HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 75
Vote at the municipal election in 1822, one thousand, five hundred and ninety-seven.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE.
January 30th, certain adventurous business men of the city broach a project for a whaling and sealing voyage to the Indian ocean.
September 3d, the citizens, dissatisfied with the arrangements of the authorities for the protection of per- son and property, meet to organize a volunteer city watch.
November 3d, a great calamity is inflicted upon the business of the city, by the burning of the famous great stone steam-mill. Material is at once collected for rebuilding, however. Among prominent business men now are noted Kilgour & Taylor, Barr, Patterson & Son, Keating & Bell, grocers; John Sterrett & Company, John Duval, G. V. H. Dewitt, dry goods merchants; Griffin & Company, C. & J. Bates, druggists; Platt Evans and James Comly, tailors; Moses & Jonas, auctioneers; J. & G. R. Gilmore, brokers.
Aggregate vote this year, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR.
Population this yea1 is twelve thousand and sixteen-First ward, three thousand one hundred and fifty-seven; Second, four thousand five hundred and thirty-one ; Third, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight; Fourth, two thousand five hundred and forty. The number of families was two thousand one hundred and nineteen; of dwelling houses, one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight.
Until 1824 it is said that the whole city had voted at one polling-place, generally the Mayor's office on Third street. At the presidential election of this year the vote was by wards.
February 24th, Mr. Samuel W. Davies offers the waterworks, which are private property, to the city for thirty thousand dollars, in convenient payments. His offer is declined by a meeting or a vote of the citizens, and he sells to the new Cincinnati Water company at the same price.
May 19th, the corner-stone of the old St. Peter's cathedral (Roman Catholic), on Sycamore street, is laid, Bishop Fenwick conducting the ceremonies.
The statistics of nativity, taken for the directory of this year—the second Cincinnati directory issued—show a very large percentage of Pennsylvanians and Jerseymen in the population, three hundred and ninety-four of the names given fo1 the directory being those of natives of the Keystone State, and three hundred and thirty-seven of New Jersey birth; two hundred and thirty-three were New Yorkers, one hundred and eighty-four native to Massachusetts, one hundred and seventy to Maryland, one hundred and forty-three Connecticut, one hundred and thirteen Virginia, and less than one hundred to any other State. Ohio as yet contributed but fifty-two native Buckeyes—adults, of course—to the directory, and any other State not mentioned less than fifty. A good many native foreigners were represented—English, one hundred and ninety-two; Irish, one hundred and seventy-three; Germans, sixty-two; Scotch, thirty-nine; Welsh, twenty-one; Swiss, seventeen, and one or two each of Swedes, Dutch, and Poles. Multiplying the numbers, respectively, by five, the products, in most cases, will probably show the actual number of population of the several classes then here. The State or country of nativity, whenever known, was entered with the person's name in the directory—a unique feature, truly.
The directory notes the entire compact portion of the city as being included within the space of one mile square.
February 2d, General Harrison was elected by the Legislature to the United States Senate.
The first fancy front in town is put up this year on Main street, by Platt Evans, tailor. His sign was still up in 1856, when it was the oldest sign in the city.
In the month of May, General the Marquis de Lafayette, accompanied by his son, on their tour through this country, paid Cincinnati the honor of a visit. Mr.
L'Hommedieu says:
The occasion brought here thousands from the country. All within a circuit of a hundred miles seemed to be here. Lafayette approached our city from Lexington, Kentucky, where he had been to visit Henry Clay. He was met and welcomed at our landing by Governor Morrow and General Harrison. The whole public ground between Main street and Broadway, and Front street and the river, was densely crowded with men, women, and children, and the windows, balconies, and roofs of the buildings fronting the river were alive with people waving their welcome. After tarrying in our city from noon of one day to midnight of the next, he departed up the river. The day of his arrival, as well as that which followed, and his departure at midnight, will be remembered, by those who witnessed the scenes, as long as their memories last. All was grand; but the closing scene, at twelve o'clock at night, with the illumination on both sides of the river, the crowd of many thousands of our people on the landing, the beautiful display made by all the steamboats in port, the procession of military companies, the firing of cannon f10m our landing, from the boats, and from the arsenal at Newport, with the martial music, seems to me, after the lapse of fifty years, the most brilliant sight of my life.
Major Daniel Gano's splendid turnout of six bay horses attached to an open phaeton awaited Lafayette at the steamer landing-the only equipage of the kind in Cincinnati. In the evening, before the ball, a public reception was given to Lafayette in the Major's orchard, which was brilliantly illuminated. A new lodge of Free Masons, called Lafayette No. 8i, was constituted in hono1 of his coming, of which he became an honorary member, and which publicly celebrated his obsequies July 20, 1834, upon the death of the eminent patriot.
Joseph S. Benham, esq., a brilliant young lawyer of this city, made the 1eception speech upon Lafayette's arrival, on behalf of the public authorities and citizens. A grand ball was given at night in the Cincinnati hotel.
Henry Clay himself had a reception and banquet at the same hotel in June of this year. The opportunity was taken by Mr. Clay for a vindication of himself, in an elaborate and very eloquent speech, from the famous charge of " bargain and sale," which had been made against him in connection with the recent presidential election. There were present, besides Mr. Clay, Governors Clinton, Morrow, and Brown, and some scores of prominent Cincinnatians. Governor Poindexter was also in town, but was detained away from the dinner. Tickets
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to it were three dollars apiece; but were purchasable by any one who had the wherewithal, and the disposition to expend it in this way. Mr. L'Hommedieu says :
Although then an apprentice-boy of nineteen years. I managed to raise three dollars, and attended the dinner. The sight of so many distinguished characters seated at a table, which crossed the ends of three or four longer ones, was a novel one to me, and I fancied myself in the presence of giants, until after the wine was freely drank, the cloth removed, smoking commenced, and speeches and story-telling became the order. Then I thought, to use the language of Governor Vance, "Most great men look smaller the nearer you get to them."
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE.
This year witnessed the breaking of ground for the Miami canal, at Middletown, June 21, by Governor Dewitt Clinton, of New York. The ceremony has been elsewhere described.
Dr. Samuel Thompson, founder of the botanical system of medicine and patentee of the celebrated Thompsonian remedies, came to Cincinnati this year, and made many converts to his school of practice.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX.
The publication of another work of local character, Cincinnati in 1826, by Benjamin Drake and E. D. Mansfield, both young men struggling to get a living at the bar, furnishes the means of giving a pretty full picture of the Queen City at this time. Their book, which was a worthy successor of Dr. Drake's two pioneer volumes, had the honor of publication the same year (1826) in London, as an appendix to Mr. W. Bullock's Notes of a Journey, of which more will be presently said. It is noteworthy that the book was subsidized by the city council, to the extent of seventy-five dollars voted to the authors for taking a census of the population.
In December of this year, the population numbered sixteen thousand two hundred and thirty—four thousand and eighty-four in the First ward, six thousand four hundred and ninety-nine in the Second, two thousand five hundred and five in the Third, and three thousand one hundred and forty-two in the Fourth-seven thousand nine hundred and ninety males, and seven thousand five hundred and fifty females. The average number to a building was six and a half persons. There were twenty-eight clergymen, thirty-four lawyers, thirty-five physicians, about eight hundred in trade and mercantile pursuits, five hundred in navigation, and three thousand in manufacturing. Mr. Mansfield, recounting his experience in taking census statistics for his book, says: "In all this visitation into the recesses of society, I never met a single pauper family, nor one really impoverished. The great body of them were mechanics, with plenty to do, generally owning their own homes, and in fact a well-to-do people."
The number of buildings in the city was two thousand four hundred and ninety-five—eighteen stone, nine hundred and thirty-six brick, seventeen of them four-storied, one thousand five hundred and forty-one frames, six hundred and fifty of 'one story, one thousand six hundred and eighty-two of two stories, and one hundred and sixty-three of more than two.
The growth of the city, during this and the preceding year, had been greater than in any former period of equal length. The yearly ratio of increase in population from 1810 to 1813 was twenty-four per cent ; 1813-19, twenty-six per cent; 1819-24, three and five-tenths; 1824--26, seventeen. For sixteen years the population of no town in the United States, of the rank of Cincinnati, had increased in corresponding ratio. Manufacturing establishments had also greatly increased within two years, some details of which will be found in our chapter on manufactures. The value of manufactures in and near the city, for the year, was one million eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The United Stated land office was now at the east end of the city, the register's office near the corner of Lawrence and Congress, the receiver's north of Congress, near Broadway. The United States branch bank had been founded here, and there were two insurance companies and several agencies. Mr. N. Holley kept a general agency and intelligence office. There were ten licensed auctioneers, who sold thirty-three thousand eight hundred dollars' worth this year, paying a duty of three per cent. thereon—one-half of it going to the Commercial hospital, the other to the medical college of Ohio. Real property was advancing at the rate of ten to twelve pe1 cent. a year, and many pieces twelve to eighteen. Interest was high, three per cent. a month being sometimes paid on small sums, and ten to twenty per annum on larger. There were then no penalties on usury.
The city was becoming somewhat a summer resort for the inhabitants of the south, especially Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Yellow Springs and the Big Bone Lick had also become prominent as places of temporary resort for excursionists.
The Miami canal was now under contract, and thirty-one miles, from Main street to the dam at Middletown, were nearly finished. Great benefits were expected to the city from the water-power to be gained in the descent from the upper level to the river, about fifty feet—enough, it was estimated, to turn sixty pair of millstones. The branch bank of the United States was still flourishing in a fine freestone front—"one of the chastest specimens of architecture within the city;" and the medical college was already in its present location on Sixth, between Vine and Race, though the building was still unfinished. The commercial hospital and lunatic asylum was up and occupied. The college building was also in place, with accommodations for a thousand pupils. The Cincinnati theatre stood on the south side of Second street, between Main and Sycamore. A Masonic grand hall was projected for the next year, in the hope of locating the grand lodge of the State permanently in Cincinnati. The purchase of the Burnet property between Third and Fourth, Race and Vine, was urged for use as a city hall and public square. It could have been had then for twenty-five thousand dollars, which was the amount for which the judge presently let it go to the United States branch bank, to satisfy its demands upon him. It was already handsomely adorned with shade-trees, flowering shrubs, and evergreens, and several liberal gifts for its ornamentation were promised if it were made public property. The Cincinnati water company,
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 77
for example, would put in a fountain gratuitously. The bridge over the Ohio was still urged, and it was thought it could be built, with nine stone piers, breakers, and connecting with both Newport and Covington, for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Various canals were also in prospectu, besides the Miami, which was so hopefully under way. The valuation of the city was three million one hundred and fifty-seven thousand three hundred and ninety-two dollars, and its revenue for 1826 twenty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-two dollars and eighty-one cents—less than half of it from taxation. A new city charter, promising improvements in local government, was about to go into operation.
Messrs. Drake and Mansfield seem abundantly justified in their closing predictions of "continued prosperity in wealth and population. The period is not a remote one when Cincinnati will hold the same rank among cities of the Union that the great State of which she is the ornament now possesses in the American confederacy."
In May the city was visited by a noble personage, Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach, who afterwards wrote a book of his travels. He said in it, however, nothing of account concerning Cincinnati. His observations on the village of Montgomery, through which he passed in coming here, will be found in the history of Sycamore township.
October 20th, General James Findlay was elected to Congress from the Cincinnati district.
November 18th, the water company begins to supply the city through its ground-pipes and hydrants. On the twenty-seventh Philip Lewis, a colored man, was hanged for the murder of Thomas Isbell, April 4th. He is said to have been the only one of his race hanged here for more than forty years.
At this time, however, says Mr. L'Hommedieu, Cincinnati "was undergoing the severe ordeal of paying off 'old debts.' Through the branch bank established here by the United States bank, during the years of inflation and extravagance which preceded this period, most of the real-estate owners had become almost hopelessly in debt, and large portions of their property had been taken by the United States bank, and subsequently sold at an advance. Some few obtained the right of redemption, and, by borrowing money in New York and Philadelphia succeeded in saving their estates; but many, if not a majority, of their debtors went under. Interest ranged from ten to thirty-six per cent., and there was no legal limit. At this period the valuation of the property listed for taxation in our city was six million eight hundred and forty-eight thousand four hundred and thirty-three dollars* —not more than some half-dozen or less of our citizens combined are now worth."
The vote of the city this year was two thousand three hundred and forty-nine. The new buildings put up numbered four hundred and ninety-six--eight one-story brick, one hundred and thirty-one two-story, seventy-seven, three-story, and one four-story; twenty-nine one-story
* This does not agree, it will be observed, by over three millions and a quarter, with Drake and Mansfield's statement.
frames, two hundred and fifty two-story;—two hundred and seventeen brick structures, two hundred and seventy-nine frame.
May 21st, the Miami canal is put under contract from Middletown to Dayton. November 21st, two canalboats start for Middletown, from Howell's Basin, six miles above Cincinnati, in the presence of a large crowd.
The arrivals and departures of steamers at this port, from the first of November, 1827, to the eighth of June, 1828, number seven hundred and thirty-nine.
It is probable that the temperance meeting held at the court house in September of this year, was the first of the kind in Cincinnati. It was only the year before that Dr. Lyman Beecher had delivered the powerful lectures against intemperance, from his pulpit at Litchfield, Connecticut, which, being widely published, had made a profound impression in favor of reform. The American Temperance society was organized the same year, and its branches spread very rapidly. Nowhere in the country, probably, did the customs of society, in the matter of indulgence in intoxicants, need reformation more than in Cincinnati; and in due time the movement reached here. Mr. E. D. Mansfield, in his Life of Dr. Drake, gives the following amusing account of the initial meeting :
The meeting was held at three o'clock in the afternoon, and for those days was really large and respectable. Many old citizens were present who were familiar with old whiskey and upon whose cheeks it blossomed forth in purple dyes. To these, and indeed to the great body of people in the west, a temperance speech was a new idea. Dr:Drake was the speaker, and they listened to him with respectful attention, and were by no means opposed to the object. The speech, however, was long. The doctor had arrayed a formidable column of facts. The day was hot; and after he had spoken about an hour without apparently approaching the end, some one, out of regard for the doctor's strength, or by force of habit, cried out: " Let's adjourn a while and take a drink !" The meeting did adjourn, and, McFarland's tavern being near by, the old soakers refreshed themselves with "old rye." The meeting again assembled, the doctor finished his speech, and all went off well. Soon after the temperance societies began to be formed, and the excitement then begun has continued to this day.
The visit of an English traveler of some distinction, Mr. W. Bullock, "F. L. S., etc., etc.," aids to make interesting the annals of this part of the Ohio valley for the year, as connected with p. promising enterprise on the Kentucky shore, upon the site of what is now little more than a suburb of Cincinnati—the village of Ludlow. While approaching the city from New Orleans, by river, the traveller's eye was caught by an elegant mansion, upon an ,estate of about a thousand acres, a little below the then city, and the property of Hon. Thomas D. Carneal, an extensive landholder and member of the Kentucky legislature. During his short stay here he visited the place, was easily prevailed upon to buy it, and upon it projected "a proposed rural town to be called Hygeia." He evidently thought no small things of his city in the air; for upon an outline map of the United States, prefixed to his "Sketch of a Journey through the Western States of North America," he notes no other towns than Cincinnati and "Hygeia." His plan for the place was drawn by no less a personage than I. P. Papworth, architect to the King of Wurtemburg, "etc., etc.," and represents a magnificent town—on paper. The eastern end was to be nearly opposite the mouth of Mill creek; about
78 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
at the further terminus of the present Southern Railroad bridge, and the western end a mile distant. The extreme breadth, back from the river, was about half the length. The place was elegantly platted, with four large squares in the middle, called, respectively, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Patterson squares. Little parks diversified the border of this great quadrangle. Two other squares, named from Franklin and Jackson, were provided for. The streets were considerably in curves, after the European manner. Agricultural, horticultural, and kitchen gardens, a cemetery "as Pere la Chaise at Paris," a chapel therein, four churches, three inns, two shops, a theatre, bath, town hall, museum, library, a school, and another public building, with a statue and a fountain, have all their places upon this plat. Mr. Bullock published it in October, 1826, upon his return to England, with his Sketch of a Journey, adding as an appendix Drake & Mansfield's Cincinnati in 1826, then a brand-new book; but all did not avail to prevent the scheme from joining the grand army of wrecked "paper towns." The old Bullock or Carneal house is still, however, prominent among the most interesting of local antiquities on the Kentucky shore.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT.
The opening of the Miami canal gave fresh life to business. Real estate made rapid advancement in price, and those who had made investments in it, were fortunate in their sales. The people were no longer dependent on mud roads and the river for their supplies, and provisions were abundant and comparatively cheap. It had before happened occasionally that, during a mild and open winter, the roads had been frightfully bad, even impassable; and the relief given by the canal was such as is difficult, indeed, to realize under the commercial conditions that now prevail. A great calamity was experienced, however, December 11th, in the destructive fire that devastated half the square on Main street, between Third and Fourth—one of the most solid business blocks in the city. The weather was extremely cold, and but two engines could play upon the fire. The citizens, women and children included, formed a line to the river, and did what they could in passing fire-buckets; but without much avail.
The valuation of taxable property in the city this year was three millions six hundred and ninety-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-three dollars, and the tax nine and five-tenths mills, yielding, with other receipts, a revenue of thirty-five thousand nine hundred and ninety-three dollars and forty-three cents. There were expended by the corporation forty-six thousand one hundred and fifty-six dollars—twenty-two thousand and five dollars for paving streets and alleys, including excavations. A loan of thirty thousand dollars was necessarily made this year, the total expenditures being sixty-five thousand four hundred and twenty-nine dollars and twenty-one cents. Miller & Company's cotton factory went into operation, also the Hamilton foundry and steam-engine factory, Goodloe & Borden's and West & Storm's engine factories, Fox's steam grist-mill on Deer creek, at the terminus of Fifth street, and other business enterprises.
The bills of mortality for 1828 show deaths to the number of six hundred and forty-seven, being one in every thirty-seven of the population-a pretty high death rate, compared with the rates of succeeding years—as one in thirty-four (eight hundred and twenty) in 1831, and one in twenty-seven (one thousand one hundred and seventy) in 1833.
