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OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest                    Volume 99 : Issue 505

Today's Topics:
  #1 HAMILTON COUNTY PART 40              [AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M RE]


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X-Message: #1
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 22:50:12, -0500
From: AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M REASONER)
To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com
Message-Id: <199907160250.WAA12494@mime3.prodigy.com>
Subject: HAMILTON COUNTY PART 40
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII

HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO By Henry Howe, LL.D., 1898

                        HAMILTON COUNTY PART 40

        One day, just before the war, standing on our office steps in
Cincinnati, there passed by a young man about thirty years of age. He was
alone, and as he approached we looked at him with unusual interest. He was
rather short in stature, thin in the flanks, but broad, full chested. His
complexion was very fair, and beard long, flowing and silky, and his face
frank and genial. He walked erect and, as was his wont, very leisurely, and
with a side-to-side swing. As his eye met ours a slight smile flit over his
face, not one of recognition for there was no acquaintance. Probably his
mind was far away and he did not see us, and it was the memory of a happy
incident that had lighted his face with the momentary joy. Possibly it was
the earnestness of our gaze, if perchance he noticed it, but that was
pardonable. His fellow-citizens were proud of him and liked to gaze upon
him being, as he was, to the manor born and a man of poetic genius, Wm.
HAINES LYTLE, the author of "Antony and Cl
eopatra," whose name was to go down to posterity as the "Soldier Poet." His
reputation at the time was that of being highly social and possessed of
winning politeness, a modest bearing and chivalrous spirit. One by our side
who was under him, as we write, says: "My regiment was marching as an
escort to some baggage wagons when an aid galloped up to me and said,
'General Lytle sends his compliments to Col. Beatty with the request to
send a company to the rear to guard against guerrillas.'" To be ever
courteous seems to have been as a sort of intuition with him, and showed
the high refinement of the man. It is said that just before the fatal
charge at Chickamauga he drew on his gloves with the remark, "If I must die
I will die as a gentleman." Whether true or a myth it matters not: if a
myth its invention shows it was characteristic and, therefore, spiritually
true.
        Wm. Haines Lytle came from a Scotch-Irish stock, and noted for
warlike qualities and experiences. He was born in the old Lytle mansion on
Lawrence street, November 2, 1826, graduated at Cincinnati College at
twenty years of age, following his naturally military instincts became a
Captain in Second Ohio in the war with Mexico, studied and practiced the
law, was a member of the Ohio Legislature, in 1857 was Major-General of the
State militia. When the rebellion broke out he was commissioned Colonel of
the Tenth Ohio, the Cincinnati Irish regiment, which he led into Western
Virginia, and fell wounded at Carnifex Ferry while leading a desperate
charge; was again badly wounded and taken prisoner at Perrysville, where
his regiment suffered terrible loss. He was commissioned General and
commanded the First Brigade of Sheridan's division on the fatal field of
Chickamauga, where he fell at the head of his column while charging,
pierced by three bullets. Captain Howard Green, a volunte
er aid, sprang from his horse, received the General in his arms, and was
rewarded with a smile of grateful recognition. Several officers and
orderlies attempted to bear him off the field. The peril of this
undertaking may be imagined since two of the orderlies were killed, and
Col. Wm. B. McCreary wounded and left for dead on the field.
        General Lytle repeatedly opened his eyes and motioned to his
friends to leave him and save themselves. Finally, upon coming to a large
tree upon a green knoll, they laid him down. He then handed his sword to
one of the orderlies, and waving his hand toward the rear, he thus tried to
express with his last breath that his well-tried blade should never fall
into the hands of the enemy. So closed the life of the poet-soldier, Lytle.
His death found him, as he prophetically wrote years before:
                "On some lone spot, where, far from home and friends,
                 The way-worn pilgrim on the turf reclining,
                 His life, and much of grief, together ends."
        Lytle had many friends in the Southern army, and his remains were
treated with every mark of respect, his mourners being alike his friends
and foes. His body was temporarily buried in a coffin until they could be
sent home. Until the outbreak of the war poetry was to him a frequent
occupation and amusement. That on which his fame will permanently rest,
"Antony and Cleopatra," was originally published, in 1857, in the
Cincinnati Enquirer.
        When preparing for our first tour over Ohio we passed a few days in
the rooms of Dr. Randall, Secretary of the Cincinnati Historical and
Philosophical Society. The Doctor then mainly constituted the society. A
few years later he was shot while dodging somewhere in California behind a
counter to avoid the ire of a pursuing ruffian; but the society still
survives. He had as an office mate L.A. Hine, then youthful, large and
handsome, who was trying to reform a deceptive and deceiving world by
publishing a magazine called "The Herald of Truth," wherein was duly set
forth a nice project for "Land for the Landless;" and then later he
established his permanent home with his family at a spot properly named for
domestic felicity; it being Love Land.
        The rooms were on East Fifth street, opposite the old Dennison
House, where the well-fed, portly form of Landlord Dennison, father of
then-to-be war Governor, was a daily object for pleasing contemplation.
Alongside was the horse market, where for decades were daily sales of
horses, sold amid crowds of coarse-grained men, unearthly, confusing yells
and poundings of auctioneers, and the scampering to and fro on bareback
horses of stable boys through the street to show their points. On looking
upon the spot, its vulgarity and coarseness, its yells and shouting, and
often oaths, it seemed as though the gates of heaven must be afar: at least
there appeared no one in search of them in that vicinity. To enhance the
attractions it was at a time when the city was termed Porkopolis, its
citizens Porkopolitans, for swine had full liberty of the streets, living
upon their findings, or going in huge droves stretching from curb to curb
to temporary boarding places in the suburbs of Deer c
reek.
        One day, while there in the rooms of the society, in bounced two
