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History of Cincinnati Ohio,

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Cornell University Library

The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032193520

1 7 : ; 9

HISTORY

OF

CINCINNATI,

OHIO,

WITH

Illustrations and Biographical Sketches.

COMPILED BY

Henry A. Ford, A.M., and Mrs. Kate B. Ford.

L. A. WILLIAMS & CO.,

PUBLISHERS,

1881.

cod turn

Id I I 7 ; , . , — I I--J

3~ ■' ■' -<v

FROM PRINTING HOUSE OF W. W. WILLIAMS, CLEVELAND, OHIO.

Prefatory Note,

The reader looks forward to this, the first history of Cincinnati that has yet found itself in print. The writers look back across its half-century of chapters and the century of years embraced by its annals, and have, chiefest of all, to regret many unavoidable errors, both of omission and commission. The more important of these, it is hoped, will appear in our page of errata; but there are still many, doubtless, that have escaped the compilers' attention. In a few cases, discrepancies appear between their statements and those of an extract immediately following. In those instances they must

assure the reader that the former rest upon an authority believed to be superior to the other in regard to the mat- ter in hand; but time and space could not always be taken for the discussion and settlement of points con- cerning which there are variant reports. In all really important matters, they believe the history will be found quite trustworthy, especially when corrected from the page of errata.

For the biographical feature of the work, except so much of it as is embodied in the chapters before the Lth, the writers have not, in general, any responsibility.

CONTENTS.

HISTORICAL,

CHAPTER

I. — A Brief Description of Cincinnati II. — Ancient Works Upon the City's Site III.— The Site of Losantiville IV. — Before Losantiville V. — Losantiville VI. — Fort Washington VII. — Cincinnati's First Decade VIII. — Cincinnati Township IX. — Cincinnati's Second Decade .

X. — Cincinnati's Third Decade XI. — Cincinnati's Fourth Decade . XII. — Cincinnati's Fifth Decade XIII. — Cincinnati's Sixth Decade XIV. — Cincinnati's Seventh Decade XV. — Cincinnati's Eighth Decade XVI. — Cincinnati in the War XVII. —The Siege of Cincinnati XVIII. — Cincinnati's Ninth Decade XIX. — The German Element in Cincinnati . XX. — Religion in Cincinnati XXI.— Education . XXII.— Public Charities . XXII. — Benevolent and other Societies XXIV.— Science XXV.— Art XXVI.— Music ....

PAGE 9	CHAPTER XXVII.-
14	XXVIII.
18	XXIX.-
20	XXX.-
26	XXXI.
37	XXXII.-
42	XXXIII.
5°	XXXIV-
52	XXXV.
62	XXXVI.-
74	XXXVII.-
81	XXXVIII.
90	XXXIX.-
99	XL.-
103	XLI.-
106	XLII.-
112	XLIII.-
119	XLIV-
127	XLV-
146	XLVI.-
172	XLVII.-
202	XLVIII.-
213	XLIX.-
222	L-
235
246

-Libraries

—Literature

-Bookselling and Publication

—Journalism '.. — Medicine ....

-The Rench and Bar — Manufacturing —The Industrial Exposition '. — Commerce and Navigation —Banking — Finance — Insurance —The Post Office .

—The Local Militia — The First Appointments —Amusements —Cemeteries —The City: Government —The Fire Department —The Water-works -Penal Institutions -The Police — Board of Health -Markets . ...

-Streets — Street Railroads — Bridges — Parks, etc. -Annexations and Suburbs -Biographical Sketches -Personal Notes -Appendix.

PAGE 258

264 276 284

293 310

324 34o 348 356 362

36S 368

376 379 383 388

393 396 398 401 407 416 477

PAGE

315

428

431 440 466 200

29S 310 136 140 177 294 315 448

443 455 465 469 132 138 140 200 29 199 136 137 200 264 294 295 320

BIOGRAPHICAL,

Baum, Martin ....	127
Burkhalter, Christian	128
Burnet, Jacob ....	265—311
Burnet, Dr. William	294
Blackburn, Dr. John	298
Bramble, Dr. David D.	431
Buckner, Dr. James H.	438
Bailey, Samuel, jr. .	450
Bouscaren, Louis G. F.	465
Cists, the .	265
Cary Sisters, the	273—419
Cramer, Dr. John . . . .	295
Cox, Hon. Joseph	43°
Cappeller, Hon. W. S.	448
Carey, Milton Thompson	441
Chickering, J. B.	454
Covington, Hon. S. F.	462
Denman, Matthias	27
Drakes, the	. 204
Drake, Dr. Daniel . . . .	296
Dunlevy, Hon. A. H. .	312
Davis, William Bramwell	436
Duckworth, George K.	467
Dodson, William Beal	473
Eshelby, E. O	451
Eaton, Morton Monroe	468
Eells, Samuel ....	475
Filson, John . . . .	27
Frankensteins, the .	141
Flint, Rev. Timothy	265
Findlay, Samuel ....	3"

Fox, Charles .

Force, Hon. Manning F.

Follett, Hon. John F.

Fishburn, Cyrus D.

Fehrenbatch, Hon. John

Guilford, Nathan

Goforth, Dr. William

Goudy, Thomas .

Hemann, Joseph Anton

Hofer, Nikolaus

Herron, Joseph

Hole, Dr. John .

Hammond, Charles

Hunt, Samuel F.

Hickenlooper, Andrew

Harper, Professor George W. .

Hunt, Colonel C. B.

Johnston, Campbell and family

Klauprecht, Emil

Kautz, August V.

Kron, Pastor

King, Rufus

Ludlow, Colonel Isaac

Lewis, Samuel .

Molitor, Stephan

Moor, August

McGuffey, Dr. William H.

Mansfield, Edward D.

Morrell, Dr. Calvin .

McClure, Dr. Robert

McMillan, William .

CONTENTS.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

Matthews, Hon. Stanley' Mussey, Dr. Reuben D. Mussey, Dr. W. H. Miles, 'Dr. A. J. Muscroft, Dr. C. S Maley, Dr. P. F McClung, Colonel David Nast, Wilhelm Patterson, Colonel Robert, . Pulte, Joseph H., Pike, S. N. . Picket, Albert Powers, Benjamin F., Reese, Rev. Dr. Friedrich Rodter, Heinrich, Rumelin, Karl Gustav, Rattermann, Heinrich A., . Rentz, August, . Roelker, Dr. Friedrich, Rehfuss, Ludwig, Ray, Dr. Joseph Ramsay, Dr. Samuel Riddle, Colonel John Ramp, Samuel W. ' Symmes, John Cleve, Stallos, Theodore, Stowe, Calvin, E.,

PAGE
416	Stites, Dr. John,
422	Symmes, Daniel,
423	Short, John Cleves,
433	Smith, Hon. Amor,
439	Staley, L. A.,
442	Sadler, L. L.,
444	Stowe, James G. ,
128	Santmeyer, Captain C. A. ,
27	Steele, Charles McDonald,
133	Skaats, Hon. George W. ,
142	Starbuck, Calvin W.,
200	Smith, Samuel Sherwood,
3i5	Underhill, Dr. J. W., .
128	Von Stein, Albert, .
129	Von Masters, Heinrich, .
130	Varwig, Henry,
133	Voight, Captain Lewis, .
'35	Von Seggern, Christopher,
I3S	Walker, George
137	Weitzel, General Gottfried
200	Wright, Dr. Marmaduke B
298	Wild, John S
417	Ward, General Durbin
449	Wright, Dr. C. O
73	Wulsin, Drausin
143	White, James S
200	Zinn, Major Peter

PAGE 293 3" 416 446 447 452 4S3 456 464 4S8 472

473 434 128 132 470

47i 476 136 138 299 312 427 442

459 460 424

		ILLUSTRATIONS,
		PAGE		PAGE
The Cincinnati Music Hall	Frontispiece.	Portrait of Colonel David W. McClung	facing 192
Portrait 0	Judge J. C. Symmes	facing	9	" Amor Smith, jr.	facing 200
Fort Washington	facing	37	L. A. Staley	facing 208
Cincinnati	in 1802		56	Hon. W. S. Cappeller	facing 216
Plan of Cincinnati in 1815	facing	68	Samuel F. Hunt	facing 224
The Trollope Bazaar .	facing	70	Samuel W. Ramp	facing 232
The Church of the Pioneers		150	Samuel Bailey, jr,	facing 240
The First Cincinnati College Building	facing	179	E. O. Eshelby	facing 248
The Tyler	Davidson Fountain	between 404 and	405	" L. L. Sadler	facing 256
Portrait 0:	John Cleves Short	facing	16	James G. Stowe	facing 264
•'	Hon. Stanley Matthews	facing	24	Prof. J. B. Chickering	facing 272
"	Alonzo Taft	facing	28	" Alice Cary	between 272 and 273
"	Colonel John Riddle .	facing	32	" Phcebe Cary	between 272 and 273
"	Dr. Reuben D. Mussey	facing	4°	" Professor G. W. Harper	facing 280
"	Dr. W. H. Mussey	facing	48	" Captain C. A. Santmeyer .	facing 288
"	Major Peter Zinn .	facing	64	" Murat Halstead	facing 291
"	General Rees E. Price	facing	72	" Hon. George W. Skaats	facing 296
■■	General Durbin Ward	facing	80	" Drausin V,	facing 304
"	Hon. Manning F. Force	facing	88	James S. W wite	facing 312
"	Hon. Joseph Cox	facing	96	S. F. Covington „	facing 320
'•	Hon. John F. Follett	facing	I04	" Charles McDonald Steele	facing 328
•■	David D. Bramble	facing	112	Colonel C. B. Hunt .	facing 336
"	Dr. A. J. Mills	facing	I20	" Louis G. F. Bouscaren	facing 344
"	Dr. J. W. Underhill	facing	128	" Hon. John Fehrenbatch	facing 352
"	William Bramwell Davis	facing	I36	George K. Duckworth	facing 360
"	Dr. James H. Buckner	facing	144	" Morton Monroe Eaton, M. D.	facing 368
"	Dr. C. S. Muscroft	facing	152	Henry Varwig	facing 376
"	Dr. Cyrus D. Fishburn	facing	160	" Captain Lewis Voight	facing 384
"	Dr. C. O. Wright	facing	168	William Henry Cook, M. D.	facing 392
"	P. F. Maley	facing 176	" Christopher Von Seggern	facing 400
"	General A. Hickenlooper	facing	184	W. H. Bristol	facing 408

,.->-.

wm^s*

JOHN CLEVES SYMMES.

HISTORY

OF

Cincinnati, Ohio.

CHAPTER I.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CINCINNATI.

How blest is he whose doom it is

A wanderer to roam, Who even in memory can return

To such a lovely home. Oh, were I in the fairest clime

That smiles beneath the sky, Here would my spirit long to come —

If not to live, to die. As yearns the weary child at night

To gain its mother's breast, So, weary with my wanderings,

Here would I long to rest.

"To the Queen City," by Charles A Jones.

Where grand Ohio rolls his silver floods

Through verdant fields and darkly waving woods, ^

Beholding oft, in flowery verdure drest, .

The green isle swelling from his placid breast ;

Here where so late the Indian's lone canoe,

Swift o'er the wave, in fearless triumph flew,

Behold the stately steam-borne vessel glide,

With eager swiftness, o'er the yielding tide ;

And where so late its shelter, rude and low,

The wigwam reared, beneath the forest bough,

Lo ! cities spring before the wondering eyes,

And domes of grandeur swell into the skies.

[Lines prefixed to Bullock's Sketch of a Journey, 1827.]

To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River.

H. W. Longfellow.

Cincinnati is situated on the north bank of the river Ohio, the part of it first settled being opposite the mouth of the Licking river, upon the site of the original village of Losantiville. Its latitude is thirty-nine degrees six minutes north; longitude eighty-four degrees twenty- seven minutes west. It is three hundred and ninety miles west of Washington city; four hundred and sixty- six miles by the river, or two hundred and fifty miles in a direct line, southwest of Pittsburgh; one hundred and twenty miles southwest of Columbus, and two hundred and fifty-five from Cleveland; and five hundred miles by river, or two hundred and ninety directly, to the mouth of the Ohio at Cairo. (The city is built upon three ter- races, The first, or that next the river, has an average height, above low water in the river, of sixty feet; the sec- ond of one hundred and twelve feet; and the third, or

the general level of the hills, rises to commanding heights varying from three hundred and ninety-six feet on Mount Adams to four hundred and sixty feet on Mount Harri- son, west of Mill creek. /The first terrace was found by the early settlers to extend from a gravelly hill or bluff near the present line of Third street, between Broadway and a point west of John street, to an abrupt but not very high bank about one hundred feet south of the hill, which was penetrated here and there by small coves. Between this bank and the river was a low but sloping shore, always flooded in time of high water. All this has been changed, including the disappearance of the bank and bluffs, by the progress of improvement in the older part of the city. The second terrace stretched from the general line of Third street in a gentle rise, as .now, back to the hills. From this the ascent to the third plateau, or the summit of the hills, is in many places exceedingly abrupft and is surmounted in part by graded and macad- amized roads up the ravines between the spurs, and in part by four inclined places — at Mount Adams, at the head of Main street, at a slope on Mount Auburn, near the head of Elm street, and at Price's hill, near the west end of the city, up all of which cars are pulled by powerful steam engines. These hills, with the popular resorts and places of amusement thereon, constitute the chief attrac- tion of the city, and are almost world renowned in their fame. Mr. John R. Chamberlain, writer of the valuable article on Cincinnati in the American Cyclopaedia, says they form "one of the most beautiful natural amphithea- tres on the continent, from whose hilltops may be seen the splendid panorama of the cities below and the wind- ing Ohio. No other large city of the United States af- fords such a variety of position and beauty." They are described as having been exceedingly attractive in their pristine loveliness. Mr. J. P. Foote, in his "Schools of Cincinnati," writing of the hills as they appeared in the early day, says; "At that period they formed a border of such surpassing beauty, around the plain on which Cincinnati stood, as to cause us, who remember them in their beauty, almost to regret the progress of improve- which has taken from us what it can never restore." The names of the principal eminences, from east to west of the city, are Mount Lookout, the Walnut Hills, Mount Adams, Mount Auburn, Clifton Heights, Fairmount,

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Mount Harrison, Mount Hope, Price's Hill, and Mount Echo. The average height of the hills above tidewater at Albany is eight hundred and fifty feet, and of the second terrace five hundred and forty feet; it being twenty-five feet below the level of Lake Erie. Low water mark in the river at Cincinnati in four hundred and thirty-two feet above the sea, and one hundred and thirty- three below Lake Erie. The descent from the upper plane of Cincinnati below the hills to low water is there- fore one hundred and eight feet.

The major part of the city, for population and busi-" ness, though by far the smallest in territorial extent, lies upon the first and second terraces. They are part of a beautiful and fertile plain, lying in an irregular circle, and extending on both sides of the river, about twelve miles in circumference. It is cut into unequal parts by the course of the river, which here makes several curves, but has a general northeast to southwest direc- tion. On two sides of the northern section of the plain, which is the smaller, the city is built along the narrow spaces between the hills and the river, and to some ex- tent on the hills themselves. On the northeast, for four and a half miles, or to and including Columbia, now a part of the city, this belt is but about five hundred yards wide; on the southwest the width is only three hundred yards to the city limits, a mile and three-quarters beyond the point where the hills, after curving around this part of the plateau, return to the river, about three miles from the point at which they left it on the other side. The city has thus a very extensive water-front — about eleven miles, allowing for the curvatures of the river, and taking in, among the annexations of the last ten years, the old village of Columbia on the one side and the former su- burb of Sedamsville on the other. The average width of the city site is three miles, although up the valley of Mill creek, since the annexation of Cumminsville in 1873, the extreme breadth is five and one-half miles. The total area enclosed by the corporation lines is fifteen thousand two hundred and sixty acres, or very nearly twenty-four square miles — an increase of seventeen square miles since 1870 (when it comprised but four thousand four hundred and eighty acres), by the successive and rapid annexation of suburbs. The older part of the city is intersected by the valley of Deer creek on the east, which is now dry except after heavy rains, and is partly occupied by the great Eggleston avenue sewer; and by the Mill creek valley on the west,' which is broad and fertile, and comparatively level for many miles to the northward. Beyond Mill creek the hills are cut through by the narrower valley of Lick run. The former con- tains a good sized stream, which has been greatly service- able for mills and other purposes, since an early period in the history of the place.

The main body of the city, including the business portion and the densest population, borders on the river between the mouth of Deer creek on the east and that of Mill creek on the west, a distance of two and one-half miles. North of East Liberty street and the Hamilton road, the hillsides from Deer creek to Mill creek are terraced with streets, and [in places] covered with dwellings to their summits. Mount Adams, overlooking the southeast corner of the plateau, has streets thickly lined with dwellings on its summit and west and south sides. The remainder of the city, including the narrow valleys along the

f.

river, above and below the city proper, the village of Cumminsville, next the northern corporation line in Mill creek valley, and the several table-iand villages from Woodburn on the east to Fairmount on the west, is irregularly built. In the northwest part are native forests and cultivated farms. On the western hills are vineyards and gardens. Be- tween Harrison avenue and the Twenty-fifth ward (Cumminsville) are many vegetable gardens. *

THE SUBURBS.

A number of villages, formerly suburbs, are now in- cluded in the city. The principal of these, beginning on the east, are Columbia, Walnut Hills, Mount Auburn, and Cumminsville. Fairmount is a residence quarter west of Mill Creek valley, and Sedamsville is mainly a manufact- uring district, lying south of the western range of hills, between it and the river, about three and a half miles from Fountain Square. Fulton is a part of the city at the base of the hills on the other side of the plain, be- ginning beyond the Little Miami railway depot and run- ning in a narrow tract northeast to Pendleton village, which lies between it and Columbia. Northeast of Columbia the city includes a part of Tusculum. Due north of it, at the extreme northeast corner of the city, is Mount Lookout, a small but attractive suburb, in part outside the corporation limits, and the seat of the Cincin- nati observatory; about north of the dividing line between Fulton and Pendleton, and on the hills, is the little plat known as O'Bryonville, between which and Walnut Hills is Woodburn, an extensive and well-built area; and west of Walnut Hills, between Mount Auburn and the north corporation line, is Corryville, a residence and business quarter, on the \«est of which is the spacious and beauti- ful Burnet Woods Park, and on the north, just outside the eity, in the southwest part of Avondale, the famous zoological gardens. Camp Washington occupies a lim- ited space between the Miami canal and Mill creek, in the vicinity of the workhouse and the house of refuge. Brighton is not marked as a district quarter upon the latest maps, but is that part of the city reaching from the junction of Freeman street and Central avenue west to Mill Creek, and takes its name from the former existence of the city stockyards there. Barrsville, Forbusville, Peterstown, and Lick Run are hamlets adjoining or not far from Fairmount, on the heights west of Mill Creek; and Weaversburgh is a station on the Westwood Narrow Gauge railroad west of Fairmount, and close to the cor- poration line. These highlands, between Fairmount and the Ohio, are as yet occupied to but a limited extent, from the difficulty with which most parts of them are still reached from the city. "The outer highland belt of the city commands distant views of hills in Kentucky and Ohio, and of the valleys of Mill Creek, the Licking, and the Ohio. It is beautified by elegant residences in the midst of extensive and highly cultivated landscape lawns, whose shrubbery is often the native forest, and is traversed by winding avenues. From the eastern corpo- ration line, through East Walnut Hills and Woodburn to West Walnut Hills, mansions occupy grounds of from three to seventy-five acres. The blue limestone of the hills is used in the construction of the finest buildings; [and .some of them have been erected from material

* American Cyclopaedia, article Cincinnati.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

quarried upon the very grounds they occupy.] West Walnut. Hills and Mount Auburn, though in parts quite compactly built, abound in -elegant and costly residences, each having from one to four acres of grounds."*

Outside the city, but in immediate proximity to it, are several lovely suburbs. Prominent among these is Clif- ton, between Cumminsville and Avondale, with the Bur- net Woods park cornering upon it at the southeast. It is described as "a most beautiful suburb, and an almost continuous landscape garden."f It has many fine groves and costly residences. The grounds about them occupy areas of ten to eighty acres. Avondale, next east of Clifton, and north of Corryville and Walnut Hills, com- prises about eight hundred acres of territory, and is also superbly built. Its views include the neighboring hills, which, however, shut out the river scenery from the den- izens of this suburb. East and northeast of this are Norwood, Oakley, Madisonville, and other places of suburban residence; and between the last named and Columbia is Linwood, a small place near the Little Mi- ami railroad, six and a half miles from the court house in Cincinnati. College Hill, away to the northwestward, about eight miles from Fountain Square, occupies the highest ground in the county,' on the heights west of Mill Creek. Glendale is another famous suburb in this direc- tion; also Carthage, eight miles out, near which are the Longview and the Colored insane asylums, and the city and county infirmaries. North and northeast of the city are also Bond Hill and Hartwell; Mount Washington and California are eastward, beyond the left bank of the Little Miami; Riverside, a suburb of two and one-half miles length along the river, adjoins Sedamsville on the extreme southwest of the city, and beyond it are Delhi and other suburban villages scattered along the shore. In all direc- tions from the city, but particularly to the north, north- westward, and northeastward, a score of miles, are many other places which may properly be reckoned suburbs of Cincinnati. On the Kentucky side are Covington, west of the Licking river, now a considerable city, the largest in Kentucky except Louisville, with West Cov- ington, Ludlow, and Bromley as suburban places for itself and Cincinnati, along the river to the west, and Latonia Springs, five miles out, on the Lexington pike, as a favorite place of resort and residence. On the other side of the Licking, opposite Cincinnati, is New- port, with the United States barracks and a considerable population; and northeast of it, also on the Ohio river, are the villages of East Newport, Bellevue, and Dayton. Newport is connected with Covington by a suspension bridge across the Licking, and with Cincinnati by the Louisville Short Line railroad bridge, which is also used for street-cars and other vehicles, and for foot passengers. The Cincinnati Southern railway bridge connects Cincin- nati and Ludlow ; but it is used only for the purpose of the railroad. Between these two bridges is the main artery of communication between the two sides of the Ohio in this region — the renowned suspension bridge, a

* American Cyclopaedia. •(•King's Pocket-book of Cincinnati.

mile from the former and a mile and a half from the latter, and connecting Cincinnati from near the foot of Walnut and Vine streets with Covington. It is not used for any steam railroad, but all the Covington lines of street-cars, with one line of the Newport horse-cars, cross it, with other vehicles and foot passengers in vast num- bers. Three ferries also connect Cincinnati with Cov- ington, Newport, and Ludlow, respectively; and the abundant facilities of access, with other inducements, have led to the residence of large numbers of Cincinnat- ians in the Kentucky suburbs. In the vicinity of the city and suburbs, on both sides of the Ohio, are many beautiful drives.

