VOLUME 17 • NUMBER 3 • FALL 2017 Ohio Valley History Is a OHIO VALLEY STAFF John David Smith Gary Z
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A Collaboration of The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. VOLUME 17 • NUMBER 3 • FALL 2017 Ohio Valley History is a OHIO VALLEY STAFF John David Smith Gary Z. Lindgren University of North Carolina, Mitchel D. Livingston, Ph.D. collaboration of The Filson Editors Charlotte Phillip C. Long Historical Society, Louisville, LeeAnn Whites David Stradling Julia Poston Kentucky, Cincinnati Museum The Filson Historical Society University of Cincinnati Thomas H. Quinn Jr. Matthew Norman Nikki M. Taylor Anya Sanchez, MD, MBA Center, and the University of Department of History Texas Southern University Judith K. Stein, M.D. Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. University of Cincinnati Frank Towers Steve Steinman Blue Ash College University of Calgary Carolyn Tastad Anne Drackett Thomas Cincinnati Museum Center and Book Review Editor CINCINNATI Kevin Ward The Filson Historical Society Matthew E. Stanley MUSEUM CENTER Donna Zaring are private non-profit organiza- Department of History BOARD OF TRUSTEES James M. Zimmerman and Political Science tions supported almost entirely Albany State University Chair FILSON HISTORICAL by gifts, grants, sponsorships, Edward D. Diller SOCIETY BOARD OF admission, and membership fees. Managing Editors DIRECTORS Jamie Evans Past Chair The Filson Historical Society Francie S. Hiltz President & CEO The Filson Historical Society Scott Gampfer Craig Buthod membership includes a subscrip- Cincinnati Museum Center Vice Chairs Greg D. Carmichael Chairman of the Board tion to OVH. Higher-level Cincin- Editorial Assistants Hon. Jeffrey P. Hopkins Carl M. Thomas nati Museum Center memberships Kayla Reddington Cynthia Walker Kenny also include an OVH subscription. The Filson Historical Society Rev. Damon Lynch Jr. Vice President Sam Whittaker Mary Zalla A. Stewart Lussky Back issues are $8.00. University of Cincinnati Leah Wickett General Counsel Secretary For more information on University of Cincinnati George H. Vincent W. Wayne Hancock Cincinnati Museum Center, Editorial Board Treasurer Treasurer including membership, visit Luther Adams Matthew A. Sheakley J. Walker Stites III www.cincymuseum.org or call University of Washington, Tacoma Secretary Anne Arensberg 513-287-7000 or 1-800-733-2077. Joan E. Cashin Martine Dunn David L. Armstrong Ohio State University William C. Ballard Jr. For more information on Kathleen Duval President & CEO Phillip Bond University of North Carolina Elizabeth Pierce J. McCauley Brown The Filson Historical Society, Nicole Etcheson Kenneth H. Clay including membership, visit Ball State University Trustees Marshall B. Farrer www.filsonhistorical.org Craig T. Friend Jessica Adelman Laman A. Gray Jr. North Carolina State Mark A. Casella Robert E. Kulp Jr. or call 502-635-5083. University Brian D. Coley, MD, FACR Patrick R. Northam R. Douglas Hurt Susan B. Esler Anne Brewer Ogden Purdue University E. Thomas Fernandez H. Powell Starks James C. Klotter David E. Foxx John P. Stern Georgetown College Robert L. Fregolle Jr. William M. Street Tracy K’Meyer Jane Garvey Orme Wilson III University of Louisville David L. Hausrath Clarence Lang Carrie K. Hayden Senior Research Fellow University of Kansas Jeffrey P. Hinebaugh Mark V. Wetherington David A. Nichols Katy Hollister Indiana State University Peter Horton Christopher Phillips Allison H. Kropp University of Cincinnati Brian G. Lawlor Ohio Valley History (ISSN 1544-4058) is published quarterly in Contact the editorial offices at [email protected] or Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum [email protected]. Center, 1301 Western Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45203, and The Filson Historical Society, 1310 S. Third Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40208. Page composition: Michael Adkins, Ertel Publishing Postmaster, send address changes to Filson Historical Society, © Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society 2017 1310 S. Third St., Louisville, KY 40208. Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2017 A Journal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society. Contents 3 Ginseng, China, and the Transformation of the Ohio Valley, 1783–1840 Luke Manget 24 The Man Who Moved the Bridge Cincinnati’s Roebling Suspension Bridge and Its Inconvenient Site Anne Delano Steinert 44 “High School Girls” Women’s Higher Education at the Louisville Female High School Amy Lueck 63 Collection Essay Connections in the Collections Cincinnati Museum Center’s Enno Meyer Collection Lory Greenland 67 Collection Essay Full of Charm and Variety The Scrapbook Collection of the Filson Historical Society Kathryn Bratcher 75 Review Essay Toward a New Railroad History? Limitations and Possibilities Scott E. Randolph 79 Review Essay Race, Paternalism, and Educational Reform in the Twentieth-Century South Emily E. Senefeld 83 Book Reviews 94 Announcements on the cover: Sheet music for Suspension Bridge Grand March celebrating the opening of Cincinnati’s suspension bridge (c. 1867). