USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume I > Part 3
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the library was ransacked, and the men filled their foraging bags with worth- less law papers and then quitted the house. The box thus saved contained the Governor's correspondence with Congress, with the Commander-in-Chief and State Officers."
There is no question but that "Pretty Susan" and her two predecessors shared the distinction and honor accorded their noted spouse. But they had their part of his great misfortunes also. So it is doubtful if their lives were as peaceful as that, for instance, of his oldest daughter Ann, who married the young officer at whom Symmes was at first disposed to curl his lip.
Ann Symmes is said to have been a particularly well dispositioned girl, and a very even tempered wife and mother. The high place reached by her husband seems never to have excited her. She was, for one thing, a semi invalid or thought she was. It took an unusually self centered woman not to age early in those days and many a staid cap covered hair without a silver thread.
Ann was destined to become the wife of one president of the United States, and the grandmother of another President-both of whom made their home for many years on the farm at the mouth of Great Miami River, where so much history has been handed down through the centuries. She was to live her entire adult life here, from the time of her marriage to William Henry Harrison. For Ann Symmes Harrison did not share her husband's brief tenancy of the White House. She never even went to Washington.
Following his marriage to Ann, William Henry Harrison had built a log house at North Bend, bought a 2,000-acre farm between the Ohio and Great Miami Rivers, and here made his home. His public duties frequently called him away for extended periods-as territorial governor of Indiana, with headquarters at Vincennes (where John Scott Harrison was born) and as major general in command of the army during the War of 1812. At the close of the war Harrison resigned from the army, was elected to Congress in 1816, again from the Cincinnati district and served three years, following which he was elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1819, and then United States Senator from Ohio in 1825. He resigned from the United States Senate in 1828 to become minister to Columbia.
During these later years the farm was operated and managed by his son, John Scott Harrison, who had a distinct liking for the pursuits of agri- culture. In the early twenties a sizable tract of land had been set apart for John Scott in the southwest corner of the big farm, and on this his father had erected what was then regarded as an imposing brick mansion of semi- classic colonial design. Much of the material in this house was shipped by boat down the Ohio River, after having been transported across the Allegheny Mountains from the East. All glass was said to have come from England.
William Henry Harrison was elected president of the United States in 1840. He died after barely a month in office. His death took place April 4,
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1841. But he had lived long enough to hold his little grandson, Benjamin Harrison, who was to become twenty-third president of the United States, on his knee.
After his death the William Henry Harrison home also burned to the ground and this is why the widow thereafter lived at the John Scott Harrison home. She had been regarded as "sickly" but she lived to the advanced age of 89 years, dying in 1864.
There is movement to restore the John Scott Harrison home and also to restore Ft. Finney, which had been built by order of the Continental Congress several years before the Columbia, Cincinnati and North Bend settlements were made, in order to repel if possible the fierce Shawnee Indians who had so retarded such settlement. Ft. Finney was on the same plot as the Harrison home. All trace of this fort is gone-but it was there, on January 31, 1786, that George Rogers Clark and two other Commissioners appointed by Congress concluded a peace treaty with the Shawnees and it was this treaty which encouraged Symmes and the other leaders in promoting settlement.
It is true that Symmes was sure there would be an adequate establishment of soldiery at North Bend. Nobody was more disgusted when, as matters turned out, Ft. Washington was established in "Losantiville" by the arrival on August 16, 1789, of 140 soldiers, under Major John Doughty, from Ft. Harmar on the Muskingum. They began Ft. Washington by constructing four block houses. They were along the line of what is now Third Street, then called Hill Street, and they were between Broadway and Lawrence. The block houses formed the beginning of Ft. Washington, a fortification of hewn logs extending 180 feet in length and two stories in height. In the following November, 1789, Gen. Harmar marched in at the head of 300 men and took possession. Today, if you will walk a short distance over Third Street, east- wardly from Broadway, you will come to a memorial erected there and flanked by four cannon. It marks Ft. Washington and is within the boundaries of that historic barracks.
It seems that a very handsome young officer, Ensign Luce, had arrived at North Bend in March, 1789, with 18 soldiers, in answer to Symmes' frantic appeals to General Harmar for protection of the Miami Purchase colonies. Ensign Luce built a small block house, pending, so Symmes thought, the arrival of the military in sufficient numbers to build a real fort.
So much is history.
