History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 2

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams
Number of Pages: 590

USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 2

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More attention is given in this valley to grain and wool-growing than to stock-raising. The secretary of State's report for 1877 says :

The lands are entirely too dear to be devoted to sheep growing fo wool; hence comparatively few fine-wooled sheep are in the valley, the bulk of the sheep being "native" and mutton breeds. As early as 1816 attention was being directed to the improvement in the horse stock of the valley, and from that time until the present that interest has been fully maintained. Those who are familiar with the strains of thorough- breds will find that many of the famous horses of the west either were bred in this valley or else traced back to stock in this region for its an- cestry. Less attention is given to cattle in this valley than other agri- cultural operations indicate, or than the wealth and fertility of the valley warrant. But the lesser interest in cattle is fully compensated by the greater interest in horses and in swine. This latter species of domestic animals is one of the "leading agricultural pursuits" of the region. The justly famous "Magie" (pronounced Mag-gee) breed of hogs is claimed to have been onginated in this valley. Early maturity and large weights are the peculiar commendatory qualities of this breed, it being no unfrequent occurrence that a head of fifteen or twenty are slaughtered averaging near about six hundred pounds net.

The average throughout the State is eight head of swine for every one hundred acres of area. In the Miami valley the average is over thir- teen head, or sixty-three per cent. more than the general average; or, the State average is seventy-seven head for every one hundred inhab- itants, and in this valley there are, in round numbers, seventy-nine head to the one hundred inhabitants. When it is remembered that more than one-fourth of the population of the State resides in this val- ley, it will be seen at once that one-fourth of all the swine in the State are grown here. Notwithstanding the Scioto valley has fifty-eight head of swine more to the one hundred inhabitants, it has less to the hundred acres than the Miami.

The climate of this part of the Ohio valley is mild and genial. The average temperature of the year is about 54° Fahrenheit, above zero, against 52° at Mari- etta, also in the Ohio valley, 50° on the south shore of Lake Erie, and 49° to 48° in the highlands, of the inte- rior. In the early day the temperature was even milder. Dr. Drake, in his Notices concerning Cincinnati, pub- lished in 1810, says :

* Ohio Geological Survey, vol. I, p. 26.

+Ohio Secretary of State's report for 1877.

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

"The latter [the Ohio river, which he was compar- ing with the Delaware at Philadelphia] at this place is but seldom blocked up with the ice which it floats, and was never known to freeze over." In his Picture of Cincinnati, published five years later, he notes the average temperature of 1808 as 56.4°; that of 1811 as 56.62°, and the average for the eight years, 1806-13, as 54.25°, which, he says, "may be regarded as an accurate exponent of the temperature of Cincinnati." One hundred degrees, from below zero to above, was the mean temperature of those years. During nine years' ob- servation the thermometer at Cincinnati was below zero but twice in a winter. The mean summer heat for those years was but seventy-four, and the thermometer stood at ninety degrees or above for an average of but fourteen days a summer. In those times, according to Dr. Drake's observation of six years, there was an average per year of one hundred and seventy-six fair, one hun- dred and five cloudy, and eighty-four variable days. The annual fall of rain and snow amounted to thirty-six inches, while now it is forty-seven and forty-three one- hundredths inches at Cincinnati and along the Ohio val- ley, against thirty-six in the northern part of the State. Said Dr. Drake, in his publication of 1815:

This country has never been visited by a violent storm, either from the northeast or southeast, nor do the clouds from any eastern point often exhibit many electric phenomena. But from every direction on the opposite sides of the meridian they come charged with lightning and driven by impetuous winds. Of these thunder-gusts the northwest is by far the most prolific source. They occur at any time during the day and night, but most frequently in the afternoon.

He gives a vivid description of such a storm, which occurred May 28, 1809, and of which some notice will be found hereafter in the history of Cincinnati, in this work.

