History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 62

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 62

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THE WATER-WORKS.

On the 6th of March, 1854, the Louisville Water Company was incorporated by act of the General Assembly, "with power and authority to construct and establish water-works in the city of Louisville or elsewhere, for the purpose of sup- plying said city and its inhabitants with water." June 24th, a popular vote was taken, to determine the question of building water-works at the ex- pense of the city, which was decided adversely by 1,251 against 1,751. However, on the 30th of June, 1856, an ordinance was passed direct- ing the Mayor to subscribe for five thousand five hundred shares of stock in the company, and pay for them in bords of the city. This or- dinance, upon submission to the people in September, was approved by a vote of 1,415 against 370. The stock finally became almost wholly the property of the city. In 1873 it was divided into 12,75 1 shares, of which three only were held by private persons, two by the city proper, and the whole of the remainder by the Sinking Fund of the city, and therefore public property. A publication of this period says :

The value of the Works to January 1, 1874, estimated at cost, is nearly $2,000,000, and there exists a bonded indebt- edness of $200,000, secured by mortgage on the Works. A sinking fund was created February 14, 1870, for the extin- guishment of this debt, which falls due February, 1883. This fund, up to this date, has been invested in the purchase of forty-eight bonds of the company and eight bonds of the city of Louisville maturing at about the same time-i. e., fifty-six bonds, of $1,000 each.

The receipts 'of the company are yearly increasing, and

now exceed $150,000 per annum-$10,000 of which are placed to the credit of the sinking fund of the company. The remainder, up to the present time, excluding the neces- sary expense of conducting the Works, has been used in the making of new pipe extensions, of which some eighty-two miles have been laid. The Works have a maximum capacity to supply fifteen million gallons of water per day.

It is provided by law that the water rates of Louisville are not to exceed those charged in either Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or St. Louis.

NOTABLE DEATH.

The Rev. Dr. John L. Waller, a prominent Baptist clergyman and editor, died here October 10, 1854.

1855.

January Ist the semi-annual dividends de- clared by Kentucky banks included one of four and one-half per cent., with an extra two and one-half, by the Bank of Louisville, and five per cent. by the Bank of Kentucky. Five per cent. was declared by the Louisville Gas Company.

February 3d the Ohio river was closed by ice, and for eleven days together.

February 6th a horse of twenty hands, or eight feet and four inches high, from Perrysville, in this State, was exhibited at Louisville. It was called the Magnus Apollo, is described as of "extraordinary grandeur and majesty of propor- tion and appearance," and was believed to be the largest horse in the world.

February 22d, Washington's birthday, the Know-Nothing State convention met in Louis- ville, and nominated Judge William V. Loving, of Bowling Green, a gentleman of Whig ante- cedents, for Governor, and James G. Hardy, a former Democrat, for Lieutenant-Governor. April 7th the ticket of this party was again suc- cessful in Louisville. There was this time no opposing candidate for Mayor, Mr. Speed, the incumbent, holding that his term did not expire this year. The Mayor-elect, Mr. John Barbee, was recognized by the several departments of the city government; but Judge Bullock, of the Jefferson Circuit Court, decided that Mr. Speed was still the legal Mayor.

An election was also held this spring to ratify or reject the contract or purchase by the city of the Strader & Thompson wharf, from the old town line near Third street to Brock street, with some small exceptions. An issue of bonds to

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the amount of $300,000 had been authorized by ordinance of August 18, 1853, but only $175,000 were issued, of date March 15, 1854, and to run thirty years.

The assessment of 1854 was $18,376,609 in the Western district, $14,885,415 for the Eastern, and $33,262,024 for the whole city, Pork-pack- ing for the season of 1855-56, 332,354 hogs, 88,029 barrels, 11,869,760 pounds.

The winter of this year is noted for its severity, the thermometer going down to twenty-two de- grees below zero.

ELECTION RIOT.

