Volume 18 • Number 4 Winter 2018

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 [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 letter of appeal to John Carrere (1759–1841), a successful Baltimore merchant. 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 exercising 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 presence 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

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Christ Church. Catholic Churches of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (United States Church Album Publishing Company, 1895). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

Before the turn of the nineteenth century, Catholics were rare on the western frontier, save for settlements near Gallipolis, Ohio; Vincennes, Indiana; and Bardstown, Kentucky. In the first decades of the 1800s, a meager wave of Catholic migration west of the Appalachian Mountains came from established Catholic communities in Maryland and Pennsylvania. At first, isolated on the frontier and deprived of association with their coreligionists, they prayed and worshipped privately or not at all. When they reached a critical mass, lay Catholic leaders worked to provide a foundation for the faith, attempting to organize their own congregations and eventually schools and charitable organizations. The frontier shaped these Catholics as much as they shaped the frontier. Historians have noted the characteristics of frontier Catholicism: “intensely patri- otic, self-assured, simple, flexible, active, optimistic, at ease with fellow Americans of whatever religious persuasion, and moderately prosperous.” Catholics on the frontier had imbibed a form of republicanism that championed religious liberty, supported the separation of spiritual and temporal power, and elevated the role of lay trustees vis-à-vis clerical control of congregations. Such emphases could be found among Catholics elsewhere but held a certain saliency in frontier locales like Cincinnati, where the church was just beginning to be organized. The frontier provided a unique locus for the development of lay-led ecclesial structures in particular. Catholic laity, and not clergy, as witnessed in Cincinnati, provided the impetus for the founding of churches and schools. As Thomas Spalding argued, “it was the laity who pushed the perimeters of American Catholicism outward

4 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY DAVID J. ENDRES and dared the institutional church to follow.” Cincinnati would prove to be such a place where Catholics migrated and the organizational structure of the church and its ministers eventually proceeded.4 Cincinnati’s role in the frontier West was remarkable. Few other American cities rivaled it in the early nineteenth century. Its population nearly tripled every decade between 1810 and 1830, rising from 2,500 to 9,600 to 24,800. The growth was made possible by its river location and rich natural surroundings. The Ohio River, especially with the arrival of the steamboat in 1811, opened the city to diverse markets as far as it traveled, from Louisville to St. Louis and New Orleans, while the abundance of field and forest provided exports. The economic possibilities spurred native-born settlement and eventually indirect and direct European immigration.5 At first, the city was fairly homogenous, dominated by the native-born, many of whom had come from the East. Nearly all had emigrated from another state—not directly to Ohio—and consequently had prior “frontier experience.” The city’s founders had been from New Jersey, followed closely behind by arrivals from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Most arrived as individuals or members of a single family. Much less frequent were arrivals part of groups of immigrants or extended families. Before 1830 foreign immigration made little impact. The 1825 Cincinnati directory, for instance, which recorded the nativity of male residents, showed only a slight composition of foreign-born: 173 Irish, 62 German, and 19 French settlers amid the nearly 1,800 heads of household from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.6 Cincinnati was predominately Protestant, though considered religiously underdeveloped. The Baptist denomination was the first to establish a congregation (1790), but Presbyterian was the dominant faith of the city’s pioneers. Eventually, other Protestant denominations took root, including Methodist (established in 1801), German Evangelical/Reformed (1814), and Episcopal (1817)—all active before the founding of a Catholic congregation.7 No identifiable Catholic presence existed in Cincinnati before 1800. The trickle of Catholic migration that was to occur between 1800 and 1815 generally proceeded from the Mid-Atlantic region, especially Baltimore and Philadelphia. Each location had an early Catholic presence, which, though small, had the benefits of resident clergy and an established parish system. Pioneer Catholics who migrated to Cincinnati before 1815 were for the most part entrepreneurs, well- connected to the city’s developing commercial interests, and moderately wealthy. The earliest Catholics to migrate to Cincinnati are representative of the pioneer generation. Thomas Dugan (circa 1768–1833), an Irish immigrant from County Donegal, may have been the city’s first Catholic—at least the first to identify with the faith of his birth. Dugan immigrated in the late 1700s, arriving in Cincinnati from an unknown location on the East Coast by 1801. He served

