?Y .. ^ y'iS BEGINNINGS OF LITERARY CULTURE OHIO VALLEY HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES BY W. H. VENABLE, LLD. Author of "A School History of the United States," " Foot-prints of the Pioneers, "June on the Miami," "Melodies of the Heart," "The Teacher's Dream," etc. CINCINNATI ROBERT CLARKE & CO. 1891 Copyright, 1891, By W. H. VENABLE. PREFACE. More than twenty years ago, in preparing for publica- tion a series of articles on the libraries of Cincinnati, the writer had occasion to glance through a good many books of western origin, and to examine files of the earliest newspapers and magazines issued in the Central States. This incidental rummage through the alcoves of a dozen dusty libraries led to further investigation, and awakened curiosity to study the intellectual agencies which created the first literary institutions in the Ohio Valley. Various items of information concerning local writers and writ- ings, from print and manuscript, and from the stored memory of persons acquainted with the general subject, furnished a stock of material which seemed worth pre- serving. A certain historical value attaches to memoranda derived from interviews with literary veterans whose minds are rich in authentic reminiscences of " The days when we were pioneers." Data obtained from the sources mentioned supplied the substance of a course of lectures on Western Poets and Poetry, delivered in College Hall, Cincinnati, in the win- ter of 1881, and afibrded topics for occasional contribu- tions to the Commercial Gazette, the Magazine of Western History, and the Ohio Historical and Archaeological Quar- terly, in the years 1886-7. Portions of the lectures and published sketches alluded to are reproduced in this vol- (iii) 989496 iv Preface, ume, in revised form, and with much additional matter, never before in print. The discursive, and even desultory character of the present book — its defects as to arrangement, proportion, and unity, will be pardoned, in consideration of the fact that the work was not fore-planned, not a regularly de- veloped essay or treatise, but a repository of accumulated notes. To condense, classify, and connect the gathered fragments, and to dispose all under not unsuitable head- ings, so as to produce a convenient reference book, has been the unambitious endeavor of the author. It was at the urgent advice of several gentlemen prominent in let- ters, and interested in preserving for historical and literary purposes such ana as these pages record, that the decis- ion was made to put forth, in book form, the chapters here collected under the title Beginnings of Literar}^ Cul- ture in the Ohio Valley. Though not confined strictly to the history of hegin- fiingSy this imperfect survey of the cultural elements of early western society is concerned, in the main, with per- sons and events belonging to the period closed by the Civil War. As a rule, the biographical parts of the nar- rative relate to the dead ; but exceptions are made in the case of many noted men and women, yet living, who achieved reputation before the year 1860. Brief mention of numerous living writers will be found, usually in foot- notes, in the chapter on Early Periodical Literature, which deals with years quite recent. Doubtless there will be missed from the index names that should have appeared, but no invidious discrimina- tion is intended. The contents of this volume, far from exhausting the subjects discussed, are merely suggestive. These gleanings show only specimen sheaves, not a com- Preface. v plete harvest. The collector gathered most of his mate- rial from the sources nearest at hand, not having had leisure or opportunity to examine, with equal care, all parts of the wide field indicated by the title of the book. Whatever is wanting to complete it, this contribution to the history of early culture in the Ohio country is offered as a report of progress. The author is indebted to a number of ladies and gen- tlemen, who, in several ways, have aided in the prepara- tion of this book. Special acknowledgment is made to Col. Reuben T. Durrett, of Louisville, Ky., for much in- formation in regard to literary matters in Kentucky ; to Mr. Henry Cauthorn, of Yincennes, Ind., who contributed an entire chapter on the literary beginnings of Indiana ; to William D. Gallagher, whose cyclopediac knowledge of western writers extends over a period of three-quarters of a century ; to Mr. Robert W. Steele, of Dayton, O., in whom courtesy and public spirit unite to help every good cause; and to Mr. Robert Clarke, of Cincinnati, without whose cordial feeling toward ventures of the kind, this volume would not have been issued. Thanks are due, also, for the loan of books and manuscripts, or for letters of information, or other polite favor relating to this pub- lication, to Mr. A. C. Quiseuberry, Lexington, Ky.; Hon. Harvey Rice, Cleveland, 0.; Hon. Horace P. Biddle, Lo- gansport, Ind.; Mrs. Mary M. Coggeshall, Chicago, III.; Mrs. M. E. Meline, Cincinnati; Mrs. Sarah H. Foote, Cin- cinnati; Mrs. E. T. Swiggert, Morrow, 0.; Mrs. Alice W. Brotherton, Cincinnati ; Hon. Chas. D. Drake, Washing- ton, D. C; Hon. A. H. McGuffey, Cincinnati; Mr. Wm. Anderson Hall, Cincinnati ; Mrs. Josephine Foster, Cin- cinnati ; Mr. Moncure D. Conway, Brooklyn, ]^. Y.; Mr. Nathan Baker and family, Cincinnati ; Mr. Emerson Ben- vi Preface, iicttj Philadelphia; Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Boston ; Rev. R. W. Alger, Boston ; E. C. Z. Judson, New York ; Mr. L. A. Hine, Loveland, 0.; Hon. Wm. Heary Smith, New York; Prof. Wm. G. Williams, Cincinnati; Dr. Ly- man C. Draper, Madison, Wis.; Hon. Benj. S. Parker, New Castle, Ind.; Mr. Jerome B. Howard, Cincinnati ; Mr. Sam- uel Bernstein, Cincinnati ; Mr. C. T. Webber, Cincinnati ; Hon. D. Thew Wright, Cincinnati ; Mr. Jacob P. Dunn, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mr. R. G. Lewis, Chillicothe, O.; Mr. Drew Sweet, Waynesville, 0.; Mr. J. L. Smith, Dana, Ind.; Dr. John Clark Ridpath, Greencastle, Ind.; Mr. I. H. Julian, San Marcos, Texas ; Mr. Alexander Hill, Cin- cinnati; Hon. Will Cumback, Greencastle, Ind.; and Miss Harriet Edith Venable, Cincinnati. Every convenience in library privileges was obligingly afforded the writer, by Mr. A. W. Whelpley, of the Cincinnati Public Library ; Mr. John M. Newton, of the Young Men's Mercantile Library; Mr. R. E. Champion, of the Ohio Mechanics' Institute ; and by the officers of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society. Cincinnati, May 18, 1891. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Some Early Travelers and Annalists. Carlyle to Emerson on certain Quaint Books— Bossu's Travels— Bar- tram's Travels — Abundance of Literature concerning the Central States — Character and Influence of this Literature — Books on the Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi by French Travelers — John G. Shea's translations of these — First Accounts of the Ohio Valley— Christopher Gist and George Croghan Ex- plore Ohio in 1750-1 — Major George Washington's Journal — Boone Explores Kentucky in 1769 — John Filson, and his History of Kentucky — Captain Gilbert Imlay, and his Account of the West in 1792— Henry Toulmin— Travels of Isaac Weld— Weld's Description of the People of the Backwoods — Baily's Journal — The Travels of Michaux — Of Yolney — " The Infamous Ashe " — The Travels of H. M. Brackenridge— Of Thaddeus Mason Har- ris—Of Christian Schultz— Of Timothy Flint— Of John Brad- bury — Bradbury's Interview with Boone, in Missouri — Books of Travel by Lewis and Clarke, Cuming, Stoddard, Harding, Dana and Long — Morris Birkbeck's English Settlement in Illinois — Thomas Nuttall's Voyage down the Ohio — A Frolic — A Corn- husking — Louisville in 1821 — " Silence and Gloomy Solitude " — H. R. Schoolcraft's Travels— Along the Wabash in 1821— Albion — Harmony — Bullock's Journey — First Historians and Histories of the Ohio Valley— Humphrey Marshall's Kentucky — Butler's Kentucky — Collins's History — Haywood's Books on Tennessee — First Historical Sketches of Ohio — Nahum Ward's Rare Pamphlet — Salmon P. Chase's Preliminary Sketch — His- torical Labors of Caleb Atwater, Jacob Burnet, Henry Howe, and S. P. Hildreth — Historians of Indiana — John B. Dillon — Judge Law — 0. H. Smith's Reminiscences —Early Annals of Illinois — The Writings of Birkbeck, Dr. Peck, Henry Brown, Governor Reynolds, and Governor Ford — Extracts from Rey- nolds's Pioneer History — Historical Services of Judge James Hall — Compendiums of Western History by Timothy Flint, James H. Perkins, Dr. Monette, and Others — Patterson's His- tory of the Backwoods — Doddridge's Notes — Withers's Chroni- cles — Sketches by John A. McClung, John McDonald, and (vii) viii Contents. James McBride — Books of Early Travel and History as Literary Material for the coming Historian, Novelist, and Poet 1 CHAPTER II. The Pioneer Prbss and Its Product— Book Making— Book Selling. The First Printing in America— The Pittsburg Gazette— John Scull — First Book Printed West of the Alleghanies— First Press in Kentucky— John Bradford — The Kentucky Gazette— Other Kentucky Newspapers— The Public Advertiser — The Focus — The Louisville Journal — The Centinel of the North-western Territory — The Western Spy — Other Newspapers in Ohio — The Early Press of Indiana and Illinois— First Paper Mills in the West— Early Book Printing in the Ohio Valley— First Books Made in Kentucky — First Books Made in Ohio — Beginning of the Book Trade — First Book-shops in the West — The Book Busi- ness in Cincinnati — Some Veteran Publishers — Sketch of U. P. James 36 CHAPTER III. Early Periodical Literature of the Ohio Valley. The Medley, 1803— Hunt's Western Review, 1819— The Cincinnati Literary Gazette, 1824— Flint's Western Monthly Review, 1827— Hall's Western Magazine, 1832— The Western Messenger, 1835— The Hesperian, 1837— Moore's Western Lady's Book, 1850— The Parlor Magazine, 1853— L. A. Hine's Periodicals— The Western Literary Journal, 1844— The Quarterly Journal and Review, 1846— The Herald of Truth, 1847— The Indies' Repos- itory, 1841— The Genius of the West, 1857— Conway's Dial, 1860— List of Periodicals Published in the Ohio Valley from 1803 to 1860 58 CHAPTER IV. Libra RIBS —The Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio. Libraries of Kentucky— Transylvania Library— Georgetown Li- brary—Danville Library— The Old Lexington Library— The first Library in Ix)ui8ville— Private Libraries— The Durrett Collection— Rare Books— First Libraries in Ohio— The Putnam Family Library— The Belpre Library— History of Putnam Library by Dr. I. W. Andrews— The Cincinnati Library— The Coon-Skin Lil)rary at Ames— The Cincinnati Circulating Li- brary—First Library in Dayton, O.— Historical and Philosophi- cal Society of Ohio— Its Charter Members— Early Publications of— Transfer from Columbus to Cincinnati— I/etter from J. Sulli- vant— Growth of the Library— Removals of the Society— The New England Society— Present Condition of the Historical Li- brary 129 Contents.f ix CHAPTER V. Backwoods Colleges, Schools, and Teachers. Jefferson's Educational Doctrines— Influence of " Notes on Vir- ginia" — Founding of Lexington, Ky. — John McKinney and the Wild Cat — Another Schoolmaster John — The Virginia School Act of 1780— Transylvania Seminary — Kentucky Acad- emy — Transylvania University— A Distinguished Faculty — Dr. Horace HoUey — Dr. Charles Caldwell— Prof. Rafinesque — Dr. Joseph Buchanan — The College Library — The Literary Society Alumni — The First Seat ui Culture in the West— "Athens" and "Tyre " — New England comes to Ohio — The Ordinance of 1787 Dr. Manasseh Cutler— His Labors in Behalf of Education — Ohio University Founded — Thomas Ewing — Other Graduates — Miami University — Its Alumni — Dr. R. H. Bishop — Prof. R. H. Bishop — Lancaster Seminary — Cincinnati College — Dr. W. H. McGufFey — Other Early Colleges in Ohio, Indiana, and Illi- nois — The Course of Study— The Golden Age of Academies — First Schools in Ohio— The Classics in the Woods— First School House in the North-west — Pioneer Schools in Cincinnati — New- port Academy— Francis Glass— Pioneer Pedagogues — Getting up a School — Whisky and Tobacco — The School in Operation — Character of Early School Books— The Three R's— School-book Authorship— Publishers— A Dream of " Dillworth "—Cadmus Conquers 161 CHAPTER VI. The Voice of the Preacher and the Clash of Creeds. " My Church "—The Jesuit Missionaries— The French Catholics in Illinois and Indiana — The Moravians in Ohio — Heckewelder — Zeisberger- First Preachers in the Ohio Valley— The Baptists in Kentucky — Lewis Craig — Presbyterians — Catholics— The First Church in Marietta— Cutler— His Liberality— Rev. Daniel Story — Divine Service in Military Form — Putnam's "Two Horned" Church— The Baptists in the Miami Purchase — Founding of the First Church in Cincinnati — Rev. David Rice — Rev. James Kemper — Church Troubles— Rev. Joshua R. Wil- son and Son — War of Sects — Heresy and Infidelity — Origin of the Camp-meeting — "The Great Awakening" — Revivals of 1826-7-8-9— Barton W. Stone— The Cane Ridge Meeting-house- New Lights — Alexander Campbell — The Unitarian Revival — Dr. Flint— Lorenzo Dow — " Johnny Appleseed " — Dr. Peck in Illinois — His Useful Labors — Peter Cartwright — Dr. Bascom — Dr. W. H. Raper— Dr. Russell Bigelow— Dr. Lyman Beecher — His Battle with Dr. Wilson— The Proselyting Spirit— "New Lights" — Campbell's Work — Great Debates — Campbell v. Owen — Campbell v. Purcell— Campbell v. Rice — Rice v. Pin- X Contents, gree— Owen at New Harmony— Frances Wright—The Free En- quirer—The " Leatherwood God " 197 CHAPTER VII. Political Oratory and Orators — The Lecture. Fourth of July Eloquence — Judge Varnum at Marietta — Governor Bt. Clair's Response— Edward Everett at Yellow Springs in 1829— Toasts and Responses— A Reception to Webster in 1 833— Speeches and "Sentiments" — New England and Ohio — The Golden Age of Debating Clubs— The Danville, Ky., Political Club of 1786-90— The People's Lyceum— Education by thinking on the feet— Lincoln— The Circuit Court a School— " Every Man a Politician " — The Horse-race an Intelleetual Stimulus— Talking Politics and Theology — Party Strife— The Disgusted French- man — The Slavery Agitation— Stump Speaking— Clay's Power — His Speech in the Senate in 1842— Other Kentucky Orators- Tom Corwin — Ewing and other Ohio Orators — Oratory in Indi- ana and Illinois — Lincoln's Eloquence — Douglass — The Lecture '^^ ♦.form — Brilliant Teachers in Colleges— Scientific Lectures — Early Lectures in Cincinnati— Stowe — Lectures before the Mer- cantile Library Association — John Quincy Adams's last Speech— Dr. Locke— O. M. Mitchel— List of Eastern Lecturers in the year 1854 — List of Western Lecturers 227 CHAPTER VIII. Planting of Literary Institutions at Vincennes, Indiana — Li- braries, Schools, and the Press. Canadian and Creole Settlers— Bishop Benedict I. Flaget^-Roman Catholic Educational Influences— Bishop Brut^ — The Source of a Celebrated Address by Judge Law — The Oldest Library of the North-west— St. Francis Xavier Church— Old Church Records- William Henry Harrison, first Territorial Governor — Francis Morgan de Vincenne— Fort Sackville— Expedition Against the Chickasaw Indians — Harrison's Vincennes Mansion — Distin- guished Legislators and Educators— The Western Sun— Elihu Stent—" Thespian Society " — Vincennes University— Prominent Lawyers— Bar Association—" Vincennes Historical and Anti- quarian Society "—George Rogers Clarke— Vincennes Library — Youth's Library of Vincinnes— Working Men's Library- Township Lil)raries— Agricultural Society— Sy mines Harrison — H Benjamin Pji- t Bible Society — Physicians and Sur- 1 geons — First " Society— St. Gabriel College— Organized l.v I'ludi.^t PrifhtH 264 Contents. xi CHAPTER IX. Pioneer Poets and Story-Writers. Aboriginal Poetry — French Wood-notes — Song on the Ohio Flat- boats — Negro Melody — " The Eolian Songster " — Popular Songs for Stage and Parlor—" Seat of the Muses"— The Verse Market Overstocked in 1824 — John Filson a Rhymester — R. J. Meigs, Jr., the first poet in Ohio — Byron a Favorite in the West— English and American Poets of Seventy Years Ago — Percival — Char- acter of Pioneer Poetry — Classical Aflfectation— Subjects of Poems — "The Mountain Muse" — Firet Anthology of AVestern Poetry— A List of Poets— Coggeshall's " Poets and Poetry of the West"— Worth's "American Bards"— "The Muse of Hes- peria " — Thomas Peirce the " Horace of Cincinnati " — John M. Harney — William Wallace Harney — Mrs. Julia Dumont — John Finley, Author of " The Hoosier's Nest "— Otway Curry— Har- vey D. Little— G. W. Cutter— Wm. Ross Wallace— Mrs. Frances D. Gage — Sarah T. Bolton — Rebecca S. Nichols — Hon. Harvey Rice — Theodore O'Hara — General AV. H. Lytle — Foreseythe Willson— Writers of Fiction — The Ohio a Romantic Stream — Themes for Story — "Modern Chivalry" — The First AVestem Novel — Tales and Sketches in the Cincinnati Literary Gazette, 1824— In the " AA'estern Souvenir," 1829-In the "Mirror"— In Hall's Magazine— Novels of F. AA". Thomas— Drake's "Tales of the Queen City," 1839—" Blood and Thunder " Serials— Em- erson Bennett — " Ned Buntline " — Letter from Judson — Fos- dick's " Malmiztic, the Toltec " — Alice Gary's Novels — Mrs. Warfield's " Household of Bouverie " — Mrs. Stowe's Literary AVork in Ohio-" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 267 CHAPTER X. Dr. Daniel Drake, the Franklin of Cincinnati. The Old Kentucky Home — Life on a "Clearing" — Home Manu- factures — Things before Words— Books and Schools— On Horse- back to " Cin."— Peach Grove— Dr. AVilliam Goforth— Drake's Marriage — His First Publication — " Picture of Cincinnati " — Rev. Joshua L. AViison— The Circulating Library — School of Literature and the Arts — Drake in Philadelphia — Dr. AA'istar — First Soda-Fountain in the AA^est — Drake at Lexington — Aled- ical College of Ohio — A Famous Medical Book — The AA'estern Museum — Audubon a Curator — The Infernal Regions — Powers, the Sculptor— Mrs. Trollope — Drake on Prohibition — Vine Street Reunions — The Literary Coterie of the 'Thirties — College of Professional Teachers — The Buckeye Dinner— A Native Menu — Mrs. Lee Hentz — " Drake's Discourses " — Destiny of the AA^est — AVritings of Drake— Death and Character 299 xii Contents. CHAPTER XI. Timothy Fi.in i -ionakv, < iKoi.uAi'HKit, P^ditor, Novelist, and Poet. The Flint Family in Salem, Mass.— Timothy Flint's Birth, Boyhood, and Education— Whimsical Reports of the Far West— Lunen- berg — Flint Resolves to be a Missionary— Over the Mountains in a Coach — Pennsylvania Wagons and Wagoners — A Brother Clergyman — A Shaggy Drover from Mad River, Ohio — Pittsburg —Wrecked on Dead Man's Riffle— Afloat in a Pirogue— River Scenery — Big Sycamores — Marietta — General Rufus Putnam — A Profane Boatman — Cincinnati — General AV. H. Harrison — In the Saddle— Lawrenceburg — A Bear in the Way — Vincen- nes — Vevay — Kentucky in 1816 — Heaven a "Kaintuck of a Place"— "A Preaching" at Frankfort— " The Athens of the West "—Backwoods " Culture "—Harry Clay— The Peach Trees in Bloom — All Aboard a Keel-boat— Sunshine and Storm — Up the Hills to Harrison's — Afloat Once More — Lawrenceburg — Shawneetown — Cairo the Wobegone — Up the Mississippi— A Half Day of Bliss— The Cordelle — Bushwhacking — Romance of the Night Camp — River Characters — The Skulking Shawnee — Ste. Genevieve — Other Old French Villages — St. Louis— The Missionary at Work— Quarrelsome Christians — A Sojourn on the Arkansas River — A Dreadful Summer — Pulpit Versus Bail- Room and Billiards — Up Stream Once More— The Extremity of Affliction— A Baby's Lonely Grave—" Thy Will Be Done "— A Learned Lady — Earthquake at New Madrid — Flint at Cape Girardeau — Fever and Ague — A Winter by Pontchartrain — Be- comes President of Rapide Seminary — Life at Alexandria, La. — Tour to the Sabine Country — A Twenty-Five-Hundred-Mile Journey— The National Road— Flint's "Recollections" Pub- lished — Residence in Cincinnati — The Novel, " Francis Ber- rean"— The Western Review— Hervieu, the Artist— His Paint- ing of Lafayette Landing at Cincinnati— Hiram Powers— A School of Fine Arts — Mrs. Trollope and Family — Jose Tosso — The Bazaar— Flint's Various Books— Flint Edits the " Knicker- bocker " — He Goes to Louisiana — Tornado at Natchez — Death of Flint 323 CHAPTER XIL JuDOB Jambs Hall, Soldier, Jurist, Author, Editor. Jameft Hall's Literary Kin— Rev. John Ewing, D.D.— Mrs. Sarah Hall— Her Writings— James Hall's Brothers— The Port Folio- Hall's Hchooling— Two Years in a Counting-house— Joins the Army—" The Dandies "—Becomes a Lieutenant— In the Battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane— A Cruise to Algiers— Studiee Law— Life at Pittsburg— The Young Man Goes West— From Contents, xiii Pittsburg to Shawneetown— The Deck of a Keel-boat— Hall's " Letters from the AVest "—Romantic Life in Southern Illinois —Pioneer Lawyers— A Den of Thieves— A Bargain with a Des- perado—Judge Hall's First Marriage— The Posey Family — "The Illinois Emigrant "—" The Illinois Magazine "—" The Western Souvenir "— Morgan Neville — Anecdote by Jose Tosso, the Violinist — The Illinois Magazine — The AVestern Monthly Magazine — Contributors — Hannah F. Gould — Caroline Lee Hentz — Harriet Beecher — The Semicolon Club — James Hall versus Lyman Beecher — The Catholic Question — Hall En- gages in Banking — Various Publications— Range and Character of His Writings — His Best Books — Style — His Poetry — Marriage to Louisa Anderson Alexander— Childreu—AVilliam A. Hall alias "Timothy Timid " — Passage from Judge Hall's Address on the " Dignity of Commerce " 361 CHAPTER XIII. George Dennison Prentice, Journalist, Poet, and Wit. Prentice's Childhood— His Mother — His Precocity — AVonderful Memory — Teaches School — Goes to Brown University — Taught by Horace Mann— Studies Law — Edits the New England Re- view—Is Succeeded by John G. Whittier — Goes to Kentucky in 1830— Prentice's Life of Clay— The Soaring Style— " The Broken-Hearted, a Tale " — Louisville Journal Founded — Per- sonal Editors— Prentice and Greeley — Hammond and Dawson — Shadrach Penn — Prentice, the AVit— " Prenticeana" — Brilliant Mots—" The Darling of the Mob "—The Code of Honor— Tip- pecanoe — Know-Nothing Party — Prentice and the Civil AVar — AVorship of Clay — Prentice in the Lecture Field — Mr. Prentice's Wife and Sons — Major Clarence Prentice and President Lin- coln — The Veteran Journalist in His Sanctum — Last Days and Death — Tombs in Cave Hill Cemetery — Statue of Prentice — Disposition and Character — A Patron of Literary People — Writers AVhom He Helped — Prentice as a Poet — His Poems Edited by J. J. Piatt — Sentimental Diction — The Substantive- Adjective " Eden " — Prentice like Bryant — Prentice a Social Favorite— His Tribute to His AVife 386 CHAPTER XIV. Edward Deering Mansfield, Publicist and Author. Colonel Jared Mansfiekl — Marietta in 1803 — Madame Blennerhas- sett — To Cincinnati in an Ark— Cincinnati in 1805 — Ludlow Station — First Astronomical Station AA^est of the Alleghanies — Mount Comfort — E. D. Mansfield's First Books — His Education at Cheshire Academy, West Point, and Princeton — Admitted to the Bar in 1825 — Distinguished Friends— Percival, the Poet — A xiv Contents, Poet's Description of Niagara— The Young Lawyer Goes West —The Columbia Street Theater—" Cincinnati in 1826 "—Assists Benjamin Drake to Edit the " Chronicle "—Marries Miss Mary Wallace Peck— Goes in Partnership with O. M. Mitchel— Sketch of Mitchel's Life— Mansfield Embarks in Literature- Literary Parties at Dr. Drake's— The Semicolon Club— The Footes— Other Members of the Club— Mrs. Stowe— Benjamin Drake — Nathan Guilford— William Greene— Cincinnati Society in 1834 — Charles Fenno Hoffman— The College of Profes- sional Teachers — Alexander Kinmont— The Common Schools — George Graham — Eminent Educators — Mansfield's Political Grammar — His Addresses — Connection with Cincinnati Col- lege — Edits the Railroad Record — Edits Cincinnati Gazette — "A Veteran Observer" — Made Commissioner of Statistics — His First Meeting with Governor Morton— Popularity of E. D. M. — His Books— " Personal Memories" — Family History — Second Marriage— Sons and Daughters — Home at Morrow, Ohio — Death— Character 409 CHAPTER XV. William Davis Gallagher, Poet, Editor, and Government Official. Birth and Parentage — The Gallaghers Move to Ohio — Settle near Cincinnati — Sir Woodworth's School — A Boy's Pleasures— " Billy " Goes to Clermont County — His few Books — Goes to the Lancastrian Seminary— Learns to Set Type — " The Remem- brancer "—" The Western Tiller"— "The Emporium "—" The Commercial Register" — "The Western Minerva" — Gallagher Visits Kentucky — Is Entertained by Mrs. James Taylor — Pays His Respects to Clay at Ashland — Writes for the " Chronicle " — Builds a House for His Mother — Edits the " Backwoodsman " at Xenia, O. — First Meeting with George D. Prentice — Marriage — Edits the "Mirror" — Makes His Maiden Speech — Debating Societies— "The Lyceum"— "The Inquisition "—" The Tags" —"The Forty-twos" — Publishes "Erato" — A Handsome Man -Hard up— The " Western Literary Journal "—The " Hesper- ian " — Assists Hammond on the Cincinnati Gazette — Secretary of the Whig Committee — Letters to Otway Curry— A New Lit- erary Comet— Issues "Selections of Western Poetry"— A Re- former—His Poems— Edits the " Daily Message "—Made Presi- tlent of the Ohio Historical Society— Address on " Progress in the North-west " — Becomes Private Secretary to Thomas Corwin —Conveys (Jold from New York to New Orleans— A Storm- Anecdote of Corwin— Goes to Ix)uisville— Connection with the " Courier " — Quarrel with Prentice— A Challenge— Rt'tires from Journalism— Life at Pewee Valley — Literary Associations with Kdwin Bryant, Noble Butler, Ross Wallace, Mrs. Warfield, and Others— Letter from Wallace to Gallagher— Delegate to the Contents. xv Chicago Convention — Carries the News to '' Old Abe " — Threat- ened with Violence in Kentucky — Becomea Secretary to Salmon P. Chase — Collector of Customs — Literary Activity — Reputation as a Public Official— Character of His Poetry—" Miami Woods" — A Pathetic Story— Mr. Gallagher's Family — His Serene Old Age 436 CHAPTER XVI. Amelia B. Welby. Amelia Welby and Alice Cary Compared — Birthplace, Parentage, and Infancy of Amelia — Her Childhood — A Born Singer — An Improvisatrice— The Emotions of Sweet Sixteen — Two Girls — "When Shines the Star" — Amelia and Prentice — A Sudden Blossoming — Enter George Welby — Amelia's Beauty and Bril- liancy — Ben Cassidy's Eulogy of Her — The Poets Worship Their Queen— "Ah ! Lovely Shade "—The Apotheosis of Senti- mentalism — Mourning for Amelia Dead — Threnodies — Popular- ity of the " Poems by Amelia " — Fourteen Editions — What Poe Wrote of Amelia — Character of her Verses — Subjects of Her Poems — Specimens — The " Rainbow " Faded — A Monument in Cave Hill Cemetery 471 CHAPTER XVII. Alice Cary. Genealogy — Robert Gary's Home — The New House — An x\ppari- tion — The Shadow of Death — Alice a Romp — A Country Girl's Tasks — Studying under Difficulties — What the Girls Read — First Appearance in Print — Alice Contributes to the Star in the West — John A. Gurley — Phoebe's Name in a Boston Paper — Letter to Lewis J. Cist — The Sisters Become Acquainted with L. A. Hine, Emerson Bennett, and Dr. Gamaliel Bailey — First Earnings of Alice — Praise from Poe — Help from Griswold — Horace Greeley — The Sisters Visit Whittier — Alice Moves to New York City — Publication of "Clovernook" — Letters to Wm. D. Gallagher — A Slave of the Pen — Author and Editor — A Merciless Criticism — Coates Kinney Reviews Alice Cary's Poems — Alice Cary Buys a House — Distinguished Guests — Bonner's Liberality — Novels — The Sorosis — A Brave Woman — Dissatisfied — Longing for the West — In Clover— A Love Story Remarks on Alice Cary's Poetry— Clovernook Dedicated— The House is Haunted 482 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. CHAPTER I. ■'■'■ SOME EARLY TRAVELERS AND ANNAL'l'fea*S.' ^ ^ "'^ '^ In a letter to R. W, Emerson, dated July 8, 1851, Thomas Oarlyle wrote as follows : " I lately read a small old brown French duodecimo, which I m.ean to send you by the first chance there is. The writer is Capitaine Bossu •} the pro- duction, a Journal of his experiences in ' La Louisiana,' ' Oyo ' (Ohio), and those regions, which looks very genuine, and has a strange interest to me, like some fractional Odys- sey or letter. Only a hundred years ago, and the Mississippi has changed as never valley did : in 1751, older and stranger, looked at from its present date, than Balbec or Mneveh ! Say what we will, Jonathan is doing miracles (of a sort) under the sun in these times now passing. Do you know Bartram's ^ Travels f This is of the Seventies (1770) or so ; 'treats of Florida chiefly, has a wondrous kind of flounder- ing eloquence in it ; and has also grown immeasurably old. All American libraries ought to provide themselves with that kind of book; and keep them as a kind of future biblical article." ^ Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, Contenant une Relation des diffe rents peuples qui habitent les environs du grande fleuve Saint Louis, appelle vulgairement le Mississippi; leur Religion; leur Gouv- ernement; leurs Guerres, leur Commerce. Par M. Bossu, Amsterdam, 1768. =* Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Musco- gulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Choctaws. By William Bartram. Plates. 8vo. London, 1792. (1) 2 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Writing a month later to the same appreciative corre- spondent, the great Scotchman said : "Along with the sheets [of the life of Sterling] was a poor little French book for you — Book of a poor Naval Mississippi Frenchman, one *Bo88u/ I think; written only a century ago, yet w^hich already seemed old as the Pyramids in reference to those strange, fast-growing countries. I read it as a kind of de- faced romance; very thin and lean, but all truc^ and very marye^QUpja^ such." The books thus strikingly character- jzp4.l>y'Q^J^ryl.e represent a species of writings constituting .thi \^v Jfajfjiid^ation of western literature. The archives of the Central Mississippi Valley are rich in records of discovery, exploration, adventure, and early scientific observation. The journals and memoranda of those who, from sight or hearsay, gave report of the In- dian country before it was reclaimed for the uses of civil- ization, show, as it were, the dark theater of history, ere yet the curtain had risen on the great play of State-making. How like a voice crying in the wilderness, fall upon the mind^s ear, the relations of Marquette and the other orig- inal explorers of the interior of the continent. When we read the strange travels of Spaniard, Frenchman, or En- glishman, in old Florida or Louisiana, in the years of the rivalry of Europe's leading nations for supremacy in the New World, we seem to realize the beginning of the be- ginnings. We stand on prehistoric ground, and wait the genesis of a people. We see the red- tribes begin to re- treat westward, fighting as they yield; and w^e behold the slow coming-in, from east, and south, and north, of the hunter, the chopper, the trader, the maker of farm and town. In dingy-paged volumes of old books we learn what manner of men and women were those who first set foot in the western forest, and dared the bloody game of Life-or-Death with the savages. The beginnings of culture in the west were dependent on what was said about the country and the settlers. Many of the first books relating to the frontier were writ- ten by outsiders, sojourners, whose motive was to tell the Old World what the New was like. These books infiu- Som.e Early Travelers and Annalists. 3 eiicecl migration, and made no slight impression on the minds of the pioneers. Narratives of travel, and sketches of backwoods' trial and adventure, naturally became the favorite reading matter of the log-cabin. The character of the families that had gone west to grow up with the country, was shaped by this kind of primitive literature. As settlement proceeded, and society became organized, the settlers themselves took occasion to employ the goose- quill, in the way of chronicle and description, and thus arose a rude indigenous literature. The writers were jealous of the reputation of their adopted backwoods, and wrote with provincial zeal. The opinions of foreign travelers came to be quite generally read and discussed; especially the reports of the more critical tourists. The uncomplimentary account of the American common peo- ple, as rendered by such writers as Wald, Ashe, and Basil Hall, though very disagreeable to such as were satirized in the harsh pages, formed what a distinguished editor calls " mighty interesting reading," and no doubt had a whole- some effect, as did afterward the bitter medicines adminis- tered by Mrs. TroUope, Captain Marry att, and Charles Dickens. Of more importance than such books of general travel are numerous carefully prepared journals of sci- entific character, giving in a most delightful style observa- tions on the archaeology and natural history of the new regions. Bartram's " Travels," the " iiounderino^ elo- quence " of which so impressed Carlyle, belongs to the scientific department of our ancient literature. The Bartrams, John, born 1701, and William, born in 1739, w^ere Pennsylvanians, and both eminent in botany. The *' Travels " of William Bartram w^as first published in Philadelphia, in 1791. Coleridge honored it with his praise, calling it " a work of high merit every way." Travels, anticipating by nearly a century those of Bossu, were undertaken by his countrymen, the French explorers of the Mississippi, in the last quarter of the Sev- enteenth century. Who that has read can ever forget the vivid and intensely dramatic " relations" of those de- voted actors in the romantic drama of discovery and con- 4 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. quest: Marquette, Allouez, Membre, Hennepin, Anastase Douay, Cavelier, St. Cosme, Le Sueur, Gravier, and Guignas, covering a period of fifty-live years, from 1673 to 1728. These heroic Jesuits tell the simple, but absorbing, story of a half century's endeavor to learn the mystery of the mighty Mississippi, and the shifting " nations " that dwelt along its shores. As one pursues the marvelous con- tinued tale, more strange than fiction, he floats along un- known waters in a bark canoe ; sees the herded buftaloes feeding on the shore; meets thronging savages in lodge or wild- woods, and smokes the calumet of peace ; visits rude temples of the sun-god; joins with the gentle messengers of a new religion as they erect the cross of Christ in the shadow of the forest and sing the holy mass to the naked chiefs who wonder the more the less they comprehend. The labors of the indefatigable John Gil- mary Shea^ have put within every reader's reach the complete series of narratives in clear translation, giving the French accounts of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, and early voyages up and down that mag- nificent stream. These " relations " draw a sort of irregu- lar line of uncertain history along the region of the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi, and out through the Gulf of Mexico. The early voyageurs kept close to the water- courses. They had acquaintance with the Wisconsin, the Illinois, and some other aflluents of the Mississippi, but, for the most part, their knowledge of the tributaries of the great stream was confined to what they could see in passing the mouths of the inflowing rivers, or what they could learn by inquiry of the Indians. But the time was soon to come when, ascending the Ohio, and every other stream that finds its way to the Father of Waters, the ' Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley. With the Original Narratives of Marquette, Allouez, Membre, Hennepin, and Anastase Douay. By John Gilmary Shea. 8vo. pp. 268. New York, 1852. Early Voyages up and down the Mississippi, by Chevalier, St. Cosme, Le Sueur, Gravier, and Guignas. With Introduction, Notes, and an In- dex. By John Gilmary Shea. 4to. pp. 191. Albany, 1861. Some Early Travelers and Annalists. 