BOOK I CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION AND INTERPRETATION—THE MOTIF OF THIS BOOK ETHICAL—ADVANTAGES OF CERTAIN SPOTS FOR BUILDING CITIES—THE WONDERFULNESS OF A GREAT CITY—THE OHIO. "A people which takes no Pride in the noble achievements of their ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered, themselves."—Macaulay. Introduction. In order to prevent my readers from false hopes as to what they may discover in the following pages, their author will explain at once his aim and purpose. It is not to gather recondite material ; nor to assemble uncorrelated items of information about the Oueen City, for almost all the facts of real value to the average man have been collected in a monumental work entitled "The Centennial History of Cincinnati," by Charles Theodore Greve. To accomplish the purpose which I cherish, (a sort of tentative interpretation of the life of our city) it would have been possible (if my literary conscience could have been satisfied in so easy a fashion) to shut myself up in a library with no other source of knowledge than this great compilation. Interpretation. But there remains, however, a task which the method of Mr. Greve did not permit him to accomplish. It is, of course, the task of selection, of combination and of interpretation. Nothing except a universe and a nation is harder to comprehend than a city. It would be possible, perhaps, to know all the facts of its evolution and still not comprehend its lades : to be familiar with its outward existence and yet remain ignorant of its inner life. No one could have understood this better or explained it more clearly than Mr. Greve had he tried. Neither he, however, nor any of his predecessors like Burnet, Drake, Maxwell, Cist, Ford and others have deliberately attempted to achieve this difficult undertaking. It is the desire, therefore, to try his hand at the interpretation of the complex life of a city of almost 400,000 souls and covering in its existence a period of more than a hundred years, that animates the author of this essay, who believes that "the outer aspect in civilization is the material for history : while the inner aspects are the material for philosophy" and that the latter are those by which we are most deeply moved. In order to do this, it will be seen at once that he must not permit himself to be engulfed by the mass of facts which, however interesting they may be, are unessential to the comprehension of the development of the growth of our civic life, which, planted at "Yeatman's Cove" in 1789 has become a vast and splendid metropolis. Vol. I-2 12 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Elimination of Surplusage. One of the great French critics defined literary style as "the elimination of surplusage" and that very brilliant aphorism discloses the prindiple upon which the historical interpreter must proceed. With the skill and resolution of a surgeon, he must cut away all that is nonessential. However interesting an incident or a character may be in itself,- it must be thrown out of consideration if it does not in some way explain the evolution of the soul of the city. If it seems like sacrilege or indifference thus to ignore many charming people and striking events, it must be remembered that history is not like a chain, each of whose links is of equal importance.. In the life of a nation or a city, multitudes of individuals and experiences are of great, but not strategic importance. A few exceptional people become types, symbols, pivots.. They incarnate diffused ideals and ambitions. In them the blind things of the masses crystallize, a hundred thouSand people live in them, are represented by them. Some of the many persons who have lived as worthily but not as creatively as these exceptional individuals will be described in the second portion of this work and to it the students of biography are referred. Many events and incidents also, quite worthy to be remembered will be recorded in that same portion of the history, in essays which treat of the various phases of our city life. The stream of history, flowing as it does in its several channels of business, politics, literature, etc., constitutes one broad river of events ; but it is so difficult to describe them in their entirety, that it has been thought best to take them up, one by one, prefacing them with a general view which might seem to coordinate the .innumerable details. By reading this attempted interpretation first and the fuller and more detailed accounts afterwards the reader will, it is hoped, be able to gain an illuminating conception of that most fascinating of phenomena, a city?s growth. A City as the Most Fascinating of Phenomena. That the growth of a city is one at least of the most fascinating phenomena in the world few thoughtful people would deny. Not but that cities differ immeasurably in interest. No one would pretend to say, for example,. that either Thucydides or Macaulay could make the history of Cincinnati as fascinating as that of Athens or of Rome; of Paris or of London. Those venerable towns have existed for many centuries and their beginnings are lost in the vistas of antiquity. They have played important parts in cosmic movements. 'Many of their inhabitants have achieved immortal fame. Traditions and even myths surround them with an aureole. A City's Uniqueness. Cincinnati is, on the other hand, an infant yet. Its beginnings have no charm of mystery. It is only one of scores of other mushroom growths of the modern world, all of which are to the superficial observer practically indistinguishable one from another. There is' a sense, indeed, in which die, history of one single American city would answer for those of a hundred equally well. But, on the other hand, that principle in Nature which forbids that two leaves, two men or two oysters should be alike .exactly, has radically differentiated each of these cities from the others. To the close observer there are dissimilarities between CINCINNATI—THE OUEEN CITY - 13 Boston and New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco, as significant if not as easily distinguishable as between Babylon and Bagdad; Calcutta and Yokohama. Even between the cities of the "Buckeye" state this difference exists. Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati are no more alike than Tom Johnson, Golden Rule Jones, Washington Gladden, John H. Patterson and George B. Cox, some of their most famous citizens. Our Personal Interests. It is this perpetual variation from type that creates an eternal charm in every field of observation, and it is to be felt in a high degree in the contemplation of Cincinnati as compared with other sister cities. But, there is a deeper reason for interest in the record of her existence and the study of her character. Cincinnati is our Home Town ! our Own City ! This is the town we live in. Here we were born ; or at least are to be buried. In Cincinnati we have a certain mysterious sense of proprietorship, and every true citizen is more interested in his own than in any other city, as he is more interested in the cottage where he was born or the house where he resides than in the birth place or palaces of emperors and kings. If any Cincinnatian therefore approaches the study of his home town with languid interest, it may be well not only to remind him of these facts ; but of another also: that the city is so complex in its nature and so. slow in its growth that it can only be apprehended through a supreme effort of a cultivated imagination. One cannot regard a single portion of its territory or a single section of its history and be profoundly moved. He must have grasped it as a whole ! The long series of events must unroll before his inner eye like a panorama. Its buildings, streets and parks must spread out before him in a bird's eye view. To see it thus is certainly to feel the fascination of a great mystery. A City Built in a Day. Let a man, for example, having mastered the principal events in the growth of Cincinnati from its first humble beginnings, stand upon Mt. Adams and look down upon it in the day time when overhung by its dark pall of smoke; or at night when lit up with electric lamps, it glows like an inverted firmament, and represent before his inner eye the scenes of which its history is composed. Let the vast and complicated procession of events, silently, move past. Let him imagine that what has required a century for its accomplishment is transpiring in a single day, and see if his bosom will not heave with a profound emotion. Spread out before his enchanted eyes. lies a region of 'exquisite beauty, un-disturbed as yet, by the advent of civilization. Through it rolls a river whose majesty is indescribable, and from whose shores primeval forests ascend the slow sloping hills to their summits. The silence and peace of Paradise are reigning there. Suddenly the solitude is invaded and the stillness broken by an irruption of the material elements of a city of a half million souls, assembled from every region of the habitable globe. As a flock of birds comes swooping down from heaven to earth; as a cloud of dust is whirled along a country road, the timbers, bricks and iron girders are assembled with a cataclysmic force and rapidity. Out of that vortex into which these ingredients are flung pell-mell, a city begins to 14 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY appear, as if created by a magic wand. Roads are cut through forests, stupendous-structures are raised ; steam boats assemble on the river ; railroads are projected into distant regions ; parks are laid out ; hundreds of thousands of infants are born and developed into men and women; commerce, education, business, litera-ture, society, religion, all unfold ; life pours in torrents down every avenue and up every thoroughfare, and all, in a single day ! A scene like this would possess an indescribable grandeur and almost unen-durable sublimity. And yet, it would be no more wonder-full for having trans-pired in twenty-four hours than in a century and a quarter. The Wonder-fullness of a Great City. It is this wonder-fullness, this mystery (lost by the average beholder through the slowness and immensity of their vast operations), that the author desires to recover, believing that the emotions which it generates are necessary to the best citizenship. For unless we feel a sense of awe in the presence of the great mysteries of life, we are not stirred to that reverence in which the sense of obliga-tion, comes to birth. And, without that sense of obligation, we cannot produce those great men who are a city's true glory. "What makes a City GREAT and STRONG ? Not architecture's graceful strength, Not factories extended length, But MEN who SEE the CIVIC WRONG, And give their LIVES to make it RIGHT, And turn its DARKNESS into LIGHT." In the judgment of Henry Drummond, the building of great cities is one of the supreme reasons for man's existence upon earth. "To make cities, that is what we are here for ! He who makes the city, makes the world. After all, though men make cities, it is the cities which make men. Whether our national life is great or mean; whether our social virtues are ma-ture or stunted; whether our sons are moral or vicious ; whether religion is pos-sible or impossible depends upon the city." The Motif of This Book is Ethical. It will be suspected from the above confession that the motive of this inter-pretation is ethical, and this suspicion is correct. It is, in fact, a "purpose" his-tory. Its purpose is to increase the public sense of obligation by pointing out the grandeur and beauty of any city, and to awaken and clarify the self-consciousness of this particular city. Some fundamental conception must dominate the mind of every one who writes a poem, essay, novel or history. The fundamental purpose of one historian may simply be to state the facts ; of another to produce a work of art; of another to awaken scientific interest ; of another to arouse an ethical sentiment. A City's Soul. The fundamental conception which will be found to pervade this entire essay will be that of a City's having a Soul ! CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 15 Many centuries ago, Socrates, a Greek philosopher, declared that "a city's soul is nothing else than its political principle which has as great an influence as the intellect does in a man's body." This conception of a city as an organism animated by a spirit may seem fanciful to some. One has, however, only to reflect for a moment upon the person-ality of such cities as Thebes, Memphis, Athens, Jerusalem and Rome, to be given a pause in his levity and skepticism. There is, in every city, an essence, an ego, a creative germ which gives it individuality. The differences are not only physical but intellectual, emotional, ethical and spiritual. Similar as have been the origin and history of the great Ohio river towns, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville, no observant traveller could fail to be conscious that the animating genius of each was separate and distinct. Now it is the discovery of the animating genius that produces municipal self-consciousness and without self-consciousness a city is as characterless as an individual. It takes the individual a long time to come to self-consciousness and it takes a city longer. But it is a question whether any city ever attains a great place in the annals of the world, until it has arrived at a more or less clear con-ception of the reason for its existence and the mission it has to work out. It is, for example, the self-consciousness of Boston and Chicago that are their greatest assets. The self-consciousness of our own city has developed very slowly. If there is any clear recognition at all of our municipal mission it is only by an inconsid-erable fraction of our citizens. The Queen City seems rather to be drifting than being steered ; to be the victim of uncomprehended influences rather than the moulder of its own destiny. What are we here for? What especial part are we to play in the great sisterhood of cities? What is our raison d'etre are great questions, and sooner or later must be answered. That they will be best answered by those who are the most familiar with their past seems probable. To know something of the conditions which preceded our birth ; something of that birth itself ; something of the influences which have shaped us since ; and something of that which we have actually achieved is among the supreme necessities for those who wish to shape our future. Let us therefore begin this study by a brief glance at the background upon which the picture of our city must be painted. Background. Like A great river, the stream of events which compose the history of a city may be explored by starting either at the end of its course, or its beginning. It is the latter method which we chose and inaugurate our inquiries with an investi-gation of those far off conditions which preceded Cincinnati's existence, lost, many of them, in the obscurities of the unknown and inaccessible past. The first curiosity demanding satisfaction is about a city's site. Why was it located here rather than there, in this spot and not in any other? It is a problem of the deepest interest. All Cities Built Upon Rivers. So great is the antiquity, and so wide the diffusion of the races, that in every country the available sites for villages