THE OLD CITY.

This part of Cincinnati — that on the plain — is laid out quite regularly, somewhat on the Philadelphia plan, and with a number of the Philadelphia street names. The streets are generally from one and a half to two and a half miles long, and fifty to one hundred feet wide. The lat- ter is the common width. "West of Central avenue they run north from the river and east from Mill creek, while east of that avenue their direction from the river is slightly west of north. The streets and avenues are generally paved or macadamized, many of them being adorned with shade trees. The buildings are substantial, and chiefly of brick. A grayish buff freestone, for fronts, is universally used for large business houses and the finest residences in the city proper, though many of the residences on the hills are of wood. The prevailing height of business buildings is five stories, though many are six. Dwellings are generally high and narrow, and seldom have front yards. The chief mercantile quarter covers about three hundred acres, and lies between Fifth street and the river, and Broadway and Smith street. Business is not concentrated as in other cities. Manu- factories are scattered through all parts of the city and its suburbs. Pearl street, which contains nearly all the wholesale boot and shoe and dry goods houses, is noted for its splendid row of lofty, uniform stone fronts, between Vine and Race streets. Fourth street, the fashionable promenade, and the most select retail business street between Broadway and Central avenue, a mile in extent, is noted for its splendid stone-front buildings. Third street, between Main and Vine, contains the banking, brokerage and insurance establishments, and the at- torney's offices; and west of Vine the large clothing houses. Within a quarter of a mile of the custom house and post office are most of the chief theatres, newspaper offices and libraries. In Pike street, in Fourth street from Pike to Broadway, and in Broadway between Third and Fifth streets, are the mansions of the 'East End'; in Fourth street, west of Smith street, in Dayton street, and in Court street, between Freeman and Baymiller streets, those of the 'West End.' The large district north of the Miami canal, which enters the city from the northwest, and extends south to the Ohio river, is known as 'Over the Rhine.' It is densely populated, almost exclusively by Germans; has numerous beer gardens, saloons and concert halls, and is thoroughly German in its characteristics. In this vicinity are all the great brew-

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

eries of Cincinnati. " * About twenty-five thousand per- sons occupy this populous district. Some of the beer and wine cellars of the quarter will hold half a million gallons of liquor. It furnishes many famous places of resort, especially for Germans and on Sunday. The superb Music hall and Exposition buildings are situated here, on the block bounded by Elm, Plum, Fourteenth and Grant streets ; also Washington park, opposite Music hall, occupying four and one-third acres, and containing a bronze bust, heroic size, of Colonel Robert L. McCook, one of Cincinnati's dead in the late war. West of Music hall, on the other side of the canal, is the im- mense Cincinnati hospital — eight buildings in one, oc- cupying nearly two squares. #n the old city are, of course, all the leading hotels, among which the Burnet, the Gibson, the Grand and the Emery are conspicuous; also the more costly and elegant church edifices, as St. Peter's (Catholic) cathedral, with its peculiarly graceful spire, its colonnade of Corinthian columns, and its musical chimes, several of the Presbyterian churches, St. Paul's Methodist, St. John's Episcopal church, the Hebrew temples, and many others; the buildings of St. Xavier's, the Wesleyan Female, the Cincinnati, and the several medical colleges; the Mechanics' institute, the Public library and others ; the great Government building going up on Fifth street, near Fountain square; the City build- ing and the County Courthouse; the singular Trollopean Bazaar, on Third, near Broadway;! several fine club houses ; Pike's, Robinson's, and the Grand Opera houses, and the Mclodeon and Mozart halls; and a number of small parks, as the Washington, the Lincoln, the Eighth- street, the City building, and the Water-works parks, all small; Fountain square, with the magnificent Tyler- Davidson fountain, the most notable work of art in the city, forty-five feet high, costing, with .the spacious es- planade on which on which it stands, over two hundred thousand dollars; the Masonic temple, an imposing free- stone-front building in the Byzantine style; the Hughes and Woodward high schools, and most of the other pub- lic school buildings; and many more interesting and ele- gant structures. Most sites of historic interest are in this part of the city, as the site of Fort Washington, on and near the junction of Third street and Broadway, and others.

IN THE ANNEXATIONS.

Outside the older city, however, is Camp Washington, a place of rendezvous and equipment for troops in the Mexican war; beyond it is Cumminsville, where "Lud- low's Station" was situated during the early years of white settlement here; and at the extreme eastern part of the city is Columbia, where the first settlement in the Miami country was made. Upon the Camp Washington tract are the enormous buildings occupied by the Cincinnati Workhouse and House of Refuge ; upon the hillside at Fairmount, to the southwest, is the former Baptist Theo- logical Seminary, now the "Schutzenplatz,'' a German club-house, commanding a superb view of the Mill Creek,

* American Cyclopaedia, f Torn down in February, 1881.

Lick Run and Ohio valleys; and adjoining Cumminsville are the Wesleyan and Spring Grove cemeteries, the lat- ter of six hundred acres, the largest and otherwise one of the finest cemeteries of the country, considered by some the most picturesque large cemetery in the world. Cumminsville has also the Catholic orphan asylum. On the hills are the various large buildings and gardens, con- stituting the famous hill-top resorts, one at the head of each inclined plane. Many schools of note are on or near these heights — as the Cincinnati University, the Mount Auburn young ladies' seminary, Mount St. Mary seminary, Mount St. Vincent young ladies' seminary, and Lane theological seminary; charitable institutions — the Cincinnati orphan asylum, German protestant orphan asylum, the Widows' and Old Men's home, and others ; some fine churches; the Zoological gardens, just beyond the city limits; one small park — Hopkins — on Mount Auburn, and the two great parks of the city — Burnet woods, containing one hundred and sixty-seven acres, nearly, with a lake of about three acres, and famous for its grand concerts of summer afternoons — also Eden park, east of the old town, largest of all the city's parks, comprising two hundred and six acres, on which are lo- cated the large reservoirs of the city water works, and a neat stone building called the Casino or Shelter House, from which, as well as from other spots in the park, many charming views may be had. At the further end of Pendleton, on the bank of the river, is a pleasant, finely-improved tract of twelve acres — private property, but used much by picnics and pleasure parties — which was formerly known as East End garden, but is now called Woodland park.

THE RIVER

makes a great bend and two small ones in front of the city, and thus affords a very extensive river front. Most of this is private property, and is considerably occupied, not only for steamboats, but for coal-boats, barges, log- rafts, and other water-craft. The city owns the landing from near the water-works, east of the Little Miami de- pot, to Mill creek, and leases the larger part to steamboat lines, ferry companies, and other parties. The Public Landing, so-called, which has been such from the earliest period of the city's history, extends from the foot of Broadway to the foot of Main street; and it is here most of the river steamers, some of them very large and ele- gantly appointed, are to be found moored. A wharf master and wharf register collect dues from vessels for the privileges of this landing, and otherwise look after the city's interests on the river. 'The Ohio is liable to great and sudden freshets, particularly in the spring, when it has sometimes risen fifty to fifty-five feet above low- water mark, and formerly did immense mischief. The flood of 1832 marked sixty-two and a half feet, and that of 1848 fifty-seven feet above low-water. These were very destructive, and are memorable in the annals of the city. About twelve hundred acres in the Mill creek val- ley were formerly subject to inundation ; but that tract has been considerably narrowed by "making land" above high-water mark for manufactories, dwellings, and other improvements demanded by the growth of the city. The

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

13

bottom-lands are rendered highly fertile by the annual overflows, and are in great request, so far as they are still available, for market gardening; also, in the lowest spots, for brickmaking. The deposit of fine clay in these places from a single inundation is sometimes four inches deep, is very smoothly laid, and when removed is almost ready, without further preparation, for the mold. The river has been, as will be shown further in this volume, an extremely important factor in the growth of the city.

CANALS.

The Miami & Erie cana-l was one of the first projects of the kind to be executed in the State. Its history has been detailed in the first division of this book. It enters the city at Cumminsville, on the east side of Mill creek and some distance from it, and proceeds in a winding but generally southeasterly course, with a right angle at the intersection of Canal street, to the basin at the cor- ner of Canal and Sycamore streets. From this point to the river, just east of the Little Miami depot, it has been abandoned, or rather converted into a huge closed sewer called Eggleston avenue sewer, which occupies in part the bed of the former Deer creek, and discharges through a spacious tunnel into the river at the point named. The remainder of the canal, extending to Toledo, is still in use.

The excavation and abandonment of the Whitewater canal, the only other canal which Cincinnati has had, have been related in the history of Hamilton county.

STEAM RAILROADS.

The railway connections of Cincinnati are exceedingly numerous, far-reaching, and important, as has been seen in the chapter on this subject in the previous part of this work. The railways entering this city upon their own or others' tracks, are the New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio (formerly the Atlantic & Great Western), the Balti- more & Ohio, the Cincinnati Southern, the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, & Indianapolis (popularly known as the "Bee Line"), the Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Day- ton, the Marietta & Cincinnati, the Cincinnati & Muskin- gum Valley, the Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Indianapolis, the Cleveland, Mt. Vernon, & Columbus, the Dayton Short Line, the Louisville Short Line, the Little Miami, or Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, & St. Louis ("Pan Handle"), the Ohio & Mississippi, the Whitewater Valley, the Fort Wayne, Muncie, & Cincinnati, the Cincinnati, Wabash, & Michigan, the Cincinnati, Richmond, & Chicago, the Grand Rapids & Indiana, and the Indianapolis, Cincin- nati, & Lafayette; besides the narrow-gauge roads — the Cincinnati & Eastern, the Cincinnati & Portsmouth, the Cincinnati & Westwood, and the College Hill railways. All of these, except the railways from the south, come in by the narrow strips of land left in the Ohio valley on each side of the old city, or by the Mill Creek valley; and most of them enter three depots— the Plum street, the "C, H., & D.," at the corner of Fifth and Hoadly streets, and the Little Miami, at the corner of Front and Kilgour. The Cincinnati Southern has its own depot, at the corner of McLean avenue and Gest street. All the depots are near "the river, and those in the eastern

and western parts of the city proper are connected by a track for limited use in transferring freight. The Ken- tucky Central, which has its northern terminus in Cov- ington, may also be considered as in the Cincinnati system.

HORSE RAILROADS.

These include four lines to Covington, one of them through Newport; another Newport line; the Elm street and the Vine street lines, connecting with the Clifton line by the inclined plane near the head of Elm street; the Main street line, using another incline at the head of Main street to reach its track to the Zoological gardens; the Baymiller street line, connecting at the foot of Mt. Adams with an incline to the summit, up which cars, horses and passengers are taken as they drive upon its carriage from the street, and at the top connecting with the Eden Park, Walnut Hills and Avondale line; the Eighth street line, connecting with the inclined railway at Price's Hill; the Cumminsville and Spring Grove line, which has recently been extended to Fountain Square, furnishing the longest ride in the city, between five and six miles, for a single fare; the Walnut Hills line up Gil- bert avenue; the Third street line; the Seventh street line; the John street line, and the Riverside and Sedams- ville line. A recent extension on Liberty street gives a new line to Brighton by Fourth and Main streets. The Elm street line, at' its eastern terminus in Pendleton, connects with steam dummy lines for Columbia and Mount Lookout. The direct Newport line makes con- nection with a dummy line for Bellevue and Dayton. All the down-town horse railways start from or near Fountain Square. Most of the lines are consolidated, so that tickets sold by one line are usable upon others.

OTHER FACILITIES

of transportation are abundant. A number of omni- buses and stage lines run to points in the country from five to thirty miles distant, not reached by the steam or horse railways, and several lines of river steamers ply between Cincinnati and other points on the Ohio, Cum- berland, Mississippi, Arkansas, White and Red rivers. The bridges and ferries also supply great public needs nearer home. The Miami stockyards, on Eggleston avenue, covering three acres, and furnishing accommo- dations for ten thousand animals, facilitate the delivery of cattle, hogs, and sheep to several of the railroads. The United Railroads Stockyard company occupies a larger tract, fifty acres on Spring Grove avenue and Mill creek, near Cumminsville, where the land and improve- ments, affording accommodations for five thousand cat- tle, ten thousand sheep, and twenty-five thousand hogs, have cost over three-quarters of a million of dollars.

The completion of the canal at Louisville around the falls of the Ohio, some years ago, now allows the largest Mississippi river steamers to come up to this city.

TELEGRAPHS AND TELEPHONES.

These are sufficiently numerous for all public and pri- vate needs. The Western Union and the Atlantic & Pacific undertake the far-away communications; the city and suburban telegraph association, the board of trade

14

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

telegraph, the police and fire telegraphs, have important local uses; as also the Bell telephonic exchange, with which the former Edison telephone exchange has been consolidated.

MISCELLANEOUS.

We have aimed in this opening chapter of the history of Cincinnati to present mainly the things which appear outwardly, to give a bird's-eye view of the city. Other and less apparent matters, as the city government, the police and fire departments, the water and gas works, the manufactures, trade and commerce of the city, its re- ligious, educational, literary and charitable institutions, its newspapers and periodicals, the public libraries, and many other subjects, will be set forth under their appro- priate heads hereafter.

CHAPTER II.

ANCIENT WORKS UPON THE CITY'S SITE.

Lonely and sad it stands;

The trace of ruthless hands Is on its sides and summit, and around The dwellings of the white man pile the ground;

And, curling in the air, The smoke of twice a thousand hearths is there;

Without, all speaks of life, within,

Deaf to the city's echoing din, Sleep well the tenants of that silent mound, Their names forgot, their memories uncrowned.

Upon its top I tread,

And see around me spread Temples and mansions, and the hoary hills, Bleak with the labor that the coffer fills,

But mars their bloom the while, And steals from Nature's face its joyous smile;

And here and there, below,

The stream's meandering flow Breaks on the view; and westward in the sky The gorgeous clouds in crimson masses lie.

The hammer's clang rings out

Where late the Indian's shout Startled the wild fowl from its sedgy nest, And broke the wild deer's and the panther's rest.

The lordly oaks went down Before the ax — the canebiake is a town;

The bark canoe no more

Glides noiseless from the shore; And sole memorial of a nation's doom, Amid the works of art rises this lonely tomb.

It, too, must pass away;

Barbaric hands will lay Its holy ruins level with the plain, And rear upon its site some goodly fane.

It seemeth to upbraid The white man for the ruin he hath made.

And soon the spade and mattock must

Invade the sleepers' buried dust, And bare their bones to sacrilegious eyes, And send them forth some joke-collector's prize. — "To the Old Mound," by Charles A. Jones, son of an old Cincin- nati family, who died at Cumminsville in 1851.

THE ANCIENT PEOPLE.

The settlers of Losantiville, and afterwards the immi- grants to Cincinnati for more than a generation and a

half, found the plainest indications that a numerous and intelligent people had been here before them. The red man had left few tokens of his occupancy, and those of but the most insignificant character; but beneath the deep shades of the luxuriant forest, overgrown by trees of centuries' growth, upon both the upper and lower ter- races, it is said, were the unmistakable remains of struct- ures erected there by a strange, mysterious race, whose very name, to say nothing of their history and tribal relations, had long been covered by the dust of oblivion. As Professor Short remarks, in his North Americans of Antiquity :

The same sagacity which chose the neighborhood of St. Louis for these works, covered the site of Cincinnati with an extensive system of circumvallations and mounds. Almost the entire space now occupied by the city was utilized by the mysterious Builders, in the construction of embankments and tumuli built upon the most accurate geometrical principles, and evincing keen military foresight.

ENCLOSURES AND EMBANKMENTS.

Almost every one of the leading classes of Mound Builders' remains was represented in the Cincinnati works. The chief work was probably a sacred enclosure, since it had no ditch, and occupied a position offering no special advantages for defence. It was an earth wall or embankment, encircling the entire blocks now bound- ed by Fourth and Fifth, Race arid Walnut streets, and including some fractions of adjoining blocks. Its figure was not mathematically exact, and was probably not intended to be so. It was a very broad ellipsis, eight hundred feet in diameter from east to west, and about six hundred and sixty from north to south. An opening or gateway ninety feet wide appeared on the east side of the wall, upon or near the line of Fourth street. The height of the work, as found by the pioneers, was scarcely a yard, but the base of the embankment averaged ten- yards in thickness. It was heaped up with loam similar to that found in its immediate vicinity, and was of quite uniform composition throughout, as discovered by subse- quent excavation and removal. Nothing found inside the main work indicated that manual labor had been expended therein, the ground being somewhat irregular and uneven, and evidently left by the Builders pretty nearly in a state of nature. There was no ditch within or without the walls. From each side of the gateway, and exterior but contiguous to the wall, stretched away a broad elevation or parapet, of somewhat indeterminate figure. From that on the line of Fourth street could be traced a bank of only twelve inches height, but with a nine-foot base. It extended southward fifty to seventy- five yards, until within a few yards of the edge of the upper plain, or the "hill," as it was then called, when it turned to the east, and ended in a mound at the present junction of Main and Third streets, about five hundred feet distant from the point of departure. No similar wall from the other side of the gateway was observable • but at a short remove north of it were two other eleva- tions, isolated though near each other, over six feet high, and probably artificial, though of shapeless form.

More than four hundred yards east of the work just described, between Broadway and Sycamore streets, was

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

i5

a bank of about the same dimensions as to height and thickness, which reached in a slight curve from Sixth nearly to Third. The circle of which it was a segment, whether ideal or embodied in earthwork, was an im- mense one. "It was evidently," says Judge Burnet, in his Notes, from which many of these facts are derived, "a segment of a very large circle, with its centre just south of the other work described." The remainder had been left unfinished, or was leveled after construction. From a point_near the south end of the segment formed a low wall could be traced to the river, and was found to correspond in a remarkable way, in height, extent, and direction, with another embankment, about half a mile distant, in the western part of the village site. Both of these had disappeared by the year 1815.

Mr. Robert Clarke, in his pamphlet on the Pre-historic Remains at Cincinnati, printed in 1876, is not inclined to give credence to the story of this extension to the river, "as it would extend the works to the bottom-land, on which Mound Builder's works are seldom anywhere found. It is more probable that this embankment turned westward and joined the other embankment at the mound."

Upon the present track of Fifth street, still east of all the works mentioned, and about four hundred feet from the segment, was a circular enclosure of sixty feet diam- eter, bearing evidence of construction by heaping up earth from the ground within. It was, when found, but one foot high, on a twelve to fifteen-foot base.

In the north part of the old town, between Elm and Vine streets, and six hundred yards from the great ellip- sis (now between the canal and Fourth streets), were two extensive earth walls, also of convex shape, but not con- stituting an enclosure. They were each seven hundred and sixty feet long, about two feet high, and ran in exact parallels in a general east and west direction, forty-six feet apart, measuring from the middle of the embank- ment, for two-thirds of the way, when they converged slightly to forty feet width, and so continued to the end. At about the point where the convergence began, there was an opening of thirty feet in the southern bank.

Many other inequalities of surface, upon sites more or less irregular, were observable in the early day ; but by the time the attention of antiquaries had been much di- rected to them, twenty-five to thirty years after settlement, they had become too obscure and ill-defined to warrant detailed description. Strange to say, the plains on the other side of the river, in Kentucky, did not present, ac- cording to Judge Burnet, the slightest vestige of. ancient earthworks.

TUMULI.

