History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 7

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

fluous wealth. Their wants were few and simple, within the easy reach of every- one; their ambition brought them no heart-burnings, no twinges of conscience, and none of that pitiable despair which what we may call that higher sphere in the cir- cles so often brings -where there are no medicines to minister to a mind diseased.

THE MODERN SCENE.

All these conditions existed here within the comparatively short period of a hun- dred years. What a change has a century wrought! Judge Symmes, Benjamin Stites, the veteran Gen. St. Clair, "Mad Anthony Wayne, " when he came to break the backbone of the Indian confederation, and scores of others who attained distinc- tion, witnessed the evolutions of the log cabin. Gen. William Henry Harrison, who afterward became President of the United States, lived in one of these primitive hovels and felt thankful that he had such a shelter. In those early days no thought ever crossed his mind that he would occupy the White House and administer the laws of the Republic. To-day there are hundreds living in Cincinnati whose ances- tors once lived in the cabins which dotted the hills and dales of Hamilton county. While living in those humble domiciles they laid the foundation of their future pros- perity, and contributed their mite toward founding the great and wealthy city which is now recognized as the central mart of trade and enterprise in the Ohio Valley.

Could the red man return and gaze from the heights upon the bustling scene beneath, he would fully realize the force of his first convictions when he read the destiny of his race in the curling smoke of the log cabin. The mighty forests which were once the crowning glory of these heights, have nearly all disappeared to make room for elegant modern homes, and where the majestic oaks once stood in the valley beneath, tall church spires now point toward heaven, to remind man of the possibili- ties of eternal blessedness, and the moral force which is controlled by those mighty agencies-education and civilization.

CHAPTER V.

CINCINNATI, PAST AND PRESENT.

[A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH, BY W. H. VENABLE, LL.D.]

INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE-FIRST ACCOUNTS OF THE MIAMI COUNTRY-OHIO UNDER FRENCH RULE-UNDER ENGLISH RULE-THE ORDINANCE OF 1784-THE ORDINANCE OF 1787-THE OLD NORTHWEST-THE OHIO LAND COMPANY OF MASSACHUSETTS-SETTLEMENT OF MARI- ETTA-THE MIAMI PURCHASE-SETTLEMENT OF COLUMBIA-LOSANTIVILLE-LOCATION OF CINCINNATI-PRIMITIVE CINCINNATI-AGRICULTURE CREATES CINCINNATI-DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCE-MANUFACTURING IN CINCINNATI-STATISTICAL VIEW OF CINCINNATI IN 1825-THEN. AND NOW-A RICH CITY-A COSMOPOLITAN CITY-A CENTER OF EDUCATION -- A UNIQUE AND PICTURESQUE CITY-THE SUBURBS-THE STREETS AND BUILDINGS-THE PEOPLE OF CINCINNATI; THEIR NUMBER, CHARACTERISTICS AND AMUSEMENTS-CONCLUSION.

T' "HIS sketch is in process of preparation while the "World's Columbian Exposi- tion" is in the full tide of its mid-progress, in Chicago. The stupendous Fair commemorates the greatest event in modern history, the discovery of America, which occurred four centuries ago. But more than one hundred years elapsed from the date of the voyage of Columbus to the time when the first permanent set- tlement of Englishmen was made on the continent. Jamestown was founded in 1607, and the Pilgrim Fathers did not land at Plymouth until 1620. The white population of the British American colonies, two hundred years ago, was less than the population of the city of Cincinnati is now. While nearly four centuries have rolled away since the caravels of the great Genoese captain first furled sail on the

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

borders of the New World, we should not forget that it is within a period of about two hundred years that the growth and development of the parts now called the United States of America, mainly fall. The history of Cincinnati, and of Ohio, covers little more than one hundred years - but what years! The people of the United States, in 1876, celebrated the Nation's birthday, by holding a grand Expo- sition in Philadelphia. The people of Ohio and the central States, in 1888, signal- ized the hundredth anniversary of the organization of the Old Northwest, and of the adoption of the National Constitution, by a magnificent Exhibit lasting one hun- dred days, held in Cincinnati. It is of this Queen City, the metropolis of the Ohio Valley, that the present chapter treats, mainly from a historical and descriptive point of view.