The sharp political agitations of this year cul- minated in Louisville in a dreadful series of dis- turbances August 6th, the date for the election of State officers and members of Congress. We copy a good account from Mr. Collins's History :

Terrible riot in Louisville, on election day; then desig- nated, and still most painfully remembered, as "Bloody Monday." Fighting and disturbance between individuals or squads, in various parts of the city. The most fearful and deplorable scenes of violence, bloodshed, and house-burning, principally in the First and Eighth wards. Between 7 and I o'clock at night, twelve houses were set fire to and burned, on the north side of Main, east of Eleventh, two adjoining on Eleventh, and two on south side of Main opposite. Patrick Quinn, the owner of most of them, was shot, and his body partially consumed in the flames. Numerous shots were fired by foreigners from windows in some of those buildings, which killed or wounded Americans in the streets; this faet, with the exaggerated report that arms and powder were con- cealed there, excited to frenzy a mob of Americans (Know- Nothings) already erazed with similar excitement; shooting and bloodshed on both sides, at other points; several persons who were concealed in the buildings, or fled to them for refuge from the mob, were burned to death; several were shot as they attempted to escape from the flames; Ambruster's large briek brewery and his dwelling, at the head of Jeffer- son, were burned; also, two Irish cooper-shops on Main above Woodland garden; frame grocery, corner of Madison and Shelby; many houses were riddled or gutted. The mob which ranged through the streets and set fire to the houses was composed of Americans, part of them with a cannon at their head; the foreigners fought from their houses, and lost life and property together. About twenty-two were killed or died of wounds, about three-fourths of them foreigners, one- fourth Americans; many more were wounded but recovered. Mayor Barbee, Marshal Kidd, and a portion of the police, and the personal efforts of Hon. William P. Thomasson, Captain L. H. Rousseau, George D. Prentice, Colonel Wil- liam Preston (the anti-Know-Nothing candidate for Con- gress), Joseph Burton, and others, at different times and places, stopped the effusion of blood, and saved the new Shelby street Catholic church and other valuable property from the rapacity and violence of the mob. Bad blood on both sides, aggravated and intensified for several days pre- vious by distorted representations of preparation for serions work, culminated in a most terrible and disgraceful riot. For several days after, fears of a renewal of the desperate con-

flict and work of destruction hung like a funeral pall over the city. A eard from Rt. Rev. Bishop Martin J. Spalding, and the steady efforts of many good citizens, gradually restored a feeling of quiet and security.

1856.

February 25th, the closure of the Ohio by ice for the surprising period of fifty-three days ceased, and the river broke up.

March 10th, a remarkable. old Louisville negro died, aged one hundred and ten years, eight months, and three days. He was known as." old Ben Duke," and was reputed to have seen the first tree felled in the valley of the Beargrass.

April 20th, the Louisville Bridge Company was re-organized, with Thomas W. Gibson as President and L. A. Whiteley Secretary.

In October, during a season of low water and comparative inactivity in navigation, the Falls pilots have the enterprise and energy, at their own expense, to secure the deepening and widen- ing of the channel through the rapids.

The same month an ingenious firm, Messrs. Cornwall & Brothers, of the city, made an ex- cellent lot of candles, of great illuminating power, from paraffine extracted from the cannel coal found near Cloverport, Kentucky.

December 31st, the Medical Department of the Louisville University was burned out, with a loss of $100,000.

The new Male and Female High Schools were both opened to students April 7th of this year.

Assessments this year: Eastern District, $14,- 427,988 ; Western, $17,207,471; total, $31,- 635,459. Pork-packing: Hogs, 245,830; bar- rels, 62,920; pounds, 7,867,991.

GRANTS TO RAILROADS.

It was a great year for the issue of bonds by the city in aid of railroads. Five hundred thou- sand dollars in thirty-year bonds, bearing date April 1, 1856, were issued in aid of the Louis- ville & Nashville road ; October 1, 1856, to the same, $250,000 in thirty-year bonds ; May 2d, $90,000, to run the same length of time, to the Lebanon Branch ; and November rith, to the same, $135,000. Previous issues had been made: To the Louisville & Nashville, April Ist, 1853, $500,000 in thirty year bonds; and April 20, 1852, $200,000 in the same. April 1, 1857,

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still another issue was made to this road, of $250,000 in thirty-year securities.

1857.

January 19, severely cold weather was experi- enced in Louisville and throughout the State. At Louisville the thermometer was 10° below, but 27° at Frankfort, and 20° or more at many other places. Four days afterwards the river be- tween New Albany and Portland was frozen over for the first time in forty years, and teams were crossing on the ice at various points on the Lou- isville front.

Another considerable flood occurred in the Ohio this year, sending the river up at the head of the canal to 35 feet above low water, and 60 below the Falls.

