History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 37

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 37

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Among the other carly springs of the borough was one on the cast bank of the Scioto, just north of the present location of the State Street Bridge, on what was afterwards known as Wharflot No. 787. A so-called " fountain springhouse " was kept there in 1840 by S. Doherty.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

In 1820, says Mr. William Armstrong, there were not more than two or three brick houses in the borough. Its improved area terminated eastwardly at Fourth Street ; Town Street was yet all in timber. Primitive oak and walnut trees, some of them nearly six feet in diameter, were standing as far west on Broad Street as the present site of the First Congregational Church as late as 1827. Mr. Harri- son Armstrong says he has walked on the fallen trees lying in High Street. Some of their stems, he avers, yet lie buried under the Odd Fellows' building. Doctor Theodore Young, who arrived in the borough in 1820, informs the writer that there were then plenty of tree stumps yet rooted in High Street. At the corner of High and Friend stood a very large one which it required several days to re- move. On High Street, opposite the present location of the Metropolitan Opera House, there was a depression in the natural surface of about ten feet. The site of the Opera House was then occupied by the little shop of a wheelwright named Aaron Matthews. Doctor Young thinks the present surface of High Street in front of the Capitol is ten or fifteen feet lower than it was then. The northwest corner of State and High, where the American House now stands, was then oe- cupied by Robert W. McCoy's drygoods store. Going thence northward, on the west side of High Street, the buildings then existing came in the following order . 1, Marsh's Bakery ; 2, Mccullough's Tailorshop ; 3, Tommy Johnson's Bookstore ; 4, the National Hotel; 5, three successive frame buildings occupied as groggeries, and known as the " Three Sisters "; 6, Judge Gustavus Swan's residence ; 7, a small frame dwelling, then the residence of Mrs. Nashee, afterwards used as a school for deaf mutes, and occupying in part the lots forming the southwest corner of Broad and High Streets.

Northward from Broad on High, west side, came first the residence of Mr. Greenwood, and next to that the frame dwelling of George B. Harvey. From that there were no more houses on that side except Zinn's onestory brick dwelling on the corner of High and Spring.

On High Street, east side, northward from Broad, we found the lots forming the northeast corner of Broad and High unoceupied, nor was there anything more in the nature of a building until we came to Wilson's tanyard, which embraced the present site of the Butler Building, on the northeast corner of High and Gay. From the tanyard on, there was nothing further until we came to Spring Street, where then stood a vacant log cabin. Beyond the cabin we stepped into the Spring Street swamp.

On the west side of High Street, going south from State we first encountered Harvey D. Little's brick, twostory drygoods store, and next after that came Rus- sell's Tavern, beyond which there were no more buildings on that side until we came to Gwynne's drygoods store, also a twostory brick.

The southeast corner of High and State was, in 1820, vaeant, but at a later period it was occupied by a frame building erected by Crosby for a drugstore. The first building on that side, going southward from State, was a harness shop, next to which came Northrup's horse-pasture, and next to that a little brick build - ing, on the corner of the alley. Beyond this brick came Brotherlin's hatstore. John M. Walcutt, whom Doctor Young mentions by his familiar borough title of " Daddy Walcutt," had a chairshop on the northeast corner of High and Town.

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THE CAPITAL AS A BOROUGH. IL.

Speaking of the condition of the borough at the time his father arrived in it in 1817, Honorable John R. Osborn says :

The town had not yet been cleared of its standing timber, trees were standing in profusion on many streets, and over a large portion of the ground. High and Broad streets were well enough defined, and so were the cross streets between Front and Third, to the Monnd. The pub- lic Square was chopped, and I am not sure but that a wooden fence surrounded it ; but many years afterwards the thick stumps were still to be seen in it .?

Mr. Joseph Sullivant stated in an address" that a pawpaw thicket grew during the borough period near the present Second Presbyterian Church. Speaking of his schoolboy days, and associates, Mr. Sullivant, in the same address, thus rhap- sodizes : " What times we had in summer, with prisoner's base, fourholed cat, hop- scotch, round the stakes and roley-boley ; and in winter how we gathered the corn from off the outlots east of Fourth Street, betwixt Town and Rich, and parched it on the old stove from Mary Ann Furnace ! "

