USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Sketches and statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 > Part 27
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BIOGRAPHY .- G. W. COFFIN.
GEORGE W. COFFIN, was born at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, No- vember 17, 1814. His parents were from Nantucket. He resided in his native place until he reached the age of twenty-one, when he determined to change his residence to some more thriving spot. As he had a brother already in Cincinnati, he naturally directed his way to this city, where he has ever since dwelt. He engaged in the foundery of D. A. Powell, as pattern maker, at first, but after the lapse of one year, changed his employer, by taking charge of the bell foundery branch of Lyon, Thomas & Co.'s establish- ment; after remaining here six months, he engaged in business, with T. B. & H. B. Coffin, as bell and brassfounders, under the firm of G. W. Coffin & Co .; which firm still exists, although com- posed of different individuals.
Mr. Coffin is one of those ingenious men, who are constantly simplifying and improving the operations of whatever business they may be engaged in ; and the bell business of this city has greatly advanced in character and extent from his labors and suggestions. His own establishment is the only one in the United States, in which bells are constructed on scientific principles, nothing being left by him to accident, in the quality and tone of the article which leaves "the Buckeye Foundery."
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MEDICAL COLLEGE OF OIIIO.
MEDICAL COLLEGE OF OHIO.
ON the site of the existing building, which has so long borne this name, the erection of a new edifice is in process of being made, and will doubtless be completed and occupied in time for the ensu- ing course of lectures. A front view of the building is to be found in these pages, which may convey a correct notion of the external appearance it will present. The style of architecture is what is called the Collegiate Gothic, combining elegance and chasteness in a high degree. The front will be of brick, finished with east-iron, painted in imitation of free-stone. The interior arrangements are such, that in adaptedness to its appropriate purposes, this building will not be second to the best college edifice in the United States.
This edifice will be of one hundred and five feet front, with a depth of seventy-five feet, and a height of fifty-five feet. The lower story on cach side of the principal entrance to be occupied with stores. In the rear of these will be the library and general lecture room ; this last fifty-four by forty-eight feet, and twenty-two feet in height, and lighted by a skylight twenty feet in diameter. In the rear of the lecture room, are two laboratory rooms, twenty-one feet by twelve each, which, with two in the story above, will be occupied by the Professor of Chemistry; and two rooms for the janitor ; also one in the rear of the library room.
In the second story, there will be six offices to rent to physicians or other professional individuals. In the rear, on the right wing, is the museum, thirty-seven feet by forty-six, and fourteen feet high. On the third floor, in front, are to be four Professors' rooms. In the left wing will be the Anatomical lecture room, fifty-two feet in diameter, and twenty-seven feet in height; this will be lighted by a skylight fourteen feet in diameter.
On the fourth story, the front will be divided into six dissecting rooms and a room for the Professor of Anatomy. In the right wing will be the lecture room on Anatomy, thirty-nine feet in diameter, a circular amphitheatre, and twenty feet high, also lighted by sky- light.
The lecture rooms will be occupied with seats, ranged in an oblong semicircular form, and rising at the same time amphitheatri- cally. This arrangement of seats in these lecture rooms affords every advantage alike for seeing and hearing, to the classes. The labora- tory will communicate by sliding doors with the general lecture
MEDICAL COLLEGE OF OHIO.
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room, so as to permit the Professor of Chemistry to refer to and illustrate his subjects, just as they stand in the laboratory.
Finally, the entire building is to be warmed by steam apparatus, in the basement, which will have the effect of diffusing an equable temperature throughout the whole edifice.
BIOGRAPHY .- JOHN D. JONES
WAS born December 9, 1797, in Conestoga valley, forty-five miles west of Philadelphia, and near the village of Morgantown, Berks county, Pennsylvania, where, until his 17th year, he was raised a farmer. Mr. J. is of Welsh descent, on the paternal line, his great grandfather, David Jones, emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1725. His maternal great grandfather-Graham-was from the north of Ireland, and arrived in America about the same period. Both branches were farmers, and many of their descendants took up arms during the war resulting in the establishment of American independence. Mr. Jones was engaged five years as clerk in a grocery house in Philadelphia, and came to Cincinnati in 1819, where he has resided ever since ; being the only merchant here, who has been engaged in business thirty years and more. He is of the firm of J. D. Jones & Co .; the other members consisting of his brothers Caleb, and Michael, and his son G. W. Jones.