and towns have all been discovered and 16 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY occupied again and again. At first, a few rude huts sheltered the wandering tribes who paused for a while to hunt, to fish, to graze their flocks or entrench themselves against the forays of their enemies in a situation favorable for a brief encampment. Afterwards came the permanent buildings of more civilized races. These in turn were destroyed by stronger peoples, who upon the ruins which they had created, erected cities of their own. Layer upon layer of the memorials of each successive metropolis have been discovered along the lakes and rivers in every part of the old world, and lend a melancholy fascination to the exploration of its various countries. And this is true of modern Europe, even. The first reliable mention of the City of Paris, for example, was in 52 B. C., but, for cen-turies before that, a little fishing village had Stood, where stands today the most brilliant city of the world. London was an obscure hamlet erected upon ground with difficulty rescued from the marshes of the Thames long before it became a Roman metropolis. Nor is it different in this newer, Western world. The City of Mexico stands where once stood the gorgeous capital of the Aztecs, and although the aborigines of the Northern half of this continent were not so civilized and therefore incapable of leaving such splendid memorials, faint traces of their residence have been discovered on practically the site of every one of ow most important towns. In fact upon some of them, the. Indian tribes were living when the white man came. Upon others were unearthed their graves and the rude foundations of their primitive abodes and public structures. So vital is the emotion excited by this sense of antiquity, and of the recurrence of the same phenomena in city building that we cannot refrain from printing a poem by Mahommed Kazuma, an Arabian writer of the Seventh Century, in which it finds expression. "I wandered by a goodly town Beset with many a garden fair, And asked of one who gathered down Large 'fruit—how. long the town was there. He spoke, nor chose his hand to stay 'The town was here for many a day And will be here, for ever and aye.' "A Thousand Years passed by and then I visited the place again; No vestige of that town I traced. But one poor swain, his horn employed ; His sheep unconscious browsed and grazed. I asked : 'When was the town destroyed?' He spoke (nor would his horn lay by) 'One thing may grow and another may die: But I know nothing of towns ! Not I!' "A thousand years went by and then I wandered past that spot again. There, in the deep of waters cast His nets, a lonely fisherman; CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 17 And, as he drew them up at last I asked him how the lake began. He looked at me and laughed to say 'The waters spring forever and aye And fish are plenty, every day.' "A thousand years went by, and then I saw the self same place again. And to ! a country wild and rude; And, axe in hand beside a tree, The hermit of that solitude I asked how old the wood might be. He said count not time at all— A tree may rise; a tree may fall ; The forest overlives us all.' "A thousand years went by, and then I went the same old round again. And there a glorious city stood. And, midst tumultuous market cry, I asked whence rose the town where wood, Pasture and lake forgotten lie? They heard me not and little blame. For them the world is as it came, And all things must be still the same. "A thousand years shall pass and then I mean to try that road again." Aboriginal Evidences. This was the case with Cincinnati. The pioneers discovered, on, their preliminary explorations, the evidences that others besides themselves, in the ages that were gone, had recognized the availabilitiy of this situation for human habitation. As in so many other localities in the middle west, they stumbled upon well preserved samples of the three types of edifices known to the vanished aborigines. The superstructures had disappeared, but the foundation remained. First—circular bases, upon which was piled the earth mounds, for burial of the dead ; Second—rectangular bases, upon which their residences were built ; Third—colossal barricades, constructed in the form of serpents, presumably, for defense. All these were here upon the spot where now our city stands and, had our ancestors fully appreciated their value, those relics and reminders of that buried past would have been sacredly preserved to awaken in the minds of each new generation that solemn sense of reverence, which such memorials, alone, possess the power to kindle. But they were ruthlessly swept away and not a visible trace remains to stimulate our imaginations and chasten our pride. 18 - CINCINNAT1—THE QUEEN CITY It is for this reason, among so many others, that the reading of our written history becomes imperative. To, those only, who take the pains to discover these facts upon the printed page, can come those deeper reflections upon the signifi-cance of a city's site, which is a large element in the appreciation of its history. Advantages of Certain Spots for Building Cities. It is this advantage of certain places for the building of towns and cities, that here challenges our attention. In one spot a lofty hill top affords a safe retreat from dangerous enemies; in another a shallow spot in a river's bed or a valley in a mountain range, affords a convenient passageway for travellers ; in still another an oasis in a desert guarantees that the pilgrim's thirst may be slaked; in still another, a fall in a stream that the mill's wheel may be turned; in still another a deep bay in an ocean shore that a storm tossed navy may secure a safe and quiet harbor. Into such situations human beings flow as naturally as streams into lake. With an instinct as unerring as that of the coney who finds his predestined refuge in the clefts of the rocks, men and women discover these strategic spots for the building of their habitations and transaction of- their business. Whether such situations have been designed by an intelligent Creator or effected by the blind strivings of nature, their preparation has required so great a length of time and the conspiracy of so many Titanic forces as to clothe them with a sort of sacred mystery. The preparation of the site of Cincinnati began millions of years ago. In fact, its landscaping was commenced almost as soon as the morning stars sang together. Formative Influences, Glaciers, etc. The present topography of this region, it must be understood, is vastly different from that of prehistoric times. Long ages ago, an immense body of water covered an enormous area of land in this great central portion of America constituting a lake which must have been almost an ocean. Its waters swarmed with living creatures, whose skeletons, deposited upon the bottom of this inland sea, formed those limestone beds of rock which, alternating with deposits of clayey shale brought down from neighboring hills, compose the upper portions of the crust of the earth in this locality. As these deposits thickened, they sank from their own weight deeper and deeper down, until at the time they had attained a depth of possibly one thousand feet, there occurred a convulsive contraction of the earth's crust, which with Titanic energy threw up a narrow but extensive island, running north and south in this very region whose geological characteristics we are studying. Upon this elevation, Nature began to operate with a slow but irresistible power. The rain, the frost and running water were her instruments and with them in thou-sands and, perhaps in millions of years, she patiently dug canals for drainage and deposited the elements of the soil. In those far off days, Geologists assure us, a river (fancifully named "Old Limestone") heading somewhere in the vicinity of Maysville, Ky., and Manchester, Ohio, flowed through the present channel of the Little Miami ; thence in a westerly direction toward that suburb, of our city known as St. Bernard, where it was met by the Licking: Thus augmented, it rolled onward up the Mill CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 19 Creek Valley to Hamilton. From this point its course is not so plainly traced; but, probably it turned in a southwesterly direction and fell into the Whitewater near Harrison. From thence it debouched into the Great Miami and so on downward through the present bed of the Ohio into the Gulf. Old Limestone. Innumerable as were the years required to perform these stupendous feats of landscape architecture and laborious as were the processes, Nature was not satisfied with the results and, patiently, began again. This time the instrument selected for her alterations was an immeasurable sheet of ice which flowed slowly but irresistibly out of the frozen North and spread itself over this whole region, planing down hills and filling up valleys, like a householder grading his door yard. Other ages rolled away and other conditions arose. The vast sheet of ice began to melt and form great dams with its floes and rubbish, through which at irregular intervals, the pent up waters burst and carried devastation over hundreds and hundreds of miles. Under the alterative powers of such prodigious energies, the ancient drainage system vanished or at least, left few and all but unrecognizable traces of itself behind. The new system, however, was finally perfected, the central canal of which is the great Ohio. The grand "Old Limestone" had disappeared and her waters now flowed in this newer bed. The Great Miami ; the Little Miami ; the Licking and smaller streams like Mill Creek, Duck Creek, Lick Run and Bloody Run (now running or soon to run through covered sewers), gradually excavated those beds through which they have been coursing for ages, and in which they were seen with admiration by the first white settlers. Their precipitous banks had been carefully graded, and one of the most fertile soils in the world had been generously deposited on them. Out of this rose luxurious and beautiful forests which the pio-neers admired and destroyed ; but which we, their descendants, can only imagine and regret. The Rivers as Assets. Among the influences which designated and fitted the spot on which Cincinnati now stands for the site of a great city, the streams, of course, were the. most conspicuous and important. The Big and Little Miamis ; the Licking and the Mill Creek had two values only. Their valleys furnished natural thorough-fares for travel and a rich alluvial soil for agriculture. But, in addition, the Ohio (which the pioneers christened with that poetic name, The Beautiful River), was a navigable stream! In this age of railroads, it is hard for us to realize the significance of that fact. It was a dull fellow who observed "How strange it is that there should so often be a navigable river running past a great city," and he would be a very stupid fellow who had not studied with intense interest the significance of those navigable rivers by side of which they, so acci-dentally ( !) flow. Who could over-estimate the importance of the Nile to Alex-andria; the Euphrates to Babylon; the Yangste Kiang to Shanghai; the Uraguay to Buenos Ayres; the Hudson to New York ; the Mississippi to New Orleans ; the Alleghany and the 'Monongahela to Pittsburgh? An ignoramus only can min-imize the future importance of these navigable rivers, even in a rapid transit age 20 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY like this. Such streams are liable to leap into unexpected uses, even. In 1910 the Seine threatened to become the destroyer of Paris, by a freshet in which she overflowed her banks and invaded the city with irresistible power. A few months later, however, in the great railroad strike, she became the city's savior, because where other means of transportation had been closed, the little vessels plying up and down her quiet waters carried the provisions which prevented famine. What service beside furnishing water, drainage and transportation great rivers are to play in the future we may only conjecture; but the part which the Ohio did actually play in the location and evolution of the great Metropolis of the Middle West demands more than a passing notice. The Ohio. The Ohio river is the greatest of the affluents of the Mississippi with respect to its discharge of water, averaging 158,000 cubic feet per second, while that of. the Missouri is only 120,000. It has its origin at the point where the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers unite, and there cradles its first great Child City—Pittsburgh. A straight line drawn from Pittsburgh to the point where it debouches into the Mississippi measures 615 miles ; but in its meanderings the waters of the great stream traverse 975 miles, and at its mouth stands the city of Cairo, as Pittsburgh does at its source. Between these two cities and lining its shores, innumerable other towns of greater or less importance may be seen—Steubenville, Wheeling., Marietta, Parkersburg, Pomeroy, Point Pleasant, Gallipolis, Huntington, Cartersburgh, Ironton, Portsmouth, Maysville, New Richmond, Covington, Cincinnati, Lawrenceburgh, Madison, Louisville , Evansville and Paducah. These are only the larger and better known ; but others, full of life and business might be named. Past these busy and prosperous centers of human activity the mighty river flows at the rate of about three miles an hour, and rising at irregular intervals under the swelling pressure of some great flood to the height of 60 or 70 feet above low water mark. According to one authority it drains 202,400 square miles, and to another 214,000, while with its tributaries it has at least 5,000 miles of navigable waters. These facts and figures feebly indicate the immensity of the region whose past and future, even more than its present, are indissolubly linked with the Ohio river. They serve to illustrate and prove its value as a factor in the selection of the site of Cincinnati. For, somewhere in a region so vast, a great metropolis was certain to arise and could not arise except upon its shores. For, it was the natural. highway for the army of pioneers who were so soon to invade this wilderness. A road cut through the forests over the Alleghany mountains admitted a large contingent, it is true. So. also did another, winding through the southern edge of the great Northwestern Territory. But those who travelled these wild and dangerous pathways were but a handful to those who floated easily down the swift current of the great river. If then it was valuable for travel, it was not less so for commerce. The difficulty of carrying heavy burdens up stream was immense ; but in order to populate the region it was only! of importance that they should be carried down. Than this nothing. could be easier, and having once been loaded on the primitive craft constructed for the purpose, not a penny of expense was afterwards incurred for transportation. CHAPTER II A TERRA INCOGNITA-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET AND THEIR DISCOVERIES- ENGLISH DISPUTE POSSESSION WITH THE FRENCH AND THE ABORIGINES TAKE A HAND-GENERAL BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT-WAR WITH THE INDIANS-GEORGE ROGERS CLARK WINS THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-DIVISION OF THE TERRITORY INTO STATES. The Previous History. Such, then were the natural advantages of this site for a city and the methods of its preparation by Nature. But, if it is necessary to know about these in order to comprehend the city in which we dwell, it is not less so to be familiar with the essential facts concerning the early history of the great region, of which it was destined to be the metropolis. A Vast Wilderness-1673-1763. We must, therefore, now begin to trace a long and complicated series of events which began to take place as far back as 1673, by means of which the Middle West was fitted for the white man's residence and for a central community from which the influences of the new civilization should radiate. To do this intelligently, we must keep in mind the vast extent of this territory, and be prepared to co-ordinate events occurring anywhere and everywhere between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi ; the Cumberland river and the great lakes. 