For eighty-three years ending with the last day of 1879, during which observations had been taken at Cin- cinnati, the average temperature of the year was 57° 65', and for the last decade of that period it was 53° 65', showing a change of five degrees for the colder since 1797. Some of the cold seasons in that day, however, were intensely severe. The lowest degree of Fahrenheit's thermometer ever registered in the city was noted Jan- uary 8, of the year last named, when, according to the observations of Colonel Winthrop Sargent, secretary of the Northwest Territory, it went to 18°, and would have gone lower, it is believed, had not the then dense forests of southern Ohio and the Cincinnati basin broken the icy northwest wind that prevailed. The winter of 1806-7 was also thoroughly frigid, and the seventh of February, of that season, when the thermometer marked 11º below, has come down in local tradition as "the cold Friday." Other cold winters were those of 1855-6, 1856-7, and 1857-8, when the thermometer thirty-two times indicated temperatures below zero, and at one time the Ohio was for two months so solidly frozen over that loaded wagons crossed safely. Another severe winter was that of 1863-4, which brought so much suffering to soldiers in the army. On the first of January, 1864, which has a permanent reputation in meteorology as "the cold New Year," 14° below was touched at Cincinnati. Since then, the win-

ters of 1870-1, 1872-3 and the three succeeding winters, and those of 1877-8 and 1878-9 have been among the coldest known in the valley. Among warm winters that have been observed are those of 1792-3-4, 1795-6, 1799-1800-1, 1805-6-7, 1809-10-11, and 1879-80, the last of these warmer than any other since 1827-8, and 10° warmer than any other since 1835-6. The thermom- eter exhibited 69° above in the shade on Forefathers' day, December 20, 1877, although that was a generally cold winter, and stood at 63° or more for some days.

The average rainfall per year, during the eighty-three years designated, has been 39.71 inches, and somewhat lighter, 37.61, for the last twenty five years of the period. Least fell in 1856-22.88 inches; and most, 69.42, in 1847. The average snowfall annually is about twenty inches, against thirty-five in central and northern Ohio. The greatest depth at one time ever observed in southern Ohio was twenty-cight inches, January 18, 1862, though twenty-two fell January 19, 1846. Sixty-nine inches fell in the winter of 1855-6, and sixty-five just ten years thereafter. Snowfalls in April sometimes occur, but very seldom later. April 20, 1814, ten inches fell, and five April 11, 1874.

Forest trees abounded in the early day in great variety, and are still, notwithstanding the dense population and extensive cultivation of the soil in the county, prominent among its physical features. Dr. Drake in his day enu- merated over one hundred and twenty species, and from their number and the luxuriance of the forest growth he argued the superiority of the soil to that of the United States generally-"for it has as many kinds of trees above sixty feet in height as all the States taken together, while it has only one-half the number of species." He also enu- merates a great number of such herbaceous plants as are deemed useful in medicine and the arts, most of which are indigenous to the soil. Of trees, the following-named are twenty of the most common species in Ohio, which are now found in Hamilton county, in the relative order of abundant growth in which they appear in the list: Oak, beech, hickory, sugar maple, poplar, walnut, elm, sycamore, ash, locust, mulberry, pine, cottonwood, white walnut (butternut), cherry, gum, soft maple, tulip, buck- eye, and silver maple. In 1853 the county still had eighty-eight thousand one hundred and twenty-three acres, or thirty-seven and seven-tenths per cent. of the area, in forest; within seventeen years thereafter fifty- three thousand six hundred and fifty acres were removed, and in 1870 it had but thirty-four thousand four hundred and seventy-three acres in forest, or fourteen and seventy- six hundredths per cent. of its acreage-by far the least of any county in the State-and the breadth of its woods is annually decreasing.

The great municipality of Hamilton county, as all the world knows, is of course Cincinnati, with its area com- prising about one-fourteenth of the entire territory of the county and its population of more than a quarter of a million.

The townships of the county along the Ohio river are: To the east of Cincinnati-Anderson, between the Little

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

Miami and the Clermont county line, and Spencer, ad- joining the city; west of Cincinnati, in order-Delhi and Miami. Those west of the Great Miami are Whitewater, Harrison (in the northwestern corner of the county), and Crosby (east of Harrison on the lines of Butler county and the Little Miami river). Other townships in the northern tier, between the Great and Little Miamis, from west to east, are Colerain, Springfield, Sycamore, and Symmes. There remain, all these adjoining Cincinnati, Green township on the west, Mill Creek township on the north, and Columbia, between Mill Creek and the Little Miami.