Mr. Jones married, in 1823, Elizabeth, daughter of the venerable John Johnston, a name long and intimately connected with the early pioneer history of Ohio. Mr. J. has been selected as an illustration of the mercantile class, and a biographical subject for this publica- tion, as an example, if any were wanting, that application to busi- ness, sound sense, and probity, will always establish, for any indi- vidual, one of the highest positions in society-the esteem, confidence and attachment of those who know him best. If Mr. Jones has not achieved political distinction, it has resulted from the fact, that he has always had his own special mission to fulfill in the business community ; and he has fulfilled it with honor to himself and family, and to the public advantage, in the lessons and example his life has given the community. Of the many individuals here, who have been successful in business, there are few who have expended so little upon their own personal indulgences, and so much in behalf of other deserving objects, public and private.
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TIIE ELECTRO-CHRONOGRAPHI.
THE ELECTRO-CHRONOGRAPH.
THE invention of the electro-chronograph, by Professor Locke of our city, may be properly noticed in connection with Cincinnati. This instrument being an invention in an abstruse department of science, can with difficulty be made intelligible in a popular work like this. The invention has been fully recognized in the Report of the Superintendent of the United States coast survey to congress, in 1848 ; by Congress itself ; by the National Observatory ; by the authors of the New Inventions in the United States, of 1849 ; and by Professor Loomis in his history of the recent improvements in Astronomy. The invention consists in such a combination of a suitable clock and electro-telegraph circuit, that the clock shall print its beats on paper or other material at the greatest distance to which telegraphic operations may be extended; at the same time permitting an observer, at any part of the circuit, to interprint his ob- servations truly among the current time marks of the clock. Thus recording accurately and permanently the fraction of a second at which the event observed occurred. As often happens in similar cases, there has been some controversy. It has been represented that Prof. Locke had merely invented a new species of " electrical inter- rupter." Prof. Locke claims, however, to have invented the means, of accurately subdividing a second of time electro-telegraphically, and of making such a permanent record of this subdivision, by an observation, as greatly to improve the means of determining longi- tude, and accuracy of astronomical observations generally. This can be popularly understood by supposing that Dr. Locke had added a new hand to a clock, which would facilitate the subdivision and reading of a second into parts as much as the second-hand itself facilitates the accurate subdivision of a minute. The inventor did even more than this ;- he not only added, in effect, this new hand, but he made it indicate the subdivision of a second at any tele- graphic distance from the clock, and made it also record permanently that subdivision ; the kind of electrical interrupter by which this is accomplished, is not very material. The committee, in Congress, had, upon representations made to them, that "magnetic clocks " had been before invented, stricken out the proposed appropriation to the inventor ; but when they had satisfied themselves fully of the novelty and utility of the above improvement of the subdivision of the second of time, and the manner of recording the same, they restored it.
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BIOGRAPHY-O. M. MITCHEL.
BIOGRAPHY-0. M. MITCHEL.
ALL men have a mission or destiny to fulfill, but all men have not the instinct to discern at the commencement of their business course, what that mission is. Happy the man who does not spend life, like Horne Tooke, in finding out that he was fitted for anything at all, rather than for what he had been all that life employed at. It was the mission of Columbus to discover a new and important continent on this earth of ours-it is the destiny of Mitchel to explore the skies, and if he should never discover a new planet, his labors and achievements thus far, in astronomical science, will secure a posi- tion among savans, of infinitely higher consequence.
O. M. Mitchel, was born in Union county, Kentucky, in July 1810. His father and mother were Virginians, who had emigrated to the west in 1800. His father died when the subject of this me- moir was but two years old, leaving no property but unproductive lands. In 1816, the family removed to Lebanon, Ohio; and young Mitchel, then seven years old, commenced his education at a school. He read Latin and Greek fluently, at the age of twelve, and at thirteen, commenced the world on his own account. He entered a store at Piqua, which he left on the score of bad treatment, and started for Cincinnati. On the way, he was engaged by a merchant at Lebanon, to assist, at four dollars per month, in a new store opening at Xenia. Here he remained six months, when the store was removed to Lebanon ; and here ended Mitchel's merchandising life. In 1825, he applied for, and through the assistance of Wm. McLean, member of Congress, for the Piqua district, Judge McLean, General Findley, and other members of Congress, from Ohio, obtained a cadet appointment at West Point.