FIRST ACCOUNTS OF THE MIAMI COUNTRY,

The beautiful region lying between the lower course of the rivers Little Miami and Big Miami, and bordered on the south by the Ohio, was famed, long before the days of the Revolutionary war, for its rich productiveness and its lovely scenery. The enterprising Virginians, who organized the Ohio Land Company of 1749, sent their agent, the wood-wise scout and surveyor, Christopher Gist, the comrade of Washington, to explore the valley of the Ohio, in the year 1750. Gist traversed Ohio, crossing the Scioto and other streams and reached the Miami Country near the middle of March, 1751. The bold pioneer was enchanted with the richness and beauty of the Big Miami valley, in which he beheld " the fairest meadows that ever can be." He waded in deep grass, and remarked that white clover grew abundantly, and that herds of buffaloes were feeding in the open fields. His journal tells of " fine, rich, level land, well timbered with large walnut, oak, sugar-trees, cherry, etc., well watered with a great number of little streams," and abounding in "tur- keys, deer, elks, and most sorts of game, particularly buffaloes." It is more than probable that, in the spring of 1751, now more than one hundred and thirty years ago, the moccasins of Capt. Gist trod the hills and plains destined to be the site of the city of Cincinnati. Nor was it far from the same tempting region that Daniel Boone, twenty-seven years later, in 1788, against his will passed up the valley of the Little Miami, a prisoner of the Indians, forced to go to Old Chillicothe near where Xenia now stands.

OHIO UNDER FRENCH RULE.

The conflicting claims of England and France for dominion in the interior of the continent were settled by the sword in what is known as the French and Indian war, which began in 1753 and ended in 1760. This was the war in which Wash- ington won his first laurels, in which Braddock's defeat occurred, and in which both Montcalm and Wolfe were slain. We have told how, in 1750-51, Gist under the direction of an English Land Company crossed the Ohio on an expedition of discovery. The French government, in 1752, formally declared that the Ohio and its tributaries belonged to France, by virtue of the discoveries of La Salle. War followed, ending in the conquest of New France. In 1763 France ceded to Eng- land her possessions east of the Mississippi. The French claimed jurisdiction over Louisiana, including the Ohio Valley, for a period of eighty-three years, from 1682 to 1763.

UNDER ENGLISH RULE.

From the close of the Old French war, 1763, to the Treaty of Paris, which closed the Revolutionary war, in 1783, a period of twenty years, Great Britain held possession of North America, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. During the war settlement went on steadily to western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and central Kentucky. In 1790 the State of Kentucky had a population of 73,677.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

THE ORDINANCE OF 1784.

The period between 1783 and 1789, from the Treaty of Paris to the adoption of the constitution, has been well named the critical period in America's history, for it was a time of transition, anxiety and uncertainty. Soon after the conclusion of peace, and in anticipation of the assumption by the general government of the western lands, Thomas Jefferson proposed to Congress a plan for the organization of the public lands.

This plan is known as the Ordinance of 1784. It proposed to divide all the western country into seventeen divisions or States, ten of which, on the north side of the Ohio, were to be named Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Arsenisipia, Metro- potamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washingtonia, Polypolamia and Plisipia. The Ordin- ance of 1784 did not accomplish its design, but the discussion of it prepared the way for Congress to consider the famous organic law of 1787, which determined the. destinies of the old Northwest.

THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.

The year 1787 gave to the American people two famous national documents, the Constitution of the United States and the Ordinance organizing the Territory northwest of the Ohio river. The constitutional convention, over which Washing- ton presided, and of which Franklin was a member, first met in May, 1787, at Philadelphia, and, after four months' deliberation, produced what Gladstone calls " the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," namely, the Constitution.

While the Federal convention was in session at Philadelphia, the Continental Congress held its last meeting at New York, and demonstrated its wisdom by fram- ing and enacting the body of law named the Ordinance of 1787. Of this celebrated State paper the profound Webster said: "We are accustomed to praise the law- givers of antiquity; we help perpetuate the fame of Lycurgus and Solon; but I doubt whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787. We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, per - haps, while the Ohio shall flow." This was uttered in 1830, and could Webster reappear now, and review the accomplished results of the law, his quoted words would but feebly express the truth. Five great States, with their innumerable farms, towns, cities, are the flower and fruitage of the Ordinance of 1787. Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and a score of other noble cities owe much of their pros- perity to the wise provision of this inspired organic law.

THE OLD NORTHWEST.