February 9, a block of four warehouses near the Galt House, with twenty other buildings on Main street, was burned with a loss of two hun- dred and fifty thousand dollars.

March 29, the citizens of the place, without reference to party affiliations, gave a compliment- ary public dinner at the Galt House to their fel- low-citizen, the Hon. James Guthrie, in recog- nition of his eminent services, then recently closed, as Secretary of the United States Treas- ury.

May 12th, the Hon. Edward Everett, of Mass- achusetts, pronounced in Louisville his famous lecture on the life and character of Washington, for the benefit of the fund being raised for the purchase of Mt. Vernon.

August 31st, opened the annual exhibition of the United States Agricultural Society, the first of these displays held west of the Alleghanies. Lord Napier, British Minister at Washington, was present, with other visitors of distinction. The exhibit of blooded stock was particularly fine.

October Ist, there was another flurry in bank- ing circles, and several banking houses in Louis- ville suspend specie payments. Mr. Collins says: "Kentucky banks refuse to lend their notes to parties who pay them out in Cincinnati, because the brokers there assort and send them home immediately for redemption in specie." Later, however, when banks and bankers every- where in the country were suspending specie

payments, the Kentucky banks refuse to suspend, and maintain their credit unimpaired.

The Musical Fund society was organized this year, as an association of resident musicians, to cultivate their art and to perform in public the compositions of the great masters. Its orchestra numbered over forty performers, and its concerts were among the chief local attractions for some years. It gave five concerts every winter until 1862, when they were suspended on account of the war. The society then had about $1,000 worth of property in music and musical instru- ments.

The Citizen Guards, another military com- pany, was organized this year, in May, with J. W. Brannor, Captain; R. D. Anderson, First Lieutenant ; Alexander Casseday, Second Lieu- tenant ; J. H. M. Morris, Third Lieutenant; James H. Huber, Orderly Sergeant, and James A. Beattie, Secretary. The other companies of the city at this time were the Falls City Guards, A. Y. Johnson, Captain, and the Marion Rifles, W. E. Woodruff, Captain.

The population in 1857 was counted at 64,665 -whites 57,478, slaves 5,432, free blacks 1,755. Valuation (of real estate, probably), $25,061,063; total valuation, $33,623,564-$18,702, 182 West- ern district, $14,921,382 in the Eastern. There were in the city 238 wholesale houses, selling this year $37,281,861. The imports (partly esti- mated), were valued at $28,566,075. Foreign imports were received at the Louisville custom- house to the value of $109,550, and of those entered in New York and New Orleans $507,- 010. Duties were paid at Louisville to the amount of $27,267. The tonnage of vessels here was 28,015. Manufactories numbered 214, with 4,531 hands, $4,096,759 capital, and $7,771,436 in products, by an incomplete esti- mate. There were seven flouring-mills, with twenty-one run of stone, turning out 208,630 barrels of flour. The pork-packing included 253,803 hogs, 82,310 barrels, or 8,759,939 pounds. The total of this industry for the last five years was 1,523,550 hogs, and 423,240 bar- rels, or 53,260,520 pounds.

ANOTHER RIOT

occurred in the city May 14. Mr. Collins thus tells the story:

Four slaves, charged with murdering the Joyce family, near the mouth of Salt river, some time since, tried at Louis-

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ville, and acquitted. A mob, headed by a son of the Joyce family, attempted to force an entrance into the jail, but was kept off by the police and a force of twelve armed men stationed inside by Mayor Pilcher. After tea the mob again assaults the jail, but the force inside, by firing into the air to intimidate, holds the crowd back a little while. They retire, and soon return with a cannon loaded to the muzzle, and pointing it at the jail door, compel the jailors to capitulate. One negro cut his throat, but the other three were taken out and hung to trees. The Mayor was struck in the face with a brick, and it was feared the mob would vent their violence on Messrs. Rousseau, Wolfe, and Mix. the attorneys who defended the negroes. May 27th, two of the rioters indicted by the grand jury, arrested, and committed to jail. .

July 20th, an affray with pistols occurred in the street, between two prominent editors, in which seven shots, were fired without harming either, though a citizen near by was accidentally wounded by a ball. The fight grew out of a newspaper quarrel.

Two other editors, from Frankfort, reached Louisville June roth, on their way to Indiana to fight a duel, which is prevented and the difficulty amicably settled here, by the mediation of friends.