Young Mitchel, less than fifteen years old at this time, immedi- ately started off, in company with Indian traders-went with them to Upper Sandusky-thence forty miles through the wilderness, to Lower Sandusky, with an Indian guide; thence to Sandusky city in a small sloop; thence to Buffalo, deck passenger, on the old " Henry Clay ;" thence on foot, with hunters, to Lockport; thence by canal, to Albany ; and in June, 1825, reached West Point with a knapsack on his back, and twenty-five cents in his pocket. Here he studied, how assiduously, may be judged by his subsequent history, until June, 1829, when he graduated in the artillery corps.
In September, 1829, when only nineteen years of age, he received
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the appointment of assistant professor of mathematics, at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the duties of which, kept him there two years. In June, 1831, he was employed in the sur- vey of the Philadelphia and Norristown railroad, and in the Sep- tember following he married, and took charge of the survey of the Pennsylvania and Ohio railroad, which was completed, and report made in November of the same year. He then went to his post at St. Augustine-Florida, where he remained until his resigna- tion, in June, 1832. In October, following, he came to Cincinnati, and engaged in the practice of the law, having been admitted to the bar in Florida. After practicing law for two years, in 1834, he opened a scientific school here, and in 1836, entered the Cincinnati College as professor of mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. In 1837, he undertook the survey of the Little Miami railroad, which he finished and reported, and organized the company in six weeks.
At the college, as professor of astronomy, Mitchel had found his appropriate sphere, and his exercises there, doubtless, prepared the way for his great enterprise, the establishment of an observatory, with appropriate instruments, at Cincinnati. This was apparently as wild a project as was ever entered into by enthusiast. There was no individual beside himself, that felt much interest in the sub- ject-no site or funds for the building, either in possession or in prospect. The whole public sentiment to sustain the enterprise had to be created, and thirty-two thousand dollars was the lowest figure required for the building and instruments. How all these means of accomplishing this great result were provided, may be discovered in the article in this volume, on the Observatory. Every man in this community, will confess, that the enterprise would have broken down in its every stage of progress, had Professor Mitchel with- drawn his hand, but for one day, from its prosecution and support.
In June, 1842, he went to Europe, and finished his studies with Professor Airy, astronomer royal, at Greenwich, England, and re- turned to Cincinnati, October, 1842. In 1845, the observatory building being finished, he took up his quarters there. His first observation was upon the transit of Mercury, May, 1845.
The attention of literary and scientific men at the east, being directed by these movements and results to the astronomical science of Cincinnati, Professor Mitchel has been repeatedly solicited to lec- ture, almost every year since, at intervals withdrawn from his obser-
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vations, in our principal Atlantic cities, and at the more important towns of New England. These lectures have always commanded crowded houses of intelligent and highly interested auditors.
In October, 1848, he brought out his magnetic clock, and in the winter succeeding, surveyed the Ohio and Mississippi railroad, from Cincinnati to St. Louis. His new declination apparatus was invented, May, 1849. His first report on this machinery, was made to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Aug., 1849, and his report of results, at its next annual session in August, 1850. A committee, of which Professor Pierce of Cambridge was chair- man, was appointed by that body to examine the apparatus, which reported that the claims made in its behalf, of accuracy and facility in recording observations, had been substantiated to the entire satis- faction of every member of the committee. This report was made to the association at its recent meeting in this city, and adopted without a dissenting voice, several of the members taking occasion to compliment the professor in the highest terms.
Professor M. is engaged in prosecuting his astronomical labors with an intensity which is provoked by the important results which he feels are almost within his grasp, and to the acquisition of which, he has hitherto sacrificed offers of position and emolument elsewhere, more than adequate to his desires or his wants, and which few men in his circumstances, would have been able or will- ing to resist. Like all the distinguished men of the past, who have conferred honor on their places of birth or residence, but whose labors are undervalued or left unremunerated by those whom they most benefit, it will be the office of posterity to attest the value of those services to the cause of science, of which the envy of some, and the indifference of others, withholds the present acknowledg- ment.