Upon the upper plain on which the principal part of Cincinnati is located, were found several large mounds or pyramids. The largest of these was due west of the great ellipsis, and five hundred yards distant from it. It was situated just where the alley between Fifth and Long- worth streets intersects the west side of Mound street, to which it gave the name ; and was formed, it is believed from its composition, simply by scooping earth from the surrounding surface and heaping it up smoothly. The

composition and structure of the mound were thus de- scribed by Mr. John S. Williams, editor of the American Pioneer, in volume II of that magazine:

The earth of the mound is composed of light and dark colored lay- ers, as if it had been raised, at successive periods, by piling earth of different colors on the top. This appearance might have been pro- duced by successive layers of vegetation and freezings, which were allowed to act on each layer before the mound received a second addi- tion to its height. In some parts the layers are completely separated by what appears to have been decayed vegetable matter, such as leaves and grass, as the earth is in complete contact, except a very thin divis- ion by some such substance. In some places through the mound there are vacancies, evidently occasioned by the decay of sticks of wood, leaving a most beautiful, impalpable powder. Throughout the mound there are spots of charcoal, and in some places it is in beds. In one or two places which we observed, the action of fire upon the clay had left marks of considerable intensity.

The shape of its base was that of a regular ellipsis, with diameters about in the ratio of two to one, and the longer diameter in a line about seventeen degrees east of north. It is described by one of the early local writers as "a considerable mound of great beauty, about fifty [?] feet high, constructed with great exactness, and standing upon a base unusually small compared with its height." The long diameter of the base was about seventy feet; the shorter thirty-five. Its circumference was four hun- dred and forty feet, and its height was twenty-seven feet so lately as 1815, though about eight feet had been cut from the top of it in 1794 by General Wayne, who posted a sentinel, with a sentry-box, upon it, while his army was encamped in the Mill Creek valley. From its summit, it is said, a view of the entire plain could be commanded; and it is a very interesting fact — wholly u«ique, so far as we know, in the history of the mounds — that this order of General Wayne restored the structure for a time to what was doubtless its ancient character and use in part, as a mound of observation. Some superficial excavations were early made in this mound, resulting in the finding of a few scattered human bones, probably from intrusive burials, a branch of deer's horn, and a piece of earthenware containing muscle shell. Long afterwards (1841) the removal of the mound in the grading of the street and alley, brought to light one of the most interesting memorials of antiquity ever discov- ered, which willl be noticed at some length below. The lines "To the Old Mound," quoted at length at the beginning of this chapter, were addressed to this ancient remain. Three smaller mounds stood in the close neighborhood of this, also containing human remains. Five hundred feet north and somewhat eastward of this work, near the northeast corner of Mound and Seventh streets, was another, a platform mound, probably about nine feet high, circular, and nearly flat on top. In this were found a few fragments of human skeletons and a handful of copper beads that had formerly been strung on a cord of lint.

Northeast of this eminence, and several hundred yards distant, on the east of Central avenue, opposite Rich- mond street, near Court, was another circular mound but three feet high, from which were taken unfinished spear- and arrow-heads of chert or flint.

But the most remarkable of this class of the Cincin- nati works which did not long survive the advent of the

i6

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

white man, was the mound at the intersection of Third and Main streets, near the site of the older as well as the later First Presbyterian churches. It was the mound formerly mentioned as terminating the wall from the great ellipsis, and was one hundred and twenty feet long, sixty feet broad and eight feet high, of an oval figure, with its diameters nearly on lines connecting the oppo- site cardinal points of the compass. It was gradually destroyed at an early day by the necessity of grading Main street to reduce the difficulty of ascent from the lower plain to the higher. The strata of which it was composed, proceeding from without, were: First, a layer of loam or soil like that upon the adjacent natural sur- face. The articles found in the tumulus were a little be- low this stratum. Second, a layer of large pebbles, con- vex, like the outer one, and of uniform thickness. Lastly, gravel, considerably heaped up in the centre, and contain- ing no remains. Many interesting articles were found in the process of excavation and removal — pieces of jasper, rock crystal, granite, porphyry, and other rocks, mostly cylindrical at the extremes and increasing in diameter toward the middle, with an annular groove near one end, and all evincing much skill of the Builders in cutting and polishing the hardest rocks. Numerous other arti- cles, made of cannel coal, argillaceous earth, and bone, including the sculptured head of a bird, supposed to be intended to represent that of an eagle; bits of isinglass or mica, lead ore, and sheet copper, all supposed to be used partly for ornament and partly in religious observ- ances; with beads of bone or shell, the teeth of some carniverous animal, probably the bear, and several large marine shells; also a quantity of human bones, appar- ently belonging to twenty or thirty skeletons, were found in this work. The last mentioned remains were generally surrounded by ashes and charcoal, and sometimes were found enclosed in rude stone cists or coffins. The stra- tum above these seemed to be undisturbed, and had evi- dently been laid after the precious deposits were made. One of the old writers also mentions among the discov- eries in this mound certain other articles, "most proba- bly deposited in it after Europeans began to visit here" — as pieces of hard brown earthenware; the small image of a female holding an infant in her arms and supposed to represent the Virgin Mary, finely wrought in ivory but somewhat mutilated; and a small, complex instrument of iron, greatly corroded, and supposed to be used for weighing light articles." The last two statements are de- cidedly apocryphal, though Judge Burnet apparently gives credence to them and repeats them in his Notes.

This ancient work was noticed very early by Colonel Sargent, secretary of the Northwest Territory, in a letter from Cincinnati, dated September 8, 1794, and enclos- ing drawings of relics exhumed from a grove near the mound. His correspondent, Dr. Benjamin S. Barton, of Philadelphia, made them the theme of an elaborate let- ter to Rev. Joseph Priestly, the famous Indian theo- logian, philosopher and scientist; and the correspondence was published, with illustrations, in volumes four and five, of the transactions of one of the learned societies of the Quaker city.

A DENUDED MOUND.

In 1874 Dr. H. H. Hill discovered a cluster of an- cient graves on the extreme point of Brighton Hill, at the west end of the range of hills north of the old city, which Mr. Clarke thinks were once covered by a mound that has been in the course of the ages washed away by the rainfalls to or near the level of the original surface. Many loose stones, in groups or piles, had been long ob- served at this spot, and had been conjectured to be the remains of an ancient stone work. The human remains were included within a circular spot about forty feet in diameter, and the bones were so greatly decomposed that they soon fell to dust. From some indications in the position of the bones there is reason to believe that Indians were buried here, as well as Mound Builders. Many teeth and tusks of animals, fragments of stag-horn, with various implements made from bone, pieces of mica, stone hammers, gorgets and pipes, spear and arrow-heads, copper and bone awls, and fragments of shells with traces of carving thereon, were aiso found in the burial- place. It was a very interesting find. The mound sup- posed to have stood over the remains and relics is that designated by Mr. Clarke, in a quotation we shall make hereafter, as the "Brighton Hill mound." It was also, probably, one of the series of signal-mounds in the Mill creek valley.

"dug-hole."

Over half a mile north of the ellipsis, which serves as a convenient point of departure for distances to the other works, was an excavation or "dug-hole," believed to be artificial, but not apparently connected with any other work. It was nearly fifty feet in diamete"r at the top, as measured from the top of the circular bank formed by throwing out the earth, and almost twelve feet in depth; and was by some of the early settlers supposed to be an old, half-filled well. It probably belonged, however, to the age of the Mound Builders, and to the class of ancient remains known as "dug-holes," origin- ally intended as reservoirs for water or store houses of provision.

a scholar's view.

General W. H. Harrison, in his instructive address be- fore the Historical and Philosophical society of Ohio, in 1837, published in their transactions, and also in pamph- let form, gave the following view of the works, as they appeared in the white man's early day here:

When I first saw the upper plain on which that city stands, it was literally covered with low lines of embankments. I had the honor to attend General Wayne two years afterwards, in an excursion to examine them. We were employed the greater part of a day, in August, 1793, in doing so. The number and variety of figures in which these lines were drawn, was almost endless, and, as I have said, almost covered the plain— many so faint, indeed, as scarcely to be followed, and often for a considerable distance entirely obliterated; but, by careful examination, and following the direction, they could again be found. Now, if these lines were ever of the height of the others made by the same people (and they must have been to have answered any valuable purpose), or unless their erection was many years anterior to the others, there must have been some other cause than the attrition of rain (for it is a dead level) to bring them down to their then state. That cause I take to have been continued cultivation; and, as the people who erected them would not themselves destroy works which had cost them so much labor, the solution of the question can only be found in the long occupancy

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

17

and the cultivation of another people, and the probability is that that people were the conquerors of the original possessors. To the ques- tion of the fate of the former, and the cause of no recent vestige of set- tlements being found on the Ohio, I can offer only a conjecture, but one that appears to me to be far from improbable.

The general thought the occurrence of tremendous floods, like those of 1793 and 1832, might be sufficient to drive off the Builders, "not only from actual suffering, but from the suggestions of superstition ; an occurrence so unusual being construed into a warning from Heaven to seek a residence upon the smaller streams."

THE WORKS IN 1817.

Many were still remaining. Judge Burnet, writing at this time, notes them as " numerous here, and consisting of two circular banks, mounds, tumuli, etc." A house then stood at the corner of Mound and Third streets, upon the site of the tumulus there. Several streets were intersecting the remains, and they did not long thereafter maintain their ground against the march of improvement, which in time obliterated the last vestige of the monu- ments of ancient civilization, so far as the surface of the site of Cincinnati exhibited them.

THE WORKS IN 1819 AND 1 825.

The maps prefixed to the first and second directories of the city, published in 1819 and 1825, however, take notice of the existence and position of the enclosures and mounds upon the site of Cincinnati, though not precisely as they have been described above. One work, the large ellipsis, is delineated as surrounding completely the block between Fourth and Fifth, Race and Vine streets, except a very small part of the northwest corner, about half the next block east, and some parts of the adjacent blocks north and south. Adjoining the north- east part of it, on the north half of the block bounded by Third, Fourth, Vine and Race streets, appears a large mound, with a single embankment running almost due south to the lower part of the block, and thence across the next block eastward to the mound at the northeast corner of Main and Third. The enclosure is represented as an irregular circle, of about six hundred feet diameter. The convex parallel walls between Canal and Twelfth are shown as a long enclosure, extending almost diagon- ally from a point a trifle east of Vine street across the block bounded by that place and the streets before named, and about half-way across the block next on the west

Wayne's sentry-post is plainly marked as a large tumu- lus at the southeast corner of Fifth and Mound, and the others mentioned as being in the west and northwest-part of the town are here — the mound upon the upper side of Seventh street, below Smith, near fhe rope-walk then standing; that on Western Row, nearly at the head of Richmond ; one large mound west of Plum, near the old corporation line on Liberty street; and also one in the eastern part of the city, directly on Fifth street, half a block beyond Broadway. The mound on Fourth street stood nearly where Pike's Opera house now is.

Thus it appears that the ancient works upon the site of Cincinnati were still so well defined, so late as 1825, as to

deserve, if not demand, a place upon the map of the city.

THE CINCINNATI TABLET.

In November, 1841, the large tumulus near the corner of Fifth and Mound streets was removed, in order to extend Mound street across Fifth and grade an alley. A little above the level of the surrounding surface, near the centre of the mound, were found a large part of a human skull and two bones of about seven inches length, pointed at one end. It was undoubtedly the grave of a Mound Builder, probably a great dignitary of his tribe. Under the fragmentary skull of the buried Builder was a bed of charcoal, ashes and earth, and therein a very re- markable inscribed stone which, after much discussion, including the publication of Mr. Clarke's interesting pamphlet in vindication of its authenticity, has been pro- nounced a genuine relic of the period of the Mound Builders. It is not lettered or inscribed with hieroglyph- ics, but is marked with curious, broad lines, curves and scrolls. Some have thought they could trace in these the outline of a figure, perhaps an idol; but the better con- jecture seems to be that it served for a record of calcula- tions and a scale of measurement. The following de- scription and remarks upon it are extracted from Messrs.' Squier and Davis's "Ancient Monuments of the Missis- sippi Valley":

The material is 'fine grained, compact sandstone of a light brown color. It measures five inches in length, three in breadth at the ends,, and two and six-tenths at the middle, and is about half an inch in thick- ness. The sculptured face -varies very slightly from a perfect plane. The figures are cut in low relief (the lines being not more than one- twentieth of an inch in depth), and occupy a rectangular space of four inches and two-tenths long by two and one-tenth wide. The sides of the stone, it will be observed, are slightly concave. Right lines are drawn across the face near the ends, at right angles, and exterior to these are notches, twenty-five at one end and twenty-four at the other. The back of the stone has three deep longitudinal grooves and several depressions, evidently caused by rubbing — probably produced by sharp- ening the instrument used in the sculpture. [Mr. Gest, however, the present owner of the stone, does not regard these as tool marks, but thinks they have some special significance. J

Without discussing the singular resemblance which the relic bears to the Egyptian cartouch, it will be sufficient to direct attention to the re- duplication of the figures, those upon one side corresponding with those upon the other, and the two central ones being also alike. It will be ob- served that there are but three scrolls or figures — four of one description and two of the others. Probably no serious discussion of the question whether or not these figures are hieroglyphical, is needed. They more resemble the stalk and flowers of a plant than anything else in nature. What significance, if any, may attach to the peculiar markings or grad- uations at the end it is not undertaken to say. The sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines (twenty-four by seven and twenty-five by eight) is three hundred and sixty-eight, three more than the number of days in the year; from which circumstance the suggestion has been ad- vanced that the tablet had an astronomical origin and constituted some sort of a calendar.

We may perhaps find the key to its purposes in a very humble, but not therefore less interesting class of southern remains. Both in Mexico and in the mounds of Mississippi have been found stamps of burnt clay, the faces of which are covered with figures, fanciful or imitative, all in low relief, like the face of a stereotype plate. These were used in im- pressing ornaments upon the clothes or prepared skins of the people possessing them. They exhibit the concavity of the sides to be ob- served in the relic in question — intended, doubtless, for greater conveni- ence in holding and using it — as also a similar reduplication of the ornamental figures, all betraying a common purpose. This explanation is offered hypothetically as being entirely consistent with the gen- eral character of the mound remains, which, taken together, do not warrant us in looking for anything that might not well pertain to a very simple, not to say rude„people.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

AN INTERESTING THEORY.

The following discussion from Mr. Clarke's pamphlet may appropriately end this little treatise on the Cincinnati works :

It may be of interest here to examine these pre-historic works in the light of Lewis H. Morgan's "pueblo" theory, as set forth in his article in the North American Review for July of this year. The great cen- tral work, an ellipse eight hundred by six hundred and sixty feet, cor- responds with his pueblo or village. Its position gave it a measure of security, being on the upper plain, three hundred and fifty feet from its edge, and could be completely screened from view from the river by a belt or grove of trees. The embankment, three feet high (possibly originally higher), with a base of thirty feet, afforded sufficient founda- tion for their buildings, occupying the circumference of the ellipse, facing inward, presenting a solid timber wall on the outside, with no entrance but by the gateway on the east, which may have been pro- tected by a palisade of round timbers, with proper openings for ingress and egress, and by some structures of the nature of block-houses on the higher embankments attached externally at each side of the entrance. From the lower of these block-houses, it will be remembered, ran the low embankment, one foot high, with nine feet base, southward nearly to the edge of the declivity, and then east to the mound on the corner of Third and Main streets. This may have been occupied by a high timber palisade, or a covered way leading to the mound, which was so situated as to command a full view of the Licking river, which enters the Ohio on the opposite shore, and was doubtless an important ap- proach, which it was necessary should be watched. If I am right in supposing that the embankment, of the same dimensions as the last, noticed east of Sycamore, running from Sixth street to near Third street, turned there and joined the other embankment at the mound, and was built upon in the same manner, we would thus have the whole front so defended that it would have to be forced or flanked by an enemy coming from the.direction of the Licking river.

East of this high hill, Mount Adams, overlooking the Ohio, and giv- ing a clear view up the river for miles, would be a natural outpost on ■ which it would not be necessary to erect a mound structure. I have never heard of any remains having been found on this hill.

To the west, the hill next the river was so distant, and from its posi- tion did not command an extensive enough view of the river to serve as an outlook; so a position was selected near the edge of the plain, about five hundred yards west of the closed end of the village, and a large mound thirty-five feet high was erected, from which could be had an extensive view of the Kentucky shore and of the Ohio, river to the bend below the mouth of Mill creek. The Brighton Hill mound would give an extensive view of the whole of Mill creek valley, the whole, as be- fore mentioned, being part of an extensive series of signal stations.

The minor mounds and other works on the upper plain may have been connected with the supervision and care of their agricultural oper- ations on the rich land between the village and the northern hills.

Thus we have a village judiciously located on a fine, fertile plain, and well guarded by the nature of the location and the artificial works erected on a carefully arranged plan.

Mr. Morgan's theory will apply to a large number of the Ohio works. The two larger mounds were so situated that we can hardly avoid the conclusion, though it is only a supposition, that one object of their erection was to serve as outlooks for watching the approaches to their village from the Kentucky side of the river by the Licking, and from the west by the Ohio. From the description of the structure of the mounds and the remains found in them, it is quite certain that they were also grave mounds. They may have been originally placed on these commanding points so as to be seen from a distance (just as we place rhonuments in prominent positions), and afterward used as out- looks. Dr. Drake, as quoted above, gives sufficient details of the structure and contents of that at the corner of Third and Main streets to warrant this conclusion as to that mound.

ANCIENT VEGETABLE REMAINS.

Although not strictly belonging to the general topic of this chapter, mention may here be fitly made of some interesting "finds" that have been made upon the site of Cincinnati, belonging to a period of ancient vegetation of which many evidences are apparent in Hamilton county, as will be seen upon reference to the second chap- ter of this book, upon its geology and topography. In

1802 a well was dug by an ancient settler in the centre of one of the artificial enclosures above described, and two stumps, of twelve and eighteen inches' diameter, respec- tively, were met with at a depth of ninety-three feet, standing as they grew, with roots sound and in place. From the soil that was thrown out in excavating the well mulberry trees grew in large numbers, although none were known to exist on the plain before. About the same time Mr. Daniel Symmes, while digging another well in the eastern part of the town, came upon a large unde- cayed log twenty-four feet below the surface. It is said that similar discoveries have frequently been made in making deep excavations in different parts of the city, showing that the ancient level of the plain was once far below its present elevation.

CHAPTER III.

THE SITE OF LOSANTIVILLE.

The original site of Cincinnati, platted and surveyed under the name of Losantiville, was contracted for before the surveys of the Symmes Purchase were made, and the conveyance to Mathias Denman simply specified that his tract should be located as nearly as possible opposite the mouth of the Licking river. When the surveys were completed, it was found that he owned the entire section eighteen, and the fractional section in seventeen lying be- tween that and the river, in township four and the first fractional range, as surveyed under the orders of the pros- pective patentee, Judge Symmes. The tract covered eight hundred acres, and including the outlots as well as in-lots laid out upon it, comprised the original site of Cin- cinnati. It extended, on a north and south line, from the present Liberty street to the river. The eastern boundary line ran from the intersection of the old Leb- anon road with Liberty street to the Ohio, at a point one hundred feet below Broadway; and the western line ran from the intersection of Liberty street with the Western row (Central avenue) to the river, which is reached just below Smith street landing. This tract, a little less than one and one-fourth square miles, was not quite one twen- ty-second part of the present vast area of Cincinnati.

The founders of Losantiville found this site nearly or quite in a state of nature, save the earthworks which in- dicated its occupancy by a people long before departed. Mr. E. D. Mansfield says it was the site of an old Indian town, and other authorities say that two block-houses had been erected hereby the soldiers of an expedition against the Indians, only eight years previous ; but the records of Losantiville are silent concerning the vestiges of the Indian village and the white men's fortifications, if any existed at this time. A dense wood covered the appar- ently virgin tract. The lower belt of ground was occu- pied mainly by beech, buckeye, and sugar trees, loaded with grapevines, and interspersed with a heavy under- growth of spicewood and pawpaws. The same timber

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

i9

prevailed upon the second terrace, with poplars and other trees, some of which were very large. Many of the beeches were also large, and a cluster of these, near "Stonemetz's ford," on Mill creek, was still standing sixty years after the settlement, and bore the name of "Loring's woods" — the only relics of the primeval forest here, except some scattered trees. A group of these trees was also called the "Beechen grove" in an early day.

At the foot of Sycamore street was an inlet of consid- erable size, which took the name of "Yeatman's cove," from its neighborhood to the tavern and store of Griffin Yeatman, but also called the "Stone landing," because used for the disembarking of the boatloads of stone brought for the building of Fort Washington, at a spot near what is now the corner of Sycamore and Front streets. At the corner of Ludlow street was another inlet, called "Dorsey's cove," and another still higher up, just below the mouth of Deer creek. These little harbors were ex- ceedingly convenient as landing-places for immigrants, and were doubtless used also by the crews of boats con- veying the earlier expeditions against the Indians. In the shore end of Yeatman's cove the first, little, rude mar- ket-house of the village was constructed, to the pillars of which boats were usually tied in seasons of high water.