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in the War of 1812 under Generals William Henry Harrison and William Hull. A merchant, investor, and entrepreneur, Dugan was among the first booksellers in Cincinnati, peddling Bibles and school textbooks, among other items. He was well-connected in the business community. If and how he practiced his Catholic faith in these early years is unknown.8 Historical surveys report Michael Scott (circa 1751–1833) and his wife, Elizabeth “Eliza” (Hickey?) Scott (circa 1754–1848) as the first Catholics to migrate to the city. Michael Scott, arriving from Baltimore in 1805, was an Irish-born carpenter and later an architect. Described as a “small, wiry man,” he became a lay leader in the community and the president of the committee that established the Christ Church congregation. The first Mass offered in Cincinnati was celebrated in 1811 by the traveling Dominican missionary Father Edward D. Fenwick (1768–1832), later the first Catholic bishop of Cincinnati, on an improvised altar in the Scott home on Walnut Street, between Third and Fourth Streets. The home was also where Fenwick and other missionaries lodged during their visits to the city. The Scotts’ desire to practice the faith was so strong that one Easter he and his family traveled south to the middle of Kentucky for Mass—only to find the priest away ministering to another community.9

Father Edward D. Fenwick gives a blessing. Catholic Churches of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

These first Catholics were soon joined by others. Robert S. Ward (1779– 1856), a carpenter by trade and of Irish ethnicity who, born in Maryland, came to the West by way of Baltimore around the time of the Scotts’ arrival. Settling initially in northern Kentucky, before arriving in the city by 1819, Ward married

6 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY DAVID J. ENDRES the Irish-born Catherine Lant (circa 1787–1872) in 1808 in Campbell County, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The tradition that a traveling missionary offered the first Mass in the Cincinnati vicinity in the Ward home was passed down in the family into the twentieth century.10 Of German ethnicity, Jacob Fowble (circa 1772–1831) migrated with his wife Margaret (circa 1776–1811), by way of Baltimore around 1808. A veteran of the War of 1812, Fowble had a variety of business interests in the city, including a tavern, inn, and general store. Along with Thomas Dugan, he served as a township trustee in 1808, a role that placed them in public service, including overseeing aid to the indigent. The community held the first meeting to form a Catholic congregation, though without effect, in the Fowble home in 1811. There is no evidence that Fowble joined the Christ Church congregation when it was founded.11 Patrick O’Reilly/Reilly (circa 1788–1835), from County Cavan, Ireland, came to Cincinnati from Philadelphia in 1814. O’Reilly’s wife, Mary Ann Waltman (1791–1875) had been born in Philadelphia. The family of her mother, Eve Esling, had been among the Catholic pioneers of Pennsylvania, arriving circa 1740. Her father, Michael Waltman/Waldman, had immigrated from Germany to Philadelphia in 1768 and converted to Catholicism from Lutheranism sometime after Mary Ann’s birth. His conversion so angered Waltman’s father that he threatened Michael’s life if he ever returned home. The Michael and Eve Waltman family rented pews at St. Mary and St. Joseph churches, the oldest Catholic parishes in Philadelphia. Patrick and Mary Ann were married at Philadelphia’s St. Joseph Church in 1813 and soon after migrated to the West.12 The death of Margaret Fowble in October 1811 may have provided the impetus for the first known meeting of Cincinnati Catholics. Margaret was buried from the Methodist church, perhaps because no Catholic congregation then existed. Her husband, Jacob, it appears, attempted to remedy the lack of a Catholic congregation. He called for a meeting less than two months later.13 A December 11, 1811, notice in Liberty Hall, a Cincinnati newspaper, titled “Catholic Meeting,” cited the religious freedom of all Americans and asked for area Catholics to gather at the Fowble home. The justification for such a meeting relied on the vision of the nation’s founders: “As the Constitution of the United States allows liberty of conscience to all men, and the propagation of religious worship, it is earnestly requested by a number of the Roman Catholics of Cincinnati and its vicinity, that a meeting be held on the 25th of December, next, at the house of Jacob Fowble.” It was hoped the meeting would result in the formation of a congregation, but it was not successful.14 Yet, a handful of Catholics, including the O’Reilly and Ward families, began gathering when Michael and Eliza Scott organized a weekly meeting for prayer and fellowship. By 1815, a half-dozen met regularly, first in a home and later in a