This year came to Cincinnati one of the most remarkable women who ever set foot in the city-one who, unlike all other foreign travellers through the valley, left here a most singular monument of her residence, which endured for more than half a century—the Trollopean Bazaar. It was built by Mrs. Frances Trollope, an Englishwoman, who resided here and in the neighborhood for a little more than two years. She is probably very poor historical authority, especially in Cincinnati, whose People and institutions she abused so persistently and unmercifully; but she was a woman of unmistakable powers of mind and literary talent-as the mother of Anthony Trollope must have been—and her observations are always entertaining, if often far from just. We shal 1 give some extracts, here and elsewhere, from her subsequent book on The Domestic Manners of the Americans. She came alone from Memphis, with he1 son and two daughters, Mr. Trollope and another son joining them here the next year. In the first volume of her book she says:
We reached Cincinnati on the tenth of February. It is finely situated on the south side of a hill that rises gently from the water's edge, yet it is by no means a city of striking appearance ; it wants domes, towers, and steeples ; but its landing place is noble, extending for more than a quarter of a mile ; it is well paved and surrounded by neat though not handsome buildings. I have seen fifteen steamboats lying there at once, and still half the wharf was unoccupied.
The sight of bricks and mortar was really refreshing, and a house of three stories looked splendid. Of this splendor we saw repeated specimens, and moreover a brick church which, from its two little neaked spires, was called the two-horned church. . . Certainly it was not a little town, about the size of Salisbury, without even an attempt at beauty in any of its edifices, and with only just enough of the air of a city to make it noisy and bustling. The population is greater than the appearance of the town would lead one to expect. This is partly owing to the number of free negroes who herd together in an obscure part of the city, called Little Africa, and partly to the density of the population a10und the paper mills and other manufactories. I believe the number of inhabitants exceeds twenty thousand.
At that time I think Main street, which is the principal avenue, and runs through the whole town, answering to the High street of our old cities, was the only one entirely paved. The trottoir [sidewalk] is of brick, tolerably well laid, but ft is inundated by every shower, as Cincinnati has no drains whatever. . . Were it furnished with drains of the simplest arrangement, the heavy showers of the climate would keep them constantly clean ; as it is, these showers wash the higher streets, only to deposit their filth in the first level spot ; and this happens to be in the street second in importance to Main street, running at right angles to it, and containing most of the large warehouses of the town. This deposit is a dreadful nuisance, and must be productive of miasma during the hot weather.
The following passage will be read with considerable amusement by the myriad dwellers on the hills in this latter day:
To the north, Cincinnati is bounded by a range of forest-covered hills, sufficiently steep and rugged to prevent their being built upon or easily cultivated, but not sufficiently high to command from their summits a view of any considerable extent. Deep and narrow water-courses, dry in summer, but bringing down heavy streams in winter, divide these hills into many separate heights, and this furnishes the only variety the landscape offers for many miles around the town. The lovely Ohio is
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 79
a beautiful feature wherever it is visible, but the only part of the city that has the advantage of its beauty is the street nearest to its bank.
Though I do not quite sympathize with those who consider Cincinnati as one of the wonders of the earth, I certainly think it a city of extraordinary size and importance, when it is remembered that thirty years ago the aboriginal forest occupied the ground where it stands, and every month appears to extend its limits and its wealth. . During nearly two years that I resided in Cincinnati or its neighborhood, I neither saw a beggar nor a man of sufficient fortune to permit his ceasing his efforts to increase it. Thus every bee in the hive is actively employed in search of that honey of Hybla, vulgarly called money ; neither art, science, learning, nor pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit.
Notwithstanding fourteen hundred new dwellings had been erected the preceding year, the demand for houses greatly exceeded the supply.
Perhaps the most advantageous feature in Cincinnati is its market, which, for excellence, abundance, and cheapness, can hardly, I should think, be surpassed in any part of the world, if I except the luxury of fruits, which are very inferior to any I have seen in Europe. There are no butchers, fishmongers, or indeed any shop for eatables, except bakeries, as they are called, in the town : everything must be purchased at market. . . . The beef is excellent, and the highest price when we were there, four cents (about twopence) the pound. The mutton was inferior, and so was the veal to the eye, but it ate well, though not very fat ; the price was about the same. The poultry was excellent; fowls or full-sized chickens, ready for the table, twelve cents, but much less if bought alive, and not quite fat; turkeys about fifty cents, and geese the same. The Ohio furnishes several sorts of fish, some of them very good, and always to be found cheap and abundant in the market, Eggs, butter, nearly all kinds of vegetables, excellent, and at moderate prices. From June till December tomatoes (the great luxury of the American table in the opinion of most Europeans) may be found in the highest perfection in the market for about sixpence the peck. They have a great variety of beans unknown in England, particularly the Lima bean, the seed of which is dressed like the French harico; it furnishes a very abundant crop, and is a most delicious vegetable. . . The watermelons, which in that warm climate furnish a most delightful refreshment, were abundant and cheap; but all other melons very Inferior to those of France, or even of England, when ripened in a common hotbed. . . . It is the custom for the gentlemen to go to market at Cincinnati; the smartest men in the place, and those of the "highest standing," do not scruple to leave their beds with the sun, six days in the week, and, prepared with a mighty basket, to sally forth in search of meat, butter, eggs and vegetables. I have continually seen them returning, with their weighty baskets on one arm and an enormous ham depending on the other.
Cincinnati has not many lions to boast, but among them are two museums of natural history; both of these contain many respectable specimens, particularly that of Mr. Dorfeuille, who has, moreover, some interesting antiquities. . . . The people have a most extravagant passion for wax figures, and the two museums vie with each other in displaying specimens of this barbarous branch of art. . . . There is also a picture gallery at Cincinnati, and this was a circumstance of much interest to us. . . . It would be invidious to describe the picture gallery; I have no doubt that some years hence it will present a very different appearance.
I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians. Billiards are forbidden by law; so are cards. To sell a pack of cards in Ohio subjects the seller to a penalty of fifty dollars. They have no public balls, excepting, I think, six during the Christmas holidays. They have no concerts. They have no dinner parties. They have a theatre, which is, in fact, the only public amusement of this little town; but they seem to care very little about it, and, either from economy or distaste, it is very poorly attended. Ladies are rarely seen there, and by far the larger proportion of females deem it an offense to religion to witness the representation of a play. . . There are no public gardens or lounging shops of fashionable resort, and were it not for public worship and private tea-drinkings, all the ladies of Cincinnati would be in danger of becoming perfect recluses.
Mrs. Trollope took for a time a country-house at Mohawk, then a straggling village along the Hamilton road at the base of Mount Auburn, where Mohawk street perpetuates its name and memory. She, by and by, determined to set up her son in business here, and projected the scheme which eventuated in the building of the Bazaar. The City Directory for 1829 gives the following entertaining account of this 1emarkable enterprise. It is hardly probable the writer would have been so glowing and enthusiastic in his descriptions, had he foreseen the criticisms which Mrs. Trollope would pass upon Cincinnati and Cincinnatians in her forthcoming book, to say nothing of the criticisms which the local public and future travellers, notably Mrs. Trollope's countrymen and countrywomen, would give her remarkable creation on East Third street. The article serves, however, as an excellent means of information concerning the design of the builders of the Bazaar, and the feelings of the citizens toward it when the enterprise was new.:
THE BAZAAR.—This exotic title carries the imagination directly to Constantinople, so celebrated for mosques, minarets, caravansaries, and bazaars. In sober English, bazaar signifies a fair or market place. The building which is the subject of the present notice, and which is now in rapid p10gress toward completion, is called the Bazaar, although but a small portion of its ample area is to be app10priated to its legitimate uses as a constant mart. The name, albeit, is in good keeping with the style of the edifice, the freestone front of which exhibits a rich and beautiful specimen of arabesque architecture, combining the airy lightness of the Grecian with the sombrous gravity of the Gothic taste. The basement story, which is entered by three several flights of stone steps, contains divers neat and commodious apartments. Those fronting the street are designed for an exchange coffee house, one of them to be fitted up and furnished as a bar-room, the other to be appropriated, as the name imports, to the transaction of general commercial business. Over the basement is a splendid compartment, sixty feet by twenty-eight, and ornamented by two rows of columns passing through it. This room gives title, if not character, to the building. Here is to be held the bazaar, where, it is presumable, every useful and useless article in dress, in stationery, in light and ornamental household furniture, chinas and more pellucid porcelains, with every gewgaw that can contribute to the splendor and attractiveness of the exhibition, from the sparkling necklace of "lady fair" to the exquisite safety-chain, will be displayed and vended.
In the rear of the bazaar is an elegant saloon, where ices and other refreshments will lend their allurements to the fascinations of architectural novelty. This saloon opens to a spacious balcony, which in its turn conducts to an exhibition gallery, that is at present occupied by Mr. Hervieu's picture of Lafayette's Landing at Cincinnati. Above the bazaar is a magnificent ball-room, the front of which, looking over the street, will receive the rays of the sun, or emit the rival splendors of its gas-illumined walls, by three ample, arabesque windows, which give an unrivalled lightness and grace to the festive hall. The walls and the arched and lofty ceiling of this delectable apartment are to be decorated by the powerful pencil of Mr. Hervieu. The rear of the room is occupied by an orchestral gallery, whence dulcet music will guide " the light fantastic toe " through the mazes of the giddy dance.
Behind the ballroom is another superb saloon, issuing also to a balcony. This division is assigned to the accommodation of gentlemen's private parties, where the beau monde may regale themselves when and how they list. Over this is a circular structure of exceedingly light and beautiful proportions, which is intended for panoramic exhibitions; and around it is constructed, in concentric circles, an airy corridor, from whence the eye, that has been already delighted to satiety by the exhibitions of art, may recreate itself amid the varied beauties and blandishments of nature.
The rear of this 'antique and multifidous edifice presents a noble facade of Egyptian columns, which will vie, in magnificence and novelty, with the Arabian windows that decorate its front. The apartments are all to be lighted by gas, furnished by Mr. Delany. The whole arrangement and architectural of this superb building reflects great credit upon the taste and skill of Mr. Palmer, the architect. The interior dimensions of the building are: Length, one hundred and four feet ; width, eighty feet ; height to the top of the spire, which is to surmount the cupola, eighty feet ; height from base to cornice, thirty-three feet.
The Bazaar stands on Third street, east of Broadway.
The building was still new when sold at sheriff's sale to
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pay the mechanics who worked upon it, and underwent important changes at the hands of its different owners, especially in the addition of another story to its height. It has been occupied for many uses in the course of fifty-two or three years, from the original occupation by the Mechanic's institute down to its habitation largely by women of ill-fame. Of late it had fallen into utter disrepair and dilapidation, except one room, which has been occupied by a rolling-mill office. Long ago the paintings with which Hervieu decorated its walls and ceilings (the ceiling of the large hall is said to have been very elaborately adorned), disappeared under successive coats of whitewash and then of wall-paper—"a striking exhibition of vandalism," says Mr. Foote, in his Schools of Cincinnati, "as the putting them on these walls was an act of folly ; for, although not works of very high art, they possess too much merit to be defaced." The observations of her son Anthony, the famous novelist, upon his visit to Cincinnati in the winter of 1861-2, will have interest here:
I had some little personal feeling in visiting Cincinnati, because my mother had lived there for some time, and had there been concerned in a commercial enterprise, by which no one, I believe, made any great sum of money. Between thirty and forty years ago she built a Bazaar in Cincinnati, which I was assured by the present owner of the house was at the time of its erection considered to be the great building of the town. It has been sadly eclipsed now, and by no means rears its head p10udly among the great blocks around it. It had become a Physicomedical institute when I was there, and was under the dominion of a quack doctor on one side and of a college of rights-of-women female medical professors on the other. "I believe. sir, no man or woman ever made a dollar in that building ; and as for rent, I don't even expect it." Such was the account given of the unfortunate Bazaar by the present proprietor.
In addition to their pecuniary troubles, sickness afflicted the Trollopes much during their second season here, and finally, seeing that "our Cincinnati speculation for my son would in no way answer our experience," they determined to go back to England. The party left in early March, 1830, and she says, "I believe there was not one of our party who did not experience a sense of pleasure in leaving it. The only regret was that we had ever entered it; for we had wasted health, time, and money there." Her experiences in this city, undoubtedly, had much to do in imparting gall and venom to the celebrated book which she published shortly after her return to the old home.
Dr. Caldwell, a phrenologist, sometimes called in that day "the Spurzheim of America," delivered a course of lectures in the city this year, and created much sensation. Some twenty or thirty citizens were led to form the Phrenological society of Cincinnati, with an elaborate constitution, numerous officers, and other details of equipment ; but it hardly survived beyond the third meeting. Miss Fanny Wright, the famous English Radical and Socialist, also lectured here to crowded houses. She was an intimate friend of Mrs. Trollope and Hervieu, and was just then trying the experiment of colonizing negroes upon a tract called "Nashoba," in Tennessee; which of course proved a failure.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE.
Population of the city this year, twenty-four thousand one hundred and forty-eight; whites twenty-one thousand eight hundred and ninety—males eleven thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, females ten thousand and thirty-five; colored two thousand two hundred and fifty-eight. New buildings, two hundred and seventy. Deaths for the year ending July 1, six hundred and forty-seven, or one in thirty-seven and one-third of the population.
The Washington Ball of this year, February 22d, is said to have been a very brilliant affair.
February 27th General Jackson passed through Cincinnati, on his way from his home in Tennessee to Washington, to be inaugurated as President of the United States. Three steamers were in the Presidential fleet, all crowded with passengers. They reached the landing amid cannon-firing and other demonstrations of applause, passed the city about a quarter of a mile, and then rounded in the stream and swept grandly down to the landing, the escorts falling back a little, to let the steamer with the President first touch the shore. "All the maneuvering," says Mrs. Trollope, who was an eye-witness of it, "was extraordinary well executed, and really beautiful." Carriages were in waiting for the General and his suite; but he walked in a simple, democratic way through the crowd to the hotel, uncovered, though the weather was cold. He was clad in deep mourning, having but lately lost his wife. He remained quietly at the hotel a few hours, while the steamer transacted its business, and then proceeded with it to Pittsburgh.
In the spring of this year, beginning April 13th, the notable public seven-days' debate occurred between the Rev. Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciple Church, and Mr. Robert Owen, of the New Harmony (Indiana) and other communities, in pursuance of Owen's challenge to the Christian ministry that he would show publicly the falsehood of all religions ever propagated, and would undertake to prove all equal, and nearly all equally mischievous. The challenge was accepted by Mr. Campbell, who was then in the prime of his strong powers; and the debate was attended by audiences that thronged to overflowing the spacious Methodist church, which held about one thousand people. It was regulated by a presiding committee, in which were Major Daniel Gano, Judge Burnet, Rev. 0. M. Spencer, Timothy Flint, and other leading citizens. Fifteen sessions for debate were held, and the vote at the close showed that the sympathies of a very large majority of their hearers were still in favor of Christianity. The addresses of the disputants were afterwards published in book form.
A Young Men's Temperance society was organized this year, starting off with about one hundred members.
About the middle of this year the office of the surveyor general of the public lands in the northwest came back to Cincinnati, by the worthy appointment of Gen-' eral William Lytle to that post. Ex-Governor Tiffin, the last previous incumbent, was early removed upon the accession of General Jackson to the Presidency, under the new principle then brought into application in Federal appointments, that "to the victors belong the spoils;" although Dr. Tiffin had held the place most acceptably during the successive administrations of Presidents Madison, Monroe, and J. Q. Adams. On the first of July
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 81
General Lytle visited the office at Chillicothe, exhibited his commission and an order for the delivery of the records, and at once removed the office to Cincinnati. Dr. Tiffin had long been struggling with disease, and was now near his end, closing a long and honorable public career August 9, 1829.
In May, 1829, the city had a visit from Caleb Atwater, of Circleville, the first historian of Ohio and one of the first writers to publish a book upon American antiquities. He was on his way to fulfill some commission for the Government in the far northwest, and 1ecords the following of Cincinnati, in the book which he subsequently published:
In this city are one hundred, at least, mercantile stores, and about twenty churches. Some of the stores do business in a wholesale way, though quite too many of them are occupied by retailers on a small scale. There are a great many taverns and boarding houses. Among the churches, the First and Second Presbyterian, one belonging to the Unitarians, and the Roman Catholics, and perhaps two or three belonging either to the Episcopalians or the Methodists, are the best. There are two museums, in either of which more knowledge of the natural history of the western States can be obtained in a day than can be obtained in any other place in a year. These collections are very well arranged, and kept by persons of taste, science, and politeness. No traveller of learning should ever pass through the city without calling to see them both, and, having once seen them, he will never neglect to see them as often as he visits the place.
There are nine book stores, and a greater number still of printing establishments, that issue newspapers. The two principal publishers of newspapers issue each a daily paper.
The mechanics of this city are numerous and very excellent in their several trades. Manufactures of iron, of wood, of stone, of all the metals indeed, are carried on with zeal, industry and talent. The builders of houses are unrivaled in the rapidity with which they do their work, and they exhibit genius, skill, and taste.
There are nearly sixty lawyers, who, for learning, zeal, fidelity, industry, morality, honor, honesty, and every other good qualification of the heart and head, are equal to a like number of the same honorable and highly useful profession, in any city in the United States.
The number of physicians and surgeons in the city must be, I presume, nearly eighty, who are skillful, learned, and highly respectable in their profession.
There are probably about forty clergymen in the city; and from the morality of the place I give them credit for a considerable degree of usefulness. . .
It will with great ease increase to a population of about fifty thousand inhabitants. Its increase beyond that number depends on so many causes, not yet developed, that human foresight cannot now scan them. It will, however, continue to be the largest town in the State, unless Zanesville or Cleveland should exceed it. [!]
There is but one evil hanging over this city—the price of land is extravagantly high, and so are house and ground rents. Every material used in building is cheap, mechanical labor is low in price, and so is every article of food and raiment.
Main street, for a mile in length from north to south, presents a scene as busy, as bustling, as crowded, and if possible more noisy, especially about the intersection of Fourth street with Main street, and also anywhere near the Ohio river, as can be found in New York. If the ear is not quite so much afflicted with strange cries as in Philadelphia or Baltimore, yet for drumming. and organ-grinding I should suppose some few spots in Main street, Cincinnati, would exceed anything of the sort in the world—at least I should most heartily and charitably hope so.
