USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 101
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The place was visited with an extensive fire on the afternoon of Friday, May 14, 1880, during the preva- lence of a brisk breeze, which spread the flames rapidly. No fire-engine was at hand, but assistance sent from Hamilton and Cincinnati finally quelled the conflagia- tion. The loss was about thirty thousand dollars. A further loss of twenty-five thousand dollars was exper- ienced by a fire August 17, 1880.
The village was laid out in 1852. Among the first to settle there this year and the next, were Messrs. Robert and Henry Clarke, Mr. Glenn, Benjamin Stenell, Fenton Lawson, and Robert Crawford. Not long after them came Hon. Stanley Matthews, Anthony Harkness, esq., Elliott, and others; and in later years it has been the home of the Hon. Warner M. Bateman, Judge J. Cilley, Florien Grauque, and many other well-known Cincinnat- ians.
The chief public institution of Glendale, is the Female college. This, as before stated, occupies the original hotel building in the place. The following paragraphs of its history are extracted from an address by its presi- dent, the Rev. Dr. Potter, at the quarter century re- union, June 12, 1879.
This institution was founded by Rev. John Covert, A. M., in Sep- tember, 1854, and named by him "The American Female College." Mr. Covert and his accomplished lady, Mrs. Covert, who received her education at two of the institutions of eastern New York, had been connected with an institution in that State, subsequently founded a seminary in Ohio, near Columbus, and still later founded and conduct- ed the Ohio Female college, at College Hill. In April, 1856, he transferred this institution to Rev. J. G. Monfort, D. D., Rev. S. S. Potter, and Rev. L. D. Potter, who assumed the possession and man- agement on the fifteenth of May, five weeks before the close of the second collegiate year. We changed the name next year to "Glendale Female College." All of the party just named and their wives had had con- siderable experience as practical teachers. Your speaker, though the youngest of the three, had had, however, a long experience, having been connected, in some capacity, for ten years, with some interrupt- ions, as scholar, teacher, or principal in boarding institutions, similar in character to this. Madame C. Rive and her sister, now Mrs. Kitchell, were already here, having come with Mr. Covert from College Hill. Mrs. McFerson, our lady principal for five years, and who is with us to-day, having given up her seminary in Bloomington, Indi- ana, joined us in September following. During the latter part of the
summer vacation of 1856 a fire occurred, cause unknown, which de- stroyed the chapel, a music building with its contents, and other structures of lesser importance. The work of reconstructing the chapel, and of the addition of a better music building attached to the main building, was immediately commenced. The session was opened, how- ever, at the time appointed, and continued until the new buildings were finished, though with many inconveniences on account of room, as many of the old scholars present remember. Rev. S. S. Potter left us in 1860, and Mrs. McFerson in 1861. Rev. J. G. Wilson, now United States Consul at Jerusalem, became connected with us in 1861, but left in 1862. Dr. Monfort left in 1865, after a successful adminis- tration as president for nine years, at the end of which time the college seemed to have become settled upon a secure and permanent basis. The steam-heating aparatus, quite a novelty at the time, was intro- duced in the summer of 1856, and various improvements to the grounds and buildings have since been added from year to year. The number of scholars has been tolerably uniform from the beginning, with three exceptions-1. During the first years, when our public school was small and ungraded, the number of day scholars was much larger than it has been since ; 2. During the first two years of the war our num- bers were greatly diminished ; and, 3. From 1871 to 1875, after the late financial crisis commenced, we were crowded almost beyond what our accominodations would warrant.
When the college was opened there was no church building in the place, and the Presbyterian church was organized in this chapel in 1855. The citizens generally, without respect to denominational pref- erences, worshipped with us in this house for the first six years-the worship being conducted by ministerial members of the faculty. The Presbyterian, Catholic, New Jerusalem, and Episcopal churches were subsequently erected in the order named.