The north shore of the Ohio, and the ground for some way back, as first observed by the whites at this point, are described as somewhat resembling in appearance the site of Philadelphia. Dr. Daniel Drake, writing twenty years after the beginnings, when the physical features of the place had not greatly changed, except by the partial clearing of the woods, in his "Notices concerning Cincin- nati," says:

Its site is not equally elevated. A strip of land called the Bottom (most of which is inundated by extraordinary freshes, though the whole is elevated several feet above the ordinary high-water mark), commences at Deer creek, the eastern boundary of the town, and stretches down to the river, gradually becoming wider and lower. It slopes northwardly to the average distance of eight hundred feet, where it is terminated by a bank or glacis, denominated the hill, which is generally of steep ascent, and from thirty to fifty feet in height. In addition to this there is a gentle acclivity for six or seven hundred feet further back, which is succeeded by a slight inclination of surface northwardly, for something more than half a mile, when the hills or real uplands commence.

These benches of land extend northwestwardly (the upper one con- stantly widening) nearly two miles, and are lost in the intervale ground of Mill creek. The whole form an area of between two and three square miles — which, however, comprehends but little more than a moiety of the expansion which the valley of the Ohio has at this point. For on the southern side, both above and below the mouth of the Lick- ing river, are extended, elevated bottoms.

The hills surrounding this alluvial tract form an imperfectly rhom- boidal figure. They are between three and four hundred feet high; but the angle under which they are seen, from a central situation, is only a few degrees. Those to the southwest and northwest, at such a station, make the greatest and nearly an equal angle ; those to the southeast and southwest also make angles nearly equal. .The Ohio enters at the eastern angle of this figure, and, after bending considerably to the south, passes out at the western. The Licking river entets through the south- ern, and Mill creek through the northern angle. Deer creek, an incon- siderable stream, enters through the northern side. The Ohio, both up and down, affords a limited view, and its valley forms no consider- able inlet to the east and west winds. The valley of the Licking af- fords an entrance to the south wind, that of Mill creek to the north wind, and that of Deer creek (a partial one) to the northeast. The other winds blow over the hills that lie in their respective courses. The Ohio is five hundred and thirty-five yards wide from bank to bank, but at low-water is much narrower. No extensive bars exist, however,

near the town. Licking river, which joins the Ohio opposite the town, is about eighty yards wide at its mouth. Mill creek is large enough for mills, and has wide alluvions, which, near its junction with the Ohio, are annually overflown [sic\. Its general course is from northeast to north- west, and it joins the Ohio at a right angle. Ascending from these valleys the aspects and characteristics of the surrounding country are various. . . . No barrens, prairies, or pine lands are to be found near the town.

Some notices of the site of Cincinnati in the early day have been inserted in the first chapter of this divi- sion of our work, and need not be repeated here. A glowing paragraph by Mr. J. P. Foote, concerning the hills in their pristine freshness, will be particularly re- membered. The ground on the "bottom" was quite broken and uneven; that on the "hill," or second ter- race, was somewhat smoother. The bank which sepa- rated them was sharp and abrupt;* and it was a serious question with the fathers whether it should be cut through by the streets with a steep or gentle gradient. Happily for the horses and men employed in the im- mense transfer business since that day, the problem was solved in the sensible way that might have been expected of the founders of the Queen City, although the cost- lier. The grade of Main street, for example, was thus in process of time extended along three squares, from Second to Fifth streets (Third street being about one hundred feet north of the original line of the bank), with an angle of ascent of but five to ten degrees. The constant change of level in the streets, in the progress of improvement from year to year, made sad work with the relations of sidewalks and pavements (or the spaces where pavements ought to have been), and left many buildings of the early day far above the streets on which they once immediately fronted. Interesting anecdotes are related of the foresight of some of the early business men, who, at once upon the planning and laying founda- tion of their buildings, went low enough with the latter to meet the future exigencies of improvement. A writer in the first number of Cist's Cincinnati Miscellany, prob- ably Mr. Cist himself, making some notes of "city changes," says:

In the early part of the present century, Broadway, opposite John's cabinet warehouse, was the center of a pond, three or four acres in ex- tent, to which the early settlers resorted to shoot plovers. The general level of upper Main street extended as far south as nearly the line of Third street, part of the original surface of the ground being preserved in some of the yards north of Third street to this date (Oc- tober, 1844). It will readily be imagined what an impediment the bluff bank overhanging the lower ground to the south, and repeatedly caving in on it, must have created to the intercourse between the two great divisions of the city — Hill and Bottom. But this statement, if it were to end here, would not give an adequate idea how far the brow of the hill overhung the bottom region ; for it must be observed that, while the hill projected nearly forty feet above the present level where its edge stood, the ground on Main street, opposite Pearl and Lower Market streets, corresponded with the general level of these streets, which must have been between thirteen and fourteen feet below the present grade. The whole ground from the foot of the hill was a swamp, fed partly from a cove which put in from the Ohio near what is now Harkness' foundry, and in high water filled the whole region from the hill to with- in about one hundred and fifty yards of the Ohio in that part of the city from Walnut to Broadway — in early days the dwelling ground,

* An interesting remnant of the old bank at the brow of the hill — the only one left, we believe — is still to be seen at the northwest corner of Third and Plum streets. It is now a back yard, heaped up with old iron.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

principally, of the settlers, as it still is the most densely built-on and valuable part of Cincinnati.

The writer then relates some interesting facts of Casper Hopple's old tobacco warehouse, on Lower Market street, which was built upon boat-gunnels many years before — material obtained by the breaking up of the primitive river vessels. In his plan of building, Mr. Hopple had the foresight to place the joists of the second story just fourteen feet above the sills of the door to the first, say- ing that that would be the proper range of the floor, when Lower Market should be filled to its proper height; which proved, quite remarkably, to be the case, so that his second story became a first, and the first a cellar of the right depth, as originally planned.

This entertaining antiquary also makes mention of Captain Hugh Moore's building, nearly opposite this, on the subsequent site of Bates & Company's hat warehouse, which likewise had boat-gunnels for foundation, with boat-plank for the inside walls, lined with poplar boards, and a clapboard roof. It was, he thinks, perhaps thirty- six feet deep and twenty feet front. Captain Moore se- cured this building for the sale of his merchandise, it being the only one he could secure for the purpose. And now comes in the remarkable part of the narrative, which makes it germane to this chapter:

"When he had bargained for the house, which he rent- ed at one hundred dollars per annum, and which, with the lot one hundred feet on Main by two hundred on Pearl street, he was offered in fee simple at three hun- dred and fifty dollars, he brought the flat-boat which was loaded with his store-goods from the Ohio, via Hobson's Choice, not far from Mill creek, up Second or Columbia street, and fastened the boat to a stake near the door, as nearly as can be judged the exact spot where the Museum lamp-post now [1844] stands, at the corner of Main and Pearl streets."

Upon the lower slope was a broad swamp, occupying the larger part of the space between Second and Lower Market streets, though a part stretched still further to the south.

CHAPTER IV.

BEFORE LOSANT1VILLE. AN INDIAN VILLAGE.

It is said, upon the authority of the late Hon. E. D. Mansfield, who makes the remark in his Personal Me- mories, that the Indians had anciently a town upon the site of Cincinnati. Its natural advantages for the. pur- poses of savage as well as civilized man, would of them- selves argue that fact, though no other evidence should exist in corroboration of the statement. Whatever that evidence may be, the history of Indian occupancy at this point has faded out as completely as that of the older and more civilized Mound Builder in this garden spot of the Ohio valley. Neither left a record in literature — not

even in that of the sculptured monument, if we except the remarkable little object known as the "Cincinnati stone," discovered in 1841 in the large mound near the interse6tion of Fifth and Mound streets; and tradition is equally silent, so far as the details of human life in a re- moter Losantiville or Cincinnati are concerned. There were the earthworks — most of them low and insignificant in appearance, as they rose in slight eminence or wound their way amid the monarchs of the forest — some so di- minutive as to be scarcely distinguishable above the sur- face ; and they were all that told of the presence of man in congregated communities upon this area until Colonel Patterson led his little band to their new homes in the wilderness. Except for those, this was the forest prime- val. Anything more would certainly have been noted and recorded by the shrewd, intelligent men who were the founders of the city.

TWO BLOCK-HOUSES.

The statement is made, however, by Mr. Isaac Smucker, of Newark, in one of his interesting historical papers published by the secretary of State in the official vohlmes of Ohio Statistics (that for 1877 containing this), that Colonel George Rogers Clark, with an army of about one thousand men, all Kentuckians, "in 1780 crossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Licking, and erected two block-houses on the first day of August, upon the ground now occupied by Cincinnati." Clark lTad organized the expedition during the previous month, to march against the Indian villages on the Little Miami and the Mad rivers, to punish the Shawnees for their marauding in- roads into the Kentucky settlements. After the reputed erection of the block-houses — which must have been very rapidly accomplished — he resumed the march, and on the fifth day thereafter struck the Indian towns at the site of Old Chillicothe, on the Little Miami. The Indians had anticipated Clark's arrival, however, and themselves applied the torch to their village, leaving little mischief for the Kentuckians to do, except to destroy the ripening corn. But at Piqua, a larger town and the birthplace of the renowned Tecumseh, on the Mad river, about five miles west of the present Springfield, the savages made a stand, preparing an ambuscade in the high grass of a prairie adjoining their lodges, and opened an unexpected and deadly fire upon the invaders. The latter speedily rallied and charged the Indians, who, after a desperate fight, fled the field, losing about twenty dead, and the Kentucky volunteers as many. The village and several hundred acres of standing corn were laid waste. Colonel Clark then returned to the mouth of the Licking, and disbanded his force.

One member, and but one, we believe, of that band of Indian fighters has left express testimony to the building of the block-houses. Mr. Thomas Vickroy, who was afterwards an assistant in the survey of the site of Pitts- burgh, was out in this expedition. He says:

In April, 1780, I went to Kentucky, in company with eleven flat- boats with movers. We landed, on the fourth of May, at the mouth of Beargrass creek, above the falls of Ohio. I took my compass and chain along to make a fortune by surveying, but when we got there the Indians would not let us survey. In the same summer Colonel Byrd

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

came from Detroit with a few British soldiers and some light artillery, with Simon Girty and a great many Indians, and took the forts on the Licking. Immediately afterward General Clark raised an army of about a thousand men, and marched with one party of them against the Indian towns. When we came to the mouth of the Licking we fell in with Colonel Todd and his party. On the first day of August, 1780, we crossed the Ohio river and built the two block-houses wheus Cincinnati now stands. I was at the building of the block-houses. Then, as General Clark had appointed me commissary of the cam- paign, he gave the military stores into my hands and gave me orders to maintain that post for fourteen days. Heleft with me Captain Johnson and about twenty or thirty men, who were sick and lame.

Nothing more is said in history, so far as the writer of these pages is aware, of these block-houses. The use of the structures, during Clark's brief campaign to the northward, is sufficiently indicated in Mr. Vickroy's statement. As his force was not regularly recruited and paid by the United States or any other constituted au- # thority, there is not the least probability that a garrison was left in it when his march was done and he recrossed the Ohio. In that case the red men would make short work of the obnoxious buildings as soon as they obtained access to them. Such works were not commonly suf- fered to remain upon lands unoccupied and undefended, as defiant monuments of the hated "Long Knife." Fire would speedily cause them to vanish in air, and the lapse of more than eight years, with floods probably inunda- ting their sites repeatedly, would so cover them with soil and nature's tangled wildwood that the very clearings made for them could not be recognized. We do not learn that there is the faintest clue to the exact locality of these block-houses. But the brief story of them is exceedingly interesting, as that of the first occupancy in houses of the site of Cincinnati by the white man, August 1, 1780.

ONE BLOCK-HOUSE.

The fact that another block-house stood upon the site of Cincinnati, more than six years before the Ludlow and Patterson party came, seems to be clearly established by similar testimony; not only that of a single person — Mr. John McCaddon, for many years a respected citizen of Newark, in this State, who was present at its building — but also by that of two persons of far greater renown, no less personages than General Simon Kenton and Major James Galloway. General Clark was then making a sec- ond expedition against the Miami towns, to avenge the defeat of the Kentuckians at the battle of the Blue Licks August 15, 1782. That disaster had aroused a fierce de- sire for reprisals upon the Ohio Indians; and, as soon as a force could be collected from the widely scattered settle- ments, it marched in two divisions, under Colonels Lo- gan and Floyd, for the., mouth of the Licking. Clark crossed here with one thousand and fifty men, threw up a block-house rapidly, and marched with such speed one hundred and thirty miles up the Miami country, that the Indians were thoroughly surprised. The principal Shaw- nee town was destroyed November 10th; also the British trading post at Loramie's store, in the present Shelby county — the same locality visited by^hristopher Gist in 1752 — and he destroyed a large quantity of property and some lives, with little loss. It was a very effective expe- dition, especially as relieving Kentucky against formida- able invasion.

Fifty years afterwards an address issued by the vener- able pioneers and Indian fighters, Kenton and Galloway, to call their comrades together for the semi-centennial celebration of theis occupation opposite the Licking, con- tained these words :

We will no doubt all recollect Captain McCracken. He commanded the company of light horse, and Green Clay was his lieutenant. The captain was slightly wounded in the arm at Piqua town, when within a few feet of one of the subscribers, from which place he was carried on a horse litter for several days ; his wound produced mortification, and he died in going down the hill where the city of Cincinnati now stands. He was buried near the block-ho^se we had erected opposite the mouth of Licking, and the breastworks were thrown over his grave to prevent the savages from scalping him.

We have also the separate confirmatory testimony of Major Galloway, who was of the party of 1782, and re- sided long afterwards in Greene county. Ht was well known to many old citizens of Cincinnati. In a letter written to acknowledge the receipt of an invitation to at- tend the fifty-fifth anniversary of the settlement of Cin- cinnati, in 1833, he says:

In October, 1782, I accompanied General Clark on an expedition against Pickaway and Loramie's town, and was within a few feet of the lamented William McCracken when he received the wound of which he died on his return, while descending the hill near which Cincinnati now stands, and was buried near a block-house opposite the mouth of Licking.

These cumulative testimonies would seem to place the question of a pre-Losantiville block-house here in 1782 be- yond doubt or cavil. But if further testimony was needed, it is supplied by Mr. McCaddon, the old resident of New- ark before mentioned, who was vouched for by the editor of the American Pioneer as "a man of sterling integrity." He wrote a letter to thai: magazine May 16, 1842, in which he gives some account of the second expedition of General Clark against the Miami Indian towns, and says:

At the place where Cincinnati now is, it was necessary to build a block-house, for the purpose of leaving some stores and some wounded men we got of McGary's company. I may therefore say that, although I did not cut a tree or lift a log, I helped to build the first house ever built on that ground, for I was at my post in guarding the artificers who did the labor of building. When this was done we penetrated into the interior in search of Indians.

Mr. McCaddon's letter has especial value, as showing the immediate purpose of the block-house. It is to be regretted that neither he nor either of the other eye-wit- nesses of its construction gives any hints of its location upon the terraces of Cincinnati, nor any intimation that he saw vestiges of the block-houses of 1780, or even the spots where they stood, which must, within little more than two years after their erection, have been easily rec- ognizable. It is not a pleasant thought, also, that the grave of Captain William McCracken, the brave soldier who died of his wounds while being borne in a rude lit- ter over the height afterward known as Key's Hill, and later Mount Auburn, has remained wholly unmarked and unrecognizable for near a hundred years. Somewhere along the river front of Cincinnati rest his bones ; unless, indeed, they have been disturbed by the excavating and unsparing hand of city improvement, .and thrown out undistinguished from the Indian and Mound Builder re- mains, which command simply the curiosity and specu- lation of the antiquary. The concealment of his re-

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

mains, to prevent their desecration by the ruthless toma- hawk or scalping knife, no doubt aided in the consign- ment to oblivion of the place of his sepulture. But it is singular that the "breastworks" noted by General Kenton as having been thrown over his grave were not remarked by the first colonists here nor by the subse- quent inquirers; since they must have been of a charac- ter quite distinct from the remains of the Mound Build- ers. They were probably but slight, and may soon have become obliterated by the action of rain and flood.

Captain McCracken, wheff at this point bn his way northward with the command, believed he had a clear presentiment of approaching death in a remarkable dream the night before he left the spot, and desired all his associates who might be living fifty years from that date, in case he should be killed on that expedition, to meet at the same place, and celebrate their brief occupa- tion as a mark of respect to his memory, and mark the wonderful changes which would probably then have oc- curred. It was agreed to by nearly all present; and an attempt was made in 1832, as we have seen, to get -the surviving comrades together for the celebration; but it was the cholera year in Cincinnati and elsewhere in the west, and only a few old men gathered, under circum- stances of depression and sorrow, to honor the memory of the departed soldier. They, however, banqueted at one of the hotels, at the expense of the corporation, and spent a few hours with interest in the interchange of reminiscences and notes of more recent personal expe- rience.

ANOTHER BRIEF MILITARY OCCUPATION

probably occurred somewhere upon or near the site of Losantiville three years later — a very brief and unim- portant one just here, but more prolonged and of con- siderable consequence elsewhere within the bounds of Hamilton county. As the story forms a very interesting episode in pre-Losantiville annals, it may well be told here, although most of it has little immediate relation to the famous site opposite the mouth of the Licking.

In the early fall of 1785, General Richard Butler, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of the commissioners of the United States Government (Generals Samuel H. Parsons and George Rogers Clark being the others) appointed to make treaties with the western and northern Indians, left his home, under instructions to proceed to the Mi- amis and negotiate a treaty there. He kept a full diary of his journey, which has been preserved, and is thor- oughly entertaining and valuable in all parts. He left Carlisle in company with "the Hon. Colonel James Monroe, a member of Congress from the State of Vir- ginia, a gentleman very young for a place in that honor- able body, but a man well-read, very sensible, highly im- pressed with the consequence and dignity of the Federal Union, and a determined supporter of it in its fullest lat- itude." The world heard something more of this young "Hon. Colonel" afterwards. He continued with the general's party in the voyage down the Ohio until Lime- stone was reached, where he obtained horses and went to Lexington. They got on prosperously in the pleasant autumn weather, and in due time neared the Miami

country. The following extracts are from General But- ler's entries of Friday, October 21st:

Sailed at half-past two o'clock; passed the mouth of the little Mi- amis at three o'clock. It is so low there was no water running [!]; above the sand-bank, which is off its mouth, the land is quick, and the little water which issues from it passes through the sand. The bottoms, both above and below, is very flat and low, and I think inundated with small floods. About two miles below is a piece of high ground, which I think will be the site of a town, as will be the case at the mouths of all the principal rivers and creeks of this great country. Below the mouth of this little river about two miles is a very large bank of sand, at which Mr. Zane came in for people to bring in two deers.

Pushed on to the mouth of Licking creek, which is a pretty stream; at the mouth, both above and below, is very fine bottoms. The bottom below' the mouth [the site of Covington] seems highest and most fit to build a town on; it is extensive, and whoever owns the bottoms should own the hill also. Passed this at five o'clock; and encamped two miles below on the north side [of course far within the present limits of Cin- cinnati. This was the most distinguished company this locality had so far had the honor to entertain.]

There is great plenty of limestone and coal appears on every strand [what could the general have mistaken for coal here?]. Here is a very- fine body of bottom land to a small creek four miles below Licking creek. [This may have been Mill creek; but, if so, the general was far out in his reckoning of distance. . If his measure is to be taken with approximate exactness, the stream was of course Bold Face creek, which enters the river at Sedamsville.]

A noteworthy bit of local tradition, relating to the Kentucky side, comes here in Butler's journal:

I am informed that a Captain Bird [Colonel Byrd], of the British, came in the year 1780 from Detroit, down the big Miamis, thence up the Ohio to the mouth of Licking creek, thence up= it about fifty miles with their boats. At this place they took their artillery, and cut a road fifty miles into the country, where they attacked several places, and took them; they then carried off the poor, distressed people with their little ones to Detroit in triumph.

This was the expedition spoken of by Vickroy, of six hundred Canadians and Indians, with six cannon, in the summer of r78o, against RiiddelFs Station, below the. mouth of Hinkston fork, on the south fork of the Lick- ing. It was mainly remarkable for its approach to the station, cutting its way through the dense woods for twelve days, without the advance being noticed by the garrison. The post was surrendered, on condition that the British should protect the prisoners from the Indians, which they were unable to do, as the savages, at once after possession was given, rushed upon the hapless people, and divided them as captives among themselves. So dis- gusted was Colonel Byrd by their conduct that he refused to move against Martin's Station, unless they would leave all prisoners taken there to him. They agreed to this, and for once kept their word, upon the surrender of the station without resistance. It was intended also to at- tack Bryant's Station and Lexington; but Byrd, who seems to ha\ce been a humane and brave man, decided to end the expedition without their capture. It was the seizure of Riiddel's and Martin's Stations, however, with the carrying of a large number of men, women and chil- dren into Indian captivity, that prompted Clark's first expedition against the Miami towns.

To return to General Butler's party. The banks of the Licking were afterwards a favorite resort for the hunt- ers of the party, to hunt buffalo. Further up the Ohio an enormous beast of this kind had been killed. Gen- eral Butler writes that its head weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds, that in life it must have stood over

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OIHO.

23

six feet high, and that its total weight was at least fifteen hundred pounds.

