USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 50
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Dark divisions sinking in the woods for a few hours' repose, would hear suddenly in the woods the boom of hostile guns and the clatter of the troops of the ubiquitous cavalry, and had to be up to hasten off. Thus pressed on all sides, driven like sheep before prowling wolves, amid hunger, fatigue, and sleeplessness, continuing day after day, they fared toward the rising sun:
"Such resting found the soles of unblest feet."
Yet to the very last the energy this daring cavalryman displayed was such as to extort our admiration. From the jaws of disaster he drew out the remnants of his com mand at Buffington. When foiled in the attempted cross_ ing above, he headed for the Muskingum. Foiled here by the militia under Remkle, he doubled on his track and turned again toward Blennerhasset Island. The clouds of dust that marked his track betrayed the movement and on three sides the pursuers closed in upon him. While they slept in peaceful expectation of receiving his surrender in the morning, he stole out along a hillside
that had been thought impassable-his men walking in single file and leading their horses; and by midnight he was out of the toils, and once more marching hard to outstrip his pursuers. At last he found an unguarded crossing of the Muskingum at Eaglesport, above McCon- nellsville; and then, with an open country before him, struck out once more for the Ohio.
This time Governor Tod's sagacity was vindicated. He urged the shipment of troops by rail to Bellaire, near Wheeling; and by great good fortune Major Way, of the Ninth Michigan cavalry, received the orders. Pres- ently this officer was on the scent. "Morgan is making for Hammondsville," he telegraphed General Burnside on the twenty-fifth, "and will attempt to cross the Ohio river at Wellsville. I have my section of battery, and shall follow him closely." He kept his word, and gave the finishing stroke. "Morgan was attacked, with the rem- nant of his command, at 8 o'clock this morning," an nounced General Burnside on the next day, July 26th, "at Salineville, by Major Way, who, after a severe fight, routed the enemy, killed about thirty, wounded some fifty, and took some two hundred prisoners." Six hours later the long race ended: "I captured John Morgan to- day, at 2 o'clock P. M.," telegraphed Major Rue, of the Ninth Kentucky cavalry, on the evening of the twenty- sixth, "taking three hundred and twenty-six prisoners, four hundred horses and arms."
Salineville is in Columbiana county, but a few miles below the most northerly point of the State touched by the Ohio river, and between Steubenville and Wellsville, nearly two-thirds of the way up the eastern border of the State. Over such distances had Morgan passed, after the disaster at Buffington, which all had supposed certain to end his career, and so near had he come to making his escape from the State, with the handful he was still able to keep together.
The circumstances of the final surrender were peculiar, and subsequently led to an unpleasant dispute. Morgan was being guided to the Pennsylvania line by a Mr. Bru- beck, who had gone out with a small squad of volunteers against him, but with whom, according to Morgan's state- ment, an arrangement had been made that, on condition that he would disturb no property in the county, he was to be safely conducted out of it. Seeing by the clouds of dust on a road parallel with the one he was on that the cavalry force was rapidly gaining his front, and that thus his escape was definitely cut off, he undertook to make a virtue of his necessity and try to gain terms by volunteering surrender to his guide. Brubeck eagerly swal- lowed the bait, and accepted the surrender upon condition that officers and men were to be immediately parolled. In a few minutes Major Rue was upon them. He doubted the propriety of such a surrender, and referred the case to General Shackelford, the second in com- mand in Hobson's column, who at once disapproved and refused to recognize it.
Morgan thereupon appealed to Governor Tod, as com- mander of the Ohio militia, claiming to have surrendered upon terms with one of his subordinates, and calling upon him to mantain the honor of his officer thus pledged.
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Governor Tod took some time to examine the case, and on the first of August responded :
I find the facts substantially as follows: a private citizen of New Lis- bon, by the name of Brubeck, went out with some fifteen or sixteen others to meet your forces, in advance of an organized military body from the same place, under the command of Captain Curry. Said Brubeck is not, and never was, a militia officer in the service of this State. He was captured by you, and travelled with you some distance before your surrender. Upon his discovering the regular military forces of the United States to be in your advance in line of battle, you surren_ dered to said Brubeck, then your prisoner. Whether you supposed him to bea captain in the militia service or not, is entirely immaterial.
