History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 84

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 84

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Twenty-five regular meetings seem to have been held with tolerable regularity during the winter months, but none in the warm seasons. The last meeting of which record is made was held "March the -, 1822." Few members were then present; yet it was voted as "expedi- ent that the society should continue its meetings for the next six months at the usual hours." Notwithstanding this heroic resolve, the society disappears from history after this meeting.

The list of books accumulated for the society's library is a short one. It included simply several volumes and single numbers of Dr. Drake's Western Journal of Med- ical and Physical Sciences; some numbers of the North American Medical and Surgical Journal; the Aphorisms of Hippocrates; Three Dissertations on Boylston Prize Questions, by Drs. George, Cheyne, and Shattuck; Wil- son Phillips' Treatise on Indigestion; one volume of the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Journal; and one of the American Medical and Philosophical Register; and one medical thesis in manuscript.

SUNDRY MEDICAL SOCIETIES.

A sort of academy of medicine was formed here by a voluntary association of physicians in the spring of 1831, for the benefit of medical students who spent the sum- mer in the city .. It began operations April Ist, of that year, with Dr. James M. Staughton giving instruction in the institutes of surgery, Isaac Hough in operative sur- gery, Joseph N. McDowell in anatomy, Wolcott Richards in physiology, Landon C. Rives in the institutes of medi- cine and medical jurisprudence, Daniel Drake in the practice of medicine and materia medica, John F. Henry

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in obstetrics, and Thomas D. Mitchell in chemistry and pharmacy. The society or academy does not appear to have been long lived.

In the winter of 1832-3 was incorporated the Cincin- nati Medical society. Its officers were well-known and reputable physicians of the city, as Dr. Landon C. Rives, president; Drs. John F. Henry and Charles Woodward, vice-presidents ; Dr. R. P. Simmons, chair- man; C. Hatch, secretary ; Dr. John T. Shotwell, treas- urer; Dr. J. S. Dodge, librarian; Dr. Isaac Colby, curator of the herbarium ; Dr. A. Hermange, curator of the cabinet.

A society for discussing medical topics, the Ohio Medi- cal Lyceum, was accustomed to meet in the medical col- lege edifice about the years 1833-4. Its president at that time was Dr. John Eberle; Drs. Samuel D. Gross and Isaac Colby, vice-presidents; Dr. Richard Steele, corresponding secretary ; J. P. Arbuckle, recording secre- tary ; T. S. Pioneer, treasurer ; Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, orator for the year 1834.

A Medical Library association was formed in 1852 and a reading-room opened June 9, with the addresses of Dr. Drake upon the Early Physicians, Scenes, and Soci- ety of Cincinnati, and, on the following evening, upon the Origin and Influence of Medical Periodical Litera- ture and the Benefits of Public Medical Libraries. It is the former of these which we have copiously cited in the first part of this chapter. An attempt had been made many years before to found such a library in Cincinnati, but it had failed and the effort of 1852 met a like fate in the fullness of time.

At a meeting of physicians held in the lecture-room of Bacon's building, on the northwest corner of Sixth and Walnut streets, the Academy of Medicine of Cincinnati had its birth, March 5, 1857. Dr. J. B. Smith was chair- man; Dr. C. B. Hughes, secretary. A constitution was adopted, and the following named officers elected :

Dr. R. D. Mussey, president ; Drs. J. B. Smith and Robert R. McIlvaine, vice-presidents; Dr. C. B. Hughes, recording secretary; Dr. C. G. Comegys, corresponding secretary ; Dr. William Clendenin, treasurer; Dr. Jesse P. Judkins, librarian.

Meetings were held regularly in the same place till March 7, 1859, when the society removed to Dr. J. F. White's office, northwest corner of Fourth and Race, and thence on the sixth of February, 1860, to its hall in the Dental college on College street, between Sixth and Sev- enth. A proposition was made in 1858 for union with the Cincinnati Medical society and the Medico-Chirur- gical society, the objects of all being similar; but the movement did not succeed. The old medical society, however, expired no great while after the academy was organized. In 1869 the academy was incorporated, and Drs. McIlvaine, J. J. Quinn, and J. P. Walker were chosen trustees. It is still maintained, and includes in its membership nearly one hundred and fifty members, who are chiefly graduates of the Medical College of Ohio. Its meetings are weekly, on Monday evening, in the am- phitheatre of the Dental college.

