History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 99

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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A charming bit of poetry is infused into this other- wise dull record of the postal service, by the following extract from the journals for August, 1816, of Mrs. Charlotte Chambers Riske, formerly Mrs. Israel Ludlow, of Ludlow's Station. She writes :

I was awakened last night by the sound of distant music. The effect was enchanting. As it approached, images long since sunk in oblivion were restored, and produced harmonious and sublime associations. 1 arose to listen whence came the melody, and found that to Echo, tossed in rich undulations around the hills, I was indebted for the symphony. The mail-carrier, privileged to announce his coming with the bugle, was enjoying the fine effect of its clear note. The night was far ad- vanced, the moon was near the zenith, and profound was the silence in all quarters of the town.

THE MAILS PER WEEK

in 1815 were only nine. About seventy different news- papers and periodicals were taken at the Cincinnati officc, aggregating about three hundred and fifty sheets a week. A great number of public documents, however, was re- ceived here, and most of the eastern periodicals were taken.

In this year Major Ruffin, after more than fifteen years' administration of the postal affairs of the village, laid down his authority, which was transferred to "Father Burke," the old Methodist itinerant and presiding elder, afterward scceder from his church and proprietor of a meeting-house of his own, which he had bought of the pioneer Presbyterians, it being that in which they had first worshipped. In this he often preached; but was, withal, very much of a politician, at first a Jeffersonian, and finally a stalwart Jackson Democrat. He naturally turned to office-seeking after awhile; and was kept in office, under administrations of somewhat varient politics, for more than a quarter of a century, until, with the in- coming of the Whigs to power in 1841, the now old gen- tleman had to surrender his post to another. Mr. Elam P. Langdon was his deputy during much of this long period.

By 1826 the local mails had increased to twenty per week, carried, in part, upon ten stages-three on the Chillicothe route, three each on the Lebanon and the Dayton and Columbus routes, and one on the route to Georgetown, Kentucky. There were still ten horseback mails. The revenue of the office from postage that year was eight thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars, and the volume of correspondence passing through it may be inferred to some extent by the fact that three thousand seven hundred and fifty free letters were de- livercd during the same period.

In the spring of the next year a new line of stages was established by- way of Xenia, Urbana, Maysville and Bucyrus, to Lower Sandusky, where its mails were trans-

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ferred to a boat. Letters reached New York city by this route, eight hundred and thirty miles, in ten days. A daily line was also run to Wheeling, nearly over the sub- sequent line of the Cumberland or National road, reach- ing Baltimore in eight or nine days. The Odin roads were then accounted generally reliable and safe from May to November. During about the same time stages could be, and were, run from Cincinnati to Lexington, Ken- tucky, eighty miles.

In the fiscal year of the Government, 1828-9, the rev- enue of the Cincinnati office reached twelve thousand one hundred and fifty dollars, having increased fifty per cent. within three years. There were twenty-three mails weekly-eighteen on stages, and five horseback mails. At the close of the year, however, the number had in- creased to thirty-two, only three of which were carried on horseback. About forty years after that (1867-8) the receipts of the office had swelled to two hundred and sixty-four thousand five hundred and eighty-seven dollars and forty-seven cents. The expenditures for salaries, etc., exclusive of the cost of free delivery, sixty-two thousand three hundred and six dollars and six cents, leaving the net earnings of the office two hundred and two thousand two hundred and eighty-one dollars and fourteen cents. The receipts and disbursements of the money-order de- partment were each over half a million dollars. The letters received for delivery numbered nine million three hundred and eight thousand, and for distribution twenty- eight million. The amount of mail matter daily handled was about twenty-five thousand pounds. There were about one hundred employes, including carriers, a force working by night, so that the office was incessantly in action as it is now.

The revenue of the office in the year 1829-30 was six- teen thousand two hundred and fifty-one dollars; in 1833-4, fifty-one thousand two hundred and twenty-six dollars and seventy-one cents; in 1839-40, fifty-five thou- sand and seventeen dollars and thirty-two cents; and in 1840-1, forty-nine thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars and thirteen cents. By this time there were sixty mails a week to and from Cincinnati. The eastern went by way of Columbus and Wheeling; the southern on one route by steamer to Louisville, on another by stage to Georgetown and Lexington; the northern by Hamil- ton and Dayton; the Western by Indianapolis; and there were also Covington and Newport mails, Chillicothe via Hillsborough and Bainbridge, tri-weekly; to West Union tri-weekly, via Milford and Batavia; tri-weekly to Mays- ville, Kentucky, via New Richmond and Ripley; as often to Cynthiana, Kentucky, via Newport and Alexandria; weekly to Stillwell, by Mt. Healthy; weekly to Mont- gomery, via Walnut Hills; and tri-weekly to Lawrence- burgh, via Burlington, Kentucky.