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rented room at Flat Iron Square, a location between Lawrence, Ludlow, and Third Streets east of the city center. Years later, Mary Ann O’Reilly recollected that frontier Catholicism was different than what she had known in Philadelphia: “When she first came on here from her Eastern home, she was grieved to find that there was no church of her faith at this place, and not even a congregation or a priest. Six persons, including herself, were in the habit of meeting in a small room, ten by twelve feet, situated in a house…and there to worship.” The nascent stage of religious development and the small number of Catholics necessitated their gathering without a priest and access to the sacraments. In their early efforts to organize for religious purposes, they seemed to maintain amicable relations, regardless of ethnicity. Still, they could not satisfy their desire to form a congregation.15 Catholics’ meager numbers and lack of a congregation contributed to their seeking religious alternatives, a fluidity that became a hallmark of frontier Catholicism. The frontier, with its high proportion of non-Catholic neighbors, meant that Catholics could not be insulated from a diversity of religious practices and beliefs. Among pioneers born into the faith, several joined non-Catholic Christian congregations based on ethnic, social, or business contacts, leaving behind their Catholic religious identity. The evidence shows non-Catholics’ willingness to integrate Catholics into their congregations and Catholics’ limited acceptance of religious alternatives. Protestant ministers rightly viewed Catholics as potential converts and, in at least a few cases, annotated their records to indicate conversion from Catholicism. In other cases, the notation “Catholic” in Protestant baptismal records may have indicated the Catholic parents’ enduring religious identity, despite having no access to baptism aside from that granted by a Protestant minister.16 Though numbers were perhaps exaggerated, reportedly “many [German] Catholics” worshipped and received baptism, marriage, and funeral rites at the German Reformed Church, the city’s first house of worship for Germans, organized in 1814. German Catholics, drawn by a common language and culture, joined this new congregation. The baptismal registers for December 1817 note three children of “Katholisch” parents. The first, Hermann, son of George and Elisabeth (Geber) Weinmann, was baptized December 7, 1817. George, born in Germany, was a butcher and appears in city directories and on tax and census rolls from 1810 to at least 1825. It is unlikely that the family returned to the Catholic faith, as its members do not appear in listings of early Catholics in the city and the surname appears in later records of the German Lutheran and Reformed churches.17 Within a few months of immigrating in 1817, Simon Oehler and his wife and children became members of the German Reformed congregation. The family had twin daughters, Martha (Oehler) Hoeffer (1817–1848) and Maria Anna (Oehler) Fries (1817–1891), baptized in the church. The records indicate that the parents were “Katholisch.” Later, the Oehlers would return to worship and sacramental reception in the Catholic Church.18

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Other Catholics joined congregations representative of less mainstream religious traditions. Peter Cazelles, a silversmith born in Bordeaux, France, came to the United States in 1803. After a stay in Baltimore and Gallipolis, Ohio, where many French families had settled, he arrived in Cincinnati by 1815. Cazelles married Clarissa Mennessier in the First Presbyterian Church that year, when as yet no Catholic congregation existed. Clarissa’s family, the Mennessiers, had also settled in Gallipolis in the late 1700s. Her father, Francis Mennessier (circa 1740–1811), who did not identify as a Catholic, arrived in Cincinnati as early as 1794 and worked as a lawyer, French tutor, and proprietor of a coffee house, pas- try store, and tavern. His daughters, Clarissa and Mary Rose, became founders of the First New Jerusalem Society of Cincinnati in 1811, the first Swedenborgian society established west of the Appalachian Mountains. The membership rolls for the congregation note that both were “R[oman] Catholic before.” Though she married a Catholic, Clarissa may have never returned to the Catholic faith. However, when, in 1819, he had the opportunity to practice the faith, her husband, Peter Cazelles, seems to have become more fervent. He was among those who sent a petition in 1820 to Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore to favor Brown County, Ohio (about thirty miles east of Cincinnati), with the establishment of a Catholic parish. Peter Cazelles remained in Cincinnati until at least 1825.19 Cincinnati’s pioneer Catholics were more likely than their non-Catholic neighbors to be foreign-born; thus, the city’s Catholic population increased along with immigration from the Old World. In 1815, Daniel Drake published Picture of Cincinnati, a surprise best-seller that helped put the city on the map, providing it with a glowing description. The text, along with other positive reports from residents, lured immigrants. Drake’s book coincided with the beginnings of a second wave of Catholic arrivals: immigrants from Europe to eastern U.S. seaports and then directly to Cincinnati. During these boom years in which the city grew rapidly, promotional literature as well as family, ethnic, and religious ties attracted new Catholic immigrants to the city.20 After 1815, the Scott, O’Reilly, and Ward families, among others, were joined by Catholic emigres arriving directly from Ireland and increasingly, after 1820, Germany. Before 1820 the majority of the city’s Catholics—perhaps three in four—were Irish. Of the twenty Catholic pioneers that the historian V. F. O’Daniel identified, fourteen bore Irish surnames, though the Irish themselves represented fewer than 10 percent of the city’s heads of household. The appeal letter Cincinnati Catholics sent in 1818 to John Carrere of Baltimore (and presumably other East Coast Catholics) was signed by a committee of four—all bearing Irish surnames. Christ Church’s first trustees included only Irishmen.21 By 1820, the Catholics of Cincinnati had become more ethnically diverse. A group of four German Catholic families arrived in 1817, a coordinated