CHAPTER XII.
CINCINNATI'S FIFTH DECADE.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY.
It was an important decade in the growth and annals of events in the Queen City. The population had grown in the ten years 1820-30, from nine thousand six hundred and forty-two to twenty-four thousand eight hundred and thirty-one, or two hundred and sixty per cent.; it was to continue to grow in this decade in satisfactory ratio, though not relatively so fast, from twenty-four thousand eight hundred and thirty-one to forty-six thousand three hundred and thirty-eight, or eighty-five per cent. The number of new buildings this year was two hundred and five.
The following notices of local improvements are contained in the directory for 1831:
During the past year a new street was opened, extending Lower Market street from Main to Walnut; and both sides of it are now, or soon will be, wholly built up with brick warehouses and other buildings, all of which are beautiful and substantial. The hotel on the corner, where the new street enters Walnut, will be one of the most splendid edifices in the western country. It is five stories high above the basement, and is to be covered with marble columns. The new street has received the name of "Pearl street," and promises to be to Cincinnati what its celebrated namesake is to New York.
Among the best buildings erected in 183o we would mention, in addition to the above, Greene's splendid row on Front street; Cassilly's & Carter's on the corner of Broadway and Front; and Moore's on the southeast corner of Main and Fourth streets. Much more taste has been displayed in the models of private dwellings than heretofore, especially in those erected on Fourth street. Of the public buildings finished during the past year, we would mention the Catholic Atheneum, the Unitarian and the Second Presbyterian churches. The latter is considered by good judges one of the best models of the Doric in the United States. It is of brick, but its front, pillars, and sides are covered with cement, in imitation of marble. The cost of this church was more than twenty thousand dollars. On its cupola has been placed a public clock, which belongs to the city. *
This year the Miami canal was extended from the then head of Main street, where it had stopped temporarily, across Deer creek, which it spanned by a large culvert. The canal commissioners proposed another halt here for a time, and the leasing of the water-power along the borders of the new line. The improvement was finished in July, 1834. The business of the canal was now rapidly increasing. During three months of 1829, the tolls at Cincinnati amounted to but three thousand five hundred and fifteen dollars; while in a single month, the first of navigation in 1831, they aggregated two thousand ninety-five dollars and sixty-five cents.
In the spring of this year a young attorney came to Cincinnati, who was favorably introduced under the name of Salmon P. Chase. He came from Washington, where he had been keeping a classical school for boys. His edition of the Statutes of Ohio, published soon afterwards, with a preliminary sketch of State history, at once gave him wide and permanent fame, and brought him large practice. In 1834 he became solicitor of the Branch Bank of the United States, and also for a city bank. In 1837 he had a very celebrated case, in which he de-
* This church stood on the south side of Fourth street, between Race and Vine, about where the Mitchell & Rammelsberg company now have heir furniture warehouse,
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fended a colored woman, claimed as a slave under the law of 1793. In the same year he made an argument in defense of James G. Birney, indicted for harboring a fugitive slave, that won him great praise, and was also widely noticed.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE.
Some notable men, mare or less identified with the history of Cincinnati, were in public office this year. John McLean was a justice of the supreme court; Peyton S. Symmes register, and Morgan Neville receiver of the land office, which was still maintained here; Micajah Williams was surveyor general, Charles Larabee surveyor of the port of Cincinnati, and Colonel William Piatt paymaster in the army.
Two hundred and fifty new buildings were put up this year. ,Population, twenty-six thousand and seventy-one. Bills of mortality, eight hundred and twenty, or one in thirty-four of the population.
The first macadamized road was built into the city this year, and others speedily followed.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO.
The city made some progress, despite many drawbacks. Three hundred buildings were erected, and the total number in the city was now four thousand and sixteen. The population increased nearly two thousand, or to twenty-eight thousand and fourteen. Nevertheless, it was a sad year for Cincinnati. It was scourged by flood, fire, famine, and cholera. The freshet of the year is memorable in the river and local annals. The Ohio began to rise about the ninth of February, and was at its maximum height on the eighteenth, when it touched the extraordinary level of sixty-two feet above low-water mark. Great suffering and loss of property and in some cases lives were experienced all along the river, but especially at Cincinnati. The whole of the old-time "bottom" was flooded so deep and so far up that the ferry boats landed at the corner of Main and Pearl streets. The Mill creek bridge was swept off; and that over Deer creek badly damaged. Thirty-five squares were inundated, many buildings damaged or wrecked, or swept off bodily, and thousands of people were turned out of house and home. Two lives were lost in the raging waters. A town meeting was held February 15, and measures of relief to the distressed and homeless were devised. Vigilance committees to prevent theft and wanton destruction of property, also committees of relief and of shelter, were appointed. All public buildings, school-houses, the basements of churches, and every available place of refuge, were surrendered to the refugees, and relief afforded as rapidly as possible. Benefits were given the sufferers by Mr. Letton of the Museum, Mr. Frank, with his gallery of paintings, Mr. Brown, of the amphitheatre, and the Beethoven society, which gave a concert of sacred music Many weeks elapsed before, the waters having subsided, the city below Third street resumed its wonted aspect, and then many injured buildings or desolated spots told of the ruin that had been wrought.
Most of the provision stores and groceries were then kept in the drowned districts; and few had time to remove their stocks before the flood reached them. There was consequently a scarcity of food, and a partial famine added to the miseries of the situation. Mr. L'Hommedieu says of this and other calamities of the year.
The greater portion of flour and other provisions had been kept below high-water mark. Some few, more successful than others, had succeeded in raising their stocks of flour to upper stories. But, then, what exorbitant prices they demanded, and would have obtained but for the denunciation of an independent press I Later in the year, and following the fire, flood and famine, came the dreaded pestilence, the Asiatic cholera, which carried more of our population to their graves than have any of its visitations since, notwithstanding our then small population of twenty-five thousand.
One of the results of the cholera was a large number of orphans. The ladies of Cincinnati found an occasion for their efforts in caring for the unfortunates. With funds placed in their hands by the Masonic lodges, and others of the city, they founded the Cincinnati orphan asylum. The city gave them the use of a building on the ground now occupied for the beautiful Lincoln park.
The great fire occurred the early part of the year, and devastated the tract from below Third street to the Commercial bank.
The cholera came on the thirtieth of September, and staid for thirteen months. The board of health for some time denied the presence of Asiatic cholera, but on the tenth. of October published an official list of deaths from that cause. In that month died here four hundred and twenty-three persons—over half of all who fell from the scourge during its prevalence in the city. Forty-one died in one day—the twenty-first of October. The dreadful epidemic continued until late in the year, and was renewed the next season. Says a paragraph in the Life of Bishop Morris:
The city, during the prevalence of this dreadful epidemic, presented a mournful aspect. Thousands of citizens were absent in the country; very many were closely confined by personal affliction or the demands of sick friends; hundreds were numbered among the dead; the transient floating population had entirely disappeared; the country people, in terror, stood aloof; business was almost wholly suspended; the tramp of hurrying feet was no longer heard on the streets; the din of the city was hushed, and every day appeared as a Sabbath. Instead, however, of the sound of church-going bells and the footsteps of happy throngs hastening to the house of God, were heard the shrieks of terror-stricken victims of the fell disease, the groans of the dying, and the voices of lamentation. For weeks funeral processions might be seen at any hour, from early morning to late at night. All classes of people were stricken down in this fearful visitation. Doctors, ministers, lawyers, merchants and mechanics, the old and the young, the temperate and the intemperate, the prudent and the imprudent, were alike victims. Seventy-five members of the Cincinnati station died that year, and fifty of them were marked on the church records as cholera cases.
This year, on the fourth day of November, was to occur the semi-centennial celebration of the temporary occupation opposite the mouth of the Licking, by a portion of General George Rogers Clark's force, in 1782, as agreed by the officers and men at that time. General Simon Kenton, Major James Galloway, of Xenia, John McCaddon, of Newark, and a few others, were still living, and they caused extensive advertisement of the proposed celebration to be made in the western papers, for several months beforehand. It was intended, on the third or fifth of November (the fourth coming on Sunday this year), among other observances, to lay the corner-stone of a suitable monument at the intersection of several streets on the site of old Fort Washington ; but when the day came, cholera was stalking with awful presence
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 83
through every street and by-way of Cincinnati, and only a handful of the venerable survivors met in the city, sadly exchanged greetings and reminiscences, uttered their laments for the honored dead, and partook of a dinner at the expense of the city. The following address, prepared by General Kenton, to awaken interest in the occasion, will still be read with pleasure:
ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF THE WESTERN COUNTRY.
The old pioneers, citizen-soldiers and those who were engaged with us in the regular service in the conquest of the western country from the British and savages fifty years ago, have all been invited to attend with the survivors of General George Rogers Clark's army of 1782, who purpose the celebration of a western anniversary, according to their promise made on the ground the fourth day of November in that year. Those also who were engaged in like service subsequently, and in the late war, have been invited to attend and join with us in the celebration on the said fourth of November, at old Fort Washington, now Cincinnati. I propose that we meet at Covington, Kentucky, on the third, the fourth being Sabbath, to attend divine service, on Monday meet our friends on the ground where the old fort stood, and then take a final adieu, to meet no more until we shall all meet in a world of spirits.
Fellow-citizens of the West! This is a meeting well worthy your very serious consideration. The few survivors of that race who are now standing on the verge of the grave, view with anxious concern the welfare of their common country, for which they fought against British oppression and savage cruelty to secure to you, our posterity, the blessings of liberty, religion, and law. We will meet and we will tell you what we have suffered to secure to you these inestimable privileges. We will meet, and, if you will listen, we will admonish you "face to face," to be as faithful as we have been, to transmit those blessings unimpaired to your posterity; that America may long, and we trust forever, remain a free, sovereign, independent, and happy country. We look to our fellow-citizens in Kentucky and Ohio, near the place of meeting, to make provision for their old fathers of the West. We look to our patriot captains of our steamboats, and patriotic stage contractors and companies, and our generous innkeepers, to make provision for the going and returning to Cincinnati, from' all parts of the West. We know that they will deem it an honor to accommodate the gray-headed veterans of the West, who go to meet their companions for the last time; for this may be the only opportunity they will ever have to serve their old fathers, the pioneers and veterans of the West.
Fellow-citizens! Being one of the first, after Colonel Daniel Boone, who aided in the conquest of Kentucky and the West, I am called upon to address you. My heart melts on such an occasion. I look forward to the contemplated meeting with melancholy pleasure. It has caused tears to flow in copious showers. I wish to see once more, before I die, my few surviving friends. My solemn promise, made fifty years ago, binds me to meet them. I ask not for myself ; but you may find in our assembly some who have never received any pay or pension, who have sustained the cause of their country equal to any other service, who in the decline of life are poor. Then, you prosperous sons of the West, forget not those old and gray-headed veterans on this occasion. Let them return to their families with some little manifestation of your kindness to cheer their hearts. I add my prayer. May kind Heaven grant us a clear sky, fair and pleasant weather, a safe journey, and a happy meeting, and smile upon us and our families, and bless us and our nation on the approaching occasion.
SIMON KENTON.
Urbana, Ohio, 1832.
This city was visited this year by Colonel Thomas Hamilton, author of Cyril Thornton and other popular novels of that day, who made the following notes upon Cincinnati in his anonymous and agreeable work upon The Men and Manners of America:
In two days we reached Cincinnati, a town of nearly thirty thousand inhabitants, finely situated on a slope ascending from the river. The streets and buildings are handsome, and certainly far superior to what might be expected in a situation six hundred miles from the sea and standing on ground which, till lately, was considered the extreme limit of civilization. It is, apparently, a place of considerable trade. The quay was covered with articles of traffic; and there are a thousand indications of activity and business which strike the senses of a traveller, but which he would find it difficult to describe. Having nothing better to do, I took a stroll about the town, and its first favorable impression was not diminished by closer inspection. Many of the streets would have been considered handsome in New York or Philadelphia; and, in the private dwellings, considerable attention had been paid to external decoration.
The most remarkable object in Cincinnati, however, is a large Graeco-Moresco-Gothic- Chinese-looking building, an architectural compilation of prettiness of all sorts, the effect of which is eminently grotesque. Our attention was immediately arrested by this extraordinary apparition, which could scarcely have been more out of place had it been tossed on the earth by some volcano in the moon. While we stood there, complimenting the gorgeousness of its effect and speculating "what aspect bore the man" to whom the inhabitants of these central regions could have been indebted for so brilliant and fantastic an outrage on all acknowledged principles of taste, a very pretty and pleasant-looking girl came out and invited us to enter. We accordingly did so, and found everything in the interior of the building had been finished on a scale quite in harmony with its external magnificence.
This was the Trollopean Bazaar, of course, which received many similar notices from travellers, especially foreigners.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE.
Population of the city, twenty-seven thousand six hundred and forty-five. Votes, three thousand nine hundred and ninety-five. New buildings, three hundred and twenty-one—two hundred brick, one hundred and twenty-one frame.
The cholera, as before stated, continued into this year. Its first re-appearance was about the middle of April. The most destructive month was July, when one hundred and seventy-six died. The total mortality from this visitation of the pestilence, from September, 1832, to September, 1833, inclusive, was eight hundred and thirteen. The average deaths per day this year were far less than in 1832, but the disease staid four times as long, or nearly six months.
June 26th, the powder-mill owned by David D. Wade exploded, killing six persons.
On the eighth of August died Dr. James M. Stoughton, one of the pioneer physicians.
December 26th, that being then supposed to be the right anniversary (the forty-fifth) of the landing of the Losantiville pioneers, the occasion was celebrated by a large party of natives of Ohio—chiefly, of course, young men, with many invited guests. Major Daniel Gano was president of the affair; William R. Morris, first vice-president; Henry E. Spencer, second vice-president; Moses Symmes, third vice-president. The address was delivered by Joseph Longworth, esq.; poems were recited by Peyton S. Symmes and Charles D. Drake, afterwards United States Senator from Missouri; and the chaplains were the Revs. J. B. Finley and William Burke. The committee of arrangements included a number of prominent young Queen Citizens of that day: George Williamson, William R. Morris, L. M. Gwynne, J. M. Foote, Alfred S. Reeder, G. W. Sinks, Joseph Long-worth, Daniel Gano, Henry E. Spencer, M. N. McLean, James C. Hall, George W. Burnet, R. A. Whetstone, and W. M. Corry. The banquet was given in the Commercial Exchange, on the river bank, upon the site of the first cabin built in Losantiville. The dinner was prepared almost exclusively from native productions, and
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only wine produced in the vicinity was imbibed. This was presented by Nicholas Longworth, in honor of the old pioneers and their descendants. Among the unique viands on the table was a roast composed of two uncommonly fat raccoons. Responses to toasts were made by James C. Ludlow, son of Colonel Israel Ludlow; by Generals Harrison and Findlay, Majors Gano and Symmes, Judge Goodenow, Nicholas Longworth, and Samuel J. Browne, the latter then the oldest Englishman in the State. A part of General Harrison's address will be found in the military chapter, in the first division of this book.
Another foreigner of some note, Mr. Godfrey T. Vigne, visited the city in July, and thus recorded his impressions of it in his book on Six Months in America:
In appearance it differs from most of the larger towns in the United States, on account of the great improvement that has taken place in the color of the houses, which, instead of being of the usual bright. staring red, are frequently of a white gray or a yellowish tint, and display a great deal of taste and just ornament. The public buildings are not large, but very neat and classical; I admired the Second Presbyterian church, which is a very pretty specimen of the Doric. The streets are handsome and the shops have a very fashionable air.
The principal trade of Cincinnati is in provisions. Immense quantities of corn and grain are sent down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans. Part of it is consumed by the sugar planters, who are supposed to grow no corn, and part is sent coastwise to Mobile, or exported to Havana and the West Indies generally.
Cincinnati has displayed more wisdom than her opposite neighbor in Kentucky. A speculative system of banking was carried on about the same time, and was attended with the same results as those I have before noticed when speaking of that State. Credit was not to be obtained, commerce was at an end, and grass was growing in the streets of Cincinnati. But the judicature, with equal justice and determination, immediately enforced by its decisions the resumption of cash payments. Many of the leading families in the place were, of course, ruined, and at present there are not above five or six persons in Cincinnati who have been able to regain their former eminence as men of business. But it was a sacrifice of individuals for the good of the community, and fortune only deserted the speculators in order. to attend upon the capitalists, who quickly made their appearance from the Eastern States, and have raised the city to its present pitch of prosperity.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR.
Votes this year in the city, four thousand and seven; new buildings, three hundred.
The cholera renewed its appearance, but less violently than in 1833. It prevailed to some extent, however, through all the warm season, to the sad depression of business and social affairs. Everything, in fact, was stagnant. It is said that the town had never before appeared so dull and apparently lifeless and inert as at the close of this summer. Property was sacrificed at low rates, and business was at times almost at a standstill. It was the last year of the visitation, however, until 1849, fifteen years afterwards.
The trustees of the Lane seminary had this year a serious difference of opinion with a number of their antislavery students, which resulted in a formidable secession from the school and an appeal to the public. A fuller account will be given in our historical sketch of that institution.
Cincinnati had some visitors of unusual interest this year. One who is still remembered tenderly and affectionately by the older residents, who were young men at the time, was Thomas S. Grimke, a prominent member of the bar of Charleston, South Carolina, who came upon invitation to deliver the annual oration before the literary societies of Miami university, Oxford. While in Cincinnati he addressed the college of teachers, a literary society called the Inquisition, and the Temperance society, always speaking wisely and well; and sometimes rising into rare eloquence. He was here only a single week, yet in that time won universal recognition, love, and reverence, and was overwhelmed with social attentions. Remaining in Ohio a few weeks longer, he was overtaken by death while visiting in Madison county, October 12, 1834, at the age of forty-eight years; and with him expired, as many believed, the most brilliant intellectual light in the southern States.