What was the territory organized under the Ordinance of 1787, and now dis- tingnished as the old Northwest? How extensive was it and where were its bounda- ries? It was the original "public domain " of the country, our first public or government lands. The entire area was 265,878 square miles. It included the land now embraced by the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, a considerable part of Minnesota, and a small corner of Pennsylvania.

THE OHIO LAND COMPANY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

The white population of the United States in 1787 was 3,800,000, about the present population of Ohio. The territory north of the Ohio was mainly savage woodland, the abode of deer, bears and buffaloes, and was roamed over by wild Indians whose rude villages were scattered here and there in rich valleys. The only white people in the Ohio country were a few traders and hunters, and a few captives taken by the red men in border war. The heroic Moravians were destroyed or

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

driven from the settlements on the Tuscarawas the very year that gave origin to the Constitution and the Ordinance of 1787.

But the time had now come for the Saxon race to take possession of Ohio, and to establish permanent States there. The eye of speculation had long been fixed with impatient desire upon the wide acres between the Great Lakes and the Beauti- ful River. To a friend in Paris, Col. Pickering wrote in April, 1783: "A new plan is in contemplation-no less than forming a new State westward of the Ohio." In the autumn of 1785, Gen. Benjamin Tupper, authorized by Congress, went from Massachusetts to the Ohio country, prospecting, and after his return he told what he had seen and heard to Gen. Rufus Putnam, and the result was the organization of a land company to buy and settle new lands in the " far west." The company chose Rufus Putnam, Mannasseh Cutler and Samuel H. Parsons, directors, and it was through the agency of Cutler that a purchase of land was negotiated with the National Congress at New York. William F. Poole truly says: "The Ordinance of 1787 and the Ohio purchase were parts of one and the same transaction. The purchase would not have been made without the Ordinance, and the Ordinance would not have been enacted except as an essential condition of the purchase." The Ordi- nance was enacted on July 13, and the land purchase completed on July 27, 1787. The purchase was located north of the Ohio river, west of the seven ranges, and east of the Scioto. The extent of the purchase was 5,000,000 acres, and the price paid for it $3,500,000, payable in public securities, equivalent to eight or nine cents an acre.

SETTLEMENT OF MARIETTA.

The first settlement made on the land of the Ohio Company, or in Ohio, was at Marietta, just east of the mouth of the Muskingum, and opposite Fort Harmar, an outpost built in 1785. The settlers landed April 17, 1788. The settlement of this first town in Ohio was nearly coincident with the establishment of a governmental administration for the newly organized territory. Territorial officers were elected by Congress, October 5, 1787, as follows: Governor, Gen. Arthur St. Clair; judges, James M. Varnum, Samuel H. Parsons, John Cleves Symmes; secretary, Winthrop Sargent. Governor St. Clair reached Fort Harmar July 9, 1788, and on the 15th he took formal charge of his office. Soon afterward he and the judges organized the territorial government in accordance with the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787; laws were issued, courts were established, churches and schools were put into operation, and New England industry soon caused the wilderness to be transformed. Thus began the State of Ohio, whose extent, at the time of organization was nearly 300,000 square miles, stretching westward to the Mississippi and beyond. Not until fifteen years later, in 1802, was it that the present State of Ohio was established.

THE MIAMI PURCHASE.

The New England colony, planted at the mouth of the Muskingum, grew to be the fair city of Marietta; but it was reserved for a settlement began near the mouth of the Little Miami, seven months after the founding of Marietta, to expand and develop into the metropolis of the Ohio Valley. Few, indeed, are the streams of a comparatively level region, that can rival the Little Miami for tranquil beauty; it may be called the Arno of Ohio; and the valley through which it flows is an agri- cultural paradise. The many attractions of this virgin valley were known to the red tribes who sought its hilly nooks in which to build their villages; and the enthusi- astic tongue and pen of Capt. Gist had detailed the charms of the place nearly forty years before the first fixed settlement was made within its limits.