The stumps of primitive forest trees in High Street have been seen and are remembered by numerous persons now living. Mr. John Otstot remembers a big walnut one, which stood in front of Heyl's Tavern in 1824, at which time the street had not yet been graveled. Mr. John M. Kerr speaks of another in front of the Capitol on which a friend of his used to sit during the summer evenings and play the violin. Mr. Samuel McClelland, who came to Columbus in 1830, has seen tree stumps taken out of South High Street, opposite Heyl's tavern. He believes that many others were not displaced but covered over in the original grading of the street, and this hypothesis has confirmation in the fact that, between Friend and Rich Streets, on High, the stump of a beech tree was disclosed in the excava- tions for the Nicholson pavement in 1867. In 1830 there were yet several treo stumps in Third Street opposite the present Engine House. High Street was then, in wet weather, no better than a " mudbole." The only important building which Fourth Street could show at that time was the residence of Iliram Matthews, on the northwest corner of Town and Fourth. Mr. Virgil D. Moore remembers High Street as a " big road full of stumps" about 1825. Long Street, east of High, was "ornamented " with many stumps as late as 1834, says Mr. Reuben E. Champion. Of the borough at that period Mr. Champion further says :

Going out Broad Street, on its south side, after passing Third, all was commons and farms - not a house until we came to where Seventh Street now is, and there stood a small log hut on the Ridgway farm. Beyond that there was nothing but woods to Alum Creek. On the corner of Fourth, north side of Broad Street, was the residence of Doctor Hoge, the venerated minister of the Presbyterian Church. Later, Peter Hayden erected his residence on the northeast corner. There were no houses on the east until you came to where W. A. Platt's house was built ; there was also a small house on the Hubbard farm. From thence it was mud to Alum Creck. The lot at the southeast corner of Broad and Third, where now stands a church [Trinity] was the " circus lot." The Champion farm contained about three hundred acres, and embraced most of the land between Broad Street and the Livingston Road, the western boundary being about opposite the old Lunatic Asylum. That was out of the world, and but little of it [the farm] was even fenced. Where now stand the Courthouse and Lutheran Church was a beautiful mound, and about one hundred yards south was " Nigger Hollow," the end of creation in that direction.4

The socalled " circus lot," it should be explained, took in part of the Capitol Square, in rear of the United States Court building. Nigger IIollow was the

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

habitat of the African population of the borough, and hence its name. Its dusky denizens seem to have been mostly emancipated slaves, of whom there was a consider- able influx about the year 1828. On the Champion farm, about one mile from the Statehouse, grew an immense oak tree, which was one of the wonders of the borough vicinage. It was nearly six feet in diameter just above the ground, and when cut down in 1839 prodneed 305 fencerails and ten and a half cords of firewood, In its immediate vicinity grew several other oaks nearly as large.

Peters's Run took its name from Tunis Peters, Junior, who removed from Pickaway County to Columbus in 1830, established a large tannery in the vicinity of the Run, and built his dwelling at the spot which now forms the southeast corner of High and Beck streets. Mr. Peters, at his own expense, erected of brick, on Mound Street, a Baptist Church building, which was torn away when the street came to be graded some years later. His descendants are now prominent in the manufacturing and other business interests of Columbus.

The forest occupying the present area of City Park took from its owner, Francis Stewart, the name of Stewart's Grove.

The Harbor Road was so called because the pilferers of the borough, and later of the eity, usually harbored in that vicinity. People who missed things went there to look for them. The thoroughfare is now known as Cleveland Avenue.

Friend Street, now Main, was so named because in its early settlement the people who' belonged to the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, were partial to it.

The woods east of the borough were very dense, and abounded in wild game, of which more will be said in another place. Among the open spaces of the borough was a pasture field, of mostly solid ground, extending from the present location of the Penitentiary to the Broad Street Bridge.

A group of eabins on the corner of Spring and Fourth streets took the name of " Jonesburgh" from that of its proprietor, David Jones, who owned a very large tract of land in the Spring Street region, east of High. On this ground Jones erected, ultimately, a score or more of small tenements which he rented mostly to German families after the people of that nationality began to arrive. One of his tenants was Jimmy Uncles, an eccentric character, somewhat intemperate, who was in perpetual contention with the proprietary lord of the swamp. During one of their quarrels, Uncles placed an old wooden pump stoek in position, pointing from his window, and declared his purpose to bombard "King David's dominions." Thenceforward " King David Jones " was one of the colloquialisms of the borough. On another occasion, when sued by Jones before a Justice of the Peace for the col- lection of some claim, Uncles put in a counterclaim for services to the plaintiff in " reading and expounding the Scriptures."