The country between a point six miles below the Lick- ing and the mouth of the Great Miami is thus described;

"On»mile from this is a bar of sand in the middle of the river; the channel is on the north shore. Here are the dreadful effects of a tornado on the hill ; on the north side, from the top down, every tree and the surface of the earth has been washed or blown off. On the south shore there is about four acres of land, the timber of which is totally blown down, which I think will be suffi- cient for mills part of the season, as it comes out of a hilly country; it has thrown out a great body of gravel, etc., which forms a kind of Presque Isle, on the south side of the river. . . Two miles below this comes in a small creek, just above which is most excel- lent land on the face of a beautiful hill. The river is beyond description, deer and turkey sporting before and on each side in great abundance — saw above twenty deers before twelve o'clock. Put in to dine about eleven o'clock about twelve miles below Licking creek.

"Sailed at half past one o'clock, the wind ahead. Here is some very fine lands covered with pine, ash, and other rich timber. Pushed on to the Great Miami, above the mouth of which I ordered the whole to encamp about five o'clock in the evening. I went out with Ma- jor Finney to examine the ground for a post."

The general was instructed by a resolution of Congress to plant a military station at any eligible point between the Miami and Muskingum rivers; and although recom- mended by General Clark, who was at a little fort a few miles below, to select a site beyond the Great Miami, he preferred to remain on the east side, in accordance with his instructions, and chose a spot on the higher ground, afterwards on the farm of the Hon. John Scott Harrison, which was cleared, and the erection of four blockhouses and a quadrangular work begun October 25, 1785. Within three days two block-houses were "in a tolerable state of defense, and a third well forward." The party, and the troops with it, commanded by Major Finney and Lieutenant Doyle, were subsisted mainly on bear's meat, buffalo and other game October 30 one Captain John- ston, a settler from below, proposed to have a road marked from Lexington to the fort, which Generals Clark and Butler warmly seconded. A store-house was presently built for the goods brought to facilitate negotiations with the Indians. Chimneys were built of stones picked up in the neighborhood. November 13th General Parsons, another of the commissioners for Indian affairs, arrived from above, with a boat-load of salt provisions; and there were several other arrivals the same day, of people bound to the falls of the Ohio and other points.

The fort here erected was called "Fort Finney," in honor of the gallant major who commanded the garrison. The following description of it, by Judge Hall, though probably colored somewhat, for his Romance of Western History, is no doubt sufficiently near the facts to warrant its quotation here:

In the eye of a military engineer the fort would hardly have deserved that name, as it was a temporary structure, intended only to protect its

small garrison against a sudden attack by an Indian force. It was composed of a series of log houses opening upon an interior area or quadrangle, with a block house or citadel in the centre, while the outer sides, closely connected, permit a square inclosure or rampart, without apertures, except a single entrance and a few loop-holes from which to discharge fire-arms. The whole presented the appearance of a single edifice, receiving light from the centre and forming barracks for the gar- rison, as well as breastworks against a foe. The forest was cleared away for some hundreds of yards around, leaving an open vista ex- tending to the water's edge, while a few acres enclosed in a rude fence and planted with corn and garden vegetables, for the use of the soldiers, exhibited the first rude attempt at agriculture in that wild and beautiful region.

A council-house was put up to accommodate the Indians, who gradually gathered in and about it; and, while awaiting the arrival of others to hold a pow-wow over the proposed treaty, and being supplied with rum and whiskey by the commissioners, they soon became drunken and troublesome, and importunate in their demands. Finally, by the last of January, after a great deal of difficulty, the representatives of various tribes were got together at the fort, in numbers reported by General Butler as forty-seven Delawares, eighty-three Wyandots, and three hundred and eighteen Shawnees, . four hundred and forty-eight in all, counting all ages and sexes. It was a large number to be dependent mainly on the supplies of the Government. No Wabash Indians were present, on account of hostility inspired by the British. The American traders and the Kentucky peo- ple, strange to say, seemed also opposed to a treaty, and did what they could to prevent it. Those Indians who came were in bad temper, and at times haughty and dis- respectful. Out of an incident arising from this spirit Judge Hall, the voluminous and entertaining writer, formerly of Hamilton county, has woven a romantic story, which is thus prettily told in a chapter of his Romance of Western History, entitled, The War Belt: A Legend of North Bend:

An apartment in the fort was prepared as a council-room, and at the appointed hour the doors were thrown open. At the head of the table sat Clark, a soldier-like and majestic man, whose complexion, eyes, and hair all indicated a sanguine and mercurial temperament. The brow was high and capacious, the features were prominent and manly, and the expression, which was keen, reflective, and ordinarily cheerful and agreeable, was bow grave almost to sternness.

The Indians, being a military people, have a deep respect for martial virtue. To other estimable or shining qualities they turn a careless eye or pay at best but a passing tribute, while they bow in profound venera- tion before a successful warrior. The name of Clark was familiar to them : several brilliant expeditions into their country had spread the terror of his arms throughout their villages and carried the fame of his exploits to every council-fire in the west. Their high appreciation of his character was exemplified in a striking as well as an amusing manner on another occasion, when a council was held with several tribes. The celebrated Delaware chief, Buckinghelas, on entering the council-room, without noticing any other person, walked up to Clark, and as he shook hands cordially with him exclaimed, " It is a happy day when two such men as Colonel Clark and Buckinghelas meet together."

Such was the remarkable man who now presided at the council-table. On his right hand sat Colonel Richard Butler, a brave officer of the Revolution, who soon after fell, with the rank of brigadier general, in the disastrous campaign of St. Clair. On the other side was Samuel H. Parsons, a lawyer from New England, who afterwards became a judge in the Northwestei n Territory. At the same table sat the secre- taries, while the interpreters, several officers, and a few soldiers, sat around.

An Indian council is one of the most imposing spectacles in savage life. It is one of the few occasions in which the warrior exercises his right of suffrage, his influence and his talents, in a civil capacity ; and

24

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

the meeting is conducted with all the gravity and all the ceremonious ostentation with which it is possible to invest it. The matter to he con- sidered, as well as all the details, are well digested beforehand, so that the utmost decorum shall prevail and the decision be unanimous. The chiefs and sages, the leaders and orators, occupy the most conspicuous seats ; behind them are arranged the younger braves, and still further in the rear appear the women and youth, as spectators. All are equally attentive. A dead silence reigns throughout the assemblage. The great pipe, gaudily adorned with paint and feathers, is lighted and passed from mouth to mouth, commencing with the chief highest in rank, and proceeding, by regular gradations, to the inferior order of braves. If two or three nations be represented, the pipe is passed from one party to the other, and salutations are courteously exchanged, be- fore the business of the council is opened by the respective speakers. Whatever jealousy or party spirit may exist in the tribe, it is carefully excluded from this dignified assemblage, whose orderly conduct and close attention to the proper subject before them might be imitated with profit by some of the most enlightened bodies in Christendom.

It was an alarming evidence of the temper now prevailing among them and of the brooding storm that filled their minds, that no pro- priety of demeanor marked the entrance of the savages into the coun- cil-room. The usual formalities were forgotten or purposely dispensed with, and an insulting levity substituted in their place. The chiefs and braves stalked in with an appearance of light regard, and seated them- selves promiscuously on the floor, in front of the commissioners. An air of insolence marked all their movements, and showed an intention to dictate terms or to fix a quarrel upon the Americans.

A dead silence rested over the group; it was the silence of dread, dis- trust, and watchfulness, not of respect. The eyes of the savage band gloated upon the banquet of blood that seemed already spread out be- fore them ; the pillage of the fort and the bleeding scalps of the Ameri- cans were almost within their grasp; while that gallant little band saw the portentous nature of the crisis and stood ready to sell their lives as dearly as possible. *

The commissioners, without noticing the disorderly conduct of the other party or appearing to have discovered their meditated treachery, opened the council in due form. They lighted the peace-pipe, and, after drawing a few whiffs, passed it to the chiefs, who received it. Colonel Clark then rose to explain the purpose for which the treaty was ordered. With an unembarrassed air, with the tone of one accus- tomed to command, and the easy assurance of perfect security and self-possession, he stated that the commissioners had been sent to offer peace to the Shawanoes; that the President had no wish to continue the war; he had no resentment to gratify ; and that, if the red men de- sired peace, they could have it on liberal terms. "If such be the will of the Shawanoes," he concluded, "let some of their wise men speak."

A chief arose, drew up his tall person to its full height, and assum- ing a haughty attitude, threw his eye contemptuously over the com- missioners and their small retinue, as if to measure their insignificance, in comparison with his own numerous train, and then, stalking up to the table, threw upon it two belts of wampum of different colors — the war and the peace belt.

The chiefs drew themselves up, in the consciousness of having hurled defiance in the teeth of the white men. They had offered an insult to the renowned leader of the Long Knives, to which they knew it would be hard for him to submit, while'they did not suppose he would dare to resent it. The council-pipe was laid aside, and those fierce, wild men gazed intently on Clark. The Americans saw that the crisis had arrived; they could no longer doubt that the Indians understood the advantage they possessed, and were disposed to use it; and a com- mon sense of danger caused each eye to be turned on the leading com- missioner. He sat undisturbed, and apparently careless, until the chief who had thrown the belts on the table had taken his seat; then, with a small cane which he heldin his hand, he reached as if playfully towards the war-belt, entangled the end of the stick in it, drew it towards him, and then, with a twitch of the cane, threw the belt into the midst of the chiefs. The effect was electric. Every man in council, of each party, sprang to his feet; the savages with a loud exclamation of astonishment, "Hugh!" the Americans in expectation of a hopeless conflict against overwhelming numbers. Every hand grasped a weapon.

Clark alone was unawed. The expression of his countenance changed to a ferocious sternness, and his eye flashed; but otherwise he was unmoved. A bitter smile was slightly perceptible upon his com- pressed lips, as he gazed upon that savage band, whose hundred eyes were bent fiercely and in horrid exultation upon him, as they stood like a pack of wolves at bay, thirsting for blood, and ready to rush upon him whenever one bolder than the rest should commence the attack,

It was one of those moments of indecision when the slightest weight thrown into either scale will make it preponderate; a moment in which a bold man, conversant with the secret springs of human action, may seize upon the minds of all around him and sway them at his will. Such a man .was the intrepid Virginian. He spoke, and there was no man bold enough to gainsay him — none that could return 4he fierce glance of his eye. Raising his arm, and waving his hand towards the door, he exclaimed; ' Dogs/ you may go I' The Indians hesitated for a moment, and then rushed tumultuously out of the council-room.

The decision of Clark on that occasion saved himself and his com- panions from' massacre. The plan of the savages had been artfully laid; he had read it in their features and conduct, as plainly as if it had been written upon a scroll before him. He met it in a manner which was unexpected; the crisis was brought on sooner than was intended; and upon a principle similar to that by which, when a line of battle is broken, the dismayed troops fly before order can be restored, the new and sudden turn given to these proceedings by the energy of Clark con- founded the Indians, and before the broken thread of their scheme of tieachery could be reunited, they were panic-struck. They had come prepared to browbeat, to humble, and then to destroy; they looked for remonstrance and altercation ; for the luxury of drawing the toils gradu- ally around their victims; of beholding their agony and degradation, and of bringing on the final catastrophe by an appointed signal, when the scheme should be ripe. They expected to see, on our part, great caution, a skillful playing-off, and an unwillingness to take offence, which were to be gradually goaded into alarm, irritation and submis- sion. The cool contempt with which their first insult was thrown back in their teeth, surprised them, and they were foiled by the self-posses- sion of one man. They had no Tecumthe among them, no master- spirit to change the plan, so as to adapt it to a new exigency; and those braves who, in many a battle, had shown themselves to be men of true valor, quailed before the moral superiority which assumed the vantage-ground of a position they could not comprehend, and there- fore feared to assail.

This is a very neat romance, but unhappily it is not historic truth. Judge Hall doubtless based his account upon the narrative of the event in the old Encyclopaedia Americana, which in turn rests upon the notes of an old officer, who is said to have been present. These, how- ever, simply say that the Indian spokesman, "a tall, raw- boned fellow, with an impudent and villainous look,'7 presented "a black and white wampum, to signify they were prepared for either event, peace or war. Clark ex- hibited the same unaltered and careless countenance he had shown during the whole scene, his head leaning on his left hand and his elbow resting upon the table. He raised his little cane and pushed the sacred wampum off the table, with very little ceremony.''

Another officer who was in the garrison of Fort Finney at this time, but who may not have been in the council- room on this occasion, gives in his diary a slightly differ- ent narrative. This was Ensign (afterwards Major) Ebe- nezer Denny, whose military journal was published by the Historical society of Pennsylvania in i860. He re- cords, under date of January 27, 1786:

Shawnees met in council house. . . The Ohio river they would agree to, nothing short ; and offered a mixed belt, indicating peace or war. None touched the belt— it was laid on the table ; Gen- eral Clark, with his cane, pushed it off and set his foot on it. Indians very sullen. . . Council broke up hastily. Some commotion among the Shawnees. Returned same afternoon and begged another meeting, when their old king, Molunthy, rose and made a short speech, presented a white string, doing away all that their chief warrior had said, prayed that we would have pity on women and children.

This account is repeated- in most particulars by the re- port made by Ensign Denny to Colonel Harmar ten days afterwards; though in this he says nothing of Clark's con- nection with the incident. He writes in a long letter under date of February 8th :

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

25

The commissioners did not attempt to touch the string which was given, and without rising determined on an answer. . . Coun- cil was not broke up more than fifteen minutes when a message came for the commissioners. After they had assembled, the chief took a white string and destroyed the whole of his former speech.

The exact truth is undoubtedly told in the journal of General Butler, who was really the chief personage in these transactions. It is a simple, straightforward, sol- dierly account, bearing every aspect of truth. According to this, after a rather defiant speech by Kekewepelletry, refusing hostages and other demands of the commission: ers, he closed by throwing upon the table a black string of wampum. The commissioners then held a confer- ence, and Butler stepped forward to reply, which he did at some length, concluding as follows :

We plainly tell you that this country belongs to the United States — their blood hath defended it, and will forever protect it. Their propo- sals are liberal and just ; and you, instead of acting as you have done, and instead of persisting in your folly, should be thankful for the for- giveness and the offers of kindness of the United States, instead of the sentiments which this string imparts and the manner in which you have delivered it. (I then took it up and dashed it on the table. ) We therefore leave you to consider of what hath been said, and to determine as you please.

No such dramatic scene as the eulogists of General Clark have depicted appears to have occurred. The In- dians were, however, brought to terms only with difficulty, and after much negotiation and many presents; but at length, on the second of February, 1786, a treaty was signed which compelled the Shawnee Indians to acknowl- edge the supremacy of the United States over all the ter- ritory ceded by England at the close of the Revolution, allotted and defined the reservation of the Shawnees, and provided for hostages and the return of white cap- tives. Two whites named Pipe and Fox, and a little boy, were given up, and six young men of the Indians were left as hostages for the punctual fulfillment of the treaty.

croghan's visit.

The whites, however, as is well known to students of local history, were on the river and casually at this point many years before the military and diplomatic expedi- tions whose story is told.

In 1765 Colonel George Croghan came down the Ohio on an errand to Vincennes and Detroit, as commissioner for Sir William Johnson, to visit the French inhabitants at those points, and enlist their sympathies in behalf of the English, in the hope of obviating further Indian wars. He left an interesting journal of his voyage. Set- ting off from Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) on the fifteenth of May, in that year, with two batteaux and a considerable party of white men and Indians, he in a few days reached the region and made the following entries in his record.

29th. We came to the Little Miame river, having proceeded sixty

miles last night.

30th. We passed the great Miame river about thirty miles from the little river of that name, and in the evening arrived at the place where the Elephant's bones are found [Big Bone lick], where we encamped, intending to take a view of the place next morning. This day we came about seventy miles. The country on both sides level, and rich bottoms well watered.

In penning the last remark Croghan had doubtless in mind a lively recollection of the broad, beautiful Cincin- nati basin which he had that day passed. He was taken

by the Indians nine days after the last entry cited, and carried by them to Vincennes.

SETTLEMENTS AND INCIDENTS.

Some years after this, it is related that three brothers, James, George and John Medfee, of Botetourt county, Virginia, set their longing eyes upon the Miami country, intending, if they found it as desirable in all important respects as was described to them, to settle the wild but very hopeful tract of which they had heard, opposite the mouth of the Licking — otherwise they would go on to the settlements on the Salt river, in Kentucky, where they had acquaintances from the Old Dominion. About the beginning of June, 1773, they set out for the wilder- ness west. Procuring canoes at the Kanawha, they floated down that stream with considerable velocity by reason of an enormous freshet — twelve feet, as the tradi- tions relate, above the great inundations of 1832 and 1847. It is supposed that it was this flood the height of which was marked, by these visitors or the Indians, upon a tree standing below Fort Washington, and which was pointed out by the latter as indicating the reach of the greatest height of the river they had known, either by personal experience or by tradition. Rushing out from the Kenawha upon the broad bosom of the Ohio, they were borne rapidly down that also. The mighty valley of the Beautiful River was full, almost from bluff to bluff; and when they arrived at the site of the future Losanti- ville and Cincinnati scarcely any tracts were in sight, below the heights, except water lots. Dismayed with the appearance of things, and not having the patience to wait for a more favorable season, they pushed on to their Kentucky friends, and, after a brief visit to their homes in Virginia, settled in the former State and became the heads of prominent Kentucky families. Such was the first abortive attempt at colonizing the Miami coun- try that is on record.

In 1780, the father of General William Lytle — who (the general) became afterwards a citizen of Williams- burgh and then of Cincinnati, lived here in very honor- able prominence for many years, and died in this city March 8, 1 831— came down the river with the largest fleet of boats and company of immigrants that had been known to that time. It comprised sixty-three of the primitive craft then navigating the Ohio, conveying a number of men capable of bearing arms said to have been equal to one thousand, besides their women and children. About ten o'clock in the forenoon of the twelfth of April, the occupants of the boats which were leading espied an encampment of Indians on the north side of the stream, opposite the debouchure of the Lick- ing. Intelligence of danger was at once conveyed back to the fleet, and three large boats were directed to land above the camp, in a concerted order. Half the fighting men were to leap ashore the moment the boats should touch; and, stopping only to form in .column, they charged the Indian village. The latter, however, in number variously estimated at one hundred and fifty to five hundred, did not wait for actual contact with their enemies, but incontinently fled, in their haste and disor-

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

der abandoning many of their poor valuables. They were pursued to Mill creek and up the valley to a point beyond the present locality of Cumminsville. Several Indians were mounted, and got away easily; the others were suffered to escape. The whites returned to their boats, and moved on to the mouth of Beargrass creek, now Louisville, where their projected settlement was effected.

The relation of Mr. John McCaddon, afterwards a res- ident of Newark, in this State, avers that he sailed down the Ohio in May of the same year, and afterwards, at Louisville, joined the expedition of George Rogers Clark against the Shawnees. Below the site of Cincin- nati a detachment of their force, which had chosen to march on the north side of the river, on account, they said, of more abundant game, while the main body kept to the Kentucky shore, became alarmed at the fresh signs of Indians, and took to their boats, intending to cross the river and rejoin their fellows, who had kept abreast of them. They had, however, got but a few yards from the bank when they were -fired upon and thrown into confusion by a party of Indians ; but before they reached the shore they heard the "scalp halloo'' from the top of the hill, and knew that the Indians were in full retreat. It is probable that the wounded men of McGary's company, mentioned by Mr. McCad- don in his letter concerning the block-house, were hurt in this affair, since it was his command that was thus attacked.

In 1785, a party which included William West, John Simons, John Seft, a Mr. Carlin, and their families, also John Hurdman, all of Washington county, Pennsylvania, visited this region with a view to settlement. Passing the site of the Queen City to be, they landed at the mouth of the Great Miami, it is thought in April, and explored its valley as far as the subsequent site of Ham- ilton. They made improvements at sundry points where they found bottom lands finer than the rest; but do not appear to have remained permanently in the country. In the fall Hurdman came down the river, and found at its mouth Generals Clark, Butler, and Parsons, with Ma- jor Finney and his soldiers, about to construct the fort and make a treaty with the Indians. Almost the only matter which connects him or this incident closely with the history of Cincinnati is the, fact that he was with the party of Symmes, three years afterwards, when there wandered away to his death John Filson, one of the pro- prietors of Losantiville.

In September of 1788 five gentlemen, from a station near Georgetown, Kentucky, came in two canoes to the mouth of Deer creek, up the bank of which they pro- ceeded on foot about one hundred and fifty yards, when they were fired upon by a concealed savage, and one of them, named Baxter, was killed. He was buried at a spot just below the mouth of the creek, where, many years afterwards, a skeleton was found by a party of boys, the skull of which had a bullet rattling inside of it. It is some satisfaction to record that the Indian who shot poor Baxter was pursued by the rest of the party and brought down.

"MIAMI."