1673. Up to the year 1673, or thereabouts, the Middle West was a terra incognita to the whites; but, at that time restless and adventurous spirits began to wander about and to investigate the secrets of this mysterious region. This period belongs almost exclusively to French history and covered nearly a century of time. It is fabulously rich in romance and of the greatest importance to general history, even in minute details ; but brief notices of a few, only, of its brilliant achievements must suffice to disclose its significance, as related to the foundation and development of Cincinnati. 1676. On the 17th day of May in the year of our Lord 1676, Marquette and Joliet began that memorable journey which resulted in the discovery of the Mississippi. Down it they floated until they reached the Arkansas river, and on the 17th of June began their return by the way of the Illinois, thus passing through the west-ern edge of that region which is the object of our investigation, but learning little if anything about it. 22 - CINCINNATI-THE QUEEN CITY 1682. Not long afterward Robert LaSalle began that famous voyage on which he completed the work of Joliet by passing dawn the -Mississippi river to the Gulf of Mexico, where on the 9th of April, 1682, he planted fleur-de-lis and claimed the region to the east of his line of travel for his native land by the right of discovery. 1687—1700.  This title was regarded by Frenchmen as quite sufficient to warrant them in taking possession, and the vanguard:of their adventurers pressed on in ever increasing numbers. Joliet founded a: colony at St. Louis in 1687. The Wabash valley was occupied in 1700; Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and many other trading posts were established in the same period. The Indians, who numbered twenty or thirty thousand, were treated kindly and became the staunch friends of the Frenchmen whose influence was soon extended over the entire region. No attempt was made to colonize and settle, for barter with the native hunters was their only thought and purpose except to make the Indians serve as a sort of buffer between themselves and the English. In carrying out their plans the) showed a wonderful sagacity. They acquired an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of the aboriginal inhabitants ; they thoroughly mastered the topog-raphy of the country ; they located their trading points with a knowledge that resembled instinct. 1748 In 1748 the first regular settlement by English-speaking men on Western waters was made in Drapers Meadow, on the New River, a branch of the Kanawha in Virginia, and in the same year Thomas Walker with a company of Virginia hunters forced his way into Kentucky and Tennessee. Trivial as those two events may seem in the great movements of history, they were epochal in fact, because the first slight tricklings of that stream of immigration westward which was, so soon to be a flood. But that illustrious year was not to close Without another event of even greater significance for, it was during its progress, that "The Ohio Company," an organization consisting of thirteen Marylanders with one London merchant was formed to speculate in Western lands, and secured a grant of 500,000 acres in the Ohio valley, to be located mainly between the Kanawha and the Monongahela. 1749. The peaceful possession by France of this wilderness empire continued long; but began to be perceptibly disturbed after the close of King George's war in 1749. In that critical contest, the English had struggled with the French for supremacy along the Atlantic coast, and the result was so favorable to them as to release their energies for new and bolder enterprises upon the unexplored wilderness to the west, than any they had undertaken, hitherto. Before that time, it is true, that the Pennsylvanians and Virginians had worked their way to the foot hills of the Alleghanies and already the Men from Connecticut had begun to break through into New York and to take possession of the Susquehanna. But the truly momentous hour now' struck and one of the most impressive movements in history began ; the movement of an irresponsible, unorganized mass of adven- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 23 turers extending over hundreds of miles along the sparsely populated western fringes of the colonies, into an unexplored wilderness. 1750. In 1750 Christopher Gist was sent by these farsighted and ambitious men, to examine and report upon their holdings, and the account of his expedition is the first one concerning the region,, by men of the English speaking race. In the year following Gist went down the southern side of the tract and found the whole region occupied by Indians and a few roving and reckless Scotch-Irish traders. These startling evidences of a determination on the part of the English to dispute the possession of this terra incognita with the French were rapidly mul-tiplied, and before long efforts began to be made to negotiate treaties with the Indians by which important holdings could be peacefully secured. These efforts, as a matter of course, produced violent dissensions and antagonisms of all sorts between the three peoples contending for the prize. The French could see as far into a mill stone as anybody and, realizing how much they had at stake, be-gan to put every possible obstacle in the pathways of the obtrusive and aggressive English. Glasconiere, the sagacious governor of Canada, 'sent Celeron de Bienville across Lake Erie ; from thence over the Portage to Lake Chautauqua; then down the Ohio as far as the Miami, by whose waters he began his return home via the Maumee river and Lake Erie to Montreal. It was a journey of exploration, of pacification and of preparation, its object being to devise ways and means to stem the tide of English advancement. 1753. In 1753, also, the Marquis Duquesne, who succeeded Glasconiere, dispatched a strong military force to seize the head waters of the Ohio—a master stroke in the great game, then being played. These hardy and determined soldiers con-structed Fort Venango at the confluence of French Creek and the Alleghany, thus fastening a secure rivet in the barriers with which they were determined to surround their precious possession. This was an act of aggression too bold to be overlooked by the English, and Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia sent a com-pany of soldiers (piloted by Christopher Gist), to remonstrate threateningly against it. The bearer of his message was a young Virginian by the name of George Washington, and he presented it so convincingly that Le Boef, the com-mander of the French, felt called upon to ask for time to communicate with the Government at Montreal. This dilatory treatment of his remonstrance was little to the taste of the irate Governor and he sent Washington back, to construct a fort at the forks of the two great rivers whose junction forms the Ohio. It was found impossible to do this, under the circumstances, but the frontier men of the region, dissatisfied at the failure, undertook to accomplish the deed themselves. The difficulties were greater than they imagined and they also, were compelled to desist by the French, who finished the structure begun by their enemies and made out of it the most strategic stronghold in the entire country. From a place so important it was imperative that the French should be dis-lodged, even at the expense of war, and Governor Dinwiddie acted promptly. 24 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY He sent Washington to accomplish its conquest or destruction but furnished him with so insufficient a force that the brave young soldier succeeded in escaping from the horrors of the battle of "Great Meadows" only with the "honors of war." His discomfiture and retirement left the French in absolute control, and at that dark moment not an English flag was waving in the whole Northwest. This situation was intolerable and the English Government planned a counter stroke. An army of very considerable size and power was raised and put under the command Of General Braddock, a soldier of renown. He took Washington upon his staff ; but ignored the advice of the young man whose experience with the Indian mode of warfare entitled him to be heard. As a result of this fatuous indifference to counsel, he was surprised by his wily enemies; his army was cut to pieces and himself slain,—a catastrophe which sent a shudder along the whole Atlantic coast and through the mother country, also. "We shall know better how to deal with the Indians another time," said the dying Braddock, but did not live to demonstrate that he had learned the great lesson; and those who came after him repeated the blunder which he had made, not only, but were guilty of a hundred others. 1758. It was so necessary to avenge this insult to English valor and, as well, to conquer this obstinate Fort that still another expedition was organized in 1758 and it Set out determined to succeed, whatever the cost might be. This time the commander was General Faber and his triumph was rendered easy and certain by the temporary absence of the ndians from the encampment. This weakening of the garrison was fatal to the French. The stronghold was captured ; its name was changed from Fort Dusquesne to Fort Pitt and it became the defense and hope of the whole frontier. The Treaty of Paris. The conquest of this little frontier post, may be considered the first act in the great political drama which we are watching. Distant as its staging was from that spot on the Ohio where our city was to have its birth, it was of critical importance and so were other events, more distant still. The "Seven Years' war between Austria, England and France was terminated by the treaty of Paris in 1763. In that far away city, a few pen strokes transferred the sovereignty of the French empire in America to the absolute control of the English. A victory that seemed possible to be achieved alone by fighting over every foot of ground in that immeasurable area was secured by the signatures of a few individuals in a quiet chamber across a stormy ocean.! "America is to be English—not French! What a result (of the Seven Years' War) is that, if there were no other!" exclaims Carlyle. "France beaten, stript, humiliated; sinful, unrepentant (governed by mere sinners and at best mere fools) collapses like a creature whose limbs fail it; sinks into bankrupt quiescence; into nameless fermentation generally ; into dry rot." For us the significance of this far off collapse of French power lies in the fact, of course, that it opened the door to the appropriation of one of the most fertile regions in the world, to the agriculture, commerce, government, religion and city building of the Anglo Saxon race. Upon their ability to conquer the wilderness and that of others. to propitiate or eliminate its Indian population, CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 25 rested the possibility of holding and controlling this immense acquisition of territory and of wealth. The Strength of the English with the Indians. The next historical problem which confronts us therefore is that of the policy of the English toward this newly acquired territory and the events by which it was prepared through complicated statecraft and bloody battles for a' peaceful occu-pation. 1763. On the 7th day of October, 1763, George III, the English King, issued a proclamation concerning the government of all the other territories ceded to England by the treaty of Paris, excepting this particular region in North America. His reason for excepting it from the provisions in that: proclamation was—the desire to rescue it all for crown lands, in order to exclude the inhabitants of the colonies from settling upon it! The selfish motive for this exclusion is one of the monstrosities of history, and is concealed and confessed in the words "Let the savages enjoy the desert in quiet, for were they driven from their forests the peltry trade would decrease."' For the profit of the home government through. the revenue derived from a fur trade with the Indians, this whole magnificent region was to be closed to the in-numerable home seekers who were waiting to clear it, plow it, inhabit it and turn it into a paradise! Pontiac War—Pontiac-1763. This cold and selfish policy was instantly resented and assisted powerfully to provoke that hatred of England which produced the wave of the American Revolution. At the first the sanguine colonists believed that, now, because the French were conquered they could safely enter upon the occupation of this splendid domain, for it did not seem even to occur to them that the Indians could offer any serious resistance without the co-operation of the French. In this belief they were most lamentably in error, for the Indians from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, grieving over the disaster to their French friends, and irritated by the sudden and daring encroachments of their white neighbors broke out into open remonstrances and threats. The French had been conciliatory and politic in their treatment of the ndians ; the English were harsh and unfair. One act of injustice followed another until at last the outraged Red Men rose in a movement of unprecedented magnitude. This movement, dangerous in itself, was rendered more so because inspired and directed by a man of extraordinary genius, Pontiac the Chief of the Ottawas. By the exercise of his. unrivaled powers this great warrior rallied the tribes of the whole region to his standard and planned a campaign of resistance, with the most consummate military skill. Various divisions of his army were to attack the several forts which the English had seized and manned, and began to do so in the months of May and June in 1763. One after another these fortresses succumbed. Forts St. Joseph (on the St. Joseph river, Michigan), fort Ontario, (now Lafayette, Indiana), fort Michillimacinac (now Mackinac, Michigan), fort Pesque Isle (now Erie, Pa.), fort Le Boeuf (in Erie Co., Pa.), fort Venango (Venango Co., Pa.), and the forts at Carlisle and Bedford, Pa." 26 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Bouquet. The only unsuccessful efforts of this sudden and brilliant campaign were, curiously enough, the one undertaken by the Chief himself (through the treachery of an Indian girl) and another less dramatic but not less fatal, at the eastern end of the confederacy. In that zone of the fighting, the Indians encountered a master in the art of war, Col. Henry Bouquet. At Burley Run, about 25 miles east of Fort Pitt, this sagacious and indomitable old veteran stumbled upon a large body of ndians and, by pretending to retreat with his 50o regulars, drew them into an ambuscade. Crushing them was the work of a few bloody moments when in the jaws of the trap he had so cunningly set. Two such dire disasters were fatal to the confederacy, and as Bouquet in swift marches swept on his errand of recovery from frontier post to frontier post, in one of the most brilliant campaigns of American history, it hopelessly collapsed restoring peace and re-establishing the English power. Treaties of German Flats and Fort Stanwick-1765-1768. The territory had been conquered in a fair fight but something else remained, for on account of its vastness it was as necessary to peace that it be defined as that it should be subjugated. This was not an easy task. Three years were consumed in earnest and sometimes heated discussions between the representatives of the two powers. At last, however, (and it is another illustration of the numer-ous and distant influences required to pave the way for the foundation of our city) a satisfactory treaty was arranged and signed in 1768 at German Flats and Fort Stanwix in far away New York. Lord Dunmore's War. This was an event of the greatest importance; but it was not the last obstacle to be removed, by any means, nor the final complication which we have to understand. A struggle of the most violent and bitter character now sprang up between the various interests bent upon the occupation of the territory thus secured. Upon the instant of signature, almost, immigration began. It was at first of a sporadic character and consisted, with the exception of the Moravian Colony on the Muskingum, of individual attempts to trade or settle. The immigrants, as was inevitable, were of the most heterogeneous character and came from all the adjacent colonies, a fact which soon gave rise to misunderstandings and altercations between the legislatures of these ambitious political bodies. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland. and North Carolina were principally involved. They dreaded, each one to see the other getting the lion's share of that vast wilderness empire which stretched away into the dim distance. The differences between Virginia and Pennsylvania were the most serious for they concerned not only the amount of territory each might grasp ; but the policy by which they governed their relations to the ndian tribes. Pennsylvania desired, principally, a peaceful trade with them in furs; the Virginians avidly coveted their soil. Had it not been for the ndian outbreak which this greed for land provoked and which served to unite the warring factions by the spread of a common danger, the disagreement might have resulted in war between the whites, themselves. CINCINNATI—THE OUEEN CITY - 27 1773. It did, in fact, provoke a most perilous uprising' of the Indians which for a time united the white men against the red men and developed into a struggle for supremacy which has been dignified by the title of Lord Dunmore's war. By the all of 1773 the Indians had become thoroughly aroused and began making attacks upon the widely scattered settlements which had been commenced within heir borders. The Shawnees were the leaders of this uprising; but were joined by bands of Mingoes and Cherokees; Wyandots and Delawares, as well as the Miamis and the Wabash. In the spring of the following year open hostilities A-ere inaugurated in consequence of an open letter issued by an agent of Lord Dunmore's, which was generally regarded as a formal declaration of war. At the first sound of arms the whites developed a rude organization of their forces into two divisions, one under Michael Cresap and the other under General Andrew Lewis. The former, goaded by a natural antipathy for his red-skinned enetmies, plunged recklessly into the struggle and fell (some say intentionally and some with vindictive purpose) upon a community of friendly ndians whom he ruthlessly put to the sword. This horrible atrocity provoked a conflict of such savage ferocity as had scarcely been known before even in that border land of blood. 1774. It was, however, a brief struggle and was brought to an illustrious termination by a memorable victory won by the division under Lewis at Point Pleasant, on the Ohio river. On the loth of October, this astute soldier encountered, at that spot, a body of Indians superior to his own in numbers but inferior in military prowess, and won from them one of the most remarkable victories recorded in the annals of Indian warfare. The results of this victory were momentous, for in the first place it was so complete as to keep the Indians quiet during the first two years of the Revolution (then just approaching) and in the second place to permit the whites to secure a foothold in Kentucky. I778-1779—Kaskaskia and Vincennes. The advances of the whites thus far recorded took place from the north and east; but inroads were being made from the south and west, as well. Those southernly encroachments were of the utmost consequence and must be here described. As has been already told, the French had established (a century or so before) important trading points at Kaskaskia and Vincennes and when the trans-fer was made in 1763, these frontier fortifications passed under the government of the King of England. It was inevitable that in the struggle between the colonies and the mother country, originating in 1776, these settlements should have a strategic value as suitable places for the British to fit out hostile bands of Indians to operate against the Americans and it, therefore, became a matter of the greatest importance to the revolutionaries that they should be captured or destroyed. The possibility of accomplishing either idea seemed remote to every one else; but there was a military genius living at the Falls of the Ohio (Louis-ville, Ky.), to whom nothing either necessary or important ever appeared impossible. The name of this remarkable man was George Rogers Clark. For some time he had pondered the problem of snatching these frontier posts from Vol. 1-3 28 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY the hands of the British and, after overcoming all obstacles to the assemblage of a force adequate for his purpose, he conducted his raw recruits to an island in the Ohio river and drilled them for his difficult and dangerous enterprise. On the 24th of June, 1778, during an eclipse of the moon, he set sail; passed safely over the rapids ; landed at an abandoned fortification (Fort Massie) ; traveled six days across the country (part of the time without food) ; fell upon Kaskaskia (situated on a river by that name on the west side of Illinois, near the Mississippi) and captured both it and the neighboring French settlements, without the firing of a gun. 1779. The surrender of Vincennes across the state (on the Wabash river) followed soon afterward and the whole region thus fell swiftly and easily into the hands of the Americans; a loss so serious to. the British that Governor Hamilton, the Commander in Detroit, began immediately to organize an expedition for their recovery.. In this he was partially successful for Vincennes surrendered, with but feeble resistance, and the news of its fall was carried promptly to Kaskaskia where Clark then was. The comment of the hardy soldier was characteristic. "I must take Hamilton or he will take me," he said and almost upon the instant, in the very dead of winter, marched. His path was through a frozen wilderness at first and afterwards over a region flooded with melting snows. Pushing res-olutely forward, the army waded shoulder deep in the slush, and falling upon the fortifications on the 24th of February, 1779, carried them by assault. There were obstacles of the most serious character still opposed to their retaining possession of their conquest ; but the heroic little battalion planted itself so firmly there as to establish an insuperable line of defense against the ndians, all along the banks of the lower part of the Ohio river. Conquest of Tennessee. To these lines of defense and points of attack thus being established on the . north, east and west of the disputed territory of the Northwest another was now added on the south, thus helping to encompass it with those powers by which its conquest, ultimately, was achieved. By the treaty of Fort Stanwix the Indian tribes bad ceded to the English all the land lying between the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, a cession which afforded the frontiersmen, ever on the watch for an opportunity, to rush in and seize the soil of the "Virginia wilderness," all the excuse they needed for a long delayed attempt. With eager eyes and swelling hearts the bolder mountaineers on. the eastern slope of the Alleghanies had coveted that vast, fertile, well-watered and hill strewn country bounded on one side by the Cumberland and on the other by the great Smoky Mountains. n it rise the Clinch, the Holston, Wautega. Nolichucky and French Broad rivers, whose volumes combined with less important streams fill the broad bed of the Tennessee with abundant water. The upper. end of the valley lay well within Virginia and so. made access to the coveted paradise easy to its adventurous inhabitants. Through this rich and beautiful region ran the war trail of the savage tribes of Indians bitterly opposed to any entrance of the whites. At once, they sprang to its defense and put their bodies; and their arms across the way ; but all in vain. The lust of land; the love of ad- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 29 venture and the instinct for civilization were too powerful for resistance. Steadily the numbers of white men were increased and their hold tightened until at last by force and fraud they drove the red men out. It was a long and bloody struggle characterized by heroic deeds and the development of remarkable men. Two of these, John Sevier and James Robertson ; uneducated but gifted with great natural powers, became both indomitable soldiers and incomparable statestmen helping not only to conquer a wilderness but to establish civilization by originating its institutions. The settlement of Tennessee is but half of that southern movement which assisted to open the Northwest to the whites. To the north of it lay a region still more beautiful and fertile, which had early tempted adventurers to penetrate its solitudes. Curiously enough, it was not inhabited by Indians who considered it their permanent abode. Lying as it did in the midst of tribes forever at war, it became a sort of Armageddon in which they ceaselessly struggled for supremacy and was known among them as "a dark and bloody battle ground." As it was unoccupied by the Indians it was neglected by the French, and so open, in a way, for the entrance for any comers who had the courage to confront the dangers of the ever fluctuating waves of Indian forays. n 1766 a little party of five ad-venturers entered Kentucky from Tennessee, and in 1769 Daniel Boone with five companions from North Carolina followed them. n 1774 John Harrod estab-lished a small colony which was called by his associates Harrodsburg, in honor of its founder, and in 1775 several other similar parties settled permanently in the region. For a time, these scattered settlements undertook to govern themselves by a code of laws of their own ordainment ; but soon afterwards the claims of Virginia to the region were recognized and she took them under her wing. During the years which followed, until the close of the Revolutionary War, the struggles of the settlers with the Indians were almost incessant; but slowly and steadily they gained a foothold from which nothing could dislodge them. Over "the Wilderness Way" and down the Ohio river a stream of immi-grants poured in such ever increasing volumes that the territory of the North-west was utterly secure from attack upon its southern side. 1781-1786. A moment's consideration will disclose the fact that the region of the great Northwest for which these armed forces British, ndian and American were so bitterly disputing was now so effectively surrounded by the latter as to be doomed to their ultimate possession. In fact, it fell into their hands. When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, the whole vast region became the property of the new government and the question of its ownership so, far as other civilized people may concern was forever solved. The problem of the right and title of its original inhabitants, the ndians, still remained to be settled by the arbitrament of the sword; but more of that, anon. Division of the Territory of the Northwest Among Stales. The military conquest of this vast region was only a phase of the problem of its final occupation. It had not only to be conquered but divided! What parts of the prize should fall to the -various states which had contributed to its contquest was a matter of the greatest perplexity—as well as of the greatest importance. There were many minor difficulties; but these were eclipsed by the mo- 30 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY mentous fact that some portion of the region belonged to individual states and not to that new nation which had come so recently to birth. Three of these, Virginia, Connecticut and New York, still more earnestly devoted to themselves, as states, than to that newer and greater political unit, the Federation, clung so tenaciously to their rights as to threaten the very existence of the national government itself. After long and acrimonious struggles, however, New York magnanimously stir-rendered her claims ; Virginia followed and finally Connecticut, with but a single reservation—a great and fertile body of land in the northern part of Ohio which she was grudgingly permitted by the others to retain—and known as the Western Reserve. General Effect of Possession of Northwest Territory. So few words as these in which these memorable events have been hastily re-corded can serve but feebly to convey their vastness and importance. Aside from the actual separation of the Colonies from the mother country, no other event (except the civil war)" has had more influence upon our national development than the conquest thus imperfectly described. The whole, immense domain belonged at last to the national government to be disposed of at its will, just at the very moment when more land was almost as necessary to its existence as fresh air and water. The soldiers of the Revolutionary War, so recently and so gloriously terminated, had returned to their homes broken in health and fortune. The government, grateful as it was for the heroism and self-sacrifice by which it had been begotten, was as poor as they, themselves, and utterly incapable of furnishing them with an adequate or, indeed, with any financial reward at all. tut, at the crucial moment, by this great conquest of this enormous region it found itself inestimably rich in land! A virgin wilderness lay open, offering the most tempting field for adventure and industry. What could have been more fortunate and what could be more important than to so fit this empire by a code of laws and a political organization to become the reward and the .home of these heroic and impoverished