The first German immigrant who settled in the borough was Christian Heyl, the circumstances of whose advent have already been narrated. In the year 1800 Mr. Heyl, then a boy of thirteen, accompanied his parents in their emigration from Germany to the United States. So contrary were the winds that the ship in which they sailed spent twentythree weeks, or nearly half a year, in making the voyage from Bremen to Baltimore. Among the borough settlers of German origin or descent who came after Mr. Heyl, were David W. Deshler in 1817, the Roeder family in

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THE CAPITAL AS A BOROUGH. H.

1820, John Otstot in 1824, George Kraus in 1829, the Studer, Knics, Hunt, Licht- enegger and Eberly families in 1831; Peter Ambos, Benedict Ritter, Otto Zirkel, and the Krumm, Jacobs and Reinhard families, in 1832, the Lohrer, Zettler and Hinderer families, Louis Hoster and Leonhard Beck in 1833, and the Siebert and Erlenbusch families, Joseph Schneider, Henry Roedter, Fritz Beck, Conrad Heinmiller and the Rickly and Esswein brothers in 1834. After the opening of the canal to Columbus, the German immigrants were landed at the wharf by boat- loads. Among the arrivals of that period were the Mochl, Pausch, Neufang, Mac- hold, Zehnacker, Laner, Moersch, Schultz, and Schweinsberger families, Professor Jueksch, Doctor Schenck, G. J. Mayer, Louis Silbernagel, Adam Luckhaupt, John Knopf, Esquire J. P. Bruck, Louis Lindemann, John Burkhard, George Kreitlein, George Schreyer, Moritz Becker, Joseph Engler, Joseph Weitgenannt, the Koetz brothers, Casper Miller, John Blenkner, and John G. Bickel.5

A considerable influx of Welsh people took place nearly contemporary with that of the Germans. Among the carlier arrivals of Welsh settlers were those of John O., Richard and William Jones, Thomas Cadwallader and Morgan Powell.

A census of the borough taken during the last week of April, 1829, makes the following exhibit :

Males under four years of age 153

between four and fifteen, . 280

fifteen and twentyone 153

.. over twentyone, 422 .

Total males, .

1008

Females under four,

149

66 between four and fifteen, 282

fifteen and eighteen, 193

over eighteen, 382

Total females,

1006

Grand total

2014

Of the total population, as shown by these figures, one hundred and sixty persons were of African descent.

The census of 1830, taken by Robert Ware, shows a total population of 2438, of whom 1343 were males, 1095 females, and 216, male and female, of African descent.

The county seat was removed to Columbus from Franklinton in 1824, at which time the Common Pleas judges were Gustavus Swan, President, and Edward Livingston, Samuel G. Flenniken and Arora Buttles, Associates. A. I. McDowell W was the Clerk and Robert Brotherton the Sheriff. From 1824 until 1840 the county courts were held in the United States Court building, but the county oflices, in the meantime, were lodged for several years in hired rooms until a building, already mentioned, was erected for their temporary accommodation, on the Capitol Square, by the County.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

NOTES.

1. The National Intelligencer, quoted in the Freeman's Chronicle of August 5, 1814.

2. Address before the Franklin County Pioneer Association June 1, 1867.

3. Before the Franklin County Pioneer Association June 3, 1871.

4. Sunday Morning News, March 30, 1890.

5. Most of the information here given as to the German pioneers of Columbus has been derived from a paper read by the Hon. Henry Olnhausen before the Humboldt Society in Feb- ruary, 1889.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BOROUGH TAVERNS AND COFFEEHOUSES.

Funkeeping in the time of the borough period of Columbus was something more than a business: it was almost a profession. Although it required no special train- ing, like the pursuit of the law, or of medicine, it did both require and develop special traits and qualifications. To be a successful landlord, or landlady, as the inn- keepers were called, was a worthy ambition in the public opinion of the time, and enlisted the best endeavors of many of the best people. Not a few who undertook it failed, and not a few who succeeded in it became affluent, acquired extensive social influence, and stepped from it into stations of important public trust. At the polit- ical eenter of the State, where the resources of a new community were strained to provide for a large official and transient population, the opportunities and emoluments of this business were particularly attractive, and Columbus con- sequently possessed, in its carly period, a larger proportion of inns, or, as they were more commonly called, taverns, than any other class of establishments.