THE OLD-TIME STAGING.

Some racy reminisences of this are given by that most graphic of writers, Mr. Charles Dickens, as he had ex- perience of it upon the roads of Ohio soon after the date last given. He was then upon his return from the west, after a previous visit to Cincinnati. He says in his American Notes :

We rested one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our journey to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage coach travelling, which, with those I have already glanced at, comprehend the main characteristics of this mode of transit in America, I will take the reader as our fellow passenger, and pledge myself to perform the distance with all possible despatch.

Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is dis- tant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, but there is a macadamized road (rare blessing!) the whole way, and the rate of trav- elling upon it is six miles an hour. We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric that it appears to be troubled with a tendency of blood to the head. Dropsical it certainly is, for it will hold a dozen passengers inside. But, wonderful to add, it is very clean and bright, being nearly new, and rattles through the streets of Cincinnati gaily.

Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, and luxu- riant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Sometimes we pass a field where the strong, bristling stalks of Indian corn look like a crop of walking sticks, and sometimes an enclosure where the green wheat is springing up among a labyrinth of stumps; the primitive worm fence is universal, and an ugly thing it is; but the farms are neatly kept, and, save for these differences, one might be travelling just now in Kent.

We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and holds it to the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever anyone to help him; there are seldom any loungers standing round, and never any stable-company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young horse; which is to catch him, harness him against his will, and put him in a stage coach without farther notice; but we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent strug- gle, and jog on as before again.

Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half- drunken loafers will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking-chairs, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade; they have not often anything to say, though, either to us or to each other, but sit there, idly staring at the coach and horses, 'The landlord of the inn is usually among them, and seems, of all the party, to be the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed, he is with reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach and passengers; whatever happens in his sphere of action, he is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind.

There being no stage coach next day, upon the road we wished to take, I hired an extra, at a reasonable charge, to carry us to Tiffin; a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stage coach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers, as the stage coach would, but was ex- clusively our own for the journey. To insure our having horses at the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the proprie- tors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole way through; and thus attended, and bcaring with us, besides, a ham- per full of savory cold meats, and fruit, and wine, we started off again, in high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next morning, very much de- lighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the roughest journey.

It was well for us that we were in this humor, for the road we went over that day was certainly enough to have shaken tempers that were not resolutely at set fair, down to some inches below stormy. At one time we were all flung together in a heap in the bottom of the coach, and at another we were crushing our heads against the roof. Now, one side was down deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers; and now it was rearing up in the air in a frantic state, with all four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, looking coolly back at it, as though they would say "unharness us. It can't be done." The drivers on these roads, who certainly got over the ground in a manner which is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking out of the window to see the coachman with the ends of a pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the lead- ers staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh and leaving them to settle there. The very slight- , est of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in the human

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body. It would be impossible to experience a similar set of sensations, in any other circumstances, unless, perhaps, in attempting to go up to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest approach to one's experience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels.

Still it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, and though we had left summer behind us in the west, and were fast leaving spring, we were moving towards Niagara and home. We alighted in a pleas- ant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager and our worst with the pigs who swarm in this part of the country like grains of sand on the sea- shore, to the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada, we went forward again gayly.

" As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a whecl would strike against an unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had enough to do to walk; as to shying, there was no room for that; and a herd of wild elephants could not have run away in such a wood, with such a coach at their heels. So we stumbled along quite satisfied.

THE LINE OF POSTMASTERS.

Following those we have named, came Major William Oliver, successor to Father Burke under the Whig ad- ministration in 1841. Then in 1845 General W. H. H. Taylor, with Mr. Elam P. Langdon still assistant. The city had now two carrier districts for penny postal delivery, with Fourth street as the dividing line. Mr. Joseph Haskell delivered mail matter to all residents to the north of it; Hiram Frazer to the south of the line. Mr. James C. Hall was postmaster in 1852.

From 1853 to 1859 Dr. John L. Vattier was post- master. The office had been long kept by Mr. Burke, and perhaps his successors, on West Third street, between Main and Walnut; but the doctor removed it to the Art building at the northwest corner of Fourth and Sycamore. In 1856, during his administration, the Government building on the southwest corner of Fourth and Vine was completed, and the office was removed to it, where it has since remained, now for just a quarter of a century. This building was sold, however, November 27, 1880, to the Cincinnati chamber of commerce for one hundred thousand dollars, to be occupied by the chamber upon its vacation by the Government, when the new Federal building on the north side of Fifth street, between Walnut and Main, shall be completed.