A new Cincinnati Medical society was formed in 1874,

by about twenty seceders from the Academy, as the re- sult of a disagreement upon a point of medical ethics or etiquette. It also meets weekly, but only during the autumn, winter, and spring months.

A Miami Valley medical society, composed of physi- cians of Hamilton, Warren, and Clermont counties, was organized at a meeting in Loveland, June 13, 1877.

MEDICAL JOURNALISM.

In 1818-19 Dr. Daniel Drake, then a prominent phy- sician in Cincinnati, and about to found the Ohio medi- cal college, issued a prospectus for a journal of the pro- fession, and secured two or three hundred subscribers, but found the pressure of other duties too strong to al- low him to undertake its publication.

The first number of a medical organ in Cincinnati, however, saw the light in March, 1822, when the initial number of the Western Quarterly Reporter was issued. Dr. John P. Godman, who had just resigned the chair of surgery in the medical college, was its editor, and John P. Foote, publisher. It lasted through six numbers, when it expired, upon Dr. Godman's return to the East.

In the spring of 1826 Doctors Guy W. Wright and James M. Mason ventured into this field of journalism, starting a semi-monthly called the Ohio Medical Reposi- tory. At the end of the first volume the interest of Dr. Mason was transferred to Dr. Drake, and the title changed to the Western Medical and Physical Joural, and the publication made a monthly. At the end of another vol- ume Dr. Drake took sole charge of the magazine, greatly enlarging it, changed it to a quarterly, and made another change of name, this time expanding the title to the West- ern Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, and adding the motto, "e sylvis nuncius." He had presently an assistant editor in Dr. James C. Finley ; then Dr. Wil- liam Wood; and finally Drs. Harrison and Gross. When the medical department of Cincinnati college came to an end, in 1839, Dr. Drake took the journal with him to Louisville, and there merged it in the Louisville Journal of Medicine and Surgery, which became a permanent publication.

A semi-monthly periodical called the Western Medical Gazette was started by the Faculty of the Medical Col- lege in the fall of 1832, with Professors John Eberle, Thomas D. Mitchell, and Alban G. Smith as editors. It lasted only nine months at first; but was resuscitated and made a monthly five months afterward by Dr. Silas Reed, Dr. Samuel D. Gross being added to the editorial staff. In April, 1835, upon the completion of the second volume, the editors dissolved their connection with it, and it was consolidated with the Western Medical and Physical Journal.

In September of the same year Dr. James M. Mason issued the first number of a new Ohio Medical Reposi- tory, giving it the same name as the journal he had started with Dr. Wright in 1826. He printed it semi- monthly, but it hardly lasted a single year.

The Western Lancet, the original of the present Lan- cet and Clinic, was begun in 1842 by Dr. Leonidas M. Lawson, afterwards a professor in the Medical College of

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Ohio, and the surviving Nestor of the profession in Cincin- nati. He was sole proprietor and generally sole editor of the Lancet until 1855, when his interest was transferred to Dr. Thomas Wood. It was published monthly for many years as the Lancet and Observer; but in 1878 was con- solidated with The Clinic, and has since been known as The Lancet and Clinic, and is published as a weekly journal of medicine and surgery, edited by Drs. J. C. Culbertson and James G. Hyndman.

Dr. Hyndman was editor of the Clinic at the time of the merger. That paper had been issued weekly since 1871, in fourteen portly octavo volumes, which are now much esteemed in the profession. It was the first medi- cal weekly started in the western country.

The medical journals of 1859 in Cincinnati were The Lancet and Observer, The Medical News, The Cincin- nati Eclectic and Edinburgh Medical Journal, The Col- lege Journal of Medical Science, and the Physio-Medical Recorder.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE BENCH AND BAR.

PIONEER LAWYERS.

To Thomas Goudy is usually accorded the honor of being the first lawyer in Cincinnati. But it should not be forgotten that in the very first boat-load of Losanti- ville voyagers, among those who landed, as he himself testified much later, "on the twenty-eighth day of De- cember, 1788," was the most prominent lawyer and mag- istrate of Cincinnati's first decade. He was a worthy man to lead the long and distinguished roll of the bench and bar of the Queen City.

