350 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Orleans until July 14, 1814. At that date the vessel was lying at Baton Rouge over night, and the river was falling somewhat rapidly, causing it to settle upon a sharp stump and to sink in consequence. Its engine, with a new boiler, was put into another boat, called the New Orleans, in 1818.

OTHER STEAMERS.

The Comet was the next boat on the Ohio moved by steam. She was built at Pittsburgh before the summer of 1813, one hundred and forty-five tons, with a new plan of machinery known as French's stern-wheel and vibrating cylinder patent.

Then came the Vesuvius, three hundred and ninety tons, built at Pittsburgh, November, 1813, by Robert Fulton himself. It was the first steamer to attempt a return trip past the falls of the Ohio at Louisville—which it never reached, however, grounding instead on a bar about seven hundred miles north of New Orleans, and remaining there nearly five months, when a rise floated it off, and it returned to New Orleans, spending the rest of its short life on the Lowe1 Mississippi, although a vessel made upon its hull made several trips to Louisville.

Subsequent early vessels of the kind were the Enterprise, a little affair of forty-five tons, built at Brownsville, in 1814; the Etna, three hundred and forty tons; the Despatch, Buffalo, James Monroe, Washington, and others. The last-named was the first one whose boilers were put on the deck. Before that they were down in the hold.

CINCINNATI'S FIRST STEAMER

was the Eagle, a small vessel of but seventy tons, built in 1818 for Messrs. James Berthoud & Son, of Shipping-port, Kentucky, to run in the Louisville (afterwards the Natchez) trade. Following this the same year were the Hecla, likewise of seventy tons, built for Honorie & Barbarox, of Louisville; the Henderson, eighty-five tons, owned by the Messrs. Bowers, of Henderson, to ply between that place and Louisville; and the Cincinnati, the first owned in this city, though only in part. She was a vessel 0f one hundred and twenty tons, built for Messrs. Pennywitt & Burns, of Cincinnati, and Messrs. Paxson & Company, of New Albany, to run in the Louisville trade. The first steamer owned entirely in the city was also constructed in 1818—the Experiment, a forty-ton craft. Thus, says Mr. Cist, "it seems that thirty-two boats had to be built before we could furnish capital and enterprise to own one." So modestly and cautiously began a branch of industry and invention which has given employment first and last to many thousands of the citizens of Cincinnati, and added countless millions to her wealth.

THE FIRST TRIP UP THE OHIO,

and past the falls at Louisville, was made by the Enterprise before mentioned. The following notice of the event appeared in one of the local papers:

THE STEAM BOAT ENTERPRISE.—This is the first steam boat that has ascended the Ohio. She arrived at Louisville on the first inst., sailed thence on the loth, and came to this port on the evening of the 13th, having made her passage from New Orleans, a distance of one thousand eight hundred miles, in twenty-eight running days (by the aid of her machinery alone, which acts on a single wheel placed in the stern), against the rapid currents of the Mississippi and the Ohio. This is one of the most important facts in the history of this country, and will serve as data of its future commercial greatness. A range of steamboats from Pittsburgh to. New Orleans— connecting Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, Cincinnati and Louisville, Louisville and Smithland, at the mouth of the Cumberland, or some eligible place on the Mississippi, below the mouth of the Ohio, thence to Natchez, and from Natchez to New Orleans—will render the transportation of men and merchandise as easy, as cheap and expeditious on these waters as it is by means of sea vessels on the ocean, and certainly far safer! (the exclamation point is Mr. Palmer's, not ours.) And we are happy to congratulate our readers on the prospect that is presented of such an establishment. Two steamboats, considerably larger than the Enterprise and yet not too large for the purpose, are already built at Pittsburgh, and will no doubt commence running in the fall. Others will follow. The success of the Enterprise must give a spring to this business that will in a very few years carry it into complete and successful operation.

IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN.

As Dr. Drake records in his Picture of Cincinnati, navigation was still conducted by flat and keelboats and barges only, though two kinds of steamers were beginning to ply upon the Ohio. One hundred days were still necessary for the New Orleans round-trip, which it was expected steam would reduce to thirty. Cincinnati had been made a port of entry in 1808, but no vessel was cleared here until this year, on account of the cessation of shipbuilding on the Ohio.

Flour was now the chief article of export from the Miami country, several thousand barrels being sent thence annually to New Orleans. Indian meal, kiln-dried, was exported to the West Indies. A very promising business had also begun in the exportation of pork, bacon, lard, whiskey, peach brandy, beer and porter, pot and pearl ashes, cheese, soaps and candles, hemp and spun yarns, cabinet furniture and chairs, walnut, cherry and blue-ash boards.

More than seventy shops in the village were now keeping imported goods for sale, about sixty of which were selling dry goods, hardware, glass and queensware, liquors and groceries; the others were dealing in drugs, shoes and iron. Castings were already made in Ohio, at Zanesville and Brush Creek, and were brought thence to Cincinnati. Pennsylvania and Virginia furnished bar, r0lled and cast-iron, and various manufactures in iron, besides millstones, coal, salt, glassware, pine timber and plank. Lead, peltry and skins came in from the Missouri territory, with abundance of furs from sources of supply nearer at hand—the Great Miami, Wabash and Maumee rivers. Cotton, tobacco, saltpetre and marble came mostly from Tennessee and Kentucky; sugar and molasses, cotton, rice, salted hides and other articles, from Louisiana. New Orleans was then, and Dr. Drake thought must continue to be, the great emporium of the western c0untry, and even in 1815 many articles of import from the east could be obtained more cheaply from that city, as coffee, salt fish, claret and some other wines, copperas, queensware, paints, mahogany and logwood. East India, European and New England goods were brought in to a considerable extent, and the several manufactures of the Middle States were received from Philadelphia and Baltimore, chiefly from the former city. The "ingress of foreign merchandise through other

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 351

channels" was already anticipated. The general government was expected to complete a National road from the navigable waters of the Potomac to the Ohio, which would greatly reduce the expense of transportation. Said Dr. Drake also: "Should New York execute the canal which it has projected, the metropolis of that flourishing State will probably become one of our inlets for foreign goods." Very likely: it so happened in a not very long-run. The main hope of commerce was yet in the other direction, however; and the good doctor still looked toward New Orleans. He wisely thought three things were necessary to improvement of trade thitherward-more extensive and wealthy mercantile houses in Cincinnati, an increased number of steamboats, and improvement in navigation at the Falls of the Ohio.

Writing of certain Indiana counties, he said: "The inhabitants of these counties receive their supply of foreign goods almost exclusively from Cincinnati, but little mercantile capital being employed at Lawrence-burgh, and there being on the Great Miami no depot of merchandise for that region."

The imports this year from places east and south of Cincinnati amounted to $534,680. In 1816 they reached $691,075; in 181 7, $1,442,266, and in 1818, $1,619,030. During the tw0 years following the last war with Great Britain, there was a great increase in the importation of foreign goods, with a consequent depression of prices in the home markets.

The following little notice, in the first number of the Cincinnati Gazette, published July 15, 1815, falls fitly into place here:

Arrived on Thursday, the sixth instant, at this port, the elegant barge Cincinnati, Captain Jonathan Horton, from New Orleans; passage eighty-seven days. Cargo-sugars, molasses, rum, lignum vitae, Spanish hides, etc., to Jacob Baymiller.

IN 1817

certain of the commercial aspects of Cincinnati were noted in an interesting way by the traveller Burnet. He says in his book:

Numbers of arks, with emigrants and their families, bound to various parts of the western country, are generally near the landing. Whilst we were here, I counted the different craft which then lay in the river; and as it may convey some information, I shall state their number: Seven Kentucky boats, similar to ours, with coal, iron, and dry goods, from Pittsburgh. Four barges or keel-boats-one was at least one hundred and fifty tons, and had two masts. These boats trade up and down the rivers, exchanging and freighting goods from and to New Orleans, Pittsburgh, etc. Four large flats or scows, with stones for building, salt from the Kenhawa works, etc. Six arks, laden with emigrants and their furniture. Emigrants descending the Ohio mostly call at Cincinnati to purchase provisions and collect information. These arks are similar to the Kentucky boats, only smaller; they can only descend the river.

In the season of 1818-19, the amount of flour inspected at Cincinnati for export reached one hundred and thirty thousand barrels. It was estimated that at least fifty thousand tons of produce went abroad that year, out of Cincinnati and the two Miami rivers. The imports of the year were only about half a million. The balance of trade had been against Cincinnati, and the local merchants were uncommonly prudent and cautious about their imports. The exports, however, from October, 1818, to March, 1819, amounted to $1,334,080-of flour alone, in amount as above noted, to value of $650,000; pork, ten thousand barrels, worth $150,000; bacon and hams, $22,080; lard, $46,000; tobacco, $66,000; whiskey, $40,000; cotton cloths sold to the Government, $15,000; live stock to New Orleans, $15,000; butter and cheese, $10,000; cornmeal, beans, etc., $20,000. To the Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri territories alone was exported the large value, for that time, of $300,000.

STEAMER TRAFFIC

soon began to look up briskly. Henceforth navigation changed rapidly from the broadhorn to the steamboat. The first vessel of the latter class built at Cincinnati, as before noted, was the Eagle, in 1818. During the next year steamer-building began to be actively and most successfully prosecuted. Vessels were built here and elsewhere on the Ohio more cheaply than in any eastern city; and, of all places on the river where steamers were constructed, the preference seemed to be given to Cincinnati. Of all that were built on the entire western waters in the two seasons between 1817 and 1819, nearly one-fourth were launched here. A large number were also built here in the years 1824-6; it is considered doubtful whether more were constructed during that time in any city in the world. The woodwork especially was superior. Black locust, which was not found even at Pittsburgh, was considerably used for it, and vessels thus made were more desirable than those constructed at the east from Jersey oak. Upon these waters there had been two hundred and thirty-three steamboats by 1826. Ninety had been lost or destroyed, and there were one hundred and forty-three remaining, of about twenty-four thousand aggregate tonnage. One was built in 1811, and another in 1814; two in 1815; three in 1816; and in the years following, successively, seven, twenty-five, thirty-four, ten, five, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-seven, and fifty-six. Of these forty-eight were built at Cincinnati, which' had half a million dollars invested in the river business. By this time the old-fashioned, primitive craft had been almost wholly superseded by the steamers, some of which were so adapted to the river as to run through the very dryest season. Thenceforth steamer-building was to be exceedingly prominent among the industries of the Queen City. The number built, however, has varied greatly from year to year. In 1833, for example, only eight steamers were launched from the Cincinnati shipyards, with a total tonnage of but one thousand seven hundred and thirty. The number of vessels, barges, and steam ferry-boats built in Cincinnati during the years 1856-79, also strikingly exhibits this variation. They were severally as follows: 1856, thirty-three; 1857, thirty-four; 1858, fourteen ; 1859, eleven; 1860, twenty-eight; 1861, eleven ; 1862, four; 1863, forty-three; 1864, sixty-two; 1865, forty-four; 1866, thirty-three; 1867, eighteen; 1868, eleven; 1869, eleven; 1870, fifty-two; 1871, forty-four; 1872, fifty-two; 1873, forty-eight ; 1874, twenty-nine; 1875, sixteen; 1876, nineteen; 1877, twenty-one; 1878, thirty; 1879, twenty-four. The aggregate tonnage ranged from one thousand seven hundred and forty-five in 1862, to twenty thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight in

352 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

1870. The arrivals of these years varied from two thousand two hundred and six in 1863 to three thousand four hundred and fifty-nine in 1866, with departures pretty nearly corresponding. The range of boats plying to and from the city was two hundred and twenty-five in 1862, to four hundred and forty-six in 1865. The second year of the late war, it will be observed, was particularly disastrous to river interests in this quarter.

The eleventh annual report, to the Cincinnati board of trade and transportation, of the committee on river navigation, made March , 1880, says of the local boat building of 1880-81:

A good number of boats have been built here the past year—the number of all crafts being twenty, with tonnage six thousand six hundred and eighty-three, against twenty-four last year, and tonnage ten thousand six hundred and forty-one. In the future we must not look for a greater number of boats, but expect a heavy increase in tonnage ; this is more applicable to stern wheel boats, which in former years were of small size and used mostly in making short trips. There are those that have attained the carrying capacity of three thousand tons. Now, however, boats, whether of side or stern wheel, for short packet trade or for more distant ports, are of large size ; indeed it seems a question to what point the size of boats may be reached. This change in building larger boats for the Upper Ohio, with more speed, is only following the prediction of those who advocated the lengthening and widening of the Louisville and Portland canal and lessening the rates of its tolls.

And the last annual report of the chamber of commerce for the commercial year ending August 31, 1880, makes the following encouraging statement of the river business of that year:

The arrivals for the year aggregated three thousand one hundred and sixty-three boats, compared

with two thousand seven hundred and twenty-five id the year immediately preceding, and the departures three thousand one hundred and sixty-seven, in comparison- with two thousand seven hundred and thirty. The Whole number of steamboats and barges which plied between Cincinnati and other ports in the past year was three hundred and twenty-two, with an aggregate tonnage of eighty-three thousand five hundred and sixty-nine. In this connection it must be kept in mind that in the past year vessels have run with great regularity and frequency, and that, in consequence, an equal number of vessels represents a larger business, because each vessel in the latter category is counted but once, no difference how frequent may have been the visitations. Again, it is true that the same number of arrivals and departures also represented an increased business, inasmuch as it comprised, generally, vessels which, from the regularity of arrival and departure, and the general exemption of transient boats, had uniformly good cargoes. It is worthy of note that the number of arrivals and departures for each leading point has increased over the preceding year. Thus, the arrivals from New Orleans aggregated, in the past year, one hundred and three vessels, compared with eighty-five in the preceding year, and the departures one hundred and sixteen, in comparison with ninety-seven. From Pittsburgh the arrivals were one hundred and eighty-two, compared with one hundred and sixty-three, and the departures' one hundred and seventy-seven, in comparison with one hundred and sixty-two. From St. Louis the arrivals aggregated ninety-three, compared with sixty-four, and the departures ninety-four, in comparison with seventy-five. From all other points the arrivals aggregated two thousand seven hundred and eighty-five, compared with two thousand four hundred and thirteen, and the departures two thousand seven hundred and eighty, in comparison with two thousand three hundred and ninety-six. A study of the figures th10ugh a series of years reveals the fact that the increase, the past year, was not solely over 1878-79, which was a year that was seriously interfered with by cold weather, that diminished the number of arrivals and departures for the year, but exhibits a general increase, extending through a series of years. Thus, the entire number of arrivals and departures exceeds any preceding year in a period of fourteen years, and has but three times been exceeded in the history of the city, which was in 1857-58, when the excess was very small, and in 1864-65 and in 1865-66, the years that closed and immediately succeeded the war, which was a time that, for a period of normal conditions, would not be a fair measure.

SEA-GOING VESSELS.

Very early in the century, as we have incidentally noticed in previous chapters, the construction of sailing-vessels, for river and possibly ocean navigation, began upon the upper Ohio. Mr. Devoll, who made the boats which brought the first colonists of the Ohio company to the site of Marietta, was a prominent builder in this line. The voyage of one of his vessels, the Nonpareil, is pleasantly narrated in our chapter on Cincinnati's second decade, in connection with the arrival here of General Mansfield and family. The local papers frequently, for many years, chronicled the arrival and departure of schooners, brigs, and "ships."

