History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 38

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 38

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Another wagonyard, not so large, was kept on High Street just opposite Mencely's.

On Front Street, west side, near State, the Culbertson tavern was kept in a twostory brick building which, in 1880, was still standing. Its sign was that of The Fox Chase, representing a fox pursued by a pack of bounds. James Culbert- son, a son of the proprietor, was a talented young attorney, practising at the Col- umbus bar. On a lot next to the Culbertson Tavern building a portion of the old Markethouse, removed from State Street, stood until a recent period.

The use of distilled liquors was very common, and every tavern had its licensed bar. The guest was usually invited by his host to one gratuitous dram in the evening and one in the morning; whatever additional fluid refreshments he consumed he paid for. " Tanzy bitters" were freely imbibed as a supposed pre- ventive of the prevailing fevers. The habit of treating was common, and at the Russell Tavern it was a rule with the loungers who used to sit on the sidewalk benches in front, that the first one to rise should treat the rest. Mr. John M. Kerr says it was habitual with many of the most prominent citizens of the borough to enjoy their mint juleps on summer evenings, seated on the sidewalk chairs or benches of the coffeehouses and taverns. If a lady of their acquaintance chanced to pass by, they rose and greeted her graciously, each with his minted julep in his hand.

The coffeehouse of the period was a place for gossip, refreshment and gaming. Among the exhilarating drinks dispensed there, coffee was one of the least called for, or thought of. The borough and carly city life of the capital developed many of these establishments, by far the most popular and important of which was that of John Young. This famous convivial resort and gambling place was located on the west side of High Street, a few rods north of State. Originally, in 1826, it took the humble title of " Bakchonse and Grocery," but in a few years it became known far and wide as the Eagle Coffeehouse. In one sense it was a social center of the borough. A citizen who remembers it well remarked to the writer that " everybody went there except Doctor Hoge." This, of course, was intended partly as a jest, but it was more than half serions. People loved a little recreation

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then, as they do now, and John Young's was the place to find it. They went there to chat and be merry, and right merry they often were. The place was always cheerful, and its keeper, according to all accounts, was a very prince of good fellows. He had been a baker, and had been set up in that business by Lyne Starling, who owned the premises. For the gaming which he tolerated no excuse can be made except that it was the amnsement of a raw, frontier town which had scarcely any other. The establishment had a public bathhouse attached to it - probably the only one in the borough - the water for which was pumped by a big, black bear, chained to a treadmill in the back yard. One day, while quite a number of loungers were watching this animal at his task, and Trowbridge, the actor, was teasing him, one of the bystanders remarked to a comrade that he would like to see, "just for the fun of it," what would happen if that bear should break loose. A few minutes later the bear did break loose, and a general scatterment followed. Among those who broke for a place of safety was John M. Kerr, to whom the writer is indebted for the history of this episode. Most of the company rushed for the street, but Mr. Kerr leaped upon a table, and in the excitement of the occasion was unconscious for several minutes that in the spring he had made the entire rear part of a dress coat he had on had been torn away by the latch of a door against which he had been leaning. The bear was soon secured by his keeper, and the loungers resumed their juleps and their jollity.

With the pleasure-seeking roysterers who frequented Young's place, singing was a favorite pastime. Among the ditties with which they fed their hilarity was one entitled " The Bobtailed Mare "; another, "Old Rosin the Bow." Apropos of the latter a wellknown citizen describes to the writer a singular scene which he witnessed as he quitted his place of business to go home very late one night, away back in the thirties. Passing the open door of Young's Coffeehouse, he saw Tom West lying on the counter in an accustomed state of intoxication. Beside him was a group of revelers including various gentlemen whose names, familiar in the annals of the borough, it is not necessary to mention. At the top of their voices they were all singing "Old Rosin the Bow," closing each stanza with the refrain :

Now I'm dead, and laid on the counter, A voice shall be heard from below, A little more whisky and water To cheer up Old Rosin the Bow.5

After each chorus a dranght of whisky was administered to West.