WILLIAM M'MILLAN

was born near Abingdon, Virginia, of Irish stock, the second of nine children. He was graduated at the renowned old college of William and Mary, and left it, as his nephew and eulogist, the late Hon. William M. Corry, said long after, "not only with the diploma, but with the scholarship of a graduate whose distinction became important to the institution and inore than re- flected her benefits." Until his removal to the Miami Purchase, he divided his attention between intellectual and agricultural pursuits. He was the first justice of the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, commis- sioned by Governor St. Clair for Hamilton county, in 1790, and was an active, energetic, public-spirited citizen here from the beginning. In 1799 he was elected as a representative of the county in the territorial legislature, and was chosen delegate of the territory in Congress after the resignation of General Harrison. While at Philadelphia, then the seat of Government, he was com- missioned United States district attorney for Ohio; but was prevented by declining health from assuming the duties of the office for more than a short time. He died

in Cincinnati in May, 1804. He had been one of the most zealous and influential members of Nova Cæsarea Harmony lodge, No. 2, of Free and Accepted Masons; and that lodge, nearly a quarter of a century after his decease, October 28, 1837, dedicated a monument to his memory, at which a glowing and eloquent eulogy was pronounced by William M. Corry, esq. We extract the following tribute to his merits as a lawyer :

During his professional career, there was no higher name at the western bar than William McMillan. Its accomplished ranks would have done honor to older countries; but it did not contain his superior. Some of our distinguished lawyers of that day were admirable public speakers: he was not. Some of them were able in the comprehension of their cases, and skilful to a proverb in their management. Of these he ranked among the first. His opinions had all the respectability of learning, precision, and strength. They commanded acquiescence; they challenged opposition when to obtain assent was difficult and to provoke hostility dangerous.

The succeeding remarks strongly and no doubt cor- rectly characterize the local bar of his day:

The profession in those times are conceded to have held high charac- ters for attainments and intellect. Their recorded history demonstrates the fact, and those who have 'survived to this day still reccive the trib- ute of unqualified praise for what they are, as well as what they were. It was not easy to obtain the district attorneyship in that day, when men were chosen and appointed to office from amongst formidable competitors by the test of honesty and capacity, as well as patriotism. The front rank of the law, then, as much as now, was inaccessible to the weak or the idle, and offices of gift went to the deserving, instead of the dishonest.

Judge Burnet, in his Notes on the Settlement of the Northwestern Territory, has this to say of Mr. McMillan :

He possessed an intellect of a high order, and had acquired a fund of information, general as well as professional, which qualified him for great usefulness in the early legislation of the territory. He was a na- tive of Virginia, educated at William and Mary, and was one of the first adventurers to the Miami valley. He was the son of a Seotch Presbyterian of the strictest order, who had educated him for the min- istry, and who was, of course, greatly disappointed when he discovered that he was unwilling to engage in that profession, and had set his heart on the study and practice of the law. After many serious discus- sions on the subject, the son, who understood the feelings and preju- dices of the father, at length told bim that he would comply with his request, but it must be on one condition-that he should be left at per- fect liberty to use Watts' version of the Psalms. The old gentleman was very much astonished, and rebuked his son with severity, but never mentioned the subject to him afterwards.

THOMAS GOUDY,

however, has undoubtedly the right to precedence as be- ing the first member of the legal profession who put out his shingle in Cincinnati. Indeed, he was here before Cincinnati was, coming, like McMillan, while the place was yet Losantiville, but later in the year 1789, it is said. In 1790 he was one of the settlers who formed Ludlow's Station, in what is now the north part of Cumminsville, and his name appears occasionally in the Indian stories of that period. Three years afterwards he was married to Sarah, sister to Colonel John S. Wallace. Among his children was the venerable Mrs. Sarah Clark, now resid- ing with Mr. Alexander C. Clark, her son, upon his farm in Syracuse township, north of Reading. Goudy's office was originally upon the corner of an out-lot, on the pres- ent St. Clair square, between Seventh and Eighth streets ; but he found it altogether too far out of town for a law- office. It was long abandoned, and came near falling a prey to the flames in the first fire that occurred in Cincin-

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nati-one that swept the out-lot of pretty much every- thing else upon it. This was the only building put up for several years upon the spacious tract between Sixth and Court streets, Main and the section line on the west, about where John street now is. The lots were then sur- rounded by a Virginia or "worm-fence."

SAMUEL FINDLAY.