5 French canoe should penetrate the mystery of the inland, and bring back authentic information of what the Indian, the Spaniard, the Saxon were doing or planning in the region between the Gulf and the Lakes, between the Mississippi and the Appalachians. French settlements were soon to be made in Southern Illinois and Indiana, and Gaul was to gain a foothold in the western part of the Ohio Valley three-quarters of a century before the first English settlements were made at the head-waters of la belle riviere. What La Salle may have said or thought of the " Fair River," which he discovered two centuries and a quarter ago, is left to conjecture. But we possess definite information concerning the impressions of many explorer's who spied out the Ohio and its basin in the eighteenth century. Christopher Gist, agent and surveyor for the Ohio Company of Virginia, made a venturesome trip to the West in the year 1750-1. From his southern home, on the Yadkin, this wood-wise scout and shrewd reader of Indian character wended his way to Logstown, an Indian village on the Ohio a few miles be- low the fork of the Allegheny and Monongahela, and pro- ceeded thence, in company with George Croghan,^ of Pennsylvania, across what is now the state of Ohio. The explorers examined and admired portions of the rich valleys of the Muskingum, the Scioto, and the Miamis. "First of white men on record," says Bancroft, "they saw that the land beyond the Scioto, except the first twenty miles, is rich and level, bearing walnut trees of huge size, the maple, the wild cherry, and the ash ; full of little streams and rivulets ; variegated by beautiful natural prairies, covered with wild rye, blue grass, and white clover. Turkeys abounded, and deer, and elks, and most sorts of game; of buftaloes, thirty or forty were frequently seen feeding in one meadow." The Indian town of ^Journal of Colonel George Croghan, who was sent, after the Peace of 1763, by the government to explore the Country adjacent to the Ohio River, and to conciliate the Indian Nations who had hitherto acted with the French. Small 4to, pp. 38. Burlington, N. J. 6 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Piqua, on the Big Miami, had a population of about four hundred families. From Piqua, Gist took his departure, alone, at the beginning of March, 1751, and passed south- ward through the grassy valleys of the Miamis, in which wild herds grazed ; and, reaching the Ohio, followed down that stream to within fifteen miles of the Falls. As the old sea-captain, Othere, is said to have carried with him, from the North Cape, a walrus-tooth, to show King Alfred, in verification of his discovery, so Christopher Gist took with him from Kentucky -the tooth of a mammoth, to astonish his Virginia employers with a specimen curiosity of the West. The name of Gist is immortalized by its intimate asso- ciation with that of Washington, whose guide and comrade he was on the memorable expedition^ sent by Governor Dinwiddle to Forts Venango and Le Boeuf, in the year 1753. The journal of Major George Washington, giving in crude but clear English, the official report of his forty-seven days' doings, from the time he set out from Williamsburgh to his return thitheis detailing the particulars of his interviews with the French officers in Pennsylvania, is one of the rarest and most interesting bits of Americana. The diary proper contains only twenty pages, ordinary octavo size, but every word tells. Surely this little book, the first fruits of Washington's pen, produced when the hero was but a youth, deserves to be kept as a " kind of biblical article." The Robinson Crusoe-like adventures which it relates, of the Virginia Major and his man Friday, Mr. Gist, ought to render the story a boy-classic. Tied up in their " match coats," with gun in hand and pack on shoulders, the two men tread the dangerous woods ; they pass " the murdering-town ;" Washington is shot at by an Indian who lay in wait for him ; in order to cross the freez- ing Allegheny, they set about making a raft, " with but one * The Journal of Major George Washington, sent by. Hon. Robert Din- widdle to the Commandant of the French Forces on Ohio. To which are added the Governor's Ix'tter. and a Translation of the French Oihcer's answer. 8vo. pp. 32. Map. Williamsburgh, printed. London, reprinted 1754. Some Early Travelers and Annalists, 7 poor hatchet," and the task requires a whole day's work ; they finally launch the raft, but are "jammed in the ice " in a most dangerous manner, and they expect to perish. " I put out my setting Pole to try to stop the Eaft, that the Ice might pass by ; when the Rapidity of the Stream threw it with so much violence against the Pole, that it jerked me out into ten feet of Water; But I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the Raft Logs." The incidental visit of Washino:ton to the border of white settlement, on the eve of the great contest of the English with the French and Indians, marks the commencement of mighty changes. Imagination pictures the resolute young American, who was to become the Father of his Country, as, bestriding his Virginia steed, he surveyed the land at the confluence of the Allegheny .and Monongahela. rivers, building a fort, and perhaps a city, in his mind. " I spent some time," he wrote, " in viewing the River, and the Land in the Fork: which I think extremely well sit- uated for a Fort." Might not a sculptor make something striking of that? — Young Washington, on Jiorseback, at the head-waters of the Ohio, looking westward ! On the second of January, 1754, Washington, then at Frazier's settlement on the Monongahela, saw " seven- teen horses loaded with materials and stores for a Fort at the Forks of Ohio," and the day after, " some families going out to settle." Those families going west to settle were of the pioneer van. The Saxon foot had begun its tramp into the backwoods. Boone made his first exploration in Kentucky in 1769 ; and white settlements were established in Western Vir- ginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, before the breaking oat of the Revolutionary War. It is estimated that in the year 1784, thirty thousand people moved into Kentucky. In that same year, and as if born of the impulse of the active time, came into existence the first historical sketch of Kentucky. Seven years before the publication of Bartram's Travels^ there was issued from the press Filson's "Kentucky," a Volume which has now become such a rare curiosity that 8 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. I here trascribe the complete title. " The Discovery. Set- tlement, and Present State of Kentucky ; and an Essay towards the Topography and Natural History of that Im- portant Country; by John Filson. To which is added an Appendix containing: I. The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boone, one of the First Settlers, comprehending every im- portant Occurrence in the Political History of that Province. II. The Minutes of the Piaukashaw Council, held at Post St. Vincent's, April 15, 1784. HI. An Account of the Indian Nations inhabiting within the Limits of the Thirteen United States; their Manners and Customs; and Keflections on their Origin. lY. The Stages and Distances between Philadelphia and the Falls of Ohio ; from Pittsburg to Pensacola, and several other Places. The whole illus- trated by a new and accurate Map of Kentucky, and the Country adjoining, drawn from actual surveys. Wilming- ton, printed by John Adams, 1784." Very few copies of Filson's book and map are in exist- ence, and a single copy of the work has been sold for as much as one hundred and twenty dollars. Next to noth- ing had been published, or was generally known about Filson, until quite recently, when Colonel R. T. Durrett^ gathered together the scanty memorials of the romantic pioneer, and gave them to the world in a small volume^ put forth by the Filson Club, Louisville. From this vol- ume (which contains a weird and shadowy portrait of John Filson) we learn that he was born near the Brandywine, Pennsylvania, about the year 1747, and that he canic' to Kentucky, probably in 1783, being, then, perhaps, thirty- six years old. He formed the acquaintance ot, and col- * RonV>on Thomas Durrett, lawyer, editor, and aullH.r. horn in Ilcnry county, K.ntucky, January 22, 1824, founder of tli.- lils-.n (lul,. lives in I/<>uisvilli*. He possesses the finest historic:! 1 lil.i;n\ in Krntutky. A cornHponflent of the New York Tribune descrilx s ( olonri l>nn(ti ;w a'Mull. uliit(-licanl.--7. (Down the Ohio and Mississippi, and back to Knoxville, Tennessee.) By Brands Baily. 8vo, pp. 439. London, 1856. 2 Travels to the Westward of the Allegheny Mountains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and return to Charleston through the Upper Carolinas. London, 1804. 16 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. riences of log-cabin life and woodland adventure, are well worth reading. Not less entertaining and more general in its scope was a book of travels by the French savant, C. F. Yolney (1757-1820), a translation^ of which appeared in 1804, and was very generally circulated. It is chiefly geographical. There was published in 1808, a book ^ that created a sensation in the Ohio Valley, and particularly in Cincin- nati. This was a pretentious but blundering narrative by Thomas Ashe, compiled from the " !N'avigator " and other books, with orrginal statements based on insufficient ob- servation, and^ not a few downright inventions of the au- thor's fancy. For example, the Big Miami river is repre- sented as flowing out of Lake Erie. Ashe went under the assumed name of D'Arville, and introduced himself by forged letters to leading citizens of the West. We are told by an early western writer that this imposter " be- guiled the late learned, ingenious, and excellent Dr. Go- forth of his immense collection of mammoth bones, and made a fortune of them, and of his book, in London." E. D. Mansfield brands Ashe as the " first to discover that a book abusing the people of the United States would be profitable by its popularity." Daniel Drake, whose pre- ceptor was the deluded Goforth, mentions Ashe, alias D'Arville, as that " swindling Englishman ;" but the favorite appellation by which indignant Cincinnatians ad- vertised the ofiending bone-stealer w^as " the infamous Ashe." The London Quarterly Review said of Ashe and » View of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America, with Remarks on Florida. By C. F. Volney. London, 1804. Volney was known to many readers from his celebrated book " The Ruins," which was published in 1791. ' Travels in America performed in 1806, for the purpose of exploring the Rivers Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio and Mississippi, and ascer- taining the Produce and Condition of their Banks and Vicinity. By Thomas Ashe. 3 vols., 18mo. London, 1808. Also, Memoirs of Mammoth and various other Extraordinary and Stupendous Bones found in the Vicinity of the Ohio, Wabash, Illinois, MissiBBippi and other Rivers. By Thomas Ashe. Plate. 8vo. Liver- pool, 1806. Some Early Travelers and Annalists. 17 f his " Travels :" " He has spoiled a good book by engraft- ing incredible stories on authentic facts." II. M. Brackenridge's Recollections^ of a journey from Pittsburg to St. Genevieve in 1792 ; Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris's accouat^ of his tour from Boston to Marietta in 1803 ; Christian Schultz's diary ,^ detailing the particulars of a journey from Kew York city to the West and South in the years 1807-8; and, above all, Timothy Flint's story* of his travels in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, begun in 1815, hold the reader's attention, with all the excitement of romance, and more than the interest of any fiction.* An exceedingly delightful book of its class is Brad- bury's " Travels in the Interior of America,"^ a racy, off- hand, and manifestly true report of the author's personal observation of nature and man in the wilder parts of the Mississippi Valley, in the years 1809, '10, '11. John Brad- bury, an English botanist, came to the United States in 1809, and having consulted Thomas Jefferson concerning the best field for his scientific labors, decided to make St. Louis his head-quarters. He ascended the Missouri, made ^ Recollections of Persons and Places in the West. By H. M. Brack- enridge. 12mo, pp. 331. Philadelphia, 1868. ^ The Journal of a Tour into the Territory northwest of the Alle- ghany Mountains, with a Geographical and Historical Account of the State of Ohio. By Thaddeus Mason Harris. With five maps. 8vo, pp. 271. Boston, 1805. ^ Travels on an Inland Voyage through New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, etc., in 1807-8. By Christian Schultz. Portrait, maps, and plates. 2 vols., 8vo, pp. 207-224. New York, 1810. * Eecollections of the last Ten Years, passed in occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. By Timothy Flint. 8vo, pp. 395. Boston, 1826. ^ For a synopsis of these entertaining books, see Venable's Footprints of the Pioneers in the Ohio Valley. ® Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809-10-11, includ- ing a Description of Upper Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Ten- nessee, with the Illinois and Western Territories. By John Bradbury. 8vo. Liverpool, 1817. 2 18 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. collections of i»lants and minerals, studied the habits and language of the Indians, and prepared an excellent gen- eral description of the Ohio Valley. His book is entirely original, a transcript of daily doings and seeings, written in simple but pittorial style, with that golden medium of skill in detailing particulars which gratifies but never cloys the reader. The diary pleasantly talks of natural scenery; of plants, birds, beasts; of Indians, S[)aniards, French and P]nglish men. Isow we have a lively descrip- tion of a bear hunt, then of a bee tree; now an account of a buitalo herd, then of a rattlesnake den. We are told how beaver meat tastes, and how to make bread of corn meal and pounded persimmons. We see the Indians dance and hear them sing; we enter the smoky wigwams, and sympathize with Mr. Bradbury in his embarassed at- tempts to escape the tender advances of squalid squaws. One reads with curious interest that, on the morning of January 17, 1810, while proceeding up the Missouri river in a boat, Bradbury saw, standing on the shore, near the. French village of Charette, an old man, " Daniel Boone, the discoverer of Kentucky." "As I had a letter of in- troduction to him, from his nephew Colonel Grant, I went ashore to speak to him, and requested that the boat might go on, as I intended to walk until evening. I remained some time in conversation with him. He informed me that he was eighty-four years of age ; that he had spent a considerable portion of his time alone in the back woods, and had lately returned from his spring hunt, with nearly sixty beaver skins." The several volumes of exploration, travel, or history, by Lewis and Clarke,^ Cuming,^ Pike, Stoddard,^ Hard- * Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, throu^^h the States of Ohio anp. 47:1-524. Frankfort, 1824. • A Life of Marshall, by A. C. Quisenbcrry, is aini(Mnu<'ndon, 1818. •Gaaettt^er of Illinois: Containing a General View of the State; a General View of each County, and a Particular Description of each Town, etc., By J. M. Peck. lOrao, pp. 376. Jacksonville, 1834. Some Early Travelers and Armalisis. 29 taining Sketches of Illinois, Missouri, and the adjacent Posts," which was published in Boston in 1831 ; and also a " Gazetteer of Illinois," published in 1834. Henry Brown's ^ " Illinois " came out in 1844. A book valued for its historical information, and amus- ing as a literary curiosity, is " The Pioneer History of Illinois," ^ written by John Reynolds, one of the early Gov- ernors of Illinois, an illiterate man of strong common sense. The volume was published at Belleville, Illinois, in 1852, and contains the history of Illinois from 1673 to 1818. The author says naively : " My friends will think it strange that I have written a book, no matter how small and unpretending it may be." He justifies his effort on the score that " many facts stated in the ' Pioneer History,' since the year 1800, came under my own observation, which may be relied on as true." Re- counting his personal history, he says : " The first Illinois soil I ever touched was on the bank of the Ohio, where Golconda now stands, in March, 1800. When we were about to start from the Ohio, I asked Mr. Lusk how far it w^as to the next house on the road, and when he told us the first was Kaskaskia, one hundred and ten miles, I was surprised at the wilderness before us. My father hired a man to assist us in traveling through the wilderness. We were four weeks in performing this dreary and desolate journey." Governor Reynolds gives the following odd description of the French settlers of Illinois : " The French seldom plowed with horses, but used oxen. It is the custom with the French every-where to yoke oxen by the horns, and not by the neck. Oxen can draw as much by the horns as by the neck, but it looks more savage. Sometimes the ^ The History of Illinois, from its first Discovery and Settlement to the Present Time. By Henry Brown. Map. 8vo, pp. 492. New York, 1844. 2 The Pioneer History of Illinois: Containing the Discovery, in 1673, and the History of the Country to the Year 1818, when the State Gov- ernment was organized. By John Reynolds. 12mo, pp. 348. Belle- ville, 111., 1852. 30 Litcraru Culture in the Ohio Valley. French worked oxen in carts, but mostly use horses. I presume that a w auon was not seen in Illinois for nearly one hundred years after its first settlement. A French cart, as well as a plough, was rather a curiosity. It was con- structed without an atom of iron. When the Americans came to the country, they called these carts ' barefooted carts,' because they had no iron on their wheels. . *' The French generally, and the females of that nation particularly, caught u[) the French fashions from New Or- leans and Paris, and with a singular avidity adopted them to the full extent of their means and talents. The females generally, and the males a good deal, wore the deer skin mawkawsins. A nicely made mawkawsin for a female in the house is both neat and serviceable . . . " The ancient and innocent custom was for the young men about the last of the year to disguise them- selves in old clothes, as beggars, and go around the village in the several houses where they knew they would be welcome. They enter the houses dancing what they call the Gionie, which is a friendly request for them to meet and have a ball to dance away the old year. The people, young and old, meet, each one carrying along some refreshment, and then they do, in good earnest, dance away the old year. About the 6th of January, in each year, which is called Lejourde Rais, sl party is given, and four beans are baked in a large cake ; this cake is distributed among the gentlemen, and each one who re- ceives a bean is proclaimed king. These four kings are to give the next ball. These are called ' King's balls.' These Kings select each one a queen, and make her a suitable present. They arrange all things necessary for tlie danc- ing party. In these merry parties no set supper is in- dulged in. They go there not to eat, but to be and make merry. They have refreshments of cake and coffee served round at proper intervals. Sometimes Bouillon, as the French call it, takes the place of coffee. Toward the close of the party, the old queens select each one a new King, and kisses him to qualify him into office ; then each new King chooses his new Queen, and goes Some Early Travelers and Annalists. 31 throiigli tlie ceremony as before. In this manner the King balls are kept up all the carnival." Another Illinois Governor, Thomas Ford, wrote a his- tory of the state, wliich was published at Chicago in 1854.^ Illinois is deeply indebted to the literary industry and enterprise of Judge James Hall, who resided in the State from 1820 to 1833, and there conducted the " Illinois Magazine," devoting much time and pains to historical subjects. To him, also, the people of the Ohio Valley owe gratitude for general labors in the field of local his- tory, and especially for his delightful volume, '' The Romance of Western History." Supplementing and uniting the special histories, such as we have just glanced at, are many more general com- pends not easily classified. One of the earliest and most important of these is Flint's " The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley," ^ 1833. Another exceedingly important and useful digest of eve-nts, covering the whole ground of Ohio Valley history, is James H. Perkins's "Annals of the West," first issued in 1846 ; revised in 1850 by Rev. J. M. Peck, and re-revised by James R. Albach in 1852, and again in 1857. From this well-ordered store-house of valuable information, many compilers *and historians have borrowed, and many more will borrow. Dr. Monette's painstaking and exhaustive *^ History of the Mississippi Valley," ^ 1846, and Hart's later and briefer ^ A History of Illinois, from its Commencement as a State, in 1818, to 1847. Containing a full Account of the Black Hawk War, the Rise, Progress, and Fall of Mormonism, the Alton and Lovejoy Riots, and other important and interesting Events. By Governor Thomas Ford. 12mo, pp. 447. Chicago, 1854. * The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley ; to which is appended a Condensed Physical Geography of the Atlantic United States and the whole American Continent. 2 vols. By Timothy Flint. 8vo. Boston, 1833. ' History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mis- sissippi by the great European Powers, Spain, France, Great Britain, etc. By John AV. Monette. 2 vols., 8vo. New York, 184G. S'2 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. work* on the same subject, are books that sum up many facts with clear authenticity. Far more attractive to the average reader than any la- bored compilation, however accurate, are divers and sun- dry volumes containing free, off-hand delineations of pio- neer life in the days when the Ohio Valley was still described as The Wilderness. These books consist largely of personal narrative, and have all the vividness and force of sketches from life. In many instances the artless di- rectness of an earnest teller of true adventures, has lent the illiterate pen a glowing power that rhetoric despairs to win. IN'ot a few of the heroic participants in border warfare, and the rude experience of log-cabin life, have set down the story of their hardy deeds and stern endur- ance in autobiography. But more frequently, the record of frontier events was left to hands not familiarly ac- quainted with the scalping knife or the hunter's trap and ^un. A very succinct and satisfactory general view of the beginning of settlement in the Ohio Valley is that em- braced in Patterson's '^ Histor}^ of the Backwoods." ^ This •contains a remarkable map, engraved at Pittsburg in 1843, and showing '^the backwoods in 1764." Patterson's book is based, in part, upon those perennially fascinating old Virginia prose epics of the bor(Jer, Doddridge's " Notes," ' and Withers's " Chronicles." * To complete * History of the Mississippi Valley. By A. M. Hart. 12mo, pp. 286. Cincinnati, 1853. ' History of the Backwoods; or, The Region of the Ohio. Authentic, from the I^arliest Accounts. Embracing many Events, Notices of Prom- inent Pioneers, Sketches of Early Settlements, etc., not heretofore pub- lished. By A. W. Patterson. Map. 12mo, pp. 311. Pittsburg. Printed for the author. 1843. * Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, from the year 17(>3 to 178:5. Together with A View of the State of Society and Manners of the First Settlers of the Western Country. By Joseph Doddridge. 16mo, pp. 316. Wellsburgh, Va., 1824. * Chronicles of Border Warfare ; or, a History of the Settlement by the Whites of Northwestern Virginia, and of the Indian War| and Some Earhj Travelers and Annalists, 33 our select list of authors identilied with the pioneer period of Ohio Valley history, what names more suitable than those of the three Macs, McClung,^ McDonald,^ and Mc- Bride?^ Each of these authors has been admired by thousands of readers ; and their books should live as long as human nature continues to sympathize with heroism. McClung's Sketches were first published in Maysville in 1832. Even a cursory perusal of the leading books of travel and history, inadequately sketched in the foregoing pages, reveals to the student a world of suggestive knowledge in regard not only to the material features of the diversified Valley of the Ohio, but still more concerning the inhabit- ants of the vast region, their origin, character, ideas, achievements and aspirations. In these books, as in a mirror, the first processes in the development of states and social institutions are reflected. We see the people at work, conquering savage nature, and laying the foundations of science, literature and art. Only by con- sidering the circumstances under which they did their mental work, only by estimating fairly their " means, culture and limits," can we judge, impartially, what they Massacres in that section of the State ; with Reflections, Anecdotes, etc. By Alexander S. Withers. 16mo, pp. 319. Clarksburg, Va., 1831. A new edition of the " Chronicles," with notes by Dr. Lyman C. Draper, of Wisconsin, is in press. ^ Sketches of Western Adventures. Containing an Account of the most interesting Incidents connected with the Settlement of the West, from 1755 to 1794, with an Appendix. By John A. McClung. Also, additional Sketches of Adventure, and a biography of the author by Henry Waller, with a portrait and other illustrations. 12mo, pp. 398. Louisville, Ky., 1879. ^ Biographical Sketches of General Nathaniel Massie, General Duncan McArthur, Captain William AVells and General Simon Kenton, who were Early Settlers in the AVestern Country. By John McDonald. 16mo, pp. 267. Cincinnati, 1838. ' Pioneer Biography ; being Sketches of the Lives of some of the Early Settlers of Butler County, Ohio. Contiiining detailed Accounts of Harmar's, St. Clair's, and Wayne's Campaigns, and many of the Early Conflicts with the Indians in Ohio and Kentucky. By James McBride. 2 vols., 8vo. Cincinnati, 1869-71. 3 34 Literal^ Culture in the Ohio Valley. accomplished, and surmise what their successors may do in the future. It is but a little while, in terms of history, since history began on the shores of the Ohio. Though crowded events 80 confuse our retrospect that Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark appear in the deceptive vista of our past like far-off heroes of antiquity ; though the French ex- plorers of Louisiana seem, in the fancy of Carlyle, as re- mote as the Pelasgi, they are all of yesterday — French- men, Boone and all. The aborigines of the Backwoods, the invading European scouts and traders who penetrated the cane-brake and the tangled wild, the hunters and sur- veyors that tracked and measured the new lands on this side of the " Great Mountains " of Pennsylvania — are painted on the canvas of imagination, dim figures, yet to be vivified and vitalized by the touch of literary art. The dry bones of old journals and chronicles are to rise and move, and be clothed upon with flesh that bleeds and feels. From the catacombs of dusty libraries, shall be resurrected the eventful past, with all its stirring scenes and splendid characters — resurrected or recreated by the potent spell of the coming historian, novelist, and poet of the Ohio Valley. GENERAL NOTE. Much valuable service has, of late years, been rendered to students and readers interested in the history of the Ohio Valley, by the enthusi- asm and energy of several public spirited individuals, who have labored to collect, edit, or reprint the most important facts and records of a com- paratively recent but nevertheless fast fading past. The " Ohio Valley Historical Series," conceived, and, in some of its most interesting num- bers, edited, by its publisher, Mr. Robert Clarke, is a rich mine of knowledge of inestimable worth to the historian. The series embraces seven large octavo volumes, uniformly bound. The following are the titles in brief : 1. Bouquet's Expedition against the Ohio Indians, 1764. 2. Walker's Athens County, Ohio, and the first Settlement in State. 3. Clark's Campaign in the Illinois, 1778-79. 4. McBride's Pioneer Biographies. 2 vols. 6. Smith's Captivity with the Indians, 1755-59. 6. Drake's Pioneer Life in Kentucky. 7. Miscellanies: I. t^spy's Tour in Ohio, etc., in 1805. 11. Williams's Som.e Early Travelers and Annalists. 35 Western Campaigns in the War of 1812-13. III. Taneyhill's Leather- wood God. In one volume. Another notable series of i)ublications is that prepared by the Filson Club of Louisville, Kentucky, a vigorous historical society, largely pro- moted by its founder, Mr. R. T. Durrett. The following is a list of its publications : 1. The tife and Times of John Filson, the First Historian of Ken- tucky. By Reuben T. Durrett. 2. The Wilderness Road, or Routes of Travel by which our Fore- fathers reached Kentucky. By Thomas Speed. 3. The Pioneer Press of Kentucky. By William H. Perrin. 4. The Life and Times of Judge Caleb Wallace. By William H. Whitsitt. 5. The History of St. Paul's Church, Louisville, Ky. By Reuben T. Durrett. 6. The Political Beginnings of Kentucky. By John Mason Brown. 7. The Life and Times of Hon. Humphrey Marshall. By A. C. Quisenberry. The publications of the several State Historical Societies of the Ohio Valley are generally known to those interested. 36 . Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. CHAPTER II. THE PIONEER PRESS AND ITS PRODUCT. BOOK MAKING — BOOK SELLING. The first printing done on the western continent was by Spanish priests in Mexico. Stephen Daye brought from England the first press used in our country, and it was set up in 1638. The first printed work of any kind done in what is now the United States was the " Free- man's Oath," impressed on one side of a small sheet of paper, in 1639. The first book printed was the " Bay Psalm Book," dated 1640. Cornelius Vanderbilt paid $1,200 for a copy of this book. In 1670 Sir William Berkley, Governor of Virginia, reported that there were no free schools or printing in the colony, and hoped that God would keep the people from both for *' these hundred years." But in fewer than twenty-five years from the time Sir William wrote, Virginia had both a college and a printing-press, at Williamsburg. And ninety-six years later Kentucky had her type and press, a little before Ohio could boast of the same aids to the progress of man. The first newspaper established west of the Allegheny mountains was the Pittsburg Gazette, which dates its birth-day July 29, 1786. The founder of this pioneer sheet, a journeyman printer named John Scull, was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1765, and he removed to Pittsburg at the age of about twenty-one. It is handed down as a tradition in the coal-and-iron city that Mr. Scull was distinguished in his days of advent as " the handsome young man with the white hat." Witli him was associated anotlier printer, Joseph Hall. Though a devout Federalist, the liberal editor opened the columns of his newspaper to welcome contributions from the distin- guished Republican leader, Judge II. H. Bracken ridge. The Pioneer Press and its Product. 37 One of tlie first books printed west of the mountains was the third volume of Brackenridge's " Modern Chivalry," issued in 1793 from the Gazette press. The iirst and the second volume of the celebrated novel were published in Philadelphia. The Pittsburg Gazette survives, and is one of the leading newspapers of Pennsylvania. The Iirst printing press in Kentucky was set up in Lex- ington, by John Bradford, in August, 1787. Bradford, a Virginian, born in 1749 — a soldier of the Revolution, migrated to Kentucky in 1785. His father was a printer, his sons were printers, and he was the first public printer of Kentucky, holding that office from 1792 to 1798. He wrote and published " i*Totes on the Early History of Ken- tucky ;" he was honored by his familiar cotemporaries with the rank and title of " Old Wisdom ;" and he is known to have played cards, and surmised to have sipped grog, with Henry Clay, as an agreeable relaxation from business. In July, 1786, Lexington granted the use of a lot to John Bradford, on condition that he establish a printing- press. Accordingly he sent to Philadelphia for a printer's outfit — press, type, ink-balls, and ink. These novelties came, slowly climbing over the mountains in a wagon, and floating in an " ark," from Pittsburg to Limestone, now Maysville. Most of the type for the first number of the Kentucky Gazette was set up at Limestone, and fell into " pi " in transportation to Lexington by pack-horse. The matter was reset, and the first impression, upon Philadelphia paper in leaves about as large as a half- sheet of ordinary foolscap, appeared, August 11, 1787. The office of publication w^as a rude log-cabin, of which a picture is given in '' Perrin's Pioneer Press of Ken- tucky," one of the publications of the "Filson Club." The editor's inventive skill enabled him to add to his scanty fonts some larger types and rude engravings cut by his own hand from dog-wood, the American box. The initial copies of the Kentucky Gazette were carried hither and thither in the wilderness by post-riders and distrib- uted to be perused eagerly in cabins or read aloud to curious assemblies, from that backwoods forum, a stump. 38 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Here, emphatically, we have civilization invading the sav- age hold of nature — we Bee the wilderness of privation and illiteracy blossoming into the rose of knowledge and thought. The ('ii/Aite was, in the main, political and reportorial of the old news of the Atlantic States. Not much local matter appeared in its columns. Yet the advertisements reflect, with wonderful vividness, the primitive conditions of life in Kentucky, over a hundred years ago. Cattle, whisky, and pelts were legal tender in those days. Prom- inent among articles for sale this pioneer voice of the press advertises tomahawks, rifles, gun-flints, blankets, buckskin for breeches, saddle-bags, and saddle-bag locks. Besides these which so forcibly suggest the out-of-door roughness and rudeness of the war-path and the post- road through the wilderness, other articles belonging to the house are oftered for sale, such as spinning-wheels; and the fashions of yore are recalled to our thoughts when we are told where and of whom we may buy knee-buckles, and powder for the hair. Bradford's enterprise proved successful — the Gazette came to stay ; it continued in existence down to the year 1848. Several other newspapers were started in Kentucky before the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury. One of these, the Kentucky Herald, founded by James H. Stewart, February, 1795, at Lexington, lasted about ten years, and w^as merged in the Gazette. In 1797 Colonel William Hunter, an enterprising printer from New Jersey, oarae to Kentucky, and soon entered into lively competition with the Bradfords. He was one of the founders of the Washington Mirror, and also of the Frank- fort Tal hull mil, both of which newspapers were started in 1798. Hunter printed "Decisions of the Court of Ap- peals," "Littoll's Laws of Kentucky," 4 vols., and " Lit- telFs Political Transactions in and about Kentucky." Colonel S. I. M. Major, m a sketch of the Frankfort press, gives a list of the papciv pnhlishcJ in Kentucky from 1787 to 1812, as follow^ : 1787, The Kentucky Gazette, Lexington. The Pioneer Press and its Product. 39 1795, The Herald, Lexington. 1798, The Mirror, Washington. 1798, The Palladium, Frankfort. 1798, The Guardian of Freedom, Frankfort. 1798, The Kentucky Telegraph, . 1803, Western American, Bardstown. 1803, Independent Gazetteer, Lexington. 1803, Weekly Messenger, Washington. 1804, Republican Register, Shelby vi He. 1805, The Mirror, Danville. 1805, The Informant, Danville. 1806, Western World, Frankfort. 1806, Republican Auxiliary, Washington. 1806, The Mirror, Russellville. 1806, Impartial Review, J3ardstown. 