soldiers? This preparation was a problem beset with difficulties too immense and intricate for us to study here. For years, the legis-lature of the new government conceived ideas which proved, upon discussion, to be impracticable and sometimes absurd ; but finally a plan was proposed which met the approbation of all, or nearly so, and harmonized contending factions. The Ordinance of 1787. This plan was embodied in an immortal document called "Ordinance for Governing the Northwestern Territory" and was passed in 1787. With that wisdom (almost a prescience) which characterized the political activities of the founders of our government, the men who gave the ordinance its final form pro-vided, strange as it may seem, for every important emergency that actually arose in the complicated struggle to subdue, populate and govern a vast wilder-ness over which still roamed bands of savage Indians from whom it finally had to be seized by force of arms. Wise, interesting and important as were all the provisions of this great document, there was a single one so remarkable then and so significant afterward that, although they are passed by in silence, it must never be permitted to go. without a word of praise. The others were political. It was ethical. By it, human slavery, in this region sacred to the highest uses of humanity, was forbidden then and evermore. CHAPTER III. THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. THE ACTUAL SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-THE OHIO COMPANY-JUDGE SYMMES AND HIS LAND GRANTS-BENJAMIN STITES AND HIS BAND SETtTLE AND CALL THE PLACE COLUMBIA-MATTHIAS DENMAN AND HIS FOLLOWERS LOCATE ON THE SPOT NOW KNOWN AS CINCINNATI AND CALL IT LOSANTIVILLE-JUDGE SYMMES LOCATES AT NORTH BEND. This preliminary survey of the military and political preparation of the Northtwest Territory to become the abode of men and file site of great cities must now be abandoned for the study of those events which paved the way, immediately, for the foundation of the city whose history we have set ourselves to trace and comprehend. This survey has taken no inconsiderable amount of valuable time and required no trifling mental effort ; but it has been necessary for our purpose. What we set out to do, it will be remembered, was to afford a sort of bird's eye view of those prodigious movements and influences which have preceded and paved the way for the phenomenon which we are contemplating-, the building of a great city. Until they are understood, the contemplation of the mystery and majesty of any great metropolis is impossible. No one can, indeed, acquire a full conception of the beauty of even the tiniest flower that blows, without realizing that a universe has been required to grow it! Earth, air and ocean; sun, moon and stars have all been called upon to furnish the ingredients of its life. So also have the resources of the universe been called upon to build a city ! As it takes all rivers to make an ocean, it has taken all the tributary streams of history to create the town we live in. 1783—1786. No sooner had the struggle with the mother country ceased and the convicttion become established that a nation had been born, than the eyes of multitudes, but particularly of the veterans of the Revolution, began to turn eagerly toward this new El Dorado in the west. Even before the problem of its government had been settled, many of the most adventurous of them had crossed the mountains and pushed their way, fearlessly, into the unknown recesses of the primeval forests. But now, that the way was wide open, the movement began to take a more orderly form through schemes for colonization on a large scale. As early as 1783, an attempt had been made by a company to secure a grant of lands be-tween the Ohio river and Lake Erie; but the strife in Congress over the owntership delayed the survey so long- that the soldiers almost gave up their hopes. In March, 1786, however, the more zealous of the promoters met in Boston and formed a new "Ohio company for the purchase and settlement of western lands." General Rufus Putnam, General Samuel H. Parsons and Rev. Manasseh Cutler were the three leading spirits and when, after the most determined and even - 31 - 32 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY desperate efforts the charter was secured, they selected as the site of their enterprise the region about the mouth of the Muskingum river. It was on the 27th of October that the grant was signed and the day is an epoch marker in the life of the infant nation, as well as in that of the Northwest" Territory. It deserves to be forever remembered by all true patriots, while the foresight and devotion Of its three great promoters ought to be celebrated as long as our government shall stand. Marietta. Success in securing the charter did not relax the energies of the men who had consecrated themselves to the achievement of their great undertaking. They went immediately to work to. give their plans material form, and in the month of February following, the various groups of the enthusiastic colony began to assemble at the mouth of the Youghiogheny river. There they eagerly constructed flat boats, hopefully embarked and successfully reached their destination on the 7th of April, 1788. Under. the protection of the guns of Fort Harmar (a considerable military post) they laid the foundations of a settlement which they named, at first, Adelphia, but afterwards Marietta, in honor of the French Queen Marie Antoinette. By the 4th of July their plans had been so rapidly carried out that a pretentious celebration of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was observed, while, on the 17th of the same month the government of the new territory was formally installed by General Arthur St. Clair, who had been selected for the great honor. In 1790 the village had increased to the number of eighty houses, and other settlements sprang Up. in the region round about. By this first step, feeble apparently as that of a little child, the movement which resulted in the population of the middle West, was thus auspiciously begun, and the second step will lead us to the foundation of our own beautiful, im-portant and ever growing city. The Ohio Company—"The Two Miamis." The Ohio company had carefully considered the attractions of the region between the two Miamis in selecting their location ; but for "good and sufficient reasons" rejected it for that at the mouth of the Muskingum. Traditions of its fertility had been widely circulated; but it was considered as being so dangerously open to the attacks of hostile Indians that settlers were afraid to make their homes upon it. The ferocity of its aboriginal inhabitants and the ruthless onslaughts they had made upon the few courageous adventurers who had. dared to fry an entrance, had secured for it that terrible designation "The Miami Slaughter House." As early as 1780 a fleet of sixty-three boats with a thousand fighting men aboard had observed the lovely shores of the land between those famous rivers, as they floated down the Ohio, seeking for a place to land and build their homes. Attractive as the country was, the numerous bands of hostile Indians who were seen skulking along through the forests deterred them from its selection, although five hundred .of the company recklessly went ashore at the mouth of Mill creek and chased the savages many miles into the wilderness. Two months later on the region was once more penetrated by white men, for Captain Bird, commanding six hundred Indians and Canadians, accompanied by artillery men with their cannon, broke their way through the woods along the CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 33 Mill creek on one of those wild forays which were still being made and ascended the Licking river on the opposite side of the Ohio. Benjamin Stites. These flying bands who first beheld the beautiful and fertile region were attracted and impressed; but lacked either the courage or the resources to seize it for themselves. It could not, however, long remain thus unappropriated, and in the nick of time that man appeared by whose foresight and resolution it was to be rescued for civilization. The name of this man was Benjamin Stites, a trader from New Jersey. Happening to be in the little town of Limestone (Maysville), on the Kentucky side of the Ohio when a party of backwoodsmen passed through it in pursuit of a troop of Indians who had stolen their horses, he joined them in a spirit of adventure. They followed the south bank of the Ohio river down to the mouth of the Little Miami, which (after having reached it by means of hastily constructed rafts) they stealthily ascended. More interested in the country than in the fugitive culprits, Stites observed it with a trained and unerring judgment. So deeply was he moved by what he saw of its beauty and fertility that upon the termination of the adventure he hastened east and confided his discovery to a person whose name .must be forever asso-ciated with that marvelous development of civilization which has taken place in the Ohio valley. John Cleves Symmes. This person was John Cleves Symmes, a gentleman who had already attained a not inconsiderable fame and fortune as delegate from Delaware to the Continental Congress in 1785-86; judge of the superior court of New Jersey; and afterwards chief justice of the same state. The story of Stites awakened his ambition and aroused his powers. He threw himself into the scheme to get possession of this paradise with an enthusiasm which knew no bounds. His large acquaintance with men of affairs made it possible and easy for him to secure the interest and co-operation of others. Selecting a score or more of the best of them he (and Stites and they) proceeded to organize an association on the same lines as those laid down by the Ohio company. Symmes, enthusiastic though he was, had also an element of great caution in his make up and before committing himself finally to what seemed destined to grow into a gigantic undertaking, he determined to go and see with his own eyes whether Stites had been deceived or not. He went, and what he saw upon that eventful journey not only reassured him but made it more than evident that the half had not been told. The report which he brought back was of so glowing a nature that it fired his associates to renewed efforts, and they pushed fortward their enterprise with indomitable energy and unquenchable zeal. On the 29th of August, 1787, they presented a petition to Congress for a grant on the same terms as the Ohio company and, impatient at the slow movements of that body, Symmes (with a childish confidence, taking it for granted that Congress would do exactly what he asked) gave Stites a covenant for ten thousand acres of the best land in the valley at the price of five shillings per acre. payable in certificates of the public debt, that medium which the government had agreed to receive in payment for the Muskingum purchase! 34 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Three days afterwards, he issued a glowing prospectus in which he offered a choice of any township, section or quarter section in this paradise of two million acres for two thirds of a dollar per acre, up to the first of May following, when the value would suddenly rise to a whole dollar. Evidently the world looked golden to him then. He felt like a king bestowing empires. Square miles of land were small; r than back door gardens. The only reservation for himself was that of an entire township at the confluence of the Big Miami and the Ohio (together with the fractional townships at the sides) on which he proposed to lay the foundations of the metropolis of the region. Upon this town site he offered every alternate lot, free of charge, to any who should improve it by the erection of a house or cabin and occupy it for at least three consecutive years. It sounded like the proclamation of an emperor and filled the western world with "cloud capped towns, and gorgeous palaces and solemn temples." That such a vision could dissolve and like an unsubstantial pageant fade away and leave a pitiful little wreck behind, seemed quite unthinkable. Applications were made in such numbers as to be recorded with difficulty, and pressed with a rivalry so fierce as to result in bitter quarrels. The wheels of the vast com-mercial scheme revolved at first, with fairy like rapidity and smoothness, for the bearings of all were oiled by hope. It was not long, however, before they each began to creak. Terribly discordant sounds arose and troubles of every kind sprang up. When, after many and aggravating delays, the treasury board at last took up. the request of the judge and his partners, it was speedily discovered that they had acted too soon! That enormous water front upon the Ohio was a' gift which would have staggered a Roman emperor or a French king, say nothing about the scrupulous legislators of a new democracy! The careful and economical committees drew new lines about the purchase, and to his distress and confusion the too optimistic judge discovered that they excluded many valuable tracts for which he had already taken (and, no doubt) expended the mney.. This, of course, produced expensive litigations and bitter animosities of so serious a nature as to darken the whole subsequent life of the honest and conscientious, but business-like judge. They followed him down to hisgrave, inn fact, and so imbittered his soul as to make him leave, in his, will, an imprecation upon what he regarded as the ingratitude of his countrymen; but what his countrymen believe was, only, an error of his individual judgment. It was an inauspicious beginning for so promising an undertaking and set it back awhile. But the opportunity was too attractive and too genuine to permit it to be permanently closed up. Compromises were agreed upon and such arrangements made as to permit. the enterprise to go forward. In May, 1792, Congress made a final disposition of the matter by. granting Symmes the whole Ohio river front (lying between the two Miamis) limited on the east and west by their hannelss and a straight line drawn from one to the other in such a way as to encompass 248,54o acres of land exclusive of a few reservations for religious, educational and military establishments. It was a terrible shrinkage and a bitter disappointment to the over sanguine promoter. As the actual immigra-tion, set in motion by the judge's personal assurance had actually begun in 1789 and the final adjustment was not reached until 1792, those three years had fur- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 35 nished sufficient time for engendering difficulties which decades were required to  settle. As every other movement in nature and in politics by which the site of Cincinnati was prepared for occupation was slow, the retardation of this last one need not cause us any new surprise. But, slowly as it moves, Providence finally attains its every goal, and the preliminary steps which we have been so swiftly tracing have at length been taken. n the first place we studied the processes of natural forces; in the second place the protracted struggles for pre-eminence and possession between the French, the English, the Americans and the Indians ; and finally the legal complications in the government plan for the sale of the terri-tory, after its possession had been gained. It is a complicated .and