Let us leave the records and dally, for a moment, with romance. There is an oft repeated story to the effect that the dashing young Ensign Luce was madly in love with the wife of one of the North Bend settlers. Friend husband became alarmed-but not to the point of rashness. He thought mat- ters warranted removal of his home and helpmate to the safely distant-at that time - community of Losantiville. But - according to the story - our young Ensign was not thus to be foiled. He managed, it was rumored, to
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have word reach General Harmar and the military authorities on the Mus- kingum that Losantiville was the right place to have their fort and that there should be stationed the military force-himself, of course, included.
Dr. Beverley W. Bond, Jr., and other accredited authorities pooh pooh this story-it's probably too amusing to be historically true. Besides, the reasons presented by Major Doughty and the final action establishing Ft. Washington at Losantiville are quoted in various authentic letters and other documents.
Even so. romanee did flourish. We have record, fairly well authenticated of Cincinnati's first two weddings, that of ELSIE ROSS who married Daniel Shoemaker, and of SALLY McHENRY, who married Darius C. Orcutt. The marriage ceremony was performed in 1790 by Squire William McMellan.
But there were still earlier brides, LUCY SHEFFIELD, for instance, youngest child of Benjamin and Hannah Sheffield of Marietta who was married there to Major David Ziegler, stationed at Ft. Harmar at the time but soon to be made commandant of Ft. Washington. He was destined to become presi- dent of Cincinnati's first Council, which made Mrs. Ziegler "first lady" of Cincinnati in 1802.
Few pioneer women, according to Henry Howe, were more highly esteemed-or more influential than Mrs. Ziegler. Even the other women liked her. In fact, the settlers' wives seem to have had the good sense to know they must get on together.
A letter written in 1797 by Mrs. ISRAEL LUDLOW brings this out. She described the little village-admitted the disadvantages of what was virtually garrison life. "But we are united by goodwill and desire for mutual happiness," she wrote.
There is however comparatively little that really is authenticated con- cerning the women who helped to found Cincinnati and the settlements in its vicinity. But we know what they did-what they must have done-to make homes from which could grow a city noted for its fine home life, its fine educational facilities, its music, art and general culture.
For one thing, early writers about Cincinnati, were all men-until we come to MRS. FRANCES TROLLOPE. Nor can this acrimonious English woman be said to have shown any enthusiasm for the women of Cincinnati during her stay from 1828 to 1830 or thereabouts. Her book, "Domestic Manners of the Americans," is largely a series of yawps because she failed to make money out of a fantastic "bazaar" which the Trollopes built on Third St. It was known as "Trollopes Folly" and that's what it was.
Judge Jacob Burnet, son of Dr. William Burnet, surgeon general of the Revolutionary army, was author of the first constitution of Ohio. In 1799 he was selected by the president of the U. S. as a member of the legislative council of the territorial government. He was presently made judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio and resigned to fill out the unexpired term created
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by the resignation of William Henry Harrison as U. S. Senator. So Judge Burnet may certainly be accepted as an able and interested historian of his day and place. But you learn nothing about early Cincinnati women from Judge Jacob Burnet.
You learn as little about women from Daniel Drake, the outstanding authority for virtually all we know today of Cincinnati's infancy and grow- ing pains. Dr. Drake was an all round genius. He was a geologist, a medical scientist, a civic leader, a patron of the arts, an authority on literature-and a writer of the first order. One might say that Dr. Daniel Drake WAS early Cincinnati. He was simply all over the place, into everything, mentioned everywhere. But it took real sleuthing among the records to discover any- thing at all about his wife and daughters.
In "Memoirs of the Life and Services of Daniel Drake, M. D. .. . " by E. D. Mansfield, 1860, on pages 74-76, was finally found the following:
"About this time, he (Drake) was led to that acquaintance which termin- ated in his marriage. Two of his friends ... were relatives and living in the house of Colonel Jared Mansfield, then Surveyor-General of the United States for the Northwestern Territory. Drake ... became a visitor. It was in the spring and summer of 1807, when rides into the country and walks in the woods were pleasant to townspeople. The Mansfield home at "Ludlow Sta- tion" had a large garden, an extensive orchard and a green lawn, leading down to Mill Creek ... woodland walks were succeeded by evenings flowing with cheerful conversation . . . Among the members of Colonel Mansfield's family was HARRIET SISSON, a sister's daughter, then in her nineteenth year. She was a person of much native grace, refined tastes, ardent temper- ament, of quick intelligence, but without a fashionable education. It was quite natural that they should become attached to each other.