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Contributors Amy Lueck is an assistant professor of English at Santa Clara University. She received her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville in 2010. Her teaching and research focus upon histories of writing and rhet- oric, spatial rhetorics, language politics, and public memory. Her manuscript, Composing the American High School, explores the history of rhetoric and writing in nineteenth-century high schools. She was recipient of a Filson Fellowship and conducted research there in 2016. Luke Manget is a lecturer of history at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. He received his PhD from the University of Georgia in 2017. His dissertation, “Root Diggers and Herb Gatherers: The Rise and Decline of the Botanical Drug Trade in Southern Appalachia,” examines the relationship between global mar- kets for medicinal plants and cultural dynamics in the rural Mountain South. He has published articles in Environmental History and Appalachian Journal. Scott E. Randolph is an associate professor in the Department of Business Administration and Accounting at the University of Redlands. His current research project concerns the 1913 Federal Valuation Act and the Progressive faith in scientific regulation. Emily Senefeld is a visiting instructor of history at Sewanee: The University of the South. Her current research project is a cultural history of the Highlander Folk School. Anne Delano Steinert is a PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati and recipient of a Filson Fellowship. Her dissertation focuses on how micro-histories illustrate the role of the built environment in the study of urban history. She is board chair of the Over-the-Rhine Museum and curator of two recent exhibi- tions on the history of Cincinnati. She is currently working on an exhibit of the Kenyon-Barr photo collection held by the Cincinnati Museum Center. 2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Ginseng, China, and the Transformation of the Ohio Valley, 1783–1840 Luke Manget t may have been growing among the old-growth chestnuts on the side of Little Mountain. Or perhaps it had matured under the butternut trees on the banks of Turkey Creek. Somewhere near the brand-new hamlet of Union in Ithe western Virginia backcountry in October of 1783, a Scots-Irishman named William Ewing spotted a small plant among the deep green understory. He saw the cluster of bright red berries perched atop a peduncle that protruded from the center of the twenty-inch-high herb. He counted the leaves. It had four. His heart beat a little faster. It probably had a large root. Ewing knew this root by itself could provide him with a knife, a pair of spectacles, a pound of gunpowder, a bushel of salt, or maybe a pint of rum.1 Wild ginseng (2012). OHIO DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES FALL 2017 3 GINSENG, CHINA, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE OHIO VALLEY, 1783–1840 The Iroquois called itgarangtoging, or “child’s thigh.” The Cherokee named it atali-guli, “the mountain climber,” and sometimes, Yunwi Usdi, “the little man.” The Tartars, living in the northern Chinese province of Tartar, called itOrhota, or “queen of the plants,” and William Byrd of Virginia referred to it as the “plant of life.” Linnaean taxonomists would later label it Panax quinquefolius, but Ewing knew it as “sang,” a shortening of the word “ginseng,” derived from the Mandarin jen-shen. Indeed, it was a world-famous plant. East Asian peoples revered ginseng as a virtual panacea. Their belief that it could effectively treat a wide variety of ailments and imbalances and their willingness to pay a premium for it made it one of the world’s most sought-after medicinal herbs.2 Ewing had only one month before ginseng disappeared for the season. A decid- uous perennial, it could grow for dozens, if not hundreds, of years, but its top— that is, everything but the root and rhizome—died back every year after the first frost. He likely knew that it grew in cool, moist deciduous forests, and although it could be found in the piedmont, it seems to have always preferred the mountains, or what one mid-eighteenth-century observer called “the hills that lie far from the sea.” As early as the 1730s, colonists recognized the plant’s tendency to grow on the “north sides of mountains and very high hills, that are shaded with trees.” Ewing also likely knew that ginseng grew in patches, sometimes so dense that a dig- ger could haul one thousand pounds of roots out of one patch. When he found one plant, there were proba- bly hundreds more nearby. It was like treasure-hunting.3 Ewing uprooted the full ginseng plant from the earth, cut off the leaves and stem, and placed the gnarly root in a small sack, where it joined hundreds of its kinsmen. Ewing took 186 pounds of roots to James Alexander’s trading post in Union, where he exchanged them for, among other things, one pound of gunpowder, a hat, a pint of rum, and two saddles.