Volume 18 • Number 4 Winter 2018
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VOLUME 18 • NUMBER 4 WINTER 2018 A Collaboration of The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio Valley History is a OHIO VALLEY STAFF John David Smith Allison H. Kropp collaboration of The Filson University of North Carolina, Brian G. Lawlor Historical Society, Louisville, Editors Charlotte Gary Z. Lindgren Kentucky, Cincinnati Museum LeeAnn Whites David Stradling Mitchel D. Livingston, Ph.D. The Filson Historical Society University of Cincinnati Phillip C. Long Center, and the University of Matthew Norman Nikki M. Taylor Julia Poston Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. Department of History Texas Southern University Thomas H. Quinn Jr. University of Cincinnati Frank Towers Anya Sanchez, MD, MBA Blue Ash College University of Calgary Judith K. Stein, M.D. Cincinnati Museum Center and Steve Steinman The Filson Historical Society Book Review Editor CINCINNATI Carolyn Tastad are private non-profit organiza- Matthew E. Stanley MUSEUM CENTER Anne Drackett Thomas Department of History BOARD OF TRUSTEES Kevin Ward tions supported almost entirely and Political Science Donna Zaring by gifts, grants, sponsorships, Chair Albany State University James M. Zimmerman admission, and membership fees. Edward D. Diller Managing Editors FILSON HISTORICAL Jamie Evans Past Chair SOCIETY BOARD OF The Filson Historical Society The Filson Historical Society Francie S. Hiltz DIRECTORS membership includes a subscrip- Scott Gampfer Cincinnati Museum Center Vice Chairs President and CEO tion to OVH. Higher-level Cincin- Greg D. Carmichael Craig Buthod nati Museum Center memberships Editorial Assistants Hon. Jeffrey P. Hopkins also include an OVH subscription. Ashley Baunecker Cynthia Walker Kenny Chairman of the Board University of Louisville Rev. Damon Lynch Jr. Carl M. Thomas Back issues are $8.00. Kevin Rigsbee Mary Zalla Secretary University of Cincinnati For more information on General Counsel W. Wayne Hancock Editorial Board George H. Vincent Cincinnati Museum Center, Luther Adams Treasurer including membership, visit Treasurer University of Washington, J. Walker Stites III www.cincymuseum.org or call Tacoma Matthew A. Sheakley Joan E. Cashin Phillip Bond 513-287-7000 or 1-800-733-2077. Ohio State University Secretary J. McCauley Brown Kathleen Duval Martine Dunn Elizabeth Clay For more information on University of North Carolina Kenneth H. Clay Nicole Etcheson President & CEO Laman A. Gray Jr. The Filson Historical Society, Ball State University Elizabeth Pierce Stuart Goldberg including membership, visit Craig T. Friend Marshall B. Farrer www.filsonhistorical.org North Carolina State Trustees Robert E. Kulp Jr. University Jessica Adelman Larry Muhammad or call 502-635-5083. R. Douglas Hurt Mark A. Casella Patrick R. Northam Purdue University Brian D. Coley, MD, FACR Anne Brewer Ogden James C. Klotter Susan B. Esler H. Powell Starks Georgetown College E. Thomas Fernandez John P. Stern Tracy K’Meyer David E. Foxx Morris Weiss, M.D. University of Louisville Robert L. Fregolle Jr. Marianne Welch Clarence Lang Jane Garvey Orme Wilson III University of Kansas David L. Hausrath David A. Nichols Carrie K. Hayden Indiana State University Jeffrey P. Hinebaugh Christopher Phillips Katy Hollister University of Cincinnati Peter Horton 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 2018 1310 S. 3rd St., Louisville, KY 40208. Volume 18, Number 4, Winter 2018 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 “Without Guide, Church, or Pastor” The Early Catholics of Cincinnati, Ohio David J. Endres 23 “The Most Appalling Forms of Degradation” Dorothea Dix Speaks Out for the Insane in Ohio Poorhouses Ann Clymer Bigelow 42 Planning the Postwar City Wilson W. Wyatt and the Louisville Area Development Association 1943–1950 Carl E. Kramer 64 Collection Essay Camp Zachary Taylor in the Filson’s Collections Jennifer Cole 72 Collection Essay The Queen City Welcomes Charles Lindbergh The Famed Aviator’s Visit Documented in Black and White Scott Gampfer 80 Review Essay Borderlands and the Ohio Valley Natalie Inman 85 Review Essay No Simple Answers Sectionalism and Political Division on the Eve of the Civil War Stephen Rockenbach 90 Book Reviews 103 Announcements on the cover: The Sister of Charity, n.d. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Contributors Ann Clymer Bigelow is a retired editor of the Current Digest of the Soviet Press. She is the author of many articles published in Ohio Valley History, including work on Ohio’s antebellum African American barbers, Dr. William Awl and the establishment of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum, Dr. Benjamin Rush and his impact on the practice of medicine in the Ohio Valley, and most recently, a study of insanity in Ohio during the Civil War. David J. Endres, a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, is academic dean and associate professor of church history and historical theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary/The Athenaeum of Ohio. The author of numerous articles, he has recently published his second monograph, Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States. He is currently editor of U.S. Catholic Historian and is preparing a history of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for its bicentennial in 2021. Natalie Inman is associate professor of history at Cumberland University. Carl E. Kramer is co-owner and vice president of Kramer Associates Inc., a public history firm in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and retired adjunct assistant professor of history and former director of the Institute for Local and Oral History at Indiana University Southeast. He has published extensively on urban development in the Louisville metropolitan region and is the author of This Place We Call Home: A History of Clark County, Indiana (Indiana University Press, 2007). Stephen Rockenbach is professor of history and chair of the Department of History and Philosophy at Virginia State University. His book, War Upon Our Border: Two Ohio Valley Communities Navigate the Civil War (University of Virginia Press, 2016), explores the war’s effect on Corydon, Indiana and Frankfort, Kentucky. 2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY “Without Guide, Church, or Pastor” The Early Catholics of Cincinnati, Ohio David J. Endres n November 23, 1818, a small group of Cincinnati Catholics sent a let- ter of appeal to John Carrere (1759–1841), a successful Baltimore mer- chant. The letter gave voice to their needs, likening them to “the lost Osheep of the house of Israel, forlorn and forsaken, destitute of the means of exercis- ing the duties of our holy religion, without guide, church, or pastor.” Cincinnati, though a sizeable frontier town of nine thousand residents on the Ohio River, had as yet no Catholic church structure or resident priest. The few Catholics—fewer than a hundred men, women, and children—were without the means of fully practicing their faith. They had assembled weekly for prayer, but gathering for Mass and participating in the sacramental life of the Church had been limited to periodic visits from circuit-riding missionaries, mostly Dominican priests head- quartered in central Kentucky. Due to a lack of numbers and resources, they were compelled to appeal to Catholics elsewhere for assistance in building a church.1 This study argues that before the 1820s Cincinnati’s Catholics had yet to form a separate, recognizable ethnoreligious subculture. Instead, they mixed easily with their non-Catholic neighbors, representing a form of frontier or republican Catholicism marked by egalitarianism, flexibility, activism, irenicism, and optimism. As a mix- ture of immigrants, including Irish, German, and French, and a few native-born, they maintained social, political, and ethnic ties with non-Catholics. Religiously, they exer- cised a certain fluidity, if not indifference, especially before an organized Catholic pres- ence developed in the city. Some gathered for worship and fellowship in the absence of any clergy; others showed a willingness to attend non-Catholic churches and in some cases, leave behind the practice of Catholicism. Still, despite the difficulties of being Catholic on the frontier, lay leaders emerged to provide the possibility of practicing the faith. Downplaying their ethnic differences in favor of a republican ideal, pioneer Catholic laity successfully organized the city’s first Catholic congregation.2 While their organizing efforts to found Christ Church—the first Catholic church in the city—have been documented, there has of yet been little attempt to study the city’s lay pioneers who brought Catholicism to the western frontier. Utilizing as a starting point the names of twenty early Cincinnati Catholics that historian V. F. O’Daniel recorded in 1920, this research explores the lives and religious experiences of Catholics who arrived prior to the establishment of Christ Church in 1819.3 WINTER 2018 3 “WITHOUT GUIDE, CHURCH, OR PASTOR” Christ Church.