If life be spared him, a bright perspective of fame, if not fortune, assuredly lies along the vista of the Professor's course. His motto for the future and for the past, will be, " Ich ersteige."
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CINCINNATI -ITS DESTINY.
CINCINNATI-ITS DESTINY.
THE law of gravitation or centralization-or as some designated it, the serial law, is now known to be one of the laws of nature. Formerly, " the major controls the minor," was a trite aphorism- regarded as almost an abstraction, and applicable to physical bodies only. The learned talked of it, especially astronomers, while des- canting upon the movements of the heavenly bodies, as a law of the solar system ; it was spoken of as the law under, and in pursuance of, which, natural forces operated, such as the winds, the electri- cal fluids, descending bodies, etc. ; but that it controlled, or affected in any manner, the results of artificial powers ; or that its influence extended beyond the physical world, is a discovery wholly of modern times.
It is now known, that everything gravitates-that the larger con trols the smaller, and that just in proportion to its density, pondero- sity, and momentum-whether it be mentally, morally, or physi- cally, is the lesser affected by the greater; and that when there is action-natural or artificial, it matters not-under the operations of this law will the greater influence control the lesser, exactly in the proportion they bear to each other.
The evolvement of artificial motive power, and its subjugation to the human will, which is the achievement of modern times, has ele- vated this latent law of nature to a position of first importance. The astonishing results which the steam-engine, the railroad, and the telegraph, are producing upon the world and the human condition, are such as to lead us into the shadowy future, to inquire what other and more remarkable effects are to flow from these new and great causes, operating under this law. But the mind is startled and becomes lost in its contemplation-the utmost outstretch of human penetration is baffled in its efforts, to estimate what lies be- fore us in the immediate future. It is hardly possible even to approximate the result. Let us try it by analogy-a brief compari- son with the past.
I ask to be indulged, only while I speculate upon the destinies of the western region of this continent, and more especially of our own city. Leaving the results to be produced, elsewhere, by the mighty agencies to which I have alluded to be investigated by others, my ambition will be satisfied, if I can, by analogy and comparison, fore- shadow some of the consequences which may occur to our own
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section and people, and realize in part, what the future has in store for us.
Fifty years ago, where were we? Five millions of people inhab- iting that tract of country, which lies between the eastern slope of the Alleghanies and the Atlantic ocean-with an occasional band of pioneers, who had scaled the mountains and cloven their way through the forests of the west, to some fair spots of earth on the margin of its streams, composed this nation.
It is sufficient for my purpose, that I state the condition of the country and its people, at that period, thus briefly. A few scattered settlements-a military post here and there-two or three small vil- lages, of which this was one, surrounded by hostile savages, were all the lodgments which the white man had then made, in this now mighty region of the west. Many of the first settlers were soldiers; others had been led hither by the wild spirit of adventure, and a few, with their families, in pursuit of richer land. The suffering and privation which attended these early adventurers, are familiar his- tories in the families of their descendants.
Nothing distinguished the period to which I am referring, from others which preceded it, save the daring of the enterprise. The same slow movements and stagnation which characterized earlier times, attended this; the natural forces alone were operating ; nothing moved by any other power.
Nations during preceding centuries had arisen, flourished and fell, scarcely crossing an imaginary boundary-cities were walled, and isolation and inertion marked the earth and its inhabitants, almost everywhere. What each produced each consumed; com- merce was hardly known ; a few crazy vessels on the sea, and cara- vans on the land, served all the purposes of trade. The mariner had no chart, and the muleteer no road ; language, and laws, and customs, all differed ; nothing was homogeneous ; nations and people stood apart; they were estranged ; their sympathies did not mingle, and hence they were enemies, and ravaged each others lands, and slew each other.