So late as thirty to forty years ago, the construction of ocean-going vessels on the river promised to become an important industry. In 1844, a bark was built at Marietta and appropriately named the Muskingum, of three 'hundred and fifty tons burthen, which was loaded at Cincinnati the next fall or winter, and started on her long voyage to Liverpool. Her safe arrival was thus chronicled in the Times, of that city, of date January 30, 1845:

Arrival direct from Cincinnati.—We have received a file of Cincinnati papers brought by the first vessel that ever cleared out at that city foi Europe. The building of a vessel of 35o tons, on a river seventeen hundred miles from the sea, is itself a very remarkable circumstance, both as a ,proof of the magnificence of the American rivers and the spirit of the American' people. "The navigating of such a vessel down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and then across the Atlantic, would, a few years ago, have been thought impossible. She brings a cargo of provisions; and we trust that the success of this first adventure will be Such as to encourage its frequent repetition. The name of the vessel is the Muskingum:

The passage of this vessel by Cincinnati, bound as it was for what then seemed the ends of the earth, naturally awakened the liveliest interest. The Gazette of that day thus poetically and dramatically begins an editorial notice of the event:

If one had stood Upon the eastern hill-top which overhangs our city, in the early gray of the morning on Saturday, and looked out upon the river, he might have thought a phantom ship was floating upon it. The quick puffing of a steamer was heard, and out beyond it seemingly a full-rigged ship, its masts towering up and all spars set, was evidently looming on and making direct for the landing of the city. Early risers were startled. Even those who knew that certain enterprising men of Marietta were building a sea-vessel were astonished when itexpectedly hove in sight. But when it approached nearer and r rarer, and bodied itself forth plainly to the naked vision, the cry went up, "a ship! a ship!" with a thrill akin, at least, to that which men and women feel on the ocean shore, when welcoming back the long-absent "sea-homes" of relative and friend. It was an exciting scene.

Several other sea-going vessels were fitted out at various points on the Ohio. Messrs. John Swasey & Company, of Cincinnati, built three vessels before 1850, of two hundred to three hundred and fifty tons—one full-rigged brig, the Louisa, and two barks, named respectively the John Swasey and tile Salem. They were taken in tow of steamers to New Orleans, and there bending sails and shipping a crew, they put independently to sea. One of them made a six months' trading trip to the west coast of Africa, and her sailing and weather qualities were reported to be of the highest order. The Minnesota, a ship of eight hundred and fifty tons, was built here about the same time by another firm, for a New Orleans owner.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 353

IMPORTS AND EXPORTS.

In 1826 the principal imports to the city of Cincinnati were as follows:

Bar, steel, and spike iron, one thousand four hundred and fifty tons, valued at one hundred and eighty-one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; castings, three hundred and fifty tons, value twenty-one thousand dollars; pig-iron, seven hundred and sixty-eight tons, worth twenty-three thousand and forty dollars; nails, seven thousand kegs, value sixty-three thousand dollars; lead and shot, five hundred and sixty thousand pounds, thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars; copper, tin plate, and glassware, eighty thousand dollars; coal, two hundred thousand bushels, twenty thousand dollars; lumber, boards, five million feet; shingles, three million five hundred thousand; joists and scantling, four hundred thousand feet; timber, one hundred and twenty-two thousand feet; total value, sixty-four thousand dollars; indigo, twenty-five thousand dollars; coffee, one million one hundred thousand pounds, one hundred and ninety-eight thousand dollars; tea, two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, two hundred and eight thousand dollars; sugar, eighty thousand dollars; fish, three thousand barrels, twenty thousand dollars; liquors, spices, etc., two hundred thousand dollars; dry goods, one million one hundred and ten thousand dollars- Total value of imports, two million, five hundred and twenty-eight thousand five hundred and ninety dollars. The exports for the same period were: Flour, fifty-five thousand barrels, worth one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars; whiskey, fourteen thousand five hundred barrels, one hundred and one thousand five hundred dollars; pork, seventeen thousand barrels, one hundred and two thousand dollars; lard, one million two hundred and eighty thousand pounds, sixty-four thousand dollars; hams and bacon, one million four hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds, fifty-seven thousand dollars; feathers, three hundred and two thousand pounds, seventy-eight thousand five hundred and twenty dollars; beeswax seventy-eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds; cheese: seventy-five thousand pounds, five thousand three hundred and twenty-nine dollars; butter, five thousand" kegs, seventeen thousand five hundred dollars; ginseng, ninety-five thousand five hundred pounds, sixteen thousand two hundred and thirty-five dollars; beans, one thousand barrels, three thousand dollars; tobacco, one thousand five hundred kegs, eighteen thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars; linseed oil, one thousand two hundred barrels, twenty thousand four hundred dollars; bristles, two thousand pounds, seven hundred and sixty dollars; hats, seventy-five thousand dollars; cabinet furniture, forty-seven thousand dollars; candles and soap, thirty thousand dollars; type and printing materials, nineteen thousand dollars; beer and porter, seven thousand dollars; clocks, etc., fifteen thousand dollars; clothing, fifty thousand dollars; hay, oats, corn, cornmeal, apples, dried fruit, castings, coopers' ware, window glass, tinware, plows, wagons, stills, horses, poultry, cigars, etc., one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Total value of exports, one million and sixty-three thousand five hundred and sixty dollars, showing a nominal "balance of trade" against Cincinnati, for the present, of one million four hundred and sixty-five thousand and thirty dollars.

The volume of commercial business, however, for the period, and twenty years before a single railway was in full operation into the city, must have been regarded as eminently satisfactory. The exports might also have properly included the steamboats built at Cincinnati, but owned abroad. About one hundred flatboats were brought every year down the Great Miami, and about thirty down the Little Miami, with an aggregate burden of thirty-three thousand five hundred barrels of flour, valued at about one hundred thousand dollars, which was less than three dollars a barrel.

It was estimated at this time that probably one-third of the imports into Cincinnati were re-exported—a business which had greatly increased within three or four years; and it was remarked that it would be conducted on a much larger scale if the local merchants had capital equal to their enterprise. The figures formerly given, therefore, do not represent the true balance of trade against them. If proper allowances were made, it was thought that the exports would equal imports, and there would be no balance of trade.

The trip from New Orleans to Cincinnati was now made in twelve to fourteen days, by steamer. The Mississippi and Ohio rivers were still, of course, the great highways by which all passengers and freight along their borders obtained access to the north. And at that time Cincinnati enjoyed peculiar advantages of situation, as to roads and water-courses, so that persons travelling from the south and southwest to the north could scarcely avoid it. But most dry goods and lighter articles of trade were still brought from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, over the mountains to Wheeling and' Pittsburgh, and thence transported down the river. The heavy articles, groceries, queensware, and the like, were brought up from New Orleans. Iron, in the larger quantities, came in principally from Pittsburgh, and from the Sandy and Licking rivers, upon which there were extensive iron works. The Paint creek and Brush creek regions, in this State, especially the latter, furnished most of the castings imported. Nails were brought from Pittsburgh and elsewhere—"a striking commentary," say Drake and Mansfield, very truly, "upon the deficiency of our manufactures.' Lead came from Missouri; salt from the Conemaugh works, Pennsylvania, and the Kanawha works, Virginia; most of the timber and boards imported was floated in rafts from near the sources of the Alleghany, chiefly from the great forests then still existing about Olean Point, New York.

The exports from Cincinnati went mainly to the West Indies and South America; but the pork and whiskey t0 Atlantic cities. Lard was shipped to Cuba and parts of South America, where it was used as a substitute for butter. The lower Mississippi region consumed much of the produce of the Miami country. And there was already a considerable bulk of supplies furnished annually from this quarter to the United States army.

THE LAST HALF CENTURY.

In round numbers, the commerce of Cincinnati for the year 1832 was estimated at $4,000,000; for 1835 at something more than $6,000,000. The steamer arrivals of this year numbered two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven. Among the imports were ninety thousand barrels of flour and fifty-five thousand of whiskey.

By 1840 the capital invested in foreign trade and general commercial business had increased to $5,200,000. There were invested in the retail dry goods trade, in hardware, groceries, and the related lines of trade, $22,877,000. The lumber business alone occupied twenty-three yards, with seventy-three hands, and an investment of $133,000. Their sales for this year reached $342,500. In January, 1842, eighty-eight steamers were owned in the district of Cincinnati, whose aggregate tonnage was eleven thousand seven hundred and thirteen. There were then upon the Western waters four hundred and thirty-seven vessels of this class—seventy of thirty to one hundred tons' burthen; two hundred and twelve of one hundred to two hundred; one hundred and five of two hundred to three hundred; twenty-four of three hundred

354 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

to four hundred ; eight of four hundred to five hundred; five of five hundred to six hundred; four of six hundred to seven hundred; one of seven hundred and eighty-five tons.

With the immense growth of population between 1840 and 1850, came a corresponding increase in trade and commerce. One Cincinnati house was transacting commercial business at the rate of $1,200,000 a year, and making more than half its shipments to Great Britain. The next year the commerce of the city was roundly put at thirty-six millions annually, one-fourth of which was a business for home consumption.

By this time the importation of coal to the city had greatly developed. The number of bushels locally consumed in 1851 was seven millions seven hundred and eighty-five thousand bushels, against one million nine hundred and fifty thousand and fifty in 1841. In 1859 the consumption had increased to fifteen millions of bushels, and there were sixty-eight coal yards in the city.

The last annual report of the Chamber of Commerce furnishes the following valuable statistics:

"The aggregate, annual, approximate value of the imports and exports, respectively, at Cincinnati, from 185455 to 1879-80, inclusive, appears in the following table:"

THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

This body, one of the most important and influential of its kind in the world, was organized October 22, 1839, to promote the amicable settlement of differences among the business men of the city. It then met but monthly, in the rooms of the Young Men's Mercantile library. The first board of officers was elected January 14, 1840, and was follows: Griffin Taylor, president; R. G. Mitchell, Thomas J. Adams, John Reeves, S. B. Findley, Peter Neff, Samuel Trevor, vice-presidents; B. W. Hewson, treasurer; Henry Rockey, secretary. The presidents of the chamber since have been Lewis Whiteman, R. G. Mitchell, Thomas J. Adams, James C. Hall, N. W. Thomas, R. M. W. Taylor, James F. Torrence, Joseph Torrence, J. W. Sibley, Joseph C. Butler, George F. Davis, Theodore Cook, S. C. Newton, John A. Gano, Charles W. Rowland, S. F. Covington, C. M. Holloway, Benjamin Eggleston, John W. Hartwell, William N. Hobart, H. Wilson Brown, and Henry C. Urner. Its present objects are defined- as to offer an occasion and place for the discussion of all leading questions of mercantile usage, of matters of finance, and of topics affecting commerce; also to collect information in relation to commercial, financial, and industrial affairs that might be of general interest and value; to secure uniformity in commercial laws and customs; to facilitate business interests and promote equitable principles, as well as the adjustment of differences and disputes in trade.

In 1846, a superintendent was appointed for the Merchants' Exchange, which was formed that year, and with which the chamber of commerce was consolidated; and his labors, especially in the preparation of annual reports, have been of great value to the united bodies. Mr. A. Peabody was- the first superintendent, 1846-9 ; then came Richard Smith, 1849-54; William Smith, 1854-71 ; and Colonel Sidney D. Maxwell, 1871 to date. This office is filled most capably and acceptably by Colonel Maxwell, whose reports are replete with statistics, and are accounted among the most valuable issued anywhere.

The chamber was chartered in 1850. It has for a long time occupied rooms at No. 22 West Fourth street, near the room of the board of trade and transportation. The Government building at the corner of Fourth and Vine streets has been purchased by the chamber and exchange for one hundred thousand dollars, and will be occupied as soon as vacated by the post-office, custom-house, and other Federal institutions now in it. The association has a reserve fund of forty thousand dollars in United States bonds. When Mr. James A. Frazer, a prominent member, died, he bequeathed five thousand dollars to the building fund of the chamber.

The chamber co-operates with the board of trade and the Mechanics' Institute in sustaining the annual Industrial Exposition, and is represented on the board of Exposition commissioners. It subscribes liberally to the guarantee fund, and in 1875 offered a special premium of three hundred dollars in gold for the best display of leaf tobacco at the Exposition of that year. Its charities have also been liberal. It gave a large sum to the Chicago sufferers ; June 8, 1877, subscribed one thousand dollars for the relief of the inhabitants of Mount Carmel, Illinois, which was destroyed by a tornado ; and, September 2 2, 1876, gave five thousand dollars for the yellow fever sufferers at Savannah, besides individual subscriptions.

It is justly considered a very high honor to be elected an honorary member of the chamber. So far only ten honorary members have been chosen: Robert Buchanan (died April 20, 1879), Henry Probasco, Miles Greenwood, John H. Gerard, David Sinton, Reuben R. Springer, James F. Torrence, George Graham (died March , 1881), Charles W. West, and William Procter.

OTHER EXCHANGES.

In 1835, long before a railroad era came for Cin-' cinnati, a Canal Produce exchange was established, mainly through the exertions of Reuss W. Lee. Josiah Lawrence was president; Henry Rockey, secretary. Its original meetings were held in the brick store owned by Major Daniel Gano, 'on the corner of Mound and Court streets, in which their quarters were rent-free after John Thompson bought the store. The Exchange was maintained two years, and then declined, as its location was considered too far up town. It was closed for a year, and then revived and re-established, this time in the College building, on Walnut street, near Fourth.

The Cotton Exchange occupies one of the rooms of

356 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

the Chamber of Commerce, to which all its members belong. It was founded in 1871.

The Grocers' Exchange holds its meetings monthly in the room of the board of trade and transportation.

The Furniture Exchange is not far distant, meeting in Room No. 48, Pike's Opera house.

A Coal Exchange has also been organized by the Cincinnati dealers in "black diamonds."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

BANKING-FINANCE-INSURANCE.

THE opportunity to write another book, and a pretty large one, is presented to any one who will treat in detail the history of these things, so important and weighty in the affairs of Cincinnati for nearly eighty years. We can in this chapter but put together some memoranda and extracts gathered in the course of our general investigations.

THE MIAMI EXPORTING COMPANY.

The first banking institution in Cincinnati bore this unique title. It was chartered for the term of forty years at the very first meeting of the general assembly of Ohio, only five months after the admission of this division of the Northwest Territory into the Union as a sovereign State. The plan of the company was first mooted by that well known old settler, some years afterwards the donor of the ground upon which the court house and county jail stand—Mr. Jesse Hunt, who was himself an exporting merchant. The agriculture and commerce of the infant west were then at their lowest point of depression, in which Cincinnati fully sympathized; and the direct object of the new institution was to reduce the difficulty and expense of transportation to New Orleans. Banking was at first a secondary matter, though its charter permitted the issue of a circulating medium, and its financial operations subsequently became much more prominent than its commercial transactions. In 1807, indeed, on the first of March, it gave over all commercial schemes, and launched out into a financial career pure and simple. Its capital stock was one hundred and fifty thousand dollars —an immense sum for that day in Cincinnati—which was taken in one hundred dollar shares by one hundred and ninety holders. The official organization was quite similar to that of the banks of to-day. Eleven directors were chosen by the shareholders, who in their turn elected the president and the cashier. In 1815 the Rev. Oliver M. Spencer, the boy hero of the Indian captivity of 1792, was president, and Samuel C. Vance was cashier. Dr. Drake, in his book of that year, said: "The reputation and notoriety of this institution are equal to that of any bank in the western country, and its dividends correspond, having for several years fluctuated between ten and fifteen per cent." Some of the later troubles of this institution are chronicled in our chapters on the annals of Cincinnati, and need not be recapitulated here.

IN THE FATEFUL YEAR

of 1812 the finances and all kinds of business were again depressed, and the clouds of war hung darkly over the country. In the midst of general gloom the second bank in Cincinnati was started—the Farmers' and Mechanics'. It was founded in 1812, and chartered the next year, but only for five years, or until the time when the charters of all banks in the State were to expire, except that of the Miami Exporting company. Its capital was the then handsome sum of two hundred thousand dollars, held in fifty dollar shares. The president, by the charter, must be one of the directors, and of these one-third were to be practical farmers, and another third practical mechanics. The taking name of the bank was thus better answered and justified than sometimes happens in the history of such institutions. William Irwin was President in 1815, and Samuel W. Davies, afterwards the proprietor of the water works, cashier. By this time its paper was extensively in circulation, and dividends had been declared of from eight to fourteen per cent. a year. In 1819 this bank was made the depository of the public moneys received at Cincinnati.

Two years afterwards, and before the war had ended—in June, 1814—the Bank of Cincinnati was opened and began its issues. Money was now easily obtained, and was much more freely and abundantly in circulation. The proportion of capital to population is said, but probably with exaggeration, to have been ten times greater than now. The capital stock of this bank was taken in fifty dollar shares, of which eight thousand eight hundred had been subscribed by the middle of 1815, and by three hundred and forty-five subscribers, who had actually paid in one hundred and forty thousand dollars. At first it had no charter, and was governed by twelve directors, with the usual executive officers. Mr. Ethan Stone was first president, and Lot Pugh cashier. Its notes were issued without stint, and went far and wide.