1858.

February 15th, the General Assembly extended for twenty years the charters of the Bank of Louisville, the Bank of Kentucky, and the Northern Bank of Kentucky, with requirements that branches should be established by them at Burksville, Columbus, and Glasgow, respectively, with $150,000 capital each. June 15th, the Bank of Louisville opened books for the sub- scription of $850,000 more to its stock, which is all taken in two hours, at $102 to the share, nearly the whole by citizens of Kentucky and in small amounts. July Ist, this bank, the Bank of Kentucky, and the Northern Bank, declared each a five per cent. dividend. The first also declared an extra dividend of twelve per cent., and the other two five per cent. each. August 31st Northern Bank stock sold in Lexington at $120 per share, and Bank of Louisville in Philadelphia the same day at $112.

In April twenty-three companies, recruited in the State, were tendered to Governor Morehead for the regiment of volunteers called for to join the expeditionary force about to march upon Utah, under command of the late General Albert Sydney Johnston. Among them were three

companies from Louisville, commanded, respect- ively, by Captains Wales, Rogers, and Forsyth. Ten companies were selected by the Governor by lot.

In April there were great revivals of religion in Kentucky and generally throughout the coun- try. In Louisville the five Methodist churches receive four hundred and twenty-eight new mem- bers, and the other denominations receive a large number.

May 19th an extensive display of leaf tobacco, grown in Kentucky, was made at the Pickett warehouse, in Louisville, under the auspices of the State Agricultural Society. One hundred and twenty-nine entries were made. The tobac- cos taking premiums were sold at auction after the exhibit, and brought prices varying from $1 1 to $53 per hundred weight.

The Fire Department of the city, which had heretofore been wholly volunteer, was recon- structed. The hand-engines were sold and the companies disbanded ; and a system of steam-machines and paid firemen was introduced. By 1864 the Department had five steamers and one hook and ladder company, and was costing $30,000, but was yet considered more econom- ical for the city, and certainly far more efficient.

The Woodlawn Race course was established this year, by the Woodlawn Association, upon a beautiful site on the Louisville & Frankfort Rail- road, five miles from the city.

THE ARTESIAN WELL.

In August of this year, the famous artesian well of Messrs. C. I. and A. V. Dupont, at their paper-mills on Twelfth street, near the river, be- gan to flow immense volumes of mineral water from the vast depth of 2,086 feet. This great work was begun in April of the year before, from the bottom of one of the wells of the mill, which had a depth of only twenty feet. At the depth of seventy-six feet the diameter of the bore was reduced from five to three inches, and so contin- ued to the bottom. The boring was mostly through solid rock, more than one thousand two hundred feet of the upper Silurian for mation alone being passed through. It was conducted most ably by Mr. Blake, and when finished at the end of sixteen months, a constant supply of about thirteen thousand gallons per hour was secured, rising from that mighty depth to one

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hundred and seventy feet above the surface. The water is perfectly limpid, with a tempera- ture, invariable the year round, of 7615°, which is 7° below that at the bottom of the well. It has important medical uses.

CHARLES MACKAY'S VISIT.

In January passed through Louisville, in a specially ungracious and fretful humor, which found vent upon the pages of his book, entitled Life and Liberty in America, Charles Mackay, LL. D., F. S. A., an English writer of some note. He was then on his way from Cincinnati to St. Louis. The following are some of his remarks;

Next morning, at an early hour, glad to leave Jeffersonville and all that belonged to it, we crossed in the steamer to Louisville, and once more found ourselves in a land of plenty and comfort, in a flourishing city, in an excellent hotel -- the Galt House, one of the best conducted establishments in America ; in a State where the Maine liquor law was only known by name, and where it was not necessary to go to the apothecary's shop to obtain, by a sneaking, hypocritical, false pretense, the glass of wine, beer, or spirits that custom, taste, health, or absolute free will and pleasure demanded.

Louisville is the principal commercial city of the State of Kentucky, well situated on the Ohio, and having direct com- munication with the Mississippi, and with all the immense in- ternal navigation of these great rivers. It contains a popula- tion of upwards of sixty thousand, and next to Cincinnati, which it aspires to rival, is the greatest emporium of the pork trade on the North American continent. The annual num- ber of hogs slaughtered here is nearly three hundred thou- sand, and is yearly increasing.