The first or pioneer tavern of the borough began its career some time during the year 1813 under the management of an original settler named Volney Payne. It was kept in a twostory brick building erected for the purpose by John Collett on the second lot south of State Street, west side of High. Its sign in 1816 was The Lion and The Eagle. From 1814 the house was kept successively by Payne, Col- lett, John McElvain and again Collett, until 1817 or 1818, when it was purchased by Robert Russell, who had an appropriate emblem painted on its sign and called it The Globe. In company with Doctor Goodale, Mr. Russell, familiarly known in the borough as "Uncle Bob," had originally come to Franklin County from Lancaster in 1805, tracing his way through the woods by the " blazed trees." He settled first in Franklinton, followed merchandizing for ten years, removed to Circleville, then returned to Columbus and purchased Collett's establishment as above stated. Under his mangement The Globe came to be considered one of the best taverns west of the Alleghanies. After an interval of some years during which the estab. lishment was conducted by Mr. Robinson, Russell resumed its control, which he retained until 1847. after which the building was ocenpied successively by F. C. Sessions's drygoods store, B. & C. Ortman's shoestore, and the jewelry store of Buck & Brown. Its present successor is the Jolinson Building. In 1850 Mr. Russell, having Jost his wife by cholera, removed to a farm near Tiffin.

The Columbus Inn, at which the Borough Council held its first sittings, was opened in 1815 by David S. Broderick in a frame building at the southeast corner

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

of High and Town.1 This was the beginning of the establishment afterwards widely known as the City House, and also, for a time, as Robinson's tavern, under the proprietorship of Mrs. Robinson & Son. During the spring of 1818 Mr. Broderick retired, and was succeeded by James B. Gardiner, who emblazoned his sign with a blooming rosetree, and the legend: "The wilderness shall blossom as the rose."

Of the final fate of the old Columbus Inn, and of its carlier history, the fol- lowing mention is made, under date of April 4, 1854, in the Ohio State Journal :

Yesterday, the workmen commenced. at the corner of High and Town streets, in remov- ing the venerable old twostory white frames formerly known as the City Hotel. This build- ing is classic in the early annals of Columbus, and many reminiscences of bygone years are associated with it. At an early day, David S. Broderick, father of the late Colonel John C. Broderick, did the honors of host there. He was succeeded by the facetious "Cokeley," who not only entertained his gnests with provant, for which he was an expert caterer, but abund- antly amused them with his overflowing wit and humor. After him came Mr. James Robin- son, Mr. Samnel Barr, Colonel [P. H.] Olmsted, and we know not how many others. . . . For several years past it [the building] has served as a sort of makeshift, and been temporarily occupied by provision men, hucksters, and mechanic shops until better apartments could be obtained.

In the same connection we are told that Mr. D. W. Deshler, proprietor of the premises, is about to erect thereon a spacious and beautiful block of business houses.

The White Horse Tavern was established at an early date, on the present site of the Odd Fellows' building, by Isaiah Voris, of Franklinton. Its name was em- blematieally represented on its sign by the picture of a white horse led by a hostler dressed in green. It was a one-and-a-half-story frame in front, with a long narrow annex to the rear, supplemented by a commodious barn, which occupied the entire rear portion of its grounds. An upstairs veranda, with which the rooms on that floor communicated, opened upon the ample dooryard, and furnished a pleasant lounging place in summer. The dining room was ranged with long tables, and warmed from a great open fireplace, out of which, in winter time, the burning logs snapped their sparks cheerily while the guests gossiped around it, seated upon sturdy oaken armchairs. In December, 1829, David Brooks became its landlord, and made it one of the favorite hostelries of the borough. Mr. Brooks seems to have resumed its management, after an interval, in 1837. It was then known as the Eagle Hotel.

The Swan Tavern, which had its origin, already chronicled, in the bakery of its proprietor, Christian Heyl, was kept in a frame building which yet stands, on the corner of High Street, east side, and Cherry Alley. On its sign was painted at one time a white, at another a golden swan. Members of the General Assemby were fond of stopping with Mr. Heyl, who provided royally both for them and for the horses from which they dismounted before his door. During its later career the Swan Tavern became widely known as the Franklin House, of which name, although at different times adopted by its rivals, it was the original and proper owner. In the spring of 1841 Colonel Andrew McElvain bought the establishment of Judge Heyl, and became its managing host Its location is described in an ad- vertisement of that period as " pleasant and commanding, . . . a few rods north of

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THE BOROUGH TAVERNS AND COFFEEHOUSES.

C.M.HUBBARD. HAY BALER.