"As the Doctor had rapidly enlarged his practice, there was nothing to prevent their union, and the marriage took place at Ludlows Station, in the autumn of 1807. Soon after they went to housekeeping, on Sycamore Street, in a two story frame building, between Third and Fourth Streets, on the east side ... Dr. and Mrs. Drake were admirably suited to one another in their genial dispositions, their buoyant spirits, their love of nature, and their ambitious aspirations. Their married life continued eighteen years, attended with a large share of human vicissitudes and not a little of trouble and adversity; yet in the whole period, with a mutual confidence and devotion seldom equaled, so much as to seem quite remarkable to those who observed it. Mrs. Drake, with quick perceptions of her husband's natural talents, and ambitious for his future distinction, ardently assisted him in all his efforts and exercised much influence over his future career."
One of the homes occupied by the Drakes is on E. Third St., right behind the Washington monument and is now the St. Anthony Syrian Maronite Church. It is still beautiful today. Their dwelling on Fourth St. near the old
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postoffice was equally attractive. The same cannot be said for the log cabin to which the philosophie scientist and citizen retired after losing his fortune and his town home in the panic of 1819. Panics, it seems, were an early- and by no means mild-variety of our all too familiar depressions and recessions.
When Dr. Drake found it could happen to him, he built a little cabin on what was then a country hillside-the block where upper Broadway now crosses Liberty St. He called his refuge "Mt. Poverty" and doubtless in his detached way, even enjoyed the experience. But whether Mrs. Drake enjoyed it-
Dr. Drake often expressed conviction that balls and parties were detri- mental to the health of "females." He said women's clothes (with all those petticoats) were too thin. Doubtless she okayed dutifully her gifted husband -but it seems too bad that nobody has been able to unearth a diary written by Mrs. Daniel Drake. One has a feeling that, once she let herself go, she could have divulged an interesting point of view.
That the men and women who settled in Cincinnati and its neighboring communities were, on the whole, superior men and women, unusually endowed with stamina as well as with ability, there is no question.
Their strain endured. Succeeding generations have evidence of the in- fluence of such heredity and of the environment it created.
Descendants of the settlers families have given a good account of them- selves. They are proud of their heritage and mindful of its varied obligations. In many instances the old names have been continued and are to be found today in connection with social, civic, educational and cultural activities of first importance.
This is a history of women of Ohio, space is limited and except where clarification of such history indicates, must be reserved for them. That pride of present day Ohio women in sturdy and industrious ancestry justifies their identification with such forbears was strikingly demonstrated by participation of women all over the state in the recently celebrated Sesquicentennial of the founding of the Northwest Territory.
A striking feature of the Cincinnati celebration, held Oct. 2-15, 1938 was an "Old Settlers Tea" held the night of Oct. 2nd at the University Club. To MRS. LAWRENCE J. BRADFORD, a member of the Cincinnati Sesquicen- tennial Celebration Committee and a former regent of Cincinnati Chapter, D.A.R., is credited in large measure the impressive representation of Cincin- nati's founders at the settlers tea by women who are their direct descendants.
Among Cincinnati women, young and old, who registered on this occasion were BERTHA GIBSON, descendant of Israel Ludlow, MABEL BROWNE, descendant of Stephen Wood, who accompanied Symmes, LOVELA H. WIL- LIAMSON, great great granddaughter of Dr. William Goforth, pioneer phy- sician of Cincinnati and for 30 years a leader in medical science, GERTRUDE