wonderful web of happenings! As was, at the outset prophesied, we have been compelled to "keep in mind a vast extent of territory and co-ordinate events occurring anywhere and everywhere between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi; the Cumberland river and the Great Lakes." The Actual Settlement. The time has come at last, however, when our vision narrows down and we are now to undertake the survey of the actual settlement of our town. But it must be remembered that no single event can be detached from all others. The stream of history bears them easily along in a single channel, blending them harmoniously together. But the mind of man cannot thus grasp them all nor can his art present them as a whole. The limitations of his powers of thought compel him to seize and to describe each one consecutively and bind them together then as best he can. . The Three Bands. We find ourselves obliged to trace, therefore, at this period of our undertaking events which had begun to transpire even before the political organization of the territory was completed. As the zeal of Symmes had led him to sell the land before he had gotten his title, the zeal of the home-seekers led them to enter the promised land while he was in the initial stages of his negotiations. Out of the many columns of this advancing army of immigrants we are concerned with a single one which, however, sub-divides itself into these three distinct, and yet most closely correlated stories of settlements, one at the mouth of the Little Miami; another at that of the Big Miami, and a third close by the mouth of the Mill creek and opposite the Licking. The starting points for expeditions into the wilderness were, naturally enough, such places as Marietta on the northern shores of the Ohio and Limestone, Maysville on the south. This latter community in the state of Kentucky had already become a trading point of no inconsiderable importance. It was the place at which the travellers by water left their boats, when headed for the famous "Blue Grass" region and for Lexington, its infant metropolis. Here were fitted out those little companies which, in ever growing numbers, pushed out in every direction into the terra.. incognita. This was the point for adventurers of every kind to gather in; discuss their prospects and their plans; get the news ; meet their friends ; purchase provisions and build their boats. 36 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY Symmes, Stites, Denman-1788. In the summer of 1788 three men might have frequently been seen in earnest conversation along the wharf and in the little town. Evidently they had .business one with another of no mean concern. John Cleves Symmes, the purchaser of the vast tract between the Miami was one; Benjamin Stites, who had secured from him the region around the north of the Little Miami, another ; while the third was a certain Matthias Denman, who was negotiating for the land on the shore of the Ohio opposite the Licking river. It is the story of their rival efforts to locate the metropolis of the Ohio valley which the progress of our narrative now summons us to tell,—not in minute details, but only in broad and bold outline. in answer to the question, "Aire you travelling slowly and observ-ing critically," a young Iowan on a railroad train in Switzerland, replied : "I am only touching the high points and never sleep more than one night in a single country." Let us, also, touch only. the high points ! We, too, must sleep no more than a single night and spend no more than a single day in any place through which we pass. Settlement at Columbia. It is with the adventures of Benjamin Stites that we begin, who, having completed his preparations before his competitors, set forth. on the 16th of November, accompanied by a little group of hardy, enthusiastic and capable companions. On the morning of the 18th, from the decks of their rude barges, they surveyed the location which they believed to be the actual heart of this wilderness world, at the mouth of the Little Miami. With caution they approached the shore and, after having 'reconnoitered for fear of Indians, disembarked. About three-quarters of a mile below the. spot at which the Little Miami discharged its waters into the Ohio they climbed the bank ; cleared away the underbrush, and kneeling down upon the virgin soil, commended themselves and the town (which they named Columbia) to the blessing of Almighty God. n this little group of serious and religious persons were several more than ordinary men. Stites himself was one; John S. Gano was another, and not less so Edmund Buxton and Greenbright Bailey. Their principles were firm; their purposes noble and their judgment sound. They were mistaken only in that which no sagacity was able, independently, to determine—the strategic spot for a great city. The element which upset their plans was the great river, whose behavior could not possibly have been fore seen.. What the circumstances demanded they did promptly, intelligently and successfully, the first thing being the erection of a block house, which they buil, from trees felled on the spot. Into this safe enclosure they led the women and children and then plunged resolutely into the work of erecting houses. The wall, were made of logs and the doors and floors of planks from their flat boats which were dismantled for the purpose. They had, of course, to endure the us hardships and dangers incident to such life; but there was abundant game. in the forest and river, while the woods were full of edible roots which the women gathered, dried, Pulverized and turned into a tolerable substitute for bread. In the spring they began to plow up "Turkey Bottom," a rich alluvial tract which the Indians had already cultivated and from which in the fall they reaped a bountiful crop, securing themselves, in this way, against that greatest of perils, hunger. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 37 The first moment which Stites was able to spare from these arduous labors he gave to the task of defining and surveying the site of the great city which, with a vivid imagination, he saw springing up on the beautiful spot. He dedicated a mile of the river front to the purpose and ran his lines back far enough into the woods to furnish room for the growth of a considerable town. At first his dreams bade fair to be materialized, for precedence. in time over his rivals was a valuable asset, and the eager homeseekers, seeing the little settlement as they floated down the stream, turned eagerly in to taste its hospitality and estimate its prospects. By the close of 1790 fifty houses (more or less) had been erected; a considerable number of important additions had been made to the population and school teachers and preachers had begun to arrive. In 1791 a Baptist church had been organized with nine members, and John Smith began his earnest labors as its pastor. Soon afterward an attempt to erect a place of worship was made and the building was occupied in 1793, remaining, by the way, a venerable land-mark till 1835. The people who were so solicitous about religious privilege could not be less so about educational. As early as the 29th .of June in 1790 a schoolhouse was opened and John Riley appointed teacher. All these achievements and many others confirmed the high hopes of the founders of the village; but, suddenly, that terrible element of contingency dashed the cup of realization from their lips. The river rose in its majesty, and almost engulfed the little town! The location was instantly seen to have been a blunder ; but its occupants 'were now so thor-oughly anchored that they had to stay. The. new arrivals shook their heads and went their way. A few merciless statistics tell. the mournful tale of great expectations blasted. In 1819 Columbia contained but fifty houses. In 1870 its population was 1165. In 1873 it was annexed as a suburb to that rival commu-nity, which was not established until several months after it had begun its promising career. It is with a feeling of sadness that we turn away from the scene of so many hopes and efforts and achievements, for the original settlers were people whose characters and careers were such as to tempt the historian to. pause and ponder on them; but the relative values of the various items that compose a history are settled by subsequent events, and these sink into insignificance on account of an advance into the wilderness by a second and third band of adventurers, whose fortunes we must also follow. In point of time, the settlement of Cincinnati actually precedes the one which we shall study first; but as it also sank into insignificance, it must be disposed of here in order that our entire attention may be fixed upon the establishment of that little village which finally became, the actual realization of all their dreams. Settlement at North Bend. It was on the 18th of November, 1788, that Stites, and his company landed at Columbia. On the 29th of December of that same. year Denman and his followers landed at Cincinnati (Losantiville) and not until the 2d of February did Symmes and the people who had pinned their faith to his leadership go ashore at North Bend. On the 29th of the month preceding, after much labor and many disappointments, Symmes succeeded in assembling his companions, finishing his barges and loading them with an adequate supply of provisions. A flood in the 38 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY river had delayed them; but when it subsided a little, the, Symmes yarty of civilians accompanied by a small military escort, went aboard and floated swiftly down the swelling tide. They made two stops on this journey, one a; Columbia, another at Losantiville, but both were brief, and on the 2d of February they beached their barges on the shore of the Ohio not far from the mouth of the Great Miami. The original purpose of the leader of the expedition had been to land exactly at the junction where a rude fort had been constructed years before; but several valid reasons made him change his mind. The principal one, however, was the hope that he might find a spot on the narrow neck of land between the two streams so elevated as to be out of the reach of the floods and yet lying along both water fronts. This precaution was no doubt the result of the glimpse he had caught of Columbia, half under water as he passed. It was in the middle of the afternoon that the disembarkation took place, and with the aid of the soldiers a camp. was quickly made. Two, forked saplings were stuck in the ground; a pole was stretched across and, against this, on one side, planks were placed to break the force of the biting blasts. In this poor shelter Judge Symmes and his family lived for the next six months, supported and encouraged by those unquenchable hopes which animate the souls of pioneers surrounded by, the immeasurable opportunities and prospects of a virgin" soil, an uninhabited wilderness and boundless natural resources. The choice of this particular spot, auspicious as it seemed, began to be unfortunate, almost from the first moment of disembarkation. The trouble began in the dissatisfaction of the petty officer in command of the military escort, who suddenly found himself confronted by the disagreeable necessity of building a fort. He had taken it for granted that the old one in the neighborhood would be made to do, and so filled the air with remonstrances' and complaints. The judge stood firm in his purpose to remain, however, where he was, and one day in March the contemptible officer, followed by his ignoble contingent, deserted their unprotected charge and sneaked off down to Louisville where they found more comfortable quarters. Upon their departure, Judge Symmes, undaunted by danger, began a protracted and careful investigation of the entire .region to see if any situation offered greater advantages for his purpose. A better could not be found and therefore he hurriedly surveyed and plotted the land so that the eager settlers could at once begin to build. Thereupon they set to work with a will, and by the middle of May. forty cabins had been completed, and still more were in process of erection. The breasts of all the people were -filled with. hope and each believed that the embryonic village which was christened North Bend (because it stood on the most northerly bend of the Ohio between the Murking river and the Mississippi) was destined to be the metropolis of the great northwest. So rapidly, indeed, did settlers pour into the community that the ever optimistic judge laid off another town site seven miles up. the Ohio (which was called South Bend), and a third sprang up of its own accord, to which the name of Sugar Camp attached itself. As in the case of Columbia, however, the endeavors of man were found to be impotent when pitted against untoward circumstances and the laws of nature Against both of these the hero of our story had to struggle. In an incident validity of which has been often enough disputed, circumstances were certainty CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 39 against the judge, for in order to achieve supremacy among three rival settle-ments, North Bend must have a fort. Well, one of the men who could have built it had already deserted and gone off to Louisville; and the second, a certain Ensign Luce, a short time afterward, also disappeared. He had fallen in love, it seems, with the pretty wife of one of the settlers who, in order to preserve her from the wiles of the daring and designing soldier, sent her away to some friends in Losantiville, a few miles up the river. The infatuated ensign followed her, of course, and to the disgust of the judge discovered that the situation of this little village where she passed her exile possessed advantages for fortification-building, infinitely superior to the one from which she had been banished ! In recording the incident Judge Burnet indulges himself in the following romantic reflections : "Thus we see what unexpected results are( sometimes produced by circum-stances apparently trivial. The incomparable beauty of a Spartan dame produced a ten years' war which terminated in the destruction of Troy ; and the irresistible charms of another female transferred the commercial emporium of Ohio from the place where it had been commenced, to the place where it now is. If the captivating American Helen had continued at North Bend the garrison would have been erected there and there would have been the Queen City of the West." It is true that the beauty of woman has altered the course of history a thousand times. "If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little larger," Pascal says, "the history of the whole world would have been different!" It is not impossible, of course, that it was a pair of bright eyes that actually located the metropolis of the northwest territory ; but we stick resolutely to our theory that it was in reality the topography of the country shaped by the hand of nature, under the supervision of an omniscient mind. "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera ;" but the rivers in their courses fought against Symmes. The Queen City was predestined to be where it is, we think, in spite of all the bright eyes in the world. At all events, but a few short years were required to prove beyond a doubt that North Bend was to sink in obscurity compared with its more fortunate