AFTER THE WAR.

During the struggle of 1812-15 there was comparatively little foreign merchandise imported into this country, and American money staid at home. But upon the restoration of peace the sails of commerce again speedily whitened the high seas, and the unwonted abundance of money naturally led to unwonted extravagance, especially in the purchase of foreign wares and luxuries. Thus the country was speedily denuded of coin, commerce and domestic trade were contracted, credits were destroyed, debts had to be collected by force, and presently set in the financial disasters and the monetary crisis which lasted from 1817 to 1823. Cincinnati had her full share of its ills. The Miami Exporting company, the woollen factory, the sugar refinery, the iron foundry in which Generals Harrison and Findlay and Judge Burnet had invested large blocks of their means—all the chief props of industry and trade in the embryo city—went down before the terrible rush of this panic. It was during this tristful period that Judge Burnet, heavily indebted to the branch bank of the United States, sacrificed to that all-grasping institution, in payment of his obligations, the

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 357

splendid property comprising the entire square upon which the Burnet house and the post office stand, now worth millions of dollars, for twenty-five thousand dollars. He had offered it td the corporation at a great bargain; but the over-cautious authorities in charge of the affairs of a new-fledged city refused to buy; so the grand opportunity was lost.

The successful founders and operators of John H. Piatt & Company's Bank, however, had means, responsibility, and the confidence of the community sufficient to start their institution not far from the fall of the general calamities upon the world of finance, in the year 1817.

THE BRANCH BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.

The second bank established by the Federal Government received its charter from Congress in April, 1816. The next year, on the twenty-eighth of January, a branch was opened in Cincinnati, and some months afterwards another was established in Chillicothe. This was in pursuance of the visit of deputations from the principal towns of Ohio to secure the establishment of branches at their several places. The Cincinnati branch was at first the only bank in the place. It was opened as an office of discount and deposit in April, 1817, withdrew from the field in October, 1820, and was re-established in May, 1825. In the years 1826-7 J. Reynolds was president, and P. Benson cashier. Gorham A. Worth, from New York city, but long a resident here, was the original cashier, and had a good board of directors at his back.

The State of Ohio asserted the right to tax these branches. A law was passed by the legislature fixing a levy of fifty thousand dollars upon each, if they should still be in business after September 15,1819. The auditor of State was authorized and directed to issue his warrants for the collection of the said amounts. When the time arrived, the branches still being in operation, the authorities prepared for the collection of the tax, but were temporarily prevented by an injunction procured by a bill of chancery in the United States circuit court, in the absence of the State auditor, Hon. Ralph Osborn, who, under advice of counsel, declined to appear as cited, upon the fourth of September, the day fixed for the hearing. He was enjoined from proceeding with the acts of collection, although the bank was at the same time required to give bonds to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. A copy of the petition for an injunction was served by an agent of the Cincinnati branch upon the auditor, with a subpoena to appear before the court on the first Monday of the next January. He had, however, no copy of the writ of injunction allowed; and the auditor enclosed the other papers to the secretary of State, with his warrant for the tax levy, desiring that if, upon legal opinions, they did not amount to an injunction, he should have the warrant carried into effect—otherwise to take no further steps in the matter. The counsel of the State giving advice that no injunction had been served—as was doubtless the case, technically—the writ for collection was passed to Mr. John L. Harper, with instructions to demand payment at the bank, and, if refused, to take the requisite amount from its vaults, if he could do so without using force. If violently opposed, he was simply to depose to, the facts before a magistrate. Mr. Harper, in company with Messrs. J. McCollister and. T. Orr, entered the banking-house on the seventeenth of September, and made the demand, after making sure their means of access to the vault. He was refused, of course, but not met with force and arms, and quietly carried off ninety-eight thousand dollars in gold, silver, and bank notes, which were turned over to the State treasury three days later.

The gentlemen making this seizure had now to confront the majesty of Federal law, in answering to a charge of contempt of court, by violating the terms of the injunction. They were arrested and imprisoned, and the money procured and returned to Cincinnati. After long delay, the case, upon an appeal to the United States supreme court, received its final hearing in February, 1824, when a decision was rendered affirming the decree of the court below by which payment of the tax was refused. The State made no further effort at collection, though the bank was deprived for some years of the advantage of the State laws in the transaction of its business, particularly in making its collections ; and the legislature made a fruitless attempt to secure a change in the Constitution of the United States, removing such matters from the jurisdiction of the Federal courts.

During the pendency of the case, in December, 1820, and the ensuing month, the following remarkable resolutions were also debated and passed by the Ohio Legislature:

That, in respect to the powers of the governments of theseveral States that compose the American Union and the powers of the Federal Government, the general assembly do recognize and approve the doctrines asserted by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia, in their resolutions of November and December, 1798, and January, 1800, and do consider that their principles have been recognized and adopted by a majority of the American people.

That this general assembly do assert, and will maintain, by all legal and constitutional means, the right of the State to tax the business and property of any private corporation of trade, incorporated by the Congress of the United States, and located to transact its corporate business within any State.

That the Bank of the United States is a private corporation of trade, the capital and business of which may be legally taxed in any State where they may be found.

That this general assembly do protest against the doctrine that the political rights of the separate States that compose the American Union, and their powers as sovereign States, may be settled and determined in the supreme court of the United States, so as to conclude and bind them in cases contrived between individuals, and where they are, no one of them, parties direct.

Thus is outlined one of the most interesting chapters in the history of banking and finance in Ohio.

Within a few years after the foundation of this bank, and during the financial crisis above mentioned, its officers received orders to put at once in suit every debt that was due and over-due. The execution of this order added immeasurably to the distress which the business men of Cincinnati were already suffering. Many of the best of them were ruined; the troubles were complicated and in many cases irreparable; and the community did not recover from the shock for many years. It was at this time that Judge Burnet was compelled to make the sacrifice of his home property mentioned in a former paragraph.

358 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Some interesting reminiscences of this period were contributed to Cincinnati Past and Present by the late Timothy A. Kirby:

Cincinnati was one of the points selected in 1816 for a branch of the bank. The advent of that institution, just after the close of the war, was at a critical time in financial affairs Imports had been suspended for several years by the war, and home manufactures stimulated into a premature existence; but were then in process of being crushed out by an overwhelming avalanche of British goods poured into the country. The war debt was large, and that portion of it held at home supplied remittance bonds to pay balances abroad in lieu of specie; thus saving the bank from immediate pressure, while the country was being demoralized by improvident trade of a one-sided character. Gorham A. Worth took charge of the Cincinnati branch, supported by a local board of directors, one of the leading spirits of which was the late Hugh Glenn. The leading men of Cincinnati were largely indebted to the local banks; their resources were mostly in lands, estimated at high values. The notes and bills discounted by the branch bank became to a large extent mere transfers of previous debts from the local banks. Such a business was unsound, and of course resulted in disaster in about four years. By the year 182o matters came to a crisis. The credit of many leading men was shaken, but still they were mostly sound in real estate assets, in case their lands maintained their values. At that day the merchants and business men of Philadelphia held Cincinnati in leading strings. It was of the utmost importance to the people of the small city to keep good faith and preserve the good opinion of the large city with which they traded. Unfortunately a little sharp practice on the part of a very small number of the people of Cincinnati had the effect to create an unjust prejudice at Philadelphia. In the course of business all the local banks became heavily indebted to the branch bank, and among these one under the management of wealthy Cincinnati and Newport men shut down, indebted one-third of a million or so to the branch. That was a large sum at that day; and to save it the head cashier was sent out, and was drawn into the acceptance of lands at an enormous valuation from the local banks. The home directors and stockholders of the United States bank were in the belief that they had been imposed upon, and that Cincinnati and her lands were a bubble, maintained by the State valuation law and by the united action of a people indebted to insolvency. It may be safely said that this one settlement, made notorious by exaggeration, in its subsequent effects cost the people of Cincinnati millions of dollars in the unjust disparagement or depreciation of its lands, and consequent losses in after settlements and also to pay the heavy indebtedness to the merchants and banks of Philadelphia and elsewhere.

The Cincinnati branch was promptly withdrawn, and the business closed up by an agency. Some of the heaviest claims were lost, being discounts of a wild character, while the good claims were collected for the most part in real estate. The titles of the property held by the bank were perfected as far as practicable, and after about two years the property was put on the market and sold in small parcels in installments favorable to the growth of the city, and in a careful manner, to protect the interests of the bank. . . .

In the year 1825, the United States bank sent out to Cincinnati Peter Benson, to open another branch of their bank at Cincinnati, supported by a good local board of directors. They enforced specie payment, compelled the local banks to keep their circulation within safe limits, and supplied exchange at fair rates. Their discount for notes and bills was for the most part done on a safe footing. There is no doubt that the general management of the Cincinnati bank, from 1824 to 1836, was highly advantageous to the business in the west. Mr. Biddle and his board of directors at Philadelphia succeeded admirably during the congress charter in sustaining the interests of the stockholders and in promoting the business of the country, Under the Pennsylvania charter they broke down and sunk the capital of the bank in their futile efforts to maintain specie payments in the face of an excessive foreign trade, stimulated to a disastrous extent by the government, policy of the time. The bank should have suspended payment two years sooner, while their assets were sound and not have gone into the folly of remitting State bonds and other trash, to Europe, to meet the huge trade balances of that day.

Colonel James Taylor, of Newport, a young man at the time, has vivid recollections of the career of this Branch bank, some of which he has courteously communicated to the writer of these pages. He says:

This bank was a large-sized shark, as it ate up all the small banks in the city—to-wit: The Maine Exporting company, the Farmers' and Mechanics' bank, and the Bank of Cincinnati, together with other banks in Ohio. Many citizens of Cincinnati were injured by the bank —among them General William Lytle (it broke him up), Judge Burnet, Mr. Carr, St. Clair, Morris, William Barr, and others. Lytle had to give up his homestead, now owned by Dr. Foster and others, and some tracts of land in Hamilton and Clermont counties. Burnet gave up his homestead, where the Burnet house stands.

I know the bank made large sums of money out of its debtors. I, as well as my father, bought considerable property of the agent, taken for debts. The money was mostly made from vacant ground, taken and subdivided, and the rise of property.

The bank wound up and established an agency, which existed over fifty years. George Jones was the first agent, in 1823 ; Herman Cope, the second; and Timothy Kirby, deceased, the third. Property was low in 1823-4, and their debtors were forced to give up property to a large amount. The bank, by rise and subdivision of property, made millions of dollars, and only wound up by Kirby a few years ago.

This United States bank, instead of being a benefit to Cincinnati, was an injury, as it forced into bankruptcy the other banks in the city, and involved many of its most influential citizens.

FINANCIAL NOTES.

The local bank rule in 1819 was that "all notes for discount must be dated and deposited in the banks the day previous, before one o'clock P. M., except those for the Branch bank, which must be dated on Tuesday." The banking hours then were only from 10 A. M. to 1 P. M.

Mrs. Charlotte Chambers Riske, formerly. Mrs. Israel Ludlow, makes this entry in her journal for August 2, 1820:

The depressed state of money matters creates much uneasiness among business men. The gentlemen have formed an association for the reduction of family expenses, superfluities of dress, amusements, etc. Mr. S. insisted upon the entire disuse of tea and coffee. Dr. D. [Drake, probably] argued against the tea measure.

By 1829 the United States Branch bank, having now a capital of one million two hundred thousand dollars, was the only banking institution left in the city. A charter for another had been obtained at the previous session of the legislature, but the stock had not yet been subscribed. The Commercial bank was shortly started, at No. 45 Main street; Robert Buchanan, president. At the legislative session of 1830-1 the Savings bank was incorporated, and it was organized the following March, with George W. Jones president and H. H. Goodman secretary. Its habitation was at Goodman's Exchange office, on West Third street, near Main.

The well-known Franklin bank of Cincinnati, for many years occupying the classic structure on Third street, near Main, bearing its name on the front, was incorporated February 19, 1833, with a capital of one million of dollars.

The Exchange bank was founded October 1, 1834, at No. 154 Main street. The celebrated Ohio Life and Trust company was incorporated in February of the same year. This institution had very extensive powers—to make insurance on lives, grant and purchase annuities, make other contracts involving the interest or use of money and the duration of lives, to receive moneys in trust and accumulate the same, accept and execute trusts of every description, receive and hold lands for the transaction of business or such as may be taken in payment of debts, buy and sell bills of exchange and drafts, and issue bills or notes to an amount not exceeding thrice the amount of the funds deposited with the company for

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 359

not less than a year, other than the capital stock. Twenty trustees managed the affairs of the company, each of whom, was a stockholder to the amount of at least five thousand dollars. The charter was not to be repealed or amended before the year 1870. By 1835 it had two millions of capital and had become a powerful institution.

In January, 1835, according to the tabular statement by the auditor of State, the banks of Cincinnati were the Ohio Life and Trust company, the Commercial, Franklin, and Lafayette. The capital of the first was put as we have stated in the preceding paragraph; that 0f each 0f the others was one million, which was all paid in for the Commercial and Franklin, but only one-fourth for the Lafayette. Judge Hall, the distinguished writer, was at this time cashier of the Commercial bank, and became its president in 1853.

A VIEW OF 1831.

The compilers of the city directory of 1831, just half a century ago, were moved by the state of the money market to say:

Money for several years has been in great demand in Cincinnati. The banks discount notes at six per cent., and do a heavy business, but the market-price of money is much greater than that. As there are no usury laws in Ohio, money sells at its real value. Ten per cent. is now considered the market-price of money secured by mortgage, unless the sum loaned be very large. Upon personal security the rate of interest varies from one per cent. a month to three, the rate varying, of course, according to circumstances. The high rates at which money may be safely invested at interest, are gradually attracting the notice of eastern capitalists, to the great profit of our citizens and all concerned. It may startle eastern men to say that money can be borrowed to carry on any business at such high rates of interest, with profit; but there is no doubt of the fact.

THE GREAT BANK BUILDING OF 1840.

The time-honored edifice on Third street, to which we have just referred in connection with a brief notice of the Franklin bank, was thus paragraphed in 1840, when it was new, in a contemporaneous number of the Cincinnati Chronicle:

The new edifice for the accommodation of the Franklin and Lafayette banks of Cincinnati, has been completed. It stands on the north side of Third, between Main and Walnut streets—a very suitable location for the business of the city, but not the most eligible for the display of its magnificent portico, except when the observer is directly in front, on the opposite side of the street. The architect is Mr. Henry Walter, to whose skill and cultured taste many public and private edifices of this city bear testimony.

Its portico was described as occupying the entire front of the building, with eight Greek-Doric columns, each four feet six inches in diameter. It was of the same style as the building for the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia, which was modeled from the Parthenon. It was built of freest0ne from the banks of the Ohio river, near the mouth of the Scioto. The roof was covered with copper. It is a notable building in the financial history of Cincinnati.

THE BANKS OF 1841

were the Life and Trust company, keeping good its capital of two millions, with Micajah T. Williams for president; and James H. Perkins, cashier, the Franklin, with one million, John H. Groesbeck, president; William Hooper, cashier; the Lafayette, with one million, Josiah

Lawrence, president, W. G. W. Gano, cashier; the Commercial, one million, James Armstrong, president, James Hall, cashier; the Bank of Cincinnati, G. R. Gilmore, president, George Hatch, cashier; the Miami Exporting Company (redivivus), with sixty thousand dollars capital, N. W. Thomas, president, J. M. Douglass, cashier ; Mechanics' and Traders' Bank, E. D. John, president, Stanhope Skinner, cashier; Exchange Bank, two hundred thousand dollars capital, owned chiefly by Mr. John Bates, A. Barnes, cashier; the Branch Bank of the United States, Timothy Kirby, agent; Cincinnati Savings Institution, George W. Jones, president, P. Outcalt, cashier. The last-named received the smallest sums 0n deposit, and paid interest on all sums bey0nd five dollars. Cincinnati was now well provided with banks, at least in number and financial strength, and the respectability of the men connected with them. Their aggregate capital was over six million dollars. The Life and Trust Company was at the corner of Main and Third; the Commercial on the east side of Main; the Merchants' and Traders' on the east side of Main, between Third and Fourth, and the Franklin and Lafayette, of course, were in their own building on Third street.

THIRTY YEARS AGO.