As a gambling resort, the Eagle Coffeehouse was frequented by some of tbe deftest experts in that vice which the cities of the East, South and West could then produce, and many pages might be filled with accounts of scenes and events within its walls, thrilling and sad as those of Monte Carlo. One of its devotees, strange to say, afterwards became a successful clergyman. Young finally sold the place, about 1839, to Basil A. Riddle, who had long been his assistant, and removed to Cincinnati, where he died. In 1843 Culbertson & Vinal took charge of the establishment, and changed its name to The Commercial. The following passage in the later history of the place is found in the Ohio State Journal of March 27, 1876 :

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THE BOROUGH TAVERNS AND COFFEEHOUSES.

The building on High Street, opposite Capitol Square between the American and Neil House, which has been occupied for a great length of time by Mr. Sam. West as a billiard room, will be vacated on Friday next. On the following day the demolition of the building will commence, to make way for a fourstory stone front building, which will be erected by Messrs. E. T. Mithoff and D. S. Stafford.

Most popular and famous of the coffeehouses, next to Young's, was the Tontine, situated on the south side of State Street, a few doors west of High, and known in the political slang of the thirties and forties as the Tinpan. Samuel Pike, Junior, was its proprietor in 1837; in 1843, 4 and 5, Francis Hall. Politically speaking, the Whig influences centered at the Eagle Coffeehouse, the Democratie at the Ton- tine. Partisan meetings were held, and party " slates" made up at both places, but the Tontine, paraphrased as Tinpan, became particularly noted for its secret eanenses, and sly partisan manipulation. Ultimately, in the heated party discus- sion of the period, the word " tinpan " was used as a synonym for caucus dictation and elandestine politics.

Many additional coffeehouses, so called, started up during the borough and early city period. Among them were the Buckeye, on East Broad Street, in 1841, by Ira Grover ; the Eclipse, in the Exchange Buildings, on West Broad Street ; and the Bank Exchange, by R. Riddell, under the Mechanics' Savings Institute, corner of High and State, in 1842. In that year the proprietors of the Young establishment advertised it ironically as a " temperance " place, but real temperance refreshment rooms were not a myth. In 1845 the Washington Temperance House, by Mr. Alsten, is announced, and in 1846 a temperance restaurant, in the basement of the City Bank, by W. Tolliver. The first saloon, so called, is said to have been kept by Krauss, about 1832. Its location was on the west side of High Street, three or four houses north of Main.

The advent of the first pretentious hotel, bearing that name, is announced in the following card, dated March 1, 1832, and published in the newspapers of the borough :

The undersigned, from Lancaster, in this State, has taken the noted Tavern Stand, nearly opposite to the Public Buildings and Court House, in Columbus, and owned by William Neil, Esq., which will hereafter be known as the National Hotel, and will be furnished and attended to in a style equal to the highest expectations. The stages of the Ohio Stage Company stop at this house, and their office is attached to the establishment.

JOHN NOBLE.

The signer of the foregoing eard, Colonel John Noble, had been engaged in tavernkeeping at Lancaster, Ohio. As his career was identified in many import- ant particulars with the early development of the city, it may here be briefly sketched. Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the emigration of his parents to Ohio in 1811 brought him to that State, where the family settled on a farm near Tarlton, in Pickaway County. During the War of 1812 he was engaged in busi- ness connected with the supply of the army at Franklinton. His tavern-keeping career began at Lancaster in 1820, but was interrupted at later dates by various other business enterprises, including canal contracts, and a trading expedition to New Orleans. While in Columbus, he was several times elected to the City Council, and was first to inaugurate the measures by which Broad Street was redeemed from the swamp, and beautified. As host of the National Hotel, which was the stage

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headquarters, and an eddying place to the immense current of emigration and business travel then beginning to pour through Columbus, he acquired an almost national acquaintance, and became one of the best known men in the West. In 1840 Colonel Noble removed to Cincinnati, and took charge of the Dennison House, in which the future Governor Dennison was, for a time, a clerk. Ile returned to Columbus in 1845, and at a later date was elected as Representative of Franklin County in the General Assembly. He returned to Cincinnati, and took charge of the Pearl Street House of that city, in 1847, but in 1854 removed back to Colum- bus, where he remained until his death in 1871, at the age of eightyone. Among the children of Colonel Noble were the late Hon. Henry C. Noble, of Columbus, and General John W. Noble, of St. Louis.

The National Hotel was a twostory brick house, painted green. Its sign was of an oval form, and bore simply the names of the house and of its proprietor. The stage office, a singlestory brick, also green, occupied the present position of the main entrance to the Neil House. Colonel Noble's successor as proprietor of the National in 1839 was Colonel P. H. Olmsted.