The Hon. James J. Faran, formerly member of Con- gress, became postmaster in 1859, with E. Penrose Jones as assistant, and William Winters, cashier. There were now eight carrier districts.

The successors of Mr. Faran have been Thomas H. Foulds (William Carey, assistant); Gustav R. Wahle (Joseph H. Thornton, assistant), and John P. Loge, who assumed the office in 1878, and is postmaster at this writing. He also continued Mr. Thornton in the post of assistant.

The Cincinnati office, in February, 1881, was handling about seventy thousand letters per day mailed in the city. The number of letters received daily was about one hunered thousand. In the handling of newspapers

and periodicals the city ranks next to New York and Chicago. The total receipts for 1880 were $520,676.27, against $472,733,03 in 1879. The expense of conduct- ing the office was 32.47 per cent of its income in 1880, against 34.48 in 1879, 34.54 in 1878, and 34.67 in 1877. Letters and postal cards to the number of 24,283,325 were mailed during the year; 24,956,336 newspapers, etc., to subscribers, and circulars and transient news- papers, etc., 13,803,380; packages of merchandise, 254, 770-a gain of fifteen per cent over 1879. The number of carriers employed in the city was eighty-one.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE LOCAL MILITIA .- THE FIRST APPOINTMENTS.

AMONG the earliest arrangements that were made in this part of the Ohio valley for government organization was provision for a militia force. During the visit of Governor St. Clair to Fort Washington, January 24, 1790, to erect the county of Hamilton and change the name of Losantiville to Cincinnati. Among the ap- pointments he made were those of a number of officers of the local militia-Israel Ludlow, John S. Gano, James Flinn, and Gershom Girard, to be captains; Francis Kennedy, John Ferris, Luke Foster, and Brice Virgin, lieutenants; Scott Traverse, Ephraim Kibby, Elijah Stites, and John Dunlap, ensigns. These provided for all the hamlets along the river in the Miami purchase, Columbia, Cincinnati, and North Bend. Gano and Flinn, for example, were of Columbia; Ludlow, of Cin- cinnati; and Virgin of North Bend. The other appoint- ments were similarly distributed.

Their companies, four in number, were to form the nucleus of the first regiment of militia of the county of Hamilton. On the seventh of December following Scott Traverse was promoted to lieutenant, vice Kennedy, resigned; and Robert Benham, the hero of a desperate Indian attack upon the site of Newport some years be- fore, was made ensign in the place of Traverse. Both of these were in Ludlow's company. December 10, 1791, a further organization of the battalion was effected by the appointment of Oliver Spencer as lieutenant colonel. Brice Virgin was at the same time made a captain, Daniel Griffin a lieutenant, and John Bowman an ensign, or second lieutenant.

MILITIA REGULATIONS.

Months before St. Clair came, the exigencies of the situation in a savage wilderness made necessary a spon- taneous and informal organization of citizens for war. Regulations were adopted at Columbia, and it is prob- able also at Cincinnati, requiring every adult male person to provide himself with a serviceable firearm, one pound each of powder and lead, sixty bullets, and six flints. He was obliged to keep his arms and equipments in good order, and to meet his fellows for parade, drill, and the

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manual exercise, twice a week. If a gun was fired after sunset it was to be considered a signal of alarm, upon which every man must equip himself and repair to the place of rendezvous.

Similar provisions, indeed, for the protection of the settlements were made by the Territorial laws. In Au- gust, 1788, among the very first laws passed by the governor and judges at Marietta, was one providing for the armament of all male inhabitants over sixteen years of age, and that they should meet every Sunday fore- noon at the places appointed for public worship, there to be inspected and drilled. It was further directed, by a law of July 2, 1791, that every person enrolled in the Territorial militia should arm himself whenever he at- tended public worship, "as if marching to engage the enemy," on penalty of a fine.

BATTALION ORDERS.

After his resignation from the United States army, General Harrison was made chief officer of the Territo- rial militia, with headquarters at Cincinnati. The follow- ing order, with a private note to General (then Colonel) John S. Gano, emanated from him:

CINCINNATI, September 24, 1798. General Orders:

The secretary of the Territory, now vested with all the powers of governor and commander in chief of the same-will, on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth instant, review the First battalion of militia of Hamilton county. The battalion is to be formed for this purpose at three o'clock, on some convenient spot of ground near to Major Ludlow's.

Arthur St. Clair, jr., and Jacob Burnet will act as aids-de-camp to the commander in chief on this occasion, and arc to be respected and obeyed accordingly.

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Commander in Chief Militia Northwest Territory.

Will Colonel Gano please to fill up the blank in the above order with the hour which he may think most convenient, and let me know the one fixed on. W. H. H.