The last mention of the Cincinnati region by a geo- graphical designation, before the incoming of Denman's colony, was doubtless by Judge Symmes, in his letter to Dayton, from Limestone (Maysville), October 12, 1788, referring to the unlucky expedition in which Filson was lost. The judge says: "On the twenty-second ult. I landed at Miami, and explored the country as high as the upper side of the fifth range of townships." The point at which he stepped ashore, and to which he casually and temporarily gave the general name of the region, was undoubtedly the Losantiville site, since here he met the party of Kentuckians, led by Patterson and Filson, who, in accordance with the public notice about to be set out in full in the next chapter, had "blazed" a road through the deep woods between Lexington and this place. They made up the major part of the escort which accompanied Symmes in the exploration that immediately followed into the interior.

CHAPTER V.

LOSANTIVILLE.

By this time the reader who has followed patiently the pages of this volume will have no difficulty in under- standing the considerations that probably determined the settlement of Losantiville. Probably no intelligent trav- eller had ever passed down the Ohio without noting the eligibility of this beautiful and otherwise singularly fa- vored spot as the site of a settlement which might be- come a great city. The Mound Builder and the Indian , had, each in his own time, realized its advantages of residence in clusters of homes; and very early the adven- turous and speculative white man, as we have seen, turned with longing, eager eyes to the fertile tract oppo- site the mouth of the Licking, as the most hopeful spot spot in all the Miami country whereon to plant a colony.

Mr. James Parton, in his article on Cincinnati in the Atlantic Monthly for June, i867,8suggests that the loca- tion of the place was determined^ by considerations of safety, as this point was the best in this region for the posting of a garrison. He also calls attention to the facts that this is the only site on the Ohio river where one hundred thousand people could live together with- out being compelled to climb very high and steep hills, and that it is also about midway between the source and the mouth of the river^-that is, near the centre of the great valley of the OhioA

Be these things as t\wy may — whether such thoughts entered the minds of the founders of Losantiville or not — it is certain that almost as soon as the proposal for the Miami Purchase had been mooted, long before Judge Symmes or the ostensible proprietors of the village were able to give valid title deeds, the conditional purchase of the tract " upon which the town was laid out had been made, and the site had been surveyed and settled. The

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

27

men whose names, in the first instance, must forever be identified with the initial steps of this enterprise, which has eventuated in such wonderful results as are to be seen in the present city on the shore, were Matthias Denman, Colonel Robert Patterson, John Filson and Israel Ludlow.

DENMAN.

Of him, the original hero of the Losantiville venture, least of all is known. He was, like Symmes, Dayton and others of the company making the famous purchase between the Miamis, a Jerseyman, residing at Spring- field, Essex county, in that State, to which he returned, and where he remained so late as 1830, at least, after his colony had been firmly planted upon the tract he bought from Symmes. He was in that year visited in his home at Springfield by the father of Mr. Francis W. Miller, author of Cincinnati's Beginnings. That he was a man of some intelligence, enterprise and energy, may be in- ferred from the incidents of his connection with this en- terprise in the then wilderness west; but we do not learn that he attained to any special distinction in his own State, or even where he was born or when he died.

PATTERSON.

Colonel Robert Patterson, a leading spirit in the pro- jecting and founding of Losantiville, was a native of Pennsylvania, born near Cove mountain, March 15, 1753, of Irish stock, at least on his father's side. At twenty-one years of age he served six months on the frontiers of that State defending it against Indian incur- sions. The same year (1774) he and six other young adventurers, with John McLelland and family, made their way to the Royal spring, near Georgetown, Kentucky, where they lived until April, 1776, when they removed to the subsequent site of Lexington. Patterson, how- ever, a few months afterwards assisted in the defence of McLelland's station, at Royal spring, when attacked by Indians; and was severely wounded by the savages in a night attack upon his party, while on their way to Pitts- burgh shortly after, to procure necessaries, and was under a surgeon's care for a year. In April, 1778, at Pittsburgh, he joined the expedition of Colonel George Rogers Clark against the Illinois country, returning to Kentucky in September, and settling at Harrodsburgh. Early the next year, being then an ensign in the Kentucky militia, he proceeded under orders, with twenty-five men, to his former residence north of the Kentucky river, built and garrisoned a fort, and in April laid off the town of Lex- ington. In May he participated in the movement of Colonel Bowman against the Shawnee towns on the Little Miami, and then, probably, for the first time, passed over the wilderness tract that marked the future seat of the Queen City. In August, 1780, he was again here, with the expedition under Colonel Clark against the Indian towns on the Little Miami and Mad rivers; and once more, in the latter part of September, 1782, when Clark marched on his campaign of destruction between the Miamis, to avenge the defeat of the whites at the Lower Blue Licks in August — in which Patterson, now colonel and second in command to Boone, had a very narrow

escape from capture. He must thus have come to know well the advantages of the site opposite the mouth of the Licking, years before the arrangement with Denman arid Filson was made. In T786, Colonel Patterson seems to have made his last visit here, in another expedition against the Shawnees, under General Logan (in which he was badly wounded), before he came with the party in Sep- tember, 1788, to "blaze" a road from Lexington to the mouth of the Licking, in preparation for the settlement of Losantiville. As is well known, he never resided per- manently with his colony here; but returned to Lexing- ton after a month's stay. In 1804 he removed from that place to a farm near Dayton, in this State, where he sur- vived until August 5, 1827, dying there and then at the advanced age of seventy-four years. Says the author of Ranck's History of Lexington:

In person Colonel Patterson was tall and handsome. He was gifted with a fine mind, but, like Boone, Kenton, and many others of his simple hunter and pioneer companions, was indulgent and negligent in business matters, and, like them, lost most of his extensive landed prop- erty by shrewder rascals.

FILSON.

John Filson was a Kentucky schoolmaster and sur- veyor (although he says in the preface to his book, "I am not an inhabitant of Kentucky"), of some literary ability, as is evinced by the articles appended to A Topo- graphical Description of the Western Territory of North America, by George Imlay, a captain in the continental army during the Revolution, and afterwards several years in Kentucky as a self-styled "commissioner for laying out lands in the back settlements." His work was published in London in three editions, 1792-7; and the appendix contains the following entitled articles, "by John Filson," one of our Losantiville projectors:

1. The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky, and an Essay towards the Topography and Natural History of that Impor- tant Country.

2. The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, one of the First Set- tlers, comprehending every Important Occurrence in the Political His- tory of that Province.

3. The Minutes of the Piankashaw Council, held at Port St. Vin- cents, April 15, 1784.

4. An Account of the Indian Nations inhabiting within the limits of the Thirteen United States, their Manners and Customs, and Reflec- tions on their Origin.

Filson had already published, in 1784, at Wilmington, Delaware, in an octavo volume of one hundred and eighteen pages, the papers named in the first two titles; and they, with three others, were republished in New York in 1793, as a supplement to an American edition of Imlay's book, and all attributed to Filson. They include a report of the Secretary of State (Jefferson) to the Pres- ident of the United States (Washington), on the quantity and situation of unsold public lands; also Thoughts on Emigration, to which are added Miscellaneous Observa- tions relating to the United States, and a short account of the State of Kentucky — the whole making up a unique and in some respects valuable book. Filson was thus the first to publish a History of Kentucky.

His Adventures of Boone appears to have been written at the dictation of Boone himself, Filson supplying merely the phraseology, with perhaps an occasional reflection. The following document, signed by Boone and others,

28

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

is printed as an endorsement and advertisement in Fil- son's work on Kentucky:

Advertisement.— We, the subscribers, inhabitants of Kentucky, and well acquainted with the country from its first settlement, at the request of the author of this book have carefully revised it, and recom- mend it to the public as an exceeding good performance, containing as accurate a description of our country as we think can possibly be given, much preferable to any in our knowledge extant; and think it will be of great utility to the public. Witness our hands this twelfth of May, Anno Domini 1784.

Daniel Boone, Levi Todd, James Harrod. Part of Filson's preface is as follows :

When I visited Kentucky, I found it so far to exceed my expecta- tions, though great, that I concluded it was a pity that the world has not adequate information of it. I conceived that a proper description of it was an object highly interesting to the United States; and, therefore, incredible as it may appear to some, I must declare that this perform- ance is not published from lucrative motives, but solely to inform the world of the happy climate and plentiful soil of this favored region. And I imagine the reader will believe me the more easily when I inform him that I am not an inhabitant of Kentucky, but having been there some time, by my acquaintance in it am sufficiently able to publish the truth, and from principle have cautiously endeavored to avoid every species of falsehood. The consciousness of this encourages me to hope for the public candour, where errors may possibly be found.

Filson receives the following notice in Collins' History of Kentucky:

The second teacher [in Fayette county] was John Filson, in or before 1784; adventurer, surveyor, fanciful writer of the autobiography of Daniel Boone, and author of the first printed book about Kentucky — first published in 1784 in Wilmington, Delaware; in 1785 translated into French and published in Paris, France; in 1792, 1793, and 1797, thrice republished in London, with additions by Gilbert Imlay, a sur- veyor of Jefferson county, Kentucky, to satisfy the cravings of restless minds in England for information about the newest part of the Old World. [Mr. Collins had apparently not heard of the New York edition.] He was one of the original proprietors, drafted the first plan, and coined the pedagogical name of the projected town of Losantiville, etc.

In a subsequent part of this history, Judge Collins says:

His fanciful name for the intended town was adopted — Losantiville, which he designed to mean "the village opposite the mouth," Le-os- ante-ville, but which more really signifies, ' ' the mouth opposite the village," — who, or what induced the change from such a pedagogical and nonsensical a name to the euphonious one of Cincinnati is un- known [ ! ] ; but in the name of the millions of people who live in or within reach of it, or visit it or do business with it, we now thank the man and the opportunity. The invention of such a- name was posi- tively cruel in Mr. Filson; we hope it had no connection with his early death. Perhaps that is reason enough why no street in Cincinnati is named after him.

Judge Collins seems also not to have heard that Plum street, in this city, is designated as "Filson street" upon Joel Williams' plat of the original town site, to be seen in the books of the recorder's office. Certainly, to the honor of the real founders and pioneers of Losantiville, the people of Cincinnati have not been neglectful in the matter of street names. There is a Ludlow street, a Ludlow avenue, and a Ludlow alley; Patterson has two streets, and Denman two; McMillan has an avenue; Bur- net both street and avenue; while St. Clair, Gano, and many other early names, have not been forgotten in the street nomenclature. It is true, however, that the mem- ory of Filson has not yet thus been permanently honored.

According to Collins, when Denman visited Lexing- ton in the summer of 1788, he saw "the double power" of Filson as a surveyor and writer, and enlisted him in

the venture with himself and Patterson, on the north side of the Ohio.

Mr. George W. Ranck's history of Lexington notes of Filson that he "was an early adventurer with Daniel Boone, and after the discoverer of Kentucky returned to Lexington in October [1784], from the Chillicothe towns, Filson wrote, at his dictation, the only narrative of his life extant from the pioneer's own lips. This narrative was endorsed at the time by James Harrod, Levi Todd, and Boone himself. Filson taught in Lexington for sev- eral years, and did no little to secure the early organiza- tion of Transylvania seminary."

Filson, it will be remembered, was killed by the In- dians in the Miami country, before the location was made at Losantiville. The circumstances of his death are nar- rated in chapter V, Part I, of this work.

Professor W. H. Venable, one of the latest and best of Cincinnati's songsters, thus, in his June on the Miami and other Poems, sings of our hero :

John Filson was a pedagogue —

A pioneer was he; I know not what his nation was

Nor what his pedigree.

Tradition's scanty records tell

But little of the man, Save that he to the frontier came

In immigration's van.

Perhaps with phantoms of reform

His busy fancy teemed, Perhaps of new Utopias

Hesperian he dreamed.

John Filson and companions bold

A frontier village planned In forest wild, on sloping hills,

By fair Ohio's strand.

John Filson from three languages

With pedant skill did frame The novel word Losantiville,

To be the new town's name.

Said Filson: "Comrades, hear my words;

Ere three-score years have flown Our town will be a city vast."

Loud laughed Bob Patterson.

Still John exclaimed, with prophet-tongue,

" A city fair and proud, The Queen of Cities in the West."

Mat Denman laughed aloud.

Deep in the wild and solemn woods,

Unknown to white man's track, John Filson went one autumn day,

But nevermore came back.

He struggled through the solitude

The inland to explore, . And with romantic pleasure traced Miami's winding shore.

Across his path the startled deer

Bounds to its shelter green; He enters every lonely vale

And cavernous ravine.

Too soon the murky twilight comes,

The night-wind 'gins to moan ; Bewildered wanders Filson, lost,

Exhausted and alone.

By lurking foes his steps are dogged, A yell his ear appalls 1

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

29

A ghastly corpse upon the ground, A murdered man he falls.

The Indian, with instinctive hate,

In him a herald saw Of coming hosts of pioneers,

The friends of light and law ;

In him beheld the champion

Of industries and arts. The founder of encroaching roads

And great commercial marts;

The spoiler of the hunting-ground,

The plower of the sod, The builder of the Christian school

And of the house of God.

And so the vengeful tomahawk

John Filson's blood did spill, — The spirit of the pedagogue

No tomahawk could kill.

John Filson had no sepulchre,

Except the wildwood dim ; The mournful voices of the air

Made requiem for him.

The druid trees their waving arms

Uplifted o'er his head; The moon a pallid veil of light

Upon his visage spread.

The rain and sun of many years

Have worn his bones away, And what he vaguely prophesied

We realize to-day.

Losantiville the prophet's word,

The poet's hope fulfils— She sits a stately Queen to-day

Amid her royal hills!

Then come, ye pedagogues, and join

To sing a grateful lay For him, the martyr pioneer,

Who led for you the way.

And may my simple ballad be

A monument to save His name from blank oblivion

Who never had a grave.

LUDLOW.

Colonel Israel Ludlow, the successor of John Filson as the holder of a third interest in the site of Cincinnati, was born upon the Little Head farm, near Morristown, New Jersey, in 1765. In his early twenties he came to the valley of the Ohio", to exercise his talents as a practi- cal surveyor, and was here appointed by the geographer of the United States, to survey the Miami Purchase and that of the Ohio company, which he mainly accom- plished by the spring of 1792, in the face of many diffi- . culties and dangers, being generally without any escort of troops, in a country swarming with Indians. Taking the interest of Filson in the Losantiville venture after the death of the latter, he became the surveyor of the town site and the principal agent in disposing of the lots. After the treaty of Greenville he was employed by the Government to run the boundary lines for the Indian country established by treaty, and successfully completed the work, though amid many perils, and sometimes in imminent danger of starvation. He was the only one of the original proprietors who fixed his home at or near Cincinnati, establishing in 1790 Ludlow Station as a cit-

adel of defence against the savages upon a spot within the present limits of Cumminsville, the block-house standing at the intersection of Knowlton street with the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad. It is claimed by his biographers (see Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio, etc.,) that he gave the name to Cincinnati, in honor of the society of which his father, Commodore Ludlow, was a member. December 12, 1794, he laid out the town of Hamilton as a proprietor; and in No- vember of the next year, in union with Governor St. Clair, Hon. Jonathan Dayton, and William McMillan, he planted the town of Dayton. November n, 1796, he was married to Charlotte Chambers, of Chambers- burgh, Pennsylvania, a quite extraordinary woman, who is made the subject of a beautiful biography by one of her grandsons. He died at home in January, 1804, after but four days' illness, and was buried in the graveyard adjoin- ing the First Presbyterian church, Cincinnati, in . the front wall of which was afterward fixed a tablet in honor to his memory. He was buried with Masonic honors, and an oration was pronounced upon the occasion by Judge Symmes.

THE PRELIMINARIES.

Denman, as a Jerseyman and perhaps a member of the East Jersey company, was early cognizant of the proj- ect of Symmes and his associates to secure the Miami Purchase; and in January, 1788, he located, among other tracts, the entire section eighteen and the frac-' tional section seventeen, lying between the former sec- tion and the river, upon which Losantiville was founded in the closing days of the same year. The present boun- daries of the tract are Liberty street on the north, the Ohio river on the south, an east line from the Mount Auburn water works to the river a few feet below Broad- way, and a west line from a point a very little east of the intersection of Central avenue and Liberty street to the river just below the gas works.

The agreed price was the same as the company was to pay the Government — five shillings per acre, or sixty-six and two-thirds cents; which for the seven hundred and forty acres of the tract paid for would have amounted to four hundred and ninety-three dollars and thirty-three cents. (This does not include sixty acres which were in dispute — the entire tract, as finally surveyed, containing eight hundred acres — and which Symmes claimed were not paid for.) But the purchase money, it is said, was paid in Continental certificates, then worth only five shil- lings on the pound, but turned into the treasury of the company at par; so that the actual cost of the entry to Denman, under this arrangement, was a little less than one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Some conjectures have been made that the entire eight hundred acres, now comprising by far the most valuable property in the city, did not cost Denman more than fifty dollars. Jonathan Dayton, one of the company, seems to have been fearful of the negotiation with Denman; for, after Symmes had gone out to the Purchase, he urged him by letter not to allow the "Losantiville section" to be covered by any warrant, except one bought from Symmes or from Day- ton as his agent, for six shillings threepence, or seven

30

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

shillings sixpence, to aid in making the second payment on the purchase. As a matter of fact, the section eigh- teen was not covered by one of Symmes' warrants until May, 1790, and the fractional section not until April of the next year; and the old belief was that Denman se- cured both at a very low rate — for a mere song, as we should say now.

denman's movements.

In the summer of 1788 Mr. Denman found his way westward, and made a personal visit to his purchase op- posite the mouth of the Licking, being thereby confirmed in his previous intentions of founding a station and ferry there, and leading a colony to the spot. On his way back he stopped at Limestone, and is said there to have fallen in with Colonel Patterson, and soon afterwards, at Lexington, with the schoolmaster Filson. Broaching his project to them, he found them eager listeners, and pres- ently agreed to take them into joint partnership with him. In this arrangement Denman appears to have undertaken the chief conduct of the business, while Filson was to do the surveying and staking off of the tract and superintend the sales of lots, and Patterson was to be the main agent in obtaining purchasers and settlers. Denman was un- derstood to be responsible for all matters relating directly to the purchase from the East Jersey company; Filson was already pretty well acquainted with the Miami coun- try; and Patterson was the most influential man in stir- ring up people to the point of removal to the new land of promise. It was thus a very judicious and hopeful ar- rangement.

Soon afterwards, probably at Lexington, the following contract was executed between the parties :

A covenant and agreement, made and concluded this twenty-fifth day of August, 1788, between Matthias Denman, of Essex county, State of New Jersey, of the one part, and Robert Patterson and John Filson, of Lexington, Fayette county, Kentucky, of the other part, witnesseth : That the aforesaid Matthias Denman, having made entry of a tract of land on the northwest side of the Ohio river, opposite the mouth of the Licking river, in that district in which Judge Symmes has purchased from Congress, and being seized thereof by right of entry, to contain six hundred and forty acres, and the fractional parts that may pertain, does grant, bargain, and sell the full two-thirds thereof by an equal, undivided right, in partnership, unto the said Robert Patterson and John Filson, their heirs and assigns ; and upon producing indisputable testimony of his, the said Denman's, right and title to the said prem- ises, they, the said Patterson and Filson, shall pay the sum of twenty pounds Virginia money, to the said Denman, or his heirs or assigns, as a full remittance for moneys by him advanced in payment of said lands, every other institution, determination, and regulation respecting the laying-off of a town, and establishing a ferry at and upon the prem- ises, to the result of the united advice and consent of the parties in cov- enant, as aforesaid ; and by these presents the parties bind themselves, for the true performance of these covenants, to each other, in the penal sum of one thousand pounds, specie, hereunto affixing their hands and seals, the day and year above mentioned.

Matthias Denman, Signed, sealed, and delivered R. Patterson,

in the presence of— John Filson.

Henry Owen, ,

Abr. McConnell.

The Virginia pound of those days was equivalent to three dollars and thirty-three cents in Federal specie, so that, since Denman sold two-thirds of his tract for sixty- six dollars and sixty-seven cents, the cash value he ap- parently put upon the whole was but one hundred dollars.

"LOSANTIVILLE.