So far as I am aware, we were the first institution, east or west, to adopt the regular classification and a fourfold division of studies, in the form and under the designation historically known as applied to col- leges for males-freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. We have been followed by many others, so that now it has become common. Of the two hundred and one, exclusive of those who graduated yesterday, only eleven, in these twenty-five vears, have been called into the eternal world. All of them, we have reason to believe, died in the triumph of faith, and several of them were uncommonly bright examples of Chris -. tian piety and character. Of those who remain, I have recorded seventy-four as having been especially commended to us for taking a lead- ing part and prominent positions in the churches and the higher walks of society in the places where their lot has been cast; seventy-three have been teachers for a longer or shorter period; thirteen have distinguished themselves as authors and writers; seven have married professors in our higher institutions, and forty-six have married gentlemen in one of the learned professions. Several of these husbands (no doubt owing largely to the influence of their wives, as is usually the case) have risen to emi- nence in the army, in their professions, and in other positions; one a justice in the United States supreme court, one a United States minis- ter to one of the foreign missions of the first class, others in the coun- cils of the States or of the United States, and others in places of influ- ence in the churches. Two are members of the present Congress of the United States. Two old scholars are foreign missionaries. Should this institution live for another quarter century, when more than half of the alumna may have reached the prime of life, we may hope for a still brighter record, for we must remember that comparatively few of our number have as yet passed beyond the period of early life.
The last catalogue of the institution at hand-that for 1879-80-exhibits a total attendance of eighty-three: Resident graduates, two; seniors, seven; juniors, twenty- two; sophomores, eleven; freshmen, twenty-six; prepar- atory, six; in ornamental studies only, nine. Twenty-five were from Ohio, twenty-three from Indiana, three each from Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and one each from Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Indian Ter- ritory, New Mexico, and Russia. There were also twenty- one Ohio day scholars.
The Rev. Ludlow D. Potter, D. D., president of this institution, is a native of New Providence, Union coun- ty, New Jersey, born in 1823, upon a farm which now constitutes the site of the village of Summit. He is re-
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
lated by blood to the Ludlow family, of which Colonel Israel Ludlow, one of the founders of Cincinnati, and was from another of them originally named Benjamin Ludlow Day Potter, his parents dropping the first name, however, when he was baptized. He prepared for col- lege at a boarding school in Mendham, and entered as a sophomore at Princeton college in 1838, graduating hon- orably in 1841. During the next two years he taught languages and mathematics at a classical school in Plain- field, conducted by E. Fairchild, A. M. In the fall of 1843 he entered the Union Theological seminary, in New York city, but the next year transferred his student_ ship to Princeton, where he was graduated as a theologue in the spring of 1846. Again during the next academic year he taught a classical school in Pennington, New Jersey, and then in the fall of 1847 he set his face west- ward, and became pastor of the Presbyterian church in Brookville, Indiana, where he remained about five years. He had been licensed as a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey in 1846, and was here ordained the second year thereafter. He was in 1853 elected principal of the Whitewater Presbyterian academy, and held the post for three years, when he removed to Glendale, and became as- sociated, as above stated, with the Revs. Dr. J. G. Mon- fort and S. S. Potter, in the management and instruction of the female college. He was here head of the depart- ment of instruction; and in 1865, Dr. Monfort having resigned the presidency, he succeeded to that position, and has since remained president of the institution. Education is thus seen, in the length and prominence of *his connection with it, to be his field of usefulness and honor, rather than the pulpit, although he has in the latter done reputable service, both as pastor aforesaid and as occasional preacher to congregations in Hamilton county and elsewhere. His academic honors have also approved his career, he having been made a master of arts by Princeton college in 1844, and a doctor of divini- ty by Hanover (Indiana) college in 1872.
Another excellent institution of Glendale for years was the Circulating book club, whose object is sufficiently indicated in the title. The organization was changed in the winter of 1880-1 to the Library Association of Glendale, upon the plan of the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association in Cincinnati, but without a leading room for the present. The officers are as follows: Pres; ident, Rev. W. H. Babbitt; vice-president, J. B. C. Morres; secretary and treasurer, H. L. Keys; and a board of six directors. The library is kept in a room of Bruce's new building.
The First Presbyterian church (Old School when formed) is the oldest religious society in Glendale. It was organized November 29, 1855, with the Rev. H. A. Tracy as pastor. An unique, Swiss-like church edifice was erected for it in 1860, which has, within a few years, been displaced by a new and finer building.