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THOMPSON and JEANETTE THOMPSON EILER, great great granddaugh- ters of Edmund Buxton, Columbia pioneer, FANNIE MANSER LAWRENCE (Mrs. Samuel G. Lawrence) descendant of Thomas Barrett-the home of his son, William Barrett, was where the Neave Building stands today, at Fourth and Race-MILDRED SHILLITO MAXWELL, great granddaughter of Rob- ert Wallace, ELEANOR DE NYSE LEE, great great great granddaughter and ISABELLA NEFF MAXWELL, great granddaughter of Jacob Burnet, HELEN and CATHERINE BRADLEY, great great granddaughters of Cap- tain Daniel Bradley, stationed at Ft. Washington in 1791, also descendants of Jonathan Plumber, of the first Marietta settlers in 1788, and of Captain Leavens, who founded Belpre, O. in 1788, CALLIE KING WALLS, descended from James Sargent, one of the framers of the Ohio constitution, NELLIE HUTTENMILLER, great granddaughter of Buchanon Symmes, ANNIE LOUISE ZIEGLER, MRS. FLORENCE ZIEGLER MORGAN, MRS SARAH ZIEGLER CUNNINGHAM, SUSAN SHAFER ZIEGLER, MRS SARA ZIEG- LER DIECKMANN and MRS ADELAIDE ZIEGLER SCHOCKLEY, all great great granddaughters of John and Ann Fisk, who came to Cincinnati in 1810, MRS. GRACE KEELER CASHBORN, descendant of Benjamin Stites, SUSAN TUCKER and FRANCES HOOD TUCKER, great great granddaugh- ters of Col. Robert Patterson, HARRIET LUDLOW ANDERSON, great granddaughter of John Ludlow, MRS. JOHN TRUMAN, daughter of John Ludlow, ELIZABETH IRWIN HARRISON BUCKNER, great great grand- daughter of John Cleves Symmes and great granddaughter of William Henry Harrison, MRS. DAN MCCARTHY, great great granddaughter of William Henry Harrison, Ruth Dodson Froome, great great granddaughter of John Dodson, Revolutionary War soldier who came to Cincinnati in 1795, FANNIE E. BUXTON, of Amelia, O., descendant of Edmund Buxton, ANN R. BON- NELL and MRS. E. JULIAN BONNELL, descendants of Lewis Bonnell, whose widow, Abigail Bonnell, married William D. Ludlow, nephew of Israel Ludlow, MARGARET THOMAS, descended from Nathanial Shepherd Arm- strong, who came to Hamilton Co. in 1799, MRS. JANET CALLAGHAN, descendant of Dr. William Goforth, MRS. HAROLD ULLAND, great great granddaughter of Patrick Dickey, MRS. ROBERT W. GWINNER, great great grand niece of Griffin Yeatman, MRS. EDMUND L. DENMAN, descendant of John Cleves Symmes, whose husband is a great great grandson of Mathias Denman, their daughters, BETTY LEE and DOROTHY JEAN DENMAN, LAURA DENMAN GOODWIN and JENNIE DENMAN ASHBY, great grand- daughters of Mathias Denman, MARY COLEMAN BURNET, descendant of Jacob Burnet, ABBIE MAY BLAKEMORE, descendant of Mathias Denman, MRS. MARGARET JONES and EDITH BUXTON, descendants of Edmund Buxton, ETHEL GRACE KROMER, descendant of Henry Allison, brother of Dr. Richard Allison, first surgeon general of the U. S. Army, MRS. FRANK E. KUGLER, descendant of Francis Nichols, MRS. S. J. WHEATLEY, de-
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seendant of Morton Wise and GWENDOLYN BURNET, great great great granddaughter of Isaac Burnet.
This chapter on the history, especially the women's part in it-of early Cincinnati may well end, as fitting climax, with the Kemper family. No name is better known in the Cincinnati of today. Telephone directories carry more than a solid column of Kempers, not all, of course, but many direct or in- direct descendants of the Rev. James Kemper, the fame of whose work as a licentiate of the Presbyterian Church was such that he was urged to come from Danville, Kentucky to Cincinnati by an imposing group of resi- dents in 1790. Among those who subscribed to build a church for him were General Wilkinson, Dr. Allison, U. S. surgeon at Ft. Washington, Winthrop Sargeant, Captain Robert Elliot and many others.
On April 27, 1791, the Presbytery examined Kemper and authorized him "to supply in the settlements of the Miami at discretion." This was the first eccesiastical appointment made by any church for regular ministrations north of the Ohio and the Rev. Mr. Kemper was the first duly authorized preacher in Cincinnati. He accepted the Cincinnati ministry in June, 1791 and went back to Kentucky for his family.
The church at Fourth and Main, when completed in 1792, was of frame, 30 by 40 feet. It had clapboards for roof and weatherboarding. There were no laths, no ceiling. The floor was of planks laid upon sleepers, the latter something like the railroad ties you see today. The seats were logs covered with rough boards. The pulpit was unplaned cherry wood. The preacher stood upon a plank resting on blocks.
The Rev. Mr. Kemper was ordained October 23, 1792 and became consti- tuted pastor of "Cincinnati and Columbia churches."
The pastor of this first Presbyterian Church in the southern part of what became the state of Ohio was from the first a power for good in the entire community. The congregation lent itself to the furtherance of secular education as well as to the fostering of religion and morality, need of which was great in what was, at the beginning, largely a military post, with all the conditions inseparable from concentration of a forceful soldiery.