The officers of Morgan's command-not so much, per- haps, because of the lack of other secure accommoda- tions, as through a desire to gratify the popular feeling that they be treated rather as horse-thieves than as sol- diers, and with a wish also to retaliate in kind for the close confinement to which the officers of Colonel Streight's raiding party were then subjected to in rebel pri- sons- were immured in the cells of the Ohio penitenti- ary. They afterwards made bitter complaints of this in- dignity, as well as of the treatment there received, there- by only illustrating the different feelings with which men regard Andersonvilles and Salisburies from those with which they themselves regard from the inside places much less objectionable.
After some months of confinement, Morgan himself and six other prisoners made their escape, on the night of the twenty-seventh of November, by cutting through the floors of their cells with knives carried off from the pri- son table, till they reached the air-chamber below ; tunnel- ing from that under the walls of the building into the outer yard, and climbing the wall that surrounds the grounds by the aid of ropes made from their bed-clothes. The State authorities were very much mortified at the es- cape, and ordered an investigation. It was thus disclosed that the neglect which enabled the prisoners to prosecute the tedious task of cutting through the stone floors un- discovered had its origin in the coarse-minded suggestion of one of the directors of the penitentiary that the daily sweeping of the cells be omited, and the "d- d re- bles made sweep out their own cells." This poor effort to treat the prisoners of war worse than he treated the convicts enabled them to cover up their work and con- ceal it from any inspection of cells that was made. It was officially reported that misunderstandings between the military authorities at Columbus and the civil authorities of the penitentiary led to the escape. Morgan quietly took the Little Miami train for Cincinnati on the night of his escape, leaped off it a little outside the city, made his way across the river, and was straightway concealed and forwarded toward the confederate lines by his Ken- tucky friends. He lived to lead one more raid into the heart of his favorite "Blue Grass," to witness the decline of his popularity, to be harassed by officers in Richmond who did not understand him and by difficulties in his command, and finally to fall while fleeing through a kit- chen garden in a morning skirmish in an obscure little village in East Tennessee. He left a name second only to those of Forest and Stuart among the cavalry men of the confederacy, and a character which, amid much to be condemned, was not without traces of a noble nature.
Of the fifty thousand militia stated in round num- bers as the total number taking the field in this State du- ring the Morgan raid, Hamilton county was reported by the adjutant general to have furnished fifteen companies, with an agregate of one thousand, four hundred and six- ty-one men on duty, to whom were paid by the State the sum of eight thousand and one dollars. The military committees of the different counties through which Mor- gan passed, including Hamilton county, were called on by the governor to furnish full statements of the losses, both public and private, from the raid, and the names of the sufferers. In 1864 the legislature ordered the appointment of a board of commissioners to pass upon these claimes .- Messrs. Albert McVeigh, George W. Barker, and Henry S. Babbitt were appointed, passed over the track of Morgan, and had public hearings for the ex- amination of claims. In Hamilton county four hundred and thirty-six claims were presented-for damages done by the rebels, sixty-two thousand six hundred and twenty- two dollars and thirty-seven cents; for damages by Union forces commanded by Federal officers, twenty-five thou- sand two hundred and twenty-three dollars and fourteen cents; for damages by Union forces not under such com- mand, one hundred and twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents ;- total sum claimed, eighty-seven thousand, nine hundred and seventy-three dollars, and one cent. The commission allowed-for rebel damage, fifty-three thou- sand, six hundred and forty-six dollars ; damage by Un- ion troops commanded by United States officers, twenty thousand, five hundred and twenty-nine dollars; damage by Union troops not so commanded, one hundred dollars ; - total allowed, seventy-four thousand, two hundred and seventy-five dollars. Property to the amount of four thou- sand four hundred and forty-five dollars taken from Hamilton county was traced into possession of the Fed- eral forces, and was duly accounted and paid for. The total expense of the raid to the State as estimated by the governor, inclusive of the pay proper of the militia, but exclusive of the heavy expense of subsisting and trans- porting them, was eight hundred and ninety-seven thou- sand dollars.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COUNTY INSTITUTIONS.
"In faith and hope the world will disagree, But all mankind 's concerned in charity ; All must be false that thwart this one great end, And all of God that bless mankind or mend."
