USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 92
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The- Harvest Home was also a flourishing institution of those days, and somewhat peripatetic, its gatherings not being confined to College Hill, nor even to Mill Creek township, as the meeting of September 29, 1856, assembled at Miamitown, Whitewater township.
ELMWOOD.
A small subdivision laid out in 1875, along the Dayton Short Line railroad, near the lunatic asylum and just southwest of Carthage, by Messrs. Frank L. Whetstone and L. C. Hopkins. It had one hundred and thirty-six people by the tenth census.
LUDLOW GROVE.
This place occupies the site of the grounds and grave- yard of the heroic old pioneer of 1793-4, John Ludlow, esq., near the junction of the Dayton Short Line and Marietta & Cincinnati railroads, about nine miles from the Plum Street depot. The original Ludlow homestead is still standing. In 1854 the tract was mostly covered with trees, where the city people delighted to keep holi- day. With the completion of the Marietta & Cincinnati, however, the prospects of this region for a suburban vil- lage began to brighten, and in 1869 the site was subdi-
vided by Benjamin Barton, H. S. Brewster, and Charles Folz. It is now included in the corporation of St. Ber- nard, for which it furnishes the sole postal facilities, under its old name.
MOUNT AIRY
is an incorporated village of large size in point of terri- tory, immediately west and southwest of College Hill and covering a little more than two square miles (one thou- sand three hundred and twenty-six acres) in Mill Creek and Green townships, of which seven hundred and forty- seven acres are in the former. Its certificate of incorpor- ation as a village was filed November 20, 1865. Some of its mayors were: Anthony Shouter, 1897-8; Oliver Brown, 1869; R. Creighton, 1870; B. H. Kroeger, 1874. The St. James Catholic church, under care of Father F. Schonfelt, with its parochial school of two departments and one hundred and fifty pupils, and its confraternities of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary, are located at Mount Airy. The village, consid- ering its large tract, is still rather sparsely settled. It had one hundred and sixty-two inhabitants in 1880.
ROLLING RIDGE
is a small settlement on the Winton turnpike, about half a mile north of Winton Place, and a mile from the north line of the township.
ST. BERNARD.
This extensive suburb lies south of the Marietta & Cincinnati railroad, and immediately north of Avondale, partly on the Carthage turnpike. It was laid out in 1850 by Joseph Kleine and J. B. Schroder, and has been so extended as to include the suburb of Ludlow Grove. It was incorporated as a village March 8, 1878. It is largely inhabited by the Germans, who have here the St. Clements Catholic church and parochial school (with about one hundred and ten pupils), and the attached Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, all under the pastoral care of the Rev. Father Gregory Faugman. The building for this church was erected in 1873. It has six hundred sittings, and a spire one hun- . dred and seventy feet high. The St. Bernard Catholic cemetery is in the southwest part of the corporation, near the canal. The extensive starch factory of Mr. Andrew Erkenbecker, of Cincinnati, are also in this place. The village has a well organized fire department, with full ap- paratus for extinguishing fires. In June, 1880, its popu- tation was one thousand and seventy-three.
SPRING GROVE CEMETERY,
with the County infirmary, Longview lunatic asylum, and Zoological gardens, all either county or city institu- tions, are wholly in Mill Creek township. They receive full notice in their appropriate places elsewhere in this work.
WINTON PLACE.
'T'his delightful suburb adjoins the Spring Grove ceme- tery on the east, due north of Clifton. It was formerly called Spring Grove, and gave the name to the great cemetery and to Spring Grove avenue, which runs far into the city. It was platted in 1865 by Sylvester Hard
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
and Samuel Troome. Chester Park, a famous place for speeding horses, is located here. The village had three hundred and eighty people, by the tenth census.
POPULATION.
Mill Creek township had ten thousand five hundred and fifty-two inhabitants in 1880.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
FREEMAN GRANT CARY
was born in Cincinnati April 7, 1810. His father, Wil- liam Cary, emigrated to the Northwest Territory in 1803 and settled on a farm he purchased at the head of Main. street, Cincinnati, where he resided until 1814 when he removed to College Hill. His thirty-two acres in Cincin- nati were sold and he bought section thirty in Mill Creek township-now Colllege Hill-where he resided until his death March 25, 1862.
