OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 433 Today's Topics: #1 HAMILTON COUNTY - PART 32 [AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M RE] ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:00:20, -0500 From: AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M REASONER) Subject: HAMILTON COUNTY - PART 32 HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO By Henry Howe, LL.D., 1898 HAMILTON COUNTY part 32 "Let us go in; these ladies have some conspiracy together." Such was a remark playfully made to us in a garden, near sunset, on an August evening in the summer of 1845. Two old gentlemen and their wives, two old ladies, were present, beside the writer; the ladies were a little one side, looking at the flowers glinting in the declining rays, and, true to their sex, busy talking. The speaker was Henry Clay, and this was his home, Ashland, near Lexington, Ky. He had invited us to tea, and directed through the house but a few moments before, we had found him in his garden. The other was JACOB BURNET, to whom he had introduced us. No man then living had made such an impress as he upon the history of Ohio and the Northwest. He looked every inch the peer of Mr. Clay, as indeed he was. They were strong friends; but in person and manners antipodal. Mr. Clay was all geniality, his voice deeply sonorous and musical. Judge Burnet was a trifle less in stature than Mr. Clay, but broader. He was then seventy-six years of age; Mr. Clay several years younger. The Judge was a thorough gentleman of the old school, of Scotch descent, his complexion very dark, swarthy; eyes black, and general expression forbidding, and manner reserved and dignified. He walked with a cane, his hair in a queue, and we think he wore a ruffled shirt. His residence at this time was in a large old-style mansion, square in shape, with a broad hall running through the centre, on Seventh street, corner Elm, Cincinnati, of which city he was its first citizen. This eminent man was the son of Dr. William Burnet, surgeon-general of the Revolutionary army, and a member of the Continental Congress; was born at Newark, N.J., in 1770; was educated at Princeton, and in 1796, when twenty-six years of age, came to Cincinnati to practice law, then a village of a few log-cabins and 150 inhabitants. The entire territory, now comprising five States and ten millions of people, was mostly a wilderness, containing scarcely the semblance of a road, bridge, or ferry. This territory was divided into four counties - Washington, Hamilton, St. Clair, and Knox. The seats of justice were respectively at Marietta, Cincinnati, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, in each of which Courts of Common Pleas and General Quarter Sessions of the peace were established. From 1796 to 1803 the Bar of Hamilton county occasionally attended the General Court at Marietta and Detroit, and during the whole of that time Mr. St. Clair (son of the General), Judge Symmes, and Judge Burnet never missed a term in either of those counties. These journeys were made with five or six in company and with pack-horses. They were sometimes eight or ten days in the wilderness, "and at all seasons of the year were compelled to swim every water-course in their way which was too deep to be forded." They had some hair-breadth escapes. One night their horses refused to go any farther, and they were obliged to camp; the next morning they found they had halted on the verge of a precipice. In 1799 Judge Burnet was selected by the President of the Untied States as a member of the Legislative Council of the Territorial Government, of which he was the leading mind. "Thus," said the late Judge Este, "in less than four years he was at the head of the bar of the West, the popular, intelligent and official leader of the Legislature. Almost an entirely new system of laws was undertaken, and the labor devolved on him. He cheerfully engaged in it and was so clearly convinced of the necessity of giving himself up to the business of legislating for the Territory that he would not listen to the friends who urged him to be a delegate to Congress. Thus early and permanently did his mind make its impress upon the legislative history of the country." Judge Burnet was the author of the first constitution of Ohio. From 1812 to 1816 was a member of the State Legislature. In 1821 he was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, serving until 1828, when he resigned to accept the position of United States Senator, to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of General Harrison. As a senator he was the intimate personal and political friend of Webster. From the notes taken by Senator Burnet in the celebrated discussion between Hayne and Webster the latter in part framed the reply which stamped Webster as the matchless orator of our country. He was the life-long friend of General Harrison, and as a delegate to the Harrisburg Convention secured his nomination for President. He influenced