ALEXANDER POPE, "Essay on Man."
THE LONGVIEW ASYLUM.
For many years an embarrassing and increasing num- ber of incurable lunatics had been confined in the old Commercial hospital in Cincinnati. By midsummer of 1853, one hundred and forty-seven inmates were con- fined in the lunatic department of that institution, and
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it was considered injudicious and even dangerous to re- ceive any inore. A communication setting forth these facts was made by the board of directors of the city in- firmary to the board of commissioners for Hamilton county, and on the twenty-fourth of August, of the same year, the commissioners appointed Messrs. J. J. Quinn, David Judkins, and A. S. Dandridge, all M. D.'s, as a committee of examination and report upon the condition and demands of the unfortunates. These gentlemen did prompt, faithful and intelligent duty, and soon re- ported ably and at length, setting forth the absolute necessity of further provision for the insane of Cincin- nati and Hamilton county. They were then authorized to ascertain where a temporary asylum could be located; and their next report recommended the lease of the man- sion and grounds of Mr. Ames, on Lick run, near the city, at eight hundred dollars per year. The report was accepted by the commissioners, and September 1, 1853, only three weeks and two days after the original com- plaint of the infirmary directors was made, the arrange- ment with Mr. Ames was effected and a commencement made of preparations for the reception of lunatic pa- tients in his building. On the third of the following October, Dr. Quinn, of the committee, was appointed superintendent of the new asylum. The better condi- tions of situation, living, attendance, etc., greatly ameli- orated the physical and mental state of the afflicted ones, and the reputation of the new asylum soon brought large additions to its numbers, two hundred and ninety-six pa- tients, or more than double the number before men- tioned as confined in the old Commercial hospital at the time of the change, being inmates at the period of their removal to the institution at Carthage in the spring of 1860. During the time (nearly seven years) the Lick Run asylum was maintained, its cost to the county was but one hundred and eighty thousand, four hundred and eighty-three dollars and seventy-seven cents, or an average of about twenty-six thousand dollars a year. This in- cludes the expense of refitting and furnishing it at the beginning of its occupation, and at the close putting it again in order for its owners, as a residence.
Preparations were not long delayed for the construc- tion of a more permanent retreat for the insane of the county. The Lick Run asylum had scarcely been se- cured, and the lunatic patients transferred from the Com- mercial hospital, when the board of commissioners moved for the erection of a more spacious and perma- nent institution. On the twenty-fifth of October, 1853, they ordered advertisement to be made "to the proprie- tors of lands in Hamilton county," that they desired to "purchase an entire tract of land of fifty or sixty acres within twelve miles of the city of Cincinnati, for the purpose of a county poor house and lunatic asylum. Sealed proposals of the terms of sale, with a correct surveyed description of said tracts of land, with its na- tural and artificial advantages, will be received from pro- prietors until the eighth day of November, 1853, at the auditor's office." Many land owners in various parts of the county sent in offers of sale by way of response, and on the eighteenth day of January ensuing, after full and
impartial examination of the several properties and sites offered, the board of county commissioners determined upon the purchase, from several land owners in Mill Creek township, near Carthage, of one hundred and nine-tenths acres, at rates varying from two hundred dol- lars to five hundred dollars per acre. The next year, March 19, 1855, the largest and most eligible of these lots, one of thirty-eight acres, bought of R. W. Lee and James Wilson, for five hundred dollars per acre, was formally set aside for the purposes of the asylum, leav- ing the remainder to the county infirmary. This was done, in the words of the order, "that the purchase of the grounds and the erection of a lunatic asylum suffi- ciently large to accommodate the wants of said county, may be separate and distinct from the county infirmary, and for that purpose we make the above order."