The post offices of the county, besides Cincinnati, are [February, 1881]: Banesburgh, Bevis, Bond Hill, Califor- nia, Carthage, Cedar Point, Cherry Grove, Cheviot, Cleves, College Hill, Columbia,* Creedville, Corryville,* Cum- minsville,* Delhi, Dent, Dunlap, East Sycamore, Eliza- bethtown, Elmwood Place, Evendale, Forestville, Fruit Hill, Glendale, Grand Valley, Groesbeck, Harrison, Hart- well, Karr, Linwood, Lockland, Ludlow Grove, Ma- deira, Madisonville, Miami, Mill Creek,* Montgomery, Mount Airy, Mount Healthy, Mount Lookout, Mount Washington, Newton, North Bend, Norwood, Oakley, Plainville, Pleasan Ridge, Pleasant Run, Pleasant Valley, Preston, Reading, Remington, Riverside, Sater, Shann- ville, Sixteen Mile Stand, Sedamsville,* Spring Dale, Sweet Wine, Symmes, Taylor's Creek, Terrace Park, Transit, Trautman Walnut Hills, Winton Place, West Riverside, and Wyoming. Many of these are also incor- porated villages; those marked * are within the corporate limits of Cincinnati, and are branches or "stations" of the Cincinnati post office.

The description of Hamilton county will be incident- . ally continued through the next, necessarily a much more elaborate chapter.

CHAPTER II. GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY.

Where is the dust that has not been alive?

-YOUNG, "Night Thoughts.'

THERE was life in the valley of the Ohio untold ages before man came to gaze upon its beautiful hills and waters. Away back in the stately march of the geologic epochs, the Silurian seas here swarmed with animate ex- istence, many of its forms so small that the aid of the microscope is needed to trace them; and some so nu- merous that great and valuable layers of rock are com- posed almost wholly of their remains. The history of the countless varieties of sentient life that so abounded here æons on æons ago may be read for us only in the rocks of the valley and the hills. It is otherwise un- written, except in the books of their Creator. Industrious inquirers, working slowly and carefully through many years, have traced the forms of them, have given them

names, and catalogued them. It does not fall within the province of this work to present a list of these. It may suffice for our purposes to say that the paleontological catalogue published within two or three years by Pro- fessor Mickleborough, of the Cincinnati normal school, and Professor Wetherby, of the University of Cincinnati, represents no vertebrate, and their presence in the rocks of Hamilton county is exceedingly rare; but from the sub-kingdoms are presented fifty-seven species of annu- losa (besides seventy-eight undetermined), one hundred and forty-five of mollusca, one hundred and thirty-nine of molluscoida, sixty-three of cœlenterata, and nine of protojoa, besides sixteen species representing, in a very small way, the vegetable kingdom.

The duty of the historian, in this, one of the opening chapters of this work, is to present something of the to- pography and geology of the county. In accordance with our custom in this series of local histories, we rely almost exclusively for these upon the authorized Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio, for which the section relating to Hamilton county was prepared by Professor Edward Orton, now of the State university at Columbus. What follows is taken almost verbatim from his report, with the addition of two or three foot-notes, and some slight changes in and arrangement of the text.

1. TOPOGRAPHY.

The prominent topographical features of Hamilton county divide the surface into two main divisions-high- land and lowland.

The first division embraces all the higher table-lands of the county, which have a general elevation of two to five hundred feet above low-water at Cincinnati. All of these areas, though often covered with superficial drift deposits, are underlain with bedded rock, which is every- where easily accessible, and which impresses peculiar features upon the face of the districts that contain it.

To the second division are referred the valleys of the county, and not only those which hold the present rivers, but also those in which no streams of considerable size are now found, but which are due to the eroding agen -. cies of an earlier day. Both of the classes of valleys are often filled with heavy accumulations of drift, but they agree in being destitute of bedded rock-except at the levels of the streams they contain, or, as is often the case, at considerably lower levels.