1808, The Reporter, Lexington. 1808, Louisville Gazette, Louisville. 1808, Western Citizen, Paris. 1809, Farmers' Friend, Russellville. 1809, Political Theater, Lancaster. 1809, The Dove, Washington. 1809, The Globe, Richmond. 1810, The Examiner, Lancaster. 1810, American Republic, Frankfort. 1810, The Luminary, Richmond. 1811, American Statesman, Lexington. 1811, Western Courier, Louisville. 1811, Bardstown Repository, Bardstown. 1811, The Telegraph, Georgetown. For interesting details concerning these and other Ken- tucky newspapers, the reader is referred to Perrin's Pioneer Press of Kentucky. The first newspaper issued from Louisville was the Farmer's Library or Ohio Intelligencer, printed by Samuel Vail, a native of Vermont. This paper was started Jan- uary 7, 1801, and was discontinued in 1808. The Western Monitor, a weekly paper devoted to the Federal party, was begun in Lexington in 1814, and edited by Thomas Curry. The Monitor passed into the hands of 40 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. William Gibbs Hunt, a New England man, who, in 1819, changed it into the Western Review, of which a full ac- count is given in the chapter on Early Periodical Litera- ture. The first daily newspaper of Kentucky was the Public Advertizer, founded b}' Shadrach Penn at Louisville. The Advertizer was started in 1818 as a weekly. After some years it* became a semi-weekly, and then a daily. The first daily issue appeared April 4, 1826, one year be- fore the Cincinnati Gazette became a daily. The Focus, established in 1826, in Louisville, by W. W. Woreley and Dr. Joseph Buchanan, was merged in the celebrated Louisville Journal, the history of which will be found in the chapter on George D. Prentice. On November 9, 1793, William Maxwell sent out, from a little garret on Front street, west of Main, Cincinnati, the initial number of the " Centinel of the Northwestern Territory," the first newspaper published north of the Ohio river. Wm. T. Coggeshall says : "A wheelbarrow would have moved all the types, cases, and stands which this pioneer establishment contained. The press was con- structed entirely of wood, and, in order that the paper might be impressed, it was operated upon very much after the fashion that country boys operate on a cider press." The only copy of the Centinel known to the writer is owned by the Ohio Historical Society in Cincinnati. It was bought at auction for $148. The Centinel bore the independent motto : " Open to all parties, but influenced by none." In 1796 the paper was sold to Edmund Freeman, who changed the name to Freeman^s Journal, and published it until 1800, when he removed to Chillicothe. A much more important paper was begun May 28, 1799, when Joseph Carpenter issued the first number of the Western Spy, which was continued irregularly for about ten years. At the time when the Spy first came out, the village of Cincinnati probably contained fewer than eight hundred inhabitants. The paper, of course, was a weekly, and it frequently failed to appear on the appointed day of The Pioneer Press and its Product. 41 issue, skipping a week whenever circumstances made it inconvenient to come to time. Carpenter's Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette passed into the possession of Carney and Morgan, who, in 1809, renamed it The Whig. After fifty-eiglit numbers of The Whig had been issued, the paper again changed owners and names, becoming the Advertizer, which was discon- tinued in 1811. A newspaper called Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mer- cury, edited by Kev. John W. Browne and published by Looker and Wallace, first appeared in December, 1804. The Cincinnati Gazette, founded in July, 1815, absorbed the Liberty Hall, and, in January, 1827, became a daily. The press was propagated rapidly in Ohio.^ Newspa- ^ The following facts were kindly furnished by Mr. R. G, Lewis, of Chillicothe, O.: " The Scioto Gazette " was started in Chillicothe, O., by Windship and Willis, April 25, 1800. Nathaniel Willis, grandfather of the poet N. P. Willis, took sole charge of it, October 25, 1800, and published it for several years. He afterwards retired to a farm in the south-west corner of Ross county. August 10, 1815, the "Scioto Gazette " and the " Fredonian Chronicle " were consolidated under John Bailhache. The " Gazette " had been published by James Barnes; the *' Fredonian," started November, 1809, was published by John Bailhache. " The Supporter " was started October, 1808 ; it was published in Jan- uary, 1816, by Nashee and Denny; in March, 1816, it was published by George Nashee. In January, 1819, John Scott was publisher of the " Scioto Gazette and Fredonian Chronicle." In April of the same year Bailhache and Scott were the publishers. October 30, 1822, " The Supporter and Scioto Gazette" was edited by John Bailhache, but published by George Nashee. In 1825, it was published by J. Bailhache & Co., and in 1826. by J. Bailhache. "The Ohio Herald" was started at Chillicothe, August 3, 1805, by Thomas G. Bradford & Co. It was not long lived. " The Farmer's Watch-Tower " was started in Urbana, O., by Corwin and Blackburn, in June, 1812. " Ways of the World " was started in Urbana, O., July, 1820. Pub- lished, in 1821, by A. R. Col well. June 20, 1822, was issued No. 31 of Vol. XI of the " Columbus Ga- zette," Ohio, by P. H. Olmstead. July 28, 1821, was published No. 1, Vol. VI, of the "Ohio Monitor and Patron of Industry," Columbus, O., by David Smith. 42 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. pers were 80on established at Williamsburg, Lebanon, Hamilton, Dayton, Urbana, Greenfield, Marietta, Chilli- cothe, and other centers of population. In the year 1819 there were about forty newspapers in the state. Nor were Indiana and the other western territories much behind Kentucky and Ohio in spreading the news. The Vincennes Sun, Vincennes, Indiana, edited by Elihu Stout, dates from 1803.^ The Missouri Gazette, now the Republican, was started in St. Louis by Joseph Charless, in 1808. The Illinois Herald was founded at Kaskaskia in 1809 by Matthew Dunbar, the public printer. The Illi- nois Enquirer, the second newspaper in Illinois, was issued Vol. VI, No. 52, of the "American Friend," was published May 24, 1822, by R. l^rentiss, at Marietta, O. Vol. XIII, No. 38, of the " Western Herald and Steubenville Gazette " was published September 16, 1820, by James Wilson, at Steubenville. 1^0. 475 of the " Ohio Patriot " was published November 4, 1820, at New Lisbon, O. No. XIV, Vol. I, " Miami Weekly Post," was published June 15, 1820, at Troy, Ohio. No. 22, Vol. 2, "Olive Branch," was published April 16, 1819, at Cir- cleville, O., by Olds and Thrall. No. 286 of "The Western Star" was published May 25, 1822, at Leba- non, O., by Van Vleet & Co. No. 31, Vol. 1, of " The Galaxy," was published May 27, 1822, at Wil- mington, O. No. 13, Vol. Ill, of the " Delaware Patron and Franklin Chronicle," was published May 27, 1822, at Delaware, O., by Griswold and Howard. No. 24, Vol. I, "The Dayton Watchman or Farmers and Mechanics' Journal," was published at Dayton by G. S. Houston and R. J. Skinner. No. 41, Vol. XII, "The Ohio Eagle," was published at Lancaster, May 9, 1822, by John Herman. No. 205, " Hillsborough Gazette and Highland Advertiser," was pub- lished May 16, 1822, by Moses Carothers. No. 46, Vol. 2, " The Piqua Gazette and Register of News, Agricult- ure, Arts and Manufactures," was published July 4, 1822, by William R. Barrington. No. 25, Vol. VIII, " Mad-Kivir Courant," was published Nov. 21, 1828, at Urbana, O., by M. L. Lewis. No. 77, "The Farmers' Friend," was published July 21 y Will- Jam A. (^amron, at Williamsburg, O. There are others, also, published in Portsmouth, Springfield, West Union, Washington C. H., Xenia, Waverlv, etc. » See Chapter VHL The Pioneer Press and its Product. 43 at Shawneetown in 1818, by Henry Eddy and S. H. Kim- mel. Judge James Hall succeeded Kimmel, and the name of the paper was altered to the Hlinois Gazette. The whole number of newspapers in the United States, in 1813, is recorded as three hundred and fifty-nine, of which seventeen were published in Kentucky, fourteen in Ohio, and six in Tennessee. The Postmaster-General reported in 1824 that there were then 598 newspapers published in the United States. Of these Ohio had 48; Kentucky, 18; Indiana, 12; Hli- nois, 5; and Tennessee, 16. The number at that date in New York was 137, and in Pennsylvania, 110. De Quincey says : " I^ot any want of a printing art — that is an art for multiplying impressions — but the want of a cheap material for receiving such impressions, was the ob- stacle to an introduction of printed books even as early as Pisistratus." This obstacle continued as late as the time of John Bradford. The difficulty and expense of ob- taining paper was at first a great drawback to the progress of publication in the Ohio Valley. By and by, however, the supply came. The first paper mill of the West was begun in 1791 and completed in 1793, at Royal Springs, Georgetown, Kentucky, by Craig, Parkers & Co. This Craig was the Rev. Elisha Craig, the celebrated pioneer preacher. The Georgetown paper mill was a wooden building with a stone basement, and was sixty feet long by forty in width. It was destroyed by fire in the year 1836 or 1837. The first of the numerous paper mills on the Miami river was erected in the year 1814. The first type foundry on the Ohio was established in 1820, when John P. Foote and Oliver Wells started the Cincinnati Type Foundry. BACKWOODS BOOK-MAKING.. The newspaper offices were the first book publishing places in pioneer days, and it was not uncommon for the backwoods editor and publisher to sell his publications at retail. Almanacs, codes of local laws, and reprints of books in general demand, were manufactured and 44 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. vended by the enterprising newspaper man. We have mentioned that John Scull issued " Modern Chivalry " and other books from the job office of the Pittsburg Gazette, in 1793; and that Bradford and Hunter, rival editors in Kentucky, competed for the public printing of the state, and put forth histories of Kentucky from their active hand-presses. Hunter opened a book-store in Frankfort in 1808. John Bradford, though he printed almanacs, circulars, and pamphlets from the year 1787, did not get out a book until 1793; and that was subsequent to the issue of a book by Maxwell and Cooch, who established a printing press in Lexington long after Bradford. The first book published in Kentucky appeared in 1793, and it bears the following title : "A Process in the Transylvania Presbytery, etc. Con- taining: Ist. The charges, depositions, and defense in which the defendant is led, occasionally, to handle the much debated subject of psalmody. 2d. His reasons for declining any further connections with the body to which he belonged. 3d, His present plan of proceeding with the pastoral charge. 4th. His belief and that of his peo- ple concerning the articles of faith contended between the reformed associate Sinod and the Sinod of New York and Philadelphia. 5th. An appendix on a late performance of the Rev. Mr. John Black, of March Creek, Pennsyl- vania. By Adam Rankin, Pastor at Lexington, Ken- tucky. Lexington : Printed by Maxwell and Cooch, at the sign of the Buffalo, Main street, 1793." This voluminous title page fronts a duodecimo of 98 pages in the old-fashioned nonpareil type of the last century. It is bound in leather and has quite a venerable appearance. It grew out of a quarrel in the church as to whether the psalms of David or the hymns of Watts should be sung. No doubt each party sang well its psalms or its hymns, but there were discords enough to rend the church and send Rankin and his » party off sing- ing their psalms while the others sang their hymns. The following year, 1794, John Bradford published " A reply The Pioneer Press and its Product. 45 to a narrative of Mr. Adam Rankin's trial," etc. It was an octavo of 71 pages. And then the quarreling and singing went on long after it had furnished Kentucky with its first printed book. Probably those who sang Watts's hymns were strongest, for, in 1803, Joseph Charless pub- lished a duodecimo of "hymns and spiritual songs for the use of Christians," at Lexington, containing 246 pages, while there seems to be no psalm-book published by the other party. In 1793, John Bradford printed in folio the Acts of the Kentucky Legislature and the Journals of the Senate and House of Representatives for the June and November sessions of 1792. He continued to print the acts and journals in folio until 1797, after which the octavo form was adopted. In 1799, Bradford issued his general in- structor intended to furnish justices of the peace with the law forms necessary for their decisions, and the same year issued the first volume of his collected laws of Kentucky. In 1803, he issued the large quarto edition of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, b}^ James Hughes, which, with its diagrams, was a wxMiderful work for the times. In 1807, was issued the second volume of collected laws of Kentucky, and in 1817, the third and last. While Bradford was thus printing numerous law books and legislature proceedings, he was also doing something for the unprofessional reader. In 1798, he issued the cele- brated "Letter from George IN'icholas of Kentucky to his friend in Virginia," and in 1799, "An Account of the Re- markable Occurrences in the Life of Colonel James Smith, of Bourbon County, during his Captivity with the Indians from the Year 1755 to 1759, inclusive." After the present century had well set in, there were other printers in Lexington besides those named, and Lex- ington became a publishing center not only for Kentucky but for the West. Besides the newspaper offices of the Ga- zette and the Herald and the printing-offices of Maxwell and Cooch, Thomas T. Skillman, Joseph Charless, Wessely and Smith, and Downing and Phillips, were prepared to issue books. So much capacity for turning manuscript into 46 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. print was calculated to produce the matter to be printed, and such was the result. Important works now began to come from the Lexington presses at frequent intervals. In 1800, Bradford published " Voyages, Adventures, and Lit- erature of the French Emigrants from the year 1789 to 1799;" in 1802, "A Review of the :N'oted Revivals in Ken- tucky, by Adam Rankin ;" " Wilson's Grammar, revised and corrected;" "IN'ew Travels to the Westward;" and " Trying the Great Reformation in this State, etc.;" in 1803, ''Political, Commercial and Moral Reflections on the late Cession of Louisiana," by Allan B. Ma- gruder ; " Poems," by J. R. Toulmin ; " The Stud Book," and David Barlow's "Defense of the Trinity;" in 1804, "Infernal Conference, or Dialogues of Devils ;" " IS'otes on the Navigation of the Mississippi River," by James M. Bradford, and "An Apology for Calvinism," by R. H. Bishop; in 1805, "The Chain of Lorenzo," by Lo- renzo Dow, and " Strictures on the Letters of Barton W. Stone," by John P. Campbell; in 1806, "A Map of the Rapids of the Ohio, with explanatory Notes," by Jared Brooks; and during these six years, numerous school books, such as Harrison's English Grammar, the Union Primer, School Master's Assistant, the American Orator, the Western Lecturer, the Monitor, the Kentucky Precep- tor, and the Kentucky English Grammar, by Samuel Wilson. In 1815, " The History of the American Revolution," by David Ramsay, was issued in two octavo volumes by Downing and Phillips of Lexington. In 1816, Wesseley and Smith issued the " History of the Late War in the West- ern Country,' by Robert B. McAfee, and the same year, F. Bradford issued "A Complete History of the Late Amer- ican War with Great Britain and her Allies," by M. Smith. In 1821, William G. Hunt issued "A Collection of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives of Indian Warfare in the West," by Samuel L. Metcalf. In 1824, Thomas Skill- man issued "An Outline of the History of the Church in the State of Kentucky," by Robert H. Bishop. It would be vain to pursue the history of Lexington publications further, unless a regular bibliography were The Pioneer Press and its Product. 47 intended. It may be stated, however, that a large propor- tion of the books there printed was of a religious char- acter. Mr. D arret t ^ has whole shelves of them, and but few of them are of much value, except as showing the cast of thought in their day. All the Kentucky books, however, were not pririted at Lexington. In the little town of Washington, in Mason county, books were printed at an early day. In Sep- tember, 1797, a w^eekly newspaper called the " Mirror " was established by Beaumont and Hunter, and the next year books began to issue from their press. " The Ken- tucky Primer," the " Kentucky Spelling Book," and the " Ohio Kavigator, comprising an Ample Account of the Beautiful River from its Head to its Junction with the Mississippi," were all issued from this press in 1798. Toward the close of the summer of 1798, the enterpris- ing Beaumont and Hunter moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, and there established a weekly newspaper called the " Palladium." Soon thereafter, the " Mirror " was dis- continued and the printing of books transferred to the office in Frankfort. Here the school books, etc., begun at Washington were continued. The editors did not now, however, confine themselves to school books, but before the year 1798 had closed they issued " Speeches of Ers- kine and Kidd in the Trial for Publishing Paine's 'Age of Reason ;' " "A Summary of the Declaration of the Faith and Practice of the Baptist Church ;" " The Several Acts Relative to Stamp Duties ;" ''A Sermon on Sacred Music," by Rev. John A. Campbell; "A Yiew of the Administra- tion of Government," and "Steuben's Manual Exercises." It was not long before more important books than those just named began to be pulished at Frankfort. In 1802, appeared "A Collection of all the Public and Permanent Acts of the General Assembly of Kentucky," by Harry Toulmin ; in 1806, " Political Transactions in and Con- cerning Kentucky," by William Littell ; "A Review of the Criminal Law of the Commowealth of Kentucky," by ' The author is under obligation to Col. Durrett for most of the infor- mation here given concerning Kentucky books. 48 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Harry Toulmin and James Blair, and " View of the Pres- ident's Conduct," by Joseph Hamilton Daveiss ; in 1808, "Principles of Law and Equity," by William Littell, and the following year, by the same author, the first volume of his great work, ** The Statute Law of Kentucky," which closed with the fifth volume in 1819; in 1810, the great work of Joseph Hamilton Daveiss entitled " Sketch of a Bill for an Uniform Militia of the United States, w^ith Redections on the State of the Kation," etc.; in 1812, the first edition of Humphrey Marshall's great his- tory of Kentucky, followed in 1824 by the enlarged two- volume edition ; in 1814, '^ Festoons of Fancy," poems by Wm. Littell; in 1816, "A Xew Kentucky Composition of Hymns," by Rev. Wm. Downs ; and in 1824, ^'Ancient History or Annals of Kentucky," by C. S. Rafinesque. During this time, however, the making of books was not confined to Lexington and Frankfort. In 1810, there was printed in the town of Richmond, Madison county, ** The American Medical Guide," by Thomas W. Ruble ; and in 1812, a large octavo, entitled " The Philosophy of Human Nature," by Joseph Buchannan. The same year, 1812, in the town of Paris, in Bourbon county, was printed "A Treatise on the Mode and Manners of Indian War," etc., by Colonel James Smith. In these early times, books were printed at Georgetown, Harrodsburg, Versailles, Bardstown, Bloomfield, Glasgow, Russellville, Covington, Bowling Green, etc. The celebrated " Sketches of Western Adventure," by John A. McClung, was printed at Maysville in 1832, and in 1847, Lewis Collins's *' History of Kentucky." Nothing has been said about book-making at Louis- ville, and for the simple reason that the work did not be- gin there until it had long been successfully conducted at other places. In 1801, Samuel Vail established a weekly newspaper in Louisville, called the '* Farmer's Library, or Ohio Intelligencer." Pamphlets, hand-bills, circulars, etc., soon were issued from this office, but nothing that can be honored with the name of book, that has come down to our times. In 1800, F. Penniston establislii'd tlio second 71ie Pioneer Press and its Product. 49 newspaper in Louisville, which was called the " Western American ;" in 1808, the "Louisville Gazette" was estab- lished by Charless and Bruner, and in 1810, the " Western Courier," by Nicholas Clarke ; but nothing in the shape of a book has come down to us from any of these early printing offices. It was not until Shadrack Penn estab- lished the "Public Advertiser" here, in 1818, that any book Avas produced worthy of the name, and that has come down to our times. In 1819, was issued from the press of Shadrack Penn, " Sketches of Louisville and its Environs," by II. McMur- trie. This was the first history of Louisville, and the first book worthy of the name printed in Louisville. Book-making, thus slow to begin in Louisville, dragged slowly on for a number of years, but still it went on. • As the old barges and keels gave place to steamboats in the w^ater, and turnpikes and railroads took the place of the buffalo paths upon the land, books took the place of pamphlets and hand-bills and circulars, in the printing offices. Those of an early date, "such as " Meditations on Various Religious Subjects," by David P. ' Nelson, in 1828 ; "An Account of the Law-suit," etc., by Rev. N. L. Rice, in 1837; and "Pulpit Sketches," by Rev. John ISewland Maffitt, in 1839, were not of a character to add lasting fame to the town as a publishing center. In 1832, the first directory of Louisville was published, containing a sketch of the city by Mann Butler, and tw^o years there- after, Mr. Butler's history of Kentucky was issued from the press of Wilcox, Dickerman & Co. This directory and history were far the most important books that had been published since McMurtrie's " Sketches," and it was some time before any others of equal value followed. The first book printed in Ohio is known as " Maxwell's Code." It is a small octavo of 225 pages, entitled : " Laws of the Territory of the United States, North- west of the Ohio, adopted and made by the Governor and Judges, in their legislative capacity, at a session begun on ' Friday the XXIX day of May, one thousand seven hiin- 4 50 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. dred and ninety-five, and ending Tuesday the 25th day of August following, with an Appendix of Resolutions and the Ordinance for the Government of the Territory. By Authority. Cincinnati : Printed by W. Maxwell, 1796." The laws enacted by the territorial legislature in 1798, were published in the same year by Edmund Freeman, Cincinnati; and subsequent laws, by Carpenter and Find- ley, Printers to the Territory, in 1800. When the capital was removed from Cincinnati to Chillicothe, Windship and Willis, of the latter place, were made printers '* to the Honorable the Legislature," and issued volumes of laws in 1801 and 1802. Carpenter and Findley, proprietors of the " Western Spy, and Hamilton Cazette," published in that paper, of date August 19, 1801, the following: "Now in press, and for sale at this office, to-morrow, price 25 cents, a pamphlet entitled. The Little Book : The Arcanum Opened^^ containing the fmidamentcds of a pure and most ancient theology— The Urim, or Halcyon Cabala, containing the platform of the spiritual tabernacle rebuilt, composed of one grand substantive — and Seven excellent Topics, in opposition to spurious Chris- tianity. A liberal deduction will be made to those who take a quantity. No trust." Almanacs were published in Cincinnati by Wm. Mc- Farland, in 1805; by Carney and Morgan, in 1809; by John W. Browne & Co., at the Liberty Hall Office, in 1810; by Joseph Carpenter, in 1811; by Browne and Looker, in 1813; by Looker and Wallace, in 1814; by Williams and Mason, in 1816; by Morgan, Lodge & Co., in 1817; by Ferguson and Sanxay, in 1818; and by Oliver Farnsworth & Co., in 1822. The number of these names of publishing firms gives some idea of the activity of the printing business in Cincinnati, in her young days. One of the earliest books published in Cincinnati was iMued from the press of David E. Carney, in the year 1807, and bears the title, "The Trial of Charles Vattier, convicted of the Crimes of Burglary and Larceny, for Btealing from the Office of Receiver of Public Monies for The Pioneer Press and its Product. 61 the District of Cincinnati, large sums in specie and bank- notes, amounting to many thousands of dollars, etc." Dr. Daniel Drake's " Notices Concerning Cincinnati," printed by John W. Browne in 1810, is declared by Peter G. Thompson, author of **A Bibliography of the State of Ohio," to be " without doubt the rarest work relating to Cincinnati." Drake's " Picture of Cincinnati," printed by Looker & Wallace in 1815, Mr. Thompson tells us is *' often erroneously catalogued as the first book printed in Cincinnati." A very rare and curious volume printed by Browne & \ Looker for the author, in 1813, is *' The Indian Doctor's \ Dispensatory; being Father Smith's Advice respecting Diseases and their Cure; consisting of Prescriptions for many Complaints, and a Description of Medicines, Simple and Compound, showing their virtues and how to apply them. Designed for the benefit of his children, his friends, and the public, but more especially for the Citi- zens of the Western Parts of the United States of Amer- ica. By Peter Smith of the Miami Country." Mr. Thompson quotes from the preface of this primitive phar- macopeia this passage : " The author would notify the purchaser that he puts the price of one dollar on this book, well knowing that 75 cents would be enough for the common price of a book of this size ; but those who do not chuse to allow him 25 cents for his advice, may desist from the purchase. He claims this 25 cents as a small compensation for the labor and observations of fifty years, etc." Doctor Drake, in his "Picture of Cincinnati," 1815, sa3'8 : " Ten years ago, there had not been printed in this place a single volume ; but since the year 1811, twelve difierent books, besides may pamphlets, have been exe- cuted. These works, it is true, were of moderate size ; but they were bound, and averaged more than 200 pages each." The first publishers, as we have noted, were proprietors of newspapers. One of the earliest and most energetic of these pioneers of the press was Ephraim Morgan, a 52 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Quaker (born 1790, died 1873), avIio was a proprietor of the "Whig" in 1809, of the "Spy" in 1815, and senior member of the firm of Morgan, Lodge & Fisher, which, in 1826, established the Daily Gazette. Mr. Morgan built up a large publishing business, and had perhaps the largest printing house and bindery in the city up to about the year 1830. In that year the house had " five power presses, propelled by water, each of which could throw off 5,000 impressions daily." They manufactured the Eclectic School Books prepared b}^ Truman & Smith. The firm of Truman & Smith, founded by Winthrop B. Smith about the year 1830, which grew to be the most ex- tensive school-book publishing house in the world, and is now merged in the American Book Company, leaped to prosperity almost at the beginning of its career. Seven hundred thousand copies of their books had been sold up to the year 1841. The series at that time comprised only McGuffy's Readers and Speller, Ray's Arithmetics, Miss Beecher's Moral Instructor, Mansfield's Political Gram- mar, and Mason's Music Book. When the Territory of Indiana was organized, under the governorship of Wm. Henry Harrison, the laws adopted by the governor and territorial judges were printed, and one of the few sets now known to exist is owned by Judge John H. Stotsenburg, of I^ew Albany, Indiana. The sessions of the governor and judges were held in the years 1801-2-3. The proceedings of the Territorial Gen- eral Assembly were published in the Western Sun, a news- paper established by Elihu Stout, at Vinceniics, in 1804. This was the first newspaper published in Indiana, and it is interesting to note that Mr. Stout came from Lexing- ton, that starting point of western culture. In 1807, a volume of revified statutes was printed at Vinroimc's with the title, "Laws of the Indiana Tcriitory." Tlu' pub- lishers were Messrs. Stout and Smoot, authorized [.ublic printers. The paper on which the code was printed was conveyed by pack-horse from Georgetown, Ky. A copy ot the "Revision of 1807" is owned by William Farrell, Paoli, Indiana. The Pioneer Press and its Product. 53 THE BOOK TRADE. The Western Spy of August 13, 1799, contains an ad- vertisement announcing that James Ferguson would sell in Cincinnati a large assortment of books, about 120 in number, among which were Young's ''Xight Thoughts," Watt's '' Psalms," '' Vicar of Wakefield," Fox's '' Book of Martyrs," and other religious, classical and standard works. In the same newspaper, of date January 30, J.802, Mr. A. Casey, of Philadelphia, has the following notice: "PUBLIC AUCTIOX. " Will be offered for sale on Tuesday, the second day of February, at the Court House in Cincinnati, a handsome collection of books and pamphlets." Mr. Robert Clarke conjectures that the books offered for sale by Mr. Casey were purchased by public-spirited citizens and probably formed the basis of the first Cincin- nati library, organized in 1802. There was certainly no book-shop in the town at that time. One was in opera- tion in Lexington, Ky, in 1803, owned by John Charles. Frankfort, Ky., had a book-shop five years later. The wants of the people, in the line of books, were supplied at first through the newspapers, or by the keepers of general stores. Isaac Drake combined traflic in books and sta- tionery with the drug business, and John P. Foote made it an adjunct to his vocation as type-founder. So far as I have been able to ascertain, John P. Foote was the orio^inator of the first regular book-store in Cin- cinnati. In 1820 (?), Mr. Foote, in company with Oliver Wells, started the Cincinnati Type Foundry, a branch of E. White's Xew York foundry. IN'ot long afterward Foote opened a book-store at-^o. 14 Lower Market street. The business was continued until 1828. A rival book-store was established by Messrs. John T. Drake, of Massachusetts, and William Conclin, of ^ew York, who carried on business until 1829, when the partnership was dissolved, Mr. Drake going into business 54 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, with Phillips & Spear, paper-makers, and Mr. Conclin starting a new book-store at 43 Main street, where he re- mained a dozen years. Mr. John T. Drake died in 1830, and his brother, Josiah Drake, carried on the book busi- ness from 1831 to 1839. His store, No. 14 Main street, was the literary resort of the day. It is stated that his sales amounted to from eighty to a hundred thousand dol- lars a year. There were several other book-sellers in the city in the period of which we are writing, among them Flash & Ryder, Thomas Reddish, Hubbard & Edmunds, Jacob Ernst, Nathan and George Gilford, and Desilver & Burr. But it seems that E. H. Flint, son of the Rev. Timothy Flint, and publisher of the " Western Review," was the principal competitor of Josiah Drake, and that his book- shop was a favorite loaiing-place for bibliophiles and mu- sicians. In the year 1827, Flint kept the following adver- tisement standing in the " Western Review :" "E. H. FLINT, HAS OPENED A BOOK-STORE, Corner of Fifth and Walnut streets, south side of Upper Market, CINCINNATI : Where he has a general assortment of school-books, geographies, atlases, stationery, &c. His assortment at present is small, but comprises many interesting and valu- able works, particularly upon the history and geography of the Western country. He has many books that were selected, to form part of a private library. He intends soon to import from Boston and Philadelphia a complete assortment of books, stationery, engravings, &c., and to keep on hand all the new publications of interest. Hav- ing recently commenced the business of sending books to all the chief towns and villages in the valley of the Mis- sissippi, he will be able to make up packages with neat- ness, and transmit them with safety and dispatch to any town in the Western and Southwestern country. Beiu^ The Pioneer Press and its Product. 55 determined to devote himself to that hiisiness, and to make annual visits to those towns and villages, he solicits orders of this kind, for which he will charge very moder- ate commissions. He will, also, sell books at auction, if transmitted with that object. He will endeavor to merit confidence by punctuality and attention, and will thank- fully acknowledge the smallest favor." « Flint's store was removed in 1828 to ]S'o. 160 Main street, " nearly opposite the First Presbyterian Church," and the proprietor advertised, by title, a long list of books and other articles, including '' quills," " silver pens," '' rice paper, assorted colors," " seal stamps," and a " large assortment of new and fashionable music." The booksellers who advertised in " Cist's Cincinnati, in 1841," were Williamson & Strong, 140 Main street; Tru- man k Smith, Main between Fourth and Fifth streets ; J. W. Ely, "Sign of the Franklin Head," 10 Lower Market street; E. Morgan & Co., 131 Main street; George Conclin, 55 Main street ; and U. P. James, 26 Pearl street. Conclin issued quite a list of original publications, in- cluding the " Practical Farmer," " Texan Emigrant," " Life of Colonel Daniel Boone," " Life and Adventures of Black Hawk," "Western Pilot,'' and "Hall's Western Reader." The name of U. P. James, more than that of any other early publisher in the Ohio Yalley, is identified with what is distinctively of a literary character. Without detract- ing from the merits of his cotemporaries, we may credit Mr. James with being the first Western publisher who ventured to embark any considerable capital in repro- ducing standard works in general literature, and who had the enthusiasm to bring out new books in prose and verse by home authors. His long, useful, and beautiful life has but recently closed, February 25, 1889, and the "American Geologist " and other scientific journals have honored his memory by recording, with praise, his eminent services as a paleontologist, geologist, and patron of natural science in general. The writers of the West 56 Liiterary Culture in the Ohio Valley. also owe him that unpayable debt which gratitude incurs to a benefactor of their profession. The following passage from a memorial printed in 1889 may fittingly end this chapter. " Uriah Pierson James was born in the town of Goshen, Orange Co., JsT. Y., on December 30, 1811. Ilis father, Thomas James, was a carpenter, who followed his trade until h*is death in 1824, the result of an accident. His mother, Rhoda Pierson James, was a direct descendant of Thomas Pierson, a brother of Rev. Abraham Pierson, the first president of Yale College. He had two brothers and three sisters, all of whom he survived, so that he was in reality the last of his immediate family. ** In 1881, long before any railroad had crossed the Alle- ghanies, he and his brother Joseph traveled by stage and canal, west to Cincinnati, arriving in August, and wit- nessing the great flood of February, 1832. Having learned the trades of printer and stereotyper, he began to work at these soon after his arrival in Cincinnati, and followed them successfully for a number of years. In a short time he began publishing books, and his first venture, the " Eolian Songster," was printed in 1832, the copyright being dated June 15th. This book was followed at intervals by others until the complete list would num- ber hundreds. In 1847, he entered into partnership with his brother Joseph as publishers, printers, stereotypers, and type-founders, the firm name being J. A. & U. P. James. The business increased rapidly, book publishing became a prominent part of it, and the firm became widely known throughout the Mississippi Valley as the 'Harpers of the West.' Many of the books published by the firm and later by Mr. James himself have had a very wide cir- culation. The 'James's River Guide' and the ' Western Pilot* were standard works among river men on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. These books contained charts of the river channels and accounts of the cities and towns along their banks, and they were considered so ac- curate that in several instances they were used to settle disputed points in the courts. The Pioneer Fress and its Product. 