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

populated suburb, equal to about one-third of the former dimensions of the city. The Burnet house was erected this year by a joint stock company, and was then ac- counted the finest hotel building in the country. Many distinguished persons were its guests, in the earlier as well as the later days. The room once occupied by Jenny Lind still bears her name.

In November or December came the famous Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley. She staid but one day in Cincinnati, on account of the crowded hotels, and made few remarks upon the place in the book she afterwards published. She noted it as a "very handsome city, in a remarkably fine situation;" has a good word for the Ger- man immigrants; has her attention attracted by "the floating wharves, which are rendered necessary by the continued and rapid fluctuations of the river." She gives the town a malicious little fling at the close:

It may be confidently stated that Cincinnati, the pride of the banks of "La Belle Riviere," is in fact what its name, "Porkopolis," implies -the Empire city of pigs, as well as of the west; but it is fortunate that they condescendingly allow human beings to share the truly magnifi- cent location with them.

On the first of May, one train per day, each way, be- gan to run over the Little Miami railroad to Springfield. On the sixth occurred the murder of O. Brasher by Jesse Jones; and on the tenth the death of Colonel Charles H. Brough, a prominent lawyer of the city, and soldier of the Mexican war.

July 20th was made memorable by the poisoning of the Simmons family, and November 30th by the at- tempted destruction in the same way of the Forrest fam- ily, by the notorious poisoner, Nancy Farrer, in whose trial the young lawyer, Rutherford B. Hayes, late Presi- dent of the United States, bore a distinguished part. She finally escaped the meshes of the law, on the plea of insanity, and was sent to the Lick Run asylum.

Mr. E. D. Mansfield, in his Memoirs of Dr. Drake, submits the following valuable remarks and statistics con- cerning the fatality and social characteristics of the chol- era in Cincinnati this year :

It commenced at the middle of April, but did not entirely cease until the return of frosts; but the intensity of the pestilence may be dated from the middle of June to the middle of August. In other words, it increased and declined with the heat. Except in the first season, 1832, this has been its uniform characteristic in every year of its appearance. It was so in 1833, '34, '39, '49, '50, '51, and '52. In the latter seasons it was very light. In September, 1849, the Board of Health in Cincinnati returned the following number of deaths, between the first of May and the first of September-four months :

Deaths by cholera 4,114

Deaths by other diseases 2,345

Aggregate 6,459

If we add to this the aggregate number of deaths in the last two weeks of April, and from the first of September to the fifteenth of Oc- tober, during which the number of deaths exceeded the average, we shall have for six months at least seven thousand, of which four thou- sand six hundred were from cholera. The mortality of the other six months, at the aggregate rate, was only one thousand five hundred. We have, then, for 1849, a total mortality of eight thousand five hun- dred, which (the population of the city being one hundred and sixteen thousand) made a ratio of one in fourteen.

If we examine this mortality socially, we shall arrive at some extraor- dinary results. The division of the cemeteries at Cincinnati, by na- tionalities and religions, is so complete that it is easily determincd how many of Americans and how many Protestants died of cholcra. Tak-

ing the number given above, of those who died between the first of May and the first of September, we have this result :

German, Irish, and Hebrews, died of cholera in four months. 2,896

Americans, English, Scotch, and Welsh, "

1,218

4,114

We see thus that the deaths among the Germans and

Irish are within a fraction of being fourfold that of the Americans and double that of the entire population proportionally. A more minute and detailed investigation of this matter would, perhaps, prove that the proportion of mortality was even more than this against the foreign element.

At some time during the forties, probably, but in some year or years which we are unable to designate with cer- tainty, a series of letters was written from a house now within the precincts of the city, which, as collected and published by the celebrated English authoress, Mary Howitt, under the title of our Cousins in Ohio, form one of the most pleasant little books in the Cin- cinnati literature. Names in them are carefully con- cealed, and even Cincinnati is not once mentioned; but the local coloring is in places unmistakable. "Red creek," for example, is undoubtedly Mill creek, and Big Bluff creek, very likely, was Lick run; and Stony creek Bold-face, which enters the river at Sedamsville. The cedar grove mentioned as "the cedars," where lived a sister of Mary Howitt and from which the letters were written, is now occupied by the Young Ladies' Academy of St. Vincent de Paul, a Roman Catholic institution, conducted by the Sisters of Charity, beyond Price's hill, on the Warsaw turnpike, in the extreme western part of the city. It was formerly the property of a Mr. Alderson. We present some entertaining extracts from the book in question :

The wooden bridge over the Red creek was now repaired. This was but a temporary bridge, the great stone bridge having been swept away the former summer, in a thunder-storm ; and this was the third that our friends had seen over Red creek since they came into the country. When first they came, it was crossed by an old, covered, wooden bridge ; and this was burned down one night by a man whose horses' feet stuck fast in a hole of the planking, which made him so an- gry that he vowed never again to be stopped by the same cause, and thereforc he set fire to the bridge before he left the place. In the course of the summer a new bridge was again to be erected.

This Red creek was a small tributary of the Ohio. It was a very beautiful stream, and its serpentine course could be traced at the cedars, although its waters were unseen, by the white trunks and branches of the buttonwood trees which grew upon its banks. It was famous in Indian tradition, and the children often sang to themselves, in a low, chanting strain, one of its legends, which an American poet had beau- tifully sung in modern verse.