Late this year came another American of genius, Charles Fenno Hoffman, author of that musical drinking song so much parodied by the temperance societies—
Sparkling and bright in its liquid light,
Is the wine our goblets gleam in;
With hue as red as the rosy bed
The bee delights to dream in—
but unhappily during most of the last half-century an inmate of an insane asylum in Pennsylvania. Some of his delightful paragraphs will be found under other heads in this book. One only is quoted here:
The population of the place is about thirty thousand. Among them you may see very few but what look comfortable and contented, though the town does not wear the brisk and busy air observable at Louisville. Transportation is so easy along the great western waters, that you see no lounging poor people about the large town, as when business languishes in one place and it is difficult to find occupation, they are off at once to another, and shift their quarters whither the readiest means of living invite. them. What would most strike you in the streets of Cincinnati would be the number of pretty faces and stylish figures one meets in the morning. A walk through Broadway here rewards one hardly less than to promenade its New York namesake. I have had more than one opportunity of seeing these western beauties by candle-light ; and the evening display brought no disappointment to the morning promise. Nothing can be more agreeable than the society which one meets with in the gay and elegantly furnished drawing-rooms of Cincinnati. The materials being f10m every State in the Union, there is a total want of caste, a complete absence of settishness (if I may use the word). If there be any characteristic that might jar upon your taste and habits, it is, perhaps, a want of that harmonious blending of light and shade, that repose both of character and manner, which, distinguishing the best circles in our Atlantic cities, so often sinks into insipidity or runs into a ridiculous imitation of the impertinent nonchalance which the pseudo-pictures of English "high life" in the novels of the day impose upon our simple republicans as the height of elegance and refinement.
About the same time appeared for a few days upon Cincinnati streets a shrewd foreign observer and representative of the French Government, Michel Chevalier, whose book of travels in the United States included the following pleasant notices:
The architectural appearance of Cincinnati is very nearly the same with that of the new quarters of the English towns. The houses are generally of brick, most commonly three stories high, with the windows shining with cleanliness, calculated each for a single family, and regularly placed along well paved and spacious streets, sixty-six feet in width. Here and there the prevailing uniformity is interrupted by some more imposing edifice, and there are some houses of hewn stone in very good taste, real palaces in miniature, with neat porticos, inhabited by the aristocratical portion of Mrs. Trollope's hog merchants, and several very pretty mansions surrounded with gardens and terraces. Then there are the common school-houses, where girls and boys together learn reading, writing, cyphering, and geography, under the simultaneous direction of a master and mistress. In another direction you see a
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small, plain church, without sculpture or painting, without colored glass or Gothic arches, but snug, well carpeted, and well warmed by stoves. In Cincinnati, as everywhere else in the United States, there is a great number of churches.
I met with an incident in Cincinnati, which I shall long remember. I had observed at the hotel table a man of about the medium height, stout and muscular, and of about the age of fifty years, yet with the active step and lively air of youth. I had been struck with his open and cheerful expression, the amenity of his manners, and a certain air of command which appeared through his plain dress. "That is," said my friend, "General Harrison, clerk of the Cincinnati court of common pleas." "What! General Harrison of the Tippecanoe and the Thames?" "The same; the ex-general; the conqueror of Tecumseh and Proctor; the avenger of our disasters on the Raisin and at Detroit; the ex-governor of the territory of Indiana, the ex-senator in Congress, the ex-minister of the United States to one of the South American republics. He has grown old in the service of his country, he has passed twenty years of his life in those fierce wars with the Indians, in which there was less glory to be won, but more dangers to be encountered, than at Rivoli and Austerlitz. He is now poor, with a numerous family, neglected by the Federal Government, although yet vigorous, because he has the independence to think for himself. As the opposition is in the majority here, his friends have bethought themselves of coming to his relief by removing the clerk of the court of common pleas, who was a Jackson man, and giving him the place, which is a lucrative one, as a sort of retiring pension. His friends in the east talk of making him President of the United States. Meanwhile we have made him clerk of an inferior.court." After a pause my informant added, "at this wretched table you may see another candidate for the Presidency, who seems to have a better chance than General Harrison; it is Mr. McLean, now one of the judges of the supreme court of the United States."
The town was also visited, in the course of the year, by two clerical gentlemen from abroad, delegates from the British Congregational Union—the Rev. Drs. Andrew Reed and James Matheson, on a tour in behalf of Protestant 1eligion, which they afterwards described in A Narration of the Visit to the American Churches. We extract the following concerning Cincinnati:
There is a great spirit of enterprise in this town; and, with an ardent pursuit of business, there is a desire for domestic comfort and a thirst for scientific improvement, not equaled in such circumstances. They have libraries and good reading societies; they have lectures on art and science, which are well attended. They sustain a "scientific quarterly" and a "monthly magazine," with a circulation of four thousand; and they have newspapers without end. Education is general here; the young people, and even the children, appear to appreciate it. They regard it as the certain and necessary means of advancement. I overheard two fine children, in the street, remark as follows. The younger one, about nine years old, speaking of her sister, said, with concern, "Do you know, Caroline says she will not go to school any more?' "Silly girl!" replied the elder, about thirteen; "she will live to repent of that !" It must be admitted that this is a very wholesome state of feeling.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE.
Population, thirty-one thousand. New buildings, three hundred and forty. Bills of mortality, nine hundred and twenty-six, or one in thirty-four of the population.
The cholera did not 1eturn this year, and as soon as it was 1easonably certain that the scourge had departed, business and public and social affairs in Cincinnati awakened to more vigorous life than ever. Mr. Mansfield says, in the Drake Biography:
A season of extraordinary activity ensued. The mind sprung up elastic from the pressure, and all was accomplished that mind could do. Enterprise, business, growth, the reality of active energy, and the ideality of a growing and prosperous future, sprang up, as the consequence of an elastic and invigorated public mind. The general trade of the country had been safe and profitable— hence there was little timidity to strengthen prudence or restrain extravagance. In the east commenced that series of enormous speculations whose centre was at New York, and which, in some respects, has never been surpassed in this country. It spread to the west, but prevailed comparatively little at Cincinnati. The speculations here were on a small scale, and it is doubtful whether they did more than give a necessary and healthful. excitement to the business community, which had so long been in a dull, quiescent state. Certain it is, that Cincinnati now owes half her growth and prosperity to plans of public works and usefulness then formed and undertaken.
The public works named by Mr. Mansfield as among the local projects of this year were the great Southern railroad 1oute to Charleston; the Cincinnati & St. Louis railroad, by Lawrenceburgh ; the Little Miami railroad, which was chartered the next March; the Cincinnati, Columbus, & Cleveland railway, also chartered the next year; the Mad River & Lake Erie, and Covington & Lexington railroads; and the Whitewater canal. All these works, though not in all cases under these names, were afterwards built.
April 4th, a grand celebration was held at the First Presbyterian church, of the forty seventh anniversary of the settlement of Ohio, where William M. Corry pronounced one of his finest orations. The dinner was at the Commercial Exchange, and was principally from the products of Ohio, with no wine or ardent spirits whatever.
On the eighteenth of the same month, the Young Men's Mercantile library association was founded. Its history will be duly told elsewhere. Forty-four years afterwards Mr. John W. Ellis, of New York, one of the illustrious forty-five who founded this noble institution, wrote a letter at some length to Mr. Newton, the librarian, containing 1eminiscences of 1835 which will bear transcription here:
It must be borne in mind that Cincinnati at that period, in 1835, compared with the present Cincinnati, was a very insignificant place in respect to wealth, population, business, and everything which constitutes a modern city. The population then was less than forty thousand. Its wholesale business was done entirely by the Ohio river, and by the canal as far north as Dayton; but for the interior trade almost entirely by wagons. For the size of the place, it had a respectable wholesale business, extending in a small way to the upper and lower Mississippi, along the Ohio, from its mouth as far east as what is now West Virginia; but a large proportion of the business with the interior in dry goods, g10ceries, and the other numerous wants of an interior community was supplied by wagons, which brought in their products and carried out merchandise. There were no railroads whatever at that period in the west. The grocery trade was supplied entirely by steamboats from New Orleans. Lighter goods were wagoned by the National road, over the Alleghany mountains, to Wheeling or Pittsburgh, and thence by steamboat down the river. When the water in the upper Ohio was low, these goods were brought from New York by the Hudson river and Erie canal to Buffalo, thence by lake and Ohio canal to Portsmouth, and thence down the river. All these means of conveyance will seem now to the active young men of Cincinnati as very primitive.
Nearly all the retail business of the city was done on Main street, from Third street to Sixth street; the wholesale business almost entirely on the lower end of Main street and on Front street facing the river. Pearl street had just been opened, but extended no further west than Walnut street, and a few wholesale stores had begun on that square. Fourth, Walnut, Vine, and other streets, now filled with an active business, were then the seat of residences, nearly all built with detached houses, surrounded with shrubbery, and the streets lined with trees. Central avenue, then Western row, and the Miami canal on the north, were the boundaries of population.
An article contributed by B. D. (Benjamin Drake?) to the Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, also helps to the understanding of Cincinnati this year. More than ordinary attention Was given to the Southern
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railroad project, as was seen in our chapter on railroads. The manufactures of the year were estimated at five millions. With Newport and Corrington, the population was thirty-five thousand. Exports were estimated at six millions or more. There were fifty stages and sixty mails a week; the steamboat arrivals were two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven; the imports included ninety thousand barrels of flour and fifty-five thousand of whiskey. The public improvements in hand were the extension of the Miami canal from Dayton to the Maumee bay, near Toledo, a part to be completed early the next summer; the macadamized turnpike from Chillicothe to Cincinnati; extensions of the Cincinnati, Columbia, and Wooster, and the Cincinnati, Lebanon, and Springfield turnpikes; the Cincinnati and Harrison turnpike, to be finished early in 1836, and extend to Brookville, Indiana; the Whitewater canal, the Little Miami railroad, etc.
Many of the houses erected this year would do credit to any city in the Union. A number of warehouses were put up; also St. Paul's church, two banking-houses on Third street, and ten or twelve large, commodious, and for the time elegant school buildings, "contributing in a high degree to the advancement of our beautiful city," says Mr. B. D. A population of one hundred thousand was predicted by 1850—which prophecy, glowing as it might have seemed, was exceeded by nearly sixteen thousand. Real estate is mentioned by B. D. as lower in price, in Cincinnati and its Kentucky suburbs, than in any other city of the Union having population, business, and permanent local advantages of equal magnitude.
The Ohio Anti-Slavery society was formed this year, with headquarters in Cincinnati, and began the issue of a weekly paper, of which we shall hear more in 1836. By 1840 the society was employing nine travelling agents and lecturers, and had become a great powe1 in political agitation.
December 11th, John W. Cowan was hanged in Barr's woods, near the spot where the Atlantic & Great Western railway depot was afterwards situated, for the brutal murder of his wife and two children on Smith street.
In the summer of this year the city was honored with a visit from the renowned English authoress and thinker, Miss Harriet Martineau. She spent some time here; and in her subsequent book of Retrospect of Western Travel gave to the city the ablest chapter, in the judgment of the present writer, that has ever been written upon it. We make room for a few short extracts:
There is ample room on the platform for a city as large as Philadelphia, without encroaching at all on the hillsides. The inhabitants are already consulting as to where the capitol shall stand whenever the nation shall decree the removal of the general government beyond the mountains. If it were not for the noble building at Washington, this removal would probably take place soon, perhaps after the removal of the great southern railroad. It seems rather absurd to call senators and representatives to Washington from Missouri and Louisiana, while there is a place on the great rivers which would save them half the journey, and suit almost everybody else just as well, and many much better. The peril to health at Washington in the winter season is great, and the mild and equable temperature of Cincinnati is an important circumstance in the case.
From this, the Montgomery road, there is a view of the city and surrounding country which defies description. It was of that melting beauty which dims the eyes and fills the heart—that magical combination of all elements—of hill, wood, lawn, river, with a picturesque city steeped in evening sunshine, the impression of which can never be lost nor communicated. We ran up a knoll and stood under a clump of bushes to gaze; and went down, and returned again and again, with the feeling that if we lived upon the spot we could nevermore see it look so beautiful.
We soon entered a somewhat different scene, passing the slaughterhouses on Deer creek, the place where more thousands of hogs in a year than I dare to specify, are destined to breathe their last. Deer creek, pretty as its name is, is little more than the channel th10ugh which their blood runs away. The division of labor is brought to as much perfection in these slaughter-houses as in the pin manufactories of Birmingham. So I was told. Of course I did not verify the statement by attending the process.
A volume might presently be filled with descriptions of our drives about the environs of Cincinnati., There are innumerable points of view whence the city, with its masses of buildings and its spires, may be seen shining through the limpid atmosphere, like a cloud-city in the evening sky. There are many spots where it is a relief to lose the river f10m the view, and to be shut in among the brilliant green hills, which are more than can be numbered. But there is one drive which I almost wonder the inhabitants do not take every summer day, to the Little Miami bottoms. We continued eastward along the bank of the river for seven miles, the whole scenery of which is beautiful; but the unforgotten spot was the level about the mouth of the Little Miami river, the richest of plains or level valleys, studded with farmhouses, enlivened with clearings, and kept primitive in appearance by the masses of dark forest which filled up all the unoccupied spaces. Upon this scene we looked down from a great height, a Niphates of the New World. On entering a little pass between two grassy hills, crested with wood, we were desired to alight. I ran up the ascent to the tight, and was startled at finding myself on the top of a preeipice. Far beneath me ran the Little Miami, with a narrow, white, pebble strand, arrow-like trees springing over from the brink of the precipice, and the long evening shadows making the current as black as night, while the green, up to the very lips of the ravine, was of the sunniest, in the last flood of western light. For more reasons than one I should prefer Cincinnati as residence to any other large city of the United States. Of these reasons not the least would be that the "Queen of the West" is enthroned in a region of wonderful and inexhaustible beauty.
Another English traveller, the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, was also here this year, and made the following notice in his Travels in North America :
On the last day of spring I arrived at Cincinnati, that precocious daughter of the west, that seems to have sprung, like the fabled goddess of war and wisdom, into existence in the full panoply of manufacturing and commercial armor.
I have been in company with ten or twelve of the resident families, and have not seen one single instance of rudeness, vulgarity, or incivility ; while the shortness of the invitations and absence of constraint and display render the society more agreeable, in some respects, than that of more fashionable cities. If the proposition stated is merely this, " that the manners of Cincinnati are not so polished as those of the best circles of London, Paris, or Berlin ; that her business, whether culinary or displayed in carriages, houses, or amusements, are also of a lower caste," I suppose none would be so absurd as to deny it. I hope few would be weak enough gravely to inform the world of so self-evident a truth ; but I will, without fear of contradiction, assert that the history of the world does not produce a parallel to Cincinnati in rapid growth of wealth and population. Of all the cities that have been founded by mighty sovereigns or na:ions, with an express view to their becoming the capitals of empires, there is not one that, in twenty-seven [forty-seven] years from its foundation, could show such a mass of manufacture, enterprise, population, wealth, and social comfort, as that of which I have given a short and imperfect outline in the last two or three pages, and which owes its magnitude to no adscititious favor or encouragement, but to the judgment with which the situation was chosen, and to the admirable use which its inhabitants have made thereof.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX.
Population estimated at thirty-eight thousand—probably somewhat too large. Votes four thousand three hundred and thirty-five. New buildings, three hundred and sixty-five. Commerce, eight million one hundred thousand•dollars. The public schools, the mercantile library,
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and the leading public charities, had well begun their organic existence. A general committee upon internal improvements was appointed at a public meeting of citizens, which proved a very useful committee. Upon it were such men as Micajah T. and John S. Williams, E. D. Mansfield, Dr. Daniel Drake, Robert Buchanan, John C. Wright, George Graham, and Alexander McGrew. Mortality of the year, nine hundred and twenty-eight. or about one in forty.
This, pretty nearly the middle year of Cincinnati's history, was a tolerably eventful one. On the eleventh of April a mob rose against the colored people, and set fire to a number of their houses in a locality then known as "the swamp," just below Western Row, now Central avenue, at the then foot of West Sixth street. Another and more serious emeute occurred in July, which resulted in the destruction of the Philanthropist newspaper office. This paper had been started by Mr. Birney in 1834 at New Richmond, Clermont county, where it had been repeatedly threatened, but never mobbed; and was 1emoved to Cincinnati, on the encouragement of friends of the anti-slavery cause there, about three months before its destruction. A meeting was held in July, composed largely from the most respectable classes in the city, largely young men, at which resolutions were passed that no abolition paper should be published or distributed in the town. On the fourteenth of that month, the publication of the Philanthropist still continuing, the printing office was violently entered by a mob, and the press and materials, which were the property of Mr A. Pugh, the printer, afterwards of the Chronicle, were defaced, "pied,' and partially destroyed. Even this did not daunt the fearless editor, and the publication went on. On the twenty-third a great meeting of citizens was held at the Lower Market, "to declare whether they will permit the publication or distribution of abolition papers in this city." A committee was appointed, which requested the executive committee of the anti-slavery society to stop the publication. They refused; when the committee published the correspondence, adding remarks which deprecated a resort to violence. Nevertheless, on Saturday night, July 30th, a large party, composed, like the aforesaid meeting, mainly from the more respectable classes in the city and of young men, gathered on the corner of Main and Seventh streets, held a short consultation, then marched down to the office, only two squares distant, effected an entrance and again seized the press and materials, but this time carried them out in part, scattered the type in the street, smashed the press, and completely dismantled the office. Part of the press was dragged down Main street and thrown in the river. The mob even went to Pugh's house to find other materials supposed to be there; but found none, and offered no violence. The dwellings of Birney, Donaldson, and other prominent abolitionists were rather noisily visited, but no mischief done to them. It then returned to Main street, proposing to pile the 1emaining contents of the office in the street; but was dissuaded, as neighboring buildings might be fired by the blaze. Retiring up Main street, a proposition was made to mob the office of the Gazette, whose editor, Mr. Charles Hammond, had not altogether pleased the malcontents by his course; but better counsels prevailed. An attack was made on the residences of some of the blacks in Church alley; but two guns were fired at the assailants, and they withdrew in disorder. A rally and second charge were made after a time, when the houses were found abandoned by the negroes, were entered and their contents destroyed. Some weeks after, upon the return of E. D. Mansfield from the Knoxville railroad convention, he and Mr. Hammond, Salmon P. Chase, and a few others, determined to hold an afternoon meeting at the court house, to consider the outrage. It was crowded; sundry speeches were made; a large committee was appointed to report resolutions; but, after all, nothing was done except to condemn mobs in general terms, regret the recent occurrence, and commend the plan of the American Colonization society as "the only method of getting clear of slavery." After the death, in September, 1880, of the Hon. William M. Corry, a tribute was paid to his memory in the Cincinnati Commercial, by ex-Governor Charles Anderson. In it occurred the following paragraph, which we take pleasure in embalming for posterity in the pages of this history:
All Cincinnati was a10used in 1836 into a wild ferocity towards the great Abolitionist, James G. Birney, esq. He was a scholar, orator, gentleman, Christian, and philanthropist, if ever these sentiments did centre in any one man. But his paper, published from the corner of Main and Fifth streets, was universally esteemed and denounced as a most pestilent nuisance to the city, the State, and the Nation. And doubtless, in the morbid and reckless state of the public feeling in the southern States, such an issue f10m Cincinnati did operate injuriously against the business and property of the citizens, which was based mainly upon their southern trade. A public meeting was therefore held in the court house for the denunciation, warning, and, if necessary, the expulsion of so great a culprit. Every man of influence or property in Cincinnati, save one alone, was directly or indirectly a party to this outrage upon free thought, free speech and a free press. That single man was William M. Corry. He alone, amidst the general obloquy and indignation, bared his brave breast to this popular tempest of the combined plutocracy and mobocracy of the whole city, and ably defended Mr. Birney's rights. It was in vain. His office was publicly pillaged. His press was smashed into splinters. His types were sown broadcast from the market place through Main street and into the Ohio river. He was driven into exile to Buffalo.