57 " He published an edition of ' Yestiges of Creation ' Boon after that celebrated book first appeared. He was a patron of many of the early authors of the West, and was the means of bringing many of them before a very wide cir- cle of readers. For many years he edited and published the ^ Farmer's and Mechanic's Almanac ' long considered a standard among the farmers, who looked upon its pre- dictions of the w^eather with the greatest respect and con- fidence. The flood of patent medicine almanacs and calendars finally made this unprofitable and its publica- tion was discontinued in 1869." S9 Lit^ary Culture in the Ohio Valley. CHAPTER HI. EARLY PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF THE OHIO VALLEY. " THE MEDLEY, OR MONTHLY MISCELLANY.*' It is recorded in numerous publications, and has been accepted as final, by bibliographers, that the Western Re- view, edited by William Gibbs Hunt, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1819-21, was the first literary magazine published west of the Allegheny Mountains. A recent discovery by Mr. A. C. Quisenberry, of Lexington, an accomplished and enthusiastic student of Kentucky literature and history, proves that the pioneers of the Ohio Valley could boast of a distinctively literary monthly, in the year 1803, full sixteen years before Hunt's Review appeared. The Medley^ or Monthly Miscellany, printed by Daniel Bradford, in Lex- ington, Ky., for one year only, from January to Decem- ber, 1803, must be considered the first magazine of the West, at least until somebody finds its predecessor. His- torians need be cautious in deciding wi^ow first events — the first child born, the first house built, the first institution established in a given settlement, or state, or territory. Mr. Quisenberry, while engaged in gathering material for a biograpliical sketch of the elder Humphrey Marshall, author of MarshoWs History of Kentucky, had occasion to ransack the Lexington library, and to make diligent search through the files of the Kentucky Gazette, the earli- est newspaper published west of Pittsburg. His attention was attracted by the following announcement in tho Gazette, dated October 26, 1802: Early Periodical Literature. 59 "PROPOSALS, By Daniel Bradford, For Publishing by Subscription THE MEDLEY, Or Monthly Miscellany. I. The Medley shall be published in numbers, one of which shall be ready for delivery the first Tuesday in every month, and regularly forwarded to subscribers as directed. II. Each number shall contain twenty-four pages, duo- decimo^ Printed with a neat type, on good paper. III. The price to Subscribers will be One Dollar per an- num^ to be paid at the expiration of six months, oy seventy - five cents at the time of subscribing. I@* The first number will issue on January 4th, 1803. The design of this publication being to combine Amuse- ment with Useful information, it will be the Study of the Editor, by the variety of his Subjects, to attain that ob- ject, and suit the tastes of each reader. It is expected that Literary Characters will accept the opportunity this Work will afford them of rendering the result of their lucubrations useful to the public. Besides Original Essays, The Medley shall contain Se- lections in Prose and Yerse, from the most approved Authors. As ' The proper study of Mankind is Man,' biograph- ical sketches of those whom talent or patriotism have rendered conspicuous shall be frequently introduced. The advantages resulting from the publication of a Literary Miscellany must be obvious. The editor has only to add that Industry in the collection of materials, and particular attention to the merits and variety of Ex- tract, shall not be wanting on his part to entitle the Medley to the patronage of the Public." According to this prospectus, the first number of the 60 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Medley was to appear January fourth, eighteen hundred and three. On that date the following notice appeared in the Kentucky Gazette : *^ The Editor of the Gazette an- nounces that a disappointment in securing paper has obliged the Editor to defer the publication of the first number of The Medley until the last Tuesday in the Month, at which time it will certainly be commenced, and thereafter be continued regularly. The number of the subscription list for The Medley has already extended be- yond the most sanguine expectations of the Editor; but what peculiarly adds to his gratification is to find among the number a great proportion of ladies, under whose protecting auspices double diligence shall be used to make the work worthy of a patronage so amiable." On January 3, 1804, just one year after the above notice was printed, the Editor of the Gazette addressed his read- ers as follows : " The subscribers to The Medley are in- formed that it will be no longer published. The twelfth number, which was issued on Tuesday last, completes the volume. Those who wish to preserve their volumes can have them bound on reasonable terms ; and any parts lost or destroyed will be replaced at 6d per number. A few sets, complete, may be had on the same terms." These notices in the Kentucky Gazette aroused Mr. Quisenberry's curiosity and led him to discover a com- plete, bound copy of the Medley in the Lexington Library, He says, in a letter to the writer of this : " I had seen several vcjumes of Mr. Hunt's ' Western Review,' but had never even heard of * The Medley.' The Librarian stated that she had never heard of it, and that the library contained no copy of ' The Medley ' magazine. Not con- tent with this, I began on my own account a search of the library, and was finally rewarded by finding in an odd corner a full volume of the little magazine, bound in sheep, and in an excellent state of preservation. It was uncatalogued. The twelve numbers aggregate 276 pages, and the pages are about the size of those in the old * blue- backed' Webster's spelling book. I believe it to be the Early Periodical Literature. 61 only copy of this pioneer Western magazine now in ex- istence." The contents of the Medley are varied, comprising es- says, sketches, short stories, poems, and miscellaneous articles, original and selected. A series of papers on " Commerce " runs through the year. There is a bio- graphical study on Samuel Adams, by James Sullivan ; a History of the Virginian Mountains, by Thomas Jeffer- son, and an account of Monticello written by an English- man in 1797. Perhaps the most notable, original articles in the magazine are two on the " Character of Thomas Jefferson," from the pen of Allan Bowie Magruder, once a prominent lawyer in Kentucky, and afterward U. S. Sen- ator from Louisiana, in 1812. He was an author of some prominence, and wrote extensively on Louisiana, and on the Indians. His article on the character of Jefferson was reprinted in several European papers, and was copied in a New York paper which credited it to the London Times. Finally it came out in book form. Magruder was born in 1775 and died in 1822. The index to the Medley shows more than a hundred headings, among which are "Advice to Married Ladies," " The Story of Alcander and Septimus," " History of Maria Arnold," " Character of Lord Chatham," " Captain Cook," "Dreadful Effects of Jealousy," " Comtesse Gen- lis," " The Experienced Man's Advice to his Son, on Drinking, Dress, etc.," " Charles James Fox," " Intemper- ance : Advice to the Bloods of the Hour," " Sir William Jones," " Thoughts on the Word ' Woman,' " " Volcanoes in the Moon, by Dr. Herschell," " The Vision of Hamid, an Eastern Tale." From a long list of titles of original poems, the following are taken as a sample : "A Tear to Hume," "An Ode (in Latin) to Thomas Jefferson," "Lines on Seeing Miss E. B. Shed Tears at the Celebration of her Marriage," " Ode to Hope, by a Voung Gentleman of Lexington," " Ode Addressed by a Physician to his Horse." 92 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. GIBBS hunt's western REVIEW. More than twenty ephemeral periodicals of a semi-lite- rarj character were published in Kentucky between the years 1798 and 1820, of which some of the titles are given in the list appended to this chapter. But the second literary magazine of historical im- portance published west of the Allegheny mountains appeared in Lexington, Kentucky. The title is " The Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine : a Publica- tion Devoted to Literature and Science." It ran from August, 1819, to July, 1821, inclusive, making four vol- umes of 384 pages each. The editor and publisher was Mr. William Gibbs Hunt. A perfect copy of this rare periodical lies before me as I write. The Western Review was a carefully edited, unpretend- ing, dignified publication, though in some respects crude and provincial. Its scientific, historical, and archaeological features have a permanent value. The geology, topogra- phy and natural history of the Ohio Valley received much attention in its pages. A series of articles entitled ** In- dian Antiquities," contributed to it by John D. Clifford, elicited much contemporary comment, and scientific men still regard the series w^ith interest. Mr. Clifford w^as a member of the Philadelphia Academy of N^atural Sciences, and also of the Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts. He was a citizen of Lexington, w^here he died May 8, 1820. Caleb Atwater, born 1778, died 1867, Indian commis- sioner under Jackson and the author of a ** History of Ohio," wrote some letters to The Western Review from his home in Circleville, Ohio. Prof. C. S. Rafinesque, of Transylvania University, contributed numerous articles on the botony, zoology and meteorology of the West. He furnished several on the Ohio river and its fishes.* * This was afterward published separately in pamphlet form. It is exceedingly scarce ; has sold for $50. Prof. D. S. Jordan has writttm a valuable monogram on this first effort to describe the fishes of the Ohio, which was published by the Smithsonian Institution. Early Periodical Literature. ^ But perhaps the most important, and certainly the most readable part of the contents of the magazine, is the series of authentic narratives headed " Heroic and Sanguinary Conflicts with the Indians." In the opening number of his periodical the editor solicits, " from persons in every part of the western countr^^ who may be able to furnish them, au- thentic and well attested narratives of this kind, mentioning names and dates, and detailing all the valuable facts with the utmost minuteness and precision." In a foot-note he says further: '* Gentlemen who are not in the habit of writing for the public, and who are not even accustomed to composition of any sort, are still solicited to communi- cate, in the plainest manner, the facts within their knowl- edge." The solicitation appears to have called forth a good many responses, for almost every number of the magazine contains one or more '■'• thrilling narratives," chiefly relating to the early settlement of Kentucky. Appearing, as it did, so soon after the close of the War of 1812-15, The Western Review contained much concern- ing the political and military characters and questions of the time. The first article in the first number of the work is a lengthy review of Reed and Eaton's " Life of Jack- son ;" and the same number contains a biographical sketch of Major Zachary Taylor, then a rising hero, in the thirty- fifth year of his age. Consonant with the spirit of the day, the periodical pub- lished occasional "forensic" eflbrts, orations, eulogies and 80-forth, for the encouragement of eloquence. An elab- orate essay, by C. D., on ^'American Eloquence," startles the reader by the conclusion that the " time is at hand when American eloquence shall glow in the fervid fire of Demosthenes and roll in the copious magniticence of Tully." We ought to be thankful that a prophecy so ter- rible was not fulfilled. The purely literary department of The Western Review was very prominent, and was evidently conducted with pride by Mr. Hunt and the " few^ friends of learning" who wrote the leading articles. The title, " Review," was no misnomer, for the magazine devoted more than half its 64 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. space to formal reviews of current books in general litera- ture. Within the brief twenty-four months of its exist- ence, it spread before its critical readers full synopses, with extracts and comments, of Scott's " Tales of a Landlord," ^' Ivanhoe," " The Monastery," " The Abbot," and " Kenil- worth," these five all coming out in two years. Among other new books reviewed were Southey's ^' Life of Wolsey" and Irving's " Sketch Book," of which last the critic says : '*' This work is not so well known in the w^estern country as from its literary merit and interesting character it ought to be." Alluding to the story of Rip Yan Winkle, the re- viewer betrays an amusing incapacity for humor by gravely objecting to the possibility of a man's sleeping for twenty years ! " We are only assured that it is an absolute fact," grumbles the literal commentator, *^and are, of course, un- able to conjecture how the story can be reconciled with reason or common sense." No fewer than three of Byron's poetical productions are reviewed in this pioneer western magazine. These are ^' Mazeppa," the first part of " Don Juan," and the ' ^Vision of Dante." The moral character of " Don Juan " of course is reprehended. I wonder how the "Hesperian bards" relished the remark that Byron "seems to have no fixed principles upon any subject, but is entirely a poet." The Western Review has but little to say on American poetry, for the reason that but little American poetry ex- isted in 1819. There is indeed a long article on " The Poetical Works of John Trumbull, XiL.D.," closing with some strictures upon the "school of poetry, in which Trumbull, Dwight, Barlow, Humphreys and some others who were educated at Yale College formed themselves.'^ The article concedes that these writers produced works that are "highly respectable," and caps the climax of faint literary praise by assuring us that " they were men of high minds, pure morals and ardent patriotism." Halleck's " Fanny," published anonymously in 1820, was reviewed and commended cautiously by the Lexing- ton censors. The author was advised to employ his muse upon subjects more worthy of her. Early Periodical Literature. • 65 Metrical composition was a copious element in Gibbs Hunt's periodical. Every number displayed from four to six pages headed " Poetry," for tlie most part original. There were enigmas, impromptus, inscriptions, elegies, epigrams, songs, odes, and " effusions," specifically so headed. There were album verses and lines mildly ama- tory '' To Julia," " To Malvina," " To Sylvia," " To Julia " again, " To a Little Bird," ". To a Rose-Bud," and, finally, " To Julia's Urn," which, being interpreted, happily means Julia's tombstone. The odes were most numerous. These and the elegies were written now in English and again in Latin. Several semi-erotic poems were written in French, and a few even in Italian — French and Italian of Lexington. For this versing in foreign tongue Transyl- vania University doubtless was responsible. The first commencement of that institution occurred July 12, 1820, with seven graduates steeped in classic literature. The last number of the last volume of The Western Review, July, 1821, contains a genuine poem, entitled the " Boat Horn," by Orlando. This was the first draft of William Orlando Butler's ^ melodious lyric, the " Boat- man's Horn," afterward made familiar to the public in Coggeshall's " Poetry of the West." Coggeshall says it was first published in 1885, but he is mistaken. It came out, as I have said, in 1821, when the author was twenty- eight years old. On the completion of the fourth and final volume of the " Review," the editor wrote : " If we have in any degree succeeded ia creating or fostering a literary taste ; if we have, to any extent, drawn out the resources of the schol- ars of the western country; if we have been instrumental in preserving for the future historian and for the admira- tion of posterity any of those interesting narratives, which contemporaries only could furnish, of the difiiculties and and dangers and almost incredible deeds of heroism that distinguished, and ought to immortalize, the early settlers ^ General Wm. O. Butler, soldier and politician, was born in 1791, and died in 1880. See " Life and Public Services," by F. P. Blair, Jr., 1848. 66 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. in the West; if, in fine, we have successfully repelled a single unjust aspersion cast upon the American character, our exertions have not been in vain, and we have no cause to regret the existence, feeble and short-lived as it may Ixave been, of The Western Review." THE CINCINNATI LITERARY GAZETTE. This is the age of gnagazines, Even sceptics must confess it ; Where is the town of much renown That has not one to bless it ? — Thomas Peirce in the Literary Gazette, 1824. Three months after the first number of Hunt's Monthly came out, Dr. Joseph Buchanan issued in Cincinnati the initial number of a weekly paper called the Literary Cadet, the pioneer literary leaf of the Queen City. Before six months elapsed the Cadet was merged in the Western Spy, a newspaper dating from 1799. In 1821-2 lived and died the Olio, a semi-monthly literary venture, published and edited by John li. Wood and Samuel S. Brooks. Among the contributors to the Olio were Robert T. Lytic, Solo- mon S. Smith, Dennis M'Henry, John H. James, Lemuel Reynolds, and Lewis Noble. It was in the days of the Olio that John P. Foote started a bookstore at No. 14 Lower Market street. This became •a meeting place for men of literary inclinations. Mr. W. T. Coggeshall recorded in the Genius of the West that " One evening in the latter part of the year 1823, John P. Foote, Peyton S. Symmes, Benjamin Drake, John H. James, D. Dashiel, and one or two others, assembled in the back room of the bookstore, when the propriety of a literary gazette was taken up for discussion. There was no lack of confident hopefulness in the opinions of the counselors, and the publication was resolved upon." The Literary Gazette was issued weekly from the press of A. N. Deming, corner of Main and Columbia streets, op- posite to the Western Museum. The first number ap- peared January 1,1824. Each number bore the motto: "Not to display learning, but to excite a taste for it." Early Periodical Literature. 67 Whether any very eager taste for leartiing was excited in its readers, there is no means of telling, but it is certain the editor failed in the essential of securing a sufficient list of pa3nng subscribers. Mr. Foote laments, in his Christmas valedictory, that his readers must part " with the year and the Gazette together, and thus furnish one more instance of the futility of all hopes founded on the anticipated en- couragement of those intellectual exertions w^iich con- tribute to soften and adorn hfe among a people whose highest ambition would seem to be exhausted in acquiring the means of support." This long sentence, when chewed, will be found tinctured with the tempered bitterness of mild irony. After Mr. Foote abandoned it, the Gazette was revived, with Looker and Reynolds as printers, and was carried on for two-thirds of a second year, when a second death finally extinguished it. Among the contributors to the Gazette were John H. James, Charles ]!!s'eave, Ethan A. Brown (afterward ijov- ernor of Ohio), David G. Burnet, 1789-1870 (president of Texas), Mrs. Julia Dumont, Mrs. Mary Austin Holley,^ wife of Dr. IIorac6 Holley, president of Transylvania Uni- versity, Miss W. Schenk, of Franklin, J. G. Drake, and Dr. John D. Godman. The prevailing character of the Literary Gazette, readers of to-day would call heavy and dry. " It is our aim in this paper to be useful rather than original," wrote the editor. Yet the severely useful features of the paper were relieved l^y much original matter designed to be sprightly and entertaining without lapsing into frivolity. The fun is invariably serious and the serious writing never funny. The Gazette flourished in the palmy days of Transyl- vania University and the Cincinnati College, and the pro- fessors in these and other academical institutions con- tributed much useful information to its columns. Pro- fessor C. S. R^afinesque, of Transylvania, who had written ^ Mrs. M. A. Holly was the author of a " History of Texas," 1833, and of a memoir of her hu&band. 68 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. many articles of a scientific kind for Hunt^s Review, wrote still more for the Gazette, furnishing a series of learned papers on the "Ancient History of Korth America," and another series on "Systematic Botany." Prof. John Locke, the respected head of Locke's Female Academy, contributed several un readably dr}^ discussions on botany and on mechanics. Prof. Locke was a pioneer in scien- tific teaching and investigation. He was born in Maine in 1792, and died in Cincinnati, in 1856. Prof. T. J. Mat- thews, father of Justice Stanley Matthews, projected a mathematical department, and there was printed from his pen a lecture on Symmes's Theory. In those days the usual place for lectures in Cincinnati was the Western Museum. Mons. J. Dorfeuille, the proprietor, was himself a cyclopedia of popular knowledge, and he gave didactic addresses on languages, books, birds, and I know not what besides. In the Gazette for November 7, 1824, it is advertised that " This evening Mr. Dorfeuille will lecture (for the second time and by particular request) on * The Pleasures and Uses Arising from the Study of Natural History and the Fine Arts,' and conclude with an address to the ladies." The Gazette gave a summary of general news and brief notices of books and writers, native and foreign. It sym- pathized with the " cause of the Greeks," and with all struggles for popular liberty. The coming of La Fayette was heralded in its pages with paeans of praise. Benjamin Drake contributed to the Gazette a series of sketches under the general caption, " From the Portfolio of a Young Backwoodsman." Several of these sketches were reprinted in the author's first volume, " Tales of the Queen City." The western verse-makers sent reams of rhyme to Mr. Foote, and he printed quires of it. The most prolific and also the cleverest of our local poets was Thomas Peirce, author of the " Muse of Ilesperia " and " Horace in Cincinnati." Peirce was wonderfully versatile. In addition to his rollicking original pieces in many meters, he made creditable versions from the French and Spanish. Some of his liveliest lyrics in the Gazette are Early Periodical Literature. . 69 subscribed " Charlie Ramble." lie contributed to the Gazette a series of narrative and descriptive cantos, in the style of Byron's Don Juan, giving a lively and amus- ing account of his personal adventures during a river voyage to New 0^'leans and a sea voyage thence to Boston. The poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck, contributed to Mr. Foote's paper at least three poems, *' Memory," ^' To Good Humor," and '^ The Tempest," which are all to be found in the author's published works. Halleck, when a very young man, used to visit at the house of Foote's father at iTut-plains Farm, near Guilford, Connecticut, and here it was that his literary tendencies were encouraged. Mr. John P. Foote himself is described as bearing a striking personal resemblance to John Quincy Adams. He was an active man of affairs, with a taste for literature. Long after the demise of the Gazette, he produced two valuable books, " The Schopls of Cincinnati and its Vicinity" iind "A Memoir of Samuel Edmund Foote." flint's western monthly review.^ It is stated incorrectly in "AUibone's Dictionary," "Duyckinck's American Literature," and similar works, that Timothy Flint began the publication of The Western Magazine and Review in 1834. The fact is that the first number of this pioneer literary journal was issued in May, 1827. The " Geography and History of the Mississippi Valley " appeared in the autumn of the same year in two large volumes from the press of E. & H. Flint. This use- ful work rapidly passed through numerous large editions. Many passages from "Flint's Recollections" are incor- porated in it. The peculiar criticism was made on this book that it was too interesting to be useful ! The reader searching for geographical or historical facts in its pages was carried away from his object by its absorbing narra- tive or brilliant description. ^ See Chap. XI. T© Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. The Western Review was published onlj tliree ;years., ar ■until June, 1830. The editor was the principal contrib- utor, though James Hall, E. D. Mansfield, Micah F. Flint, and some others sent occasional articles. The magazine had the motto, ^^ Benedicire haud Maledicere.*^ The subjoined extracts from the "Editor's Address/' in the first number, are not without piquancy and local color : - " We are a scribbling and forth-putting people. Little as they have dreamed of the fact in the Atlantic country^ we have our thousand orators and poets. We have not a solitary journal expressly constituted to be the echo of public literary opinion. The teeming mind wastes its sweetness on the desert air. . . . IS'ow we are of the number who are so simple as to believe that amidst the freshness of our unspoiled nature, beneath the shade of the huge sycamores of the Miami, or cooling the forehead in the breeze of the beautiful Ohio, and under the canopy ot our Italian sky, other circumstances being equal, a man might write as well as in the dark dens of a city. . . . Our literary creed is included in one word, simplicity. Our school is the contemplation of nature. . . . Review- ers who imagine that nothing good can be written beyond a circle of three and a half miles in diameter, of which circle they are the center, may have, as must certainly be conceded to Boston reviewers, a good deal of mechanical cleverness in manufacturing sentences and rounding periods." The Review contained only original articles, not a few of which were long and dreary, on the " Philosophy of Ed- ucation," " Political Economy," "An American Uni- versity," " The Trinitarian Controversy," " Temperance/' and the like. One can not help thinking, as he turns the leaves of this sixty yesLVs old exponent of western letters, that the good editor felt it incumbent on him to show more than usual gravity, dignity, and learning. It seems as though he might have said to himseli', as he trimmed his goose-quill: "We will demonstrate to tliose carping Early Periodical Literature. 71 eastern critics that our Review is a review indeed, solid and solemn enough for the most exacting scholar. We will prove to the workl that the west is by no means friv- olous, and that we ourself, though for relaxation we may dash off a novel now and then, are capable of much heav- ier things, and we do not forget we are a collegian and a clergyman." To natives of the Ohio Valley, the Western Review contains much that is of local and historical interest. Flint was loyal to his adopted region, and gave prominence , to western topics. Every book or periodical published this side of the Alleglienies received attention in his monthly pages. All public addresses, orations, sermons, and debates were duly announced and generously com- mented on. The great discussion between Robert Owen and Alexander Campbell, which Flint attended, was made the subject of several editorial articles. The Review was a magazine of fifty^six octavo pages; price three dollars a year. It was issued from the press of W. M. Farnsworth, Cincinnati, Ohio. hall's western monthly magazine. TlaU's Illinois Magazine, 1830, and Western Monthly Magazine, 1832, are important repositories of western his- tory and literature. A detailed account of them is given in the chapter relating the life of Judge Hall, which see. THE WESTERN MESSENGER. The Western Messenger, a magazine devoted to religion and literature, and published by the Western Unitarian Association, was started in Cincinnati, June, 1835. The first volume comprised twelve monthly numbers ; the seven succeeding volumes included six numbers each, a volume every half year. The last issue appeared April, 1841. The magazine was edited until March, 1836, by Rev. Ephraim Peabody, an amiable young man of fine poetical ability, who was born in JS"ew Hampshire in 1807. Mr. Peabody was taken ill and was obliged to go south. The 72 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. management of the periodical devolved upon the Rev. James Freeman Clarke,^ and the place of publication was changed to Louisville, Kentucky, where Mr. Clarke was stationed as minister to a Unitarian Society. In 1840 Mr. Clarke returned to Boston, where he soon after founded the Free Church, of which he was the pastor until his death in 1888. The Messenger was removed to Cincinnati, and was edited by Ilev. W. II. Channing, who was ordained pastor of the Unitarian Church of that city May 10, 1839. Channing w^as assisted by his cousin. Rev. James II. Perkins, who indeed was a contributor j:o the Messenger from the start, and whose best literary work was published in it. The Western Messenger was, of course, denominational, and derived support from eastern Unitarians, who took an active interest in planting their ideas in the west. Its subscription list was never large, and its pecuniary strug- gles were constant. Few comph:ite copies of the work are to be had, and I ani told that sets are very costly. Mr. U. P. James, the veteran publisher and dealer in. old and rare books, remembered sorting out a "great pile" of the Western Messenger, which Mr. Perkins brought to the store on Walnut street, about the year 1845. The Western Messenger was essentially an eastern mes- senger — the organ of ]N'ew England liberalism in the Val- ley of the Ohio. Devoted to religion and literature, it was even more literary than religious, and both its theology and its literature were tinctured with transcendentalism. No other periodical that has appeared in the Ohio Valley is richer than it in original and suggestive contributions, and I doubt if any other contains so much tine and deli- cate writing. The lirst editor, Mr. Peabody, and his enthusiastic friend, Mr. Perkins, were imbued witli the idea of ** en- ' JamcB Freeman Clarke, D.D., woh born in New Hampshire, April 4, 1810. GraduaUnl at Harvard in 182t), and at Cambridge Divinity School in 1833. Resided at Ixjuisville 18:^3-1840. Founded Church of Disciples, Boston, 1841. Author of ** l.ife of General Wra. Hull," 1848; "Eleven Weeks in Kuropt>," 1851; "Christian Doctrine of Forgiveness;" "Ten Great Rt^Ut'i«>T>H '' otc. Early Periodical Literature. 73 eouraging" and developing the literary spirit of what was then "the west." They invited to their columns the aid of William D. Gallagher, Otway Curry, Thomas H» Shreve, and other western writers. " It ought to he one object of a western journal to encourage western litera- ture," wrote the editor. In accordance with this princi- ple, the magazine made prominent a series of carefully prepared articles on " Western Poetry." These articles gave conspicuous reviews of the literary productions of William D. Gallagher, F. W. Thomas, Lewis F. Thomas, C. D. Drake, J. G. Drake, Albert Pike, John B. Dillon,^ and Thomas Shreve. Readers of to-day will smile or sigh to read the critical opinion that " Mr. Shreve has a Bul- werian control over language and a Byronic grandeur of imagination and gloom of thought." A leading w^estern contributor to the Messenger was Mann Butler, who furnished a number of valuable sketches on the " Manners and Habits of the Western Pioneers." After James Freeman Clarke took hold of the maga- zine, the editorial tone was changed, and a new set of contributors began to write. Among the regular corre- spondents were Rev. George W. Hosmer, who, coming from Northfield, Massachusetts, organized a church in Rochester, and Rev. William G. Eliot, w^ho established his famous society in St. Louis. In response to a letter of inquiry concerning the West- ern Messenger, Dr. Clarke kindly sent the following: "Jamaica Plains, Mass., Feb. 19, 1886. "Dear Mr. Venable: — If I were not laboring under an indisposition, I should like to write you at length about ^ John Brown Dillon was born in Virginia in 1805. He removed to Ohio, and became a printer in Cincinnati ; began to write for the Gazette in 1826 ; went to Logansport, Indiana, and studied law ; afterward he removed to Indianapolis, where he was appointed state librarian ; held other public positions; wrote much in verse and prose. Among his works are "Historical -Notes," " History of Indiana," "Oddities of Fed- eral Legislation." Died in 1879. T4 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. the Western Messenger and its contributors. It was rather a vivacious affair, ranging from grave to gaj, from lively to serious. We were the first to publish any of Emerson's poetry. We had a contribution from Dr. Cban- ning and a poem from John Keats not before printed, and one which Wendell Holmes sent to me. "... The Messenger was a wandering star. First published in Cincinnati, it came to Louisville, where Eph. Peabody became an invalid, and went back again because the facilities were better in Cincinnati than in Louisville. While in the latter, I was not only editor, but also pub- lisher, and even went about once in Kentucky to get sub- scribers. I found I could import paper to print it on from Boston, via New Orleans, at less cost than I could buy in Louisville, and did so. When the number was ready for distribution, I recollect that Cranch or Osgood, or whoever happened to be with me, and I would fold, di- rect, and carry the copies to the post-office. Sam Osgood and I were carrying the basketful to the post-office one evening, when we met a stout negro, and offered him a " quarter" to take it for us. He lifted the basket and put it down again, saying: "Too heavy, massa !" So we took it ourselves. " When you see Mr. Gallagher, give him my kind re- gards. He and Edward Cranch are the only survivors of the Messenger group that I know of now in Cincinnati. T have the original subscription book, and of the Cincin- nati names — Foote, Donaldson, Lawler, Yardy, Urner, Hastings, Sampson, Jos. Longworth^ Timothy Walker, Evart, Shoenberger, Thomas Bakewell, Ryland, etc. — I fancy all are gone. " I am glad you propose to do justice to the forgotten magazine, which, in its day, was, I think, a rather respect- able effort for the young people who wrote in it. Yours, "Jamks Freeman Clarkk.'