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migration. Arriving in Philadelphia aboard the ship Xenophon were Simon (1787–1854) and Emerensia (Lehmann) Oehler (1790–1866); Joseph (1795– 1880) and Clara Hechinger; Xavier Christian (1784–1848) and Maria Theresia (Ramser) Dannheimmer (1786–1867); and Johann (1769–1848) and Judith (Meyer) Zoller (1778–1839). The relationships of the families before immigration are unknown, though some were from nearby localities in southwest Germany in Baden. Attracted to the city because of the economic opportunity represented by affordable land, the early German Catholics established farms just outside the city in today’s West End and Over-the-Rhine and raised produce to sell in town. While some German Catholics joined the German Reformed Church, others must have been discontented with non-Catholic religious alternatives, as Father Fenwick referenced in 1820 the “dire need” for a German-speaking priest due to the number of “recent German immigrants.”22 Only weeks before the German Catholic families’ arrival in Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Western Spy and Dayton’s Ohio Watchman advertised a meeting of area Catholics to be held on October 12, 1817, for the purpose of building a Catholic church. The note encouraged Catholics “to please take notice that great encouragement is already held out to them” and ended with a verse taken from the King James translation of Hebrews 12:2, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of the faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despis- ing the shame, and is set at the right hand of the throne of God”. The choice of the verse and the translation source are intriguing. On the one hand, the verse encouraged Catholics that Jesus, founder of the Church, was victorious, just as they hoped they would be in establishing a congregation. Yet, on the other, the use of the King James Bible, not an approved Catholic translation, was perhaps a nod to regnant American Protestantism or even a hope for non-Catholic support. The translation choice may indicate a republican sensibility and a willingness to collaborate beyond ethnoreligious boundaries or may prove such boundaries had yet to be established, both identities of frontier Catholicism.23 Nine men, seven women, and four children attended the October 1817 meeting held at the Michael Scott home. We do not know which families, whether Irish or German, sent representatives; however, in the founding of Christ Church the role of German Catholics was subordinate to that of the Irish. Still, of the German families that arrived in 1817, several became members of Christ Church after a period of either belonging to the German Reformed Church or perhaps abstaining from formal worship completely.24 The early Germans mixed easily not only with their non-Catholic neighbors but also with Irish coreligionists. These first German arrivals, according to historian Walter Glazer, “were careful to soften their native customs and attachments so as not to offend their native-born neighbors.” Their settlement patterns, which took them outside the city, may have also allowed them a certain ease in putting

10 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY DAVID J. ENDRES down roots. But their “minority within a minority” status as both Germans and Catholics and their arrival after the first wave of Irish contributed to their failure to lead in matters of religion. Still, the arrival of German Catholics provided a further impetus for organizing a congregation, even if they would remain literally and figuratively on the city’s periphery through 1830.25 By the time the four German Catholic families had arrived, perhaps only by coincidence, efforts at organizing the Catholics in the city were gaining strength. Michael Scott, the obvious leader, was indicated as committee president on official correspondence and active in providing a Catholic presence in the city from the beginning. That lay Catholics (with clergy support) formed congregations was not unusual for the period. Many congregations—Catholic and non-Cath- olic—were based on the model that placed trustees in charge, a system of governance that could be found not only on the East Coast but in Catholic frontier settlements such as Vincennes, Indiana.26 Consequently, Cincinnati’s lay Catholics bore the burden of fundraising, yet the relative independence of congregational trustees also provided them with the freedom to select a site for the church, draw up the architectural plans, and procure the building materials. Fundraising had been the community’s most significant difficulty. Their need occasioned a November 23, 1818 appeal letter to John Carrere of Baltimore, in which they described themselves as lacking “guide, church, or pastor.” The appeal evidently did not generate an overwhelming response, because a March 13, 1819, notice in the Western Spy asked local Catholics to forward “as large a portion of their subscriptions as they possibly can.”27 In the spring of 1819, the Christ Church congregation, representing an estimated hundred Catholics, was officially incorporated in the state of Ohio as a religious society with five lay trustees guiding it. With meager funds, the pioneer Catholics purchased a lot north of the city limits in the “northern liberties” near what would become the northwest corner of Liberty and Vine Streets. Though it has been argued that the church was built outside the city limits because of an anti-Catholic ordi- nance forbidding a church in town, it seems more likely that a city location was not pro- scribed. Instead, the land north of the city was more easily acquired and on better terms.28 James Findlay (1770–1835), a prominent non-Catholic, agreed to sell the congregation two lots for $1,200, though the Catholics could only put forward $450 at the time of the transfer (Findlay exe- James Findlay (1770-1835). cuted a mortgage with the trustees for the balance). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