rival, and Judge Symmes confessed that in 1795 the village was only half as large as in 1793. From that time it never regained its pre-eminence, and has been of no particular consequence except for its historical charm as having been the residence of the famous judge and his still more distinguished son-in-law, William Henry Harrison,—a charm that has never been as deeply felt by Cincinnatians as it ought. The life in those two old log. cabins was full enough of romance, of culture and of political significance to have converted them into shrines for a municipality more sensitive than our own to the value of such associations. It is not to our credit, as a city, that our thoughts and our footsteps do not turn more often to a locality consecrated by the memories of two such remarkable men and by their so neglected graves. CHAPTER IV. THE EMBRYO CITY. CINCINNATI THE VILLAGE, I 788-1802-MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A SURVEYOR -NAMES OF THOSE WHO FIRST LANDED IN CINCINNATI AT YEATMAN'S COVE-RIVALRIES, JEALOUSIES, PLOTS, COUNTER PLOTS, TRAGEDIES-CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE INDIANS--ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT-GENERAL "MAD ANTHONY WAYNE" AND THE BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBERS-TREATIES-PROBLEMS. And now, with feelings of sympathy for the so often and so bitterly disappointed judge, we turn away from the scenes of his futile hopes to trace the growth of a great city on a spot which he passed by with indifference if not with scorn. Moving in accordance with preordained necessities the tide. of population had begun to set towards the predestined center of the great west's new life, a few weeks before Judge Symmes made his fatal error, and the history of this movement now challenges our attention. Matthiss Denman. Some time in January, 1778, one of the minute men in the Revolutionary War, Matthias Denman by name, a resident of New Jersey, became interested in the prospects of the northwestern territory and determined to invest some money in the lands which were then being thrown upon the market in such immense and inexpensive tracts. It was the purchase of John Cleves Symmes which attracted him most, and acting upon the impulses excited by its widely heralded advantages, he purchased the entire section, No. 18, and the fractional section, No. 17. In making this purchase his motive was a double one, first to lay out a village and second to run a ferry across the Ohio to the mouth of the Licking river. He had been told that the Indian warpath from Detroit into the southland crossed the Ohio at this point, as did also the trail of the Miami and the Wabash tribes, on their way into the hunting grounds in Kentucky. It is proof enough of the man's sagacity that from these facts and the appearance of the country on a rude map, he selected that strategic position which many a pioneer had overlooked, even when seeing the country with his eyes. In order to reassure himself before incurring any other risks, Denman decided to go and view his purchase. This he did in the summer following and was so astonished and delighted by what he found that he determined to carry out his plans without delay. On his way back from his tour of investigation he stopped at Limestone (Maysville), the then center of all such enterprises At that place he met a certain Robert Patterson, a prominent citizen of Lex-ington, Kentucky, whom he forthwith interested in his project. Patterson sug- - 41 - 42 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY gested the need of a third factor in the combination and named John Filson, a schoolteacher and surveyor whom he knew, at home. The missions of the men were well defined. Denman was to finance the scheme; Patterson to secure settlers and Filson to lay out the site. It would gratify our civic pride no doubt to be told that these three founder of our city were men of the noblest mould. As a matter of fact, they wen only rather more than commonplace. Denman was a true patriot; a brave soldier ; a fine horseman and a successful speculator. His interest in the region where he made this investment was purely financial, and he watched it closely riding on horseback from New Jersey to Ohio in 1798-1801-1811-1824. But he never became a resident of his town site; nor in any marked manner, its benefactor. During the last ten years of his life he was blind and died at the advanced age of ninety. Col. Robert Patterson. Col. Robert Patterson, a resident of Pennsylvania, had migrated to Kentucky in 1774 and settled in Georgetown, from which he subsequently removed Lexington. In 1776 he was one of seven men who set out for Fort Pitt to procure ammunition, traveling on foot or by canoe. All of the party were killed or wounded by Indians; Patterson, himself, receiving a blow which 'confined him to his bed for a year. Later on, he joined George Rogers Clark on that great expedition of 1778, and after that attended Col. John Bowman in his raid on oh Chillicothe in 1779. He was captain in Col. Clark's expedition against the Shawnees in 1780 and second in command to Daniel Boone at the battle of Blue Lower Licks. On the retreat he was overcome with fatigue and would have perished had not Aaron Reynolds, whom he had once rebuked for profanity placed him on his horse, saying as he did so, "You saved my soul and I will save your life." In 1782 he was a colonel in another of Clark's expeditions, and also in that of General Benjamin Logan against the Shawnees in 1786. After hi part in the work of founding Cincinnati had been accomplished, the. indomitable old pioneer moved to Dayton, which he helped to found in 1804, residing on farm in the vicinity until his death. John Filson. John Filson was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, in 1774, and died near Cincinnati, at some unknown spot and in an unknown manner, in 1788. An ad- venturous turn of mind led him from civilization into the wilderness, and he wandered over much of the territory west of the Alleghany mountains. For sell eral years he resided in Kentucky where he surveyed land, taught schools and wrote books. Some of these possessed considerable historical value, and the lis proof of industry and earnestness if not of literary genius. Among them a "The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky," "A Map of Kentucky," "A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America," (in association with George Imlay). He also left a manuscript diary "A Journey- from Philadelphia to Vincennes, Indiana, in 1785," "A Journal Two Voyages by Water from Vincennes to Louisville," and an account of attempted voyage in 1786. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 43 It seemed a fortunate thing, indeed, to be able to associate a man like this with the new enterprise; but the part he was destined to play proved very slight, for, as we shall see, his life was mysteriously terminated before he had even accomplished the purpose for which he had been chosen. He came so near to being the most fascinating character in the whole history of our city that one is tempted to meditate upon the narrow margin by which he failed. He needed, in the first place, a little more of the divine afflatus and, in the second place, to have died in some valiant personal encounter before the eyes of reliable witnesses to have rendered him our patron saint. But he disappeared as completely as if swallowed up by an earthquake, and in the name which he bestowed upon our city, revealed the superficiality of his accomplishments. It is through some very little slip indeed that men sometimes fail of immortality. As the cat in the fable might forever have been considered a princess had not a mouse crept into the throne room and suddenly excited her feline nature to a spring, Filson might, almost, have been regarded as a scholar, but for that preposterous hybrid word, Losantiville, by which he disclosed his ignorance. Contract of 1788. Such were the heroes of the first act in our drama. The part they played is brief, but of the utmost importance. Upon the 5th day of August, 1788, they signed an agreement as to their rights and duties in the contemplated enterprise. On the 6th of September they advertised their proposed townsite in the Kentucky Gazette of Lexington. From Lexington, whither they had gone for this purpose and others, they returned to Maysville, where they expected to meet Judge Symmes, from whom, of course, they had secured their land. His coming had been, however, unconscionably hindered, as arrivals often were in those days when flat boats could not run on schedule time. Impatient of this delay, Denman and Patterson, with a group of enthusiastic followers, hastened down the river to that charmed spot to which their thoughts were turtling with such eager hopes and such fond desires. There was work which they could do before the judge arrived, and at it they went with all their might. Filson was the man of the hour, and he at once began to plot the site and to it gave the name Losantiville (Le-os-anti-ville), literally the mouth op-posite the town; but according to his naive construction of this melange of Latin, French and Greek, "the town opposite the mouth" (of the Licking river). It was almost the last of his earthly achievements, for a few days afterwards while wandering about in the woods and studying the situation, he mysteriously disappeared, supposedly a victim to the treachery and ferocity of the ndians. Fortunately for the infant enterprise a substitute for the lost surveyor was at hand, a man of solid parts, whose influence upon the life of the young com-munity was destined to be profound. His name was Israel Ludlow, and he had been engaged by Judge Symmes to conduct the surveys of his immense posses-sions. Immediately upon the death of Filson he was invited to accept the third place in the tripartite agreement vacated by the schoolmaster's sudden taking off. Eager as all these promoters were to begin the actual settlement, they found it impossible to do so until a certain spot called "the twenty mile point" (agreed upon between Symmes and Congress) had been accurately located so that from it all the locations could finally be traced. This was no quick and easy task; hut Ludlow and his competent helpers went resolutely to work. n spite of Vol. 1-4 44 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY their best endeavors many months elapsed and the company which had arrived upon the 22nd of September was gradually scattered, some never to return. It was not until the middle of winter that the good news went up the river to Limestone that the survey was at last completed and, so impatient was the little colony waiting there to plant itself. and be all ready for the opening of the spring, that they determined to embark at once. Their names have been preserved and, as recorded in the directory of 1819, stand as follows : James Car-penter, William McMillan, John Vance, Robert Caldwell, Sylvester White, Sam Mooney, Henry Lindray, Joseph Thorton, Noah Badggley, Thaddeus Bruen, Daniel Shoemaker, Ephraim Kirby, Thomas Gizzel, William Connel, Joel Williams, Samuel Blackburn, John Porter, Fran. Hardesty, Matthew Fowler, Evan Shelby. There probably were others, as the list varies in different authorities and Ludlow and Patterson were certainly among them. The Landing December 28, 1788. On the 24th of December this little company embarked, and after a hard trip down the river through sixty-nine miles of floating ice, they reached their destination and went ashore on the 28th in a little bay which afterwards went by the name of Yeatman's cove. There have been disembarkations of a nobler kind, of course. The motive: of our Puritan forefathers, stepping ashore upon Plymouth Rock, rendered theirs a world event, while this one remains a local incident. The Pilgrims left their homes and crossed the ocean for the purpose of establishing a government upon the broad foundation, civil and religious liberty. The pioneers who went ashore at Yeatman's cove were probably animated only by the desire to advance their private interests. And yet the significance of the event cannot be disparaged by this fact. n the first place, that desire is not deficient in -sublimity and has accounted for most of the great movements of history. n the second place, they set in operation forces which have produced immeasurable effects. They were the originators, however unintentionally or uncomprehendingly, of events which have helped to change the face of nature and alter the destinies of millions of men and women. Who, then, can contemplate them as they go.. ashore (rude and uncultured men of whom only two or three were strong enough to have left enduring traces of their individual selves; dressed in the coarsest garments; carrying. their riff, in their hands; suspicious and jealous of each other ; greedy of land and gold without that sense of awe which steals upon us when observing the inception of all great events? To every thoughtful person the scene possesses a perpetual fascination, and although what the actors said and did passed unrecorded imagination easily . reconstructs the scene. They gathered branches of dead wood; struck a spark with steel and flint ; lighted a fire and gathered around to warm their half frozen bodies. They gazed about with mingled motives hope and despair over a situation so absolutely undeveloped, but so full of possibilities; erected rude shelters; and made themselves as comfortable as the: could. n the charming words of Dr. Daniel Drake, "They set their watchmen around; lay down with their feet to the blazing fire and fell asleep under music of the north wind whistling among the branches of the frozen sycamore and water maples which overhung them." CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 45 They Build their Cabins. Upon the morrow the hardy pioneers burnt their bridges behind them by breaking tip the boats in which they came, to help construct their houses. With the bodies of trees for the walls and the boat planks for floors, they built a few rude habitations, the first of which was placed a little east of Main, on Front, as the streets came afterward to be called. Rude and ugly as were these structures, they must possess a sort of sacredness in all our eyes, for they made our civilization possible and became a sort of cradle in which were rocked the institutions upon which it was founded. They have vanished, utterly, displaced by buildings of a higher type; but around them lingers and always will remain a halo of romance. They Choose Location. Having thus secured a temporary shelter, they undertook the serious busi-ness of dividing the land between them. It will be remembered that John Filson had begun the survey of the townsite ; that it was uncompleted at his death, and that Israel Ludlow was appointed to take his place. A Rival Plot. The actual work of survey by a person so competent required but little time, and the plot was made ready by the 7th of January, 1789. Hardly had it been presented, however, when a rival one appeared. Among the most aggressive spirits in that little company of adventurers was a certain Joel Williams, who had long foreseen the advantages to be derived from the rights to ferry people across the Ohio river, and who determined to secure them at all hazard. Hav-ing discovered that in the Ludlow plot