laughing, merry country girls. Some jokes passed between them and the
Doctor and Hine, and then they bounced out. They were from a rural spot
eight miles north of the city, and well named Mount Healthy, their names
Alice and Phoebe Cary, girls then respectively 26 and 22 years of age, and
just rising into fame.
        The portraits as published are not at all as they were then. Phoebe
had a round, chubby face, and seemed especially merry. Alice we again saw
and but once years later at a concert by Jenny Lind in the old National
Theatre on Sycamore, near Third street. She was then small and delicate
with an oval face, expression sedate and thoughtful. She was attired in
Quaker-like simplicity, her dark hair parted in the middle and combed
smooth over the brow. No maiden could look more pure and sweet than she on
that evening. Her appearance remains as "a living picture on memory's
wall." By her sat that most superb-looking rosy-cheeked old man, Bishop
M'Ilvaine, whose resemblance to Washington was of almost universal remark.
Robert Cry, the father of the Cary sisters, came in 1803 to the "Wilderness
of Ohio" from New Hampshire, and in 1814 married Elizabeth Jessup and made
a home upon the farm afterwards known as the "Clovernook" of Alice Cary's
charming stories.
        Their mother, a sweet woman of literary tastes, died in 1835, and
two years later their father married again. Alice was then 17 and Phoebe 13
years of age. Their stepmother was unsympathetic with their literary
aspirations, which at this time were budding. Work with her was the
ultimatum of life, and while they were willing and aided to the full extent
of their strength in household labor, they persisted in studying and
writing when the day's work was done, while she refusing the use of candles
to the extend of their wishes, they had recourse to the device of a saucer
of lard with a bit of rag for a wick after the rest of the family had
retired. Alice began to write verses at 18, and Phoebe some years after
her. For years the Cincinnati papers formed the principal medium by which
they became known, then followed the ladies' Repository of Boston, Graham's
Magazine, and the National Era of Washington. Recognition from high
authorities at the East then came to their Western home
. John G. Whittier and others wrote words of encouragement, and Edgar Allan
Poe, pronounced Alice's "Pictures of Memory" one of the most musically
perfect lyrics in our language.
        In 1849 a great event occurred to the sisters - a visit to their
home from Horace Greeley. The philosopher had come to the city and wanted
the pleasure of an acquaintance with these rural maidens, whose simple,
natural verses of country life had touched a sympathetic chord, and so went
out to their home and gladdened their hearts. We presume after that visit
the stepmother wished she had been less close with her candles.
        We remember that time well; the philosopher was an old
acquaintance; the weather had turned intensely cold, and he said to us he
was unprovided with a sufficiently warm clothing for a return by stage
coach over the mountains.
        A winter fashion at that time in the Ohio valley was a huge coarse
blue blanket with a black border of about six inches. These shawls were
extensively made into overcoats, whereon their black zebra-like stripes had
full display. A more uncouth appearing garment could not be well imagined
either as shawl or overcoat. It was warm, but absorbed rain like a sponge.
The shawls had struck the philosophic eye, they were so peculiarly what was
then known as "Western," and to an inquiry we replied we had one not in use
to which he was welcome. He gratefully accepted the gift and wore it home
as a specimen of Cincinnati fashions, carrying, too, in its meshes a
generous quantity of the city's soot, for which the garment had an especial
retaining adaptability. To have thus ministered in that long ago to the
comfort of an old-time philosopher bent on reforming mankind and inviting
young men "to go West" is another pleasing picture on "Memory's walls."
Nearly thirty years elapsed ere we again saw the sage -he was on his
Presidential canvass, riding through Fourth street in an open barouche. His
white, benevolent face had broadened, and he was bowing and smiling to the
people, looking "for all the world" like some good old grandmamma when bent
on dispensing to the youngsters some good warm gingerbread just out of the
oven.
        Having obtained recognition from the Eastern literati and some
pecuniary success by a volume of their poems, in 1852, the sisters, first
Alice and then Phoebe Cary, removed to New York to devote, themselves to
literature. They established themselves in a modest home, and by their
habits of industry and frugality had success from the very start.
        Occasionally they visited their old home and resumed the habits of
their girlhood days. When they had obtained literary eminence they
established on Sunday evenings weekly receptions, when for a term of
fifteen years were wont to gather the finest intellects, the most cultured
characters of the metropolis and the East. Assemblies so comprehensive in
elements so comprehensive in elements, so intellectually varied and
harmonious, were never before seen in the metropolis. They were quite
informal and not especially gratifying to the mere butterflies of fashion
whom curiosity sometimes prompted to attend.
        Alice was frail, and in her last sickness, prolonged for years, she
was tenderly nursed by her stronger sister, bearing her great sufferings
with wonderful patience and resignation. She died February 12, 1871, and
five months later Phoebe followed her. She was naturally robust in health,
but she had been weakened by intense sorrow, and then becoming exposed to
malarial influences quickly followed her sister. Both were buried in
Greenwood cemetery.
        It had been pitiful to see Phoebe's efforts to bear up under her
dreadful loneliness after her sister's death. "She opened the windows to
admit the sunlight, she filled her room with flowers, she refused to put on
mourning and tried to interest herself in general plans for the advancement
of woman. All in vain. Her writings were largely poems, parodies and hymns."
        One of her poems, written when she was only eighteen years of age,
has a world-wide reputation. It's title is "Nearer Home," and it has filled
a page in nearly every book of sacred song since it s composition. Its
opening verses are:
                One sweetly solemn thought
                Comes to me o'er and o'er
                I am nearer home to-day
                Than I ever have been before.

                Nearer my Father's house
                Where the mansions be:
                Nearer the great white throne,
                Nearer the crystal sea.

                -continued in part 41

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End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #505
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