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Thomas Dugan, trustee of Christ Church, was a trusted friend of Findlay. Dugan’s testimony in a sensational 1807 trial had helped secure a guilty verdict against Charles Vattier, convicted of stealing a substantial sum from Findlay, who was at the time an official of the federal land office. Though Dugan’s role in Findlay’s decision to sell the land “on good terms” to the Catholic trustees is unclear, it seems likely that Findlay knew several of the trustees.29 Once the land was secured, Michael Scott drew up the plans for a simple frame church of fifty-five by thirty feet. The wood for the building was cut in Alexandria, Kentucky, and sent up the river. The building was soon assembled, and on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1819, Christ Church held its first religious service. Fenwick’s nephew, Father Nicholas Dominic Young, O.P., celebrated Mass that day and continued, along with Fenwick, to serve the Catholics in Cincinnati.30 By all accounts, the church was quite modest, consisting of bare wood, without plaster or ceiling. Perhaps because the building was unsecured, the congregation members brought “pictures, crucifixes, and candles every time they went to the chapel.” One chronicler, unimpressed with the structure and its location, stated that this first Catholic church—“if one could call the barn-like, plank hut a church”—was inconveniently located in the woods one mile from the city such that in bad weather “the bottomless muddy path” from the city was “almost impassible.” Fenwick, too, grumbled to another cleric about the church, describing it as “only a small half-built, framed chapel on a lot of ground not paid for.”31 While the attempt to form a congregation had finally been successful, the lack of Catholics in Cincinnati was pronounced, given the city’s significant growth. Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget (1763–1850) of Bardstown, Kentucky, who then had jurisdiction over the Catholics in Cincinnati, wrote in June 1819, just as Christ Church was beginning, that it was a “great misfortune” that so few Catholics had settled in the city. He lamented that only a smattering of Catholic “laborers and clerks” and a mass of potential converts composed the populace. But he ended with a word of hope and promise: “Yet, I think nothing should be neglected to establish religion here: for the mercy of God is great, and when He pleases, He can multiply his children.”32 In 1821 the young church in Cincinnati became established as a diocese, with Fenwick as its first bishop. Fenwick, along with several other Dominican priests, arrived in March 1822 to serve the Catholics of the new diocese. In his surviving letters, Bishop Fenwick said little about the pioneer Catholics of Cincinnati. He noted in an 1822 letter that they had been able to successfully build a church, though “unfortunately it is not yet paid for.” Still, he boasted that the church was well-attended, with a daily increasing congregation, including converts from Protestantism. With the establishment of Cincinnati as a diocese, the humble Christ Church was elevated to the position of a cathedral and was the site for Ohio’s first priestly ordination when on, April 6, 1822, Bishop Fenwick called