The next lineal successor of the National was the original Neil House, built by William Neil, whose name it bore, from 1839 to 1843, at a cost of over $100,000. It was considered a great enterprise in its day, and was intended to provide a botel worthy of the new era which had by that time begun in the growth of the capital.

During the night following the day of the Presidential election, November 6, 1860, the Neil House took fire, and owing to the insufficiency of the water supply was mostly destroyed. A contract for its successor, the present building, was closed by Mr. Neil in March, 1861, with Miller & Auld, of Mount Vernon, on plans prepared by Mr. Auld. The work of clearing away the debris of the old building began in the following June, and in September, 1862, the new Neil House, Wal- stein Failing in charge, was opened to the public. It contained about one hundred and fifty rooms.

Where the American House now stands, on the northwest corner of High and State Streets, a tavern called the Franklin was at one time kept by Robinson. The present building was erected on the site of MeCoy's drygoods store by its pro- prietor, Robert W. McCoy, who, in accordance with the custom of the time, broke a bottle of whisky on its chimneytop when the last briek, was laid. On the twentysixth of November, 1836, announcement was made that Charles F. Dres- bach, then a jeweler, and William Kelsey had taken charge of it, under the title of C. F. Dresbach & Co. Mr. Dresbach had married a daughter of the veteran land- lord, Robert Russell. In April, 1838, he withdrew from the concern and was suc- ceded by Samuel Pike, Junior, late of the Tontine Coffeehouse. The firm then became Pike & Kelsey. The sign of the American of that day like that of the National, and of nearly all the early taverns and hotels, was of elliptical form, and raised on a staff standing by the sidewalk in front of the establishment. In 1849 an additional story was added, and various other improvements in the building were made. Mr. Kelsey continued in the management until 1870, when he emi- grated to St. Louis, and took charge of the Planters' Hotel of that eity. Ilis suc- cessor in the American was A. J. Blount.

An establishment variously known as the Buckeye House, and the Broadway Hotel, with many transient aliases, occupied for many years the site of the Board

yours Truly John m. Hugh

PHOTOGRAPHED BY BAKER.

Residence of John M. Pugh, 1347 East Broad Street, built in 1890.

THE BOROUGH TAVERNS AND COFFEEHOUSES. 289

of Trade Building, on East Broad Street. In 1840 its manager was Ira Grover, its owner Colonel John Noble. H. Hurd had charge of it in 1842 and 1845. It led an inconspicuous and chequered career, sometimes as a tavern, sometimes as a boarding house.

In Mareh, 1846, Colonel P. H. Olmsted announced that in the following month of April he would take charge of the United States Hotel, at the northwest corner of High and Town Streets. In 1850 the house was "reopened " by R. Russell. J. Smith & Son took charge of it in 1851. Simonton & Son conducted it for a long period of later date.

The list of taverns and coffeehouses of the borough period, and of their numer- ous hotel, saloon and restaurant successors, might be considerably prolonged, but without historical advantage. If this chapter has presented facts fairly represent- ative of the picturesque life and business of the early taverns and their congeners, its purpose has been accomplished.

NOTES.

1. Western Intelligencer.

2. Mr. Broderick had kept the Franklinton Hotel prior to his removal across the river to Columbus. Eliza Springer is announced as his successor in the Franklinton Hotel in 1816.

3. Ohio State Journal. December 12, 1827.

4. Address before the Board of Trade, July 24, 1889.

5. Various versions of this song, some of which are too coarse to be amusing, have been published. The following representative stanzas are taken from a very long one, containing both wit and sentiment, which went the rounds of the press in 1841 :

OLD ROSIN THE BOW.

Time creeps on the wisest and happiest, As well as all others, you know, And his hand, though it touches him kindly, Is laid on Old Rosin the Bow.

My fingers grow stiff and unskillful, And I must make ready to go, God's blessing on all I am leaving- I lay down the viol and bow.

This world and my cheerful companions, I love, but I'm willing to go, For a better, I trust, is in waiting Above, for Old Rosin the Bow.

I've ever been cheerful, but guileless, And I wish all the world would be so, For there's nothing like bright happy faces, In the eyes of Old Rosin the Bow.