As early as the year 1786, the year in which Putnam and Tupper were organiz- ing the Ohio Company to purchase lands on the Muskingum, Maj. Benjamin Stites, a native of New Jersey, brought down the Ohio river from Red Stone, Pennsylvania,

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

a flatboat laden with flour and whiskey, which valuable freight he sold to the inhabitants of Limestone or Maysville, Kentucky. High excitement was prevailing at the time, among the Kentucky pioneers, on account of late depredations of Indians who had stolen many horses. A company of whites was collected to go in pursuit of the red thieves, and Maj. Stites, keen for any adventure, joined the party as a volunteer, and became its leader. Following the trail of the Indians, the pursuers came to the Ohio at a point nearly opposite the mouth of the Little Miami, and then crossed to the Ohio, or " Indian side," of the river, a locality so often drenched in the blood of savage warriors that it came to be called the " Miami Slaughter House." Still tracking the flying horse-thieves the Kentuckians went up the Little Miami to Old Town or Old Chillicothe, an Indian village north of where Xenia now stands; thence they went westward to the Big Miami, and down south- ward by way of Mill creek valley, to the Ohio. This excursion, which happened in summer, enabled Maj. Stites to see and examine delectable valleys of both Miamis, with their deep, rich soil, and magnificent natural growth of forest and grass, which had so taken the eye of Gist in 1751. Stites wisely concluded that the sooner he cast his own lot in this land of more than promise, the better. Well for him and for his happy descendants, still living in plenty in the region, that he did so. Like Benjamin Tupper, this equally enterprising Benjamin was seized with the fever of land speculation. We are told by good authorities that the courageous Major walked from Ohio to the city of New York, where Congress was in session, to confer with Hon. John Cleves Symmes, then a member of Congress from Trenton, and to propose the purchase of lands in the West. The prospect of profit from an early purchase, like a swift contagion, worked in the imagination of Symmes, who immediately went to the Miami Country himself, and by the testimony of his own senses verified the report of Stites. Symmes returned to the East, a company was formed of twenty-four men, among whom were Symmes, Jonathan Dayton, Elias. Boudinot, Dr. Witherspoon, and Benjamin Stites. In his own name Symmes petitioned Congress for a grant of 2,000,000 acres of land, to be located within designated boundaries; but when surveyed the tract was found to contain only 600,000 acres, of which 20,000 acres were sold to Maj. Stites. The grant by Con- gress was signed October 22, 1787, and the transfer to Stites was made November 9, 1787. On December 7, 1787, Stites purchased 10,000 acres more, making in all a snug farm of 30,000 acres of Miami valley, for the Major.

The reader will bear in mind that when the Territorial government of Ohio was organized, at Marietta, October 5, 1787, John Cleves Symmes was chosen one of the judges. The Miami purchase was consummated three months after the Mus- kingum purchase, and both were taken possession of in the following year, 1788.

SETTLEMENT OF COLUMBIA.

Maj. Benjamin Stites, anxious to take possession of his 30,000-acre farm on the Miami, induced a number of bold adventurers from Pennsylvania to join him, and, in the summer of 1788, he descended the waters of the Monongahela and Ohio, on a "broad-horn " boat, arriving at Limestone (Maysville), Kentucky, in July. At this point the migrating company made a stock of clapboards to roof their antici- pated cabins, and completed other plans for settling in the wilderness. Thirty of the band signed an article of agreement, but several seem to have backed out, deterred from venturing their lives in the "Miami Slaughter House," by the rumor of fresh danger from the Indians. On the 16th of November, 1788, Maj. Stites with a party of twenty-six persons, including four women and two boys, embarked at Maysville, and started down the river to seek their future homes. They landed a little after sunrise, on the morning of November 18, somewhat below the mouth of the Little Miami, at a spot nearly in front of the present residence of Athan Stites, now within the limits of Columbia, a part of the corporation of Cincinnati. It is

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

said that the first to plant foot upon the shore was Hezekiah Stites, brother to Ben- jamin. According to Rev. Ezra Ferris, the company, "after making fast the boats, ascended the steep bank and cleared away the underbrush in the midst of a paw- paw thicket, when the women and children sat down. They next placed senti- nels at a small distance from the thicket, and having first united in a song of praise to Almighty God, upon their knees they offered thanks for the past, and prayer for future protection." This devout and pious scene, in the paw-paw thicket, near the shore of the Ohio, furnishes a study for some Cincinnati artist to immortalize in a painting. The bold brush of C. T. Webber would do it justice. Blockhouses were erected as promptly as possible, for the storage of goods, and the protection of the women and children, and thus was begun the settlement of Columbia, the nucleus of a great city.

The first county erected in Ohio was named after Washington, and its capital was Marietta; the second, with Cincinnati for its seat of government, was called Hamilton, after the wise and honored federal statesman.