Meanwhile plans and specifications had been procured for an asylum building; Mr. Joseph Talbert had been appointed superintendent of the work, on behalf of the commissioners ; the excavation of a cellar and basement had been commenced, and a considerable amount of work done. Thus far materials were purchased and labor paid, at the order of the commissioners, as the work went on, but presently, on the twenty-first of March, 1855, contracts were made for the erection of the asylum as follows: For the stone work, with Jesse Timanus; for the brick work, with John Hawkins; for the plumbing, with Messrs. Hugh McCollum & Com- pany; and for the tin roofing and copper gutters, with William Dunn. The board was not unanimous in the award of these contracts, and the third member of it, Commissioner Ruffner, protested in writing against all the contracts, mainly on the ground that advertisement of their letting had not been made, and that none ex- cept the successful bidders had had the opportunity to make offers for the work. The matter was taken into the courts; and, a month or two afterwards, Judge Bel- lamy Storer, of the superior court of Cincinnati, ren- dered a decision holding that Jesse Timanus and others, contractors aforesaid, were not acting in compliance with law. The board of commissioners was therefore en- joined from proceeding with the work under these con- tracts. They were vacated, the work stopped, and the commissioners, under direction of the court pending future operations, placed it in a condition of safety against damage from weather and depredations.
The sum of one hundred and two thousand six hun- dred and forty-nine dollars and eighty-seven cents had already been expended upon the building and grounds. Before proceeding to incur further expense, it was deemed advisable to submit the whole matter of the erection of a lunatic asylum at Carthage to the voters of the county for their decision. The vote was taken at the October election, 1856, and resulted in a majority for the asylum. The commissioners accordingly, on the twenty-third day of the next March, ordered the work to be recommenced and the foundation walls carried up to a level with the first floor. The construction of the re- mainder of the building was to be done under contract; and in July the board directed the county auditor to ad-
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
vertise for proposals, and again, in September, the bids under the former advertisement having exceeded the ap- propriations made, he was directed to call for further proposals, but not for the construction of one wing of the asylum. Numerous bids were submitted accord- ingly, and on the fifth of October the board concluded a contract with Mr. Wesley M. Cameron for the comple- tion of the asylum entire, with the exception of the north wing, according to plans and specifications, for the total sum of one hundred and forty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-six dollars and ninety-three cents; also for the delivery of three million brick, at six dollars and twenty-five cents per thousand, or an aggregate of eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars.
An act had been passed by the legislature, at the ses- sion of 1856, to "authorize the commissioners of Hamil- ton county to sell certain real estate in said county, and to provide for the erection of a county infirmary and lu- natic asylum therein." This act was amended March 8, 1858, enlarging the powers of the commissioners; and an issue of bonds was made in pursuance thereof, to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. The securi- ties were placed without difficulty-twenty-five thousand dollars at eight per cent. interest, and a like amount at nine per cent. in Cincinnati, at par; and fifty thousand dollars at eight per cent. and a premium of one-fourth of one per cent., in Philadelphia. The whole thus realized to the county one hundred thousand one hundred and twenty- five dollars. The county auditor was now author- ized to advertise for proposals for the erection of the north wing and gas-house, and Mr. Cameron, in the face of many favorable bids, received the contract on his en- tire bid, as the lowest in the aggregate, for the sum of seventy-nine thousand four hundred and eighty-five dol- lars and thirty-one cents. The work proceeded rapidly and satisfactorily under his contracts, and in a little more than two years after the signing of the first obligation the whole was completed. November 25, 1859, Mr. Isaiah Rogers, architect of the asylum, gave the board of com- missioners formal notice that Mr. Cameron had fulfilled his obligations. There was, however, still a great deal to be done upon out-buildings, water-works, and the grading and preparation of the grounds-much of which, indeed, was not effected until the building had been occupied and was under the control of the directors of the asylum. To add to the delays and cost, the asylum building, on the twenty-first of May, 1860, shared in the destruction wrought by the tornado which swept through this region on that day, losing six roofs and sustaining serious dam- age to two others. Again an arrangement was made with Mr. Cameron, who speedily replaced the roofs. The entire expense of grounds and buildings, as provided for by the county commissioners, from 1854 to 1861, was five hundred and eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty-two dollars and twenty-five cents, of which two hundred and seventy-nine thousand six hundred and eighty-eight dollars and sixty five cents were raised in the years 1855, 1858, 1859 and 1860, and the balance was received from the sale of bonds and other sources, including one hundred and forty thousand one hundred and fifty dollars in transfers