May 30th occurred the first parade of the Cincinnati Gray's; and on the fourteenth of June a volunteer company under Captain James Allen, editor of the Cincinnati Republican, departed to join General Houston's army and aid in the struggle for Texan independence. On the sixth of March the subscription books for the Little Miami railroad were opened; and on the twentieth of February the city, also Newport and Covington, were illuminated in honor of the projected Cincinnati & Charleston railroad, which was soon temporarily defeated, by the refusal of the Kentucky legislature to grant right of way through the State.
On the thirteenth of January began the memorable debate between the Rev. Alexander Campbell and Bishop Purcell, which was afterwards published and extensively circulated. February 23d died Peter Williams, of Delhi, the pioneer mail carrier from Cincinnati through the wildernesses. General Jackson visited the city March 18th, and was received with great acclamation by admir-
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ing throngs. William Barr, a very prominent old resident, died March 21st. On the 24th of that month the city debt amounted to two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN.
New buildings this year, three hnndred and five, notwithstanding it was a year of great financial disaster, Tye were five thousand nine hundred and eighty-one house in the city. Mr. E. D. Mansfield wrote long subsequently: "Just after the convention of 1837, say up to 1848, the growth of Cincinnati continued with great rapidity. Strange as it may seem, the constant depression and want of money did not impede building; on the contrary, it aided Cincinnati. For several years the city grew rapidly." The deaths this year numbered nine hundred and sixty-eight, or about one in thirty-nine.
On the third of May the first loan for local improvements was voted by the city, to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars.
January 6th, John Washburn was hanged upon a scaffold erected at the junction of the Walnut Hills and Reading roads, for the murder upon the same spot, for money, of an inoffensive old man named Beaver. Afterwards, June 3rd, Hoover and Davis were executed for complicity in the same murder; and Byron Cooley, on the twenty-fifth of November, for killing John Rambo. It was a great year for capital punishments.
October 28th, a monument to the memory of William M. Millan was dedicated by Nova Caesarea Harmony Lodge No. 2, upon an eminence on the farm of William M. Corry, esq., then two and a quarter miles from Cincinnati, near the Reading turnpike, in a graveyard designated by Mr. McMillan before his death. A eulogy was pronounced by Mr. Corry, which was published in pamphlet form, and widely complimented. The monument was afterwards removed to Spring Grove cemetery, where it now stands. It is of grey freestone, in the psuendo-Doric order, and surmounted by a Grecian urn.
Some observations made upon Cincinnati this year by a garrulous American traveller, Professor Frederick Hall, M.D., in his Letters from the East and from the West, may fittingly be reproduced here:
Perhaps, I might give you a juster idea of the appearance of Cincinnati by comparison. You cannot have forgotten how Genoa appeared to us, as seen from the point where our steamboat anchored or from that where the American ship-of-war, the Potomac, was stationed, farther out in the bay. The view was enrapturing. Our eyes were riveted to it. We had never seen its parallel. Rightly do the Italians, thought we, style Genoa 'La Superba.' Here, we could not help imagining, Vespasian took from Nature the model of his Colosseum which he commenced at Rome. The arena of his, often saturated with human blood, uselessly, wickedly shed, represents this narrow, flat plain, overspread with marble houses and palaces and churches, and all the pomp and bustle of a populous and magnificent town. The sloping galleries of the Roman Colosseum are a miniature representation of the lofty and ragged Appenines which form the semicircular back-grounds of the city, and on which are perched many a sumptuous mansion, many a terraced garden, many an humble cottage, and many a moss-clad ruin.
Were you here, I would conduct you across the Ohio river in the convenient steam ferry-boat, lead you to a spot half a mile from the water's edge, and there ask you to take a deliberate survey of Cincinnati and of the country back of it. You would, I think, at once say that it bears no slight resemblance to the native city of Columbus. The high lands here, though in some degree similar, are less lofty, less rocky, and exhibit fewer human habitations; but they are far richer,
their forms vastly more variegated and more beautiful. You do not, it is true, here see anything like the towering light-house of Genoa, or the Cathedral of Lorenzo, or the ' palazzo ducal;' nor are you to expect it. Consider the difference in the ages of the two cities. The one is an infant at the breast; the other wears bleached locks. The one is not yet fifty years old; the other is two thousand. But, old as she is, her population does not exceed eighty-five thousand.. That of Cincinnati has already attained to near half of that number; and what will it be two thousand years hence, if it continues to increase, as it has done during the last quarter of a century? Let fancy stretch away into futurity, and view her then. She will see a little world of men—not a
New York—not a Glasgow--but a London. Since the year 1812 her population has received an augmentation of more than twenty-six thousand souls. Should she continue to increase in the same ratio for two thousand years to come, what will be her numbers? What hill will not he crowded with houses? What valley will not pe crowded with them?
Another author-traveller of 1837 to the Queen City was no less a notable of that day than the great writer of sea-tales, Captain Francis Marryat. In his Diary of the American Journey, subsequently published, he thus notes matters and things here :
Arrived at Cincinnati. How rapid has been the advance of the western country! In 1803 deer-skins, at the value of forty cents per pound, were a legal tender; and, if offered instead of money, could not be refused—even by a lawyer. Not fifty years ago the woods which towered where Cincinnati is now built, resounded only to the cry of the wild animals of the forest or the rifle of the Shawnee Indian; now Cincinnati contains a population of forty thousand inhabitants. It is a beautiful, well-built, clean town, reminding you more of Philadelphia than any other city in the Union. Situated on a hill on the banks of the Ohio, it is surrounded by a circular phalanx of other hills; so that, look up and down the streets whichever way you will, your eye reposes upon verdure and forest-trees in the distance. The streets have a row of trees on each side, near the curb-stone, and most of the houses have a small frontage, filled with luxuriant flowering shrubs, of which the althea Frutix is the most abundant. It is, properly speaking, a Yankee city, the majority of its inhabitants coming from the east; but they have intermarried and blended with the Kentuckians of the opposite shore—a circumstance which is advantageous to the character of both.
There are, however, a large number of Dutch •and German settlers here; they say ten thousand. They are not much liked by the Americans; but have great influence, as may be conceived when it is stated that, when a motion was brought forward in the municipal court for the city regulations to be printed in German as well as English, it was lost by one vote only.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT.
New buildings, three hundred and thirty-four. Mortality, one thousand three hundred and sixty-five. Votes in the city, four thousand five hundred and seventy-three.
April 25th, the most terrible accident recorded in the history of Cincinnati occurred at the Fulton landing, then just above the city, in the explosion of the new and beautiful steamer Moselle. An elaborate and most interesting account of this event has been given in the third edition of the Annals of the West, the publisher of that work having been an eye-witness of the event. We transcribe the narrative for these pages :
The Moselle was regarded as the very paragon of western steamboats; she was perfect in form and construction, elegant and super') in all her equipments, and enjoyed a reputation for speed which admitted of no rivalship. As an evidence that the latter was not undeserved, it need only be mentioned that her last trip from St. Louis to Cincinnati, seven hundred and fifty miles, was performed in two days and sixteen hours—the quickest trip, by several hours, that had ever been made between the two places.
On the afternoon of April 25, 1838, between four and five o'clock, the Moselle left the landing at Cincinnati, bound for St. Louis, with an unusually large number of passengers, supposed to be not less than two hundred and eighty, or, according to some accounts, three hundred. It was a pleasant afternoon, and all on board probably anticipated a de-
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lightful voyage. The Moselle proceeded about a mile up the river to take on some German emigrants. At this time it was observed by an experienced engineer on board, that the steam had been raised to an unusual height, and when the boat stopped for the purpose just mentioned, it was reported that one man who was apprehensive of danger went ashore, after protesting against the injudicious management of the steam apparatus. Yet the passengers generally were regardless of any danger that might exist, crowding the boat for the sake of her beauty and speed, and making safety a secondary consideration.
When the object for which the Moselle had landed was nearly accomplished, and the bow of the boat just turned in preparation to move from the shore, at that instant the explosion took place. The whole of the vessel forward of the wheels was blown to splinters; every timber (as an eye-witness declares), "appeared to be twisted, as trees sometimes are, when struck by lightning." As soon as the accident occurred, the boat floated down the stream for about one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards, where she sunk, leaving the upper part of the cabin out of the water and the baggage, together with many struggling human beings, floating on the surface of the river.
It was remarked that the explosion was unprecedented in the history of steam. Its effect was like that of a mine of gunpowder. All the boilers, four in number, burst simultaneously; the deck was blown into the air, and the human beings who crowded it were doomed to instant destruction. It was asserted that a man, believed to be a pilot, was carried, together with the pilot-house, to the Kentcky shore, a distance of a quarter of a mile. A fragment of a boiler was carried by the explosion high into the air, and descending perpendicularly about fifty yards from the boat, it crushed through a strong roof and through the second floor of a building, lodging finally on the ground floor.
Captain Perrin, master of the Moselle, at the time of the accident was standing on the deck, above the boiler, in conversation with another person. He was thrown to a considerable height on the steep embankment of the river and killed, while his companion was merely prostrated on the deck, and escaped without injury. Another person: was blown a great distance into the air, and on descending he fell on a roof with such force that he partially broke through it, and his body lodged there. Some of the passengers who were in the after-part of the boat, and who were uninjured by the explosion, jumped overboard. An eye-witness says that he saw sixty or seventy in the water at one time, of whom comparatively few reached the shore.. There were afterward the mutilated remains of nineteen persons buried in one grave.
It happened, unfortunately, that the larger number of the passengers were collected on the upper deck, to which the balmy air and delicious weather seemed to invite them, in order to expose them to more certain destruction. It was understood, too, that the captain of the ill-fated steamer had expressed his determination to outstrip an opposition boat which had just started; the people on shore were cheering the Moselle, in anticipation of her success in the race, and the passengers and crew on the upper deck responded to these acclamations, which were soon changed to sounds of mourning and distress.
Intelligence of the awful calamity spread rapidly through the city; thousands rushed to the spot, and the most benevolent aid was promptly extended to the sufferers, or rather to those within the reach of human assistance, for the majority had perished. The scene here was so sad and distressing that no language can depict it with fidelity. Here lay twenty or thirty mangled and still bleeding corpses, while many persons were engaged in dragging others of the dead and wounded from the wreck or the water. "But," says an eye-witness, "the survivors presented the most touching objects of distress, as their mental anguish seemed more insupportable than the most intense bodily suffering:"
Death had torn asunder the most tender ties; but the rupture had been so sudden and violent that none knew certainly who had been taken or who had been spared. Fathers were distractedly inquiring for children, children for parents, husbands and wives for each other. One man had saved a son, but lost a wife and five children. A father, partially demented by grief, lay with a wounded child on one side, his dead daughter on the other, and his expiring wife at his feet. One gentleman sought his wife and children, who were as eagerly seeking him in the same crowd. They met and were reunited.
A female deck passenger who had been saved seemed inconsolable for the loss of her relatives. Her constant exclamations were, "Oh! my father! my mother! my sisters!" a little boy about five years old, whose head was much bruised, appeared to be regardless of his wounds, and cried continually for a lost father, while another lad, a little older, was weeping for a whole family. One venerable man wept for the loss of his wife and five children. Another was bereft of his whole family, con- sisting of nine persons. A touching display of maternal affection was evinced by a woman, who, on being brought to the shore, clasped her hands and exclaimed, "Thank God, I am safe!" but instantly recollecting herself, she ejaculated in a voice of piercing agony, "Where is my child ?" The infant, which had been saved, was brought to her, and she fainted at the sight of it.
Many of the passengers who entered the boat at Cincinnati had not registered their names, but the lowest estimated number of persons on board was two hundred and eighty. Of these eighty-one were known to be killed, fifty-five were missing and thirteen badly wounded.
On the day after the accident a public meeting was called at Cincinnati, at which the mayor presided, when the facts of this melancholy occurrence were discussed, and among other resolutions passed was one deprecating the great and increasing carelessness in the navigation of steam vessels and urging this subject upon the consideration of Congress.
The Moselle was built at Cincinnati, and she reflected great credit on the mechanical genius of that city, as she was truly a superior boat, and under more favorable auspices might have been the pride of the waters for several years. She was new, having been begun the previous December and finished in March, only a month before the time of her destruction.
A committee was appointed at the meeting of citizens, to report upon the causes of the disaster. Dr. Locke, Jacob Strader, Charles Fox, T. J. Matthews, and J. Penn, formed the committee. They made a prolonged and careful examination, and published a report in a pamphlet of seventy-six pages. It was mainly from the pen of Dr. Locke, and is a thoroughly scientific exposition of the subject, much of which has permanent interest and value.
October l0th, a fire occurred on McFarland street, which destroyed two or three small buildings, and took the life of a little son of Mrs. McComas, aged eight years. The citizens subscribed one thousand two hundred and seventy-nine dollars and sixty-six cents the next forenoon for the relief of the sufferers. On the twenty-third there was another fire on Broadway, between Fourth and Fifth, destroying cabinet and turners' shops, and a bedstead factory.
The semi-centennial of the settlement of Cincinnati was celebrated in good style this year, Dr. Daniel Drake delivering the oration. The invited guests included many aged Ohio pioneers of 1785-7-9, and other years.
The first fair of the Ohio Mechanics' institute was held this year and was a gratifying success.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE.
January 3d, the city buys the entire rights and property of the Cincinnati Water Works company for three hundred thousand dollars.
February 22d, Robert Wright lost an arm by an accident in cannon-firing while giving a salute at the Public Landing, in honor of Washington's birthday.
March 1st, occurred the death of Morgan Neville, a prominent citizen, and formerly receiver at the land office. On the eighteenth a lad named Winship was killed in a menagerie exhibiting here, by an uncaged tiger.
June l0th, the first superior court for, the city was organized, with David K. Este, judge, and Daniel Gano, clerk.
December 9th, died the well-known pioneer merchant, Colonel John Bartle, aged ninety-five. He came to Losantiville; in December, 1789. General Robert Y.
11
90 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO
Lytle, another and yet more eminent resident of Cincinnati, died at New Orleans on the twenty-first of this month.
A vigorous attempt was made this year to suppress the liquor-selling coffee-houses by making their licenses practically prohibitory; but it was evaded by the proprietors taking out tavern licenses, which cost but twenty-five dollars and gave the 1ecipients one more day in which to sell liquors.
The population of the city in 1849 was about forty-two thousand five hundred; number of new buildings, three hundred and ninety-four—two hundred and eighty brick, one hundred and fourteen frame. Mortality list, one thousand two hundred and eighty-two, or one in thirty-five.
CHAPTER XIII.
CINCINNATI'S SIXTH DECADE.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY.
The official census this year exhibited a population for Cincinnati of forty-six thousand three hundred and thirty-eight, an increase since 1830 of eighty-five per cent. The new buildings this year numbered four hundred and six—brick two hundred and sixty (in the seven wards respectively forty-seven, seventeen, thirty-one, twelve, seventy-six, thirty-three, forty-four), frame one hundred and forty-six (in the several wards in order, thirteen, one, fourteen, three, forty-three, eighteen and fifty-four). The vote of the year was six thousand three hundred and forty; the mortality bills one thousand three hundred and twenty-three, of whom ninety-seven were strangers. They being deducted, the deaths of inhabitants were only one thousand one hundred and twenty-nine, or one in thirty-nine of the population.
April 3d, deceased Charles Hammond, a leading editor, politician and lawyer of the city, and one of the strongest and most accomplished men the place ever had. Further notice of him will be made in our chapters on the bar and on journalism.
This was the year of the Harrison campaign, in which, certainly, Cincinnati, Hamilton county, and all Ohio took an exceeding interest. The warm season was full of excitement in the Queen City, and there were great rejoicings when her favorite son was declared the winner. The state of the campaign in this region and along the river is amusingly illustrated in the remarks of Mrs. Steele, an intelligent eastern traveller hereaway this year, in her Summer Journey in the West:
Sixteen miles below Cincinnati is the residence of General Harrison, the candidate for the Presidency. It is said he lived in a log cabin; but it was a neat country dwelling, which, however, I dimly saw by moonlight. To judge f10m what we have seen upon the road, General Harrison will carry all the votes of the west, for every one seems enthusiastic in his favor. Log cabins were erected in every town, and a small one of wicker-work stood upon nearly all the steamboats. At the wood-yards along the rivers it was very common to see a sign bearing the words, " Harrison wood," " Whig wood," or "Tippecanoe wood," he having gained a battle at a place of that name. The western States, indeed, owe him a debt of gratitude; for he may be said to be the cause, under Providence, of their flourishing condition. He subdued the Indians, laid the land out in sections, thus opening a door for settlers, and, in fact, deserves the name given him of "Father of the West."