* The poem by John Keats, referred to in the above, is the " Ode to Apollo,'' beginning: Early Periodical Litcratuir.. T5 " God of the golden bow, And of the golden lyre, And of the golden hair, And of the golden fire ; Charioteer Of the patient year; Where, where slept thine ire, When like a blank idiot I put on thy wreath. Thy laurel, thy glory, The light of thy story ; Or was I a worm, too low-crawling for death? O Delphic Apollo ! " The original manuscript of this ode was presented to the editor by George Keats, a brother of the poet, who lived in Louisville, and a sketch of whose life was written by James Freeman Clarke. In the Messenger were also printed extracts from a journal kept by John Keats in England and Scotland, in 1818. Introducing these ex- tracts to his readers, the editor notes it as strange "to meet with the original papers of Keats at the Falls of the Ohio." In October, 1836, there appeared in the Messenger a long letter written from Boston, in June of the same year, by the distinguished Dr. William E. Channing. This let- ter, I believe, does not appear in Dr. Channing's collected works, although some passages of it are finished in his best literary style. Readers of to-day will find food for reflection in what so eminent an observer thought of Bos- ton some fifty years ago : " Shall I say a word of evil of this good city of Boston ? Among all its virtues, it does not abound in a tolerant spirit. The yoke of opinion is a heavy one, often crush- ing individuality of judgment and action. Xo city in the world is governed so little by a police and so much by mu- tual inspection and what is called public sentiment. We stand more in awe of one another than most people. Opinion is less individual, or runs more into masses, and often rules with a rod of iron." Interesting also to dwellers in the Central States will it be to read the great preacher's views regarding the then W^eat. The letter says : 76 JJterary Culture in the Ohio Valley. "All our accounts of the West make me desire to visit it. I desire to see nature under new aspects ; but still more to see a new form of society. I hear of the defects of the West ; but I learn that a man there feels himself to be a man, and that he has a self-respect which is not al- ways found in older communities ; that he speaks his mind freely ; that he acts from more generous impulses and less selfish calculations. These are good tidings. I rejoice that the intercourse between the East and the West is increasing. Both will profit. The West may learn from us the love of order, the arts which adorn and cheer life, the institutions of education and religion w^hich lie at the foundation of our greatness, and may give us in return the energies and virtues which belong to and dis- tinguish a fresher state of society. " You press me to come and preach in your part of the country. I should do it cheerfully if I could. It would rejoice me to bear testimony, however feeble, to great truths in your new settlements. I confess, however, that my education would unfit me for great usefulness among you. I fear the habits, rules and criticisms under w^hich I have grown up and almost grown old have not left me the freedom and courage which are needed in the style of ad- dress best suited to the Western people. I have fought against these chains. I have labored to be a free man, but in the state of the ministry and of society here, free- dom is a hard acquisition. I hope the rising generation will gain it more easily and abundantly than their fathers." The young men who uttered their opinions in the West- ern Messenger availed themselves of the intellectual free- dom which " a new form of society " afforded. They said their say more boldly than New England encouraged them to do. The iron rod of public sentiment was not so threatening' in Louisville and Cincinnati as in Boston. Thinkers, such as Samuel Osgood and C. P. Cranch, be- gan their literary career in this Western periodical. Cranch was for a time Clark's assistant in Louisville. Clarke was an enthusiastic student of German literature Early Periodical Lifrrfrtiuy. 77 and philosophy, unci he translated for the Messenger De Wette's " Theodore, or the Skeptic's Progress to Belief," afterward reprinted in George Ripley's "Specimens" of German literature. There was a department of " Orphic Sayins^s," from Ga3the;*and one or two of Goethe's stories were printed. Rev. Charles T. Brooks contrihuted many translations from Krummacher, Herder, Uhland and other German poets. J. S. D wight also wrote original poems and translations of both prose and verse for the Messenger. Dwight won a permanent place in literature by produc- ing the well-known verses beginning : " Life is not quitting The busy career ; Life is the fitting Of self to its sphere." It is not strange that the editor of the Messenger, satu- rated as he was with German literature and transcendental philosophy, should be one of the first to admire Carlyle, and among the first to discover the rising genius of Emer- son. When Emerson's " Kature " appeared in 1836, Os- good reviewed it in the Messenger. He said : " There are some things in this book that we do not understand ;" but he discovered in the luminous pages a *' wonderful dawn." Commenting on Emerson's oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837, C. P. Crancli wrote : " It is full of beauties, full of original thought. Every sentence indi- cates the man of genius, the bold, deep thinker, the origi- nal writer." It is a fact noteworthy in the history of letters that Em- erson first appeared in print, as poet, on the banks of the Ohio. He contributed to the Western Messenger, gratis^ the poems: "Each and All," "The Humble-bee," " Good-bye, Proud World," and " The Rhodora." These are among his best metrical pieces. " Good-bye, Proud World," is perhaps his most popular lyric, though the au- thor did not esteem it highly. It came out in April, 1839, but is subscribed "Canterbury Road, 1823." On compar- ing these verses as they were printed originally, with the 78 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, later copies as they stand in the author's volumes, one discovers many curious verbal changes. In some cases considerable addition has been made to the first version, and in other cases passages have been left out. The alter- ations are invariably obvious improvements. For instance, the expression, " Vulgar feet have never trod," is happily •ubstituted for '' Evil men have ever trod." The first line of the quaint and beautiful poem on ^* The Humble-bee," " Burly, dozing humble-bee," originally read : " Fine humble-bee! fine humble-bee!" In the letter from Mr. Clarke, allusion is made to a poem sent to the Western Messenger by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The poem was that entitled '' The Parting Word," Avhich admirers of the ''Autocrat " will recall from the first line : " I must leave thee, lady sweet." Another literary star, not of the first magnitude, yet of a clear and lasting luster, tbat rose from the East to shine in Clarke's Western galaxy, was the religious poet, Jones Very. This eccentric character, in March, 1839, sent the following letter from Boston to Louisville: " Rev. J. .F. Clarke, editor Western Messenger : ** Hearing of your want of matter for your Messenger, I was moved to send you the above sonnets that they may help those in afiliction,for Christ's name is ever the prayer of me, his disciple, called to be a witness of his sufferings and an expectant of his glory. If you ask for more — as I have them — so will they be communicated, freely. Amen. **The hope of Jesus be with you wlu n V(jii are called to be a partaker of his temptations. "Jones Very." Ear^y Periodical Literature. 7^ The letter was accompanied by twenty- seven sonnets, which were published, as were many other of Very's poems, from time to time, in the Messenger. Nearly all of these are included in the edition of Very's poems issued a few years ago. Clarke was an appreciator of Hawthorne's early work. He reprinted "Footsteps on the Sea-shore" from the first edition of "Twice Told Tales," and wrote an editorial Comment : " Since the days of Elia we have seen nothing to compare with it. It lias all of Washington Irving's delightful manner with a pro founder meaning and a higher strain of sentiment." Among the contributors to the Messenger were two women who afterward became well known in letters — Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody and the more celebrated Mar- garet Fuller. The latter sent her friend Clarke a number of articles, reviews on " George Crabbe and Hannah More," on " Bulw^er," on "Letters from Palmyra," and a paper on " Philip Van Arte veld." Her contributions were signed S. M. F. — Sarah Margaret Fuller. When Clarke left Louisville for Boston, the Western Messenger ofiice was removed to Cincinnati, and Rev. W. H. Channing became editor, assisted by Rev. James H. Perkins. The magazine grew more than ever devoted to German translations and to transcendental, poetic theol- ogy. The many articles furnished by Perkins were filled with earnest, practical fact and thought, and possess a high value. In June, 1840, the editor wrote : " Our friend, Mr. Bron- son Alcott, of Boston, has kindly given us his prose poem, 'Psyche, or the Growth of the Soul.'" But "Psyche'* never unfolded her silvery wings before the readers of the Western Messenger. The magazine vanished in a sort of rosy mist in budding April, 1841. There was a conditional promise on the last page of the last number that the publication of it might be resumed in July; but the promise failed. The period- ix3al was an exotic — a Boston iiower blooming in the Ohio Valley. 80 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, The Western Magazine was a harbinger* of the famous Boston Dial, which made its first appearance in July, 1840. It is a very interesting and notable fact that at least ten of the contributors to the Messenger were also among the writers for the Dial. These were Emerson, Fuller, Clarke, E. P. Peabody, Dwight, Brooks, F. II. Hedge, W. H. Channing, Cranch, and Very. Miss Pea- body was the first publisher of the Dial, and Margaret Fuller and Emerson were its editors. Of the ten, all wer6 born between the years 1803 and 1813, and four, Cranch, Dwight, Brooks, and Very, were born in 1813. I can not better close this sketch than by quoting from the final volume and number of the Western Messenger this word of praise and prophecy : " We have not said a word of the Dial, for we are slow to praise our own family, and the writers of the periodical are our dear friends. Therefore, one word only, readers — believe not the geese who have hissed their loudest at this newcomer. Such foolish creatures can not save the capi- tol. The Dial marks an era in American literature. It is the wind-flower of a new spring in the western world. For profound thought, a pure tone of personal and social morality, wise criticism and fresh beauty, the Dial has never been equaled in America." w. D. Gallagher's " HESPERIAN." No other man has done so much for the cause of western periodical literature as William D. Gallagher.^ He was connected editorially with numerous magazines and news- papers, including The Western Minerva, The Cincinnati Mirror, The Western Literary Journal, the Cincinnati Ga- zette, the Louisville Courier, the Ohio State Journal. But his most important literary venture was the Hesperian. He has given us the history of the publication in the fol- lowing words : " In the winter of 1837-38 Mr. Gallagher projected at ' Mr. Gallagher's literary services to the West are giv6n in detail \A the biographical sketch, Chapter XV. Early Periodical Literature. 81 Columbus, Ohio, where he was then residing, a work of larger size and more diversified character than any he had yet attempted in the West, or, so far as the writer knows, in the United States. This was the Hesperian, which ap- peared in May following, W. D. Gallagher and Otway Curry, editors ; John D. Mchols, publisher; Charles Scott and John M. Gallagher, printers ; ninety-four pages super- royal octavo, double column ; five dollars per year sub- scription. This work was so exclusively one of the writers own projecting; it was made to bend so entirely to his ideas of what such a periodical should be ; his own pen furnished such a large proportion of its entire con- tents ; his reputation was so intimately connected with it; his fame and fortune so staked upon its success, and his humiliation at its failure so deep and abiding, that he feels he is not the proper one to write its history. He is proud to say that no similar work was ever received in the United States with more decided marks of favor. Its characterizing feature was one of usefulness ; its numerous articles on the early history of the state, on its agricult- ural resources, on its manufacturing industry, on its com- mercial channels, on its mineral treasures, on its literary and humane institutions, on its geology, flora, etc., were appreciated by a circle of readers of which any periodical might boast. The best talent of the West was engaged contributing to its pages, and on its subscription books the names of the educated and intelligent were most lib- erally written. But notwithstanding all this, through the grossest remissness and most culpable mismanagement on the part of its publisher, the publication of the work was suspended at the close of the third volume — eighteen months from its commencement. Over the causes of this suspension the writer, then alone in the editorship, had no control, and he was in no manner pecuniarily responsible for the injustice done by it to that portion of the subscrib- ers who had paid for the full second year. He declined subsequent propositions from the publisher to recommence the work, in the first place, because his confidence in the 6 82 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. integrity of that individual had been shaken, and in the next, because the propositions were accompanied by con- ditions which would have made it necessary materially to modify the plan of the publication, which would have left him without an adequate support. In this manner, what was at first in reality only a suspension of the work be- came a discontinuance of it. His long and bitter regret at this mortifying termination of a venture on which he had staked so much, it is useless to speak of, as it can be measured by the feelings of no one who has not been cir- cumstanced similarly with himself" moore's western lady's book. Half a century ago "gentlemen's magazines" and "la- dies' books " were in demand and the supply was forth- coming. One of the oldest American lady's books is the familiar " Godey," now in its sixtieth year. I have come across No. 1, Vol. I, of a Western Lady's Book, printed in August, 1840, by H. P. Brooks, Walnut street, Cincinnati. It is a thin pamphlet of twenty-eight pages, edited by an "Association of Ladies and Gentle- men," and bears the motto, " The Stability of Our Repub- lic, and the Virtue of her Institutions is with the Ladies." It does not appear that the patriotism and other virtues of the " ladies and gentlemen who projected the Western Lady's Book " were equal to the task of preserving its stability ; at least I have never seen a second number of the publication, nor met any one who ever did see a second number. The leading article in No. 1, Vol. I, of the Western Lady's Book is by P. Sturtevant, and is entitled " The Heroine of Saratoga : a Tale of the Revolution," and it tells us how Emeline Wharton, for love of Henry Elverton, dis- guised herself as a soldier, saved her country and married her lover. Another story by "Jane," and having the cheerful caption, " The Village Graveyard," relates the languishing loves of Charles Anson and Caroline Lee, and how, soon after they were wedded, they breathed their last and were nicely buried in the same grave. Early Periodical Literature. 88 A periodical of much vitality was Moore's Western Lady's Book, edited by A. and Mrs. H. G. Moore, Cincin- nati, and devoted to literature, biography, science and general miscellany. I have not been able to procure a complete set of the quite numerous volumes of this publi- cation, which was issued somewhat irregularly through a period of eight or ten years. It was started, I believe, in 1850, with the name " Western Magazine," but the pub- lishers and editors announced, early in 1854, that " having received such liberal patronage from the ladies of our country to the Western Magazine, they have concluded to change the name and make it more exclusively a ' Lady's Book.' " The magazine was made " more exclusively a Lady's Book," by introducing two new features — fashion plates and music. Ladies of to-day, who gaze with de- light upon the monthly array of illustrations in Demorest, the Bazaar, or the Delineator, would laugh at the pictures in the Lady's Book. Much of the contents of Moore's Lady's Book is se- lected matter, yet a good many of the Western writers favored its pages with original pieces. Honorable Horace P. Biddle,^ of Lidiana, T. H. Burgess, Harriet jN". Babb, P. F. Reed, R. E. H. Levering, Osgood Mussey, and Alf Burnet wrote for it. The issue for January, 1855, con- ^ Horace P. Biddle, LL.D., Ph. D., was born March 24, 1811, in a log cabin near Logan, O. He was the son of one of the original Marietta settlers, and a protege of Thomas Ewing. He studied law with Hocking Hunter, of Lancaster, O. Began the practice of his profession in Ohio, but settled at Logansport, Ind., in 1839. Was elected Judge of the Cir- cuit Court in 1846, and called to the Supreme bench in 1857. Presided as Supreme Judge for twenty-five years. Judge Biddle is living and oc- cupies a fine old mansion on " Biddle 's Island," on the Wabash, at Lo- gansport. He has by far the largest private library in Indiana— a col- lection of over 7,000 standard books and bound newspapers, filling ten or twelve rooms. Biddle began his literary career in 1842 by writing for the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1850 he published his first volume, "A Few Poems." A second volume of his poems appeared in 1868 from the press of Hurd & Houghton. Other works by him are " The Musical Scale," a scientific treatise, 1850 ; " Glances at the World," 1873; "Elements of Knowledge," and "Prose Miscellany," 1881; and " Last Poems," 1882. 84 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. tains a biographical sketch of Alf Burnet from the pen of Coates Kinney. The best of the poetry contributed to the Lady's Book is that of F. B. Plimpton, whose " Mari- ners of Life," '' Poesie," '' Mount Gilbo," and " The Oak" appeared originally in this periodical. Several continued stories were written for the Lady's Book — one a prize tale, '* The Twin Sisters," by Mattie Lichan ; another, " Elizabeth, or the Broken Vow," by Edward Clifton ; and a third, and by far the best of the three, " The Prophecy, or the Recluse of the Maumee," by U. D. Thomas. Decidedly more interesting than these fictions are two illustrated articles by William T. Coggeshall. The first of these, published in March, 1854, describes a visit to Niagara falls, and opens with this paragraph : " I was fortunate in the associations of my first visit to Niagara falls. I went with Kossuth and suite, and I found there Godfrey Frankenstein and his brother George, the artists who had been studying and painting the cata- ract, the rapids, the rocks, the river and the whirlpool, for several years, in order that they might be able to rep- resent them on canvas, and take Niagara to those people who could not go to it." The second article by Coggeshall is called a " Trip to New York," and was printed in January, 1855. A local interest belongs to this, because it is illustrated by twelve wood-cuts by R. J. Telfer, representing views on the Little Miami Railroad. One of these is a picture of Jamestown, now Dayton, Kentucky. The descriptive text says : " On the right, and near two miles from the depot, you will see a handsome town on the Kentucky shore. This is Jamestown. It was laid out only three or four years since, and is now, as you see, a considerable village. In a few years the Kentucky shore, like the Ohio, will be lined with a continuous town. The three towns of Covington, Newport and Jamestown, now contain about twenty thou- sand inhabitants. Three-fourths of this is the growth of the last ten years." Early Periodical Literature. 85 Among the objects shown by pictures are the Cincinnati water-works, Jamestown, the Columbia burying-ground, Milford, Miami railroad bridge, Deerfield station, and Mor- row's mill.^ Mr. Coggeshall discoursed on Gov. Morrow as follows : " Just before you come to Foster's Crossings, you will notice on the left hand of the cars as you come from Cin- cinnati, on the west bank of the river, a large mill and plain frame house. This was the residence of one of the real statesmen of our country — Governor Morrow. He entered public life in 1802, and remained in the public service half a century, in which time he never lost the public confidence nor ever failed in any part of his duty. He was a member of the state convention to form the first constitution, was twelve years a member of the house ot representatives in congress, and most of the time the only representative of Ohio. He was six years in the United States senate, four years governor and several years, toward the close of his life, president of the Little Miami Railroad Company. The Duke of Weimer, after visiting him in 1825, described him as a faithful copy of ancient Cincin- uatus. "He was engaged, on our arrrival, in cutting a wagon pole, but immediately stopped his work to give us a hearty welcome." To return from this excursion up the Miami to our " Lady's Book," we find, in the issue of March, 1854, and subsequent numbers, a feature worth noting. Mrs. E. A. Aldrich, having suspended the publication of a women's right's paper, the Genius of Liberty, made an arrange- ment with the proprietors of the Lady's Book, to continue the advocacy of her views by occupying eight or ten pages of the magazine, every month, with such articles as she or her sister reformers might choose to write. " In- dividual sovereignty," declared Mrs. Aldrich, " is our star. This is our deepest foundation. It is the motto on all * The mill is still standing, a picturesque relic. ' Two pictures of it, painted by Gustave Frankenstein about the year 1855, may be seen in Springfield, Ohio. 86 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. our banners. It is the vitality of this movement. Per- sonal independence is the all in all. It is our center and circumference — the soul and body of our efforts." To the department headed " Genius of Liberty/' there were sev- eral contributors, viz., Melissa M. Taylor, M. E. Wilson, M. A. Bronson and Mary S. Legare. The most exciting passage in their discussions is entitled, " Women's Intel- lectual Inferiority or Horace Mann vs. Physiology," a stricture on the president of Antioch College, who, it seems, had accepted the theory that woman's mental powers are not equal to man's, because her brain is lighter than his. The student of the history of western literature will find in Moore's Western Lady's Book a series of a dozen or more sketches on the '^ Poets and Poetry of the West." He will, perhaps, be surprised to read long biographical reviews of poets and poetesses w^hose names he never heard. M. D. Conway said in a review of Coggeshall's " Poets and Poetry of the West :" " Some filtration is necessary for all our western streams before they are drinkable. About half a dozen of these poets should have been omitted accidentally." The Lady's Book includes sev- eral names among its poets that Coggeshall did omit. THE PARLOR MAGAZINE. In July, 1853, appeared the first number of the Parlor Magazine, conducted by Jethro Jackson, 180 Walnut street, Cincinnati. It was handsomely printed on sixty-four large, double-columned pages, and illustrated with steel-plates and wood-cuts. Some of the fashion plates were printed in colors. The Parlor Magazine thundered a good deal in the in- dex. The prospectus contains quite an ethical treatise. "In the high moral tone and scrupulous purity of senti- ment, the truthfulness and intelligence which will pervade our ])ages," wrote Mr. Jackson, *' we hope our most serious readers will find qualities to propitiate and secure their careful scrutiny and ])crmanent approbation. It will be our jiim to hlciid \-alual)U' i n In im nation and sound Early Periodical Literature. 87 morality with the gratification of a literary and imagina- tive taste. Phases of history, illustrations of local inter- est, vivid portraitures of virtuous life and occasional dis- quisitions and reviews, embellished here and there with glittering gems of poetry, will, we trust, give value to our pages." This studied announcement of intention to in- struct and improve the public drew a certain patronage, but was not as attractive to people in general as Mr. Jackson hoped it would be. His plan was to make such a magazine as he judged the people ought to read, rather than one which they w^ould like to read. The maxim of Sleary, the circus manager, in Dickens' novel, that " Peo- ple mutht be amuthed," holds true of magazine readers. In his anxiety to keep every thing frivolous out of his publication, the conductor put in it too much that was dull. Yet, on the wdiole, the contents of the Parlor Mag- azine were attractive, and became more so as the months passed by and Mr. Jackson gave up a prejudice against romances. The follow^ing is a partial list of contributors to the Parlor Magazine : Rev. S. D. Burchard, Dr. J. R. Howard, Thomas H. Shreve, W. S. Gaffney, Yirginius Hutchen, Mrs. Helen Truesdell, S. W. Irwin, Rev. Edward Thomson, Harriet E. Benedict, Mary Clemmer,^ Anne Chambers Bradford, M. Louisa Chitwood, Roley McPherson, Horace Rubley, J. H. Bone, D. F. Quinby, William T. Coggeshall, Mary E. Hewett, Kate Harrington, G. W. L. Bickley, W. W. Dawson, M. D., William Baxter, F. H. Risley, Miss M. E. Wilson, Thomas H. Chivers, J. H. Baker and Peter Fishe Reed. At the end of six months Messrs. Applegate & Com- pany, 43 Main street, became the publishers of the maga- zine, Jackson continuing the general management, assisted by Alice Cary. The first semi-annual volume, from July to December, 1853, was issued as an independent work, under the title of " Family Treasury." The accession of Alice Cary to the editorial control of Afterward Mary Clemmer Ames, the biographer of the Cary sisters. 88 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, the periodical gave new life to its pages. She took a more cheerful view of the duties of an editor than Mr. Jackson had taken. But it is evident from her first editorial that she was not sanguine as to the success of the magazine, nor over-confident of her own powers of pleasing. There is a sprightly wit and a keen common sense about her salutatory that warrant me in quoting some sentences from it. She says : "As we seat ourself at the editorial table of the Parlor Magazine, an anecdote, which we have read somewhere, occurs to us : "A French surgeon, who was in the habit of boasting of the performance of some very difiicult operation, hav- ing treated no less than sixteen patients, was asked how many of them he had saved. ' Oh,* replied the French- man with naivete^ ' they all died — but I assure you the ex- periments were yqvj brilliant ! ' " Our magazine is not greatly below the sixteenth one that has struggled for existence in Cincinnati, and if it should fail, why w^e shall congratulate ourselves with the reflection that it was at least a brilliant experiment. . . . Some years ago the editor of a small paper in the interior of Ohio announced in Viis salutatory that he had that day commenced ' the wielding of the tripod,' and, lest we should fall into a similar blunder, we will cut short our introductory, simply referring the reader to what we pre- sent, rather than to showy promises, for it is surely true that a bird in the hand, even if it be a common sort ot bird, is worth two in the bush." Alice Gary contributed to the Parlor Magazine a story written in her best vein, entitled " The Actress." She also contributed a number of short poems, remarkable for their naturalness, pathos, and melody. One of these, doubtless the sincere expression of feelings she had recently experi- enced in New York City, is called " Homesick" — Oh ! shall I ever be going Back any more ? Back where the green woods are blowing Close by the door ! Early Periodical Literature. 89 Back where the mowers are binding Pinks with their sheaves — Where homeward the cattle are winding Together of eves ? The fresh-smelUng earth at the planting — The blue-bird and bee, The gold-headed wheat fields aslanting How pleasant to me ! I'm sick of the envy and hating All efibrt brings on — I'm sick of the working and waiting, And long to be gone. Gone where the tops of red clover With dew hang so low, And where all the meadow-side over The buttercups grow. I'm weary — I'm sick of the measures Each day that I track— Of all which the many call pleasures. And long to be back. Back where the ivy-vines cover The low cabin wall. And where the sweet smile of my lover Is better than all. Oh ! shall I ever be going Back any more — Back where the green woods are blowing Close by the door ? The genius of Alice Gary did not bring financial pros- perity to the Parlor Magazine. She soon retired from the editorial chair to return to IN'ew York, and Mr. W. F. Lyons took her place. Mr. George W. L. Bickley, who had been publishing the West American Review, transferred bis subscription list to that of the Parlor Magazine, and in 1855 he became a partner in the concern. The merged magazines formed one, with the new name, The West American Monthly, which did not survive to greet the year 1856. ^ Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. LUCIUS A. hine's periodicals. The literary magazines of the west have usually been private enterprises, undertaken by enthusiastic young men bent on carrying out ideals rather than making money. Only youth and enthusiasm have the strength and the rashness to venture on reforming the world without cap- ital and by means of printer's ink and a publication. Something near fifty years ago, a handsome, stalwart,, all-hopeful student, fresh from I^orwalk Academy, Ohio, came to Cincinnati and took the regular course in the law school, then under the direction of Timothy Walker. This young gentleman was Mr. L. A. Hine, oldest son of Sheldon Hine, a thriving farmer who came from the good old Orthodox county of Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1818, and settled at Berlin, Erie county, Ohio, where he pros- pered. L. A. Hine was born at Berlin, February 22, 1819. Though trained to conservative views and habits, both in theology and economics, Hine departed from the coun- sel of his family, having been indoctrinated with the rad- icalism of Horace Greeley, Robert Owen, and other agi- tators. He did not enter upon the practice of law, but, actuated by hopes of literary success, he started the West- ern Literary Journal and Monthly Magazine, the first number of which came out in November, 1844. In this venture he was associated with E. Z. C. Judson ("Ned Buntline ") — an ill-assorted partnership. Hine was to fur- nish one thousand dollars and Judson ^ve hundred dol- lars; but it turned out that Hine furnished nlore than one thousand five hundred dollars and Judson nothing. Both were very young men — Hine only twenty-five and his partner twenty-one. By and by they took into the firm a third ambitious young fellow from Tennessee — Hudson A. Kidd. Judson was nominally editor, he having already achieved some reputation as a writer for the Knicker- bocker Magazine, and as editor of Ned Buntline's Own, a story paper which he had started at Paducali, Kentucky. Unfortunately for liimself and for his associates, Judsoa Early Periodical Literature. 91 got into a quarrel at IS'ashville, Tennessee, which led to a passage at arms, in which he killed a man who had shot at him. Judson was captured by a mob and almost hanged, w^as glad to escape with his life and fly to Pitts- burg. In consequence of this affair, the literary magazine was discontinued after six numbers had been issued, Iline paying the debts. The contents of this unfortunate Journal and jReview are varied and entertaining. Almost all the leading writers of the West contributed to its columns. The post of honor in the first number was occupied by William D. Gallagher, who furnished a long historical article on " Periodical Literature." The same veteran, who, how- ever, was then no veteran, but a dashing young man but thirty-six years old, gave to the public, through the Jour- nal, a number of his best poems, such as " Truth and Freedom." Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, that Hannah More of the West, contributed column after column of moral sketch and story to encourage the magazine ; Mrs. R. S. Nichols, Mrs. An;ia Peyer Dinneis, Miss E. A. Evans, Mrs. S. M. Judson, Mrs. Lee Hentz, and Miss E. A. Dupay were con- stant writers for it. It must not be thought that the has bleus monopolized the pages of our young men's magazine. Many male writers, grave and gay, kept the post-bags enriched with their offerings. Productions were printed from T. H. Shreve, Albert Pike, J. Ross Browne, J. B. Russell,. Charles Cist, J. L. Cist, Prof. Cross, J. B. Hickey, B. St. James Fry, Hiram Kaine, Otway Curry, L. C. Draper, Colonel Charles Whittlesey, J. R. Eakin, E. P. is'orton, F. Colton, C. B. Gillespie, W. B. Fairchild, J. C. Zachos, D. L. Brown, H. A. Kidd, Anson Nelson, H. B. Hirst, James W. Ward, H. C. Beeler, G. T. Stuart, J. J. Martin, W. H. Hopkins, John Tomlin, A. S. Mitchell, Dr. T. M. Tweed, Emerson Bennett, and Donn Piatt. The gentleman named last wrote on the subject of " Old Bachelors," and under the pseudonym "John Smith." The novelist, W. Gilmore Simms, contributed a poem, " The Grave of the 92 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, Bard." Emerson Bennett's contribution was a languish- ing sonnet to his " ladje love." Many of the names just given will be recognized as holding a worthy place on the scroll of literary dis- tinction. Albert Pike ' was well known and highly popular, not only in the West, but throughout the country, on account of his successful eftbrts as poet, law reporter, and editor in Arkansas and Tennessee. His poems, an '' Ode to the Mocking Bird," "Ariel," " Hymns to the Gods," were re- garded as products of genius. Pike was born at Boston in 1809. He seems to have struck up a jolly acquaintance- ship with "Ned Buntline," to whom he addressed a poetical letter, which was published in the Journal. It opens thus : Dear Ned, your craft I see 's at length afloat, A tight, sea-worthy, staunch, and well-manned boat. Mr.L. C. Draper, named in the list, is Dr. Lyman C. Draper, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, whose col- lections of Western biographical and historical material are invaluable. Draper was born near Butfalo, New York, in 1815. Much of his work has been done in co-operation * General Pike died in Washington City, April 2, 1891, in the eighty- second year of his age. He was Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite Masonry of the Southern Jurisdiction and Chief of the Royal Order of Scotland for this country. He was born in Boston in 1809. He was author, editor, lawyer, and soldier. He edited the Arkansas Advocate and the Memphis Aj)peal. It was stated in the New York Times that he had the largest and most costly library in the South. His " Hymns of the Gods " was published in 1839. Besides this he wrote three other volumes of poems. His writings on Masonry are considered the high- est authority. In 1874, he published a book on Philology. General Pike removed to Washington in 1868. Since the year 1875, he translated about twenty volumes from Sanskrit into English. A Washington cor- respondent of the Chicago News, writing of these, says : ** They are not printed, but are in manuscript, every word being written by Gen- eral Pike, and in all of the thousands of pages, there is not a scratched word or an erasure. If General Pike had given the same time and erudition to the world of literature, instead of to the secret order of which he was the head, his name would, undoubtedly, have been classed with the Raskins, Emersons, and Carlyles." Early Periodical Literature 93 with Benson Lossing. Dr. Draper is deservedly distin- guished as the editor of the ten volumes of Wisconsin Historical Collections, and the author of " King's Moun- tain and its Heroes," and other historical works. He con- trihuted to Hine's publication an article on " General George Rogers Clarke." Colonel Charles Whittlesey's important donations to the Journal include articles on " Indian History," " John Fitch," and " The Northern Lakes." Judson, besides numerous editorials, furnished charac- teristic sketches in true " Xed Buntline" style — "The Last of the Buccaneers," " The Lost Chief of the Uchees," and reminiscential "Sketches of the Florida War." Benjamin St. James Fry,. born 1824, now a Doctor of Divinity, and the editor of the " Central Christian Advo- cate," St. Louis, was very active in literary matters in the Ohio Valley. He edited in Cincinnati a periodical called the " Rambler," and was connected with Hall's Maga- zine. He became president of " Worthington College." To his pen we are indebted for the biographies of several prominent Methodist clergymen. John Celevergoz Zachos,^ an occasional contributor to Hine's periodical, is a Greek, born at Constantinople in 1820. Coming to America, he graduated from Kenyon College, Ohio ; studied medicine in Miami University, Ohio ; became associate principal of Cooper Female Col- lege, Dayton, Ohio ; and afterward professor in Antioch College under Horace Mann. In 1852, he edited the Ohio School Journal. He is the author of several school books. For some years he was a Unitarian preacher. Since 1871, he has been curator of Cooper Institute, ^ew York City. • L. A. Hine, by nature earnest and by reflection serious, felt an inward call to serve humanity by effecting social and educational reforms, especially by some great land re- form, to bring about such happy conditions as Henry ^ For some years teacher of mathematics in Rev. Dr. Colton's school, Cincinnati. '94 Literary .Culture in the Ohio Valley, Oeorge looks forward to. Hine "Busied his pen in the elu- cidation of his chosen themes. He wrote articles en- titled " Distinctions," " Standard of Respectability/* •" Teaching a Profession," " Union of Mental and Physical Labor," and " One Dollar." Occasionally he invoked the lyric muse, who inspired him with strains of a contem- plative and melancholy tone. The young man w^as loaded with a burden no less than the old, sad world with its im- memorial woes. The Literary Journal w^ent to wreck in April, 1845. In the following January, Hine put forth, at his own ven- ture, as editor and publisher, the initial number of THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL AND REVIEW. This was published through the year 1846, and then merged in the Herald of Truth. In his Quarterly, he gave fuller scope to his opinion on political and social economy. His reviews took the form of radical discus- sion under such captions as "Association," " The Spirit of Democracy," " Obligations of Wealth," " Progression," " The Land Question," '^ Our Social, Political and Educa- tional System." One of his earliest out-and-out radical utterances was a review of E. P. Hurlbut's " Essays on Human Rights," published by Greeley in 1845. When Hine's father (prudent and sagacious money-maker that he was) saw this article, he dryly remarked, " Lucius will make nothing by writing in that way." Nevertheless Lucius did make — enemies. The Quarterly was not wholly given up to radical dis- cussion. David Dale Owen contributed several scientific papers on " Geology." The editor continued also, as in his previous publication, to give prominence to literary topics, and to solicit contributions from purely literary writers. Albert Pike, Emerson Bennett, George F. Mar- shall, Alice Gary, Mrs. C. A. Chamberlain, Mrs. R. S. Nichols and Mrs. Sophia H. Oliver wrote poems for the Quarterly. A piece contributed by Mrs. Oliver entitled, ^* I Mark the Hours that Shine," went the rounds of the press and was printed in school-readers. Early Periodical Literature. 