Contemporary with McMillan and Goudy, as a Cin- cinnati lawyer, was Ezra Fitz Freeman; and early came also an attorney of reputation, of whom Judge Carter has the following pleasant recollections:

He was an intelligent man and a good lawyer; but he became fonder of politics, and engaging in them most earnestly and prosperously, he was sent to Congress from the Hamilton county district once or twice in the latter twenties. He was a first-rate man in every sense, and we are glad to put him down in our reminiscences, I remember him as I saw him and knew him in very boyhood-a burly, portly form, largely developed frontal head, adorned with sandy hair; and he had the mien and manners of a finished gentleman.

DANIEL SYMMES,

another early member of the Hamilton county bar, was a nephew of Judge Symmes and brother of Captain John Cleves Symmes, the advocate of the theory of concentric circles and polar voids. His father, Timothy Symmes, only full brother of the hero of the Miami Purchase, was himself judge of the inferior court of common pleas in Sussex county, New Jersey, but came west soon after his older brother, and was the pioneer at South Bend, where he died in 1797. Daniel was born at the ancestral home in 1772, graduated at Princeton college and came out with his father; was made clerk of the territorial court; studied law and practiced some years; after Ohio was admitted was a State senator from Hamilton county and speaker of the senate; upon the resignation of Judge Meigs from the supreme bench in 1804 was appointed to his place and held it until the expiration of the term, when he secured the post of register of the Cincinnati land office, and performed its duties until a few months before his death, May 10, 1817.

JACOB BURNET.

Judge Burnet has received incidentally so many other notices in this work that he need have but brief mention here. He was born in 1770 -- son of Dr. Burnet, of New Jersey, who distinguished himself in the Revolutionary war-and in 1796 followed his brother, Dr. William Burnet, to the hamlet in the wilderness opposite the mouth of the Licking, and here made his beginnings as a lawyer and magistrate. In about two years he was at the head of the legislative council for the Northwest territory-the man, scarcely beyond twenty-eight years old, who in influence and usefulness stood head and shoulders above all others in the first Territorial legisla- ture. His long and honorable career thereafter, ending only with his death in 1853, at an advanced old age, need not be recapitulated here. He retired from active practice in 1825. Judge Carter indulges in the following reminiscence of him :

Judge Jacob Burnet, as he was called, after he became a judge of the supreme court, was a very early lawyer of the Ohio bar. Having come to the city of Cincinnati from the State of New Jersey, toward the close of the last century, and engaging in very carly practice of the law in

our courts, and becoming one of the most expert and learned and able lawyers of the bar, he may justly be esteemed the pioneer lawyer of the old court-house, and his name deservedly stands at the head of the list of its members of the bar.

When the hapless Blennerhasset was to be tried as an accessory to the high treason of Aaron Burr, he was advised by the latter to employ in his defense Judge Burnet, and also Richard Baldwin, of Chillicothe. It was expected that the trials would occur in the State of Ohio. Blennerhasset followed the advice, and presently wrote to his wife: "I have retained Burnet and Baldwin. The former will be a host with the decent part of the citizens of Ohio, and the latter a giant of influence with the rabble, whom he properly styles his 'blood-hounds.'"

Some reminiscences of Judge Burnet's own, extracted from his Notes on the Settlement of the Northwestern Territory, will have interest here:

From the year 1796, till the formation of the State government in 1803, the bar of Hamilton county occasionally attended the general court at Marietta and at Detroit, and during the whole of that time Mr. St. Clair, Mr. Symmes, and Mr. Burnet never missed a term in either of those counties.

The journeys of the court and bar to those remote places, through a country in its primitive state, were unavoidably attended with fatigue and exposure. They generally traveled with five or six in company, and with a pack-horse to transport such necessaries as their own horses could not conveniently carry, because no dependence could be placed on obtaining supplies on the route ; although they frequently passed through Indian camps and villages, it was not safe to rely on them for assistance. Occasionally small quantities of corn could be purchased for horse feed, but even that relief was precarious, and not to be re- lied on.

In consequence of the unimproved condition of the country, the routes followed by travellers .were necessarily circuitous and their progress slow. In passing from one county seat to another, they were generally from six to eight, and sometimes ten, days in the wilderness. The country being wholly destitute of bridges and ferrries, travellers had therefore to rely on their horses, as the only substitute for those conve- niences. That fact made it common, when purchasing a horse, to ask if he were a good swimmer, which was considered one of the most valu- able qualities of a saddle horse. Strange as this may now appear, it was then a very natural inquiry.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THREE TO EIGHTEEN HUN- DRED AND TEN.