The Rev. Mr. Kemper was by nature fearless. As soon as possible, he built his home in what was then a forest, Walnut Hills, on the still dangerous outskirts of the city. This log cabin home still stands, the oldest house of the Miami Purchase now in existence. It is no longer on its former site. When Kemper Lane, where the Kemper house had held its own throughout the years, was about to be rebuilt by a subdivision, the Cincinnati Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution saved the historic residence.
Mrs. Lowell Fletcher Hobart, who later became president general of the D.A.R., was at the time regent of the Cincinnati Chapter and Mrs. James R. Murdoch, a former regent, was chairman of the historic sites committee, in charge of the project.
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It was arranged with the city that the house be moved, intact, to the Zoological gardens, there repaired but not changed, to be used as a museum of historic relics. Many of these were contributed by members of the Cin- cinnati D.A.R. The Kemper Log Cabin was dedicated with appropriate cere- monies on Flag Day, June 14, 1912.
The ceremonies and all connected with them were of special interest, you may be sure, to Mrs. Alice Kemper Boring (Mrs. Daniel Z. Boring), direct descendant of the Rev. James Kemper and an active member of Cin- cinnati Chapter, D.A.R. Her Revolutionary War ancestors were Charles Kemper of Virginia, Rev. James Kemper, Captain Moses Curtis of Massa- chusetts and Captain John Hathaway, of Virginia.
An outstanding project of even greater historic importance was carried out by the Cincinnati D.A.R. in 1901, only eight years after the chapter was organized. It was started in 1899, when the Daughters, as well as members of other patriotic and historic organizations, decided that there should be a suitable marker of the site of Ft. Washington. The fort, built in 1789 on the government reservation bounded by Broadway, Fourth St. and Ludlow St. and the Ohio River, was torn down in 1808, when the reservation was sold in lots and became the site of many handsome homes. In the course of time the old frontier fort, upon which the safety of the entire community had many times depended, was almost forgotten.
Many of the younger generation did not know it had ever existed, com- paratively few knew where it once had stood.
Credit for launching the project of marking the site of Ft. Washington is given to MRS. FRANK W. WILSON, who urged that other patriotic societies of the city and state be asked to participate in the enterprise.
The plan was carried out and in course of time a handsome and ap- propriate monument, of stone surmounted by an ancient cannon, was placed on East Third St. at what would have been the central spot of the old fort. This too was unveiled, with patriotic exercises, on a Flag Day-June 14, 1901. To MRS. PIERCE J. CADWALLADER, later a regent of Cincinnati Chapter, was assigned the honor of unveiling the mounment.
The most famous pioneer woman of Muskingum County was SARAH ZANE McINTIRE. She was the daughter of Col. Ebenezer Zane, who in 1796 addressed a memorial to Congress setting forth plans he had made to connect the Ohio River at Wheeling with a road to Limestone, Ky. to join the river again there. He asked for the right to build and operate ferries and for grants of land for such purpose.
He was granted, by act of Congress, three tracts of land, each a mile square at the Muskingum, Hockhocking and Scioto Rivers. The road he laid out with the help of expert woodsmen was known as Zane's Trace. It is almost to a hair's line the Old National Road from Wheeling to Zanesville, and thence to Kentucky.
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Col. Zane's sister was the famous ELIZABETH ZANE whose bravery in saving the gun powder at Fort Henry in 1782 has been celebrated in song and story. The Zanes were a fine courageous family with wills of their own. Thus it happened that when a wandering shoemaker, born of Scotch parentage at Alexandria, Va., in 1759, one John McIntire by name, arrived in Wheeling, he sought out the Zane family, and being a bold and forthright young man, was soon impressed by Ebenezer and his brother Jonathan, into service on the trace.
While working with the Zanes he met and fell in love with Ebenezer's daughter, Sarah, then a beautiful girl in her teens. She announced her de- cision to marry the thirty-five year old shoemaker, and nothing would deter her, not even the equal determination of her parents that she should not do so.
On the day of the wedding her father went hunting to show his distaste at having a son-in-law only twelve years younger than himself. Her mother, it is said, even used her slipper on the young bride-to-be, to force her to give up the man of her choice. But in spite of parental objection, Sarah became Mrs. John McIntire.
In the fall of 1799, Ebenezer Zane having deeded to McIntire and Jon- athan Zane the lands of the Muskingum crossing, John and Sarah McIntire came to Zanesville to make their home. With her, Sarah brought the famous side board and chest of drawers which are still being preserved and are on exhibition at the present time in the Art Institute at Zanesville.
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