95 George S. Weaver, of Dayton, Ohio, who became a ^celebrated Universalist preacher and writer, began his lit- erary practice in this Quarterly. THE HERALD OF TRUTH. " The Herald of Truth, a monthly periodical devoted to the interests of Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Science and Art," a magazine of eighty pages, the organ of a brotherhood of social and religious radicals who had a community on the Ohio river, was started in January, 1847, and was continued nineteen months, when the " Brotherhood " failed. L. A. Hine was employed to edit the periodical, but no effort was made by the society to push it, the leader believing it w^ould work its own way. The Herald partook somewhat of the character of its pre- decessor, the Quarterly, though it contained greater vari- ety and was superior in literary style and mechanical " make-up." The devotees of the " Philosophy of Uni- versal Harmony " used its free pages as a vehicle for con- veying their theories to the public. The editor resumed his efforts to set forth the facts, figures, and arguments to demonstrate the necessity of land reform. He made an exhaustive historical survey of the " Roman Land Laws " and of the " Hebrew Land System." Articles were pub- lished on various phases of socialism, on St. Simon and Fourier, and on Swedenborg. A long discourse on the history of " Labor," from the pen of Robert Dale Ow^en, found an acceptable place in the Herald. Many of the men -and w^omen who wrote for the Lit- erary Journal and the Quarterly were personal friends of Mr. Hine and continued to favor him with their assist- ance. Among them were Alice and Phoebe Gary and Emerson Bennett. Several new contributors made the Herald of Truth their medium of communication with the " gentle reader." Among the contributors of prose I name John 0. Wattles, Dr. Diver, John Patterson, I. P. Cornell, John White, Thos. L. Boucher, Maria L. Varney, and Milton J. Sanders. Warner M. Bateman, now a prominent Cincinnati lawyer, made one of his earliest lit- 96 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, erary efforts in preparing for the Herald an article enti- tled "Education — Freedom," written from Springboro, Ohio." The poetical contributors, besides those already men- tioned, were Mrs. Sarah T. Bolton, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, Mrs. Sarah J. Howe and Coates Kinney. THE WESTERN QUARTERLY REVIEW. In 1849 Mr. J. S. Hitchcock, who once kept a news room in the old post-office building in Cleveland, Ohio, and who was an able solicitor for journals, started in Cin- cinnati another- Quarterly Review, expecting to pay ex-- penses and more by canvassing for subscribers. Mr. Hine agreed to do the editorial work, which he did gratis until the proprietor mysteriously disappeared in Chicago, where he had gone on a soliciting tour. Whether Hitchcock was killed, or whether he died among strangers who gave no information of him, is unknown to this day. What- ever may have been his fate, it is certain that the Quar- terly failed. Two numbers only were issued, of about two hundred pages each. The first was illustrated with a steel engraving of the poet, William D. Gallagher ; and the second, with a portrait of John Locke. The volume contains, in all, twenty-eight articles, in prose and verse, the titles of the most important being : " The Youth of Christ," " The Land Question," " Ethology," "American Eloquence," "Neurology," "Powers's Greek Slave," " The Free-Soil Movement," " William D. Gallagher," " The Revolution of 1698 and Macaulay's History," " Decline of the Church," " The Republic," "Education and Crime," " Mission of Democracy," and " Ohio : Her Resources and Prospects." In nine's Quarterly of 1849, the literary element is en- tirely subordinated to the controversial, though the work contains a few poems and a story with a purpose, called "A Philosophical Sketch," composed by the editor. In- deed, the battle of opinions had thickened around Hine, and henceforth he gave himself to his favorite " cause." He had drawn the tire of many conservative journalists, Early Periodical Literature. 97 who hated his radicalism on general principles. We find him, in 1850, editing the Daily Nonpareil, a paper con- ducted on the co-operative plan by a company of printers. On ceasing to write for the I^onpareil, he commenced traveling as a lecturer on reforms, especially the land re- form and educational topics. His magnificent personal appearance, his fine voice, and eloquent, poetic style of delivery, make him a very impressive orator. He is the author of numerous . pamphlets on political and social economy, and of several radical stories, " The Unbal- anced," "Patty Parker," " Currie Cummings," "The Money Changer," etc. In 1869 Mr. Hine published three numbers of a reform journal called Hine's Quarterly, or the Pevolutionist, having for its motto the word^ '''■Taurus cornthus captusJ' Mr. Hine now resides near Loveland, Ohio, living a recluse life, but still actively engaged in study and lite- rary composition. THE ladies' repository. By far the longest lived, most extensive, and most ex- pensive literary periodical ever published west of the Al- legheny mountains was the Ladies' Repository and G-ath- erings of the West, a- monthly which was started nine years before the first number of Harper's was issued. It was almost the only western magazine that had the good fortune to be sustained by any considerable capital and patronized from the start by a considerable class of read- ers. The periodical was owned and managed by the Methodist Book Concern, and naturally received the sym- pathy and support of the great denomination which, in a special way, it represented. It was conducted in a liberal spirit, according to a policy that extended a tolerant hand to all, and it was hospitable to the ideas of any writer who expressed himself with moral propriety and a fair degree of literary skill. The Ladies' Repository contains thirty-six annual vol- umes, published in the years 1841-1876. Each of the first 7 98 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. * fourteen volumes has 380 pages, and the succeeding vol- umes each comprise 760 pages. The Repository was dis- continued after 1876, but, in its stead, the Book Concern published a still larger periodical, the ^N'ational Repository, which was kept up four years, 1877-1880. The life of the two magazines — they may be regarded as one and the same — covered forty years of the most interesting period of the history of the Ohio Valley. The Ladies' Repository was started in consequence of a memorial suggesting the desirability of such a publica- tion, addressed to the M. E. Conference, at Cincinnati, in September, 1839, by Mr. Samuel Williams, of Mt. Auburn, the father of Professor Samuel W. Williams, now in the Methodist Book Concern, and of John Fletcher Williams, librarian of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. Samuel Williams was one of the early pioneers. He was a gentleman of literary tendencies, and he contributed to the Repository, under the name of "Plebius," a series of reminiscential papers called " Leaves from an Auto- biography," giving experiences in Pennsylvania and West Virginia from 1790 to 1850. As the name would indicate, the Ladies' Repository was designed, originally, to furnish reading particularly ac- ceptable to women, or to the family circle. Hence, for the first year or two, its columns abounded with advices and admonitions, somewhat solemn and heavy, to the fe- male sex. Caleb Atwater, the pioneer historian of Ohio, contributed an article on " Female Education." An ad- dress by Samuel Galloway, A.M., to the pupils at Oakland Female Seminary, at Hillsborough, Ohio, on " Female Character and Education," was published. There also ap- peared in print a discourse to a Young Ladies' Lyceum, by Honorable Bellamy Storer, the distinguished jurist and statesman. As one glances over the introductory volumes of the long series of Repositories, and observes how im- measurably and unceasingly the misses, maids, and mat- rons were belectured and relegated to their "sphere," one feels sorry retrospectively. That was before the day of Kansas voting and Vassar College, Yet, it must be said Early Periodical Literature, 9^ to the credit and honor of the early editors of the Repos- itory, that they opened their columns freely to female writers, and that, as time went on, the women had their full " say," to the exclusion, we trust, of some masculine severities on female education, which might have been printed. The first editor of the Ladies' Repository was Rev. L. L. Hamline, A. M., afterward bishop, who held the manag- ing pen for nearly five years. As was expected, the lead- ing preachers of the Methodist Church in the West, and many of the presidents and professors in Western colleges, wrote for the magazine, which was expressly devoted to "Literature and Religion." A majority of the most prominent denominational ministers and educators con- tributed to the useful work. isTumerous writers not of the Methodist persuasion also proffered their aid, which was accepted, always with thanks, and often with pay in cash. The subscription list rapidly increased, and in its palmiest days, the Repository enrolled thirty thousand subscribers, and had three or four times that many readers. Every number was illustrated with one or more fine steel en- gravings. The subjects chosen for illustration in the early years of the periodical were local scenes and objects, drawn from nature by Western artists. The first number presented " Views on the Ohio." Other of these pictures made in the forties were "A Railroad Scene," '' View on the Miami Canal," and very beautiful sketches of the " Big Miami River" and " Indiana Knobs." Among those who wrote for the Repository in its first decade, when the Book Concern was managed by Rev. J. F. Wright and Rev. L. Swormstedt, were many who had already risen to distinction and 'more who afterward achieved honored names for worthy public service in re- ligion, education, literature, legislation or law. This magazine was the seed-bed in which were germinated and nurtured hundreds of intellectual growths that in time bore fragrant blossoms and good fruits in the West, or were transplated to bloom and bear in other parts of the 100 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. world. The list of contributors is a very long one ; I will seleot from it a few leading names : Prof. F. Merrick, of the Ohio Wesleyan University, wrote for the Repository on zoology. Rev. M. P. Gaddis, as early as 1841, contributed a " Scene in a School Room," and afterward he sent other pieces. Rev. J. L. Tomlinson, president of Augusta College; Bishop Morris, D.D.; Prof. W. G. Williams, of Woodward College ; Rev. Joseph F. Tuttle, of Wabash College; Rev. D. D. Whedon, D.D., president of Michigan University ; Rev. W. P. Strickland, Prof. Waterman, Rev. B. W. Chidlaw, Rev. L. D. Mc- Cabe, Prof. E. C. Merrick, Rev. A. M. Lorraine, Rev. S. McClure, Rev. W. C. Hoyt, Rev. J. R. Wilson, Rev. R. Sapp, Rev. T. Harrison, G. P. Disoway, Rev. R. W. Allen, Rev. J. B. Durbin, D.D., and Pro£ E. W. Merrill, all slione in the galaxy of contributors between the years 1840 and 1850. Dr. Hamline was succeeded in the editorial chair by the Rev. E. Thompson, who, on being elected president of the Ohio Wesleyan Univerity in 1845, gave place to Rev. B* F. Teeft. Teeft was followed in 1845 by Prof. W. C. Larrabee, who acted as editor for five months, until Janu- ary, 1853, at which time Dr. Davis W. Clark, afterward Bishop Clark, took the responsible position. All of these had been generous contributors to the Repository before they were selected to edit it, and, of course, as editor, «ach in turn wrote much for its columns. Dr. Thompson had been the much loved and respected head of a famous academy at ITorwalk, Ohio. His schol- arship and literary ability were very great, and few men have done more to advance civilization by individual ef- fort than he. Prof. Larrabee was a distinguished teacher in Asbury University (now De Pauw), Indiana. Dr. B. F. Teeft wrote much and well on various sub- jects. He was of a literary turn, and he gave to the Re- pository a more decided literary character than it had be- fore his editorial connection with it. Through its pages he gave to the public a historical and philosophic story relating to the time of Louis the Thirteenth of France Early Periodical Literalare. 101 and entitled " The Shoulder-knot." This was published in a separate volume by the Harpers, in 1850. In 1840 and 1841, Rev. D. P. Kidder, who, in 1839, had made a visit to Brazil, furnished the Repository with a series of '' Sketches of Travel." Colonel John McDonald, of Poplar Ridge, Ohio, author of McDonald's " Sketches of the Pioneers," contributed an account of " Logan, the Mingo Chief," whom he had seen. Another pioneer, illustrious in politics, the Honor- able Joshua R. Giddings, contributed in November, 1844, his personal recollections of the " Skirmishes on the Lake Peninsula in 1812." In June, 1846, the Rev. James B. Finley published in the Repository the first of several papers giving reminiscences of his early life. Finley came West with his father, down the Ohio river to Kentucky, in 1788, and his narrative is extremely interesting. Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, who resided in Yevay, Indiana, from 1814 to the year of her death, 1857, wrote for the Re- pository " Sketches from Life," " Our Village," and other things. Her style is sometimes tedious and prolix, but her stories have the supreme merit of dealing with reali- ties, and the strata of dull paragraphs ai^e veined with the gold of good writing. Here is a specimen of her descrip- tive composition, valuable for its picturesque vividness, and for the true glimpse it gives of the customs of pioneer days along the Ohio river : '• We are watching the boats that are descending the stream — we have no eye for ob- jects of mere visual interest. Here is one at hand that has been heralded by some half dozen ' outriders ' — a store boat! laden with fancy merchandise — an exciting array of red and green and yellow, now quiet for the hearts of the demoiselles, both of our town and the back- woods. Why, look ! the stirring rumor has been out upon the wings of the ^vind. They are already hurrying, in not silent groups, down to the bank — the young, the fair, the gaileless-hearted. Beshrew the heart that would &corn their simple vanity. May every little purse (and well we ken they were light enough) prove sufiicient for the favor- ite want, for hardly have its contents been earned, and 102 Jjiterar.y Culture in the Ohio Valley. carefully have they been treasured, doubtless for such destination." An enormous quantity of very poor poetry lies entombed under the covers of the Ladies' Repository. To compen- sate for this rubbish, there is excellent poetry to be found, here and there, scattered through these forty volumes. Mrs. Sarah J. Howe, a verse writer of considerable power, wrote her best pieces for the Repository. She achieved a good reputation on the merit of a poem, "Bolesdas II., or the Siege of Kiow." In 1849 she con- tributed to the Herald of Truth a scene from another orig- inal drama, of which the hero is an Indian chief. Mrs. Howe lived in Newport, Kentucky. Her poems were never published in a collected form. Otway Curry, who in his lifetime divided with W. D. Gallagher the laurels of local fame, won his literary hon- ors by means of the Repository. He was a constant and valued contributor to its pages ; and when he died his life was written lovingly by Edward Thomson and by Wm. D. Gallagher. Alice Cary began to write for the Repository in 1847. Her genius was soon recognized, and she was employed as a regular contributor of poetry and prose. She pub- lished about a hundred short stories and sketches, many of which were reprinted in her volumes called " Clover- nook." Poems were contributed to the Repository by Mrs. Helen Truesdell, Mrs. A. L. Ruter Dufour, Mrs. L. H. Sigourney (who also contributed stories), Mrs. S. T. Bol- ton, Mrs. R. S. Nichols, Miss M. Louise Chitwood, Virginia F. Townsend, Hannah F. Gould and Phcebe Cary. The much admired, much ridiculed, Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper, was a personal friend of Doctor Teeft, to whom he sent occasional letters and poems. The following note from him was written from Furze Hill, Brighton, England, and is dated September 28, 1848 : " My Dear Sir : I hope you will long ago have received my letter, and that a response from you may be on its Early Periodical Literature. 103 road. By the way of stirring up your mind to remem- brance, I send you the inclosed ballad, which I have just written, and which tells its own tale. I send it to you, my friend, as a newly forged link of love between our nations. Send any tidings likely to be of interest. Salute all unseen friends, and believe me, as ever, " Truly yours, Martin F. Tupper." The ballad inclosed is named, " Ye Thirty !N'oble IN'a- tions," and addresses the states of the Union in terms of general praise, tempered by a mild denunciation of slavery. The Repository published perhaps a dozen strings of verse from Mr. Tupper, who usually added to his name the let- ters " D. C. L., F. R. S." In September, 1848, appeared a " National Anthem for Liberia " and a monitory rhymed address "To America," beginning: " Young Hercules thus traveling in might, Boy-Plato, filling all the West with light. Thou new Themistocles of enterprise : Go on and prosper — Acolyte of fate ! And, precious child, dear Ephraim— turn those eyes— For thee, thy mother's yearning heart doth wait." Turning the leaf illuminated by the verse of Tupper, we find on other pages of the Repository names familiar to the eye and ear, but which we do not associate with the idea of verse-making. Yet here they are prefixed or suffixed to eff'usions in measure and rhyme ! M. B. •Hagans, now a grave and dignified judge in Cincinnati, sent to the Repository, forty years ago, a little poem on " Memory." And here, in volume ten, is the " Emigrant's Lay," by Ben. Pitman, since the author of many phono- graphic books. And on another page not far from the " Emigrant's Lay," we read " The Christian's Fear," a hymn by the scholarly 0. J. Wilson. We are not sur- prised, after these discoveries, to find attached to a bit of blank verse, written in 1847, the name of Alfred Holbrook, the widely known president of the National Normal Uni- versity, Lebanon, Ohio. In volume sixteen the curious reader comes upon "Autumn Musings," a sentimental lyric 104 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. by Rev. J. H. Vincent, now bishop, the far-famed leader of the " Chautauqua Movement." Another volume brings to light a poem by Kev. Edward Eggleston, whose writings are now known wherever English is read. After tracing the literary beginning of so many noted men to a fountain of verse, one is prepared to read Prof. "William G. Williams's article, in volume thirteen of the Repository, in answer to the question, " What is Poetry?" Or, the reader may turn to a critical and suggestive essay by Coates Kinney, on " Poetry and Poets." Kinney's own muse very well answers the query, " What is Poetry?" for she enabled him to produce many genuine poems, a few of which were printed in this same Ladies' Repository, for which he began to write, as a paid contributor, in 1855. The titles of his principal articles are, '' Clyde Sutven's Story," "Duty Here and Glory There," "Soma and Psyche," "Elocution," "Impressibility," "Pronunciation," and " The Future of the English Language." A very able and eminent contributor to the earlier vol- umes was Rev. A. Stevens, who became the historian of the Methodist Church. His articles include " Sketches of New England Life," " Klopstock," " Meta Klopstock," and " Horse Sylvestrse " — a series of beautiful essays. Mr. Erwin House, for many years assistant editor, wrote numerous articles for the magazine. He prepared many of the book notices. Another writer, admired for his exact, varied, and thorough learning, and for his lucid and charming style, is Prof. S. W. Williams, who began to write for the Repos- itory in 1857, and who gave it much valuable aid for a number of years. His first article is entitled " The Myth- ical Character of William Tell." In 1850 L. A. Hine, the reformer, published in the Re- pository a long and able article on the " Idea of Virtue." The paper gives the ethical views of many philosophers, ancient and modern, and rciiclK's the conclusion that "love is virtue," and tliat we '-vainly setk reform on any other basis than that of intellectual and religious improve- ment." . Early Periodical Literature. 105 M. D. Conway, who began his public career as a Methodist preacher, wrote critical studies on " Gray's Elegy," on '' Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer," and " Ralph Waldo Emerson," for the Repository in 1850. Other literary people who wrote for the Repository be- tween 1850 and 1860, were Isaac H. Julian,^ J. W. Roberts, George W. Hoss, Rev. J. W. Wiley, Rev. Robert Allyn, Hon. Horace P. Biddle, Dr. Cornelius G. Comegys, Horatio N. Powers, Rev. E. O. Haven, D.D., O. J. Victor, Metta V. Fuller, W. W. Fosdick, William T. Coggeshall, and Mrs. Donn Piatt, author of " Belle Smith Abroad;" Peter Fishe Reed, Rachel Bodley, late president of the Woman's Medical College, Philadelphia; Virginia F. Townsend, editor of Arthur's Home Magazine and author of a dozen or more volumes; and Charles Nordhotf, the Prussian, who wrote *' Man-of-War Life," " Kine Years a Sailor," and other popular works. When Dr. Clark became editor of the Repository, 1853, the work was enlarged to double its original size, and several new features were added. Almost every number contained a finely engraved portrait of some favorite Amer- ican female writer, accompanied by a lengthy sketch of her life and works. A few of the women thus honored were L. H. Sigourney, Sarah Josepha Hale, Elizabeth Stewart Phelps, Alice Cary, Amelia B. Welby, Emily C. Judson, ^ Isaac H, Julian, noAV conducting a literary agency in San Marcos, Texas, has done much for the cause of general culture, as editor and otherwise. He writes under date of March 13, 1891 : " Since my happy release from the newspaper tread-mill, I am devoting most of my time to those lit- erary pursuits and recreations w^liich were the delight of my youth." Julian was born in Wayne county, Indiana, June 19, 1823. He was a contributor to the National Era, the Ladies' Repository, the Genius of the West, and other periodicals. From 1846 to 1850 he resided in Iowa. Returning to Indiana he became editor of the " True Republican," at Centerville. He has since edited several newspapers. In 1873 he re- moved to Texas. He published in 1857 a biief " History of the White- water Valley." A volume of his poems is now in preparation. Mr. Julian possesses a rare and valuable collection of western books and man- uscripts. 106 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The picture of Mrs. Stowe represents her as almost ideally beautiful. Portraits of many eminent preachers were also engraved for the Repository; and other illustrations — landscapes, fancy groups, reproductions of historical and classical paintings — appeared from month to month. It is said that the sum spent on pictures far exceeded the amount paid for all other matter in the magazine, and that con- tributors dropped off and the literary character of the Re- positoiy declined as the department of illustrations became prominent. Be that as it may, it is certain that the man- agers of the periodical concluded not to attempt to compete with the general illustrated literary magazines, such as " Harpers'," and decided to give a more specially re- ligious and denominational direction to their work. After 1860 the Repository gradually lost its hold as a representa- tive western literary journal, though it retained great vi- tality and continued to be a strong, intellectual, and moral force, not only within the church, but in the community at large. I may record, as a point of historical interest, that for many years the editorial offices and binderies of the Methodist Book Concern were located in the old St. Clair mansion, at the corner of Main and Eighth streets, Cin- cinnati. I remember calling on Dr. Clark, in 1861, at the editorial room of the Repository, on which occasion he said, "Do you know that we are now sitting in the library of General Arthur St. Clair?" The Evening Times of May 19, 1879, contains a his- torical sketch of the St. Clair house, to which, unfor- tunately, no name is affixed, but which was evidently pre- pared with care and accuracy. The writer says : " Doubtless the foundation was laid in the summer of 1800, and the house followed closely the type that had ruled for years before in the East. It was the model to the West, the first dwelling of any pretensions, the first house of brick built in the Miami country. The very bricks were brought from Pittsburg in keel-boats. A large piece of freestone that forms the door-step came in the Early Periodical Literature.. 107 same way, and was the wonder of the folks at the time. The building was a marvel and a matter of pride. Yet, in 1822, John I. Jones bought the house and lot at tax sale for twenty-five dollars. Then it was owned by the United States Bank, and in 1835, Crafts J. Wright deeded the property to Salmon P. Chase for $8,064. Chase deeded it back to Wright & Swan, agents for the Methodist Book Concern, for $11,200. The Book Concern made editor's offices of the bed-chambers and binderies of the parlors. It was at one time divided by a wood partition into two dwelling-houses, and finally it has become the litter place of a manufactory. St. Clair's home deserves a better fate than to perish, when so much life might be its lot. The walls are as sound as they were nearly a century ago. With us this building is the beginning, the ancient temple, the first step out of the wildnerness. St. Clair left no family of wealth to cover his faults and lift up his virtues. His name has been covered in the local history by the fame of those less worthy in many respects, and clouded by a disaster in his early history which some future historian will sweep away. Then General St. Clair and all he left here will assume a new value." THE GENIUS OF THE WEST. The Genius of the West, a monthly magazine of West- ern literature, was projected, and for a time conducted, by Howard Durham, a young Jerseyman, who came from his native state, in 1847, to the village of Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati. Durham was a shoemaker by trade, but, disregarding the proverb, " Stick to thy last," he forsook his humbler bench for a seat on the editor's tripod, and began his literary fortune by publishing a neat paper. The Western Literary Gem, which was presently united with another paper, the Temperance Musician. The last-named sheet was edited by Rev. A..D. Fillmore, author of a series of singing-books which followed the system of angular or "Buckwheat" notes once in vogue. Durham also joined John W. Henley in getting up a " moral and literary monthly for the young," which was christened " The Lit- 108 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. tie Traveler," a name afterward changed to " The Little Forester," by Durham, who bought his partner out. The initial number of the Genius, printed in the rooms of the Phonetic Advocate, by Elias Longley ^ and Brothers, 169J Walnut street, is dated October, 1853. After issuing several numbers, Mr. Durham took into partnership with him Coates Kinney, a poet already famous on account of the popularity of his " Rain on the Roof." ^ Kinney had just re- ^ Elias Longley waB born at Oxford, Ohio, in August, 1823, while his father was still a student in Oxford College. His father moved to Lebanon, Ohio, in 1832, and thence to Cincinnati in 1840. Here the. boy was educated in the public schools and Woodward College, and then studied for the Universalist ministry, but he soon gave up the ministry for a newspaper life. In 1848, he learned Phonography, and in 1850, began the publication of a monthly magazine of thirty-two pages, entitled "The Phonetic Magazine." This paper was continued two years, then it became a semi-monthly, and later was enlarged to a weekly newspaper. Its publication was suspended in 1861. During the ten years previous to the war, Elias Longley, in connection with his brothers, compiled and published an American Manual of Phonography, and a primer, first and second readers in phonetic spelling, which ob- tained extensive sales all over the United States. From 1861 to 1884, he was engaged in daily newspaper reporting on the Commercial and the Daily Gazette, doing all of the short-hand speech reporting and much of the interviewing. Beginning with the speech of Lincoln, on the old Burnet House steps, before the election, he reported the ad- dresses of Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and many other distin- guished statesmen. He was sent to report the re-hoisting of the flag at Fort Sumter, where he took down the speeches of Beecher and AVm. Lloyd Garrison. He was the first short-hand reporter of Cincinnati, where he was for two years official court reporter. He was also, for a time, official reporter of the Ohio legislature. Mr. Longley is now re- siding in South Passadena, California. ^"Rain on the Roof," unquf^stionably the most popular poem ever written in the Ohio Valley, an i xqiiisite lyric that has been everybody's favorite, now for over forty years, luis a very interesting history. TUe poem was written in the summer of 1840, while the author was visiting his father's family at Spring Valley, Greene county, Ohio. Colonel Kinney says, in a letter to the writer : " I slept one night next the roof, in the little frame cottage which our folks lived in, and which has since been torn away and replaced. In the evening there came up a gentle rain, which pattered on the shingle roof, two or three feet above my head, all the part of the niij;ht during which I was awake. Here I lay a.id ( oticeived the lyric , and then went to sleep. It haunted me till next day, which was brigiit, and green, and glorious; and, on a Early Periodical Literature. 109 signed his professorship of languages and belles lettres in Judson College, Mt: Palatine, Illinois, and, on his return to Ohio, he hecame the leading editor of the new magazine. Some business difficulty having arisen between Durham and Kinney, the latter bought the concern, taking as com- pany Wm. T. Coggeshall^ and Durham retired. The fol- lowing curt valedictory appeared in the Genius of August, 1854: " For numerous reasons, more interesting to myself than to the public, I have withdrawn from the Genius of the West and Forester, leaving my partners ' monarchs of all they survey.' Howard Durham." In January, 1855, Durham issued the first number of a rival magazine, which he named " The New Western, the original Genius of the West." The enterprising young editor was overtaken by financial troubles, added to which he suffered a bereavement in the death of a child. He was obliged to abandon the " 'New Western," and not long after he was attacked by cholera, of which he died September 14, 1855, at the early age of twenty-seven. By the terms of his partnership with Kinney, William Turner Coggeshall became the chief owner of the Genius of the West. Born at Lewistown, Pennsylvania, Septem- ber 6, 1824, Coggeshall came to Akron, Ohio, in early walk from Spring Valley down to Mt. Holly — three miles — where I went to visit my uncle's folks, I composed most of the poem, finishing it the same afternoon during a sequestration of myself and a ramble in the woods just adjoining the town — woods now long since cleared away. It was the easiest production I ever wrote. It cost me no labor. . . . I sent it to the Great West, which was then edited by the nov- elist of Indians, Emerson Bennett. I was personally acquainted with Bennett, and he knew me as a writer, for I had contributed to a little literary paper of his. It was so long before the poem appeared that I had given it up as unaccepted. But finally it did appear, September 22, 1849. ... I learned later, from E. Penrose Jones, who was pub- lisher of the Great West, that the poem escaped oblivion through an accidental discovery of his. He was looking through Bennett's rejected manuscript drawer, and found it. Bennett had thought it not quite up to the standard of Indian-novelist literature, and had tossed it into that drawer." 