the waterfront had been dedicated as a public landing, he had another survey made whose principal difference from the original lay in the names of the streets and the reservation of riverfront for himself! It was the first outbreak of human greed in the infant community and was provoked, as usual, by the value of a "natural opportunity." "As long as an acre of land, a bottle of wine or a beautiful woman stands between two men, there will be danger of war," observed an acute Frenchman. He might have added to the list "a natural opportunity," for a waterfall, a bed of ore or coal, a diamond mine, a spring of water or a convenient place for a ferry are not less certain to awaken the evil passions of men. Joel Williams' deed of aggression was bitterly resented by the Ludlow faction and originated a quarrel which continued until a decree of the supreme court in 1807 settled it forever, by compelling Williams to dedicate it all back to the public, except enough for a small building lot and space to land his little boat. The present struggle between the railroad and the citizens over this same invaluable tract is only, it will be observed, a far off echo of that first angry contest, there being now as then an instinctive recognition of its importance both to the public welfare and to private interests. The dispute divided the community for years; but did not long delay the actual drawing of lots. The subdivision of the original purchase for townsite purposes contemplated tracts of two sizes, one called "in lots" and the other 46 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY "out lots," the former being for residences in the village and the other garden spots in the environs. All of them were covered with trees, of course, and it required the active imagination of townsite boomers to confer upon them any value at all in that lonely and snow covered landscape. Even this creative faculty, so highly developed in the minds of all adventurers, could not make that value very great, it seems, for the lots on the lower of the two. branches on which the plot was surveyed were bought and sold for about two dollars, and those on the upper for four. A hidden reason was the cause, perhaps, of that small price. The fact of the matter was, as subsequent events made plain, that most of the original settlers did not intend to stay and were merely gambling in future values. Out of the first draw, only two participants, Isaac Freeman and Scott Traverse, rescued and took out deeds, while twenty per cent did so in that other one which followed, not long afterwards. Problems The real difficulties of what had seemed almost a holiday adventure to these hardy pioneers now began to open up. All such enterprises consist of a series of problems each of which demands a separate solution. Sometimes they follow close upon each other's heels, but at others are separated by wide intervals of time. These are simple, those profound, and all are different. The hardest and most complex are kept, of course, for the later stages of development, as. the more difficult mathematical calculations are held back from the pupil until he has grown old enough to solve them. But even the easy problems are hard enough for beginners, and we shall see our strong-limbed, brave-hearted and hard-headed pioneers put to it, many times, before they mastered the mysteries of the art of town building. It is as an attempt to solve a series of problems that we shall now consider.. the history of these brave pioneers and their descendants, and the very first with which they had to deal was of a nature serious enough to have appalled less hardy spirits than their own. It was, of course, the problem of their relation to the Indians. Problem, I. All around their little clearing rose a wilderness wall through the apertures of which they always fancied they could see, and actually often did, the peering eyes of their savage foes, and they knew that between them was an unquenchable antagonism. Few, if any, of either race dreamed even for a moment of the. possibility of any community of interests. Both felt that the extermination of one or the other was written on the scroll of fate. The white men accepted the situation with their jaws set, and most of them, it is likely, regarded the clearing out of the ndians with as little sentiment as the clearing off of their timber. The history of the first few years of our municipal life is largely then series of narratives of desperate personal or neighborhood struggles with the ndians. It would be easy to consume page after page with thrilling stories of them; but it would be profitless. A few will be enough if they are typical. be cause our purpose is not to recite details, but to comprehend principles and follow movements. It is not easy, of course, to make a selection, for during the first four years of the life of the little village, tragic conflicts constantly occurred. The only hope of expansion was to push out into the wilderness and open farm CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 47 but every move in this direction meant such perils as few were willing to encounter. The tendency of the settlers was, therefore, to cling to the shelter of the community and the protection of the military, a remarkable contrast to that of the settlers of Kentucky, who pushed into the wilderness, trusting alone to their strong arms and their deadly rifles. A difference so remarkable is not to be explained by attributing a greater courage in the immigrants on the southern side of the Ohio than on the northern; but by the simple fact that when Kentucky was settled no state aid was possible, and the pioneers were obliged to protect themselves or be destroyed. On the other hand, the immigration on the northern side of the river took place after the organization of the national government, and an army, such as it was; had been equipped to defend the, pioneers in their dangerous undertakings. It: is human nature to expect and to avail itself of police protection, when it exists, and the Ohio immigrants obeyed a natural impulse. There were soldiers whose sole business it was to defend them from the ndians, and, in the main, they waited for them to perform their duty. But there were notable exceptions, and the more adventurous began to push up along the two Miamis, Mill creek, Deer creek, and Lick run, in little colonies, in. order to be the first to secure the fertile. lands of those wonderful valleys. Of course they ran great risks, and their little outposts, defended by block-houses and brave hearts, were objects of repeated onslaughts by the. ever watchful avengers of this intrusion into their domains. The following story of one such attack upon one of these stations will serve as well as many to reveal, the nature of the difficulties and dangers of life in that early period of occupation. Dunlays Station. In the spring of 1790, John Dunlap and a company of intrepid companions laid out a town site on the Big Miami, seventeen miles from Cincinnati. They speedily erected a few log cabins which they surrounded by a strong, high picket fence. At the corners were small block houses. There were residing within the enclosure thirty people, men, women and children, of whom not more than ten were able to bear arms. Scarcely had the preliminary work been finished before the premonitory symptoms of an Indian attack were discovered and word was sent to Cincinnati for aid. Fort Washington had already been established there, and Lieutenant Kingsbury was sent to help the exposed settlers, with a company of eighteen men. The threatened attack was unaccountably postponed ; but on the 10th of January, 1791; began. Its first shock fell upon Col. John S. Wallace and his assistants in a surveying expedition which had taken them out of the enclosure. They had spent a night in camp, and, as they began operations in the morning, were fired upon from ambush by the redskins. One. man was killed and several more, severely wounded, ran in every direction seeking safety where they could. The first intimation of the disaster was given to the people in the fort by the barking of a dog, and Lieutenant Kingsbury, versed in the lore of frontier fight-ing, clapped his hands and shouted at the top of his voice that the ndians had come. At first, the settlers who were outside the walls imagined he had done this to stimulate their vigilance; but almost upon the instant beheld five hundred Indians dash from their forest and run to the fort with frightful yells. With 48 - . CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY terrified haste they rushed for the gates and entered just in time. Enraged at the escape of the quarry, Simon Girty, their leader, seized a man by the name of Abner Hunt, captured the day before; bound him hands and feet ; placed him on a log and compelled him to beg the besieged garrison to surrender. This he did with piteous eagerness; but Kingsbury attempted to intimidate the savages by telling. them that aid was expected every moment and that surrender was im-  possible. n response to this answer and to a volley fired by the soldiers, the Indians piled a heap of dry brush over the body of Hunt, to which they set fire and danced around him while he burned. At the termination of this horrible atrocity they shot burning arrows at the buildings, which would have been fired but for a frozen sleet. So desperate was the situation that in reply to the pleadings of the women for some word of hope, the lieutenant answered grimly that he "saw no hope at all and that all must die together. I have asked for volunteers to go to Cincinnati for aid," he continued; "but no one dares take the risk." At that critical moment a soldier by the name of Wiseman sprang forward and declared his determination to undertake the dangerous mission. After a journey full of perils this hardy volunteer (the most youthful soldier in the army) arrived in Cincinnati, where an "exorbitant dram of brandy and unstinted praises for his courage and a good night's sleep put him in shape to lead back reinforcements in the morning." News of their coming had no doubt been carried to the Indians, for just as they arrived at the settlement the entire band was seen, in full retreat. On their way into the fortification, where they were hailed as deliverers, the rescuing party passed the grave of the unfortunate Hunt, which the garrison had hastened out to dig as soon as their foes departed. O. M. Spencer-- 1791. To match this narrative of the typical experience of a community, the tales of the adventures of a single individual should be told. On the 7th of July, 1nt a thirteen-year-old son of Colonel Spencer, one of the most important of the early pioneers., entered a canoe which' pushed off from the shore of the Ohio just below Fort Washington. Besides himself there were in the boat four other people—Jacob Light, a Mr. Clayton, Mrs. Coleman and a drunken soldier. By the time they' had reached Deer creek, on their way up stream, the soldier tumbled into the water and, awakened by the shock, succeeded in swimming to land. The boy was frightened and, being himself unable to swim, begged to I put ashore, and in company with the staggering soldier continued the journey on foot. "Good bait for Indians," said Clayton to his fellow-sailors, and hardly had the words escaped his lips when a shot rang out of the woods. The bull., struck his comrade first and tumbled him into the river, then hit himself, a glancing blow. He succeeded, however, in getting to shore and escaped ; but Clayton was scalped and young. Spencer captured. Mrs. Coleman jumped into the water floated nearly a mile and succeeded at last in reaching Fort Washington, where, she was hospitably cared for, and lived for fifty years to tell the tale. What happened to the drunken soldier is one of the secrets of history ; but with the usual luck of the man in his cups he probably got off with a whole skin and an uncut head of hair. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 49 Young Spencer's story, however, has been preserved and furnishes an example of the thrilling adventures of those far off days. It was a Shawnee Indian who captured him and by whom he was soon turned over to "White Loon," a Mohawk chief. By this savage proprietor he was taken to the confluence of the Auglaize and the Miami, where the chief placed him in care of his old mother, a priestess of the Iroquois tribe, and known by the euphonious name of Cooh-coo-cha. On account of the influence of Colonel Spencer, every possible redemptive agency was set in operation ; but it was not until the last day of February, 1793, that, through the influence of the President of the United States with the gover-nor of Canada, he was set at liberty. At the latter's request, Colonel Elliot, the Indian agent, secured his release and sent him down the Maumee river to Detroit in a pirogue paddled by a couple of ndian women. From Detroit he was taken to Erie, Pa., and from thence to Fort Chippewa and Niagara, across the wilder-ness of New York to Albany, down the Hudson to New York city and thence through Pennsylvania to Cincinnati. To multiply these tales would be easy, but profitless, for the imagination can easily reproduce such harrowing scenes in any number, and thus enable us to con-tinue the study of the establishment of a military center from which radiated those influences by means of which they finally became impossible. Fort Washington. It was the horror inspired by them and the clamors of their victims for assistance that finally aroused the central government to decisive and, at last, sufficient action. These remonstrances and demands were voiced in the main, or at least with the most effect by John Cleves Symmes, whose personal influence was the greatest political asset of the whole region. The ever increasing cry of the pioneers for the utter crushing out of Indian domination made itself felt at last in Philadelphia. At this time the national gov-ernment was hardly constituted and its power was very slight. The echoes of the Revolution were still reverberating. The various colonies (but recently organ-ized into states) were struggling for prominence ; the debts contracted in the war were clamoring to be paid ; localities and organizations in need of support were shrieking for assistance. Never was a new government born with more burdens on its infant shoulders. The convention which assured its existence was held in Philadelphia on the 14th of May, 1787. On the 2d of July, 1788, Congress was notified that enough of the states had consented to the plan for union to make it a certainty. Washington, the first president, was inaugurated on the 30th of April of that same year. The ears of the father of his country immediately resounded with the din of voices calling for governmental aid, but none were louder and more insistent than those of the towns' along the Ohio, and Judge Symmes was the mouthpiece of them all. It was fortunate for the imperiled communities that the great first president was capable of understanding their pressing needs. He realized that much depended upon the safety of this region as a place for his old soldiers to rebuild their shattered fortunes in, as well as for opening new territory for the expansion of the growing colonies. For these and many other reasons he was forward in promoting a movement for obtaining a cessation of ndian hostilities.