The Catholic church is strong in Glendale. Saint Gabriel's was organized in 1858, and at once erected a brick building upon a lot given the society by Messrs. Gross and Dietrick, which has since been steadily occu-
pied. It cost about two thousand dollars. The church is under the pastoral care of the Rev. Father James O'Donnell. It has a parochial school of four depart- ments, and about two hundred and fifty pupils, kept in the rear of the church by the the Sisters of Charity. It is free to all children, and the citizens of Glendale in 1868 contributed one thousand and three hundred dol- lars to make valuable additions to its facilities. The Sodality of the Living Rosary is a society attached to this church.
Christ Episcopal church was organized August 6, 1865, under the auspices of the Rev. J. B. Pratt. Ser- vices were held in the school-house and in private houses until about 1867, when a chapel was erected by the so- ciety on Sharon avenue, and subsequently the fine build- ing now occupied at the top of the hill just south of the avenue. Its cost was twenty thousand dollars, and it was first occupied May 30, 1869.
The church of the New Jerusalem society was erected in 1860, on Congress avenue.
LOCKLAND.
The village of Springfield township next in importance to Glendale is Lockland. It is a much older town, hav- ing been laid out May 27, 1829, by Messrs. Nicholas Longworth and Lewis Howell. It took its name from the locks here, built in the Miami canal, which was then a quite new thing. Two houses were here at the time. It grew with reasonable rapidity, and has become a pros- perous business place. It had one thousand two hur- dred and thirty-one population in 1860; one thousand two hundred and ninety-nine in 1870; and one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six in 1880. Part of this, how- ever, resides in Sycamore township, into which the village extends. Two hundred and twenty acres of it are in Springfield township, sixty-five in Sycamore. It is situated on the township line just west of Reading and northeast of Carthage and Hartwell, about a mile and one-third north of the Columbia and Mill Creek township line. It was incorporated December 20, 1865. Among its mayors were Andrew Thomas, 1869; Charles S. Dunn, 1870-4. The Lockland Building and Savings association was formed here in June, 1871. A Methodist class was or- ganized near the place so long ago as 1799, by the Rev. Francis McCormick, at the house of a Mr. Ramsey. The churches now are: The Presbyterian, Rev. S. C. Palmer, pastor; Baptist, J. W. Davis, pastor; the Wayne Avenue Methodist Episcopal, Rev. Mr. Vance; Mt. Zion Baptist (colored), Rev. S. P. Young; African Methodist, Rev. M. M. Smith; and the Christian, also a colored congregation. In the Wayne Avenue church is still used, with almost entire satisfaction, the venerable organ which was the first ever played in Cincinnati.
July 2, 1876, an historical discourse was preached by the Rev. W. A. Hutchison, then pastor of the Presby- terian church in Lockland, from which the following facts are obtained :
The Presbyterian church in Reading, organized August 29, 1823, divided January 2, 1839, into New and Old School branches. The Rev. Benjamin Graves, who had
BENJAMIN URMSTON.
Benjamin Urmston, fourth son of David and Mary (Enyard) Urmston, of Ligonier valley, New Jersey, is of English stock. They immigrated to Ohio about 1801, coming first to Cincinnati, then pushing northward to a tract in Butler county, three miles north of Sycamore township, where both lived and died. Their children numbered ten, among whom was the subject of this sketch, born December 20, 1800, in Pennsylvania, and was a babe in arms when brought by his parents down the Ohio river on a raft. His early life was spent on the farm with his father until his marriage, and for some years afterwards, when he removed to a small place given him by his father upon the paternal estate. Here he remained several years, and about 1838 removed to Springfield township, where he has since resided as a farmer. He occupied his present place in 1853. It is about a quarter of a mile south of Mount Pleasant, on the old Hamilton pike, and the residence is that in which Robert Cary, father of Alice and Phœbe Cary, spent his last years. The old Cary residence is near, and a part of the former Cary farm is now the prop- erty of Mr. Urmston. Some of his children at- tended the district school kept by Phœbe Cary in this very neighborhood over thirty years ago. Here he is spending a tranquil and generally healthful old age.