This day proved altogether an eventful onc. Uncle Cornelius [Col- onel Sedam?] told them about the landing of three hundred and ninety- five emancipated slaves which he had witnessed [in Cincinnati]. They arrived in the steamer at about eight o'clock that morning. They were a motley company of men, women, and children, old and young, but all decently dressed, and bringing with them their wagons and house- hold stuff and considerable property-some people said to the value of ten thousand pounds. The history of their emancipation was interest- ing. It had been a struggle of nine years' continuance; but to the honor of the south, the law had decided in their favor, and they were on their way to Mercer county, in the State of Ohio, which was chiefly settled by free colored people, and where a tract of land had been pur- chased for them.

These poor people had been the property of one John Randolph, a wealthy planter of Roanoke, Virginia. During his lifetime he had been a strenuous upholder of slavery ; yet, even then, it was said that his con- science often rebelled against him, and, but for custom and the fear

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

of ridicule, and perhaps of persecution also, he would have liberated his slaves. He did, however, all that he believed it possible for him to do; he provided in his will for their liberation after his death, and left a handsome provision for their transportation to a free State and for their maintenance there.

But this, it is said, did not satisfy his conscience on his dying bed. Being then unable to speak, he called for a pencil and paper, and wrote upon it the word, "Remorse." He felt, it is probable, in those last moments that even the act of kindness which he had prepared to do after his death could not atone to the Almighty for a lifelong practice of oppression, against the sinfulness of which his own soul had even thus testified.

He died, and after a long nine years' struggle the slaves were freed by law; and thus they now were on their way to what they hoped would be a home of freedom and peace. Uncle Cornelius said that the prin- cipal street of the city presented a singular sight, and one which they who saw would not soon forget. First came in the procession a crowd of negroes-men, women, and children, all dressed in coarse, cotton garments, but having the appearance of people who, by their dress, were in comfortable circumstances. They were on their way from the river, up which the steamer had brought them, to the canal, where they were again to embark for their new location. Behind them came their baggage-wagons, which formed a very long and singular array; and altogether it was the most extraordinary company of emigrants which had ever been seen in those parts. Many of the women had very young babies in their arms; there were also some very old people amongst them, and the one who brought up the rear was a very striking figure. He was the oldest and noblest-looking colored man that Uncle Cornelius had ever seen; he walked slowly with a long cane, and had something grand and patriarchal in his aspect and manner. Probably he might be one of those who had been brought up with his afterwards celebrated master, and, perhaps, when remorse wrung his death-bed soul, he might be remembered by him as one to whom a lifelong injus- tice had been done.

Willie, one day, at the beginning of the month, rode with his father some miles up the country, to Stony Creek valley, to see the wagon loaded with charcoal, for which purpose it had been sent beforehand. Charcoal was used to burn in a small stove with coal or wood, in the cold mornings and evenings, to warm and cheer the rooms; and a store of it was therefore laid in.

Stony Creek valley was one of the most secluded valleys in the neighborhood; the road which ran along it passed through pleasant woods, and now and then crossed the rocky bed of the stream. The valley itself was famous for lime and charcoal-burning; it was but little cleared of wood, and the houses, which were mostly log-cabins, were inhabited by Germans, principally charcoal-burners. There was a pleas- ant kind of poetical, out-of-the-world character about the whole place; and the curling smoke which rose up so dreamily into the sunny sky, from the rude charcoal and lime kilns, added greatly to its effect.

CHAPTER XIV.

CINCINNATI'S SEVENTH DECADE.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY.

The census of this year was taken under inauspicious conditions, on account of the return of the cholera from its visitation of 1849. Nevertheless the figures obtained, one hundred and fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty-eight, were very large as contrasted with the forty- six thousand three hundred and thirty eight of ten years before, showing an increase in the decade of sixty-nine thousand one hundred, or very nearly two hundred and fifty per cent .- an average of almost seven thousand newcomers every year. The new buildings this year numbered one thousand four hundred and eighteen, and the total number of buildings was sixteen thousand two hundred and eighty-six. The new ones included five

stone, nine hundred and thirty-nine brick, and four hun- dred and sixty-four frame structures. Brick houses had advanced in number beyond all others, and were now three-fifths of all in Cincinnati. Among new public edifices were the German Protestant Orphan asylum, the Widow's home, sundry school-houses and engine houses, the Episcopal church on Sycamore street, and St. John's, at the corner of Seventh and Plum, the First and Seventh Presbyterian churches, and two hotels. The City hall and new court house were projected, the public offices being still at the southeast corner of Fourth and Vine streets. Fourteen macadamized roads now entered the city, with an aggregate length of five hundred and four- teen miles; two canals, together with their extensions, reaching out five hundred and sixty miles, and twenty- one railways, were in the immediate Cincinnati connec- tions, in all measuring one thousand seven hundred and thirteen miles, with five hundred and eighty-six miles more in progress and one thousand and six undertaken. The churches of the city numbered ninety-one, with four synagogues.

Mr. Charles Cist, writing for his decennial volume (Cincinnati in 1851) of the next year, has the following paragraph concerning the heterogeneous character of the city's population. Although written thirty years ago, it is well worth quotation now:

The population of the city presents many varieties of physiology. The original settlers were from various States of the Union; and the armies of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, during the Indian wars, left behind them a still greater variety of persons. The subsequent immi- gration, though largely from the Middle and northern Atlantic States, has been, in part, from the more southern. In latter years it has been composed, still more than from either, of Europeans. The most numerous of these are Germans, next Irish; then English, Scotch, and . Welsh. Very few French, Italians, or Spaniards have sought it out. Lastly, its African population, chiefly emancipated slaves and their offspring, from Kentucky and Virginia, is large; and although inter- marriages with the whites are unknown, the streets show as many mu- latto, griffe, and quadroon complexions as those of New Orleans. Thus the varieties of national physiology are very great.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 26

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