On the second night after our arrival, I and my fellow- traveler were alarmed several hours after we had retired to rest by the loud cry of "Fire ! fire !" several times repeated in the lobby adjoining our rooms. I rushed out of bed. opened the door, and saw a negro woman rush frantically past. She called "Fire ! fire !" and passed out of sight. Another door was opened, and a woman's voice exclaimed, "It is not in the Galt House ; there's no danger !" In the meantime, as quick as thought, an uproar of bells and the . rattle of engines were heard ; and knowing how frequent fires were in America and how much more frequent in hotels than in other places, we prepared ourselves to escape. But by the blaze that suddenly illumined our bedrooms, we saw that the conflagration was at the opposite " block" or row of build- ings at a manufactory of naptha and other distilled spirits. The fire raged till long after daylight, and all efforts to sub- due it being utterly futile, the "boys" with their engines directed their energies to save the adjoining buildings, in which they happily succeeded. At breakfast in the morning we learned from the negro waiter who attended us that the fire had proved fatal to his good master. The landlord of the hotel had lain for three days previously at the point of death, and the noise and alarm created by the fire, and the dread lest it should extend to his premises, had acted so pow- erfully on his weakened frame, that he had expired in a par- oxysm caused by the excitement.

There is nothing to detain a traveler in Louisville, unless it be private friendship and hospitality, of both of which we had our share. After three days we took our departure for

St. Louis, but found it as difficult to quit Louisville as it had been to arrive at it. We crossed to Jeffersonville to take the train for the Mississippi, and were in the cars within ten minutes of the appointed time. We had not proceeded five hundred yards from the "depot," or station, when our loco- motive, which happily had not put on all its steam, ran off the rails and stuck hard and dry upon the embankment. Here we waited two hours in hope of assistance ; but none being forthcoming, we made the best of the calamity, and re- turned to our old quarters at Louisville for another day. On the morrow we again started for the same place; but, this time being more successful, we arrived, traveling at the rate of not more than fourteen miles an hour, at the bank of the great river Mississippl.

1859-MR. DEERING'S BOOK.

Some time during this year Mr. Richard Deer- ing, of the firm of Deering & Welburn, real estate and collecting agents, published a thin octavo volume, of one hundred pages, upon Louisville: Her Commercial, Manufacturing, and Social Advantages, from which we make some notes of the local situation.

Mr. Deering estimated the population of the city at seventy thousand. The total taxation was but 1.45 cents upon each $100, much less than in St. Louis, Pittsburg, Chicago, Nashville, or New Albany. The city officers were paid total salaries of $24,350, and the police, forty-one . in number, $34,980 in aggregate salaries.

There were sixty miles of paved streets and forty of unpaved alleys-one hundred in all. The largest paved street was five and one-half miles in length. Public pumps were still numer- ous, but an appropriation, after being several times refused, had been voted for waterworks. The grounds now occupied by the works had been selected, and the buildings and reservoir were in progress, with a prospect of supplying the city early in 1860.

A spacious wharf had been constructed at the public expense at Portland. Horse cars were running from Twelfth street to this wharf and the ferry landing there, connecting at Twelfth street with omnibuses on Main for Wenzel street, at the east end of the city. These were as yet the only regular lines of street conveyance in the city. Two of the streets running loward Port- land had also been recently paved with boulders throughout. The omnibus and car company, which was one, carried freight as well as passen- gers upon its lines.

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The upper wharf, above the Falls, was being greatly extended and improved. Beargrass creek had been turned into the Ohio by a new chan- nel two miles above the old mouth, and a large sewer was constructing over its mouth at the south side of the old channel, the creek filled up and the wharf built over it, and extended further up the stream and made so high as to be above the annual floods.

The public buildings included the court-house, "now being finished at the expense of the city and county jointly," the present post-office and custom-house, the Masonic temple, the Blind in- stitution, and many hospital, school, and church buildings. The public school buildings num- bered ten. The market-houses were six, all still on Market street, built with iron columns on stone pedestals.

The medical schools were going, with the law department of the university, two commercial schools, St. Aloysius's college, the Cedar Grove (Catholic) and Presbyterian female academies, the Louisville female college, Mr. Butler's private school for girls and misses, McBurnie & Wo- mack's for boys, and several others, besides Bishop Smith's and the Rev. Mr. Beckwith's girls' schools in the vicinity.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 62

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814