The city was also visited this year by the much travelled Englishman and voluminous writer of his travels, the Rev. J. S. Buckingham, who published in all some nine volumes of American travel. From several extracts relating to Cincinnati, which will appear in different places in this history, we select the following for insertion here:
The private dwellings of Cincinnati are in general quite as large and commodious as those of the Atlantic cities, with these advantages, that more of them are built of stone, and much fewer of wood, than in the older settlements; a greater number of them have pretty gardens, rich grass-plats, and ornamental shrubberies and flowers surrounding them, than in any of the eastern cities; and, though there is not the same ostentatious display in the furniture of the private dwellings here, which is met with at New York especially, every comfort and convenience, mixed with a sufficient degree of elegance, is found in all the residences of the upper and middle classes; and it may be doubted whether there is any city in the Union in which there is a more general diffusion of competency in means and comfort in enjoyments, than in Cincinnati. The stores also are large, well filled, and many of them as elegant in appearance and as well supplied with English and French articles as in the largest cities on the coast, though somewhat dearer, of course. The hotels are numerous and good, and boarding-houses at all prices abundant. The Broadway Hotel, at which we remained, appeared to us one of the cleanest and most comfortable we had seen west of the Alleghanies.
Mrs. Steele's Diary of a Summer Journey in the West contains the following:
CINCINNATI, July 19th.
As much as we had heard of Cincinnati, we were astounded at its beauty and extent, and at the solidity of its buildings. It well merits the name bestowed upon it here—Queen of the West. We have explored it thoroughly by riding and walking, and pronounce it a wonderful city. . . . We spent the morning slowly driving up and down each street, along the Miami canal, and in the environs of the city in .every direction, and were quite astonished—not because we had never seen larger and finer cities, but that this should have arisen in what was so lately a wilderness. Its date, you know, is only thirty years back [!]. The rows of stores and warehouses; the extensive and ornamented dwellings; the thirty churches, many of them very handsome, and other public buildings, excited our surprise. Main street is the principal business mart. While in the centre of this street, we mark it for a mile ascending the slope upon which the town is built, and in front it seems interminable; for, the river being low, we do not observe we are looking across it to the street of the opposite city of Covington, until a steamboat passing, tells us where the city ends. Broadway is another main artery of this city—not, however, devoted to business, but bounded upon each side by rows of handsome dwellings. Third, Fourth, Seventh, Vine, and many other streets, show private houses not surpassed by any city we had visited. They are generally extensive and surrounded by gardens, and almost concealed from view of the passers by groves of shade-trees and ornamental shrubbery. An accidental opening among the trees shows you a glimpse of a piazza or pavilion, where, among groves and gardens, the air may be enjoyed by the children or ladies of the family.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE.
The publication of the first of Mr. Charles Cist's valuable series of volumes on Cincinnati occurred this year, and from it a fully sketched picture of the city at this time may be made up. The buildings were now largely brick, especially in the central and business parts. Dwellings and warehouses were not only greater in number, but "greatly superior to those previously erected in value, elegance, and convenience." Its population, numbering about fifty
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 91
thousand people of all ages, included four hundred and thirty-four professional men, two thousand two hundred and twenty-six of the mercantile classes, ten thousand eight hundred and sixty-six mechanics in seventy-seven different trades, and one thousand and twenty-five agents, bar-keepers, hotel-keepers, and the like. The capital invested in commerce was estimated at five million tw0 hundred thousand dollars, and in merchandize, twelve million eight hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars. There were twenty-three lumber-yards, with 0ne hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars capital and sales in 1840 amounting to three hundred and forty-two thousand five hundred dollars. There were eight banks, with an aggregate capital of more than six millions. The Miami canal was now in operation to Piqua, and the extension was completed eighty miles beyond Dayton and was making rapid progress toward Defiance, at the rapids of the Maumee. For two years it had paid more than the annual interest upon the debt incurred in its construction, which was considered "the highest evidence of its utility." The vast water-power which it had brought to the city was mostly in use. The Whitewater canal was nearly finished. An improvement in the Licking, being made at Kentucky's expense, was expected to bring benefits to Cincinnati. A steam packet was t0 he immediately put on the 1iver. The Little Miami railroad was completed for about thirty-five miles out, and more was under contract. Turnpike improvements had been steadily extended. The Charleston or Southern railroad scheme was still held in abeyance by the opposition of Kentucky, and the depression in the moneyed world. The exports on the Miami canal had increased from eight thousand five hundred and seven dollars and sixty-nine cents in 1828 to seventy-four thousand three hundred and twenty dollars and ninety-nine cents in 1840. The city had one German and six English daily papers, with a large number of tri-weeklies, weeklies, and monthlies. There were forty-six churches, including two synagogues, and a large number of benevolent and charitable societies and institutions, on both public and private foundations. Science and literature, education, music, and other of the higher interests, were all embodied in organizations and institutions existing here. The fire and water service of the city had been greatly improved. The city had been made a port of entry. It had now sixty weekly mails, and the revenue of the post office in 1840 had been forty-nine thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars and thirteen cents.
The city is described by Mr. Cist as still "almost in the eastern extreme of a valley about twelve miles in circumference, perhaps the most delightful and extensive on the borders of Ohio." With the adjacent parts of Mill creek and Fulton townships, and Newport and Covington, the total population of Cincinnati and suburbs was reckoned at sixty thousand. The Germans in the city now numbered fourteen thousand one hundred and sixty-three—three thousand six hundred and thirty in the First, one thousand one hundred and thirty-seven in the Second, one thousand nine hundred and twelve in the Third, nine hundred and ninety-six in the Fourth, four thousand
three hundred and twenty in the Fifth, six hundred and ninety-five in the Sixth, and one thousand four hundred and seventy-three in the Seventh ward. The American population was fifty-fou1 per cent., German twenty-eight, British sixteen, French and Italian one, and all others one per per cent. of the entire population. About six thousand eight hundred children were being educated in the public and private schools.
Great improvements were expected—among them not less than five hundred dwellings and warehouses to go up during the year, including a larger proportion of warehouses than usual. Several blocks and single buildings for stores were going up in March of this year. The number of new structures for the twelve months was afterwards reported at four hundred and sixty-two. The present St. Peter's cathedral, on the corner of Eighth and Plum streets, was about erecting, and was finished in 1844. " Over the Rhine " was developing rapidly, and a new German Catholic church on Main, beyond the canal, was to be built shortly. About three-fourths of the Germans in those days were said to be Roman Catholics.
The use of coal for fuel was becoming quite general; nine hundred and thirty thousand bushels had been sold the previous year, and a sale of more than two millions was expected for 1841.
Mr. Cist finally " ventured the prediction that within one hundred years Cincinnati would be the greatest city in America, and by the year A. D. 2,000 the greatest city in the world " !
During the early part of this yea1 General Harrison, the elect of the people, as well as of the Electoral College, by a tremendous majority, made his way to Washington, to assume the duties of Chief Magistrate of the Nation. Judge Joseph Cox, in an address to the Cinciunati Literary club, February 4, 1871, on General William H. Harrison at North Bend, has thus sketched the farewell :
The scene of his departure was most affecting. Old men who had shared with him the toils of the campaigns among the Indians, their wives and children, his old neighbors, the poor, of whom there were many who had shared his bounty, gathered to witness his departure, cheering for his triumph while their cheeks were wet with tears. The boat on which he was to pass up the river lay at the foot of Broadway, in Cincinnati. The wharves, streets, and every surrounding vessel and house were filled with spectators. Standing on the deck of the steamer, with a clear, ringing voice he recalled to the mind of the people that forty-eight years before he had landed on that spot a poor, unfriended boy in almost an unbroken wilderness to join his fortunes with theirs, and that now, by the voice of a majority of the seventeen millions of people of this free land, he was about to leave them to assume the Chief Magistracy of the greatest Nation of the earth. He assured them that he was devoted to the interests of the people, and although this might be the last time he would look upon them, they would find him in the future true to the old history of the past. Prophetic vision ! Nevermore was it given to him to look on the faces of those who this day cheered him on to his high goal. Before visiting Washington, he went to the old homestead on the James river, and there, in the room of his mother (then dead many years), composed his inaugural address as President."
Less than six months had gone, when the old hero came back, but in his coffin. Acclamations were exchanged for sobs and sighs ; tears of joy for tears of deepest grief. Judge Cox then depicts the final scenes :
The funeral services took place at the White House, after which the
92 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
body, accompanied by a large civic and military procession, was taken to the Congressional burying ground and deposited in the receiving vault, to await the arrangements of his family. The nation was shrouded in mourning, and the ensuing sixteenth of May was set apart as a day of fasting and prayer, upon which, in nearly every town and city, the people met in honor of the illustrious dead.
In the meantime preparations had been made to inter the remains on a beautiful hill just west of his home at North Bend, and under the guidance of committees of Congress and of the principal cities of the country, they were, in July, 1841, escorted from Washington. Arriving in Cincinnati, the body lay in state at the house of his son-in-law, Colonel W. H. H. Taylor, on the north side of Sixth street, just east of Lodge, and was visited by thousands of his old friends and fellow citizens. It was then, after suitable religious services, placed on a bier on the sidewalk, and the citizens and military filed past it. The funeral procession, under charge of George Graham, esq., still living, then marched to the river; the corpse was placed on a magnificent catafalque on board a steamer. which, with two others lashed side by side and loaded with mourners, slowly, with solemn dirges and tolling bells, moved to North Bend. Arriving there, a long p10cession followed the remains to the summit of the mound, where they were deposited in the vault, beneath a low-built structure covered with turf. There have they lain for nearly thirty [now forty] years.
No marble rears its head to mark
The honored hero's dust;
Nor grittering spire, nor cenotaph,
Nor monumental bust.
But on the spot his manhood loved
His aged form's at rest;
And he built his own proud monument
Within a nation's breast.
June 16th an ordinance was passed granting to James F. Conover and J. H. Caldwell the right to supply gas to the city for the period of twenty-five years.
In September another anti-negro mob made a terrible disturbance, originating in an affray at the corner of Broadway and Sixth street, between some Irish and a party of negroes, several nights before. There were thenceforth fights every night, in that part of the city, between the whites and the blacks, until early Friday evening, when a mob, composed largely of river-men and roughs from Kentucky, gathered at the Fifth street market-space, now the Esplanade, and marched thence to a negro confectioner's shop on Broadway, next the synagogue, where they smashed the front of it, but were presently met and sharply engaged by the negroes with fire-arms. Many were wounded on both sides. The mob was addressed by the mayor and Mr. John H. Piatt, but without avail. About one o'clock that night the mob gained possession of a six-pound cannon from some place near the river, loaded it with boiler punchings and other missiles, took it to the negro quarter, and fired it several times, but without doing much damage. It was stationed on Broadway, and fired down Sixth street. Many of the negroes became considerably alarmed at this demonstration, and incontinently fled to the hills. In about an hour the military, which had been called out by the mayor, appeared on the scene and kept the mob at bay. Through the next day, however, and until three o'clock Sunday morning, the mob held its front and defied its opponents. The citizens held a meeting Satin-- day morning, and passed facing-both-ways resolutions against mobs and Abolitionists. The city council held a special meeting to consider the situation; and the negroes had another meeting in a church, where they expressed their willingness to abide by the laws of 8807-give bonds as required by that act, or leave the State. About three in the afternoon the mayor, marshal, police, and others went to the theatre of still threatened conflict, and marched off two to three hundred negroes to jail for safe-keeping. The mob, however, recommenced its violence early, and at different points. The Philanthropist office was again sacked, and a number of houses inhabited by negroes and the negro church on Sixth street were partially destroyed and rifled of their contents. An attempt was made to fire the book establishment of Truman & Smith, on Main street, which was for some reason obnoxious to the roughs. Before morning, however, the mob, not receiving fresh accessions, stopped its violence, and dispersed through sheer exhaustion. Several men were killed in the progress of the affair, and twenty or thirty wounded, a few of them dangerously. About forty of the mob were arrested. The affair assumed importance enough to cause the issue of a proclamation by the governor. That night the military turned out in force, including a troop of horse and several foot companies, with the firemen acting under authority as police, and eighty citizens who had volunteered to support the officers of the law.
In October the Western Methodist Anti-Slavery convention assembled at Cincinnati. It actually could not then find a meeting-house of its own denomination open to it, but found a hospitable reception in a Baptist church. Hon. Samuel Lewis was chairman of this meeting. Fifteen years afterwards the feeling had so changed that one of the largest Methodist churches of the city was used for a great and enthusiastic Republican meeting, assembled to promote the election of General Fremont.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO.
One of the chief events of this year was the arrival from Pittsburgh of the young but already celebrated English novelist, Charles Dickens, with his wife. They staid but a short time, and then embarked on the steamer Pike, for Louisville, stopping here also for a day on his return. He gave Cincinnati a chapter in his American Notes, and treated it much more fairly than some other places alleged themselves to have been treated. We extract the following:
MONDAY, April 4, 1842.
When the morning sun shines again, it gilds the house-tops of a lively city, before whose broad, paved wharf the boat is moored ; with other boats, and flags and moving wheels and hum of men around it ; as though there were not a solitary or silent rood of ground within the compass of a thousand miles around.
Cincinnati is a beautiful city ; cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favorably and pleas_ antly to a stranger at the first glance as this does, with its clean houses of red and white, its well-paved roads and footways of bright tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The streets are broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private residences remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There is something of invention and fancy in the varying styles of these latter erections, which, after the dull company of the steamboat, is perfectly delightful, as conveying an assurance that there are such qualities still in existence. The disposition to ornament these pretty villas and render them attractive leads to the culture of trees and flowers, and the laying-out of well kept gardens, the sight of which, to those who walk along the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. I was quite charmed with the appearance of the town and its adjoining suburb of Mount Auburn, from which the city, lying in an amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty and is seen to great advantage.
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 93
There happened to be a great temperance convention held here on the day after our arrival ; and as the order of march brought the procession under the windows of the hotel in which we lodged, when they started in the morning, I had a good opportunity of seeing it. It comprised several thousand men, the members of various "Washington Auxiliary Temperance Societies," and was marshaled by officers on horseback, who cantered briskly up and down the line, with scarves and ribands of bright colors fluttering out behind them gaily. There were bands of music, too, and banners out of number ; and it was a fresh, holiday looking concourse altogether.
I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a distinct society among themselves, carrying their national Harp and their portrait of Father Mathew high above the people's heads. They looked as jolly and good-humored as ever ; and, working the hardest for their living, and doing any kind of sturdy labor that came in their way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought.
The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the street famously. There was the smiting of the rock and the gushing forth of the waters ; and there was a temperate man with a considerable of a hatchet (as the standard-bearer would probably have said) aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently about to spring upon him from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this part of the show was a huge allegorical device, borne among the ship-carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while upon the other the good ship Temperance sailed away with a fair wind, to the heart's content of the captain, crew, and passengers.
After going round the town, the procession repaired to a certain appointed place, where, as the printed programme set forth, it would be received by the children of the different free schools, "singing temperance songs." I was prevented from getting there in time to hear these little warblers, or to report upon this novel kind of vocal entertainment —novel, at least, to me ; but I found, in a large open space, each society gathered round its own banners and listening in silent attention to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the little I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, as having that degree of relationship to cold water which wet blankets may claim ; but the main thing was the conduct and appearance of the audience throughout the day, and that was admirable and full of promise.
Cincinnati is honorably famous for its free schools, of which it has so many that no person's child among its population can, by possibility, want the means of education, which are extended, upon an average, to four thousand pupils annually, I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys' department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra—a proposal which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls' school reading was proposed, and as I felt tolerably equal to that art, I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accordingly, and some half-dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs in English history. But it was a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; and when they had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the Treaty of Amiens and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this extreme stave in the ladder of learning for the astonishment of a visitor, and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons, which they understood.
As in every other place I visited, the judges here were gentlemen of high character and attainments. I was in one of the courts for a few minutes, and found it like those to which I have already referred. A nuisance cause was trying; there were not many spectators; and the witness, counsel, and jury formed a sort of family circle, sufficiently jocose and snug.
The society with which I mingled was intelligent, courteous, and agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city, as one of the most interesting in America, and with reason; for, beautiful and thriving as it is now, and containing, as it does, a population of fifty thousand souls, but two and fifty years have passed away since the ground on which it stands (bought at that time for a few dollars), was a wildwood and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scattered log huts upon the river's shore.
Another bank mob occurred in the city on the first of November, caused by the suspension of the Bank of Cincinnati and the Miami Exporting company's bank. Some movable property, books, and papers, were 1eached and destroyed, and a demonstration was also made against two exchange offices; but the City Guard, under command of the astronomer, Captain 0. M. Mitchel, were defending the banks, and after they had fired a volley or two on the mob, wounding several, the crowd dispersed and did no further damage.
The number of new buildings erected this year was five hundred and thirty-seven.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE.
Mr. Cist notes this year as an era in the political existence of Cincinnati, as having two natives of the county rival candidates for the office of Mayor at the spring election—Messrs. Henry E. Spencer and Henry Morse —which was certainly a very interesting circumstance, but was paralleled in 1845, when the same two were again candidates for the office.
February 28th a disastrous fire and explosion occurred in Pugh & Alvord's pork-packing establishment, which killed eight persons and wounded fourteen, among them several prominent citizens.
November ad, the first number of the Cincinnati Commercial was issued, by Messrs. Curtiss & Hastings. On the twenty-eighth the Whitewater canal was opened.
December 22d, S. S. Davies, ex-mayor of the city, departed this life.
Number of new buildings this year, six hundred and twenty-one.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR.
This year was comparatively devoid of events, save the inevitable quadrennial excitement of the Presidential election. On the twenty-seventh of April the first ground was bought for Spring Grove cemetery. The eighth of October marked the advent of Millerism, of which an interesting account will be found in our chapter on Religion in Cincinnati. The first, and long the only cotton factory in the city, was erected this year by Messrs. Samuel Fosdick, Anthony Harkness, and Jacob Strader.