110 Literary Culture in the OhioValley. manhood, and embarked in the publication of a temper- ance paper, bearing the peculiar caption, The Roarer. At Akron he was married, October 26, 1845, to Mary Maria Carpenter. Mr. Coggeshall removed to Cincinnati in 1847, and became reporter for the Times, under the man- agement of " Pap " Taylor. In 1849 he worked on the Gazette with Wm. D. Gallagher. He traveled, in 1851-2, with General Louis Kossuth, reporting that eloquent Hungarian's speeches for both western and eastern papers. In the fall of 1852 he established a little paper called the Commercial Advertiser, but soon gave it up, and went into the office of the Daily Columbian as assistant editor. Having resigned his position on the Columbian, he took charge of the Genius, saying in brief salutatory : *^A11 I have and all I am are invested in the enterprise this maga- zine announces." Coates Kinney's connection with the Genius of the West was severed June, 1855, when he wrote a " good- byographical " and retired, leaving Coggeshall sole pro- prietor. Early in 1856 Coggeshall was appointed state librarian by Governor Chase, and the Genius was disposed of to Mr. George True, who conducted it until July, 1856, when it was discontinued, five complete volumes having been issued. Three thousand copies of the Genius were the greatest number ever put forth in any single month. Complete sets and even stray numbers of this periodical are very scarce, as, indeed, are sets and copies of most other western publications. This is accounted for, in part, by the circumstance that, during the civil war, the sanitary commission gathered and sent to the soldiers all the copies of unbound periodicals that could be procured. Every house was ransacked for reading matter, and tons of books and pamphlets were collected and shipped to Southern camps and hospitals. The quality of a magazine is indicated by the character of its contributors. In the prospectus of the Genius of the West, the editor announced the following men and women as his pledged " assistants :'* Coates Kinney, Wm. T. Coggeshall, J. H. A. Bone, Peter Fishe Reed, Clement Early Periodical Literature. Ill E. Babb, J. W. Roberts, R. E. H. Levering, J. Hunt, Jr., J. M. Walden, Comly Jessup, U. P. Ewing, T. H. Burgess, Benjamin S. Parker, Mrs. Sarah T. Bolton, Alice Gary, Frances D. Gage, Harriet E. Benedict, Garrie Myer, M. Louisa Ghitwood, Miss M. E. Wilson, Mary A. Reeves, Kate Harrington, Julia M. Brown, Mary "Eulalie" Fee, Louise E. Vickroy. Goggeshall printed in his list of contributors most of the above names and these additional ones : Wm. D. Gallagher, Rev. Dr. E. Thompson, Rev. A. A. Livermore, James W. Taylor, James W. Ward, Donald Macleod, Don A. Pease, D. Garlyle McGloy, Florus B. Plimpton, Anson G. Ghester, E. S. S. Rouse, Thos. Hub- bard, Alfred Burnett, G. A. Stewart, General L. V. Bierce, S. S. Gox, John B. Dillon, J. B. Burrows, T. Herbert Whipple, Mrs. R. S. Nichols, Mattie Griffith, Carrie Piatt, Elvira Parker, Phoebe Gary, Harriet N. Babb, E. D. Mans- field, Dr. I. J. Allen, L. J. Gist, Gsgood Mussey, Prof. J» R. Buchanan, W. W. Fosdick, O. J. Victor, W. Albert Sutliffe, S. D. Harris, Isaac H. Julian, M. Halstead, J. H. Baker, Prof. E. E. Edwards, L. A.Hine, Y. M. Griswold, Sydney Dyer, T. J. Janvier, Metta Victoria Fuller, Mrs, Susan W. Jewett, Mrs. Frances S. Locke, Ida Marshall, Jane Maria Mead, Lydia Jane Pierson, Daniel Vaughn. John Morgan Walden, born 1831, now Rev. J. M. Wal- den, D. D., a bishop in the M. E. Ghurch, contributed to the Genius of the West, in its first year, a religious sketch entitled " The Orphan's Prayer ; or the Superstitions of Yore," and a temperance story, ''The Contrast; or the Old Still-House and its Owner in Ruins." The scene of both these little stories is the bank of the Big Miami river, and the writer delineated with much fidelity local scenery and, to some extent, local customs. Mr. Goggeshall took an active interest in history, and solicited competent writers to send him chapters recount- ing the annals of the West. James W. Taylor, author of the " History of Ohio," contributed some valuable matter ; John B. Dillon of Indiana, W. S. Drummond of Missouri, and Humphrey Marshall of Kentucky, all wrote special articles for the Genius. The veteran historian of Marietta, 112 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Dr. S. P. Ilildreth, contributed an excellent article on "Heroic Women of the Early Western Settlements." Mr. Coggesliall, himself an indefatigable explorer, espe- cially in the fields of western literature and journalism, gave his readers the benefit of his researches. Orville James Victor was one of the best writers for the Genius. He contributed a long and excellent review of " Gerald Massey, the Workingman's Poet." Victor was born in 1827, at Sandusky, Ohio, where, in 1852, he became assistant editor of the Daily Register. He was a frequent contributor to the Ladies' Repository and other periodicals. In July, 1856, he was married, in Mansfield, Ohio, to the accomplished writer. Miss Metta Victoria Fuller, and the Genius published a handsome account of the wedding, under the happy heading, " Victoria, the Victor." The couple moved to Kew York, and Mr. Vic- tor became editor of the Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and engaged in various other literary work. He is the author of a four-volume " History of the Southern Rebellion," which Horace Greeley pronounced an " admirable work " and used as an authority. Mrs. M. V. Victor, nee Fuller, was born in 1831. She began to write verses and stories at the age of fourteen, and at sixteen she was known to a numerous circle of ad- miring readers, through various pieces contributed to Willis's Home Journal, under the sentimental pseudonym of the " Singing Sibyl." In 1847 she published her first book, " The Last Days of Tul." Then appeared " Poems of Sentiment," 1851 ; " Fresh Leaves from the Western Woods," 1852 ; " The Senator's Son " and " Fashionable Dissipation," 1854. The last two were temperance novels, and thousands of copies were sold. On her removal with her husband to N'ew York, Mrs. Victor continued her lit- erary career, publishing, in 1857, " The Two Mormon Wives ;" in 1858, " The Arctic Queen : a Poem," and, in 1860, " Mrs. Slimmon's Window." Another of her books, " The Dead Letter," is " believed to be," says J. C. Derby,, its publisher, " one of the most widely circulated Ameri- Early Periodical Literature. 113 can novels — second only to ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.' " Mrs. Victor died in 1886. Another writer of the Genius' fraternity, who, like the Victors, the Carys, and Wallace, and Whitelaw Reid and Howells, and many more, went East to better his fortunes, was James Warner Ward. Born in ^N'ew J ersey in 1818, and educated at Boston High School, Ward came to Cincinnati when a very young man, and studied natural sciences under the guidance of Prof. John Locke. He was a contributor to Gallagher's Mirror and to the Hesperian. Becoming a practical botanist, he joined John A. Warder in conduct- ing the Western Horticultural Review. A man of wide- ranging tastes and talents, he turned his attention, with success, to the composition of sacred music. Ward set- tled in ^N'ew York city in 1859. Peter Fishe Reed, a man of weird and delicate fancy, almost a genius, but lacking in will-power and practical qualities — a painter, poet, and romancer — wrote for the Genius of the West some impressive verses and several prose pieces of remarkable insight and subtilty. " The Still Demon : A Fable," is the name of one of his queer allegories ; " The Devil's Pulpit : A Legend of Tullulah Falls," is a wild, strange story of Indian love and savage incantation. More skillfully wrought is a strange study of the conflict of pride and humility, presented in the form of a Poe-like story, called " The Wills of Arlam and Malra." But the most original and meritorious of Reed's prose contributions to the Genius is a short one, "The Triune Muse," a beautiful allegory showing the unity of poetry, painting, and music. Other contributions by Reed were three articles discussing the "Principles of Poetry," and the quaint poems, " The Poet-Zone," and " Dream- World Wonders : A Fantasia." Reed was what is called " self-made " — that is, he was poor, and had not the benefit of schools or influential friends. He was born at South Boston in 1819. He has been, he tells us, "farmer, shoemaker, house and sign painter, editor, doctor, photographer, music teacher, and 8 114 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. painter of portraits and landscapes." He lived in Ver- mont, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Santa Bar- bara, and Cedar Rapids, the last place being his home at the time of his death. His first writing was for the Weekly Columbian. In the days of the Genius of the West, he owned and tilled a farm near Vernon, Indiana. There he wrote a novel, in which the career of a self-made man was portrayed. This was never published. In 1868 he published, in Chicago, a volume, "The Voices of the Wind and Other Poems." Two years before, he brought out a very ingenious and amusing book for young people, under the title " Beyond the Snow," and he was engaged in writing a romance of a marvelous sort, which he named " The Moon City," when he died, in 1887. William Whiteman Fosdick, a born poet, a true wit, a boon companion of artists and literary men, a courteous gentleman, loved and admired by every man, woman, and child who knew him, contributed to the Genius two poems — his stanzas, " To William Cullen Bryant," and a pretty love-story in rhyme, " The Maiden of the Mill." Fosdick was a native of the west, being born in Cincin- nati in January, 1825. He died in the same city in 1862, universally lamented. Ko reader possessed of sensibility can read Fosdick's collected pieces, "Ariel and Other Poems," without feeling that they sparkle with the divine light. Such lyrics as " The Maize," " The Pawpaw, " The Catawba," "The Thrush," have both the body and the soul of truth, and they deserve to be cherished. The name of Florus B. Plimpton, another western born and western bred poet of high merit, whose recent death, in April, 1886, is fresh in the public memory, occurs on the pages of the interesting magazine of which we are giving a history. Mr. Plimpton was born in Portage county, Ohio, in 1830. The energy of his comparatively short life was spent chiefly in the arduous labors of news- paper editing. Most of his poetical compositions were produced in the period of his early manhood, from about 1850 to 1860. He wrote for Knickerbocker, Moore's Western Lady's Book, the New York Tribune, any many Early Feriodical Literature. 115 other periodicals. Seventy of his select poems were col- lected and published in a most elegant and richly illus- trated volume by his wife. Plimpton contributed to the Genius of the West only two poems, " The Flight " and "Woman's Love in Woman's Eyes." Hon. Benjamin S. Parker, whose pen and tongue have done so much to promote the cause of literature and the prosperity of writers, in Indiana, was a contributor to the Genius. Mr. Parker was born in a backwoods cabin, in Henry county, Indiana, February 10, 1833. He was edu- cated chiefly by his mother, who read aloud to him much of the best English poetry, fiction, and history. After at- tending a Quaker school at Rich Square, he taught school for a while, and then went into mercantile business. Later he became a newspaper editor. In 1880, he was elected to the state legislature, on the Republican ticket. President Arthur, in 1882, appointed him United States Consul to Sherbrooke, Canada. He is now clerk of the court of Henry county, Indiana. Mr. Parker has written in prose and verse for numerous periodicals, including the Century Magazine. He has published two books, " The Session and Other Poems," in 1871 ; and " The Cabin in the Clearing and Other Poems,'' in 1887. It is announced that he is preparing for the press a comprehensive work on the "Poets and Poetry of Indiana." A competent and enthusiastic student of west- ern authors,. he has delivered excellent lectures on "West- ern Literature," " Poets and Poetry," and other subjects. A recognized and much respected leader in every local movement for the advancement of "the good cause," he was one of the founders and the second president of the Western Association of Writers, an organization now in the sixth year of its flourishing existence, and embracing in its membership about a hundred writers of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky. Coates Kinney's portion of the contents of the Genius was generous in quantity and excellent in quality. Be- sides editorial correspondence and " littlegraphs," he con- tributed two or three good poems and a number of finely- 116 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. written prose articles, including " Improvisations of an Opium-Thinker," " The Poetry of Alice Gary," and " Two Scenes of the War," the last a bit of dramatic word- painting, in two vivid scenes, one of the battle of Inker- man, the other of an English cottage home and a maiden, who receives news of the death of her lover at Inker- man. This composition is admirable; its brilliant merit was recognized throughout the country, and the piece was widely copied. It remains for me to add something further about Mr. Coggeshall. A most industrious worker, he furnished nearly half the matter of the volumes of the Genius that he edited. A practical moralizer, he wrote sketches for young men on " State Governors," on '' Millard Fillmore," and " Young America." A sifter and compiler of facts, he prepared historical papers on the *' Origin and Prog- ress of Printing," " Men and Events in the West," and " Literary and Artistic Enterprises in Cincinnati." . He published an essay entitled " Genius and Gumption," sev- eral short stories, and one long one called " The Counter- feiters of the Cuyahoga : a Buckeye Eomance." In 1854 a collection of some of his stories was published by Red- field, New York, with the title, " Easy Warren and His Cotemporaries ; Sketched for Home Circles." In 1855 he brought out a volume called " Oakshaw ; or the Victims of Avarice : a Tale of Intrigue," and a lecture on " Caste and Character." In 1859 he published "A Discourse on the Social and Moral Advantages of the Cultivation of Local Literature," and in 1863, " Stories of Frontier Ad- venture in the South and West." . While connected with the Genius he announced himself as a public lecturer, and became quite popular on the platform. He was appointed state librarian in 1856, and held the position during the administrations of Governors Chase and Dennison. His opportunities as editor, lecturer, and librarian, facilitated the task which he had set himself of collecting materials for his most important work, " The Poets and Poetry of the West." This well-known vol- Early Periodical Literature. 117 ume was copy-righted in the year 1860, and was issued as a subscription book by Follett, Foster & Company, Co- lumbus, Ohio. It contains six hundred and eighty-eight large pages, and is a compendium rather than a selection of western poetry, presenting biographical notices of, and poems by, more than one hundred and fifty writers. Among the biographical contributors, the following were named in the canvasser's prospectus, with place of resi- dence and occupation : Rev. Edward Thomson, president of Ohio Wesleyan University ; William D. Gallagher, Kentucky ; Ben Cassedy, Louisville ; Rev. T. M. Eddy, editor Northwestern Christian Advocate ; W. W. Fosdick, Esq., Cincinnati; Orville J. Victor, editor Cosmopolitan Art Journal ; Frances Fuller Barritt, ]N"ew York city ; Honorable J. W. Gordon, Indianapolis ; Honorable Rob- ert Dale Owen, United States minister at J^aples ; Hon- orable Heman Canfield, Medina, Ohio ; William T. Bas- com, Esq., Columbus, Ohio ; Benjamin St. James Fry, president of Worthington Female College ; Prof. L. D. McCabe, Ohio Wesleyan College ; Lyman C. Draper, sec- retary of Wisconsin Historical Society; Lucius A. Hine, Loveland, Ohio ; Rev. M. D. Conway, Cincinnati ; Sulli- van D. Harris, editor Ohio Cultivator; William Henry Smith, city editor Cincinnati Gazette; T. Herbert Whip- ple, Chicago ; J. W. Hoyt, editor of Wisconsin Farmer ; Coates Kinney, Waynesville, Ohio; J. D. Botefur, Fre- mont, Ohio ; Thomas Gregg, editor Hamilton (111.) Repub- lican; Austin T. Earle, J^ewport, Kentucky; Abram Brower, Esq., Cincinnati; James S. Frost, Esq., Detroit ; Henry B. Carrington, Esq., Columbus, Ohio; Honorable William Lawrence, Bellefontaine, Ohio ; C. E. Muse, as- sistant editor of Louisville Democrat. In 1862 Coggeshall removed to Springfield, Ohio, and purchased the Springfield Republic. In 1865 he returned to Columbus, and became editor of the Ohio State Jour- nal. At this time his health failed, from the effects of exposure while in secret service in the first year of the war, and he resigned his position as editor and accepted 118 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. the office of private secretary to Governor J. D. Cox.^ He received, in June, 1865, a government appointment as United States minister at Quito, Ecuador, and immediately removed to South America. His broken health was not restored ; he died at Quito, August 2, 1867, aged forty-two years, having accomplished a large amount of useful )vork, especially in the promotion of culture in the West. His "Poets and Poetry of the West" has done much to keep green the memory of our early authors, and much to give prestige to men and women who are yet living, and who, in many instances, were introduced to the public in its pages. The facts here printed concerning him were ob- tained from his widow, Mrs. Mary M. Coggeshall. conway's dial. " The Dial : A Monthly Magazine for Literature, Phil- osophy, and Religion. M. D. Conway, Editor. Horas non numero nisi serenas. Cincinnati. N"o 76 West Third Street. 1860." Thus reads the title-page of a bound volume of one of the most original, peculiar, and audacious publications that ever issued from the press. The work is complete in twelve numbers, just filling the eventful months of the memorable year 1860, the year of Lincoln's first election, the year after John Brown's raid, and before the fall of Sumter. The opening article in the January number, en- titled, "A Word to Our Headers," concludes with the fol- lowing paragraph : " The Dial stands before you, reader, a legitimation of the spirit of the age, which aspires to be "free ; free in thought, doubt, utterance, love, and knowledge. It is, in our minds, symbolized not so much by the sun-clock in the yard as by the floral dial of Linnteus, which recorded the advancing day by the opening of some flowers and * Jacob Dolson Cox, diBtinguished in American history, military and civil, as general, governor, and cabinet officer, is eminent in the educa- tional world as dean of the Cincinnati Law School and late president of the Cincinnati University. He is an authority in science and his- tory. Early Periodical Literature. 119 the closing of others ; it would report the day of God as recorded in the unfolding of higher life and thought, and the closing up of old superstitions and evils ; it would be a dial measuring time by growth." When Moncure Daniel Conway penned this paragraph he had not completed the twenty-eighth year of his very active life, though he had begun an aggressive literary career ten years before. Born in Virginia in 1832, he graduated from Dickinson College in 1849, then studied law, and in 1851 entered the ministry as a Methodist preacher. Before ascending the pulpit he had written for the Southern Literary Messenger, the Richmond Examiner and the Ladies' Repository, and had put forth a vigorous pamphlet advocating the introduction of the lN"ew Eng- land system of free schools in Virginia. lie had, also, not only repudiated all sympathy with the system of slavery, but had begun a war on that institution as fierce as the pen could wage. Some time in 1852 he withdrew from the Methodist Church and went to Cambridge, where he entered the divinity school, from which he graduated a " broad-gauge " Unitarian, or, rather, an Emersonian transcendentalist. From 1854 to 1856 he was pastor of the Unitarian Society at Washington city. The reason for his leaving Washington for Cincinnati is thus given in his own language : " I was by a majority of five of the Unitarian congregation in Washington city declared to be too radical in my discourses on slavery for the critical condition of that latitude ; and, therefore, I was invited to become minister of the First Congregational church ia Cincinnati, Ohio." This was in 1856. Conway's think- ing, writing, and preaching became more and more inde- pendent, liberal, and unpopular with evangelical denomi- nations. He disbelieved in the supernatural elements of Christianity, and published what were regarded as flippant ** Tracts for To-day" and discourses in "Defense of the Theater," and on the "Natural History of the Devil." Such was the history and record of the young man, M. D. Conway, at the period when the Dial was conceived and born, llis mind was saturated and dripping with 120 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, speculative philosophy and the thoup^ht and dream of the Concord seer. The very name of the new magazine was identical with that of the celebrated Boston " organ," conducted in 1840-5 by Margaret Fuller and R. W. Emer- son, of which the western journal, as Conway confessed, aspired " to be an Avatar." The great majority of pieces in the Dial were written by Conway, even including several bits of poetry, " Eola," "Amor Respicit Coelum," etc. He wrote a series of ten papers, a sort of didactic story in the Carlylesque style, called " Dr. Einbohrer and His Pupils," in which are dis- cussed various problems of evolution, life and faith.* Other of his articles are : " Excalibur : A Story for Anglo- American Boys," being a dramatic history of John Brown's sword; "The God with the Hammer," "The Two Servants," " ^N'emesis of Unitarianism," " Sweden- borgian Heretic," "The Magic Duet," "The Word," " Moral Diagnosis of Disease," and " Who Discovered the Planet?" The last named was widely copied and the poet Longfellow praised it. The Dial had a number of able contributors, several of them distinguished in letters. Among these was Rev. O. B. Frothingham, who published in the Dial a complete work running through nine numbers, entitled " The Christianity of Christ." This was the earliest published work of importance by the author. Emerson honored his friend and admirer by sending oc- casional contributions in prose and verse to the Cincinnati periodical. The essay, " Domestic Life," was published October, 1860, and " The Story of West Indian Emanci- pation," in November. The quatrians — " Cras, Heri, Hodie," "Climacteric," "Botanist," "Forester," "Gar- dener," "Northman," "From Alcuin," "Nature," "Na- tura in Minimus," " Orator," " Poet," "Artist," were orig- inally printed in Conway's Dial. A number of the early poems of W. D. Howells ^ adorn * Ohio people take pride in knowing that Mr. Howells was a " Buck- eye boy," bred and educated in the thoughts, feelings, and customs of Early Periodical Literature. 121 the pages of the Dial. Of these I name '' The Poet," '* Misanthropy," and the lines beginning " The moonlight is full of the fragrance Of the blooming orchard trees." It rests upon undeniable authority that the first printed notice of his work that Howells ever saw was a little review of the " Poems of Two Friends," published in the Dial for March, 1860. The notice says, " Mr. Howells has intellect and culture, graced by an almost Heinesque "familiarity with high things ; and if it were not for a cer- tain fear of himself, we should hope that this work was but a prelude to his sonata." Translations from Taussennel, Balzac, and other French authors were furnished the Dial by Dr. M. E. Lazarus. The longest of these Avas a complete translation of Balzac's '' Ursula." E. D. Mussey wrote for the Dial a striking allegorical composition on love, with the figurative title, " My Sculp- tured Palace Walls." A very remarkable and, to most minds, shockingly ir- reverent article on ''Prayer," was .contributed by the late Orson S. Murray. The object of the writer was to prove that all prayer is unmitigated evil. Mr. Conway added a comment to the article, disclaiming responsibility for its sentiments and combatting them. Orson Murray was a noted anti-slavery agitator, and opposer of the church. Whittier described him as a " man terribly in earnest, Avith a zeal that bordered on fanaticism, and who was none the more genial^ for the mob violence to which he had been subjected." He was born in Orwell, Vermont, September 23, 1806 ; removed to Ohio in 1844, where he published the radical paper. The Regenerator, which had been started in [N'ew York. He the " old " West. Born in Belmont county, Ohio, he spent his boyhood and youth in the counties of Butler, Greene, Montgomery and Frank- lin. Delightful reminiscences of his early life are given in his autobio- graphical story, "A Boy's Town." 122 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. died at his residence, near Foster's, Warren county, Ohio, June 14, 1885, aged seventy-nine. lie had prepared his own funeral sermon, or "Death-bed Thoughts," which was read on the day of his burial. An exceedingly attractive and suggestive feature of the Dial was a department called " The Catholic Chapter," a monthly collection of religious and moral aphorisms from all sources, ancient and modern, which, no doubt, was the beginning of Conway's " Sacred Anthology." The best and most readable of Conway's own writing in the Dial is the part included under the head of " Critical iN'otices." In this sort of work the versatile editor was crisp, piquant and wonderfully discriminating. His gen- ius is essentially literary, and he reads and reviews books con amore. The year 1860 was prolific of significant books, especially in the line of controversies, religious and political, and of discussion, scientific and philosophical. A few of the numerous works reviewed with more or less thoroughness in the Dial, were Henry Ward Beecher's " Views and Evi- dences of Religious Subjects," and Edward Beecher's " Concord of Ages," both progressive ; Sir William Ham- ilton's "Logic," the "Political Debates of Lincoln and Douglas," and " Redpath's " Life of John Brown," Darwin's " Origin of Species," Hawthorne's " Marble Faun," and George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss," and, in poetry, " Lucile " and Walt Whitman's " Leaves of Grass." The editor's breezy criticism of Whitman contains an amusing passage, which is here quoted, because it kills two or more birds with a well-slung stone. It reads as follows: "A friend of ours told us that once, when he was visiting Lizst, a fine-dressed gentleman from Boston was announced, and during the conversation the latter spoke with great contempt of Wagner (the new light) and his music. Lizst did not say any thing, but went to the open piano and struck with grandeur the opening chords of the Tannhiiuser overture; having played it through, he turned and quietly remarked, * The man who doesn't call Early Periodical Literature. 123 that good music is a fool.' It is the only reply which can be made to those who do not find that quintessence of things which we call poetry in many pages of his (Whit- man's) work." In a short but cordial notice of Coggeshall's " Poets and Poetry of the West," published at Columbus in 1860, occur these resounding sentences : " But we do not fear that any man ^\\\\ carefully read this book without seeing that the West has a symphony to utter, whose key-note is already struck, and which is to make the world pause and listen. The world has heard the song of Memnon in the Orient; it must now turn to hear the Memnon, carved by the ages, as it shall respond to the glow of the Occident." The very last one of the seven hundred and seventy-eight pages included in the Dial is devoted to a reverential and laudatory heralding of Emerson's " Conduct of Life," the sheets of which the Boston master furnished in advance to his Cincinnati disciple. The Dial was self-supporting. It wa,s largely patronized by Jews. In his " Parting Word " to the reader, the proprietor w^rote : ^' We confess to some complacency regarding what we have done, and can never be brought to look upon the Dial as, in any sense, a failure. We could name one or two papers that we have been enabled to lay before the public, and claim that they alone w^ere worth all the toil and expense which our project has involved w^ith editor or subscriber. Sweeter verses have never been sung in the land than some which have been wafted from the branches of the Dial through the country. And we rest from our labors quite sure that we shall see the day when the numbers remaining on hand will be insufficient to supply the demand for them." 124 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, PARTIAL LIST OF LITERARY PERIODICALS PUBLISHED IN THE OHIO VALLEY FROM THE YEAR 1803 TO 1860. Note. — The list includes a few newspapers devoted specially, if not wholly, to literature, but does not embrace the numerous publications issued to represent sectarian and professional interests. The early West, teemed with periodicals of a religious character, nor were there lacking journals of law, medicine, and agriculture. The Medley or Monthly Miscellany. Daniel Bradford, Lexington, Ky. From January to December, 1803. The Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine. Monthly. Wm. Gibbs Hunt, Lexington, Ky. August, 1819, to July, 1821. Successor to the Western Monitor, a Federal weekly paper established in 1814, and edited by Thos. Curry. The Literary Cadet. Weekly. Dr. Joseph Buchanan, Cincinnati, November, 1819. Twenty-three numbers were issued and then the Cadet was merged in the Western Spy, which was thereafter published as the Western Spy and Literary Gazette. The Olio. Semi-monthly. John H. Wood and Samuel S. Brooks, Cincinnati, 1821. Continued for one year. The Literary Pamphleteer. Paris, Ky., 1823. The Literary Gazette. Weekly. John P. Foote, Cincinnati, January, 1824, to December, 1824. Revived by Looker and Reynolds, who con- tinued it for eight months in 1825. The Western Censor. Indianapolis, Ind., 1823-24. The Western Luminary. Lexington, Ky., 1824. The Microscope. Louisville, Ky. Weekly. 1824. The Western Minerva. Francis and Wm. D. Gallagher, Cincinnati, 1826. Survived less than one year. New Harmony Gazette. New Harmony, Ind. Robt. Owen. 1825. 1 vol. Continued as the Free Enquirer in New York. 1828-35. 6 vols. The Literary Focus. A Monthly College Paper. Oxford, Ohio, 1827-8. Published by the Erodelphian and Union Literary Societies. Printed by J. D. Smith. The Western Review. Monthly. Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, May, 1827, to June, 1830. Transylvania Literary Journal. A college paper. Prof. Thos. J. Matthews, Lexington, Ky., 1829. Masonic Souvenir and Pittsburg Literary Gazette. A quarto weekly. Flint called it, "in form and appearance the handsomest in our valley." 1828. The Shield. Weekly. R. C. Langdon, Cincinnati, 182-. Survived two years. The Ladies' Museum. Weekly. Joel T. Case, Cincinnati, 1830. Sur- vived one or two years. The Illinois Magazine. Monthly. James Hall, Shawneetown, 111., October, 1830, to January, 1832. The Ladies' Museum and Western Repository of Belles Lettres. Cin- Early Periodical Literature. 125 cinnati. Edited by Joel T. Case. . Printed by John Whetstone. Weekly. Begun in 1830, and merged in the Mirror in November, 1831. The Cincinnati Mirror and Ladies' Parterre. Edited by Wm. D. Gallagher. Published by John H. Wood. Semi-monthly. First num- ber issued October 1, 1831. At the beginning of the third year Thomrs H. Shreve went into partnership with Gallagher, and the two bought the paper, enlarged it, and issued it weekly under the name Cincinnati Mirror and Western Gazette of Literature. In April, 1835, the Chron- icle was merged in the Mirror and James H. Perkins became one of its editors. The Mirror was sold in October, 1835, to James B. Marshall, and bought again in January, 1836, by Flash and Ryder. It was dis- continued early in 1836. The Olive Branch. Circleville, O. Scientific and Literary. Bi- monthly, $1.50. Edited by " a number of gentlemen." 1832. The National Historian. St. Clairsville, O., Horton J. Howard. The South-western Port Folio. Proposals were issued for publishing in Nashville, Tenn., the above, to be conducted by Thomas Hoge and Wilkins Tannehill. The periodical was to appear April, 1832. Price, $5.00. Came to naught. Western Quarterly Review. In April, 1832, Messrs. Hubbard and Edwards, of Cincinnati, issued the prospectus of a quarterly, each num- ber to contain 250 pages. The projectors proposed to pay for all ac- cepted articles at the rate of $3.00 a page. The first number was to come out in November, 1832, but it never appeared. [The two last named projects, and another of a similar sort by Mrs. Julia Dumont, all originating about the same time, attest the general literary interest and ambition of the writers of the third decade of the century.] The Literary Cabinet. St. Clairsville, O., 1833. Monthly. 12 num- bers. Edited by Thomas Gregg. The Academic Pioneer and Guardian of Education. Cincinnati, monthly, 1833. Forty 8vo. pages. Price, $2.00. Organ of the Western Academic Institute, and predecessor of the Academician. Albert Pickett, Editor. Lexington Literary Journal. Lexington, Ky. John Clark, Esq., Editor and Proprietor. Twice a week. $3.00 a year, 1833. The Western Monthly Magazine, a continuation of the Illinois Maga- zine. Cincinnati, James Hall, January, 1833, to February, 1837. The Literary Pioneer. Nashville, Tenn., 1833. The Kaleidoscope. Nashville, Tenn., 1833. The Literary Register. Elyria, O., 1833. The Schoolmaster and Academic Journal. Semi-monthly. B. F. Morris, Oxford, O., 1834. The Western Gem and Cabinet of Literature, Science, and News. St. Clairsville, O. Semi-monthly, and afterward weekly. Gregg and Dufi'ey. Mrs. Dumont and Mrs. Sigourney were contributors. 1834. Kept up about a year. The Western Messenger. Cincinnati and Louisville. Western Uni- 126 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, tarian ABSOciation. Edited by Ephraira Peabody, James Freeman Clarke, James H. Perkins, and VV. H. Channing. June, 1835, to April, 1841. The Family Magazine. Cincinnati, Eli Taylor. Started in 1836 and published six years or more. The Western Literary Journal and Review. Cincinnati, Wm. D. Gallagher, 183G. One volume. Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal. Louisville, W, D. Gallagher and Lewis B. Marshall, 1837. Five numbers only. The Hesperian ; or, Western Monthly Magazine. Columbus and Cincinnati, Wm. D. Gallagher and Otway Curry, May, 1838 to*1841. 3 vols. The Literary New-Letter. Weekly. Louisville, Ky., Edmund Flagg and I^onard Bliss, December, 1838, to November, 1840. Published by Prentiss and Weissenger in the Journal office. The Monthly Chronicle. Edited by E. D. Mansfield, Cincinnati, 0., 1839. Published by Achilles Pugh. One vol., 568 pages. Literary Examiner and Western Review. Pittsburg, E. B. Fisher and W. H. Burleigh. Monthly. Eighty-four pages to a number. 1839. Published about a year by Wm. W. Whitney. The Buckeye Blossom. Xenia, P. Lapham and W. B. Fairchild, 1839. 16 pages. The Family Schoolmaster. Richmond, Ind., Halloway and Davis, 1839. Short lived. The Western Lady's Book. Cincinnati. Edited by an association of ladies and gentlemen. 'Published by H. P. Brooks. Begun August, 1840. The Ladies' Repository and Gatherings of the West. Cincinnati, Methodist Book Concern, 1841 to 1876. In the year 1877 the Methodist Book Concern began to publish the National Repository, which was kept up for four years. Young Ladies' Museum. Cincinnati. Monthly quarto. J. P. and R. P. Donough, Publisliers. Circulation of 1,200. 1841. Family Magazine. Jas. H. Perkins, Editor. J. A. and U. P. James, Publishers. Cincinnati. Monthly. Circulation of 3,000. Begun in 1841. The American Pioneer. Vol. I, Chillicothe, 1842; Vol. II. , Cincin- nati, 1842. John S. Williams. Historical. The Western Rambler. Cincinnati, Austin T. Earle and Benj. S. Fry. Started September 28, 1844. Survived only a few months. The Youths' Monthly Visitor. Cincinnati, 1844. Quarto. Edited by Margaret L. Bailey. Transferred to Washington city in 1847, and con- tinued until 1852. Southwestern Literary Journal and Monthly Review. E. C. Z. Judson ("Ned Buntline) and H. A. Kidd, assisted by L. A. Hine. Nos. 1 and 2 were published in Cincinnati; Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 in Nashville, Tennessee. From November, 1844, to April, 1845. Early Periodical Literature. 