Congress to relieve the settlers of the West and Southwest from much of the indebtedness for their lands, which otherwise would have involved the great mass in irretrievable ruin. Mr. Burnet possessed great public spirit and was eminent for solid integrity and acuteness of intellect, Mansfield says such was the construction of his mind that "it was impossible for Burnet not to have been a partisan." His likes and dislikes were held with great tenacity. When Aaron Burr was in Cincinnati he was peremptorily refused an interview by Judge Burnet, who sent him word that he would never shake hands with the murderer of his own and his father's friend. Originally a Federalist, he became a strong Whig, and in the United States Senate came up to the level of its great leaders, Webster and Clay. He died in 1853, a firm believer in the inspiration of the Bible, a Presbyterian in faith, but was far removed from sectarian bigotry. NICHOLAS LONGWORTH was born in Newark, N.J., in 1782, was for a time a clerk in his brother's store in South Carolina, came to Cincinnati in 1803 and died in 1863, leaving an estate of many millions from early investments in Cincinnati land. He studied law and practiced for a while, and in 1828 began the cultivation of Catawba grape, and from it manufactured wine of a high marketable value. He had 200 acres of vineyards, a large wine-house, and was favorably known by his experiments on the strawberry. The Catawba grape was cultivated with great success for a number of years, producing about 500 gallons of wine per annum; then it gradually failed. It is thought that the clearing of the forest has changed the climate of Southern Ohio, which is now afflicted with what is regarded as destructive to the grape culture, that is - heavy fogs, wet atmosphere, changes from warm to cold, without wind - a condition from which the islands and shore of Lake Erie are free, and where the grape culture is so successful. Mr. Longworth lived in a huge stone cottage mansion in the centre of a three or four acre lot, at the east end of Fourth street, originally built by Martin Baum, now the residence of David Sinton. Forty years ago the spot was known as Longworth's Garden, and was one of the chief attractions of the city from its display of flowers and fruits, notably grapes. "He was very shrewd, quick witted; with great common sense and acquisitiveness. He had little dignity or learning, but had a quiet good humor and a readiness at repartee which made him very popular." He was a friend to artists and kindly to the poor, and very eccentric. He was short in person and careless in his dress. As was often his wont, he had shown a stranger through his grounds, when the latter, mistaking this man of millions for a serving man, on leaving him at the gate dropped a dime in his hand, which Mr. Longworth accepted with thanks and put in his pocket. Every Monday for a term of years he had at his house a free gift distribution to the poor. At the appointed hour strings of old ladies, German and Irish, would be seen, flocking here with baskets to receive at their option a loaf of bread or a peck of cornmeal or a dime. When he started out in the morning to make calls upon his numerous tenants or otherwise, he would have the business of each call written on a separate slip of paper and pinned on his coat sleeve. These would be pinned on in the order of his calls and torn off in rotation. He had continuous appeals for charity, and he was wont to say in certain cases, "Ha! a poor widow, is she? Got a struggling family of little ones? I won't give her a cent. She is the Lord's poor - plenty to help such, I will help the devil's poor, the miserable drunken dog that nobody else will do anything for but, despise and kick. And he did. He used to talk of himself in the second person, as once we heard him say. There's Longworth; it takes $30,000 to pay his taxes, and it keeps him poor to raise the money." This was true; he owned much earth, but had little cash. His son Joseph and grandson Nicholas were noted as patrons of art, as is his granddaughter, Mrs. Maria Longworth Storer. The entire family is unusually popular from it beneficence and public spirit, especially in the fostering the things of beauty that give to life its efforescence and fragrance. The first banker west of the Alleghenies, a successful merchant and most enterprising citizen, was JOHN H. PIATT. He did so much for Cincinnati in developing its resources that President William H. Harrison, in his last speech at home before going to his inauguration, gave most of it to an eulogy of Mr. Piatt, saying among other things that a statue should be erected on the river landing to the memory of the man who had done so much for the city. That he has no monument and now scarcely a memory, that the one street named for him had its name changed, does not speak well for Cincinnati. -continued in part 33 -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #433 *******************************************