from the county fund at various times. The house- furnishing complete, stock, and farm implements, in July, 1874, according to an inventory then taken, were valued at fifty-six thousand nine hundred and forty-four dollars and forty-eight cents. The entire cost of the asylum to November, 1877, was seven hundred and ninety-six thousand eight hundred and twenty-six dollars and twenty-three cents, including all out-buildings and the grounds belonging to the institution, which amount to about one hundred and twenty-five acres. An act was passed by the legislature May 13, 1868, which authorized the commissioners to procure additional lands for the use of the asylum, in accordance with which the board, at the request of the directors of Longview, retained the county infirmary farm of sixty-three acres, and passed twenty-five thousand dollars from the asylum fund to the credit of the infirmary fund, in compensation therefor. There were also purchased the lands and lots south of Centre street and west of the canal, for twenty-four thousand and eighty dollars and fifty-five cents. The di- rectors, in the course of their management, from the date of the organization of their board, July 13, 1859, to the end of their fiscal year, November 1, 1877, also made many improvements on the grounds and buildings, put- ting in machinery and otherwise adding to its facilities and conveniences, to the amount of one hundred and thirty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight dol- lars and ninety five cents. These, with the value of the house-furnishing, etc., as before stated, and the cost of maintenance and care of inmates during that period (one million six hundred and sixty-eight thousand and forty- one dollars and fifty-six cents), made their total expendi- tures, during a little more than eighteen years, one mil- lion eight hundred and eighty-two thousand and sixty-five dollars and fifty-four cents.
There had been received to that time for State Central district patients (1869 to 1874, inclusive), $105,221.34 ; for colored patients from the State at large (1869 to 1877), $44,737.70; and for. pay patients (after 1861) under a system introduced by a resolution of the directors March 5, 1860, authorizing their reception and fixing the rates for their accommodation, $138,687.36 ; and from sales of produce, etc., at Longview, $9,640.28. Taxes for the support of the asylum had been collected by the county to the amount of $608,729.43, ranging from $1,000 in 1877 to $81,439.98 in 1868. The amount of taxation for this purpose in some other years was very light, and during the years 1874, 1875, and 1876, none seems to have been collected. The State appropriation during the eighteen years amounted to $1,109,925.94. The total receipts of these years from all sources were $2,016,642 .- 05; the disbursements, as before given, $1,882,065.54. Two years thereafter the total sum expended had amounted to $2,063,026.26-$90,127.64 for 1878, and $100,836.68 for the next year. Before the act of April 28, 1873, the State paid as much for the support of Longview as was raised annually in the county by taxa- tion for general appropriations to lunatic asylums in the State. After that act an apportionment of expenditures was made upon a basis of population.
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
The first board of directors of Longview asylum was appointed jointly by the governor of the State and the commissioners of the county, and consisted of Messrs. John L. Vattier, John Burgoyne, and T. F. Eckert. They were appointed in pursuance of an act of the legislature of April 5, 1859, and took the oath of office on the thirteenth of July following, when the board was organized by the election of Dr. Vattier, president, and Mr. W. L. De Beck, secretary. November 10, 1859, the board appointed Dr. O. M. Langdon, of Cincinnati, superintendent ; B. C. Ludlow, M.D., assistant physician; Mr. R. T. Thorburn, steward, and Mrs. Mary A. Sharp, matron. The present officers of the asylum are: C. A. Miller, M.D., superintendent, succeeding Dr. W. H. Bunker in 1878; Drs. J. M. Ratliff and F. F. Hellmann, assistant physicians; A. V. Stewart, steward. The directors are: H. D. Peck, president; James F. Chal- fant, secretary; A. J. Mullane, B. Roth, Dr. C. S. Mus- croft.
Liberal appropriations have been made by the State, as just indicated, for the support of Longview asylum. The smallest appropriation was made the first year- seven thousand dollars; the largest in 1874-one hun- dred and eighty-three thousand eight hundred and eighty-four dollars and fifty-eight cents -- these granted in pursuance of an act passed March 10, 1857, entitled "An act to constitute the county of Hamilton a separate district for lunatic asylum purposes, and to provide for the erection and government of an asylum therein," and of amendatory and supplementary acts subsequently passed. A joint resolution of the general assembly, November 25, 1868, provided for the support and care of patients sent to Longview from the central district of the State. The jurisdiction of the State and county au- thorities is thus concurrent, and during some part of its history has been harmoniously exercised, and for the best interests of the institution.
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