The general plan of the town was agreed upon, and Filson was to proceed as quickly as possible to get a. plat made, and all things in readiness for early settlement and sale. It was also agreed to call the new place Losanti- ville. This extraordinary designation was undoubtedly the product of the Kentucky schoolmaster's pedantic genius. An analysis of the word soon discovers its meaning. "L" is sometimes supposed to be simply the contraction of the French le, making the entire name to read "the town opposite the mouth." It is more gener- ally believed, however, to have been intended by Filson as an abbreviation for Licking, leaving the article before. ville in construction to be understood. Os is the Greek word for mouth, anti Latin for opposite, and ville French for town or city. The whole term would thus signify the town opposite the mouth of the Licking. It fur- nishes a remarkable instance, not only of an eccentric, polyglot neologism, but of the power of synthetic lan- guages to express in one word what an analytic language like ours must express in a much longer circumlocution and with somewhat numerous words. It has been doubted whether the village was ever really so called, except in the original plans of Filson, Denman, and Patterson; but there can be no doubt in the mind of one who looks well into the question, that the plan and village had that title continuously from the day they were agreed to, in August, 1788, to the day, January 2 or 4, 1790, when Governor St. Clair changed it to Cincinnati, "so that," as Judge Symmes wrote, " Losantiville will become extinct." There was never a post office or municipality here of that name; but letters were written from here under it; the town seems to have been familiarly so designated in correspondence and conversation ; it has come down in almost unquestioned tradition associated with that title; and, to crown the evidence, it so appears upon some of the earliest maps of Ohio, and one of the plats recorded fifteen years after the settlement, while bearing the name Cincinnati, is also remarked in the explanations as "formerly called Losanterville." The orthographic blunder nqted suggests the spelling adopted by Mr. Julius Dexter in his prefatory historic note to King's Pocket-book of Cincinnati, and which may occasion- ally be seen in print elsewhere — " Losanteville, " for which there are some good arguments to adduce. The name appears originally to have been written with considerable carelessness, since among the papers of Patterson, after his death, was found a copy of the "conditions" present- ly to be recited, though not in his handwriting, in the heading of which the name appears as " Losantiburg. " It was probably the heedless work of some clerk of Pat- terson's. The right name appears in the nomenclature of Cincinnati only in "Losantiville Hall," a place of as- sembly on Front street, many years ago, north of Deer Creek bridge, mentioned in the Cincinnati Almanac for 1 85 o. Nothing else like it appears in all the geographical nomenclature of the world, except in a single instance— the name of the postoffice at Losantville, Randolph county, Indiana, probably named from a pioneer settler or proprietor.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OIHO.

3i

THE ROAD TO THE LICKING.

After the execution of the agreement, Denman re- turned to Limestone to meet Judge Symmes, leaving an understanding with his partners that they were soon to "blaze'' a road through the wilderness in the direction of their purchase and establish a ferry across the Ohio there, if practicable. The former part of this arrangement ap- pears conspicuously in the following advertisement, in- serted by Patterson and Filson in the Kentucky Gazette, published at Lexington, for the sixth of September, 1788

Notice. — The subscribers, being proprietors of a tract of land op- posite the mouth of the Licking river, on the northwest side of the Ohio, have determined to lay off a town on that excellent situation. The local and natural advantages speak its future prosperity, being equal, if not superior, to any on the bank of the Ohio, between the Miamis. The in-lots to be, each, half an acre, the out-lots four acres, thirty of each to be given to settlers upon payment of one dollar and fifty cents for the survey and deed of each lot. The fifteenth of Sep- tember is appointed for a large company to meet in Lexington and mark a road from there to the mouth of the Licking, provided Judge Symmes arrives, being daily expected. When the town is laid off lots will be given to such as may become residents before the first day of April next. Matthias Denman.

Robert Patterson. John Filson.

A company was gathered without much difficulty in those restless and adventurous days. It was, probably, not large, but sufficient for the purpose, and did not in- clude Judge Symmes, who was proceeding to "Miami" by way of the river. Without waiting for him, the party found its way to the Ohio — doubtless aided much of the way by old Indian trails and military traces — and must have arrived there in a few days, since it there met Den- man and Judge Symmes, who records that he "landed at Miami" on the twenty-second of September. Fil- son is rather doubtfully said to have spent a day or two here, marking out streets through the dense forest. He, with the rest of the Kentuckians, accompanied Symmes on the exploring expedition up the Miami country, which they penetrated "as high as the upper side of the fifth range of townships,'' as the judge after- wards wrote. The adventures of this party, and the un- happy death of Filson, have been related in our chapter on the Miami Purchase. While Symmes and Patter- son were absent on this excursion," Denman, Ludlow — who happened to be with the party, though not yet.a proprietor — and others, followed the meanderings of the Ohio between the Miamis, and pushed their way about ten miles up one of the Miami rivers.

THE VOYAGE FROM LIMESTONE.

After the death of Filson and the return of the explor- ing party to the Ohio, Denman and Patterson went with Symmes back to Limestone, where they decided upon just the individual needed to take the place of Filson in the partnership, in the person of the young surveyor, Israel Ludlow; and an arrangement was made in Octo- ber by which he should take Filson's interest in the Lo- santiville enterprise. The latter's plan of the town had perished with him. His brother, who was with the party of Kentuckians when John • Filson was killed, consider- ing that he had yet paid nothing and had established lit- tle valid claim upon the property, informed the surviving

partners that the legal representatives of the deceased would demand nothing under the contract of August 2 2d. Ludlow prepared a new plan of the village, differing, it is supposed, in some important respects from Filson's, par- ticularly as to the public square to be donated for church and school purposes, the common or public landing, and the names of streets. It is quite possible that some of these differences appear in the discrepancies observable between the recorded plats of Ludlow and of Joel Wil- liams, which will be presently noted. The drafting of plans, the gathering of a colony, and other preparations for the settlement, employed the time of the proprietors at Limestone and elsewhere for many weeks, and they were further hindered for a time by the same obstacles which delayed Symmes, as recited in our chapter on the Purchase. At length, on the day before Christmas, in the year of grace 1788, the courageous founders of Lo- santiville and Cincinnati packed themselves in the rude flat or keel-boats and barges of the time, took leave of the party still at Limestone that was shortly to settle North Bend (the Columbia adventurers had been gone more than a month), and swept out on the broad bosom of the Ohio, now swelled beyond its usual limits, and covered thickly with floating ice.

They were all men, twenty-six in number. The fol- lowing, by the best authorities, is the

ROLL OF HONOR.

Noah Badgeley, Samuel Blackburn, Thaddeus Bruen, Robert Caldwell, Matthew Campbell, James Carpenter, William Connell, Matthew Fowler, Thomas Gizzel (or Gissel), Francis Hardesty, Captain Henry, Luther Kitch- ell, Henry Lindsey, Israel Ludlow, Elijah Martin, Wil- liam McMillan, Samuel Mooney, Robert Patterson, John Porter, Evan Shelby, Joseph Thornton, Scott Traverse, Isaac Tuttle, John Vance, Sylvester White, Joel Williams.

The list given in the Cincinnati Directory of 1819, which is usually repeated as the roll of founders, does not include the names of Ludlow and Patterson, which is ob- viously incorrect; nor of Henry, Matthew Campbell, or Elijah Martin. It includes the name of Ephraim Kibby, who was subsequently of the Columbia colony, and was very likely of this party, as also Daniel Shoemaker, who is not on the list of 1819, but appears, like Kibby among the original proprietors of donation lots. Martin and Campbell were also such proprietors; but not Henry. The names of all the others appear in the list of those who drew donation lots, except those of the proprietors of the town and of Bruen, Caldwell, Connell, Fowler, Hardesty, Shelby, and Tuttle. The fact is, not all who came with the party staid as colonists, while others arrived subsequently to share in the distribution of the donation lots. Tuttle, Henry, and probably others, joined Symmes' voyagers to North Bend in February; Kibby and Shoe- maker, though drawing lots at Losantiville, were with Stites' party at Columbia, and at least Kibby subsequently removed there; one other at least, Mr. Hardesty, went elsewhere, probably on the Kentucky shore, since there were Hardestys in Newport; and others drifted away without making permanent settlement here.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Judge Symmes' account of the voyage of the Losanti- ville argonauts from Limestone was communicated to his fellows of the East Jersey company, in a letter from North Bend, about five months afterwards. It is as follows:

On the twenty-fourth of December last, Colonel Patterson of Lexing- ton, who is concerned with Mr. Denman in the section at the mouth of the Licking river, sailed from Limestone in company with Mr. Tuttle, Captain Henry, Mr. Ludlow, and about twelve others, in order to form a station and lay out a town opposite Licking. They suffered much from the inclemency of the weather and floating ice, which filled the Ohio from shore to shore. Perseverance, however, triumphing over difficulty, they landed safe on a most delightful high bank of the Ohio, where they founded the town of Losantiville, which populates consid- erably, but would be much more improved by this time, if Colonel Pat- terson or Mr. Denman had resided in the town. Colonel Patterson tarried about one month at Losantiville, and returned to Lexington.

The time of the departure from Limestone is indispu- table; the date of arrival at "Miami" has been much disputed. For many years the twenty-sixth of Decem- ber was celebrated as the anniversary of the landing; and to this day the city directory notes that as the day observed by the Cincinnati Pioneer association, though we are informed that their practice in this particular has changed. It does not seem at all probable that, in the face of difficulties experienced, the voyage from Lime- stone to Yeatman's cove, sixty-five or more miles, was accomplished in two days. An English traveller, noting his arrival here in 1806, records that "travelling is so very good between Limestone and the town, a distance of sixty-eight miles, that I descended in two short days' run, without meeting with any obstacles.'' Bad weather and other hindrances, as floating ice, which Symmes says "filled the Ohio from shore to shore," would undoubtedly delay the trip beyond two days, and very probably until the day now generally accepted as the true date — De- cember 28, 1788. William McMillan, a man of native talents and classical education, of strong memory and clear, judicial brain, testified years afterwards, in a chan- cery case involving the right of property, as between the city and Joel Williams, in the Public Landing, that he landed here with the party on that day. Denman also, in another case, testified that they came "late in Decem- ber," though he could not remember the precise day; while Patterson and Ludlow thought the landing was early in January, which is quite certainly too late. Mr. McMillan's testimony, we think, now commands general acceptance. The tradition is probably correct that the party, occupied in completing the preparations, did not get away from Limestone until somewhat late in the day, and made but nine miles before tying up for the night • that the third day they sighted Columbia, but were una- ble to reach it or stop on account of the ice; that the same cause prevented their landing here upon arrival opposite the spot on the evening of the same day, but that, after remaining in or near the mouth of the Licking through the night of the twenty-seventh, they effected a crossing with their boats the next morning, and trium- phantly entered the little inlet at the foot of Sycamore street, afterwards known as Yeatman's cove. Fastening their frail barks to the roots and shrubs along the bank, they step ashore, collect driftwood and other dry frag- ments, strike the steel and flint, and provide themselves

with their first necessity to comfort and cookery — ample fires. Very likely, the fatigues of the voyage over, they soon realize, even long before night, the graphic picture drawn by Dr. Daniel Drake more than sixty-three years afterwards: "Setting their watchmen around, they lay down with their feet to the blazing fires, and fell asleep under the music of the north wind whistling among the frozen limbs of the great sycamores and water maples which overhung them."

It was no time for prolonged rest or sleep, however. The depth of winter is not the season for open-air bivou- acs, when shelters are at hand. The readiest expedient for the supply of material for dwellings — one already sug- gested' by the practice of the boatmen of the age in breaking up their vessels and selling their constituent parts when the destination was reached— naturally occur- red to the newly arrived, and their first cabin was con- structed of boat-planks and other breakage from the craft in which they came. This is the statement of Judge Burnet, in the historical preface he wrote in Mr. George Henry Shaffer's Business Directory of 1840, and which Mr. Shaffer, who is still living, assures us is trustworthy in every particular. If so, the picture of the first cabin (represented as a log one, standing below the cove), used in a mayor's message some years ago as an advertisement '■ for a forthcoming History of Cincinnati, must be revised 1 and reconstructed in the light of this fact. The first was built on the present Front street, a little'east of Main, and of course northwest of the cove or place of landing; and others soon put up, two or three in number, were in the immediate vicinity, where the dense, wild forest bor- dered upon the surging waters.

THE ORIGINAL TOWN PLAT.

While his companions occupied themselves in build- ing, hunting, scouting, and other employments, Ludlow, doubtless assisted by Badgeley, who was one of Symmes' surveyors, and other trusty aids, engaged in the survey of the town, which was substantially completed by the seventh of January, 1789, when the drawing took place for the donation lots. The survey extended from the river to Northern row, now Seventh street, and from Eastern (now Broadway) to Western row (Central ave- nue), with out-lots of tour acres each, or a present square, beyond Northern row to the north limits of the Losanti- ville purchase, at Liberty street. The out-lots numbered eighty-one. The street corners were marked upon the trees. There was and is, as everybody remarks, an interesting association between the two. The Jerseymen and Penn- sylvanians of the party had clearly in mind, in the regu- larity with which the town was laid off and the names they gave its avenues, their favorite Quaker City—

Where the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest, As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they invaded. The survey was not recorded until April 29, 1802, when the law of the Territory required it, under heavy penalties. The entry may be found in Book E — 2, pages 62-63. The following documents, on page 60, introduce and ex- plain it:

References to the plan of the Town of Cincinnati, in page No 62 exhibited by Colonel Israel Ludlow (as one of the proprietors), on the

/,

< <: , /,

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

33

fore-noon of the twenty-ninth day of April, 1802, and recorded agree- ably thereto.

N. B. — The following certificate is attached to the original: This may certify that I consider myself as having been one of the original proprietors of the Town of Cincinnati, and hereby authorize Israel Ludlow to make or copy a plan according to the original plan or intention of the firm, and cause to be recorded as such, agreeably to the Laws of the Territory in that case made and provided. November 20, 1801.

Matthias Denman. Test:

P. P. Stewart, D. C. Cooper.

The following notes from another Nota Bene may be of interest :

The lots in the regular squares of the town contain seventy-two square perches, are twelve poles in length and six poles wide. The out-lots, which are entire, contain each four*acres, are in length from east to west six chains and fifty links.

The six long squares between Front and Water streets contain lots ten poles long and six poles wide.

All the streets in the town are four poles wide, excepting Seventh street * and the Eastern and Western row, which are but two poles wide.

The corners of the streets are north sixteen degrees west, and others crossing at right angles south seventy-four degrees west. — Streets through the out-lots four poles wide.

Then, on pages 62-3 of the record, follows the Ludlow plat. The streets thereon are named as now, except East- ern row (Broadway) and Western row (Central avenue). The name of Plum street is spelt " Plumb." None of the alleys or narrower streets now existing within the tract platted were in this survey. The space now occupied by the Public Landing is left blank, except for the well known cove of that day, which is figured as extending to the south line of Front street, a little east of the foot of Syca- more, and a little wider at its junction with the river than it was long. Colonel Patterson, in a deposition made in 1803, in the suit between Williams and the town of Cin- cinnati, said that this ground "in front of Front street was declared at that time a public common for the use of the citizens of the said town, excepting and reserving only, for the benefit of the proprietors, the privilege of establishing a ferry on the bank of the Ohio on said com- mon."

All lots in the south half of the squares between Sec- ond and Third streets, and all below them, are laid out lengthwise north and south; all others in an east and west direction. Lots one hundred and fourteen to seventeen, and one hundred and thirty-nine to forty-two, are indi- cated in Ludlow's appended notes, and by a boundary of red ink in the plat, as "given to public uses." They con- stitute the block bounded by Fourth and Fifth, Walnut and Main streets, which' was afterwards divided between the First Presbyterian church, the Cincinnati college, and the county of Hamilton.

East of Eastern row, between extensions of Third and Fifth streets, were sixteen in-lots, and immediately north of these was the first range of out-lots, numbered from one to eight. The ranges of out-lots on the northwest, two in number, began also north of Fifth street. Some in- truding hand has marked "canal" upon the north line of the third range of out-lots, above Seventh street, then the

♦This was undoubtedly originally designated as Northern row,

narrow, two-rod street forming the north boundary of the town.

Another and rival plat, surveyed by whom we know not, was exhibited to the recorder by Joel Williams, on the same day, "at six o'clock p. m.," of "the town of Cin- cinnati (formerly called Losanterville)," by Samuel Free- man and Joel Williams, assignees of Matthias Denman and Robert Patterson. It was also recorded by the ac- commodating register of that official term, immediately after the Ludlow and Denman plat. The general changes in the names of streets, as indicated by letters upon this map, referring to notes prefixed, possess special interest, and exhibit the most pointed difference between the two. The present Water to Seventh streets are thus designated, in order : Water, Front, Columbia [Second], Hill [Third], High [Fourth], Byrd [Fifth], Gano [Sixth], and Northern row. At least one of these names, Columbia, prevailed in the local usage for many years. The intersecting streets, from Eastern row (which retained its name, west- ward, were Sycamore, Main, Cider [Walnut], Jefferson [Vine], Beech [Race], Elm, Filson [Plum], Western row. The space devoted by the original proprietors to a pub- lic landing is shown as filled with in-lots, numbered four hundred and sixty-one to four hundred and sixty-eight. The numbers of other lots and the general features of the survey are the same as in the other plat. The same square, bounded by Main, Cider, High, and Byrd streets, is marked and noted as "reserved for a court house, a jail, a church, and school." There is also some differ- ence observable in the boundary lines of sections.

This was made, as the appended affidavit of Williams shows, in the absence from the territory of Denman and Patterson, "the two other original proprietors of said town" — other than Filson, Colonel Ludlow not being recognized in the affidavit — and Williams' consequent be- lief, as he swore, "that they had no intention of recording in person the plat of said town, agreeable to a late act of the said territory, entitled 'an act to provide for the recording of town-plats.'" The affidavit goes on to aver that " this deponent further saith that he possesses, as he believes, sufficient information in the premises to enable him to make a plat of said town of Cincinnati, agreeable to the original plat, design, and intentions of the aforesaid original proprietors of said town, in man- ner and form as the same was originally laid out and de- clared by the proprietors aforesaid; and this deponent further saith that the within is a true and accurate map or plat of the said town of Cincinnati, agreeable to the or- iginal plat, planj" etc. The divergences from Ludlow's survey are thus partly accounted for. Williams' claims, under this plat, made without any reference to Colonel Ludlow, the original surveyor, who was still living and readily accessible within five miles of the Cincinnati of that day, were subsequently made the subject of litigation between himself and the public authorities, in which his plat was invalidated and his case lost. The property in- volved in the determination of this case was that which Williams' plat covers with town lots, but which has been continuously occupied, save a small part on the west side once covered with a building or buildings, as a public

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

landing. This tract Williams had bought in 1800 from Judge Symmes, who made the usual guarantee of his right to sell it, and gave Williams some color for his claim. As to the comparative correctness of the two plats, it is worth notice that Colonel Patterson, in his deposi- tion of 1803, declared that he had examined both plats, and believed "the one recorded by Israel Ludlow to be agreeable to the original plan."

Some years before this, in 1794 or 1795, Williams had come into possession by assignment of Denman's remain- ing interest, and claimed as an original proprietor. The remainder of Patterson's third, about the • same time, passed by assignment to Samuel Freeman. The colonel remained here but a short time, and then returned; while Denman, who did not even come with the colony in De- cember, did not remove from New Jersey. Of the four worthies originally associated with the founding of Cin- cinnati, only Colonel Ludlow became identified with the place as a resident; and he lived at his station some miles out. To all.intents, however, he was a Cincinnatian.

THE DONATION LOTS.

Losantiville was now ready for regular settlement. It remained for the proprietors to fulfil their generous pledges of free in-lots and out-lots to the expectant colonists. The survey having been completed, or suf- ficiently advanced for the purpose, by the seventh of January, the proprietors, represented by Colonel Ludlow, promulgated the following:

CONDITIONS

on which the donation lots in the town Losantiville are held and settled. The first Thirty town and out lots to so many of the most early ad- venturers shall be given by the proprietors, Messrs. Denman, Patterson, & Ludlow, who for their part do agree to make a deed free and clear of all charges and incumbrances excepting that of surveying and deeding the same, so soon as a deed is procured from Congress by Judge Symmes.

The lot-holders for their part do agree to become actual settlers on the premises; plant & attend two crops successively & not less than One Acre shall be cultivated for each crop & that within the term of two years— each person receiving a donation lot or lots shall build an house equal to Twenty feet square, One Storey & half high, with a brick, stone, or clay Chimney, which shall stand in front of their respective in lots and shall be put in tenantable repair within the term of two years from the date hereof.

The above requisitions shall be minutely complyed with under pen- alty of forfeiture, unless Indian depredations render it impracticable. Done this seventh day of January Qne thousand seven hundred & Eighty Nine. Israel Ludlow.

The lottery for the distribution of the lots was held the same day, under the personal direction of Patterson and Ludlow, with the result indicated below. The original proprietors of some of the most valuable lots in the city are thus shown. The orthography of the original record, now in the possession of the Ohio His- torical and Philosophical society, has been followed, there being no difficulty in recognizing the names:

Out- In- Out- In-

lots. lots. lots. lots.