During the summer and fall of this year, Mr. Charles Cist pursued his favorite occupation of enumerating the buildings of the city, the results of which he published in his Miscellany. He found in the First ward fifteen public buildings (including the post office, a theatre, and the unfinished observatory), and one hundred and twenty dwellings, shops, storehouses, mills, and offices—total seven hundred and thirty-five—five hundred and fifty-one of brick and one hundred and eighty-four frames. Eighty-two had been built in 1844, against twenty-six the previous year. The Second ward showed up twenty-two public buildings and one thousand and thirty-nine dwelings, etc.,—eight hundred and twenty-five brick and two hundred and fourteen frame. One hundred and two of these had been put up within the year. The Third ward contained but six public edifices, but had one thousand one hundred and sixty-two private buildings—two of stone, four hundred and thirty-four frame, and seven
94 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
hundred and twenty brick. Some of the new structures, one-hundred and seventeen in number, are described as of great extent and height. Mr. Cist says:
The Third ward is the great hive of Cincinnati industry, especially in the manufacturing line. Planing machines, iron foundries, breweries, saw-mills, rolling-mills, finishing shops, bell and brass foundries, boiler yards, boat building, machine shops, etc., constitute an extensive share of its business.
The Fourth ward, also embracing a large share of the heavy business of the city, n0w had four buildings of a public character and one thousand two hundred and seven others-four stone, six hundred and fifty-two brick, and five hundred and fifty-one frames—one hundred and seventeen built the same year. Fifth ward--; public buildings, thirteen; private, one thousand five hundred and fifty-two; brick, eight hundred and twenty-five; frame, seven hundred and twenty-seven ; built this year, one hundred and seventy-six. Sixth—public structures, ten; private, one thousand and fifty-three; built in 1844 (seventy-nine less than in 1843), one hundred and seventeen; brick, four hundred and ninety-five; frame, five hundred and sixty-eight. Several improvements of a superior character are noted. Seventh-twelve public buildings, one thousand two hundred and ninety-nine private—six hundred and ten brick, seven hundred and one frames; two hundred and nineteen built this year. The great edifice going up, as it had been for four years, was the Roman Catholic cathedral, on Plum street. Eighth—seven public and one thousand one hundred and fifty-seven private structures—four hundred and three brick, seven hundred and sixty-one frame ; built during the year, two hundred and twenty-six. "A great number of fine dwellings of brick" are noted as among the new improvements. Ninth -fourteen public and one thousand one hundred and ninety-eight private buildings; new ones, eighty-two ; brick, four hundred and seventy-eight; frame, seven hundred and thirty-two; stone, two. The total number of buildings in the city was ten thousand seven hundred and seventy-three, an increase of one thousand two hundred and twenty-eight over the previous year. It was also thought that as many as five hundred new buildings had been put up during the year in the district between the corporation line and the base of the hills on the north.
Many familiar old buildings disappeared this year—among them Fairchild's corner, on Main and Front, which was a quarter of a century old; Elsenlock's corner, on Walnut and Front, which was one of the earliest enclosed lots of Losantiville, and the building upon it the favorite resort of the "United Democracy;" also, east of Main, above Fifth, an old white frame building, put up in the days of Fort Washington, and Andrew's Buck's hotel, once a fashionable resort. Looking from the corner of Main and Fifth, all buildings of a quarter of a century before, within the view, had disappeared.
A classification made of citizens this year, according to their pecuniary ability, developed the fact that there was only one man (Nicholas Longworth) worth over five hundred thousand dollars; six were worth two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand dollars; twenty-six one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand dollars; forty-three fifty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars; fifty-six thirty thousand to fifty thousand dollars; seventy-three twenty to thirty thousand dollars; eighty-two fifteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars; one hundred and eighteen ten thousand to fifteen thousand dollars; four hundred and twenty-three five to ten thousand dollars; six hundred and forty-five two thousand five hundred to five thousand dollars ; eight hundred and twenty-six one thousand five hundred to two thousand five hundred dollars; and thirteen hundred and thirteen under one thousand five hundred dollars. It was estimated that the sale of eight squares in the business part of the city would more than pay all the bank debts then due by her business men.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE.
The population of the city this year had grown to seventy-four thousand six hundred and ninety-nine—an increase of twenty-eight thousand three hundred and seventeen, or sixty-one per cent., in five years. The increase was to be yet more remarkable during the five years to come. The number of new buildings was one thousand two hundred and fifty-two—seven hundred and eighty-nine brick, four hundred and sixty-three frame. The total number of buildings in the city was eleven thousand five hundred and sixty, exclusive of stables and the like. Among the finer structures in the course of erection this year were the Cincinnati college, the Masonic and Odd Fellows' halls, the College of Dental Surgery, two Roman Catholic, two Presbyterian, four Methodist, one Welsh, and two Disciple churches. The building of the college, on Walnut street, between Fourth and Fifth, where its successor now stands, had been burned on the nineteenth of January, and a more spacious and elegant structure was now going up.
In May of this year Mr. Cist thus notes in his Miscellany some interesting facts relating to the trend of the business interests of the city:
The increase of business in Cincinnati compels it to radiate from its former centres. Blocks of business stands are forming east, west and north of the existing commercial regions. Thus some thirty large ware- and store-houses have been or are just about to be erected on Walnut, between Water and Second streets. Commerce is finding vent down Second, Third and Front streets to the west, and up Second and Third streets to the east. That fine block known by the name of Hopple's row, and which has hardly been a year built, is now occupied with lace and dry-goods stores, drug-shops, carpet ware-houses, etc., in which goods are offered wholesale to as good advantage as in an other part of the city. Among these the dry-good store of Baird & Schuyler may be especially alluded to as a fine establishment. These are the occupants of the lower buildings; up stairs is a perfect den of wipers in the shape of lawyers and editors.
We continue Mr. Cist's interesting notices of local matters :
OUR NORTHWEST TERRITORY.—There is nothing in Cincinnati exhibits a growth as vigorous as the northwestern part of our city, popularly called Texas. What constituted originally the Seventh ward was, only seven years ago, interspersed here and there with dwellings, but consisted principally of brick-yards, cattle-pastures and vegetable gardens, for the supply of markets. Such was the unimproved condition of this region, that nearly two hundred and fifty acres, occupied as pasturage, were owned by four or five individuals alone, Two hundred and fifty acres of pasturage in a city, and that city as thriving as Cincinnati ! The whole number of dwellings at that period, within the bounds of that ward, were short of three hundred and fifty, and its whole population could not have reached to twenty-five hundred souls;
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 95
and these the buildings and inhabitants of a section of Cincinnati more than a mile square!
Now what a change! Eleven hundred new buildings, most of them of a character for beauty, permanence and value equal to the average of the main body of our city improvements. The streets graded and paved to a great extent, churches and public school-houses going up in its midst, and well-paved sidewalks, adding to the general finish and convenience. With all these improvements, too, space has been left, at the sides and in the fronts of the buildings, for that free introduction of shrubbery and flowers which render our city so attractive to strangers, and so airy and pleasant to ourselves. It is, in short, completely rus in urbe, abounding in spots which combine the comfort of a country villa with the convenience and advantages of a city residence.
It may serve to give a striking view of the magnitude and extent of the improvements in this region to state that London street has been graded from Fulton to Mound street west, which extent, some one thousand two hundred feet in length, is now dug down from five to ten feet, to fill up one thousand feet farther west and the entire width—sixty feet—of the street. The stupendous character of the work may be inferred from the volume of earth filled in, which, at the intersection of Baymiller street, measures sixteen feet in depth. The greater part of this is also paved, and progressing as fast in paving as is prudent, the graded ground being covered with stone as fast as it settles to its permanent bed. This must become one of the finest entrances to our city. The population of this section of Cincinnati is now, doubtless, eleven thousand, the inhabitants having quadruped since 1838.
A new and important avenue to trade and marketing has been opened through this part of the city, by extending Freeman street to the Hamilton 10ad. The effect of this will be to direct a large share of the travelling to the city, to the intersection of Fifth and Front streets; and to bring the pork-wagons into direct communication with the pork-houses which must be put up on the line of the Whitewater canal.
This avenue will also become a formidable rival to Western Row, as a connection between the adjacent parts of Indiana and Cincinnati, owing to the scandalous condition into which the upper part of that street has been suffered to dilapidate, which renders it impassable in winter and unpleasant at all times.
Eighth street was now paved to a distance of more than two miles west of Main, and was rapidly coming into use as one of the chief avenues of travel to and
from the country.
Mr. [Elmore] Williams was originally the owner of all that valuable property at the corner of Main and Front streets, facing one hundred feet on Front and two hundred on Main street, extending from Worthington Shillito & Co.'s grocery store to Front, and thence Place Traber & Co.'s store, west to Main street, and became so under these circumstances: The lot in question was taken up by Henry Lindsey, who after holding it a year or more disposed of it to a young man for a job of work, whose name Mr. Williams has forgot. The second owner, having a desire to revisit his former home in New Jersey, and being unwilling to trust himself through the wilderness without a horse, begged Mr. Williams, with whom he was acquainted, the latter then residing at the point of the junction of the Licking and the Ohio, to take his lot in payment for a horse, saddle and bridle of his, valued at sixty-five dollars. After much importunity and principally with the view of accommodating a neighbor, Mr. Williams consented, and after holding the property a few days, disposed of it again for another horse and equipments, by which he supposed he made ten dollars, perhaps. This lot not long afterwards fell into the hands of Colonel Gibson, who offered it for one hundred dollars to Major Bush of Boone county, in 1793. So slight was the advance for years to property in Cincinnati. This lot, probably at this time the most valuable in the city, estimating the rent at six per cent. of its value, is now worth three hundred and thirty-seven thousand and four hundred dollars. Where else in the world is the property which in fifty-four years had risen from four dollars to such a value?
The man is still living, and in full possession of his faculties, bodily and mental, who stood by surveying the first cellar-digging in Cincinnati. This was the cellar of the first brick house put up here, and which was built by the late Elmore Williams, at the corner of Main and Fifth streets. As one-half of the community in that day had never seen a cellar, being emigrants from the farming districts, and the other half were surveying a novelty in Cincinnati, it may readily be conceived there was no scarcity of on-lookers. My informant gives it as his judgment that the west half of the Wade dwelling on Congress street, is the oldest building now standing in Cincinnati, certainly the only one remaining of what were built when he first saw the place. Most of the houses were log cabins, and hardly better, so he phrases it, " than sugar-camps at that." The city, when he landed, had not five hundred inhabitants. He has lived to behold its increase to seventy-five thousand. Where will the next fifty years find it ?
June 11th, was held a meeting of the southern and western anti-slavery convention in the city, with animated and interesting discussions.
An interesting event occurred on the twenty-eighth of September, in the dedication of Spring Grove cemetery. Cincinnati had now the beginnings of a worthy "God's acre."
The city was visited in 1845 by the great English geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, who, more than any other man in the history of geology, industriously collected facts and constructed theories for it. He was out much on explorations in this region with Dr. John Locke,- who had been on the State geological survey; and visited the Big Bone lick, in company with Robert Buchanan, Mr. Anthony, and other intelligent gentlemen. The following are some of Sir Charles' remarks upon the geology and paleontology of this part of the valley:
The Ohio river at Cincinnati, and immediately above and below it, is bounded on its right bank by two terraces, on which the city is built, the streets in the upper and lower part of it standing on different levels. These terraces are composed of sand, gravel, and loam, such as the river, if blocked up by some barrier, might now be supposed to sweep down in its current and deposit in a lake. The upper terrace is bounded by steep hills of ancient fossiliferous rocks. Near the edge of the higher terrace, in digging a gravel-pit, which I saw open at the end of Sixth street, they discovered lately the teeth of the elephas primi genius, the same extinct species which is met with in very analogous situations on the banks of the Thames, and the same which was found preserved entire with its flesh in the ice of Siberia. Above the stratum from which the tooth was obtained I observed about six feet of gravel covered by ten feet of fine yellow loam, and below it were alternations of gravel, loam, and sand, for twenty feet. But I searched in vain for any accompanying fossil shells. These, however, have been found in a similar situation at Mill creek, near Cincinnati, a place where several teeth of mastodons have been met with. They belong to the genera melania, lymncea, amni cola, succinea, physa, planorbis, paludina, cycles, helix and pupa, all of recent species, and nearly all known to inhabit the immediate neighborhood. I was also informed that near Wheeling a bed of freshwater shells, one foot thick, of the genus unio, is exposed at the height of one hundred and twenty feet above the main level of the Ohio. The remains of the common American mastodon (M. gigantius) have also been found at several points in the strata in the upper terrace, both above and below Cincinnati. Upon the whole it appears that the strata of loam, clay, and gravel, forming the elevated terraces on both sides of the Ohio and its tributaries, and which we know to have remained unaltered from the era of the Indian mounds and earthworks, originated subsequently to the period of the existing mollusca, but when several quadrupeds now extinct inhabited this continent. The lower parts, both of the larger and smaller valleys, appear to have been filled up with a fluviatile deposit, through which the streams have subsequently cut broad and deep channels. These phenomena very closely resemble those presented by the loess, or ancient river-silt of the Rhine and its tributaries, and the theory which I formerly suggested to account for the position of the Rhenish loess (also charged with recent land and freshwater shells, and occasionally with the remains of the extinct elephant) may be applicable to the American deposits.
I imagined first a gradual movement of depression, like that now in progress on the west coast of Greenland, to lessen the fall of the waters or the height of the land relatively to the ocean. In consequence of the land being thus lowered, the bottoms of the main and lateral valleys become filled up with fluviatile sediment, containing terrestrial and freshwater shells, in the same manner as deltas are formed where rivers meet the sea, the salt water being excluded, in spite of continued subsidence, by the accumulation of alluvial matter brought down incessantly from the land above. Afterwards I suppose an upward movement gradually to restore the country to its former level, and, during this upheaval, the rivers remove a large part of the accumulated mud,
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 96
sand and gravel. I have already shown that on the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, in the United States, we have positive proofs of modern oscillations of level, similar to those here assumed.
The rock forming the hills and table-lands around Cincinnati, called the blue limestone, has been commonly referred to the age of the Trenton limestone of New York, but is considered by Messrs. Conrad and Hall, and I believe with good reason, as comprehending also the Hudson river group. It seems impossible, however, to separate these divisions in Ohio, so that the district colored blue (No. 15) may be regarded as agreeing with Nos. 14 and 15 in other parts of my map. Several of the fossils which I collected at Cincinnati, the encrinites and aviculae (of the sub-genus Pterinea) in particular, agree with those which I afterward procured near Toronto, on the northern shores of Lake Ontario.
After seeing at Cincinnati several fine collections of recent and fossil shells in the cabinets of Messrs. Buchanan, Anthony and Clark, I examined with care the quarries of blue limestone and marl in the suburbs. The organic remains here are remarkably well preserved for so ancient a rock, especially those occurring in a compact argillaceous blue limestone, not unlike the has of Eu10pe. Its deposition appears to have gone on very tranquilly, as the lingula has been met within its natural and erect position, as if enclosed in mud when alive, or still standing on its peduncle. Crnstaceans of the genus Trinacleus are found spread out in great numbers on layers of the solid marl, as also another kind of trilobite, called Paradoxides, equally characteristic of the Lower Silurian system of Eu10pe. The large Isotelus gigas, three or four inches long, a form represented, in the Lower Silurian of northern Europe, by the asaphi with eight abdominal articulations, deserves also to be mentioned, and a species of graptolite. I obtained also Spirifer lynx in great abundance, a shell which Messrs. Murchison and De Verneuil regard as very characteristic of the Lower Silurian beds of Russia and Sweden. Among the mollusca I may also mention Leptaena sericed, Orals striatula, Bellerophon bilobatus, Aviculae of the subgenus Pterinea, Cypricradia, Orthoceras, add others. There were also some beautiful forms of Crinoidea, or stone-lilies, and many corals, which Mr. Lonsdale informs me differ considerably from those hitherto known in Britain—a circumstance probably arising from the small development of coralline limestones in the Lower Silurian strata of our island. Several species of the new genus Stenopora of Lonsdale are remarkably abundant.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX.
January 6th, occurred the first annual meeting of the New England society; Henry Starr, president. On the fifteenth, the post office was removed from near the Henrie house to the Masonic building, at the corner of Third and Walnut streets.
March 25th, Messrs. Wright & Graff sold at auction seventy-five feet of ground, with buildings thereon, on the southeast corner of Third and Walnut, for fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars; and April 14th, there was a considerable sale of lots belonging to the Barr estate, at the West end.
April 17th, Miles Greenwood's foundry was burned, but he rebuilt promptly and reoccupied September 17th, just five months after the fire.
On the 9th of July the First and Second Ohio infantry regiments, commanded by Colonels 0. M. Mitchel and Curtis, left Camp Washington for the theatre of war in Mexico.
August l0th, announcement was made that the Little Miami railroad would run its first train to Springfield. On the 14th, the Rev. Joshua L. Wilson, for many years pastor of the First Presbyterian church, dies.
September 7th, the Merchants' exchange is opened in the college building. On the 28th Edward Byington falls by the hand of violence, slain by Theodore Church.
New buildings to the number of nine hundred and eighty were erected.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN.
New buildings this year, one thousand one hundred and forty. The first five-story brick in Cincinnati was put up at the corner of Pearl and Walnut streets, by Edmund B. Reeder-the building afterwards occupied by Booth's hardware store. While the cellar was being dug, an old bystander gave the interesting information that he had once loaded a flat-boat on that very spot.
On the twenty-first of August, the first public telegraphic dispatch wired to Cincinnati was received by the local press. It was justly accounted a very interesting event.
In December another tremendous flood occurred in the Ohio, reaching its height about the seventeenth, when it stood only six inches lower than in the great freshet of 1832. The city was better prepared for it, however, and although there was much distress and loss, it did not entirely renew the excitement and unhappy scenes of fifteen year before.
On the twenty-second of April, Levi Coffin and family moved to Cincinnati. This arrival is solely noticeable because it brought a strong reinforcement to the rather feeble band of abolitionists in the city, and because it introduced here a new branch of trade—a grocery store at which no products of slave labor were to be had. Mr. Coffin was of Massachusetts and Maryland stock, but a native of North Carolina, where he became thoroughly impressed with, the ills of slavery, and a confirmed abolitionist. He went in 1822 to Indiana, and taught school there awhile, returned to North Carolina, engaged in teaching again, but came west finally in the fall of 1826 and located at Newport, Wayne county, Indiana, where he remained for more than twenty years, engaged in store-keeping, pork-packing, making linseed oil, and managing a station of the Underground railroad. In the last named business—quite the reverse of profitable, in a pecuniary sense—he was exceedingly zealous, and assisted many fugitive slaves in the direction of the north star. He says in his volume of Reminiscences:
"This work was kept up during the time we lived in Newport, a period of more than twenty years. The number of fugitives varied considerably in different years, but the annual average was more than one hundred."