In 1851 there were but six incorporated banks in the city : The Ohio Life Insurance and Trust company, still at the southwest corner of Main and Third streets, of which Charles Stetson was president and George S. Coe cashier. The Commercial bank, 132 Main street; Jacob Strader, president; James Hall, cashier. The Franklin Branch bank, north side of Third, between Walnut and Main street; J. H. Groesbeck, president; T. M. Jackson, cashier. Lafayette bank, near the Franklin Branch; George Carlisle, president; W. G. W. Gano, cashier. Mechanics' & Traders' Branch bank, z00 Main street; T. W. Bakewell, president; Stanhope S. Rowe, cashier. City bank, south side of Third, between Walnut and Vine; E. M. Gregory, president; J. P. Reznor, cashier.

The aggregate of capital allowed fo1 banking in the city 0f Cincinnati was so limited by the general assembly that the business of private banking had been greatly stimulated. A large number of banking-houses and brokers' offices had been opened, among the more prominent of which were the following: Ellis & Morton's, corner of Third and Walnut; Burnet, Shoup & Company, northwest corner Third and Walnut; Phoenix Bank of Cincinnati, and George Milne & Company, on Third, between Main and Walnut; Merchants' Bank of Cincinnati, first door from Third, on Walnut; S. 0. Almy, on Third, near Walnut; T. S. Goodman & Company, Main, just above Third; Citizens' bank (W. Smead & Company), Main, between Third and Fourth; Gilmore & Brotherton, Main street, below Columbia; Langdon & Hatch, corner of Main and Court; B. F. Sanford & Company, corner of Fourth and Walnut; and the Western bank of Scott & M'Kenzie, at the northwest corner of Western Row and Fifth street. This last seems to have been a long way 0ut of the general centre of the banking business, which, it is worth while to notice, was concentrated

360 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

almost exclusively within two or three squares on Third, Walnut, and Main streets.

One of the bankers of 1855, still in active business in the city, contributed the following to the historical number of the Daily Gazette, April 26, 1879:

Referring to your note of this morning, regarding the bankers of 1855, I called to my aid Mr. James Espy, to have my memory refreshed, and find the following list to comprise those now in the business who were here at that date:

H. W. Hughes, then Smead, Collord & Hughes, now H. W. Hughes & Co.

James Espy, then Kinney, Espy & Co., now Espy, Heidelbach & Co.

J. D. Fallis, then Fallis, Brown & Co., now president of the Merchants' National bank.

W. A. Goodman, then T. S. Goodman & Co., now president of the National Bank of Commerce.

Henry Peachey, then teller Ohio Life & Trust Company, now president Lafayette bank.

W. J. Dunlap, then Wood, Dunlap & Co., now cashier Lafayette bank.

S. S. Rowe, then casher of the Mechanics' and Traders' bank, now cashier Second National bank.

S. S. Davis, now S. S. Dayis & Co.

Mr. James Gilmore is another of the old bankers, of a standing of forty years or more, who retired from business so lately as the latter part of the year 1880.

By 1857 the City bank had been added, with its location at No. 8 West Third street.

Cincinnati is recorded as having suffered less by the monetary crisis which shortly set in than any other city of importance in the country. Only one wh0lesale establishment and a few retail houses succumbed to the pressure. The sales to country merchants in 1857 aggregated twenty-five millions, which betokened a fairly healthy state of things in Cincinnati and its tributary region.

THE NATIONAL BANKS.

The capitalists of Cincinnati availed themselves with 'reasonable promptness of the advantages of the National Bank act. By the first of December, 1863, there were fully organized and in operation, the First National, with a capital of $1,000,000; the Second, with $00,000; the Third, with $300,000; and the Fourth, with $125,000 capital. The private banks the same year numbered twenty-seven, with a total capital of $723,599.

The next year there were twenty-five private banks, with an aggregate capital of $1,566,510.

In 1866, only three national banks were reported, with a capital of $900,000.

In 1867, there were eight nati0nal banks, with $4,628,353 capital, and seventeen private banks, with capital to the aggregate amount of $807,554.

In 1868, report was made of only six national institutions, but with $3,910,000 capital; nineteen private institutions, capital $2,841,400. The United States bonds and other securities exempted from taxation in Hamilton county this year, amounted to $4,875,000, being nearly one-fourth of the total amount exempted in the State of Ohio.

In 1869, the national banks were still six, whose capital had grown to $4,015,000. Twenty-one private banks were reported, with $3,089,410 capital.

In 1870, one national bank had dropped out of the re. ports, and the five remaining had a capital of $3,500,000. There were nineteen private banks, with $2,798,750 capital. This status was maintained in 1871.

In 1872, the five national banks had $4,00,000 capital; in 1873, $4,000,000; in 1874, $4,185,014; and in 1875, $4,265,560.19. The number of private banking institutions reported for these years, respectively, was seventeen, with $2,235,50 capital; nineteen, with $2,150,380; nineteen, with $2,295,747; and nineteen again, with $2,341,000. In the report of 1873 was included one savings bank, organized under the act of February 26, 1873, with $50,000 capital; and in the report of the next year one organized under the act of February 24, 1845, with a capital of $182,518.

In the year 1876-7, nine national banks were reported to the State authorities, with a capital of four million, seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, or an average of more than half a million apiece; seventeen private banks, capital two million and seven thousand dollars; two savings institutions, fifteen thousand four hundred dollars; total, twenty-eight, with an aggregate capital of six million, seven hundred and forty-seven thousand and four hundred dollars.

1877-8.-Nine national banks, four million five hundred thousand dollars; one savings, thirty thousand dollars; sixteen private, one million, six hundred and eighteen thousand one hundred dollars. Total, twenty-six ; capital, six million, three hundred and ninety-eight thousand, one hundred dollars.

1878-9-Nine national, four million four hundred and fifty thousand dollars; four savings, under act of February 24, 1845; nine private, six hundred and twenty-five thousand and sixty-seven dollars. Total, twenty-two banks, with capital five million eight hundred and twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty-six dollars.

The figures given in the report of the board of trade and transportation, for the banking capital of Cincinnati at the close of the years 1877, 1878 and 1879, vary somewhat from those given above. They are:

October 14, 1880, the Citizen's National bank was organized, with a capital of one million dollars, shared by ninety-four stockholders. Briggs S. Cunningham was elected president; G. P. Griffith, vice-president, and George W. Forbes, cashier.

November 22d, of the same year, Gilmore's bank was consolidated with the National Bank of Commerce, upon which occasion Mr. James Gilmore, then the oldest banker still in existence in Cincinnati, retired from active service in the fields of finance.

A MEMORABLE EVENT

in the history of finance in this city is thus related in Kenney's Cincinnati Illustrated:

"On the eighteenth of September, 1873, the well known failure of Jay Cooke & Company brought about the great panic of the year. On the twenty-fifth of the same month, the clearing-house association resolved, for the protection of the bankers, that payment of currency

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 361

on checks, except for small sums, should be temporarily suspended, and that bankers should certify checks drawn on balances, payable through the clearing-house only. On the thirteenth of October following, there was a general resumption, and within thirty days all the clearing-house certificates, amounting to over four hundred thousand dollars, which had thus been issued to facilitate business, were withdrawn and cancelled. Among the city bankers, so firm was their standing, and so ample their means, that there was not a disaster to mark the track of the commercial storm that passed through the country."

THE CLEARING-HOUSE.

The Cincinnati clearing-house association was organized in 1866, with objects in the facilitation of banking business corresponding to those of clearing-houses in other cities. Mr. George P. Bassett has been its manager from the beginning. Its rooms are in the third story of the building No. 70 West Third street. In the financial year ending April 1, 1877, the aggregate clearings through this agency were $629,876,985, ranging from $45,255,742 in August, to $65,786,893 in December. In the year 1877-8 the clearings were $587,019,030; 1878-9, $514,977,000, and in 1879-80, $614,275,807.

The following named banks and bankers representing the present leading monetary institutions of Cincinnati, except the Bank of Cincinnati, which was merged with the new Citizens' National bank December 17, 1880-were members. of the Clearing-house association September r, 1880: First National Bank, capital $1,200,000; Second National, $200,000; Third National, $800,000; Four411 National, $500,000; Merchants' National, $1,000,000; National Lafayette and Bank of Commerce, $400,000; Commercial, 200,000; Franklin, $300,000; Bank of Cincinnati, $100,000; Western German, $100,000; German Banking company, $250,000; Espy, Heidelbach & Co., $140,000; Seasongood, Sons & Co., $120,000; Joseph F. Larkin & Co., $115,000; H. W. Hughes & Co., $100,000; S. Kuhn & Sons, $50,000. Total capital of banks and hankers then in the Clearing House, $5,575,000. The totals for the five years next previous were: 1878-9, $5,565,000; 1877-8, $6,468,000; 1876-7, $6,828,000; 1875-6, $6,785,000; 1874-5, $6,740,000.

THE SAFE DEPOSIT COMPANY.

This useful institution is situated in the Lafayette Bank building. It was founded in 1866, after the plan of the first deposit company in this country, established shortly before by Mr. Francis H. Jenks, of New York city. Mr. Samuel P. Bishop, as representative of a strong body of Cincinnati capitalists, spent a fortnight in Mr. Jenks' institution in New York, and became fully possessed of the details of the scheme in every particular. Upon his return the Safe Deposit company was organized, the necessary legislation for such institutions secured, and Mr. Joseph C. Butler elected president and Mr. Bishop secretary. Mr. Bishop is still secretary. One-half of the Lafayette bank fire-proof building, forty-two feet front by one hundred feet deep, was secured by perpetual lease, and the plan of safe adopted. The latter, thirty-five feet long, seven feet high, and twelve and one-half feet wide (with the centre supported by iron), composed of five alternate layers of steel and iron, so put together that no screw or nut should penetrate through more than three layers, was undertaken to be constructed by Miles Greenwood. With all the appliances of his establishment, and with work much of the time night and day, so difficult was the system adopted of interlacing the elastic steel with the iron, that nearly eighteen months elapsed before the work was completed, and at a cost of nearly fifty thousand dollars for the safe alone. With four combination locks of James L. Hall & Company, and Dodds, Macneale & Urban, the company have supplied to the public what they undertook to do, although at greater expense than was anticipated.

INSURANCE NOTES.

The first local insurance company was started November 25, r 81 6-the Cincinnati-with a capital of half a million. William Barr was president, and John Jolley secretary.

After this, little attention was paid to the formation of local insurance companies until about 1825. With the exception of the foreign agencies, the Louisville company had practically the monopoly of the Cincinnati business, and hence its profits were enormous, and its stock became very valuable. A local company was formed about 1820, but it secured little business, and did not survive the subsequent commercial depression. The Ohio Insurance company was incorporated in January, 1826, with a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the privilege of increasing it to five hundred thousand dollars. Two th0usand and ten shares of fifty dollars each were promptly subscribed and paid in or secured. T. Goodman was made president, and Morgan Neville secretary. The new institution rapidly acquired the confidence of the community, and built up a large business, with consequent appreciation of its stock.

In January, 1827, the Cincinnati Equitable Insurance company was chartered, on the mutual insurance plan. Ezekiel Hall was its chairman or president; John Jolley secretary. Agencies were established in the Queen City. In 1825 the AEtna Fire Insurance company, of Hartford, got in here with William Goodman for agent; and by 1827 the Protection, of Hartford, the Traders' Inland Navigation Insurance company, of New York (Thomas' Newell, agent), and the United States Insurance company (William Hartshorn, agent), had agencies in Cincinnati.

In 1829, a later Cincinnati Insurance company was incorporated, with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars capital, and power to double it; in 1832 the Firemen's; in 1836 the Washington, the Fire Department's and the Canal; in 1837 the Miami Valley; and in 1838 the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Insurance company, and the Commercial, were incorporated. The Cineinnati still survives, and celebrated its semi-centennial in April, 2879, being then the oldest joint stock general fire and

46

362 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

marine insurance company west of the Alleghanies; also the Firemen's, which has had but three presidents in its long career, and has always been a strong company; and likewise the Washington, the two companies of 1838, and the Miami Valley, which is fourth in age of all Ohio insurance companies.

The Eagle Insurance company, fire and marine, dates from 1850; the Citizens', from 1851, as the Clermont County Fire, Marine and Life Insurance company, and 1858 under its present title; the National, also from 1851; the Western, from 1854, although a perpetual charter had been granted for it in 1836; the Union, from 1855, as the Mercantile Insurance company of Covington, and in 1859 in its present name and place; the Germania Fire and Marine, from 1864; the Enterprize and the Globe, from 1865; the Union Central Life, from 1867, owning the fire building at the corner of Fourth street and Central avenue; the Aurora and the Amazon, from 1871; the Fidelity, from 1872; the Mutual Fire, from 1874.

The Cincinnati Insurance company, of Cincinnati, is the oldest joint-stock general fire and marine insurance company organized west of the Alleghany mountains. The company celebrated its semi-centennial anniversary in April, 1879. In the office of the company, at No. 81 West Third street, hangs an original copy of the Cincinnati Commercial Daily Advertiser, containing the official announcement that the requisite amount of st0ck had been subscribed, and therefore the company was ready for business. The c0mpany has had a most remarkable career of success. For fifty years its dividends averaged thirteen per cent.; in some years they reached thirty-two per cent. The total premiums received have been three million one hundred and three thousand and nineteen dollars and fifty-seven cents. The losses have been one million six hundred and fifty-four thousand five hundred and forty-three dollars and fifty-eight cents. The total dividends, one million four thousand five hundred and thirty seven dollars and twenty-three cents. The president, Jacob Burnet, jr., has held the office for the past ten years.

The board of directors for 1829, under which the company was organized, was as follows: Josiah
Lawrence, Joseph K. Smith, Lewis Whiteman, Benjamin Urner, William D. Jones, Thomas Reily, Elisha Brigham, William Neff, John T. Martin, William S. Hatch, Robert Buchanan, John W. Mason, David Kiljour, Michael P. Cassilly, William R. Foster. Elisha Brigham, president; William Oliver, secretary.

The board for 1882 is as follows: A. H. Andrews, George W. McAlpin, Gardner Phipps, Matthew Addy, Joseph H. Rogers, John Kauffman, Jacob Burnet, jr., Edmund G. Webster, William Resor, jr., Briggs Swift, William H. Harrison, Charles Schmidlapp, Nathaniel Newburgh, George I. King, Peter Rudolph Neff. Jac0b Burnet, jr., president; Charles A. Farnham, secretary.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE POST OFFICE.

"Do NOT send your packets by the mail as the expense is heavy. The letter said to be forwarded by Major Willis was by him, or some other person, thrown into the post office, and I was obliged to pay six shillings and eight pence in specie for it." So wrote Jonathan Dayton, a prominent and wealthy citizen of New Jersey, and a member of Congress, September 8, 1789, to John Cleves Symmes, of the Miami Purchase. Postage was a pretty serious matter in those days, and the denizens of Losantiville and Cincinnati were not in haste to pay the charges levied for postal facilties. It was not until 1793, and one account definitely says the fourth of July, 1794, that the post office was established in the infant Cincinnati. Abner Dunn was the first postmaster. The hat full of letters and occasional newspaper constituting the office were kept in his cabin, on the corner of Butler street and the Columbia road, now Second street, beyond Fort Washington and the Artificers' yard. The next year M. T. Green, of Marietta, contracted to carry the mails between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, in a pirogue or large canoe, propelled by poles and paddles. When going down the stream he carried also a little freight, and occasionally, for a small consideration, a passenger. When post offices were also founded in the interior of the Miami country they were supplied on horseback by William Olim, a son-in-law of the Cincinnati postmaster.

DUNN'S SUCCESSORS.

Mr. Dunn died July 18, 1794, and was buried upon the lot where the office was kept.

The next postmaster was William Maxwell, the well known editor, founder of the first newspaper established in Cincinnati, or the Northwest Territory, and publisher of the Territorial Laws. He was succeeded by Daniel Mayo, and then Major William Ruffin received the appointment, and removed the posit office to his dwelling, a red two-story frame house, at the corner of Lawrence street and the Columbia, which stood long after on Columbia and Plum street, a familiar object to the old settlers of Cincinnati, and a generation or two of their descendants. Major Ruffin was the first postmaster in this century—an urbane, gentlemanly, accommodating man, who made a popular officer. Some remarks of Dr. Drake concerning him, as the boy Drake saw him in 1800, are comprised in our annals of the second deeade. The mail was then brought by the river from Limestone (Maysville), in a pair of saddle-bags. The gallant major held the office for a number of years—much longer than any of his predecessors—at least until 1812, and probably far beyond that, to the incoming of his successor, the Rev. William Burke.