Mr. James McBride, in his Pioneer Biography, notes as the Cincinnati lawyers who were wont to attend the Butler county courts during and between these years, Judge Burnet, Arthur St. Clair, jr., Ethan Stone, Nicho- las Stone, Nicholas Longworth, George P. Torrence, and Elias Glover. He adds: "The bar was a very able one, and important cases were advocated in an elaborate and masterly manner."

ST. CLAIR AND HARRISON.

The "Mr. St. Clair" named in Judge Burnet's first par- agraph, was Arthur St. Clair, jr., son of Governor St. Clair, and a man of some ability, who came within two votes of defeating General Harrison at the first election, by the Territorial legislature, of a delegate to Congress. Harrison was also a lawyer, as well as doctor, farmer, sol- dier, and public officer, and sometimes appeared in a case; but won no distinction whatever at the bar. His chief prominence in the courts was simply as clerk of the Hamilton county court of common pleas, from which po- sition he was elected at one bound to the Presidency of the United States. His knowledge of the law, of course,

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was of much use to him in his various public and private employments.

Harrison was, it should be noted, one of the very few temperate lawyers and public men of his time. Judge Burnet recorded in his Notes many years afterwards that, of the nine lawyers that were contemporaries with him in his earlier days in Cincinnati, all but one went to drunkard's graves. It was an age, as we have seen else- where, of high conviviality and destructive good fellow- ship. Harrison's own son, it is said-the junior William Henry Harrison, a young lawyer of brilliant talents, elo- quent and witty-fell an early victim to intoxicants.

Apropos of the morality of the bar in the olden day, there is a tradition that two of the lawyers, named Clark and Glover, made full preparations to fight a duel over some personal or professional difference. The affair was settled without bloodshed, but not until one of them had pulled off his shoes, to fight the more conveniently in his stocking feet.

EARLY JUDGES.

Hon. A. H. Dunlevy, son of Judge Francis Dunlevy, of Columbia, in an address before the Cincinnati Pio- neer society, April 7, 1875, gave the following reminis- cences of the bench of 1804-5:

Among these early judges, besides my father, then the presiding judge, were Luke Foster, James Silver, I think, and Dr. Stephen Wood. Judge Goforth was also on the bench, but lived in the city. Here, too, I frequently met Judge John Cleves Symmmes. In the early part of court he was always thronged with purchasers of his lands, and I have seen him while supping his tea, of which he was excessively found, writing deeds or contracts, and talking with his friends and those who had business with him, all at the same time.

OTHER EARLY LAWYERS.

John S. Will, a native of Virginia, born in 1773, and admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one. In 1798 he went from Cincinnati to Chillicothe and attended the first session of the common pleas court of the territory there. In 1809 he removed to Franklinton, now a part of Columbus, and died there April 27, 1829. He was not an eminently successful attorney, and is said often to have appeared as defendant, rather than counselor and advocate, in actions for debt.

David Wade was more prominently identified with the early bar here. He was public prosecutor in 1809, and for a long time afterwards.

Moses Brooks came to Cincinnati in 1811, was at first an innkeeper, but studied law and was admitted to prac- tice. He abandoned the profession in 1830 from ill health, and became a successful merchant. He was also, as we have seen under another head, an occasional writer of some note for the press.

Nicholas Longworth came from Newark, New Jersey, to the west, and soon became a Cincinnati lawyer, but more for wealth than fame, and did not remain perma- nently in the profession. Judge Carter says :

He came to Cincinnati from Jersey in very early times and commenced operations as a shoemaker and afterwards studied law and was admit- ted to practice law at the earliest bar, but he did not practice law very much, though he was very capable and possessed an acute and astute mentality, and he was always a good and clever gentleman, as singular and eccentric as he was sometimes. His position as a lawyer affording him great facilities, he became mostly engaged in property specula- tions, and eventually became by far the largest real-estate holder in

this city and in the western country, and the richest man. He was, in a sense, the Crœsus of the west, for his wealth increased and increased so much in the great growth of Cincinnati that he hardly knew what to do with it, and certainly did not know all he owned. . For a rich man, though peculiar, particular, and eccentric, he was a good and clever man, in both the American and English sense.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 84

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