Here in the wilderness, the subject of our sketch, the oldest of three sons, with his two brothers, William Woodward, and Samuel Fenton, received his early edu- cation. He afterwards attended college at Miami uni- versity, and graduated with honor in the class of 1831. This was fifty years ago, and since that time Mr. Cary has left a marked impress of his character for good which in the history of the county is inerasable. He has devoted more than thirty years of his life to teaching. He established Cary's academy, originated Farmers' college, into which the academy was merged; also orig- inated for females what afterwards became the Ohio Female college; which institutions were eminently suc- cessful until after he resigned the presidency-the Farm- ers' college at that time numbering three hundred students. The Female college was likewise quite successful.
Mr. Cary's fort was in government, and was also a suc- cessful teacher. During his presidency he associated · with him men of ability in the various departments of his institution-we say his institution, for he exercised entire control of it from the first until he resigned his . place in it. During the period of its existence under him he educated, to a greater or less extent, some three thousand young men, many of them now occupying dis- tinguished positions north and south, in the ministry, at the bar, as physicians, or becoming active business men. Mr. Cary's character is marked by a combination of strik- ing traits; being possessed of a strong constitution, of temperate habits, of good health, giving him physical ability to successfully accomplish whatever he undertakes.
He has made his own place in society and is known to be presistent, energetic and self-reliant, never seeking aid from others, much less place or honors of office. The arduous and responsible duties that have fallen to his lot have been discharged so as to reflect credit upon himself and the honorable positions he has filled. He has now reached the age of over three score and ten, and is still in possession, to a wonderful degree, of those characteristics
which have distinguished him through life. He seems to be thoroughly conversant on all subjects of natural science, especially those pertaining to agriculture and horticulture of which he is proficient both in practice and theory. He has connected with his residence an admir- ably arranged conservatory and greenhouse, on his own plan, in which he spends much of his time in experiment- ing for his own gratification. He established and edited an agricultural periodical, The Cincinnatus, which for five years had a wide circulation, and only ceased by reason of the Rebellion, which placed such literature at a discount, many of the subscribers being in the south. He was one of the distinguished early leaders and sup- porters of the Cincinnati Horticultural society, being several times its honored. president. Mr. Cary is not only an adept in the natural sciences but is also a good classical and mathematical scholar, his education and ability eminently fitting him for marked prominence. He was selected as one of two to represent the great State of Ohio-under Buchanan's administration-in a congress of the States for the promotion of agriculture, with Marshall and Wilder at its head. After over a quar- ter of a century's labors in the schools originated and constructed by him, he retired to a farm in Butler county, where, with his wonted zeal and industry, he devoted him- self to rural pursuits, leading a quiet and retired life. His residence, planned by himself (see engraving), is a model of taste and fine architecture, combinding more conveniences than almost any structure in the county. His place is set with the choicest fruits grown in the cli- mate and with fruits, evergreens, and diciduous trees his residence is completely encircled, and all is in keeping with the intelligence of the man, amply repaying any one with the information he would receive, on almost every subject, from a visit to his place. He has been an elder in the Presbyterian church for over forty years, and its active, zealous supporter.
His wife, Malvina McCan, to whom he was married April 4, 1833, was a native of Chillicothe, a daugter of a pioneer, who was a man of fine education and was an extensive surveyor. She died in the month of January, 1872. He had by her eight children, five of whom sur- vive. His second wife was the widow of Dr. James Rich- ardson, and daughter of Clark Bates, one of the earliest pioneers of the west. He was married to her March 6, 1873, with whom he still lives. His mother, Mrs. William Cary, now ninety years of age, intelligent and still active, lives with him. Notwithstanding her advancement in years she enjoys all her faculties of mind. William Woodward, named after William Woodward, the founder of Woodward college, died in 1847. He was a farmer, a man of sound judgment and mathematical education. General S. F. Carey, of world wide renown as a lecturer and popular orator, is the youngest of three brothers. The Cary sisters, the celebrated writers, are his cousins, and were greatly aided in their first efforts by the subject of this sketch.
We may say, few men, in an independent and unaided life and on their own resourses, have exerted a more ex- tended influence than has F. G. Cary.
€.
Freeman G. Carys
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SPENCER.
FORMATION AND GEOGRAPHY.