SOME REMINISCENCES.

May 17, 1799, a notice appeared in the Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette to the following effect:

POST OFFICE.—Notice is hereby given that a post office is established at CHELICOTHA. The persons, therefore, having business in

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 363

that part of the country may have speedy and safe conveyance by post for letters, packets, etc.

The mail was then carried to "Chelicotha" from Cincinnati on horseback, by an Indian trail through the woods.

The Spy and Gazette was also enabled to announce, March 12, 1800, that a post-route had been established between Louisville and Kaskaskia, to ride once every four weeks—also that one had been opened between Nashville and Natchez. "This," said the pleased Spy, "will open an easy channel of communication with those remote places, which has heretofore been extremely difficult, particularly from the Atlantic States."

Mr. James McBride, in his Pioneer Bi0graphy, gives a brief sketch of the early mail serivce between the Miamis, which is well worth quoting. He says:

There was at that time [1804, when the post office at Hamilton was opened], and for many years afterward, only one mail route established through the interior of the Miami country. The mail was carried on horseback, once a week. Leaving Cincinnati, it passed through Hamilton, Franklin, Dayton, and as far north as Stanton (a town on the east bank of the Miami, opposite the site of the present town of Troy), thence through Urbana, Yellow Springs, and Lebanon, back to Cincinnati. Afterward it was reversed, starting by way of Lebanon, and 1eturning by Hamilton, but touching at the same points. There was then no post office west of the Miami river."

A reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, late in December, 1874, collected and contributed to his paper some interesting reminiscences, gleaned from a descendant of the gentleman named in the following paragraph:

In 1808-9 Peter Williams had contracts for carrying the mails be tween Louisville and Cincinnati, Cincinnati and Lexington, Cincinnati and Chillicothe, and Cincinnati and Greenville, in Darke county. All these contracts were performed with pack-horses through the dense forests and along the "blazed" tracks or paths which, in those days, were called roads! The trip from Cincinnati to Louisville was generally performed in about two weeks time. The provender for the horses had frequently to be carried along, it being impossible to procure any on the way. So of the other routes to the difierent places named—everywhere through the grand, dense forests, filled with wild games of all kinds. Our informant recollects many rude incidents which occurred on many trips he, as a boy, made with his father, and afterwards by himself, as he became older, to Chillicothe, Greenville, Louisville, etc. Mr. Williams retained these mail contracts up to 1821, using pack-horses during the whole time, and only releasing them on the advent of the stage-coach, owners of which could afford to carry the mails at about one-half the price he was getting. In those early days the pack-horse was the only way in which supplies of every kind could be transported any distance; and Mr. Williams distinctly remembers that his father possessed the only wagon in the country around Cincinnati, and that, being of no use, was suffered to rot down in the barn.

Among Mr. Williams' young mail-carriers was one who afterwards attained no small distinction—Mr. Samuel Lewis, of Cincinnati. The following paragraphs are extracted from the life of Mr. Lewis by his son:

After working a short time upon the farm, he was employed in carry-. ing the United States mail-for which Mr. Williams had a contract at that time. His route was at first from Cincinnati to Williamsburgh, and afterward from the latter point to Chillicothe. This work often required seven days and two nights in the week, making the labor very severe. In addition to this, the creeks and small rivers along the route were to be forded, bridges at that period being out of the question. This was all done on horseback. The routes covered most of the country east of Cincinnati to the Scioto river at Chillicothe, and southward of this to the Ohio river, including Maysville, Kentucky. Over some of these streams, during high water, it was necessary to swim the horse; while often the attempt was accompanied with much danger. At one time, being compelled to swim his horse, he had secured the mail-bag, as he supposed, and commenced crossing the stream, swimming himself and leading the horse. When nearly over, the mail-bag, from some cause, became unloosed and floated off. His horse was first to be secured, and then the mail. Its recovery and the renewal of his journey would have been speedy, but he was struck by a floating log in the water, and severely injured. Making his way with extreme difficulty to the shore, he succeeded in mounting his horse, and continuing his journey to the next town, which he reached completely drenched and exhausted, and where he remained fo1 some days before he was able to renew his round. The accident unfitted him for his employment for the time, and when he returned to Cincinnati, he was occupied with other labor.

A charming bit of poetry is infused into this otherwise dull record of the postal service, by the following extract from the journals for August, 1816, of Mrs. Charlotte Chambers Riske, formerly Mrs. Israel Ludlow, of Ludlow's Station. She writes:

I was awakened last night by the sound of distant music. The effect was enchanting. As it approached, images long since sunk in oblivion were restored, and produced harmonious and sublime associations. I arose to listen whence came the melody, and found that to Echo, tossed in rich undulations around the hills, I was indebted for the symphony. The mail-carrier, privileged to announce his coming with the bugle, was enjoying the fine effect of its clear note. The night was far advanced, the moon was near the zenith, and profound was the silence in all quarters of the town.

THE MAILS PER WEEK

in 1815 were only nine. About seventy different newspapers and periodicals were taken at the Cincinnati office, aggregating ab0ut three hundred and fifty sheets a week. A great number of public documents, however, was received here, and most of the eastern periodicals were taken.

In this year Major Ruffin, after more than fifteen years' administrati0n of the postal affairs of the village, laid down his authority, which was transferred to "Father Burke," the old Methodist itinerant and presiding elder, afterward seceder from his church and proprietor of a meeting-house of his own, which he had bought of the pioneer Presbyterians, it being that in which they had first worshipped. In this he often preached; but was, withal, very much of a politician, at first a Jeffersonian, and finally a stalwart Jackson Democrat. He naturally turned to office-seeking after awhile; and was kept in office, under administrations of somewhat varient politics, for more than a quarter of a century, until, with the incoming of the Whigs to power in 1841, the now old gentleman had to surrender his post to another. Mr. Elam P. Langdon was his deputy during much of this long period.

By 1826 the local mails had increased to twenty per week, carried, in part; upon ten stages—three on the Chillicothe 1oute, three each on the Lebanon and the Dayton and Columbus routes, and one on the route to Georgetown, Kentucky. There were still ten horseback mails. The revenue of the office from postage that year was eight thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars, and the volume of correspondence passing through it may be inferred to some extent by the fact that three thousand seven hundred and fifty free letters were delivered during the same period.

In the spring of the next year a new line of stages was established by way of Xenia, Urbana, Maysville and Bucyrus, to Lower Sandusky, where its mails were trans-

364 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Ferred to a boat. Letters reached New York city by this route, eight hundred and thirty miles, in ten days. A daily line was also run to Wheeling, nearly over the subsequent line of the Cumberland or National road, reaching Baltimore in eight or nine days. The Odin roads were then accounted generally reliable and safe from May to November. During about the same time stages could be, and were, run from Cincinnati to Lexington, Kentucky, eighty miles.

In the fiscal year of the Government, 1828-9, the revenue of the Cincinnati office reached twelve thousand one hundred and fifty dollars, having increased fifty per cent. within three years. There were twenty-three mails weekly—eighteen on stages, and five horseback mails. At the close of the year, however, the number had increased to thirty-two, only three of which were carried on horseback. About forty years afte1 that (1867-8) the receipts of the office had swelled to two hundred and sixty-four thousand five hundred and eighty-seven dollars and forty-seven cents. The expenditures for salaries, etc., exclusive of the cost of free delivery, sixty-two thousand three hundred and six dollars and six cents, leaving the net earnings of the office two hundred and two thousand two hundred and eighty-one dollars and fourteen cents. The receipts and disbursements of the money-order department were each over half a million dollars. The letters received for delivery numbered nine million three hundred and eight thousand, and for distribution twenty-eight million. The amount of mail matter daily handled was about twenty-five thousand pounds. There were about one hundred employes, including carriers, a force working by night, so that the office was incessantly in action as it is now.

The revenue of the office in the year 1829-30 was sixteen thousand two hundred and fifty-one dollars; in 1833-4, fifty-one thousand two hundred and twenty-six dollars and seventy-one cents; in 1839-40, fifty-five thousand and seventeen dollars and thirty-two cents; and in 1840–I, forty-nine thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars and thirteen cents. By this time there were sixty mails a week to and from Cincinnati. The eastern went by way of Columbus and Wheeling; the southern on one route by steamer to Louisville, on another by stage to Georgetown and Lexington; the northern by Hamilton and Dayton; the Western by Indianapolis; and there were also Covington and Newport mails, Chillicothe via Hillsborough and Bainbridge, tri-weekly; to West Union tri-weekly, via Milf0rd and Batavia; tri-weekly to Maysville, Kentucky, via New Richmond and Ripley; as often to Cynthiana, Kentucky, via Newport and Alexandria; weekly to Stillwell, by Mt. Healthy; weekly to Montgomery, via Walnut Hills; and tri-weekly to Lawrence-burgh, via Burlington, Kentucky.

THE OLD-TIME STAGING.

Some racy reminiscence of this are given by that most graphic of writers, Mr. Charles Dickens, as he had experience of it upon the roads of Ohio soon after the date last given. He was then upon his return from the west, after a previous visit to Cincinnati. He says in his American Notes:

We rested one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our journey to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage coach travelling, which, with those I have already glanced at, comprehend the main characteristics of this mode of transit in America, I will take the reader as our fellow passenger, and pledge myself to perform the distance with all possible despatch.

Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, but there is a macadamized road (rare blessing!) the whole way, and the rate of travelling upon it is six miles an hour. We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric that it appears to be t10ubled with a tendency of blood to the head. Dropsical it certainly is, for it will hold a dozen passengers inside. But, wonderful to add, it is very clean and bright, being nearly new, and rattles through the streets of Cincinnati gaily.

Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, and luxuriant in its p10mise of an abundant harvest. Sometimes we pass a field where the strong, bristling stalks of Indian corn look like a crop of walking sticks, and sometimes an enclosure where the green wheat is springing up among a labyrinth of stumps; the primitive worm fence is universal, and an ugly thing it is; but the farms are neatly kept, and, save for these differences, one might be travelling just now in Kent.

We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and holds it to the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever anyone to help him; there are seldom any loungers standing 10und, and never any stable-company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young horse; which is to catch him, harness him against his will, and put him in a stage coach without farther notice; but we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent struggle, and jog on as before again.

Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half-drunken loafers will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in 10cking-chairs, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade; they have not often anything to say, though, either to us or to each other, but sit there, idly staring at the coach and horses. The landlord of the inn is usually among them, and seems, of all the party, to be the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed, he is with reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach and passengers; whatever happens in his sphere of action, he is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind.

There being no stage coach next day, upon the 10ad we wished to take, I hired an extra, at a reasonable charge, to carry us to Tiffin; a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stage coach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers, as the stage coach would, but was exclusively our own for 'the journey. To Insure our having horses at the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole way through; and thus attended, and bearing with us, besides, a hamper full of savory cold meats, and fruit, and wine, we started off again, in high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the 10ughest journey.

It was well for us that we were in this humor, for the 10ad we went over that day was certainly enough to have shaken tempers that were not resolutely at set fair, down to some inches below stormy. At one time we were all flung together in a heap in the bottom of the coach, and at another we were crushing our heads against the roof. Now, one side was down deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers; and now it was rearing up in the air in a frantic state, with all four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, looking coolly back at it, as though they would say "unharness us. It can't be done." The drivers on these roads, who certainly got over the ground in a manne1 which is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking out of the window to see the coachman with the ends of a pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over what is called a corduroy 10ad, which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh and leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in the human

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 365

body. It would be impossible to experience a similar set of sensations, in any other circumstances, unless, perhaps, in attempting to go up to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest .approach to one's experience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels.

Still it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, and though we had left summer behind us in the west, and were fast leaving spring, we were moving towards Niagara and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager and our worst with the pigs who swarm in this part of the country like grains of sand on the seashore, to the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada, we went forward again gayly.

As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against an unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had enough to do to walk; as to shying, there was no room for that; and a herd of wild elephants could not have run away in such a wood, with such a coach at their heels. So we stumbled along quite satisfied.

THE LINE OF POSTMASTERS.

Following those we have named, came Major William Oliver, successor to Father Burke under the Whig administration in 1841. Then in 1845 General W. H. H. Taylor, with Mr. Elam P. Langdon still assistant. The city had now two carrier distriets for penny postal delivery, pith Fourth street as the dividing line. Mr. Joseph Haskell delivered mail matter to all residents to the north of it; Hiram Frazer to the south of the line. Mr. James C. Hall was postmaster in 1852.

From 1853 to 1859 Dr. John L. Vattier was postmaster. The office had been long kept by Mr. Burke, and perhaps his successors, on West Third street, between Main and Walnut; but the doctor removed it to the Art building at the northwest corner of Fourth and Sycamore. In 1856, during his administration, the Government building on the southwest corner of Fourth and Vine was completed, and the office was removed to it, where it has since remained, now for just a quarter of a century. This building was sold, however, November 27, 1880, to the Cincinnati chamber of commerce for one hundred thousand dollars, to be occupied by the chamber upon its vacation by the Government, when the new Federal building on the north side of Fifth street, between Walnut and Main, shall be completed.

The Hon. James J. Faran, formerly member of Congress, became postmaster in 1859, with E. Penrose Jones as assistant, and William Winters, cashier. There were now eight carrier districts.

The successors of Mr. Faran have been Thomas H. Foulds (William Carey, assistant); Gustav R. Wahle (Joseph H. Thornton, assistant), and John P. Loge, who assumed the office in 1878, and is postmaster at this writing. He also continued Mr. Thornton in the post of assistant.

The Cincinnati office, in February, 1881, was handling about seventy thousand letters per day mailed in the city. The number of letters received daily was about one hunered thousand. In the handling 0f newspapers and periodicals the city ranks next to New York and Chicago. The total receipts for 1880 were $520,676.27, against $472,733,03 in 1879. The expense of conducting the office was 32.47 per cent of its income in 1880, against 34.48 in 1879, 34.54 in 1878, and 34.67 in 1877. Letters and postal cards to the number of 24,283,325 were mailed during the year; 24,956,336 newspapers, etc., to subscribers, and circulars and transient newspapers, etc., 13,803,380; packages of merchandise, 254, 770—a gain of fifteen per cent over 1879. The number of carriers employed in the city was eighty-one.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE LOCAL MILITIA.—THE FIRST APPOINTMENTS.

AMONG the earliest arrangements that were made in this part of the Ohio valley for government organization was provision for a militia force. During the visit of Governor St. Clair to Fort Washington, January 24, 1790, to erect the county of Hamilton and change the name of Losantiville to Cincinnati. Among the appointments he made were those of a number of officers 0f the local militia—Israel Ludlow, John S. Gano, James Flinn, and Gersh0m Girard, to be captains; Francis Kennedy, John Ferris, Luke Foster, and Brice Virgin, lieutenants; Scott Traverse, Ephraim Kibby, Elijah Stites, and John Dunlap, ensigns. These provided for all the hamlets along the river in the Miami purchase, Columbia, Cincinnati, and North Bend. Gano and Flinn, for example, were of Columbia; Ludlow, of Cincinnati; and Virgin of North Bend. The other appointments were similarly distributed.

Their companies, four in number, were to form the nucleus of the first regiment of militia of the county of Hamilton. On the seventh of December following Scott Traverse was promoted to lieutenant, vice Kennedy, resigned; and Robert Benham, the hero of a desperate Indian attack upon the site of Newport some years before, was made ensign in the place 0f Traverse. Both of these were in Ludlow's company. December 10, 1791, a further 0rganization of the battalion was effected by the appointment of Oliver Spencer as lieutenant colonel. Brice Virgin was at the same time made a captain, Daniel Griffin a lieutenant, and John Bowman an ensign, or second lieutenant.

MILITIA REGULATIONS.