Full many a gay-hearted circle, Has tripped on a light heel and toc, Through the good old cotillion and contra, Inspired by my viol and bow.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

And when a string cracked in the middle, They just took a breath, as you know, While Rosin retuned the old fiddle, And clapped some new dust on the bow.

All the youth love the merry old fellow, And his heart's not ungrateful, I know ; For, to see them all joyous and happy, Is bliss to Old Rosin the Bow.

A few whom we love have departed, And oft to the churchyard I go, And sit on some green, grassy hillock, And think on the sleepers below. * * *

Now when I'm laid under the greensward, Don't sorrow too deeply for me, But think on the morrow that's coming, How sweet our reunion shall be.

Then lay me 'neath yonder old chestnut, Without any funeral show, And but add to the tear of affection : "God care for Old Rosin the Bow."

Then get me a simple stone tablet, To reach from my head to my toe, And modestly trace on its surface The name of Old Rosin the Bow.

But do not forget to adorn it- Just over my bosom, you know, Where so many long years I have borne it - With my cheerful old viol and how,

That all who pass by and look on it, May say, "after all, I don't know But the truest philosopher living Was honest Old Rosin the Bow."

6. Now southeast corner of Wall and State streets.

CHAPTER XVII.

FUR, FEATHER AND FIN.

The chronicles of the borough are not complete without some incidental notice of the wild creatures of the surrounding woods. Between the animal life of these forests, and the human life which sprang up in its midst there were naturally many interesting historical points of contact.

In all the annals of the Ohio Wilderness, the abundance and variety of the wild beasts and birds which infested it obtained conspicuous mention. Its Iroquois conquerors regarded it as a hunting ground, and at the time of its first exploration by white men, parties of Indian nomads were roaming it in quest of its game. It was this which tempted the Wyandots south ward from their villages about Detroit and Sandusky, and this, probably, which brought the Mingoes westward from their haunts on the Susquehanna and Mohawk. In every part of Ohio have been plowed up the arrowheads of flint spent from the bow of the moccasined expert of the chase. In no part were his skill and daring more liberally rewarded than in the Scioto Valley. The first explorers and settlers of that region all concurrent- ly testify that they found its forests abundantly peopled with every species of in- digenous game, both furred and feathered. The proof's are abundant that in this particular no exception is to be made of the forests which environed the borough of Columbus. The village hunters usually went east, says Doctor Edward Young, nor did they need to go farther than where Twentieth Street now is to find all the game they desired.1 The Indian hunters lingered in the neighborhood long after the first white settlements began, and for many years pitched their annual camps on Walnut Creek, and other watercourses of Franklin County.

" When we first came to this country," says Joel Buttles in his diary, " there was a great deal of wild game, of course. I have sometimes killed three deer in one day. Turkeys were numerous, and easily killed. Wolves were also numer- ous. - Bears were few, the country being too level to suit their habits. Buffaloes had long before left the country, though there had been a time when there were many about. Raccoons were an annoyance because of the damage they did to the corn in the fall season. The wolves could not do much damage because the sheep were so few at that time, but they destroyed young pigs, and it was our interest to kill them when we could. . . . I trapped for them, and caught many, though my younger brother Aurora had better success than I had. I also took, in trapping for wolves, many of a certain kind of animals called fisher - a longlegged, dark- brown animal. The wolf, when canght, seeing no way of escape, gives np all at.

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tempts, and yields himself a passive prisoner to be done with as his eaptor chooses, but he will not thus submit to a dog, and will fight one with great desperation.

" I must not forget," continues Mr. Buttles, " to mention the opossum, a small animal about the size of a eat, though very different in appearance and form, being much heavier, and generally very fat. He has short legs, a sharp nose, small head, small, thin ears with very little hair on them, and the body covered with a short, coarse, curly white wool, with long black hairs intermixed, giving it a very un- sightly appearance. He has a long tail like a muskrat, in which there is great muscular strength so that the animal can sometimes suspend himself from the bough of a tree, which, in case of danger, it will aseend with great difficulty. It ean make but little speed, and when pursued and overtaken, always throws itself down and feigns death. I never could by any means make it show signs of life but by putting a coal of fire or a blaze to its nose. I have known it carried for miles hanging by the tail across a man's shoulder, to all appearance lifeless, and nothing would make it move but the application mentioned above. It is one of the marsupial tribe, having a sack or poneh under the belly of the female, extend- ing from the hindlegs to the forelegs, and capable of being extended so as to almost prevent walking. Into this pouch a small opening admits the young ones, where they find a safe and congenial abode. I onee caught one with five young ones in this pouch. They were of the size of a very small mouse, and had no hair at all."