Spencer township was erected some time in the early '40's, to relieve the embarrassment caused to some of the people in transacting township business or voting, from the size of Columbia, which had always been a large township, and had now become populous. The new municipality began at the eastern line of Cincinnati township, being the "second meridian" referred to fre- quently in a previous chapter, or the range line dividing Mill Creek and Columbia townships, and extending to the Ohio nearly at the foot of Barr, a short street running from the river to Eastern avenue, west of Pendleton. North upon this meridian to the second section line, at the northwest corner of section thirty-two; thence due east to the Little Miami river ; thence by the Little Miami and Ohio rivers to the place of beginning, com- pleted the boundaries of the township. It contained within its limits the old village of Columbia, with Pendle- ton and the present sites of Tusculum, O'Bryanville, and a part of Mount Lookout-all now included within the city; also Linwood, East Linwood, Russell's, Turkey Bot- tom, and part of Red Bank. Its greatest width, a mile south of the north line, was but three and a half miles, the breadth dwindling to less than a third of a mile at the mouth of the Little Miami. Its length varied from four miles, on a line drawn from the present northeast corner of the city, at Mount Lookout, to the junction of the rivers, down to one and a quarter miles on the west- ern boundary. It has a water front of five miles and a half on the much-winding Little Miami, and four miles on the northward-bending Ohio. Yet it was, at its best es- tate, but a small township, having only four entire sec- tions, with nine fractional sections, altogether hardly making the equivalent of eight square miles. The town- ship proper has, within the last decade, been further en- croached upon by the movement of the city eastward. By the annexation of Pendleton, Columbia, and the dis- tricts to the north of these, it has lost the whole of sec- tions twenty-five and twenty-six, thirty and thirty-one, to- gether with parts of sections nineteen, twenty-four, and thirty, restricting the territory over which it has exclusive jurisdiction to half its former limits, or about four square miles, including the whole tract adjoining the Little Mi- ami, and one and a half miles front upon the Ohio. What remains of the township (only two thousand one hundred and eighty-four acres, and but eight hudred and sixty-nine outside its villages) is almost exclusively in the valley ; is low and flat, but exceedingly rich and fertile. Much of the triangular space between the Little Miami railroad and Mount Lookout is, however, on the hills, |
and gives many picturesque views up and down the val- ley, and across to Mount Washington and the heights of Anderson.
Besides the Little Miami road, Spencer is also inter- sected by the Cincinnati & Portsmouth narrow guage railroad and the projected line of the Ohio River & Vir- ginia railway. Within the city part of old Spencer, two dummy lines of street railroad connect the terminus of the horse-car lines at the east end of Pendleton with Co- lumbia and Mount Lookout, respectively. The Union Bridge pike runs from Linwood about a mile southeast- ward to the splendid structure over the Little Miami, no- ticed in our chapter on Anderson township; the New Richmond pike, from Columbia toward the mouth of the river, crosses it below Mount Washington ; the old Cin- cinnati and Wooster pike intersects the whole township from Cincinnati to Red Bank, on the Little Miami, at the northeast corner of Spencer ; and it has numerous other fine roads. The drives over the hills and along the val- ley in this direction are among the finest in and near the city
A very handsome and valuable improvement was made in this township some years ago, at the expense of the county, in building a very strong and costly union levee or roadway, of about a mile's length, across the Little Miami bottoms, from the Union bridge to Linwood, upon which the Union Bridge turnpike now runs. It is forty feet wide on top the whole way, and in many places from fifteen to twenty feet in height, containing an immense amount of earth and stone, and costing near eighty thousand dollars. It is designed to raise this, one of the most important roads into the city, over which most of the wagon transportation and carriage travel from the eastward comes in, altogether above the annual floods of the Little Miami and the Ohio, which overflow this part of the valley, and had often grievously interrupted the use of the old highway. Upon completion of the levee, the county also generously proceeded to displace the antiquated, rough wooden Union bridge by the present superb iron crossway, which is suitably mentioned else- where.
The township received its distinguished name in honor of Colonel Spencer, one of the early colonists of Colum- bia, and father of the Rev. Oliver M. Spencer, whose story of Indian captivity supplies one of the most inter- esting leaves in its history.
ANCIENT WORKS.