HAY BALEA

ELLER!

CASH GRAIN

THE SWAN (HEYL) TAVERN, SOUTH HIGH STREET. Photograph by F. H. Howe, Columbus Camera Club, 1892.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

the entrance of the National Road into High Street." In 1842 the establishment passed from Colonel McElvain to J. W. & D. C. Dryden, of Xenia. In the spring of 1849 a Franklin House, possibly the same, was taken charge of by Grundy D. Taylor.

Jeremiah Armstrong's Red Lion Hotel, despoiled of many its original appur- tenances, still stands on South High Street. Its position is on the west side of the street, a few doors north of the late Metropolitan Opera House Block, between Rich and Town. Its nearest rival was the White Horse Tavern, which stood nearly op- posite. On its first sign was painted an Indian Chief, but in the summer of 1822 Mr. Armstrong advertised the "Columbus Hotel, sign of Christopher Columbus first landing from his ship in America; " and in 1827, "The Columbus Hotel, sign of the Red Lion . .. one dollar per day for man and horse."" Mr. Armstrong was a popular host, and entertained many distinguished guests. Mr. John L. Gill, who alighted at the Red Lion when he first arrived in the borough in 1826, says that "al- though not so large as the others, it became famous as the headquarters of several of the governors, among them Morrow, Trimble and McArthur."4 General Har- rison, when visiting Columbus, stopped there habitually, as did also Clay, Ewing, Sherman and other men of national reputation. In 1850 the front part of the old Red Lion Tavern was removed, and the remainder of it fitted up for shops of various kinds.

James B. Gardiner, who had acquired a large acquaintance as editor of the Freeman's Chronicle, in Franklinton, started the Ohio Tavern in 1816. It occupied a frame building on ground afterwards known as "the Howard lot," situated on Friend Street, just west of High. In 1818 Mr. Gardiner took charge of the Columbus Inn, as successor to Mr. Broderick, and was succeeded. in the Ohio Tavern by Jar- vis Pike. In 1821 James Lindsey succeeded Pike, and raised the sign of The Swan, but soon exchanged it for The Sheaf of Wheat. In the summer of 1822 Pike announced that he had " taken that large and commodious stand on Broad Street, lately the property of H. M. Curry, Esq." It occupied a twostory frame building on West Broad, and was known as Pike's Tavern.

McCollum's Tavern, The Black Bear, northwest corner of Front and Broad, was one of the early Columbus inns. Its snecessor, at a later period, was the Erin go Bragh. Daniel Kooser opened an inn contemporary with McCollum's at the cor- ner of Sugar Alley and Front Street, but its name is not recorded.

In the autumn of 1825 was advertised the Tavern of The Golden Lamb, kept by Henry Brown " in the building formerly occupied by Mr. James Robinson, and recently by Mr. William Neil, on High Street, opposite the United States Court- honse and State buildings." An advertisement of the next month following men- tions the same place as " Franklin Hall, sign of the Golden Lamb." In 1826 this establishment passed under the management of Edmund Brown, of West Union.

A twostory briek tavern known as the Union Hotel was situated on South High Street, west side, nearly opposite The Swan, between Cherry Alley and Rich. John D. Rose, Senior, and John D. Rose, Junior, were its proprietors, and its sign The Golden Plough. In 1836 the Roses annonnce that " there being a large wagonyard attached to the establishment, families traveling, and large teams, can at all times be accommodated." At a later date General Edgar Gale became the

285

THE BOROran TAVERNS AND COFFEEHOUSES.

host at the Union, after which it was generally known up and down the National Road as Gale's Tavern. The junior Rose acquired celebrity as a barkeeper, and emigrated to New Orleans, where the St. Charles Hotel paid him a phenomenal salary as a dispenser of cordials.

The large wagonyard attached to the Union Tavern was situated at the present southwest corner of Main and High Streets, west side of High, and was kept by Amos Mencely. It was at one time known as the White Horse, at another as the Cross Keys, and was a favorite and famous resort of the great wheeled schooners of the road, which were locked up there over night for safety of the merchandise with which they were laden. The Meneely yard was one of the liveliest places in the borough, particularly in the evening, when, amid the crack- ing of whips, the shouts of teamsters and the jingling of bells which the sturdy roadsters bore upon their hames, the mammoth canvas-covered, broad-tread, six- horse wagons, creaking with their burdens, and dusty with the day's travel came flocking in for the night.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 37

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202