The northeast part of Franklin County, says Virgil D. Moore, was as good a hunting ground as any in Ohio. How Mr. Moore's father, with the rifle he had carried at Bunker Hill, shot, from the roof of his cabin, the deer which browsed by moonlight in his elearings, has already been narrated.

The first of the wild quadrupeds to disappear from the Central Ohio woods seem to have been the elk and the buffalo. Both were rarely seen in the Seioto Valley by the early explorers. Harrison Armstrong says he has heard his father tell of elk which the hunters had encountered, but not of buffalo. A history of Licking County published in 18812 says that about the year 1803 a small herd of buffaloes, six or eight in number, "strayed from their usual haunts farther west, and reached a point a short distance east of where Will's Creek empties into the Muskingum. Here, for a day or two, they were pursued by the late John Channel, a famous hunter and pioneer, but without suceess so far as Mr. Channel was concerned." The antlers of the elk, says the same writer, were found " pro- fusely scattered in the forest," but no living specimens of the animal remained in Lieking County at the time of the white man's advent. The final extermination of the elk and buffalo in Ohio dates from about the year 1800. The animals did not emigrate ; they were destroyed.

The cougar, commonly called panther, and the wild cat or catamount both prowled through the Franklin County forests. They were lithe, fierce and not pleasant customers to meet unarmed. The panther was a whiskered beast, with small head, large rounded ears, short hair of a tawny brown color, and a ringed tail. His weight sometimes reached one hundred and fifty pounds. His favorite prey was the wild turkey, of which he sometimes made havoc bordering on extermination. A night adventure of the Lueas Sullivant surveying party with one of these cats has already been narrated. 'The wildcat was of the same family

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as the cougar, but smaller, and of varying color, with dorsal lines, and slightly spotted. It was too savage to be tolerated and too unsociable to linger long about the settlements. Harrison. Armstrong says he has seen wildcats in the woods near the present starch factory below the city. Another citizen informs the writer that when a boy he and a companion killed a young one near the Shepherd Watercure, on Alum Creek.

The bear of the Ohio Wilderness occasionally came nosing around the settle- ments at the Forks of the Scioto. The late William S. Sullivant stated that he saw one come out of the woods not far from the spot on which now stands the Kelley Mansion. This is said to have been bruin's positively farewell appearance in the immediate neighborhood of the borough.

Of the wolves the chronicles are numerous. They infested the Franklin County forests in considerable numbers, and were last of the beasts of prey to dis- appear. In her sketch of the Merion family, whose log dwelling stood at the present southwest corner of High and Moler streets, Mrs. Emily Stewart says the wolves were so numerous in that vicinity that " the dogs would chase them from the house at night," but that " when the dogs turned toward home, the wolves would chase them back until they would come against the door with such force as to almost break it down." How they pursued Mrs. Merion on her way home from Franklinton one evening in 1814 has been narrated. "The first winter that I lived in Columbus," said Judge Heyl, " we could plainly hear the wolves howl- ing at night in the east part of the town. A colored man who lived on Rich Street, one square from High Street, put some old meat on the ends of the logs of his cabin, and at night the wolves came and carried it off."3 Verily, the " high bank opposite Franklinton " deserved its title of those days as Wolf Ridge.

Such a nuisance to the settlers were these animals, by reason of their depreda- tions upon the swine, sheep, and poultry, that the General Assembly began at a very early period to legislate for their extermination. A statute of February 19, 1810, provided that any person who should " kill or take any wolf or wolves with- in this State" should receive a bounty of four dollars for each one over and two dollars for each one under six months old, on producing the " scalp or sealps with the ears entire " to a justice of the peace within thirty days, and taking an oath that the life of no bitch wolf had been spared by the claimant of the bounty "with a design to increase the breed." This law was reenacted December 6, 1819, and, with some amendments, December 22, 1821. It was again reenacted in 1830, and again in 1852. The amount of bounty paid for wolf scalps from the publie tuinds has amounted to as much as eleven thousand dollars in a single year, but the claims on which a considerable part of this sum was expended are believed to have been fraudulent.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 38

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