It was to his house in Newport that the Eliza Harris of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin went, on her journey northward, and told her thrilling story of escape.
In 1844 he became convinced that it was wrong to sell, buy, or use any product of slave toil, and began the search for groceries and cotton goods that were, from first to last, solely the result- of free labor. He found associations already existing in Philadelphia and New York, manufacturing goods of free-labor cotton, and getting sugar and other groceries from the British West Indies and other localities where slavery did not exist. He bought a limited stock of these for his Newport store and sold them, necessarily to Abolitionists almost exclusively, and at a very small profit, compared with that he might have realized from slave-labor wares. He traveled in the south to find localities where slaves were not used in the production of cotton and sugar; and in one case,
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 97
where cotton was ruined for his purposes by being necessarily passed through a gin operated by slaves, he bought a three hundred dollar gin in Cincinnati and shipped it to Mississippi, relying upon his correspondent there to pay for it in cotton. It was thenceforth known as the "Abolition gin," and greatly stimulated the production of free-labo1 cotton.
Mr. Coffin came to Cincinnati in 1847, at the solicitation of a Union Free-labor convention, held at Salem, Indiana, the previous fall, to open a wholesale depository of free-labor goods. This he did, though at much pecuniary sacrifice and in the face of much personal obloquy. Contrary to his expectation, he had also to remain in active service as president of the Underground railroad, as he had come now to be generally considered. His Reminiscences say:
I was personally acquainted with all the active and reliable workers on the Underg10und railroad in the city, both colored and white. There were a few wise and careful managers among the colored people, but it was not safe to trust all of them with the affairs of our work. Most of them were too careless, and a few were unworthy—they could be bribed by the slave-hunters to betray the hiding-places of the fugitives. . . We were soon initiated into Underground railroad matters in Cincinnati, and did not lack for work. Our willingness to aid the slaves was soon known, and hardly a fugitive came to the city without applying to us for assistance. There seemed to be a continual increase of runaways, and such was the vigilance of the pursuers that I was obliged to devote a large share of time from my business to making arrangements for the concealment and safe conveyance of the fugitives. They sometimes came to our door frightened and panting and in a destitute condition, having fled in such haste and fear that they had no time to bring any clothing except what they had on, and that was often very scant. The expense of providing suitable clothing for them when it was necessary for them to go on immediately, or of feeding them when they were obliged to be concealed for days or weeks, was very heavy. Added to this was the cost of hiring teams when a party of fugitives had to be conveyed out of the city by night to some Underground railroad depot, from twenty to thirty miles distant. The price for a two-horse team on such occasions was ten dollars, and sometimes two or three teams were required. We generally hired these teams from a certain German livery stable, sending some irresponsible though honest colored man to procure them, and always sending the money to pay for them in advance. The people of the livery stable seemed to understand what the teams were wanted for, and asked no questions.
Learning that the runaway slaves often arrived almost destitute of clothing, a number of the benevolent ladies of the city—Mrs. Sarah H. Ernst, Miss Sarah 0. Ernst, Mrs. Henry Miller, Mrs. Dr. Aydelott, Mrs. Julia Harwood, Mrs. Amanda E. Foster, Mrs. Elizabeth Coleman, Mrs. Mary Mann, Mrs. Mary M. Guild, Miss K. Emery, and others—organized an anti-slavery sewing society, to provide suitable clothing for the fugitives. After we came to the city, they met at our house every week for a number of years, and wrought much practical good by their labors.
Our house was large, and well adapted for secreting fugitives. Very often slaves would lie concealed in upper chambers for weeks, without the boarders or frequent visitors at the house knowing anything about it. My wife had a quiet, unconcerned way of going about her work, as if nothing unusual was on hand, which was calculated to lull every suspicion of those who might be watching, and who would have been at once aroused by any sign of secrecy or mystery. Even the intimate friends of the family did not know when there were slaves secreted in the house, unless they were directly informed. When my wife took food to the fugitives she generally concealed it in a basket, and put some freshly ironed garment on the top, to make it look like a basketful of clean clothes. Fugitives were not often allowed to eat in the kitchen, from fear of detection.
The interest of these statements, as part of a memorable chapter of local and political history, justifies the space we have given to them. Mr. Coffin remained in Cincinnati, successfully but modestly conducting his business as an Abolition storekeeper and underground railway manager so long as necessary; and after the war, at a meeting of the colored folk of Cincinnati and vicinity, to celebrate the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, he formally and humorously resigned his office as President of the Underground railroad, declaring that "the stock had gone down in the market, the business was spoiled, the road was of no further use"; and retired amid much applause. During the war and afterwards, he did much good work among the destitute and suffering freedmen. He since published his Reminiscences in a thick volume, abounding in interesting narratives. After his death a second edition was published, with an added chapter giving an account of his closing years. He died at his residence in Avondale, September 16, 1877, at the advanced age of seventy-nine, leaving his widow still surviving.
A terrible riot occurred at the county jail this year, resulting in the death of eleven persons, some of whom were wholly innocent of any complicity with the mob. Two soldiers in the Mexican war had been discharged at its close and returned to the city with their land warrants. They were soon after accused of an outrage upon the person of the little daughter of the family with whom they were boarding, near the Brighton house, and were lodged in the old jail, on Sycamore street, the officers taking them thither fighting their way with the utmost difficulty through an infuriated mob. Toward evening an immense crowd gathered about the place, which was guarded by the finest military companies in the city—the Greys and the Citizens' Guards—and several rushes were made upon the building. At first the assailants were repulsed by the firing of blank cartridges; but at last, when the soldiers were pressed back, and the ringleaders were actually within the doors of the jail, it became necessary to fire with ball, which was done with terribly fatal effect, stretching eleven persons lifeless at the first fire, some of them at a distance from the mob, and not participating in it. The people were unarmed and dispersed at once in haste, not to return ; and the prisoners were saved from the threatened vengeance. After a little time for reflection, popular feeling settled in favor of the action of the officers and soldiery, and finally in favor of the prisoners themselves. They were not even brought to trial, the grand jury unanimously refusing to bring a bill of indictment against them; and there is little doubt that the infamous charge was part of a scheme to dispossess them of the land-warrants which they had honestly earned by hard and dangerous service. Public opinion was turned so strongly against their persecutors, indeed, that they found it advisable to disappear from the community, to escape possible lynching themselves.
Number of new buildings this year, one thousand three hundred and five.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE.
The number of names upon the directory this year is twenty-one thousand five hundred and forty-five, exceeding the number upon the directory of 1846 by six thousand nine hundred and forty-five. The addition was made this year of Fulton, a tolerably large and densely
98 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
populated suburb, equal to about one-third of the forme1 dimensions of the city. The Burnet house was erected this year by a joint stock company, and was then accounted the finest hotel building in the country. Many distinguished persons were its guests, in the earlier as well as the later days. The room once occupied by Jenny Lind still bears her name.
In November or December came the famous Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley. She staid but one day in Cincinnati, on account of the crowded hotels, and made few remarks upon the place in the book she afterwards published. She noted it as a "very handsome city, in a remarkably fine situation;" has a good word for the German immigrants; has her attention attracted by "the floating wharves, which are rendered necessary by the continued and rapid fluctuations of the river." She gives the town a malicious little fling aithe close:
It may be confidently stated that Cincinnati, the pride of the banks of "La. Belle Riviere," is in fact what its name, "Porkopolis," implies —the Empire city of pigs, as well as of the west; but it is fortunate that they condescendingly allow human beings to share the truly magnificent location with them.
On the first of May, one train per day, each way, began to run over the Little Miami railroad to Springfield. On the sixth occurred the murder of 0. Brasher by Jesse Jones; and on the tenth the death of Colonel Charles H. Brough, a prominent lawyer of the city, and soldier of the Mexican war.
July 20th was made memorable by the poisoning of the Simmons family, and November 30th by the attempted destruction in the same way of the Forrest family, by the notorious poisoner, Nancy Farrer, in whose trial the young lawyer, Rutherford B. Hayes, late President of the United States, bore a distinguished part. She finally escaped the meshes of the law, on the plea of insanity, and was sent to the Lick Run asylum.
Mr. E. D. Mansfield, in his Memoirs of Dr. Drake, submits the following valuable remarks and statistics concerning the fatality and social characteristics of the cholera in Cincinnati this year:
It commenced at the middle of April, but did not entirely cease until the return of frosts; but the intensity of the pestilence may be dated from the middle of June to the middle of August. In other words, it increased and declined with the heat. Except in the first season, 1832, this has been its uniform characteristic in every year of its appearance. It was so in 1833, '34, '39, '49, '5o, '5x, and '52. In the latter seasons it was very light. In September, 1849, the Board of Health in Cincinnati returned the following number of deaths, between the first of May and the first of September—four months :
Deaths by cholera - 4,114
Deaths by other diseases - 2,345
Aggregate - 6,459
If we add to this the aggregate number of deaths in the last two weeks of April, and f10m the first of September to the fifteenth of October, during which the number of deaths exceeded the average, we shall have for six months at least seven thousand, of which four thousand six hundred were from cholera. The mortality of the other six months, at the aggregate rate, was only one thousand five hundred. We have, then, for 1849, a total mortality of eight thousand five hundred, which (the population of the city being one hundred and sixteen thousand) made a ratio of one in fourteen.
If we examine this mortality socially, we shall arrive at some extraordinary results. The division of the cemeteries at Cincinnati, by nationalities and religions, is so complete that it is easily determined how many of Americans and how many Protestants died of cholera. Tak ing the number given above, of those who died between the first of May and the first of September, we have this result :
German, Irish, and Hebrews, died of cholera in four months - 2,896
Americans, English, Scotch, and Welsh, - 1,218
4,114
. . . We see thus that the deaths among the Germans and Irish are within a fraction of being fourfold that of the Americans and double that of the entire population proportionally. A more minute and detailed investigation of this matter would, perhaps, prove that the proportion of mortality was even more than this against the foreign element.
At some time during the forties, probably, but in some year or years which we are unable to designate with certainty, a series of letters was written from a house now within the precincts of the city, which, as collected and published by the celebrated English authoress, Mary Howitt, unde1 the title of our Cousins in Ohio, form one of the most pleasant little books in the Cincinnati literature. Names in them are carefully concealed, and even Cincinnati is not once mentioned; but the local coloring is in places unmistakable. "Red creek," for example, is undoubtedly Mill creek, and Big Bluff creek, very likely, was Lick run ; and Stony creek Bold-face, which enters the river at Sedamsville. The cedar grove mentioned as "the cedars," where lived a sister of Mary Howitt and from which the letters were written, is now occupied by the Young Ladies' Academy of St. Vincent de Paul, a Roman Catholic institution, conducted by the Sisters of Charity, beyond Price's hill, on the Warsaw turnpike, in the extreme western part of the city. It was formerly the property of a Mr. Alderson. We present some entertaining extracts from the book in question:
The wooden bridge over the Red creek was now repaired. This was but a temporary bridge, the great stone bridge having been swept away the former summer, in a thunder-storm ; and this was the third that our friends had seen over Red creek since they came into the country. When first they came, it was c10ssed by an old, covered, wooden bridge ; and this was burned down one night by a man whose horses' feet stuck fast in a hole of the planking, which made him so angry that he vowed never again to be stopped by the same cause, and therefore he set fire to the bridge before he left the place. In the course of the summer a new bridge was again to be erected.
This Red creek was a small tributary of the Ohio. It was a very beautiful stream, and its serpentine course could be traced at the cedars, although its waters were unseen, by the white trunks and branches of the buttonwood trees which grew upon its banks. It was famous in Indian tradition, and the children often sang to themselves, in a low, chanting strain, one of its legends, which an American poet had beautifully sung in modem verse.
This day proved altogether an eventful one. Uncle Cornelius [Colonel Sedam?] told them about the landing of three hundred and ninety-five emancipated slaves which he had witnessed [in Cincinnati]. They arrived in the steamer at about eight o'clock that morning. They were a motley company of men, women, and children, old and young, but all decently dressed, and bringing with them their wagons and household stuff and considerable property—some people said to the value of ten thousand pounds. The history of their emancipation was interesting. It had been a struggle of nine years' continuance ; but to the honor of the south, the law had decided in their favor, and they were on their way to Mercer county, in the State of Ohio, which was chiefly settled by free colored people, and where a tract of land had been purchased for them.
These poor people had been the property of one John Randolph, a wealthy planter of Roanoke, Virginia. During his lifetime he had been a strenuous upholder of slavery ; yet, even then, it was said that his conscience often rebelled against him, and, but for custom and the fear
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 99
of ridicule, and perhaps of persecution also, he would have liberated his slaves. He did, however, all that he believed it possible for him to do; he provided in his will for their liberation after his death, and left a handsome provision for their transportation to a free State and for their maintenance there.
But this, it is said, did not satisfy his conscience on his dying bed. Being then unable to speak, he called for a pencil and paper, and wrote upon it the word, "Remorse." He felt, it is probable, in those last moments that even the act of kindness which he had prepared to do after his death could not atone to the Almighty for a lifelong practice of oppression, against the sinfulness of which his own soul had even thus testified.
He died, and after a long nine years' struggle the slaves were freed by law; and thus they now were on their way to what they hoped would be a home of freedom and peace. Uncle Cornelius said that the principal street of the city presented a singular sight, and one which they who saw would not soon forget. First came in the procession a crowd of negroes—men, women, and children, all dressed in coarse, cotton garments, but having the appearance of people who, by their dress, were in comfortable circumstances. They were on their way from the river, up which the steamer had brought them, to the canal, where they were again to embark for their new location. Behind them came their baggage-wagons, which formed a very long and singular array; and altogether it was the most extraordinary company of emigrants which had ever been seen in those parts. Many of the women had very young babies in their arms; there were also some very old people amongst them, and the one who brought up the rear was a very striking figure. He was the oldest and noblest-looking colored man that Uncle Cornelius had ever seen; he walked slowly with a long cane, and had something grand and patriarchal in his aspect and manner. Probably he might be one of those who had been brought up with his afterwards celebrated master, and, perhaps, when remorse wrung his death-bed soul, he might be remembered by him as one to whom a lifelong injustice had been done.
Willie, one day, at the beginning of the month, rode with his father some miles up the country, to Stony Creek valley, to see the wagon loaded with charcoal, for which purpose it had been sent beforehand. Charcoal was used to burn in a small stove with coal or wood, in the cold mornings and evenings, to warm and cheer the rooms; and a store of it was therefore laid in.
Stony Creek valley was one of the most secluded valleys in the neighborhood; the road which ran along it passed through pleasant woods, and now and then crossed the 10cky bed of the stream. The valley itself was famous for lime and charcoal-burning; it was but little cleared of wood, and the houses, which were mostly log-cabins, were inhabited by Germans, principally charcoal-burners. There was a pleasant kind of poetical, out-of-the-world character about the whole place; and the curling smoke which rose up so dreamily into the sunny sky, from the rude charcoal and lime kilns, added greatly to its effect.
CHAPTER XIV.
CINCINNATI'S SEVENTH DECADE.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY.
The census of this year was taken under inauspicious conditions, on account of the return of the cholera from its visitation of 1849. Nevertheless the figures obtained, one hundred and fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty-eight, were very large as contrasted with the forty-six thousand three hundred and thirty-eight of ten years before, showing an increase in the decade of sixty-nine thousand one hundred, or very nearly two hundred and fifty per cent.—an average of almost seven thousand newcomers every year. The new buildings this year numbered one thousand four hundred and eighteen, and the total number of buildings was sixteen thousand two hundred and eighty-six. The new ones included five stone, nine hundred and thirty-nine brick, and four hundred and sixty-four frame structures. Brick houses had advanced in number beyond all others, and were now three-fifths of all in Cincinnati. Among new public edifices were the German Protestant Orphan asylum, the Widow's home, sundry school-houses and engine houses, the Episcopal church on Sycamore street, and St. John's, at the corne1 of Seventh and Plum, the First and Seventh Presbyterian churches, and two hotels. The City hall and new court house were projected, the public offices being still at the southeast corner of Fourth and Vine streets. Fourteen macadamized roads now entered the city, with an aggregate length of five hundred and fourteen miles; two canals, together with their extensions, reaching out five hundred and sixty miles, and twenty-one railways, were in the immediate Cincinnati connections, in all measuring one thousand seven hundred and thirteen miles, with five hundred and eighty-six miles more in progress and one thousand and six undertaken. The churches of the city numbered ninety-one, with four synagogues.
Mr. Charles Cist, writing for his decennial volume (Cincinnati in 1851) of the next year, has the following paragraph concerning the heterogeneous character of the city's population. Although written thirty years ago, it is well worth quotation now:
The population of the city presents many varieties of physiology. The original settlers were from various States of the Union; and the armies of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, during the Indian wars, left behind them a still greater variety of persons. The subsequent immigration, though largely from the Middle and northern Atlantic States, has been, in part, from the more southern. In latter years it has been composed, still more than from either, of Europeans. The most numerous of these are Germans, next Irish; then English, Scotch, and Welsh. Very few French, Italians, or Spaniards have sought it out. Lastly, its African population, chiefly emancipated slaves and their offspring, from Kentucky and Virginia, is large; and although intermarriages with the whites are unknown, the streets show as many mulatto, grille, and qqadroon complexions as those of New Orleans. Thus the varieties of national physiology are very great.
This was a cholera year in Cincinnati, one terribly destructive to human life, and resulting in a panic, which at one time almost depopulated the city. The number of deaths reached the high figure of four thousand eight hundred and thirty-two-more than four per cent. of the entire population. The census was taken this year, and Mr. Cist says, in his Cincinnati in 1851 : "The population returns were further reduced, from the still greater numbers put to flight by the approach and arrival of that pestilence. For weeks every vehicle of conveyance was filled with these fugitives, who, in most cases, did not return in time to be included in the enumeration of inhabitants." He thought that, but for this drawback, the census would have made a return for the city of not less than one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants. The actual figures obtained were, as we have seen, one hundred and fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty:eight —an increase of two hundred and fifty per cent. in ten years, against an increase of ninety per cent. from 1830 to 1840. No other city in the United States exhibited a ratio of increase so large, nor was there any other whose absolute increase was so great, except only Philadelphia and New York.