Joel Williams 3 79 Ephraim Kibby 4 59

John Porter 2 77 John Vance 24 4

David McClure 6 26 Jesse Fulton 23 6

Samuel Mooney 14 33 Henry Bechtel 16 56

Sylvester White 15 2 Isaac , Freeman 20 51

Joseph Thornton 28 3 Samuel Blackburn 29 1

James Carpenter 1 32 Scott Traverse 9 52

Matthew Cammel 8 28 Elijah Martin 26 7

Noah Badgeley 22 31 Archibald Stewart 12 57

Luthar Kitchel 13 58 James McConnel 5 30

James Cammel 21 34 " Davison 19 27

Jesse Stewart 30 54 James Dument n 5

Benjamin Dument 25 53 Jonas Menser 10 29

Isaac Van Meter .. : 18 8 Thomas Gizzel 17 9

Daniel Shoemaker 27 79 Harry Lindsay 7 76

William McMillan 31 James Campbell 154

By this record thirty-one out-lots and thirty in-lots were given away. There are thirty-two names of donees, but Mr. McMilllan drew no in-lot, and in-lot number seventy-nine seems to have been drawn by both Joel Wil- liams and Daniel Shoemaker. The latter, however, ob- tained lot seventy-eight, as appears by the diagram below, so that the record, as originally made, is probably erroneous, and thirty-one lots each, of in-lots and out-lots, were donated, which would just comprise the four dona- tion blocks of in-lots, save only the one lot presently to be noted. The in-lots given embraced the entire blocks be- tween Front and Second, Main and Broadway, Second and Third, Broadway and Sycamore, and the east half of the block bounded by Second and Third, Main and Sycamore, except lot fifty-five, on the northwest corner of Second and Sycamore, which was then reckoned of little value, on account of the position of part of it in the swamp which was for years about the intersection of Sycamore and Second streets. The lots which faced or adjoined the Public Landing were accounted the most valuable. Some of the settlers preferred not to be limited to these blocks in their selections, and declined to receive as donees, preferring to have a free range for purchase, which could then be effected at an exceedingly low rate. The original price of either class of lots is not certainly known, but is supposed to have been two dollars for an in-lot on the "Bottom," and four dollars for one on the "Hill." All evidence goes to show that prices were very cheap. Colonel Ludlow, for example, having one hundred dollars due him on his bill of surveying, chose to take a tract of one hundred and twenty acres seven miles from the village, rather than accept the offer made him instead, of four out-lots and a square through which now .runs Pearl street, and which is worth millions of dollars. Several years afterwards, though prices had much advanced, lots in the principal streets could yet be had for less than one' hundred dollars. About 1805 town property rose rapidly, from the large influx of popu- lation, but advanced more slowly till 1811, when another rapid appreciation set in, continuing until 1815, when some lots on Main street, between Front and Third, com- manded as much as two hundred dollars per front foot, and one hundred dollars from Third to Sixth. Property on lower Broadway, Front, and Market streets, could then be had for eighty dollars to one hundred and twenty dollars per foot; elsewhere in the business quarter, ten dollars to fifty dollars, according to situation and local advantages for trade. Out-lots still adjoining the town, and neighboring tracts of country property, commanded five hundred dollars to one thousand dollars an acre in 1815.

Settlement in Losantiville still needed stimulating; and a large number of additional lots were given away by

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

35

the proprietors, mostly in May, 1789, to other newcom- ers. The following list has been preserved of lots given away by the proprietors on the same conditions as the first thirty donation lots:

No. of Lot. No. of Lot.

Robert Caldwell 83, 84 Robert Benham 17, 62

John Cutter 92 Joshua Findlar 37

Seth Cutter 89 Henry Bechtle, jr 57

James Millan 94 Robert Benham 63

Levi Woodward 33, 34 Joseph Kelly 113

Thaddeus Bruen 32 Isaac Bates 60

Nathaniel Rolstein 30 James Campbell 154

William Rolstein 65 Dr. John Hole 227

Jonathan Fitts 61 Jabith Philips 91

William Cammel 85 John Cummings 106

Abraham Garrison 86 Captain Furguson 13

Francis Kennedy 151

Lutner Kitchel 80

David Logan 263

Mr. Wick Malign Baker 138 John Covert 85

Cobus Lindsicourt 114 Enoch McHendry 67

Richard Benham 90 James Dument 108

William McMillan, esq 27 John Terry, sr., 116

Same (out-lot) 53 Joel Williams 126

Henry Reed 88 J oseph McHendry 79

John Ellis 129 James Cunningham 128

Captain [before Lieut.] Ford. .9, n Samuel Kitchel 209 or 205

Levi Woodard 34 Colonel Robert Patterson 127

We have corrected the orthography of this list in many places, to correspond with known spelling. These lots seem all to have been in-lots, save one of those noted as a grant to Mr. McMillan.

The following is a diagram of one of the blocks in the first donation parcel, with memoranda of actual settlers who drew the several lots, January 7, 1789:

Lieutenant Mahlon Ford . . .

Elijah Martin 82

Samuel Kennedy 112

	Joel Williams.		Jesse Stewart.
	79		54
	D. Shoemaker.		Benjamin -Dumont.
	78		53
H vO O	0 a, 99 ft.		>• < tn G Z J	99	m tn « a 5 « < 10 «	z < 2 ^ H «

LANDING. PURCHASERS.

Many other names appear on Ludlow's record as the original purchasers of lots in Losantiville, mostly dur- ing 1789. They have been collected by the industry of Mr. Robert Clarke, in his privately printed pamphlet on Losantiville, and we subjoin the list, striking there- from only the names already given as those of proprie- tors of donation lots:

Dr. Adams, George Adams, John Adams, Henry Atchison, Stephen Barns, Daniel Bates, William Beazley, William Bedell, Thomas Black James Blackburn, John Blanchard, Truman Bostwick, Thomas Brown, Brunton & Dougherty, Moses Burd, James Burns, Garret Cavender,

John Cheek, Thomas Cochran, Ephraim Coleman, James Colwell, Peyton Cook, Daniel C. Cooper, John Coulson, Joseph Cutter, Mat- thew Danalds, Edward Darling, Jonathan Davis, Elijah Davis, William Devin, William Dillan, William Dorrough, Russel Farnum, Elijah Finley, Benjamin Flinn, Jacob Fowler, Samuel Freeman, Adam Funk, John Gaston, Uriah Gates, James Goald, William Gowen, Archibald Gray, George Greves, John Griffin, Joel Hamblin, Hezekiah Hardesty, Uriah Hardesty, William Harris, James Harway, William Hedger,

Heooleson, Robert Hinds, Daniel Hole, Darius Hole, William

Hole, Zachariah Hole, Edward Holland, Jerum Holt, Israel Hunt, Nehemiah Hunt, Nicholas Johnson, David Joice, Nicholas Jones, John Kearsey (or Kearney), William Kelley, Rev. James Kemper, Lieuten- ant Kingsbury, Bethuel Kitchell, Daniel Kitchell, John Love, James Lowrey, John Ludlow, James Lyon, Daniel McClure, George McClure, John McClure, Mary McClure, William McClure, William McCoy, James McKnight, Henry McLaughlin, John McLaughlin, James Mar- shall, Isaac Martin, Margaret Martin, Samuel Martin, Luke Mellon, Jonathan Mercer, James Miller, Moses Miller, Jacob Mills, Alexander Moore, Robert Moore, Dr. Morrel, Jesse Mott, Captain John Munn, George Murfey, John Murfey, Mr. Neelson, George Niece, Christopher Noon, Darius C. Orcutt, Andrew Parks, Culbertson Parks, Presley Peck, Thomas Persons, Matthew Pierson, Samuel Pierson, Enos Potter, Cap- tain Pratt, James Pursley, Jacob Reeder, Stephen Reeder, Thomas Rich- ards, John Riddle, Abraham Ritchison, Reuben Rood, Asa Root, Jona- than Ross, John Ross, John Ross, jr., Moses Ross, William Ross, Wil- liam Rusk, Colonel Winthrop Sargent, Levi Sayre, David Scott, James Scott, Obediah Scott, John Seaman, Jonas Seaman, Niles Shaw, Casper Sheets, Ziba Stibbins, Captain Strong, Dennis Sullivan, Jacob Tapping, Henry Taylor, Enos Terry, Robert Terry, John Tharp, Judge George Turner, Benjamin Valentine, Benjamin Van Cleve, John Van Cleve, Jacob Van Doran, -John Van Eton, Cornelius Van Nuys, James Wal- lace, Jacob Warwick, David Welch, Samuel Whiteside, John Wiant, Winters, Amos Wood.

All deeds had still to be given by Symmes, as the pro- prietors of the town had yet no valid title from him ; and he himself, for that matter, had not been able to obtain his patent from the Government.

annals of losantiville.

January was spent mainly in surveying and in laying off in-lots. Improvements were begun on the outlots, and continued as the weather permitted, in order to get them ready for crops in spring, and some were pretty well cleared in the course of the year, especially on the "Bot- tom," between Walnut street and Broadway. A great many trees were cut down this year, but they mostly re- mained on the ground, where some of them were to be seen for years afterwards. Still, the main reliance for food the next fall and winter was upon the settlers at Co- lumbia, who had much of the fertile Turkey bottom under cultivation, without whose aid there would have been pos- itive suffering at Losantiville, and perhaps abandonment of the fort by the garrison. The Indians did not come in and manifest friendship; but did no great amount of harm the first year. About twenty log cabins and one frame dwelling were built during the year, principally on lots adjacent to the Public Landing.* There were but one or two stone chimneys among them all. They were, in general, surrounded by standing timber, stumps, and great butts of timber too difficult to split, and so left to decay or be burned.

It is not certainly known when the first family came. As early as the eighth of February Francis Kennedy was on the ground with his wife Rebecca and children to the perfect number of seven; but his may or may not have been the first entire family. It is known that he found

* Major Fowler, however, thought there were forty or fifty cabins by the close of 1789.

36

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

three women already here — Miss Dement, daughter of James Dement; Mrs. Constance Zenes, afterwards Mrs. William McMillan; and Mrs. Pesthal, a German woman, with some small children. He said he found but three little cabins when he came, all without floors. On the tenth of April Mr. McHenry came, with two grandsons and as many granddaughters; also Mrs. Ross with a small family. Kennedy's family lived in the boat in which it came, until the ice in the river began to run, when he built a cabin right in the middle of Water street, which was not yet opened. He established the first ferry to the Kentucky shore at this point, Thomas Kennedy attending it upon the other side, and had a great deal to do, especially during the campaigns against the Indians. He was drowned near the close of the Indian wars, while ferrying over cattle for the army, and Joel Williams next obtained the ferry license.

Thomas Kennedy, the ferryman beyond the flood, was a Scotchman who came first to Losantiville in the spring, and then removed to the other shore, where Covington now stands, which from him and his vocation long bore the name of "Kennedy's Ferry."

In April of this year arrived Thomas Irwin and James Burns, two young men from Pennsylvania, who had come to push their fortunes in the Miami country. They stopped first at Columbia. Mr. McBride, in his Pioneer Biography, sketch of Mr. Irwin's life, thus narrates their further movements and observations :

Messrs. Irwin and Burns remained at Columbia during the day, ex- amining the place. Mr. Irwin said there were quite a number of fami- lies residing there at the time, scattered over the bottom lands, and, as he thought, very much exposed. They offered great inducements to the young adventurers to locate themselves at Columbia; and, though they informed them of another sm.ill settlement eight miles further down the river, opposite the mouth of the Licking river, they gave them no encouragement to go there.

They remained in their boat during the night, and the next morning left it in the care of the man opposite whose house they had landed, and taking their guns, started down the river-bank in quest of the set- tlement below. The bank was narrow, and there was no road or traces ; the woods were thick, and the way much obstructed by under- brush and vines; — so that the travelling was very tedious. Opposite the mouth of the Licking river, they came to a double shanty occupied by seven men. These men, all but two of them, had been employed with the surveyors in surveying Symmes' Purchase during the preceding winter. Their names were David Logan, Caleb Reeves, Robert [James?] McConnell, Francis Hardesty, Mr. Van Eaton, William Mc- Millan and John Vance. Joel Williams was also there, and had been with the surveyors a part of the time, and was with Israel Ludlow when he surveyed and laid out the town in February [January] previ- ous [1789], marking the lines of the streets and corners of lots on the trees. This shanty had been built by these persons for their accom- modation, immediately after they laid out the town. It was the first improvement made in the place, and these persons were the first set- tlers of Cincinnati. Joel Williams assisted them to build the shanty, and remained with them some time, until, with their assistance, he built a cabin on his own lot near the foot of Main street. He had the plat of the town, was an agent for the proprietors, and encouraged Irwin and Burns to settle themselves at that place.

In the evening of the same day they returned to Columbia, remain- ing on board their boat all right. The next day they floated down the river, and landed at the shanty opposite to the mouth of Licking river. This was about the tenth day of April. The next day was spent in examining the place, and, being pleased with the situation, they con- cluded to remain. Mr. Burns located one town-lot and one out-lot. The out-lot contained four acres. Irwin also obtained a town-lot. They cleared one acre of ground, which they planted with corn. . .

The double shanty, before mentioned, occupied by Logan, McMillan, and others, was situated about the head of Front street. Irwin and

Burns located themselves near to it, and put up a temporary shanty, which they occupied during their stay that summer. The other settlers were scattered principally between Sycamore and Main streets.

According to Irwin's recollections, the first hewed log house in the place was put up by Robert Benham about the first of June on a lot below Main, and between Front street and the river. All the settlers of the village helped him at the raising.

Mr. Irwin did not settle permanently in Cincinnati. He was an ensign in Harrnar's unfortunate campaign, re- mained at the village the next winter and summer, went out as a wagoner in St. Clair's expedition, and remained in Cincinnati a few years longer, in January, 1793, mar- rying Miss Ann Larimore, and settling finally about four miles east of Middletown, Butler county. He was a major in the War of 181 2, and afterwards represented his county repeatedly in both branches of the State legis- lature, and was a colonel in the militia He lived to the age of eighty-one, dying on his farm October 3, 1847.

Another notable arrival of that spring was James Cun- ningham, from Beargrass creek, now Louisville. The latter part of May, however, he pushed out beyond the present site of Reading, where he established Cunningham's Sta- tion or settlement, and was the first white man to settle in Sycamore township. The names of some others, re- corded in the list of purchasers of lots, are undoubtedly those of actual settlers this year.

In December came Colonel John Bartle, one of the earliest and best known merchants in the place, who spent the remainder of his days here, dying December 9, 1839, aged ninety-five.

By the close of 1789 eleven families and twenty-four\ unmarried men were residents of the village. Among] the men of family were Drs. Morrell and Hoel, Stephen I and Jacob Reeder, Daniel Kitchell, Samuel Dick, Messrs. Garrison, Blackburn, and others. There were also the troops of the garrison, which were numerous after the arrival of General Harmar with his reinforcement. An account of the building of the fort, which occurred this year, and of the fort itself, with its subsequent history, will be given in the next chapter.

A TRAGEDY.

The tragedy of the year was the drowning of Noah Badgeley, an immigrant from Westfield, New Jersey, who was one of the surveyors employed by Judge Symmes. He had been up the Licking river, in a time of high water, for a supply of bread-corn, had been successful in his mission, and was returning when his canoe was overturned, he drowned, and three other men of Losantiville placed in imminent danger of drowning. They fortunately se- cured a refuge in a tree-top, but in the midst of the rag- ing waters, where they remained for many hours before relief came.

o

t— t

E- pej o

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

37

CHAPTER VI.

FORT WASHINGTON.

A LITTLE ROMANCE.

Judge Burnet, in his Notes on the Northwestern Ter- ritory, has put on record an entertaining but probably apocryphal tradition concerning the establishment of Fort Washington at Losantiville, rather than North Bend; upon which, in some small measure, it is rea- sonable to believe, turned the subsequent and widely dif- ferent fortunes of the two villages. Ensign Luce (Gen- eral Harmar spelled this Luse), the officer dispatched, after most urgent and repeated solicitations by Judge Symmes, from the garrison at Louisville to North Bend, for the protection of the settlers, had no definite instruc- tions as to the spot he should fortify. It was expected by the judge that he would build a permanent work at the place he had come to occupy; instead of which he erected but a single, and not very strong, blockhouse, and presently moved on with his force of twelve soldiers to Losantiville, where he joined Major Doughty in the construction of the more elaborate works that were after- wards named Fort Washington. Now, says Judge Bur- net:

About that time there was a rumor prevailing in the settlement, said to have been endorsed by the Judge [Symmes] himself, which goes far to unravel the mystery in which the removal of the troops from the Bend was involved. It was said, and believed, that while the officer in command was looking out very leisurely for a suitable site on which to build the block-house, he formed an acquaintance with a beautiful black-eyed female, who called forth his most assiduous and tender attentions. She was the wife of one of the settlers at the Bend. Her husband saw the danger to which he would be exposed if he remained where he was. He therefore resolved at once to remove to Cincinnati, and very promptly executed his resolution. As soon as the gallant commandant discovered that the object of his admiration had changed her residence, he began to think that the Bend was not an advanta- geous situation for a military work, and communicated that opinion to Judge Symmes, who strenuously opposed it. His reasoning, however, was not as persuasive as the sparkling eyes of the fair Dulcinea now at Cincinnati. The result was a determination to visit that place and examine its advantages for a military post; which he communicated to the Judge, with an assurance that if, on examination, it did not prove to be the most eligible, he would return and erect the fort at the Bend. The visit was quickly made, and resulted in a conviction that the Bend could not be compared with Cincinnati as a military position. The troops were accordingly removed, to that place, and the building of a block-house commenced. Whether this structure was on the ground on which Fort Washington was erected by Major Doughty, can not now be decided. That movement, produced by a cause whimsical and apparently trivial in itself, was attended with results of incalculable im- portance. It settled the question whether North Bend or Cincinnati was to be the great commercial town of the Miami country.

Thus we see what unexpected results are sometimes produced by circumstances apparently trivial. The incomparable beauty of a Spar- tan dame produced a ten years' war, which terminated in the destruc- tion 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 this captivating American Helen had continued at the Bend, the garrison would have been erected there; population, capital, and business would have centred there; and there would have been the Queen City of the West.

This is a very pretty story, and its narration gives a beautiful tinge of romance to the local coloring of these annals. But the well-ascertained and authenticated facts are against it. There is no other evidence than this gos- sipy tradition that Ensign Luce built anything at Losanti- ville, prior to the beginnings of Fort Washington, or that

he had any voice in the selection of a site for the fort. On the other side, it is perfectly well known that he did build a work of some permanence and strength (though Symmes, in a letter of July 17, 1789, calls it a "little block-house, badly constructed ") at North Bend, and re- mained there for several months, perhaps until after Major Doughty had begun the work at Losantiville ; and that his transfer to that station was determined, not by an affaire de cceur, but by military considerations solely. The check which the progress of North Bend received in 1789 was the result of previous Indian murders and scares, and not merely of the transfer of a handful of troops. The pretty story, as veritable history, must be given up. The genesis of Fort Washington, as we shall presently show, is now perfectly well known ; and Ensign Luce (or Luse) had nothing whatever to do with it. Luce, it may be added, resigned in March of the follow- ing year, and Harmar, in forwarding his resignation to the Secretary of War, seemed particularly anxious that it should be accepted.

THE REAL BEGINNINGS.

The determination to plant a fort opposite the mouth of the Licking, and the commencement of work upon it, are usually set down for June or July of 1789. We first hear of the project, however, in Major Denny's Military Journal, under a date later than either of these. Writing in his quarters at Fort Harmar, he records :

Aug. 9th [1789J. — Captain Strong, with his two subalterns, Lieuten- ant Kingsbury and Ensign Hartshorn/ and a complete company of seventy men, embark for the Miamis.

nth. — Captain Ferguson joined us with his recruits. Major Doughty follows Captain Strong for the purpose of choosing ground and laying out a new route intended for the protection of persons who have settled within the limits of Symmes' Purchase.

Sept. 4th. — Ferguson with his company ordered to join Strong in erecting a fort near the Miami. Lieutenant Pratt, the quartermaster, ordered to the same place.

Major Doughty, the senior officer of the troops thus dispatched to the Miami country, had evidently dis- cretionary powers as to the location of the fort; for a letter from' General Harmar, written from Fort Harmar September 12, 1789, to General Knox, Secretary of War, contains the following:

Major Doughty informs me, in his letter dated the twenty-first ulti- mo, that he" arrived at the Little Miami on the sixteenth, and after reconnoitring for three days from thence to the Big Miami, for an eligi- ble situation whereon to erect the works for headquarters, he had at length determined to fix upon a spot opposite Licking river, which he represents as high and healthy, abounding with never-failing springs, etc. , and the most proper position he could find for the purpose.

Work, then, was pretty certainly begun upon Fort Washington about the twentieth of September, 1789.

The site selected was a little east of Western row, or Broadway, between that and the present Ludlow street, just outside the village limits, as then surveyed. It was upon the hill, but not far removed from the brow of it as the second terrace then existed — right upon the line of Third street, pretty nearly around the location of the Trollopean Bazaar for more than fifty years, and extend- 'ng near sixty feet on each side of the present extension of Third street. The entire reservation, as subsequently made by the Government for the purpose in the patent to

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

Symmes, was fifteen acres, upon which the fort stood near the west and north sides. The position which it occupied, with reference to present blocks and streets, may be readily seen by reference to the old maps of Cin- cinnati, in the books descriptive of the city in the early day.

In February, 1841, Mr. Samuel Abbey, then a resi- dent of New England, but a sergeant in Doughty's com- mand at the time of the erection, revisited the site while on a visit to Cincinnati, and emphatically identified the spot between Broadway and Ludlow streets, where Third street begins to change direction northwardly, as the sta- tion of the flagstaff of the fort. Mr. Abbey had reached the advanced age of seventy-five years, but his faculties were still in vigorous action, and his recollections of persons and places in the early day of Cincinnati seemed undimmed.

THE MAIN STRUCTURE

of the fort was square in shape, a simple fortification of hewed and squared timbers, about one hundred and eighty feet long on each side, with barracks two stories high, connected at the corners by means of high and strong pickets with bastions, or more properly block- houses. These were doubtless the "four block-houses" spoken of in one of Timothy Flint's books as