It will be appropriate here to give a complete list of the names of the first settlers of Columbia: James H. Bailey, Zephu Ball, Jonas Ball, James Bowman, Edward Baxton, W. Coleman, Benjamin Davis, David Davis, Owen Davis, Samuel Davis, Francis Dunlevy, Hugh Dunn, Isaac Ferris, John Ferris, James Flinn, Gabriel Foster, Luke Foster, John S. Gano, Wm. Newell, John Phillips, Jonathan Pitman, Benj. F. Rudolph, James Seward, William Goforth, Daniel Griffin, Joseph Grose, John Hardin, Cornelius Hurley, David Jennings, Henry Jennings, Levi Jen- nings, Ezekiel Larned, John McCullough, John Manning, James Matthews, Aaron Mercer, Elijah Mills, Ichabod B. Miller, Patrick Moore, Wm. Moore, John Morris, Benjamin Stites, Thomas C. Wade, John Web, Mr. Wickersham, Daniel Griffin.

The settlers passed through the usual hardships of backwoods life, beset with danger from savages, droughts and floods. The rifle was always at hand, in the cabin home, in the field, and at meetings on Sunday. In the winter and spring of 1788-89, the supply of food gave out, and the pioneers subsisted on wild game, and the bulbous root of the bear grass. There was abundance of fish in the rivers, and Turkey Bottom was so named from the fact that plenty of wild turkeys frequented it. This same Turkey Bottom, the flats of the Miami, which now produce annual crops of corn, was cultivated in prehistoric years, by the savages; and the white settlers by a more careful tillage made it bring over a hundred bushels of corn to the acre, the first year it was broken by the plow.

LOSANTIVILLE.

Matthias Denman, of New Jersey, purchased of Judge Symmes, in January, 1788, a tract lying on the north side of the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Licking, for which he paid 663 cents per acre, in Continental certificates, or about $125 for the entire plat. In the summer he visited his purchase, designing to lay out a town and establish a ferry across the Ohio. Meeting with Col. Robert Patterson at Mays- ville, and John Filson at Lexington, Denman discussed his projects with them and proposed a partnership which was accepted, and on the 25th of August the three men entered into an agreement by which they became joint proprietors of the town plat. Sometime in September, Filson, who understood surveying, marked out a road from Lexington to the proposed settlement. Filson it was also who invented the name Losantiville, as an appropriate designation for the station the proprietors were about to locate. The word was intended to signify "the town opposite the mouth of the Licking." The hybrid compound is thus explained: The initial L stands for Licking, the syllable os is Latin for mouth, anti means opposite, and ville is French for town-L-os-anti-ville. Much ridicule has been heaped upon Filson for bestowing this pedantic name upon the infant village which, two years later, was rechristened by Governor St. Clair. According to Col. Jones, a story is

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

related of St. Clair, to the effect that when he arrived near Losantiville, standing on the roof of the boat, looking at the cluster of cabins, he asked " What in the hell is the name of this town anyhow?" The bluff general changed the name to Cin- cinnati, which, though historically significant, is also pedantic, and open to the objection that it may be translated either as a genitive singular or a nominative plural-of Cincinnatus or Cincinnatuses. Doubtless St. Clair was thinking of the "' Society of the Cincinnati," rather than of the curly-haired Roman who left his plow in the furrow and went to join the army. One cannot help thinking that the beautiful Indian name " Miami " would have been a more fitting name for the town than either Losantiville or Cincinnati. There is a handsome brick edifice on one of our streets which the owner had the historical fancy to name "The Losantiville."

Before much progress had been made toward planning or surveying the town plat, Filson's life came to a mysterious termination. While wandering alone in the Miami woods, he is supposed to have been killed by Indians. Robert Clark has an old schoolbook, once the property of a brother of the murdered man, in which is an inscription recording that "This book was the property of my brother John Filson who was killed by the Indians." Some of the direct kindred of Filson now reside in Gallipolis, Ohio. The Cincinnati street, now called Plum, was originally named Filson avenue. Filson was a man of ability and education, a diligent explorer in Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio, the first historian of Kentucky, and the first to prepare an authentic map of that State. The historical investigators of Louisville have named a very important society "The Filson Club," in his honor, and it would be fitting that some lasting work of architecture or other art should be dedicated to his memory in Cincinnati. One of our artists has sketched on canvas a spirited picture of Filson and his partners discussing the plan of the town they were about to found, and the suggestion is here ventured that the public or some public- spirited citizen might do the city a service by providing means for the completion of this design on a large scale.

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History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 7

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1592

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592