Lieutenant Colonel Gano, commander First battalion Hamilton county militia.

Another battalion order, dated May 13, 1799, and published in the Spy and Gazette four days afterwards, proclaimed that-

The lieutenant colonel again calls on the officers of every grade to exert themselves in exercising and teaching the men the necessary ma- nœuvres as laid down in Baron Steuben's Institutes, etc. And it is hoped that the delay of the battalion may have a good effect; that is, that the indicated farmers may have time to put in their summer crops, and the indicated officers, at their company parades, may improve their men in exercising them, so that they may be distinguished when the bat- talion is formed, which will be on the Fourth of July, next.

By order

DANIEL SYMMES, Lieutenant and Adjutant.

The "glorious Fourth" rolled around in the fullness of time; and "Spectator" makes report to the Spy that "the battalion paraded accordingly;" that "two or three companies on foot were in uniform, and a troop of horse, about thirty in number, mostly so also, the whole being reviewed by his excellency, William Henry Harrison, governor of the territory pro tempore."

The militia of the village and county came in a few years to number about eight hundred, organized in five companies, one of which was light infantry. James Smith-"Sheriff Smith"-is said to have been captain of the first light infantry company raised in Cincinnati,

which was probably this one. He was afterwards pay- master in the First regiment, Third detachment, Ohio militia, in the War of 1812. The five companies above mentioned composed an odd battalion, attached to the First brigade, First division, Ohio militia. They were re- quired to occupy two days in the spring for muster and training, and four days in the fall, two of which were de- voted to a school of instruction for the officers.

"HEADS UP!"

The following notice appeared in the Spy and Gazette for July 16, 1800:

HEADS UP, SOLDIERS !

Those gentlemen who wish to join a volunteer light infantry company are requested to meet at Mr. Yeatman's tavern.

The company was accordingly organized, and was that commanded by Sheriff Smith, as before noted. There seems to have been a little of the holiday soldier about its members, for a subsequent notice in the Spy reads: "In consequence of rain, the muster, etc., of the Cincin- nati light infantry is postponed."

GENERAL FINDLAY.

In August, 1804, General James S. Findlay, of Cin- cinnati, received his election in the First division of Ohio militia; which was the occasion of the following letter from Governor Tiffin to General Gano, commander of the division :

CHILLICOTHE, August 3r, 1804.

DEAR GENERAL-I have just received yours of the twenty-eighth inst., enclosing the returns of General Findlay's election, and herewith you will receive his commission. I am glad to hear you are now nearly completing your very laborious task of organizing your division. Do pray push forward with the same zeal and industry you have uni- formly manifested until it is completed. If you knew the trouble and plague I have with other divisions you would pity me, and --

Yours, very respectfully, EDWARD TIFFIN. IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

the local militia consisted of the Cincinnati light dra- goons, our old friends the light infantry, and the Cincin- nati. The Gazetteer of that year says: "'I'hese compa- nies are organized within the corporation, are handsomely uniformed, and are well acquainted with military tactics. Their appearance is nowise inferior to the European militia."

The biography of Mr. William Robson, Queen City militia man of the ancient days, prepared for Cincinnati, Past and Present, includes the following reminiscences :

It may not be amiss to give, at this point, his reminiscences of the old-time drill in Cincinnati. When about eighteen years old-in 1821 -he was ordered out to drill with the men, and the grotesque figure that they cut with their implements of warfare made an indelible im- pression upon his mind, which, we apprehend, was imbued with a keen sense of the ridiculous. It appears that the State was either too poor to furnish them with firearms, or else withheld them for fear they would hurt themselves; and so their only weapons were sticks and cornstalks. The commons on which the muster took place extended from Walnut street to Plum street, and from Seventh street to Hamilton road. There were then but two or three houses on the land within these lim- its. One of there was a public house kept by "Mother Mohawk," called the "Hop Yard," on Plum street, west of what is now Washing- ton park. This was the great place for holding Dutch balls on Satur- day nights; and was principally frequented by the hatters and butchers, who generally indulged in a free fight when a considerable number be- longing to each fraternity would meet, the object being to get posses- sion of the ranch and girls. On one occasion the regiment was being

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formed under the command of Colonel Z. Biggs, where the canal runs east and west. The colonel was dressed in blue cloth coat, with large yellow facings, and was mounted on a very spirited horse. Non-com- batants had assembled in large numbers to witness the manœuvres of the nondescript soldiers and add interest to the frolicking day, when the colonel gave the order for them to "swing" so that the regiment would front to the westward. This order, according to one of the rank and file, was "obeyed right gallantly." But the Independent Press, under the following lines:

" Charge! charge! with mutual voice they cry, And rush to battle bloody ___ "

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 99

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