The thickness of the drift beds does not generally ex- ceed one hundred feet, and thus it will be seen that in the Ohio valley the lowlands have a maximum elevation of one hundred feet above low-water at Cincinnati; but as we follow back the Miamis and the lesser streams, we find these beds assuming higher elevations, as the floor of the country that sustains them is gradually elevated, so that they sometimes attain, in the northern and eastern portions of the county, a height of one hundred and fifty or even two hundred feet above the same base.

In other words, the highlands of the county are the areas in which the bedded rocks remain, to an elevation of three hundred feet and more above the Ohio river, while the lowlands are those areas from which the rocks

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

have been removed, at least to the existing rivers and lesser streams.

The slopes that connect these two kinds of areas are commonly precipitous, as in the river-hills of Cincinnati; but sometimes the descent is hroken by the interposition of drift deposits.

The valley of the Ohio, which here runs in an east and west direction, makes the southern boundary of the county, and, though deep, is comparatively narrow. Sev- eral of the north and south valleys that traverse the county are absolutely wider than the Ohio valley; and when the volumes of the streams that they contain are taken into the account, the disproportion between them and the first-named valley is very great. A similar state of facts obtains through southwestern Ohio-the valleys that trend to the west of north especially having been excavated on an ampler scale than the rest, other things being equal. These facts seem to point to glacial ero- sion as a prominent canse in the production of the sur- face features of the country, as the glaciers are known by the striæ they have left to have advanced from the north- west.

An examination of the map of the county, * in the light of the facts already known, will serve to show, what an acquaintance with it abundantly confirms, that its sur- face has suffered a vast amount of erosion. The most interesting facts in this connection are not the valleys which are occupied by the greater streams of to-day, but those deep and wide valleys that are at present either entirely deserted by water-courses or traversed by insig- nificant strenms, wholly inadequate to account for the erosion of which they have availed themselves. Atten- tion will be called to one or two instances of this sort.

The broad valley now occupied in part by Mill creek, and in part left entirely unoccupied, extends continuously from the. present valley of the Great Miami at Hamilton to the Clifton hills, just north of Cincinnati, where it divides into two branches-one passing to the north and east of the city, and entering the valley of the Little Miami between Red Bank station and Plainville-while the other branch, the present valley of Mill creek, passes directly to the Ohio through the site of the city of Cin- cinnati.

No rocky barriers-nothing, in fact, but the same drift terraces that make the walls of its present course-shut out the Great Miami from entering the Ohio valley at the same points where the Little Miami and Mill creek now enter. Indeed, there is the best of reasons for believing that it has followed, in the past mutations of its history, those very courses to the great valley. Mill creek has taken possession of the middle portions of this valley, but has never occupied more than one of its lower branches, that one the narrower.

The most striking examples of this erosion of an earlier day are to be found, however, on the western side of the county, and are, for the most part, to be referred to the same river whose agency has already been invoked.

There is an open cut, at least two miles wide, in the

northeastern part of Crosby township, which bears due westward from the present course of the Great Miami. Near the west line of the township this old channel is deflected to the southward, and is thenceforward occu. pied by the Dry fork of Whitewater, until it is merged in . the valley of this last-named river. That the streams which hide themselves in this great valley to-day have had next to nothing to do with its excavation, is evident from the fact that there is not one of them whose course agrees with the direction of the valley, but all cut across it transversely. More than half of the townships of Crosby, Harrison, and Whitewater have been thus worn away and made to give bed to the rivers in the successive stages of their history. The channel above named can be confidently set down as another of the earlier courses of the Great Miami.

Still a third of these old channels, more interesting in some respects than either of the two just named, is found near Cleves, Miami township. By reference to the map, it will be observed that the river here approaches within a mile of the Ohio; but, instead of entering the great val- ley at this point, it makes an abrupt detour to the west and south, and only reaches its destination after a circuit of ten miles. Its approach to the Ohio at Cleves is blocked by a ridge that is interposed, one hundred and fifty to two hundred and seventy-five feet in height. A tunnel that was carried through this ridge, in the con- struction of the Whitewater Valley canal, and which is at present used by the Indianapolis & Cincinnati rail- road, shows it to be composed of glacial drift. The di- rection of this channel is in the line in which the glaciers advanced, so that its existence can be quite plausibly ascribed to the great agents of denudation. Whether or not the origin of this channel can be referred to the glacial period, its closure was certainly effected there.