The following notes of antiquities in Spencer township are taken from Dr. Metz's paper on the Prehistoric Monu- ments of the Little Miami Valley:
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
Immediately south of Red Bank Station, Little Miami railroad, com- mences a gravelly ridge, having an average elevation of about forty to fifty feet above the general level of the surrounding plateau, and extend- ing in a southwesterly direction for three-fourths of a mile along the course of the Wooster turnpike. On this ridge and on the estate of Dr. O. M. Langdon, we have a tumulus and a circular excavation. The tumulus has an elevation of nine feet and a circumference of two hundred feet at base. It has not been explored and is covered with young forest trees. Three hundred yards southwest of this tumulus is the circular excavation. Its diameter north to south is forty feet, east to west forty-four feet, depth seven feet. An old settler related that fifty years ago remains of stakes or palisades could be seen surrounding this excavation. The southeast slope of the ridge near this excavation is covered with huge conglomerate masses, under which are two small caves ; no evidence exists about them as to their having served as habi- tations.
Half a mile west of this ridge is an elevated plateau sloping to south- ward, until it coinsides with the first bottom of the Little Miami river. On this plateau, at its highest elevation just south of the Little Miami railroad and at the junction of Oak and Elmwood avenues of the Lin- wood Land company's subdivision, was a mound recently removed in the grading done by the Land company. The superintendent of the grading informs me that there were two circular layers of human re- mains, one near the general level of the ground, and one three feet above the lower one; he gives its height as eight feet and its circum- ference at base of two hundred feet. The Hon. Judge Cox states to me that this mound was enclosed by a circular work that had a diame- ter of eight hundred feet.
South of this mound, distant two hundred yards, was a mound which was explored fifty years ago. My informant, Mr. Riggle, re- members that in a kind of stone coffin, as he describes it, were two skeletons lying side by side, with their feet to the east, and that their faces were covered with layers of mica.
The five acres west of these mounds are known as the Indian Bury- ing Ground, now subdivided into lots by the Linwood Land company. The square bounded by Elmwood, Walnut, Oak, and Maplewood avenues covers the greater part of the ancient cemetery, and an exca- vation made anywhere within or near those boundaries will reveal human remains. The inhumation was usually at length with head to east.
A short distance east of the Linwood station, on the south side of the railroad, can yet be seen a portion of the mound remaining. This mound was removed to make way for the Little Miami railroad. Many relics were found in grading down these mounds and levelling the ground over the cemetery, which are in the collections of Dr. H. H. Hill and J. J. Hooker, of Cincinnati, and of the writer and others.
Southwest of another mound, and at about the same elevation known as Linwood Hill, distant about four hundred yards, is the site of a mound ; it has been graded down. I could learn nothing positive as to its dimensions, the Anderson house occupies its site. Still further westward, a quarter of a mile distant, and at the same elevation on the Land company's property, is a mound four feet high with a circum- ference of one hundred and fifty feet. It has not been explored.
The history of the western half of the old township now belongs to Cincinnati, and has been mostly consid- ered in the second part of this book. As, however, the landing of the first white settlers in the Miami purchase was undoubtedly upon the present soil of Spencer township, with which this, the oldest town in Hamilton county and the second founded in Ohio was identified for many years, we have reserved for this chapter the history of the beginnings of Miami settlement at
COLUMBIA.
The movements of Major Benjamin Stites, who was not merely the founder of Columbia, but in the first instance of the Miami purchase also, preliminary to his emigration to the west, have been detailed in our chapter on the purchase, in the first part of this work.
To Stites were sold, by the East Jersey company, twenty thousand acres, mostly in the Little Miami valley,
and including, of course, the subsequent site of Colum- bia, and some tracts elsewhere. In July, 1788, he ar- rived at Limestone with a party of emigrants from the Redstone Old Fort, and there joined a company which had arrived on the fifth of June, having left New York and New Jersey during the spring, accompanied by the Rev. John Gano. They had been attracted to the Miami country by the representations of the Rev. Wil- liam Wood, of Kentucky, who had visited New York toward the end of 1787, and confirmed the glowing statements which Stites, and then Symmes, had endeav- ored to spread at the east. Judge Symmes, with his party, arrived soon after, and the now large company of Miami immigrants here remained together until winter was very near.