Rebecca Kennedy, wife of Benjamin Urmston, is daughter of Samuel Kennedy, son of Thomas Ken- nedy, who ran the well known "Kennedy's Ferry" from Cincinnati to the Kentucky shore, and owned the cornfield upon which Covington, in part, now
MRS. BENJAMIN URMSTON.
stands. Her mother's maiden name was Jane Richardson, of a Pennsylvania family, whose father came from England at the age of eighteen. Re- becca was born three miles above Hamilton, October 26, 1801, where her father owned a large farm, which is still kept in the family, and is reck- oned one of the finest places in Butler county. About 1822, upon the death of her grandfather, she removed with her parents to the ancestral resi- dence in Covington, in the old Kennedy stone mansion. Here she was married to Mr. Urmston, October 16, 1828, and returned with him to the home of the elder Urmston, in Butler county. She has since shared his fortunes, his joys and sorrows, and all of life's experiences, through the long and happy union of almost fifty-three years. Their children have been: Kennedy Urmston, born De- cember 30, 1829, died at the age of nearly three years; Robert, born August 10, 1830, married Sarah Bevis, June 10, 1862, a prosperous farmer, residing near his father, has two sons and one daughter living; Mary Jane, born May 26, 1834, died March 27, 1858; Benjamin, born December 27, 1837, lives at home with his father, and mana- ges the business of the farm; Edmond born June 25, 1840, married Margaret Butterfield October 12, 1869, resides on a farm opposite the old home in Butler county, has two sons and two daughters.
Mr. and Mrs. Urmston have been members of the Old School Baptist church for more than forty years. The former has voted the Democratic ticket steadily for sixty years, and still goes regu- larly to the polls.
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379
HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
been called and ordained pastor of the original society in 1827, continued to preach to the New School people, and after a few years began to answer a call for Presby- terian preaching in "the neighboring and little village of Lockland," then a hamlet clustered "closely about the locks. He says, in a letter to his old congregation, read upon the Centennial occasion above mentioned:
I preached the first sernion ever preached in Lockland, in a log cabin standing near by what is now the first lock in the canal. In progress of time the Presbytery, at the request of the people, organized the Pres- byterian church of Lockland. Prior to the organization there was no house of worship, and I preached, as did Paul, "from house to house," and in Brother Long's dooryard in the summer and in his workshop in the winter.
April 6, 1850, was the natal day of the Lockland New School Presbyterian church. It numbered twenty-one members. Mr. Graves preached to it until 1853, and then, in order, came the Rev. Messrs. I. De La Mater, Edward Scofield, John Hussey, Silas Hawley, W. A. Hutchison, and S. C. Palmer, the last of whom is present pastor. Under Mr. Hawley's ministrations, in February and March of 1866, a notable revival season occurred which brought thirty-eight into the church.
After the formation of the Lockland society, the New School branch in Reading languished, and in a few years ceased to exist, its members transferring their allegiance mainly to the Colony church. To this, many years after, October 14, 1870, in the year succeeding the formal reuni- on of the Old and New School assemblies of Pittsburgh, the Reading Old School wing also came over and joined the Lockland society, which now took the name of the Reading and Lockland Presbyterian church. The Read- ing pastor, Rev. James H. Gill, came with his congrega- tion, and ministered to the United church for three months, when ill-health compelled him to retire; while the Lock- land pastor at the time, the Rev. Mr. Hawley, was dis- missed the same day, with sixty-one of the members, to form the Presbyterian church of Wyoming. Many in- teresting facts concerning the antecedent church in Reading will be found under the proper head in the his- tory of Sycamore township, following this chapter.
From the organization of the church in Reading in 1834 to the centennial observance by the Reading and Lockland Church July 2, 1876, the number of members received on profession was seven hundred and twenty- four; on certificate, three hundred and sixty-eight; total, one thousand and ninety-two. During the five years of Mr. Hutchison's pastorate preceding the latter date, the additions aggregated one hundred and twenty, or an average of twenty-four per year.
Reading is exceedingly fortunate in its industries, for which the four locks furnish an ample water-power, in an average fall of twelve feet each, yielding an equivalent of three hundred and fifty horse-power, or enough to move thirty-five run of stone. There are four paper- mills here, one of them alone employing about one hun- dred aud fifty hands, with a pay roll of over forty thou- sand dollars a year and a product in printing paper and fine, plain and tinted book paper, in one recent year, of one million one hundred and twenty-five thousand
pounds, worth one hundred and ten thousand dollars. There are also two woollen mills, a huge cotton-mill recently erected, two starch factories, two flouring-mills, one box-factory and planing-mill, one baking-powder factory, and some wagon factories. Factory owners and operatives are thus a very large element in the population of Lockland.