127 The Querist. Cincinnati, Mrs. R. S. Xichols, 1844. Continued a few months. The Democratic Monthly Magazine and Western Review. Columbus, Ohio, B. B. Taylor, Editor; S. Medary, Publisher. June and July, 1844. The Casket. Cincinnati, J. H. Green, " the reformed gambler," and Emerson Bennett, 1845. The Semi-Colon. Cincinnati. Robinson and Jones, 1845. Monthly. Indiana Farmer and Gardener. Devoted to Rural Affairs and Domes- tic Economy. Indianapolis, Ind., 1 845. Edited by Henry Ward Beecher. Continued in 1846, in Cincinnati, as Western Farmer and Gardener, ^lany of tht articles in the above were incorporated into Beecher's book, "A Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers, and Farming." The Cincinnati Miscellany or Antiquities of the West. Cincinnati. Edited by Charles Cist ; printed by Caleb Clark. Monthly. 2 vols. From October, 1844, to April, 1846. Very valuable. The Quarterly Journal and Review. Cincinnati, L. A. Hine, January to October, 1846. The Olden Time. Pittsburg, 1 846. Edited by Neville Craig. Monthly. Devoted to Preservation of Documents, etc., relating to Early Settle- ment of Upper Ohio Valley. Reprinted by Robert Clarke, Cincinnati, in 1876, in 2 vols. Valuable. The Herald of Truth. Cincinnati, L. A. Hine, January, 1847, to June, 1848. The Great AVest. Literary newspaper. Cincinnati, E. Penrose Jones, May 5, 1848, to March, 1850. Sackett's Model Parlor Paper. Cincinnati, Egbert Sackett and F. Col- ton, December, 1848. Eight numbers issued. The Shooting Star. Cincinnati, S. H. Minor. The Western Mirror. G. W. Copelan and " Sam'l Pickwick, Jr.," Woodward College, Cincinnati. Western Quarterly Review. Cincinnati, L. A. Hine, January to April, 1849. Gentlemen's Magazine. Cincinnati, J. Milton Sandei-s and J.M. Hun- tington, 1849. A few numbers only. The Hipean. Cooper Female Institute, Dayton, Ohio, 1849. Moore's Western Lady's Book. Cincinnati. Edited by A. and Mrs. H. G. Moore. Begun in 1849, and continued about eight years. The Western Pioneer. Chillicothe and Cincinnati, S. Williams, 1841-4. 2 vols. The Western Literary Magazine. Columbus, Ohio. George Brewer. The Columbian. Literary newspaper. Cincinnati, W. B. Shattuc and W. D. Tidball, October 20, 1849, to [March, 1850. Buchanan's Journal of Man. Cincinnati. Begun 1850, and continued five or six years. Edited and published by Joseph R. Buchanan, :M.D. A valuable publication. The Western Literary Magazine. Louisville, Ky., 1853. Monthly. 128 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. The Phonetic Magazine. 48 pages. Monthly. Partly in the reformed spelling. Longley Brothers, 1853. Type of the Times. Successor to above. Weekly octavo. Same pub- lishers. Edited by L. A. Hine, Elias Longley, and William Henry Smith. 1853. Columbian and Great West. Cincinnati, W. B. Shattuc, March, 1850, to September, 1854. The Citizen. Lyons and McCormick, Cincinnati, 1851. Pen and Pencil. Cincinnati, W. Wallace AVarden. Started January, 1853. . Eight numbers issued. The Parlor Magazine. Cincinnati. Conducted by Jethro Jackson, assisted by Alice Cary. Begun July, 1853. 2 vols. Genius of the AVest. Cincinnati. Edited by Howard Durham, Coates Kinney, and W. T. Coggeshall. October, 1853, to June, 1856. The Literary Journal. Cincinnati, Mrs. "Ella Wentworth," Mrs. E. K. Banks, and H. Clay Pate, 1854. A few numbers. West American Review. Cincinnati, G. W. L. Bickley, 1854. The Forest Garland. Cincinnati, Smith and Lapham, 1854. The Odd Fellows' Literary Casket. Cincinnati. Edited by W. P. Strickland ; published by Tidball and Turner. Begun in 1854. Afterward published by Longley Brothers, who engaged William Henry Smith to edit it. Among the contributors were Rev. I. D. Will- iamson and Wm. Dean Howells, the latter then working on the Ohio State Journal. Howells contributed pieces under the pseudonym ^' Chipsa." The Templars' Magazine. Monthly. Cincinnati, Dr. Wadsworth, Editor, 1854. The Diadem. Attica, Ohio, J. C. Michell, 1854. The Literary Messenger. Versailles, Ind., Ross Alley, 1854. The National Cadet. Cincinnati, Forrest and Stevens. Monthly. A temperance paper. Short-lived. 1854. The Western Literary Cabinet. Detroit, Mich., Mrs. Sheldon, 1854. The Home Journal. Cincinnati, Alf Burnett and Enos B. Reed, 1855. The Western Art Journal. Cincinnati. Edited by Rev. W. P. Strick- land ; published by J. S. Babcock, 1855. The Message Bird. Waynesville, Ohio, J. W. Roberts, 1856 to 1860. The Louisville Review. Louisville, Ky. Monthly. 1856. The Dial : A Monthly Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Re- ligion. Cincinnati, M. D. Conway, January to December, 1860. Libraries. 129 CHAPTER IV. LIBRARIES-THE HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF OHIO. I. SOME EARLY LIBRARIES. Reuben T. Durrett, an exact historical writer and biog- rapher, and himself the owner of by far the largest and best private library in Kentucky, writing from Louisville in 1888, says : "As early as 1795, our provident neighbors of Lexing- ton began the work of gathering together books for a public library. On J^ew Year's day of that year, a few citizens met in the old state-house, and resolved to estab- lish a library, to be called ' Transylvania Library.' They appointed a committee to secure subscriptions and perfect the organization, and in a few days they secured the amount of |500, and the money was collected and sent to the East for books. In the following January the books, 400 in number, arrived, and the people of Lexington were made glad by their appearance. In 1798 the old Kentucky Academy was merged in Transylvania University, and its little library of 200 volumes wenfto swell the new collec- tion to 600. On the 29th of ]^ovember, 1800, the library thus started was incorporated by the legislature under the name of ' The Sharers of the Lexington Library,' and thus was permanently established the first library ever started in the State of Kentucky. " By the same act of the legislature which established the Lexington Library, two others were incorporated in the state : one, called ' The Sharers of the Georgetown 9 130 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. Library/ at Georgetown, Ky., and the other, * The Sharers of the Danville Library,' at Danville, Ky. Among the incorporators of the last-named library appears the name of Ephraim McDowell, the early surgeon of Kentucky, who was the father of ovariotomy ; and who, as early as the year 1809, performed the first operation in the world for removing diseased ovaries. " In 1804 a library was incorporated at Lancaster, in Garrard county ; in 1808 at Paris, in Bourbon ; in 1809 at [N'ew Castle, in Henry ; in 1810 at Shelbyville, in Shelby, and Winchester, in Clark ; in 1811 at Washington, in Mason; in 1812 at Versailles, in Woodford, and Frank- fort, in Franklin ; and in 1815 at Mount Sterling, in Montgomery county. " Each of the dozen libraries thus incorporated ante- dated any movement of the kind in the city of Louisville. Kone of them, however, is entitled to any honors beyond antiquity and a name in the statute book except the first, the Lexington Library, established in 1795. This noble old pioneer of human knowledge has come down from the past century, bearing the treasures of other times. It has survived fires, removals, changes of rulers and book thieves, and stands to-day with its ten thousand volumes, one of the greatest honors of the city that has cherished it for nearly a century. On its shelves are valuable old works that can nowhere else be found, and among them may be named complete files of the Kentucky Gazette, the earliest paper published in Kentucky, from its first issue, August 11, 1787, to its last." The Transylvania College Library here referred to by Mr. Durrett was in its day one of the largest and best in the United States. A portion of its classical and miscellaneous collection was selected by a no less competent scholar than Edward Everett. The medical books were procured in Europe by Dr. Charles Caldwell. The university possessed an ana- tomical museum, a cabinet of specimens in natural history, and a botanical garden. Libraries. 131 Besides the college library, there was an independent collection, the Lexington Library, which was begun by the citizens in 1795. To this four hundred volumes pur- chased in Philadelphia were added in 1796. Donations were made to this pioneer library by George Washington, John Adams, Aaron Burr, and other notables. Clay be- came its benefactor in his days of power. The old Lexington Library contains, among other rare works, Rapin's History of England, printed more than two hundred years ago, a large number of old black-letter English law books from one to three hundred years old, and a London street directory of two centuries ago. Per- haps the most curious book in the collection is a huge volume comprising a large number of old parchment deeds. These deeds are written in the black-letter script, in a barbarous law Latin, and each of them conveys property to the Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul, at Ipswich, England. They are supposed to be older than the time of Edward the First (1272), in whose reign the statute of mortmain, forbidding the conveyance of land to the Church, was enacted. An inscription on the fly-leaf of the volume states that it was " presented to the Lex- ington Library by John Bobb, Esq.," but does not say when. The old Gazettes of almost a century ago have frequent references to Mr. John Bobb, and of such a char- acter as to lead one to suppose that he was a man of prominence in his day and generation, but it appears that he has now utterly vanished out of the memory of man. It is conjectured that this book was confiscated at Ipswich some time during the wars of the Commonwealth, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and brought to America by the confiscator or some member of his family. The vicinity of Lexington was settled almost exclusively by Virginians, a very great many of whom were from that portion of Virginia, " the Northern ISTeck," which in 1649 was largely settled by English cavaliers fleeing from the wrath of Cromwell after the execution of Charles the First. 132 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. I am indebted to Mr. Dnrrett for the following interest- ing sketch of " The First Library in Louisville. "It was not until 1816 that the citizens of Louisville seem to have thought of the necessity of a public library. On the 8th of February of this year Mann Butler, "Will- iam C. Gait, Brooke Hill, llezekiah Ilawley, and William Tompkins obtained from the legislature a charter for the * President and Directors of the Louisville Library Com- pany.' This library was a joint stock association, with the right to issue as many shares as its directors might think necessary, and of any denomination they might wish. They had the authority to assess the shareholders, for the benefit of the library, to any sum per annum not exceed- ing one-fifth of the value of the shares of any one holder. In 1819, when Dr. McMurtrie published his history of Louisville, this library was located in the second story of the south wing of the old court-house, then standing in the place of the present city hall. Among its books were valuable histories collected by Mann Butler, and works on -scientific subjects obtained by Dr. McMurtrie. The whole number of volumes was about 500, and the young library may then be said to have been in its prime. It never ma- terially increased afterward, and when the malignant fever of 1822 almost depopulated the city, the library, as well as the people, seems to have taken the seeds of death into its system. The files of the first newspapers pub- lished in our city perished, and so did the early works upon the history of our city, state, and country. Only a few of its volumes have come down to our times, and these are of but little value in the collections in which they are now found. The most valuable books perished, and the unimportant ones which survived reached our times in such a mutilated condition as to be of little con- sideration except as relics of the past. There is a name connected with its organization, however, that should not pass from our memory as did its books from our use. This was Mann Butler, the first named among those who Libraries. 133 appear in the act of incorporation. It was he who inau- gurated the gathering together of this first collection of books in our city, and if he had had as much money as he had love for books, he would have placed the library upon such a lasting foundation that it would have stood to our times." As to private libraries in Kentucky, there have been none of any particular importance until of late years. The books owned by the pioneers were few in number and of an ordinary character. There were some respectable professional libraries, but none of a literary or general character worthy of note. George Nicholas, Henry Clay, John J. Crittenden, S. S. ISTicholas, Madison C. Johnston, and others, had good professional libraries. Colonel S. I. M. Major, who died at Frankfort a few years ago, had one of the best literary libraries in the state, but the number of its volumes did not exceed three thousand. The late Dr. T. S. Bell left a library of some two thousand volumes, and Dr. Eichard H. Collins left about twenty-five hundred volumes. The largest private library ever collected in Kentucky, with a single exception, is that of the late Jas. P. Boyce. It numbers about ten thousand volumes, and is very valu- able as a theological collection. The only private library larger and more valuable than that of Mr. Boyce that has ever been collected in Kentucky is that of Mr. Durrett himself, now stored in his large mansion house, No. 202 Chestnut street, Louisville. Though the collections just named can not properly be called early libraries, they may, with propriety, be considered under that head, because they abound in material directly concerning the begin- nings of our history and literature. To the student inter- ested in the picturesque and romantic annals of pioneer days, in the newspapers, magazines, history, fiction, and poetry of the grand old State of Kentucky, the library of Colonel Durrett is a treasure-trove that can not be dupli- cated upon the globe. Colonel Durrett's absorbing passion — he calls it his "hobby" — is the study of history and the collection of 134 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. books, pictures, and relics of an archaeological kind. His father was a book collector, and gathered, in early days, a considerable library, which the son inherited, and to which he has been adding for forty years. The collection is the largest and most valuable that has ever been made in the State of Kentucky. In Kentucky books this li- brary has no equal. The proprietor has made it a point to secure every book that was written by a Kentuckian or about Kentucky or a Kentuckian, or that was printed in Kentucky. While the library has pretty well exhausted the Kentucky State of publications, it also embraces the best works of all the other states, and of the United States and of Europe. The collection occupies six large rooms and a hall, and contains at least fifty thousand books and pamphlets. There are many old and rare works in the collection, and several valuable manuscripts relating to western history. The files of bound newspa- pers constitute an important feature of the library. There are numerous books that have severally a special interest as having belonged to distinguished men, or having passed- through strange adventures. For instance, there is a copy of " Gulliver's Travels," the identical copy which the pio- neer Keely read aloud to Boone and others in camp in the year 1770. Among Colonel Durrett's manuscripts is a letter written by Boone, which I here reproduce : " May the 1th, 1789. "Dear Sir: — This Instant I Start Down the River. My Two Sunes Eeturned anieadetely from Philadelphia and Daniel Went Down With Sum goods in order to Take in gensgn at Lim Stone. I hope you Will Wright me By the Bearer Mr goe how you Ccm on With my Ilorsis — I Hear the Indians have Killed Sum peple Neer Limstone and Stole a Number of horsis — Indeed I Saw one of the men Who Was iired on When the kiled also 5 pursons War Cirtinly kiled on the head of Dunkard Crick on this River a bout Six Dayes since 30 miles from Radstone I ' Likewise saw a Later yesterday from Muskingdom To Mr Libraries. 135 Galaspey at the old fort that 300 Indans are Certinly Sitout from Detraight To Way Lay the Kiver at Deferent placis to Take Botes Sum Say 700 Sum Say 100 But the Later Cartiiies of 300 this accoumpt you may Rely on I am Dear Sir With Respect your omble Sarvent " Daniel Boone. " My Best comtm. To Mrs. Huntt Col Rochester and Lady." The first settlers of the Xorth- western Territory, com- ing chiefly from the most cultured Xew England stock, considered books a necessary part of their household goods. Dr. S. P. Ilildreth, the historian of Marietta, in his " Pioneer Biographies," mentions that General Israel Putnam " collected a large library of the most useful books ; embracing history, belles-lettres, travels, etc., for the benefit of himself and children, called the Putnam Family Library. After his death they were divided amongst the heirs, and quite a number found their way to Ohio, being brought out by his son and grandchildren." The first library in the territory north-west of the Ohio, like the first school, was at Belpre, near Marietta, 0. It was organized in 1796, probably in August or September, and called the Putnam Family Library, though the name was changed to Belpre Library, or Belpre Farmers' Li- brary. The library was owned by a joint stock company, with shares valued each at ten dollars. The hooka were kept at the house of Esquire Isaac Pierce, who was libra- rian. Dr. I. W. Andrews took the pains, in 1879, to trace and find, in the possession of several families, more than a score of volumes belonging originally to this pioneer col- lection, and bearing the inscription, "Putnam Library," or " Belpre Library." He gives the following particulars, which I copy from the Marietta Register of June — , 1879: " The library formed in 1804 at Amesville, in what was then Washington county, now Athens, is a matter of gen- eral knowledge. It has been often referred to as a signal instance of the beneficial effects of good books in a 136 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. community. That township has produced some remark- able men, such as Bishop Ames and Thomas Ewing; and many of the families resident there at the beginning of the century, like the Browns, Cutlers, Walkers, and oth- ers, have been noted for their intelligence and elevated character. The formation of that library is a matter of familiar history, and the descendants of those who founded it may well be proud of the part there ancestors took in establishing such an association. "Another library, formed by the early settlers in another part of the Ohio Company's purchase, is not so well known. When the writer prepared the centennial his- torical sketch of Washington county, three years ago, he was ignorant that such a company existed. His attention was arrested by seeing, among some old memoranda of early times, preserved by Colonel John Stone, of Belpre, a receipt for money paid for a share in a library in Bel- pre, in 1796. . He at once wrote, asking for information respecting that library, and for the facts presented in this article he and the public are indebted to Colonel Stone. " In the ' Lives of the Early Settlers,' by Dr. Hildreth, there is an allusion to the library of General Israel Put- nam, from which the inference is possible that Colonel Israel Putnam, son of the General, might have brought with him to Ohio a number of books from the collection of his father, and that these became the nucleus of a pub- lic library. However this may be, there is abundant evi- dence of the existence of such a library at Belpre at a very early day. The receipt referred to above, and which is before me as I write, is as follows : " ' Marietta, 2Qth Oct., 1796. " * Received of Johathan Stone by the hand of Benj. Miles, ten dollars for his share in the Putnam Family Li- brary. W. P. Putnam, Clerk' " Here was a library organization with its stockholders and officers, the value of a share being $10. The organi- zation had probably been recently effected, as the Indian Libraries. 137 war was not ended till 1795. Captain Jonathan Stone, father of Colonel John Stone, was doubtless one of the original shareholders, and this receipt was for the pay- ment of his stock. In the records of the Probate Office of Washington county, among the items in the inventory of the estate of Jonathan Stone, dated September 2, 1801, is this : ' One share in the Putnam Library, §10.' "In the Ohio Historical Collections, by Henry Howe, under the head of Meigs County, is an account of pioneer life written by Amos Dunham, who settled in Washing- ton county about 1802, and afterward removed to Meigs. He says : ' The long winter evenings were rather tedious, and in order to make them pass more smoothly, I pur- chased an interest in the Belpre Library, six miles dis- tant. . . . Many a night have I passed in this man- ner (using pine knots in place of candles) till 12 or 1 o'clock, reading to xny wife, while she was patcheling, carding, or spinning.' " Have we any testimony as to the library from those now living? Mr. Edwin Guthrie has distinct remembrance of his father having books taken from the Belpre Library. Colonel Otis L. Bradford remembers that the library was kept at the house of their nearest neighbor, Isaac Pierce, Esq. Mrs. Smith, of Pomeroy, remembers her mother say- ing that her husband (Amos Dunham, mentioned above) could always find time to attend the Belpre Library meet- ing, regardless of hurrying work. Colonel John Stone recollects that Esquire Pierce was the librarian and kept the library at his house. He remembers attending at sev- eral times the meeting for drawing books, and has a dis- tinct recollection that the association was dissolved by common consent, that he was present at the sale or dis- tribution of books, and selected the Travels of Johathan Carver. The time of dissolution he can not give pre- cisely, but thinks it was about 1815 or 1816. He is prob- ably the only person now living who was present at that time. " But if the organization was thus dissolved and the books distributed, can not some of them be found? Mr. 138 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, Geo. Dana reports six volumes among his books. John Locke's Essays concerning the Human Understanding, London, 1793, has " Putnam Family Library, JS'o. 6," which is crossed, and underneath is written, " Belpre Li- brary, !N"o. 29." The Practical Farmer, title page gone, but dedicated to Thos. Jeiferson in 179.2, has " Putnam Family Library, JNo. 5," which is crossed, and underneath is writ- ten, "Belpre Library ITo. 6." He has also Robertson's History of Scotland, two volumes, inscribed, " Belpre Farmers' Library, JS'o. 24," and Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, three volumes, inscribed, " Belpre Farmers' Library, 'Eo. 10." Both the last two works were published in 1811. It would seem that the name was changed from Putnam Family Library, as the inscription on some of the books is Belpre Library, and on others is Belpre Farm- ers' Library. " Mr. 1. W. Putnam writes that there are in his family, the History of Vermont, 1794, one volume ; Bassett's His- tory of England, four volumes; Hume's History of Eng- land, six volumes; and Goldsmith's Animated Nature. "In the family of Mrs. O. H. Loring are five volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, pub- lished in England in 1783. Some of these contain the name of Wanton Casey, as well as the words * Belpre Li- brary.' Mr. Casey married the daughter of Major Good- ale, and returned to Rhode Island, probably before 1800. " There are then in these three families twenty-three volumes belonging originally to the Belpre Library, and inscribed with one or the other of the designations men- tioned above. " We have thus documentary evidence of the existence of this library, which is contirmed by the testimony of living witnesses, and by the production of more than twenty volumes having upon them the original library mark. How many volumes were in the library is not now known. One of those referred to bears the number 80. From titles quoted, it will be seen that the works were solid and good. The library was established as early as Libraries. 139 1796, and continued in operation for twenty years or more. '" That the settlers of the Ohio Company thus established two libraries at a very early day can not be disputed. And the communities where they were established were both such as we might expect in intelligence and charac- ter. A large number of the present families of Belpre are the descendants of the early settlers. The ancestors of all the families in whose possession are the old library books were in Farmers' Castle at Belpre during the In- dian war. And so w^ere the ancestors of nearly all "whose names are mentioned in this article." Several of the volumes named by Dr. Andrews w^ere exhibited by the owners, in the great Centennial Exposi- tion at Cincinnati, in the summer of 1888. The second library collected on the north side of the Ohio river was projected and organized by a number of gentlemen on Saturday, February 13, 1802, at Yeatman's Tavern, Cincinnati. The following subscribers each took one or. more shares, at ten dollars a share, contributing, in all, the sum of $340. The names are Arthur St. Clair, Peyton Short, Cornelius R. Sedam, Samuel C. Vance, James Walker, S. S. Kerr, James Findlay, Jeremiah Hunt, Griffin Yeatman, Martin Baum, C. Kilgour, P. P. Stewart, W. Stanley, Jacob White, Patrick Dickey, C. Avery, John Reily, John R. Mills^ Jacob Burnet, J. S. Findlay, Joseph Prince, David E. Wade, Isaac Van Huys, Joel Williams. The '' Cincinnati Library" went into op- eration March 6, 1802, with Lewis Kerr as librarian. It is of interest to know that the above list begins with the name of the governor of the ISTorth-western Territory, General St. Clair, and that it contains the name of John Reily, first teacher in Ohio, and that of Judge Burnet, the author of " Burnet's Xotes." More interesting in its history than either of the libra- ries mentioned is the celebrated '^ Western Library," or " Coonskin Library," of Ames township, Athens county, Ohio. Ephraim Cutler, son of Manasseh Cutler, Sylvanus Ames, father of Bishop Ames, and Benjamin Brown, the 140 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. revolutionary soldier were among the organizers of this library. Mr. Walker, in his " History of Athens County," says: " Some of the settlers were good hunters, and^there being a ready market for furs and skins, which were bought by the agents of John Jacob Astor and others, they easily paid their subscriptions. Mr. Samuel Brown, who was soon to make a trip to Boston in a wagon, would take the furs and skins intended for the purchase of books and bring back the books in return- His trip was unavoidably delayed longer than he expected, but in . the summer of 1803 he went to Boston with the furs, etc., with which he purchased the first installment of books. These books cost $73.50, and comprised the following: ^ Robertson's North America,' ' Harris' Encyclopaedia,' * Morse's Geography,' ^Adam's Truth of Eeligion,' ' Gold- smith's Works,' 'Evelina,' 'Children of the Abbey,' ' Blair's Lectures,' ' Clark's Disclosures,' ' Ramsey's Amer- ican Revolution,' ' Goldsmith's Animated Nature,' ' Play- fair's History of Jacobinism,' 'George Barnwell,' 'Ca- milla,' ' Beggar Girl,' and some others. Later purchases included Shakespeare, ' Don Quixote,' ' Locke's Essays,' * Scottish Chiefs,' ' Josephus,' ' Smith's Wealth of Nations,' * Spectator,' ' Plutarch's Lives,' 'Arabian Nights,' and ^ Life of Washington.'" A pleasant anecdote associates the name of Thomas Ewing with the organization of the " Coonskin Library." It is related that while a boy Ewing used to carry books to the field and read aloud to the workhands, and that the rumor of this caused the neigh- bors to make up a purse of $100 to buy a library, the young reader contributing ten coon -skins to forward the project. The transubstantiation of rattlesnakes into bacon, "for the posterity of Adam," which so impressed Carlyle's im- agination, is not so striking and suggestive as this change and conservation of the force of traps and gunpowder into printed thought. The second public library of Cincinnati was opened in 1814. Rare copies exist of a " Systematic Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Circulating Library of Cincinnati, Libraries. 141 to which are prefixed au Historical Preface, the Act of In- corporation and By-Laws of the Society. Published by order of the Board of Directors. Cincinnati ; Printed by Looker, Palmer and Reynolds, 1816." The '' Historical Preface," evidently prepared by Dr. Daniel Drake, presi- dent of the society, tells us that, " in the autumn of 1808, several persons desirous of seeing a public library estab- lished in Cincinnati, assembled for the purpose of applying to the legislature of the state for a law of incorporation ;" that a petition and draft of the bill were forwarded, but, " for reasons not discovered to the petitioners, their prayer was not granted;" that in 1811 "the project was again re- vived and a subscription paper circulated by George Turner, Esq., with considerable success." A meeting of subscribers was held, a constitution adopted, and finally a charter of incorporation was secured. The "Preface" goes on to record that, " on the sixteenth of April, 1814, the library containing little over three hundred volumes was opened. To eifect an immediate increase of this di- minutive collection was regarded as a great desideratum; and in addition to a pressing call for the unpaid subscrip- tions, the directors resolved upon and succeeded in bor- rowing from several persons small sums of money on a credit of three years without interest, and of purchasing from others a number of valuable books on the same terms." The first purchase of books, two hundred and fifty volumes, was made at Philadelphia in the summer of 1815. Li the same year, " the trustees of Miami Univer- sity authorized a committee of that board to examine the books belonging to that institution and dispose of such as were not essential to its library. Of the books thus re- jected, a committee of the directors of the Library Society purchased, on credit, one hundred volumes, many of which are well suited to the popular tastes." " In the autumn the board vested one of its members, about to visit the eastern cities, with discretionary power to purchase books. The fruits of this delegation were about four hundred volumes, among which are many rare and valuable works." The interesting document we quote is dated October 17, 1816, 142 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, and signed by Daniel Drake, president, and Jesse Embree, secretary. The preface concludes as follows : " For the present year it has been found absolutely nec- essary to increase the annual assessments ($1) a hundred per cent. To this measure no reasonable shareholder will object after a moment's reflection. In all similar institu- tions there is a contribution of this kind, and in most of those with which the directors have any acquaintance, it is greater than that under consideration. Without it no public library can flourish." The directors of the Circulating Library in 1816 were: Daniel Drake, Jesse Embree, William 8. Hatch, Thomas Peirce, Peyton S. Symmes, David Wade, Micajah T. Will- iams. The librarian was David Cathcart. The library contained about one thousand four hundred volumes, value estimated at three thousand dollars. The books were classified in the catalogue under these heads : Arts and Sciences, Agriculture and Veterinary Art, Bot- any and Medicine, Biography, Chemistry, Mineralogy and the Arts, Drama, Education, Geography and Topography, Oivil History, Law and Politics, Moral Philosophy, Mili- tary Tactics, Modern Classics, Miscellany, IN'atural His- tory, Philosophy and Mathematics, Kovels, Political Econ- omy, Statistics and Commerce, Philology, Periodical Works, Poetry, Theology and Ecclesiastical History, Voy- ages and Travels, Donations. Among the donors to this ambitious collection were : Christopher Anthony, S. D. Baldwin, Wm. H. Burton, William Corry, Daniel Drake, Prof. Hosack of [N'ew York, William S. Hatch, Samuel Lowry, James H. Looker, Prof. E. D. Mansfield, of the Military Academy, West Point, Josiah Meigs of Washington, Richard Marsh, Thomas Rawlins, Peyton S. Symmes, Cleves Short, and David Wade. In the departments of history, law, and theology, this early library was well supplied. It contained, in biogra- phy: Bosweirs "Johnson," Johnson's " Poets," Marshall's " Washington," Roscoe's " Lorenzo de Medici," Southey's "Nelson," Voltaire's "Peter the Great" and "Charles Libraries. 143 XII." Under the head Modern Classics, it included " The Adventurer," ^' The Tattler," " The Spectator," " The Guardian," '''The Eambler," the works of Bacon, Beatty, Sterne and Swift, Johnson's '•' Rasselas," and Irving's *•' Salmagundi." Fiction and poetry were represented by Edgeworth, Hannah More, Madam D'Arblay, Madam De Stael, Cervantes, Mrs. Opie, Henry Brooks, Smollett, Mackenzie, Rousseau, Miss Porter, Mrs. Holfland, Hol- croft, Goldsmith, Akenside, Beattie, Barlow, Butler, Burns, Bloomfield, Byron, Crabbe, Cowper, Campbell, Darwin, Dryden, Freneau, Gray, Hogg, Homer, House, Moore, Montgomery, Pope, Southey, Thompson, Trum- bull, Scott. Some of the by-laws of the Circulating Library Society are curious in the minute stringency of detail. For ex- ample : " Every shareholder shall be entitled to receive from the library two volumes for each share he may hold therein. "All persons are debarred from the privilege of lending any book taken out of the library to a non-shareholder; under the penalty of one dollar for every such offense. " The time for detaining a book out of the library shall be : for a duodecimo, or any number of a periodical jour- nal, one week ; for an octavo, two weeks ; for a quarto, three weeks ; for a folio, four weeks. And if any book be not returned according to the time specified, there shall be paid a fine of six and one-quarter cents for a duo- decimo, twelve and a half cents for an octavo, and twenty- five cents for a quarto or folio volume ; and the fines shall be respectively doubled on every succeeding week, until they shall amount to the value of the book. Provided, that the above periods be extended two weeks to persons resident in the country. "A deposit of Jive dollars shall be made with the librarian by every shareholder, on receiving a volume of the ' Cy- clopsedia' (Rees), Wilson's ' Ornithology,' or the 'English and Classical Dictionary.' " Mansfield and Drake's " Cincinnati in 1826 " informs us that the Circulating Library " is kept in one of the lower 144 Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, rooms of the college edifice, where access may be had to it every Saturday afternoon." The " college edifice" was the original Cincinnati College building, first known as the Lancastrian Seminary, from the fact that a large school on the Lancastrian method was conducted there in 1816 by Edmund Harrison, under the presidency of Jacob Burnet, author of " Notes on the Northwestern Territory." Eventually, for some reason unknown to the writer, the books were boxed up and packed away in the cellar of a bookstore on Main street. Here they remained for sev- eral years, gathering dampness and mold, until Rev. J. H. Perkins, author of the invaluable " Western Annals," as- sumed the responsibility of overhauling the boxes, and bringing their neglected contents to the light. The treas- ured volumes of "Wilson's Ornithology" fell to pieces of their own weight. Such of the books as were in tolerable condition were selected and placed on the shelves of the library of the Ohio Mechanics' Institute, a harbor des- tined to receive the drifting remnants of several pioneer