Months before St. Clair came, the exigencies of the situation in a savage wilderness made necessary a spontaneous and informal organization of citizens for war. Regulations were adopted at Columbia, and it is probable also at Cincinnati, requiring every adult male person to provide himself with a serviceable firearm, one pound each of powder and lead, sixty bullets, and six flints. He was obliged to keep his arms and equipments in good order, and to meet his fellows for parade, drill, and the

366 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

manual exercise, twice a week. If a gun was fired after sunset it was to be considered a signal of alarm, upon which every man must equip himself and repair to the place of rendezvous.

Similar provisions, indeed, for the protection of the settlements were made by the Territorial laws. In August, 1788, among the very first laws passed by the governo1 and judges at Marietta, was one providing for the armament of all male inhabitants over sixteen years of age, and that they should meet every Sunday forenoon at the places appointed for pub!ic worship, there to be inspected and drilled. It was further directed, by a law of July 2, 1791, that every person enrolled in the Territorial militia should arm himself whenever he attended public worship, "as if marching to engage the enemy," on penalty of a fine.

BATTALION ORDERS.

After his resignation from the United States army, General Harrison was made chief officer of the Territorial militia, with headquarters at Cincinnati. The following order, with a private note to General (then Colonel) John S. Gano, emanated from him:

CINCINNATI, September 24, 1798.

General Orders:

The secretary of the Territory, now vested with all the powers of governor and commander in chief of the same—will, on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth instant, review the First battalion of militia of Hamilton county. The battalion is to be formed for this purpose at three o'clock, on some convenient spot of ground near to Major Ludlow's.

Arthur St. Clair, jr., and Jacob Burnet will act as aids-de-camp to the commander in chief on this occasion, and are to be respected and obeyed accordingly.

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON,
Commander in Chief Militia Northwest Territory.

Will Colonel Gano please to fill up the blank in the above order with the hour which he may think most convenient, and let inc know the one fixed on. W. H. H.

Lieutenant Colonel Gano, commander First battalion Hamilton county militia.

Another battalion order, dated May 13, 1799, and published in the Spy and Gazette four days afterwards, proclaimed that—

The lieutenant colonel again calls on the officers of every grade to exert themselves in exercising and teaching the men the necessary manoeuvres as laid down in Baron Steuben's Institutes, etc. And it is hoped that the delay of the battalion may have a good effect; that is, that the indicated farmers may have time to put in their summer crops, and the indicated officers, at their company parades, may improve their men in exercising them, so that they may be distinguished when the battalion is formed, which will be on the Fourth of July, next.

By order
DANIEL SYMMES,
Lieutenant and Adjutant.

The "glorious Fourth" rolled around in the fullness of time; and "Spectator" makes report to the Spy that "the battalion paraded accordingly;" that "two or three companies on foot were in uniform, and a troop of horse, about thirty in number, mostly so also, the whole being reviewed by his excellency, William Henry Harrison, governor of the territory pro tempore."

The militia of the village and county came in a few years to number about eight hundred, organized in five companies, one of which was light infantry. James Smith—"Sheriff Smith"—is said to have been captain of the first light infantry company raised in Cincinnati, which was probably this one. He was afterwards paymaster in the First regiment, Third detachment, Ohio militia, in the War of 1812. The five companies above mentioned composed an odd battalion, attached to the First brigade, First division, Ohio militia. They were re-quired to occupy two days in the spring for muster and training, and four days in the fall, two of which were devoted to a school of instruction for the officers.

"HEADS UP!"

The following notice appeared in the Spy and Gazette for July 16,

HEADS UP, SOLDIERS!

Those gentlemen who wish to join a volunteer light infantry company are requested to meet at Mr. Yeatman's tavern.

The company was accordingly organized, and was that c0mmanded l y Sheriff Smith, as before noted. There seems to have been a little of the holiday soldier about its members, for a subsequent notice in the Spy reads: "In consequence of rain, the muster, etc., of the Cincinnati light infantry is postponed."

GENERAL FINDLAY.

In August, 1804, General James S. Findlay, of Cincinnati, received his election in the First division of Ohio militia; which was the occasion of the following letter from Governor Tiffin to General Gano, commander of the division:

CHILLICOTHE, August 31, 1804.
DEAR GENERAL-I have just received yours of the Twenty-eighth inst., enclosing the returns of General Findlay's election, and herewith you will receive his commission. I am glad to hear you are now nearly completing your very laborious task of organizing your division. Do pray push forward with the same zeal and industry you have uniformly manifested until it is completed. If you knew the trouble and plague I have with other divisions you would pity me, and
Yours, very respectfully,
EDWARD TIFFIN.

IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

the local militia consisted of the Cincinnati light dragoons, our old friends the light infantry, and the Cincinnati. The Gazetteer of that year says: "These companies are organized within the corporation, are handsomely uniformed, and are well acquainted with military tactics. Their appearance is nowise inferior to the European militia."

The biography of Mr. William Robson, Queen City militia man of the ancient days, prepared for Cincinnati, Past and Present, includes the following reminiscences:

It may not be amiss to give, at this point, his reminiscences of the old-time drill in Cincinnati. When about eighteen years old—in 1821 —he was ordered out to drill with the men, and the, grotesque figure that they cut with their implements of warfare made an indelible impression upon his mind, which, we apprehend, was imbued with a keen sense of the ridiculous. It appears that the State was either too poor to furnish them with firearms, or else withheld them for fear they would hurt themselves; and so their only weapons were sticks and cornstalks. The commons on which the muster took place extended from Walnut street to Plum street, and from Seventh street to Hamilton road. There were then but two or three houses on the land within these limits. One of there was a public house kept by "Mother Mohawk," called the "Hop Yard," on Plum street, west of what is now Washington park. This was the great place for holding Dutch balls on Saturday nights; and was principally frequented by the hatters and butchers, who generally indulged in a free fight when a considerable number belonging to each fraternity would meet, the object being to get possession of the ranch and girls. On one occasion the regiment was being

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 367

formed under the command of Colonel Z. Biggs, where the canal rims east and west. The colonel was dressed in blue cloth coat, with large yellow facings, and was mounted on a very spirited horse. Non-combatants had assembled in large numbers to witness the manoeuvres of the nondescript soldiers and add interest to the frolicking day, when the colonel gave the order for them to "swing" so that the regiment would front to the westward. This order, according to one of the rank and file, was "obeyed right gallantly." But the Independent Press, under the following lines:

" Charge! charge! with mutual voice they cry,
And rush to battle bloody—"

adds additional comment on the doings of that day, by saying that they made great havoc on hogs, dogs, grasshoppers and boys; and, as their colonel had desired, were stopped in their course of destruction by a post-and-rail fence; and remarks that if the fence had not been there, they would have been charging still!

The comical musters of that day easily gave "Horace in Cincinnati" a tempting field for the exercise of his talents; and among the satires contributed by Mr. Pierce to the Independent Press was the following. Most of the characters named will be recognized by the readers of this history:

MILITIA MUSTER-1822.

BY HORACE.

"All the cobblers, tinkers, and tailors of the city had mounted the nodding plume."

"See, Will," said Jack (they had went out
With curious eyes and hearts right stout,
To view the gallant, joyous rout,
Drawn up for deeds of chivalry),

"See, first comes Findlay, doughty knight,
Arrayed in casque and goose-plume white,
Cloth coat, buff vest, and breeches tight,
Commander of the field;

"Jim Wallace on his left elbow,
A man who fears not pigmy foe;
And on his right Sir Dan Gano,
Who well a pen can wield."

They take their post by spreading tree,
That they may view and better see
The movements of the host;
And see ride up fierce Colonel Carr,
The foremost always in a war
'Gainst pancakes, steak, and toast;

"With Ferris clad in tough bull-hide,
Bold Scott upon his larboard side,
Who can a brandy buffet 'bide,
As well as stalwart blows.

"There's Churchill, who will break a lance,
Give him but fair and knightly chance,
With any foe that dare advance
Against his fiery nose.

"See brave M'Farland lead the van,
Chief of a cruel, butchering clan,
Dabsters among calves and sheep;
And just behind, Sir Charley Hales,
Chivalric knight at auction sales,
In physic wondrous deep.

"And here's the youthful Whittemore,
Well skilled in merchant's mystic lore;
Tho' young, he's heard the cat-gut's roar
And kens a yardstick's strength.

"There's valiant Doughtrough in his rear,
Who's thrown aside cakes, bread, and beer,
And now is buckled to a spear
Of thirty inches length.

"Behold stout Nutting strut,
The knight of the capacious gut,
His height just five feet three;
And, last of all—but hold! hark!
Is that the war-dog's surly bark?
For Mars' sake, look and see!"

Said Will, "It is the slogan yell,
That on the air does loudly swell—
Look! they have broke their line!
See how they run!—see how they fly,
Shouting loud their battle-cry,
'By Jing, it's dinner time!'

"Voracious Carr is at their head,
Doughtrough's hard by, he'll ne'er be led
In foray 'gainst a loaf of bread—
By the powers of mud, not he!

"'Charge, Doughtrough, charge! Ye head of gourd!'
Was Colonel Carr's last fighting word."

THE MILITIA OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX,

in the Fourth of July parade of that year, were noted as the Cincinnati Hussars, Captain Norsell; the Washington Artillery, Captain Brinkerhoff ; the Lafayette Grays, Captain Harrison; and the Cincinnati Guards, Captain Emerson. None of these companies have survived to the present time.

A NOTABLE COMPANY.

The most famous military organization which the city ever had, is said to have been the Rover Guards. The daily Commercial of October 31, 1880, gives the following outline history of this command:

Prior to 1852, when the present paid fire department of our city was organized, the force afforded protection from fire was a volunteer one with hand engines. A noted company of firemen was that of the Rovers, located on East Fourth street, near Broadway. Their engines were of the best make and the most elaborate finish, and named the Red Rover, the Pilot, and the Water Witch. The company was composed of the elite of the city. When the volunteer fire department was disbanded in 1852, the company resolved to perpetuate their name by forming a military company, to be known as the Rover Guards. The uniform of the company, as many will remember, was the most brilliant and showy that taste could devise and money purchase. It was made of scarlet cloth, faced and trimmed with buff and gold, with black bear skin shako of the grenadier pattern. In a few years their name was a familiar one all over the country. Before the war of the Rebellion was inaugurated, a disagreement in the company was followed by a withdrawal of many members, who formed another company, the noted Guthrie Greys.

When news of the firing on Fort Sumter was received, in April, 1861, President Lincoln, by proclamation, called for seventy-five thousand volunteers for defence of the National capital. The very first to volunteer were the famous Rover Guards, who left Cincinnati for the war the very day after the proclamation came by telegraph. The members left their offices, their work-shops, their counting-houses, and their families, and volunteered en masse. Under the command of Captain George M. Finch, they became company A, of the Second regiment of Ohio volunteers, and served in the Army of the Potomac. Other members organized a second company the day following, which, under the command of the late Captain H. E. Symmes, became company C, of the Fifth Ohio volunteers.

Still later in the war, the company name was perpetuated by a third organization, under command of Captain M. S. Lord, who served as company D, of the One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Ohio volunteers. Many men who gained their first knowledge of military tactics, and acquired their high ambition for military glory and renown while serving in the ranks of the Rover Guards, became officers in different regiments of the service until it might be said that thousands and thousands of patriotic soldiers were organized and commanded during the war by members of this historic company.

An effort was made, in the fall of 1880, by the few remaining members of the guards yet left in Cincinnati, to form a life association 0f the veterans.

368 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

LATER ORGANIZATIONS.

In 1857-8, all the regularly organized volunteer troops in and near Cincinnati were comprised in the Third brigade, Frst division, Ohio volunteer militia, under the command of Brigadier General Charles H. Sargent. His staff was composed of Brigade Major W. C. Thorp, Brigade Quartermaster Captain E. P. Jones; and Captain C. B. Williams, aid-de-camp. "Rover Regiment A" had for field officers and regimental staff Colonel John Kennett, Lieutenant Colonel Vanaken Wonder, and Major T. W. Haskell; Lieutenant J. B. Stockton, adjutant; H. G. Kennett, quartermaster; William Niswell, paymaster. Its companies were: Young American artillery, Captain A. G. Kennett; Fulton artillery, Captain J. T. Cushing; Cincinnati Rover dragoons, Captain H. W. Burdsell; Cincinnati Rover guards, General C. H. Sargent commanding; Fulton guards of Liberty, Captain A. E. Jones; Texas guards of Liberty, Captain L. Wilson; Crockett rangers, Captain J. J. Dennis; Washington Rifles, Captain Little; Invincible Rifles, Captain William Craven. The First Independent regiment had F. Linch for colonel, Frank Smith, lieutenant colonel, and Charles Snyder, major; but seems to have been, for a time at least, without staff officers. The companies were: the Washington dragoons, Captain Frank Smith; Lafayette guards, Captain P. Mueller; Jackson guards, Captain Joseph Kuhule; German sharpshooters, Captain C. Solomons; German Liberty guards, Captain Frank Miller; German Yagers, Captain John Schram; Steuben guards, Captain C. Amis; Cincinnati cadets, Captain J. A. Keller. The Cincinnati Independent battalion, attached to the brigade, had Major James Reynolds for commande1 and Lieutenant John O'Dowd, adjutant. Its five companies were the Sarsfield artillery, Captain Tiernon; Sarsfield guards, Captain Levy; Shield's guards, Lieutenant Thomas Lavender commanding; Republican guards, Captain McGroarty; and the Queen City cadets, Captain J. W. Burke. The Independent Guthrie Grays, Captain William K. Bosley, was not attached. It afterwards formed the nucleus of one of the earliest and finest regiments raised for the war of the Rebellion in Cincinnati. The remainder of the list is noticeable for the number of the names it contains of those who distinguished themselves in that great struggle.

The number of militia companies formed in and about Cincinnati during and since the war thickens too rapidly for us to follow their history. The Ohio National guard, as is well known, was f0rmed in the course of the conflict, the order for its formation being received in the city April 4, 1863, and responded to with all desirable pr0mptness. 'The First battalion of the guards is a Hamilton command. Company B is called the Lytle guards, from General W. H. Lytle, who fell at Chickamauga. It was formed in August, 1868. C0mpany C was formed in 1868 as a company fora Zouave battalion, and reorganized in 1872 as the Cincinnati Light guard. Company D was recruited in 1874 as the Queen City guards. Company E, the Harrison Light guard, belongs to Harrison, in the northwest part of the county, where it has its armory. July 4, 1876, the First regiment, Ohio National guard, went into camp at Oakley, near the city,
where it remained for instruction and dicipline three days.

The Sniton cadets, named from a well known citizen, were organized in the spring of 1875.

The Cincinnati Jaeger company (German) was formed the same year; also the Camp Washington dragoons. Several private volunteer German companies are known as the Turnverein cadets.

In addition to the companies of the National guard in the city, the police force is regularly drilled in the manual of arms, to serve upon occasion. A Gatling gun, purchased during the disturbances by the railway employes in 1877, is also the property of the city, and is kept in readiness for use.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

AMUSEMENTS.

THE colonists of Losantiville, battling with the wilderness and the Indians, struggling against the forces of nature in their effort to found a home in the forest by the shore, had little time or opportunity, if they had inclination, for public amusements. The recreations characteristic of the backwoods and the frontier were of course theirs; and, with the growth of the years and the planting of settlements more thiekly along the Ohio valley, so that concert troupes and other caterers to the popular tastes could make something like "a tour" in the new country, the era of public entertainments set in. The first reliance, however, was naturally upon home resources and talent. The officers at the fort were a gay and versatile party, and often gave dramatic performances, or cooperated with such of the villagers as had set amateur theatricals on foot. The tedium of garrison and backwoods life was greatly relieved by their aid.

THE THESPIANS.

In 1801 we begin to hear more definitely of amateur theatricals in the little town, and the formation—at any rate, the existence—that year, of a home company of Thespians. It was probably composed, in good part, of officers of the garrison, since the place of meeting and performance at this time was in the artificers' yard of the fort. Four years afterward, when the troops had evacuated the fort, we learn of Messrs. Thomas H. Sill, Benjamin Drake, Dr. Stall, Lieutenant Totten, and others, as members of the band. Their rendezvous at this time was the loft of the stable on General Findlay's premises, back of the present site of the Spencer house. The next year they gave a performance of "The Poor Gentleman" in a stone stable, very likely the same. Yeatman's tavern was not far distant, and a noteworthy allusion was made to his famous sign, in the following couplet from the prologue:

To call in customers we need to raise no rumpus;
You can't mistake the sign; 'tis Yeatman's square and compass.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 369

General Findlay delivered an address at the opening of the entertainment; and Major Zeigler, who was then president of the village, made a splendid figure as doorkeeper, in knee-breeches, with cocked hat and sword, in the good old-time manner.