The character of Stites's arrangements with Symmes, in part at least, may be learned from the following docu- ments, which we find, all but the last, in Colonel A. E. Jones' valuable address on the pioneers of the Little Miami valley :
Captain Benjamin Stites enters ten thousand acres and the fraction on the Ohio and Little Miami rivers, and is to take in Mr. John Car- penter as one of his company, to be on line or sections on the Ohio and Little Miami from the point, and ten thousand acres on equal lines and sections at the mill-stream [Mill Creek], falling into the Ohio be- tween the Little and Great Miamis-which, when the certificates there- of are paid and the Record Book open, shall be recorded to him and to such of his company as join therefor.
[Signed.] JOHN C. SYMMES. New Brunswick [N. J.], 7th of September, 1787.
A supplement follows, without date or signature :
The last ten (10,000) thousand acres is to be taken in the following manner: Two sections at the mouth of Mill creek, and the residue to begin four (4) miles from the Ohio up Mill creek. Captain Stites takes four (4) sections on the Little Miami with the fraction adjoining the ten (10,000) thousand acres where it comes to the Little Miami, and four sections with the section next above the range of township, taken by Daniel , esq., on the Little Miami.
By the eighth of February, 1793, Captain Stites had paid in full for his tracts, as the following receipt evinces :
CINCINNATI, February the 8th, 1793.
Received of Benjamin Stites, esq., at different payments, certifi- cates of debts due by the United States, to the amount of ten thou- sand six hundred and fifty-two dollars and twenty-three-one-hundreths of a dollar, in payment for different parts of the Miami purchase, ly- ing, as may appear by location of Mr. Stites, ten thousand acres round Columbia, seven sections on the waters of Mill creek for differ- ent people, as will appear by the Miami records ; and about three or four sections in the neighborhood of Covalt's Station, and in cash or- ders and other articles to the amount of one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, eight shillings, and eight pence, for which lands, accommoda- ted to the several locations, I promise to make a deed in fee simple, so soon as I am enabled by receiving my deed from the United States.
Attest : JOHN S. GANO, [Signed. ] JOHN C. SYMMES.
The following letter from Major Stites, written a few months after planting his colony, will be read with in- terest in this connection:
COLUMBIA, June 18, 1789.
SIR :- After my respects to you and family, I would inform you that, after further deliberation on the subject of the second purchase, that if you should find it valued, that you would endeavor to purchase or come in with the owners of the point, if you can find who they are, so that we may hold some lots in and some out. Sir, do what you can, and we will be on the same terms of the article of agreement betwixt us. This from your humble servant,
To JOHN S. GANO, Washington, BENJAMIN STITES.
MOSS- ENG GO.N.Y
SAMUEL M. FERRIS.
Samuel Marsh Ferris, of Linwood, was born October 12, 1817, in the old Ferris homestead at Mt. Lookout (now Cincinnati), where his mother, now in her eighty-fourth year, still resides.
Isaac Ferris, the great-grandfather, came to Columbia from Connec- ticut in the year 1789. During the Revolutionary struggle both he and his son Ebenezer were engaged as soldiers under Washington in the battle of White Plains. After coming to Ohio he became one of the constituted members of the first Baptist church organized in Columbia. He was a faithful member until his death which occurred in 1819, and it may be said of his numerous descendants that they are, so far as known, strict adherents of the Baptist church. Mr. Ferris had five sons-Ebenezer, Isaac, John, Abram and Ezra; the last-named was a practicing physician in Lawrenceburgh, Indiana. John lived in the old homestead. He was a captain first, afterwards a colonel. Abram kept a tanyard in Cincinnati. Ebenezer, the grandfather of S. M. Ferris, moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where he lived and died. He had three children, two girls and one boy-Isaac Ferris, father of the subject of this sketch.
Isaac Ferris was born in Lexington, Kentucky, April 12, 1795, and when only four years of age came to Hamilton county, Ohio, where he resided up to the time of his death. He came to Ohio to live with his grandfather, and learned the shoemaker's trade with his uncle Abram. Not liking this business he soon afterwards learned the trade of a blacksmith, which he followed successfully fifteen years. Out of this business grew the hame business, which he conducted until his death, and which has since been conducted by his sons.
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