But this is a digression ; let me return to the subject, and descend one decade of time. I have said that a little more of energy-of the spirit of adventure, which perhaps is a characteristic of our race, is all that distinguished the people and the period I was con- sidering from any others that preceded them. That was our condi- tion forty years ago. The interval exhibits progress according to the
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ordinary momentum. Comforts were provided under the instincts of necessity ; the church, the school, the court-house, and the road, each appeared in its turn, and, having overcome the hardships of pioneer life, glowing accounts go back of happy western homes. Others are stimulated thereby, and the almost impassable road which traverses the mountain, is thronged with rude vehicles, cover- ing the household and worldly gear of the new adventurous emi- grant. Having reached the river, his own hands construct the bark with which he and his descend it, to his future home; slowly, wearily, expensively, the journey is made.
An infant commerce has sprung up, which was floated on the ark, the keel, and the barge, the history of which, is familiar to us all.
The genius of Bolton and Watt, had evolved the new motive power of steam, and this is the period at which Fitch, and Rumsay, and Fulton, had commenced applying it to its great use, but so im- perfectly, that confidence in its success, was slowly and reluctantly yielded. A single steamer during that year, announced the mighty achievement to this vast western region.
Another decade-thirty years ago, where were we then ? This is the period which dates an era. The magic influence of steam had been felt, and everywhere acknowledged. New life, new energy, new hope, new vitality, new action, were everywhere visible. The settlements were no longer isolated. There was the mill, the fac- tory, the forge ; all bore testimony to the new vivifying principle ; but its great use in the west, was vindicated by the cheapened cost and expedition of locomotion and transportation-we had subdued the rivers and lakes, and made them subservient to our will; but looking east, there stood the frowning Alleghanies.
Let us come down another period, and then look. Twenty years ago-ah ! there is the stage coach and ponderous Conestoga wagon, rolling over the scientifically built turnpike; there waves the rich harvest in the west where the forest waved ten years before; there rises the stately mansion, where the primitive cabin stood ; there the opulent city, once the village site; and mark the fleets of noble steamers, which swarm our lakes and rivers.
But descend with me again-ten years ago-and where ? why, we had risen to the rank of a mighty people, doubling in number the entire population when the nation sprang into being. Our voice was heard with attention in the halls of national legislation. The tide of emigration, at first feeble and slow, had now swollen and
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was rolling toward us in a mighty volume. The news of our won- drous march had gone booming across the water to the old world, and had stirred the nations ; like bees, they had swarmed, and were emigrating. Our giant strides had astonished our eastern brethren, and they were reaching out their hands in friendly salutations. Turnpikes and canals were stretched out toward us, from all direc- tions, with tenders of intercommunication and traffic. At a bound, we covered the land with population, from river to lake, and from lake to river. Instead of struggling feebly toward the west, as we had struggled to this point, by adding settlement to settlement, and county to county, we marshaled into line by platoons of states.
But we must pass the last decade, and then pause and meditate. Where are we now?
The chief feature which distinguishes this period from others which preceded it, is the clear development of that law of gravita- tion to which I have referred, and of the operation of the new forces under it, which the last decade has principally introduced. It will probably be known in coming time, as the railroad and telegraph period. Although the locomotive had been partially in use before, yet the full development of its capacity and uses, which has been chiefly achieved in this, will probably assign it as the one to which it pro- perly belongs. Its claim to the telegraph is exclusive and undoubted.
It is a very difficult task to classify the various influences which mold and fashion the human condition; and it becomes doubly difficult when these influences themselves change, grow greater or less, or are disturbed by the introduction of new influences not in use before. The law of these influences can, perhaps, be made most clear by exhibiting the results of their operation, as far as they have appeared. Man, by nature, is a gregarious creature ; but in the settlement of new countries, necessity and stronger instincts control this natural law ; the desire for better land or health, or more com- fortable provision for offspring, often draws him away from social comforts, and plants him in the wilderness. It was thus, that settle- ments were first made in this region of the west-isolation and dis- persion characterized them; while under the pressure of more urgent wants, the emigrant felt not the discomfort of solitude; but soon these were provided for, and he longed for social intercourse. Provision for this, exhibits the operations of natural forces under the serial law. The village is the nucleus, and results from neces- sity ; this grows naturally in the middle of the settlement, each one
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