A neat eight-page paper called the Suburban Resident is published here, for Lockland, Reading, Wyoming and Carthage. by Mr. George W. Smith. It is an edition of the Cincinnati Transcript, printed at Cumminsville by A. E. Weatherby, and bore the same name from the time of its founding, September 13, 1879, by George K. Booth, the Lockland postmaster, to October 1, 1880, when Mr. Smith took it and changed the name. It is a racy and interesting sheet, and serves a good purpose in the collec- tion and dissemination of news in these suburban villages.
SPRINGDALE.
This, the northernmost village in the township, is also the oldest, having been platted August 23, 1806, by John Baldwin. It was then and for many years known as Springfield, but for postal reasons was compelled to take its present name. It is at the northwest corner of sec- tion twelve, a little northwest of Glendale, on one of the Hamilton turnpikes, and a little over a mile west of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad. It was incor- porated as a village March 16, 1839, and had three hun- dred and eighty-two inhabitants in 1870 and two hun- dred and eighty-four in 1880. The Ohio State Gazetteer of 1821 notices it as "a wealthy post-town of Hamilton county, fifteen miles north of Cincinnati, on the road to Hamilton, containing two hundred and twenty inhabi- tants." This is a fuller notice than any other village was able to command in the book. The Gazetteer of 1831 also mentioned it as a "wealthy" place, and credits it with .a population of two hundred and eighty. The issue of 1841 gives it the same number, with fifty-five dwellings, four stores, two taverns, one school-house, one church, and "a large number" of mechanics' shops.
Some of the earliest tradesmen and mechanics of the village are thus recalled by Mr. Anthony Hilts, one of the very oldest survivors of the early day in Springdale: John Baldwood, proprietor of the town, blacksmith; John McGilliard, postmaster; Captain John Brownson, hotel- keeper ; Garret Lefferson, and Isaac Larrne, blacksmiths ; Colonel William Chamberlain, dry goods merchant; John Swallow, dealer in dry goods and groceries ; N. S. Schor- ey, tanner and currier; the father of Governor O. P. Morton, of Indiana (who was brought up in Springdale), hotel-keeper; William Creager, cabinetmaker and under- taker; John Rogers, manufacturer of Windsor chairs; Hatfield Williams, wheelwright; James Cogg, hatter; Jo- seph Hagerman, physician. It is also remembered by old citizens that one Birder made hats in Springdale about sixty years of rabbit and other fur, great bell- crowned affairs, that would hold a peck apiece, the fur sticking out of them half an inch or more. It is thought that James Cogy preceded Creager as cabinetmaker, and was the first in the village; and that Creager was fol- lowed by Garrett Williamson.
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
The old brick store in Springdale was erected in 1833, and the old pork-house on the other side of the street in 1838. Among the oldest dwellings in town, some of which go a long way back, are the Hunt, Prigg, and Creager houses.
Mr. Hilts came to Springdale (then Springfield) in 1818, a boy of eleven years. But one other person of that day and neighborhood survives with him. He con- tributes the following recollections of the school of his first winter here:
"Schools were got up in those days by subscription, the employers paying usually three dollars per scholar a quarter. Three months in the winter season they had school, and none in the summer. The teacher boarded from house to house. At the close of the term he was entitled to the subscription, and made his own collection. The school- house was a hewed-log house, in which was a school taught by Calkins Corkins, an Eastern man."
Mr. Huffman, a very aged resident of the village, re- members two of the pioncer schools at Springdale-one kept by Caleb Kemper in a meeting-house originally built by the "New Light" religionists, and afterwards used for a school-house; the other, taught by a lady named An- drews, in a frame building erected in the Presbyterian churchyard. In this school needlework was among the branches taught. Alpheus McIntyre was another of the early local pedagogues; John Wood was another. The present graded school building was put up in 1870.
The Presbyterian church at Springdale is the oldest re- ligious society in the north of the county. Its history has been admirably detailed by Rev. William H. James, pastor (still in charge), in an historical discourse preached upon its seventy-ninth anniversary, June 4, 1876. Since the publication of this address Mr. James has obtained a more ancient document relating to its subject matter than any then accessible to him, which by his courtesy, we are enabled to present herewith :
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