THE CINCINNATI THEATRE.

A performance at the "Cincinnati Theatre" was regularly announced in the Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette for September 30, 1801, at the same time the "Cincinnati races" were to occur. The embryo institution fell into financial difficulties soon after, and on the twelfth of December an appeal was made through the same medium to all subscribers to the theatre to advance the sum of twenty-five cents upon each ticket—probably season tickets—and to sell single tickets for fifty cents each, for the benefit of the enterprise.

About 1806 amateur histrionic performances in Cincinnati were regularly organized. Mr. E. D. Mansfield, in one of his entertaining books, gives the following reminiscences of them:

In the performers was Dr. Drake, with Totten, Mansfield, Sill, and other young men. The corps being entirely deficient in females, the young men had to assume both the parts and dress of the female characters. The performance took place in a large barn, and is said to have gone off with great eclat. If the actors had not the advantage of music and paraphernalia which attended the performances of Talma and Garrick, they were quite as successful in exciting the laughter and promoting the amusement of their audiences; and as this village playing was unattended with any of the stimulants to vice and dissipation so disgraceful to modern theatres, it may be placed to the account of what Johnson called the common stock of harmless amusements.

June 27, 1808, a special performance was given by the Thespians, for the benefit of the single fire company of the village.

AMUSEMENT SOCIETIES.

Very early in the century two local organizations were formed to provide for the popular amusement—the Thespian corps and the Harmonical society. We have already learned something of the work undertaken by the former. The later was composed of amateur musicians, who formed a brass band and furnished the orchestra at all the entertainments given by the Thespians. The performances were commonly in the stone stable already referred to, in rear of Yeatman's tavern. Among the actors are remembered Ethan A. Brown, afterwards governor of the State; General Findlay and Mr. Sill, both subsequently members of Congress; Rawlings and Wade, who became famous lawyers; Nicholas Longworth, Colonel Cutler, Captain Mansfield, and others of note then or afterwards. The proceeds of a series of performances were designed at first for a public library, but were ultimately turned into a fund for the building of the Lower market.

In 1814 a circus enclosure, on the west side of Main street, below Fourth, was used by the Thespians as their "Shell-bark Theatre." Among the actors at this time were Griffin Taylor, E. Webb, Joseph Thomas, William Douglass, Calvin Fletcher, John F. Stall, Thomas Henderson, Nathaniel Sloe, Abijah Ferguson, Junius and John H. James, Samuel Findlay, the two Hinduses, the Bensons, and Mr. Hepburn. Music was furnished by Caszelles and Doane, with Zumma at the bassoon; C. Thomas, clarionet; Samuel Best, violin; Joseph and Samuel Harrison, bass drum. Joseph Hindus was the scenic artist as well as low comedian.

THE FIRST THEATRE BUILDING.

The same year a vigorous movement was made in the direction of a permanent and worthy place of public amusement. December 13, 1814, the following announcement, probably emanating from the Thespian corps, or some member or members of it, appeared in the Liberty Hall newspaper:

"THEATRICAL NOTICE

"All persons who are favorable to the establishment of a theater in this place are requested to meet at the Columbian Inn on Thursday evening next, the fifteenth instant, at seven o'clock. The members of the Cincinnati Thespian Society are also particularly requested to attend."

The result of this agitation was the erection of a playhouse, but of a cheap and temporary character—a small frame, on the south side of Columbia or Second street, between Main and Sycamore, on the identical site where the famous old Columbia Street theatre was afterwards built. The Thespians had still to be mainly responsible fo1 its erection, and wholly so for a year or two for the entertainments within it. They attempted to disarm opposition by offering to give the proceeds of the performances to charitable purposes, but a very vigorous antagonism was nevertheless developed, under the lead of the Rev. Dr. Wilson, pastor of the Presbyterian church. He held, as many excellent people would probably still hold, that the new theatre threatened serious injury to the morals of the town. The Thespians, some of whom were quite as much concerned for the morals of Cincinnati as the reverend doctor, accepted the gage of battle, and maintained stout controversy with him through the newspapers and otherwise. The Fourth of July celebration of one year was made the opportunity, by some ardent advocate of the new institution, of a humorous fling at the doctor. The following toast was offered: "The Cincinnati Theatre—May it not, like the walls of Jericho, fall at the sound of Joshua's horn."

The columns of Liberty Ball and the Spy for some months teemed with fulminations from one side or the other of this question. Dr. Wilson, after the classic style of that day, wrote over the name "Philanthropos;" his principal opponent appeared in print as "Theatricus," and the terms in which they assailed each other's positions, were similarly ponderous. The following, from the communications of Theatricus to Liberty Hall of March 4, 1815, is a good sample extract:
One word upon music and for the present I have done. You have denounced in pretty round terms the use of that enchanting science in all cases but for devotion. Can you forget 'tis music which alternately inspires the soldier with nerve and ardor for the conflict, and thrills with extacy [sic] or wraps with enthusiasm the most peaceful bosom of taste and sensibility—that pity, and terror, and hope, and gladness are the concomitant attributes of its power, and that aided by popular sentiment and poetry it forms no trifling link in the political chain which encircles us !

The theatre, in charge of the Thespians, was maintained against all opposition this year; but not with dis-

47

370 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

tinguished financial success. A circus was already exhibiting in the place, and drew more of the public patronage. It is doubtful if the theatre more than paid expenses this year, though its managers, even before its debts were paid, put fifty dollars into the charity fund. The next year a regular troupe of travelling players, the "Pittsburgh Company of Comedians," managed by the well-remembered Drake, took Cincinnati in their route from Pittsburgh to Frankfort, Kentucky, and gave a series of performances here.

THE COLUMBIA STREET THEATRE.

Mr. Drake was so well pleased with the patronage accorded his company during this and ensuing season, and the prospects of popular amusement in Cincinnati, that in April, 1819, he announced to the people of the newly-fledged city that he was ready to listen to any proposition from them looking to the construction of a more permanent place of entertainment. The controversy of 18 r 5, between "Philanthropos" and his opponents, again broke out, and with greater virulence than ever; but Drake and his project were strongly backed, and moved steadily forward. May 11th, a meeting of citizens favorable to a new theatre was held at the reading-room, a company of thirty to forty stockholders formed, and a subscription paper drawn up, in which Mr. Drake solemnly pledged himself "to preserve the purity and morality of the stage." The paper was successfully circulated, and the necessary funds secured without much difficulty; so the construction of the edifice was begun in September, and finished early the next spring. It stood on the site of the temporary affair built four years before, at the corner of a narrow alley running from Second to Front streets, on the west side of the theatre, and between Main and Sycamore streets. It was a brick building, forty feet front, ninety-two feet deep, with a wing ten feet in depth, projecting from the rear. A portico, twelve by forty feet, adorned the Second street side, with a pediment supported by Ionic pillars, half of which were embedded in the wall, and a neat flight of steps to the door of entrance, which all together made an attractive front. Its sittings comprised two tiers of boxes, a "pit," after the fashion of that day, and a gallery, and were sufficient for six to eight hundred people. The door of the pit opened on the alley. The stage was commodious for a theatre of the size, and was screened by the traditional green curtain. It was furnished with sperm-oil footlights, and the auditorium was lighted by a chandelier and lamps upon the balustrade 0f the second tier of boxes. An ornamental arch and two flattened columns on either side constituted the proscenium, and between each pair of 'columns was a panelled door, out of which an actor could conveniently step when called before the curtain. Through one of these, too, the manager or one of the actors would appear every evening between the plays—of which there were pretty sure to be two or more every evening—to make formal announcement of the performances for the next night. Just below the arch and over the curtain, in letters of stone color, was the Shakespearian line:

"TO HOLD, AS 'T WERE, THE MIRROR UP TO NATURE."

Judge Carter, in a chapter of reminiscences contributed to the Daily Enquirer for November 28, 1880, upon which we have drawn freely for the purposes of this article, says: "This was an excellent motto for that old-day theatre, for if ever the mirror was held up to nature by actors and actresses it was done by those excellent ones of the old Columbia Street theatre."

The little new theatre, when finished, was thought to be something quite superb. The Literary Cadet of March 16, 1820, about the time it was completed, said: "The building, we believe, is the best structure of the kind in the western country this side of New Orleans." In May, 1823, a Covington painter named Lucas painted a view of Cincinnati from the Kentucky side for a drop curtain, which added further to the attractions of this theatre. It was specially notable as the first art work which Covington—then a village for only about eight years—had produced, and one which, says a Kentucky historian, "attracted a great deal of attention for its beauty and uniqueness."

The management of the new theatre was undertaken by Messrs. Collins and Jones, who had taken one-half the stock in the new enterprise, "both of whom," said Theatricus in one of his newspaper articles, "are favorably known to our citizens for their dramatic talent and gentlemanly deportment, and both of whom are determined upon fixing their residence here; thereby not only insuring their best exertions for rendering the establishment both popular and respectable (and they have already offers of assistance from some of the best performers of the seaboard); but what will be of greater importance to some, they will avoid the odium attached to the light heeled gentry of the circus of carrying off its thousands to scatter in other climes, instead of returning them in invigorating currents to the various classes from which they are drained."

For fourteen years the Columbia Street flourished in honor and tolerable pecuniary success. In 1825, how ever, some debts had accumulated against it, and it was sold at public vendue by the company to two persons. Finally it fell a prey to the devouring flames late in the night of April 4, 1834.

SOME NOTES.

In 1813 a travelling museum, with wax works, transparencies of Washington, by Mr. and Mrs. Manly, and other irresistible attractions, was shown by Messrs. Jerome and Clark at Harlow's tavern.

Already, before the opening of the new theatre, Cincinnatians had had an occasional taste of the higher order of dramatic performance. On the night of the Fourth of July, 1819, there was a notable rendition of the part of "Isabella," by Mrs. Belinda Groshorn, an English actress, who spent her last days and died here, and has a monument in Spring Grove cemetery.

In 1823 an institution called the "Vauxhall Garden" was kept at the old orchard of General Gano, on the east side of Main street, above Fifth, by two Frenchmen, one named Charles and the other known as Vincent Dumilleiz.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 371

By this time the place of amusement on Columbus street seems to have been designated as the Globe theatre; and it was at this, upon the evening of July 4, 1823, that a memorable performance was given—memorable chiefly because in the little company of actors playing "Venice Preserved," was a youth of sixteen, undertaking the part of " Jaffier," whose name was Edwin Forrest. He was the son of poor parents, among the pioneer families of Butler county, in whose dense woods he had been brought up. He exhibited much histrionic talent while still a boy at school, and was incessantly practicing imitations and grimaces and taking part in simple dramas in barns and elsewhere. In Cincinnati he got his start thus early with a strolling theatrical corps, with whom he went to New Orleans, arriving there too shabbily dressed to make a decent appearance on the streets of the southern metropolis. His evident merits as an actor, however, soon attracted the attention of some of the wealthiest people in the city, who bought him a good suit of clothes and otherwise favored him, so that he was soon fully launehed upon his long and remarkably successful career. The occasion of Forrest's first appearance was the benefit of Cargill, one of the troupe, who was assisted by his new made bride, herself an actress of no small note at the time—Amelia Seymour. Everdale was conductor of the orchestra, and the new drop scene representing Cincinnati as seen from the opposite shore, was another element in the attractions of the evening.

When the next Fourth of July came around (1824) the circus of Pepin & Barnes was in town, a "grand, pan-regal" affair, with musical instruments twenty-four long, and an exhibition of thirteen life-sized figures performing on trumpets.

In 1829 the amusements of the city are noted in the Directory as being the theatre on Second street; Let-ton's and the Western Museums; the Gallery of paintings, at the corner of Main and Upper Market; the Apollonian Garden, on Congress street, near Deer creek; and the Atheneum and Reading-room on Fourth street, adjoining the city council chamber. The last named was open from 8 A. M. to 9:30 P. M., and was supplied with newspapers and periodicals to the value of f0ur hundred dollars per annum. Five dollars a year entitled a subscriber to its privileges. There was still anothe1 reading-room in town.

On the fifth of July, 1830, the peripatetic show of Macomber & Company was exhibited at the corner of Sixth and Walnut streets. It included in its attractions a white bear, a leopard and a tiger.

On the evening of the same day—which seems to have been observed as Independence Day this year—one Her1 Cline wheeled a barrow up a rope or wire from the stage to the gallery.

MRS. TROLLOPE'S VIEW

of theatricals in Cincinnati about this time is expressed in the following extract from her book:

The theatre at Cincinnati is small, and not very brilliant in decoration; but in the absence of any other amusement our young men frequently attended it, and in the bright, clear nights of autumn and winter the mile and a half of distance was not enough to prevent the less enterprising members of the family from sometimes accompanying them. The great inducement to this was the excellent acting of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Drake, the managers. Nothing could be more distinct than their line of acting, but the great versatility of their powers enabled them often to appear together. Her cast was the highest walk of tragedy, and his the broadest comedy; but yet, as Goldsmith says of his sister heroines, I have known them change characters for a whole evening together, and have wept with him and laughed with her, as it was their will and pleasure to ordain. . . His comic songs might have set the gravity of the judges and bishops together at defiance. Liston is great, but Alexander Drake was greater.

Her talent is decidedly first-rate. Deep and genuine feeling, correct judgment, and the most perfect good taste, distinguish her play in every character. Her last act of Belvidera is superior in tragic effect to anything I ever saw on the stage, the one great exception to all comparison, Mrs. Siddons, being set aside.

It was painful to see these excellent performers playing to a miserable house, not a third full, and the audience probably not including half a dozen persons who would prefer their playing to that of the vilest strollers[!]. In proof of this, I saw them as managers, give place to paltry third-rate actors from London, who would immediately draw crowded houses, and be overwhelmed with applause[!!].

The theatre was really not a bad one, though the very poor receipts rendered it impossible to keep it in high order.

Some further remarks of Mrs. Trollope upon the theatre of that time may be found in the chapter relating to her residence in and near Cincinnati. Not less entertaining than the Trollopean diatribes, but in a different way, are the following, now printed, we believe, for the first time:

RULES AND REGULATIONS.

The following code of "Rules and Regulations of the Cincinnati Theatre, on Columbia street," promulgated May 1, 1830, and printed as a poster for the information of all frequenting the establishment, will be read half a century later with interest. We give the italics as we find them :

I. Gentlemen will be particular in not disturbing the audience by loud talking in the Bar-Room, nor by personal altercations in any part of the house.

II. Gentlemen in the boxes and in the pit are expected not to wear their hats nor to stand nor sit on the railing, during the performance; as they Hill thereby prevent the company behind, and in the lobby, from seeing the stage. Those in the side boxes will endeavor to avoid leaning forward as, from the construction of the house, the projection of one person's head must interrupt the view of several others on the same line of seats.

III. The practice of cracking nuts (now abandoned in all well regulated Theatres) should be entirely avoided during the time the curtain is up; as it must necessarily interfere with the pleasure of those who feel disposed to attend to the performance.

IV. Persons in the upper Boxes and Gallery will be careful to avoid the uncourteous habit of throwing nut-shells, apples, etc., into the Pit; and those in the Pit are cautioned against clambering over the balustrade into the Boxes, either during or at the end of the Performance.

V. Persons in the Gallery are requested not to disturb the harmony of the House by boisterous conduct, either in language or by striking with sticks on the seats or bannisters, etc. The same decorum will be expected (and enforced) from that part of the audience as from any other.

VI. As both manager and performers are disconcerted by the presence of spectators during the hours of Rehearsal (from so to 2), it is found necessary to prohibit the entrance of visitors, on such occasions, further than the outer lobby or Box-office. Intrusions behind the scenes, on nights of performance, are also prohibited—except in urgent cases. Messages from the audience to the manager can be conveyed, either by direct calls or through the agency of the Door-keeper.

VII. The Box-Office (on the left side of the vestibule) will be open from so to I, and from 3 to 6, every day, where seats may be taken and secured in either tier, until the opening of the 2d Act. Gentlemen will, of course, leave unoccupied those seats which are marked as engaged by others, until the stipulated time; as the interruption, on the arrival of the proper owners, must be unpleasant to all parties.