It tasks the imagination to account for the excavation of these broad and deep valeys by existing erosive agen- cies, even when they are reinforced by the important ad- ditions of glacial ice; but to agencies identical with these the work must be referred. There is no evidence, as has already been shown, of minor flexures or axes of disturbance in the Blue Limestone region, by which the strata could have been thrown into hills and valleys; but, on the contrary, the beds are found to occur in unbroken regularity, being affected only by the slight general dip, of which account has been previously given. It is scarcely necessary to say that opposite sides of valleys give every possible proof of having been originally con- tinuous, the sections which adjacent exposures furnish being absolutely identical in their leading features.

The Cincinnati group has been found to demand for its original formation long-continued cycles of peaceful growth and deposition, and in, like manner the fashion- ing of its bed into the present topographical features of " the country must have been in progress through such protracted ages that the historic period in comparison shrinks into insignificance.

[The correctness or necessity of the appellation, "Cin- cinnati group," which often occurs in the geological reports, is gravely doubted by the local geologists. In January,

" Geological Survey of Ohio, Vol. I.

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

1879, a committee of ten, headed by S. A. Miller, esq., reported to the Cincinnati Society of Natural History "that the fossils found in the strata for twenty feet or more, above low-water mark of the Ohio river, in the first ward of the city of Cincinnati, and on Crawfish creek, in the eastern part of the city, and in Taylor's creek, east of Newport, Kentucky, at an elevation of more than fifty feet above low-water mark in the Ohio river, indicate the age of the Utica Slate group of New York. A fauna is represented in these rocks that is not found above or below them. Moreover, brown shales and greenish blue shales and concretionary nodules give a lithological character to the strata which distinguishes them from the strata both above and below." All strata containing triarthrus becki, the com- mittee hold, are to be referred to the age of the Utica Slate group of New York. Above its range is the Hud- son River group. The Trenton group is not exposed at Cincinnati nor in the Ohio valley anywhere west of the city, but is probably represented in the rocks of Ohio a few miles east of that point. The Utica group is not represented elsewhere in Ohio. All the lower Silurian rocks in southwestern Ohio belong to the Hudson River group, except the small exposure of the Utica slate in the banks of the Ohio and east of the city in the immedi- ate vicinity of the river. The committee therefore report that the name "Cincinnati group" should be dropped, "not only because it is a synonym, but because its re- tention can subserve no useful purpose in the science, and because it will in the future, as in the past, lead to erroneous views and fruitless discussions." Investiga- tion, so far, they add, has not led to any other or further sub-divisions than those formerly adopted.]

Strictly speaking, there are no hills in Hamilton county, the surface being all referable to the table-lands and to the valleys worn in them. What are called the Cincinnati hills, for example, are merely the isolated remnants of the old plateau, which have so far escaped the long-continued denudation. Indeed, the highlands of the county are all of them outliers or insulated masses, surrounded on every side by the valleys of exist- ing rivers, along the deep excavations wrought out by these streams at an earlier date and under somewhat different geographical conditions. These islands of the higher ground vary in area between quite wide limits, some of them containing a few scores of acres, and others as many square miles.

The high ground immediately appertaining to Cincin- nati furnishes a good example of these outliers. By reference to the map, the insulation of this high ground will be seen to be perfectly effected by the Little Miami vailey, the Ohio valley, the Mill Creek valley, and the abandoned channel of the Great Miami, already describ- ed, on the northern and eastern sides. Very important consequences result to the city from this insulation. It follows, for instance, that there are but two natural ways of ingress to the city by lowland, or, in other words, that there are but two railroad routes possible-one by the Ohio valley and the other by the Mill Creek valley. Both of these are circuitous and in other respects unfa-

vorable, especially as ways of approach from the east. These difficulties have led to the project of reaching the business center of the city by a tunnel from the northern valley.

The Dayton Short Line railroad encounters, near West Chester, one of these outliers in its route, which necessi- tates a grade of forty-five feet to the mile at this point- the highest grade, in fact, on this line (New York Cen- tral) between tidewater and the Ohio river.

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History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 2

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams Number of Pages: 590

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams
Number of Pages: 590