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VIII. The prices of admission will continue as usual, viz: 1st Tier of Boxes, and Pit, 75 cents:2d Tier, 50 cents:—Gallery, 25 cents. Colored persons will occupy the Gallery Slips on the East side. On occasions of great attraction, it may be found expedient to unite the upper and lower Boxes, according to the original plan.

IX. When side Benches are placed in the lobbies, it is proper to remember that they are intended to enable the second row of standing spectators to overlook the first;—an object which is entirely frustrated by dragging them out from the wall and impeding the passage to the boxes.

X. For the purpose of accommodating those who may be prevented from an earlier attendance, the Manager will, on ordinary occasions, allow a deduction in the price of admission after the Fourth act—or first half of the performance.

XI. Checks are only receivable the same evening they are issued, and from the persons who originally obtained them.

XII. Smoking is altogether prohibited, as a practice at once dangerous and offensive.

The Manager being resolved to render the theatre worthy of the patronage of an enlightened and refined community, respectfully submits to the friends of the drama the foregoing rules adopted for their protection; and has only to hope that he may 1arely have occasion to call to his aid the authority employed for enforcing them.

THE MUSEUMS.

In the summer of 1818 Mr. William Steele, a citizen of Cincinnati, proposed to Dr. Drake and two other gentlemen that they should found a public museum. The prudent doctor preferred the organization of a larger association, and a meeting of citizens was accordingly held, at which a constitution was adopted. Some local collections of curiosities were got together, some purchases made, and the institution was formally opened on the tenth of June, 1820, with an address on the objects and advantages of the institution by Dr. Drake, from which a suggestive extract was made in a previous chapter. For several years it was managed by a board of directors, with Dr. Robert Best, afterwards professor of chemistry in the Transylvania university, a man of taste and talents, for curator. The celebrated Audubon was curator for a time in 182o, but did not stay long. He was succeeded by Dr. Best, who also went out when the museum was transferred by the society to Mr. Joseph Dorfeuille, who had brought a large collection of foreign curiosities to Cincinnati for exhibition. This transfer was made in 1823, and seems to have been gratuitous, the members of the museum society only reserving to themselves the privilege of visiting the collections with their families. The donations to it had been very liberal. Dr. Drake gave it his cabinet of minerals, organic remains, fossils, and western antiquities. The managers made special explorations in its interest at the Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, which yielded many fossils and skeletons, and bones of the larger mammalia. The several curators, of whom James Griffiths was one, made interesting and important collections of western quadrupeds, birds and fishes. Conly Roquet, esq., the consul general of the United States at Rio Janeiro, and other Americans in Brazil, sent the museum several hundred fine specimens of natural history. Mr. Dorfeuille added his large collection of oriental antiquities, foreign and domestic birds, and western amphibia. A valuable collection was also bought from Colonel John D. Clifford, at Lexington, Kentucky, comprising many choice specimens of American antiquities, fossils, and other curiosities. In 1826 the museum contained one hundred mammalia and bones, and the skele ton of an elephant, fifty bones of the megalonyx, thirty-three quadrupeds, five hundred birds, two hundred fish, five thousand invertebrate animals, one thousand fossils, three thousand five hundred minerals, arranged according to Cleaveland's system of mineralogy, three hundred and twenty-five specimens in botany, three thousand one hundred and twenty-five medals, coins, and tokens, one hundred and fifty specimens of Egyptian antiquities and two hundred and fifty of American, one hundred and twelve colored microscopic designs; cosmoramic, optical, and prismoramic views of American scenery and buildings; the tatooed head of a New Zealand chief; five hundred miscellaneous curiosities, with several representatives of the fine arts, including a fine transparency depicting the battle of New Orleans, " by a lady of Cincinnati," and an "elegant organ." From time to time lectures were delivered by scholarly gentlemen of the city, illustrative of articles in the museum—a plan which was somewhat prominent in the scheme of the founders.

Among the attractions 0f the museum in 1834 were also "McCarty's invention," a curious machine "upon a new principle," a saw-mill operated by two bears, and glass-spinning. The wax figures made by Hiram Powers were among its most renowned features, in those days. The "infernal regions," whose construction has been generally but wrongfully attributed to Powers, were long one of the wierd fascinations of the musuem. Mrs. Trollope of course had to have her words to say about this feature of the display. She writes in her book:

He [Mr. Dorfeuille] has constructed a pandemonium in an upper story of his museum, in which he has congregated all the images of horror that his fertile fancy could devise; dwarfs, that by machinery grew into giants before the eyes of the spectator; imps of ebony with eyes of flame; monstrous reptiles devouring youth and beauty; lakes of fire and mountains of ice; in short, wax, paint, and springs have done wonders. "To give the scheme some more effect," he makes it visible only through a grate of massive iron bars, among which are arranged wires connected with an electrical machine in a neighboring chamber; should any daring hand or foot obtrude itself within the bars, it receives a smart shock, that often passes through many of the crowd, and, the cause being unknown, the effect is exceedingly comic; terror, astonishment, curiosity, are all set in action, and all contribute to make Dorfeuille's Hell one of the most amusing exhibitions imaginable.

Some years afterward the museum was visited by Harriet Martineau, who thus recorded her impressions of it in her Retrospect of Western Travel:

We visited the museum, where we found, as in all new museums whose rooms want filling up, some trumpery among which much is worthy to mention. There was a mermaid- not very cleverly constructed, and some bad wax figures, posted like sentinels among the cases of geological and entomological specimens; but, on the whole, the museum is highly creditable to the zeal of its contributors. There is, among other good things, a pretty complete collection of the currency of the country, from the earliest colonial days, and some of other countries with it. I hope this will be persevered in, and that the Cincinnati merchants will make use of the opportunities afforded by their commerce of collecting specimens of every kind of currency used in the world, from the gilt and stamped leather of the Chinese and Siberians to the last of Mr. Biddle's twenty dollar notes. There is a reasonable notion abroad that the Americans are the people who will bring the philosophy and practice of exchanges to perfection; and theirs are the museums in which should be found a full history of currency, in the shape of a complete set of specimens.

Michael Chevalier's Travels also speaks of the infernal regions, "to which," he says, "the young Cincinnati girls resort in quest of excitement which a comfortable and

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peaceful, but cold and monotonous manner of life denies them. This strange spectacle seems to afford a delicate agitation to their nerves, and is the principal source of 1evenue to the museum." The Directory of 1834 characterizes the exhibition as "a very splendid representation of hell."

After the death of Dorfeuille, Mr. Frederick Franks, the artist, became proprietor and director of the museum, and removed it to the corner of Third and Sycamore streets, where its front was ornamented with the wooden statue of Minerva, before referred to. Here he added a stage to his equipment, upon which domestic performances were frequently given. He was also the proprietor of a gallery of paintings, which was open to the public for a considerati0n. More of this and other art galleries is related in our chapter on art.

The premises he occupied were burned down, with all their contents, late in the night of March 31, 1840, and that was the last of the Western, the Dorfeuille, and the Franks museum, infernal regions and all.

Ralph Latten's famous museum was started in 1818, while the project for the other was only being mooted, and was at first the property of himself and a man named White. It occupied spacious halls in the second and third stories of a brick building at the corner of Main and Fourth streets. The upper story was mainly devoted to the exhibition of wax-works. A local publication of 1819 says: "It is understood that the proprietor intends making the establishment one of permanency." It was at this time at the corner of Main street and the Upper market.

In 1826 it contained about two hundred birds, forty animals, fifty mammalian bones, twenty-three wax figures, two thousand minerals, and a variety of Indian antiquities, marine shells, and miscellaneous curiosities. Besides transient visitors, it was supported by regular subscribers, of whom there were about three hundred. A course of lectures on ancient and modern history was at one time included in its attractions.

After Letton's museum expired, it was long before another was opened in Cincinnati. Finally Colonel Wood, who had been associated with Barnum, and had started in Chicago and other cities, opened a museum and theatre in the second and third stories of the Broadwell building, then standing on the northwest corner of Fifth and Walnut streets. This survived for five or six years; but went up in flame and smoke during the night of July 14, 1857. Since then, we believe, the Queen City has had no museum.

THE THIRD STREET THEATRE.

In 1831, three years before the burning of the pioneer Columbia street institution, Mr. James H. Caldwell, a prominent theatrical manager in that day, having theatres in Louisville, St. Louis, Natchez, New Orleans, and Mobile, determined to build an extensive temple of the muses in Cincinnati. It was situated on the south side of Third street, between Sycamore street and Broadway, and about equi-distant from them. Judge Carter gives the following description of it:

This theatre was two stories high on Third street, and on account of the descent from Third to Lower Market street, was five stories high on the latter street, extending as it did from street to street. It was an imposing structure, built of brick, about seventy feet on Third and Lower Market, and one hundred and twenty feet from street to street. The front was adorned with a pediment supported by flattened columns, and a flight of steps extending across the whole front led up to the doors. The interior had a most large and commodious stage, with a grand proscenium and a most beautiful blue-colored cloth curtain, trimmed in gold, which opened in and drew up from the middle. The orchestra place was very large, and then there was a large pit and three tiers of boxes, the upper one being the gallery, where the "gods and goddesses" used to assemble on days, or rather nights of yore. The stage was adorned with the most beautifully-painted scenery of any theatre then in this country, the scenic artist being the then celebrated Italian painter Mondelli.

This theatre was opened with a grand performance on the evening of the Fourth of July, 1832, when an address, written by Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, the n0velist, then residing in Cincinnati, was delivered by Mr. Caldwell, and an essay in vindication of the drama, from the pen of Isaac A. Jewett, was read. Mr. Caldwell had given a prize of fifty dollars to the former, and another of one hundred dollars to the latter.

In the same month a benefit was given to Edwin Forrest, wh0 appeared in the character of King Lear, with Mrs. Rowe as Cordelia.

Mrs. Knight, another celebrated actress of the time, also appeared soon in Perfection, and Invincible, or the Little Cup.

This theatre lasted but little more than two years, when, on the twenty-fifth day of October, 1836, it also was burned. Mr. John Martin, stage carpenter, who had lodgings in the building, lost his life in the flames—the only fatality ever attending the burning of a theatre in Cincinnati.

LIPPINCOTT'S AMPHITHEATRE.

This was a great brick building on the southwest corne1 of Second and Sycamore streets, intended mainly for exhibitions of the horse drama, or circus. It was erected in 18£3 by Mr. Lippincott, a wealthy dealer in horses and livery-stable keeper in the city, who put it up specially for the use of Bancker & Nichols, who had been giving equestrian performances for several seasons in a large frame amphitheatre on the subsequent site of the National theatre, where also Mr. Caldwell had successfully produced the legitimate drama before building his theatre on Third street. Upon the ground floor of the new structure was a large circus arena, and there was also a stage fo1 histrionic performances. The building was completed, and announcement made for the opening performance of Messrs. Bancker & Nichols' troupe on the evening of January 31, 1834, when, only two nights before, the structure took fire and burned to the ground. A large number of valuable horses, many of them carefully trained, were stabled in the building, and not one of them was saved.

Mr. Lippincott became insane by reason of this terrible calamity, and shortly afterwards hanged himself in an out-house.

SHIRES' THEATRE.

After the transfer of the Burnet property on Third and Vine streets to the branch bank of the United

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States, and the judge's removal to his new building at the corner of Seventh and Elm streets, the old dwelling was taken by Mr. William Shires, and converted into a restaurant and hotel. In process of time he utilized a part of the spacious grounds still remaining unoccupied west of the house, near Bake1 street, for the building of a theatre—a plain, frame building, about fifty by one hundred feet. It had a commodious stage, a spacious pit, one tier of boxes for a dress-circle, and an uncommonly large balcony, or second tier. Judge Carter says:

This theatre, under the energetic management of fellow-citizen Shires, proved for several years of the forties a great success, and it may be said that perhaps Cincinnati never saw better playing and acting than on the boards of Shires' theatre. I could mention from memory a great number of the greatest legitimate stars of the country who from time to time performed there, and a still greater number of the best legitimate plays performed there. London Assurance was enacted there with better arrangements and stronger cast than ever elsewhere in our city, and a thousand other good plays.

This theatre, too, was burned January 8, 1848, in the evening, during a great snow fall, whose flakes were most brilliantly and beautifully illuminated by the surging flames. This fire, thus clearing the ground, although the Burnet mansion was saved, was one of the elements in the projecting and building of the magnificent Burnet house soon afterwards.

THE NATIONAL THEATRE.

In 1837 an effort was made to erect a yet more spacious and creditable theatre—one worthy of the development and demand of the city: A stock company was organized and a considerable block of subscriptions made. The times were perilous, however, and presently the stockholders faltered and fluctuated in the enterprise. Then came to the front Mr. John Bates, a banke1 who had changed to banking from the wholesale grocery business only the year before, and single-handed built the famous "Old Drury," on the east side of Sycamore street, between Third and Fourth. It was commenced May 0, 1837, and pushed so rapidly that, although a large and elegant building for that time, it was opened for entertainments on the ensuing third of July. It had been leased to Messrs. Scott & Thorne, the latter then a famous actor; and the opening pieces were "The Honeymoon," and "Raising the Wind," in both of which Thorne appeared. A prize address, by F. W. Thomas, was also recited by Miss Mason.

The National was built upon a lot of one hundred feet front and two hundred and six feet deep, and had an uncommonly spacious stage, exceeding in size that of Drury Lane, London, from which it finally received the affectionate title of "Old Drury" from the venerable theatre goers of Cincinnati. It is said to have been one of the most convenient and excellently arranged theatres in the country.

Mr. Bates was so much encouraged by the success of his experiment at theatre-building in Cincinnati that he afterwards built one in Louisville and another in St. Louis. He managed the three houses of entertainment himself for a time, but ultimately found it advisable to part with all except the National. This was remodeled in 1856, and a handsome stone front added. It had a long season of prosperity, until the opening of Pike'e Opera house, when its star waned, but waxed again when Pike's burned in 1866. It experienced many vicissitudes thereafter, being occupied sometimes by the variety, sometimes by the legitimate drama, until the last star performance was given there under Macauley's management in 1871, when Edwin Booth appeared in Shakespearian plays. After a long period of comparative abandonment, the "Old Drury" was finally sold in June, 1880, for seventeen thousand five hundred dollars, to be converted into a tobacco warehouse.

OTHER EXTINCT THEATRES.

The People's theatre was built some time in the '40's, on the southeast corner of Sixth and Vine streets, and was burned June 13, 1856.

Upon the same site afterwards rose Wood's theatre (not the museum and theatre), where the last performance was given March 23, 1878, after which it was demolished to make way for the new Gazette building.

The Trivoli theatre is thought by Judge Carter to have been the first German institution of the kind in Cincinnati. It occupied, he says, the third story of the large brick building now standing on the corner of Sycamore and Canal streets, and was well fitted up in German order and style for lager beer and dramatic performances, and had quite a career for the entertainment of our German fellow citizens and their American friends. The theatre—that is, the upper stories of this building—was burnt out August 13, 1860.

The Palace Varieties was a large frame structure on Vine street. The Arcade now passes over its site. It is believed to have been the first variety theatre in the city. On the ninth day of July, 1869, it too fell a prey to the flames.

The Academy of Music was an elegant little theatre on the northwest corner of Fourth and Home streets. It was destroyed by fire December 8, 1870.

PIKE'S OPERA HOUSE.

The original opera house built by Samuel N. Pike was erected in 1859, upon the site of an ancient mound on Fourth street, between Vine and Walnut. Its stage and auditorium were larger and finer than those of the present opera house, and their relative positions were exactly reversed. After a performance of the "Midsummer Night's dream, March 22, 1866, about midnight, it was totally destroyed by fire. The present superb edifice speedily rose out of its ashes, and has since been steadily and generally successfully occupied for the purposes of the opera and the drama, and occasionally for great public meetings, the university commencements, Sunday afternoon lectures, and the like. It has a seating capacity of about two thousand.

THE GRAND OPERA HOUSE

is a more modern institution, occupying the fine building of the Catholic institute, on the west side of Vine street, corner of Longworth. It seats twenty-three hundred. Above it is the well-known Mozart hall.