12 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY DAVID J. ENDRES to priesthood Father Francis Vincent Badin, the younger brother of Father Stephen Theodore Badin, the first priest ordained in the United States.33 The city’s Catholics, regardless of ethnicity, worshipped together at the new cathedral until the middle of 1822. Though they had utilized the property for only three years, it became evident to Fenwick that the “northern liberties” location was not suitable. Against the advice of the church’s lay trustees, he decided to relocate the church south to Sycamore Street, toward the city’s “bottom,” where most of Rt. Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick the Irish lived. At the same time, he had the owner- (1768-1832), first Bishop of Cincinnati. ship of the property in the “northern liberties” trans- CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER ferred to himself. These unpopular decisions were evidence of Fenwick’s siding with a new form of parish governance, one more clerically centered, more authoritarian, less American, and more European.34 The structure’s move was accomplished using oxen, but the building fell apart en route and had to be reconstructed in its new location. On the first Sunday after the relocation, the church began to sway visibly during Mass. Michael Scott and another parish member sprang from their pews to secure the building, with Scott climbing under- neath and risking harm to steady the supports. Though they disagreed with Fenwick about the relocation, the trustees worked to further establish the congregation.35 Pioneer Catholics continued to worship in the former Christ Church building, renamed St. Peter in Chains, when it was relocated. Johann and Judith Zoller’s daughter Marie Eva was reportedly married in 1824 in the reconstructed frame building. The building proved inadequate even in its new location. In 1825, Michael Scott drew up plans for a new brick cathedral on the Sycamore Street site. While Christ Church was noted for its simplicity, the new cathedral was a Gothic-inspired construction at a size of 110 by 50 feet with five 15-foot windows on each side. Once the new building was ready for worship, on June 29, 1826, the original Christ Church was no longer used for religious services, though it would house St. Francis Xavier Seminary when it opened in 1829.36 In addition to founding the Christ Church congregation, pioneer Catholic families proved an First St. Peter’s Cathedral, erected in 1825 by Bishop Fenwick on Sycamore street. Catholic Churches of important source of leadership in Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Cincinnati’s expanding Catholic CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

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community. Members’ support of new religious and philanthropic endeavors is indicative of an activism born of their frontier Catholic identity. Since newer arrivals were unlikely to have the money to support philanthropic interests, the city’s Catholic pioneers provided indispensable funding for several Church-related efforts that offered important services to the city’s residents, including non-Catholics. Such a role suggests not only their activism, moderate wealth, and religious faith but also their republican, egalitarian ideals. Patrick O’Reilly, a prominent businessman who founded one of the city’s first breweries, collaborated with Bishop Fenwick and was an officer in Cincinnati’s Irish nationalist organization, the Association for the Promotion of Civil and Religious Liberty in Ireland. In 1828, O’Reilly tried unsuccessfully to convince a group of Sisters of Charity, passing through town en route to St. Louis, Missouri, to serve in Cincinnati. When Bishop Fenwick prevailed upon the sisters a short time later, the O’Reilly family provided housing for them until a more stable arrangement could be made. The family is memorialized among the most significant benefactors of St. Peter’s Orphan Asylum, which the sisters began soon after their arrival.37 Thomas Dugan had a reputation for generosity and became a significant supporter of Catholic institutions in the city, including the orphan asylum. By the early 1830s, he had departed for Philadelphia, where he remained a supporter of Catholic charities and was remembered at the time of his death as “the widow, the orphan, the poor man’s friend.”38 Michael and Eliza Scott were well-regarded for their generosity and piety. In 1823, they provided a donation of a hundred acres in Perry Township, Brown County, Ohio, for Catholic use. The land later became the home of the Ursuline Convent at St. Martin’s settlement and its associated boarding school. Eliza, affec- tionately called “old grandmother Scott,” was eulogized as “first in time and first in merit,” a “true Christian woman,” recognized by her many Protestant friends as having saintly qualities.39 Without respect to class or ethnicity, the city’s Catholic pioneers provided the vision and foundation for the first Catholic-sponsored charitable and educational institutions in Cincinnati. All of the residents, not just the Catholics, were noted for their egalitarianism, spirit of cooperation, and fraternity. An 1826 descriptive guide called Cincinnati the most “Republican” of cities in the nation. Its inhabit- ants included “emigrants from all quarters of the Union, and from different parts of Europe” yet no groups were so numerous as to cause “subdivisions of society influenced by national partialities.” However, Catholics’ pan-ethnic, republican worldview would soon be tested.40 By 1826, Catholics in Cincinnati numbered more than a hundred families, with, according to Bishop Fenwick, approximately one in five being converts, or at least experiencing reversions to Catholicism. As immigration from the Old World increased, the need for a priest to minister to German Catholics was apparent.

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Fenwick made a trip to Europe in 1823 to obtain financial assistance and manpower. Frederic Rese, a young German priest, arrived in Cincinnati in 1824. He learned English quickly and converted dozens of German families from Protestantism. His success, according to Fenwick, earned him the ire of the local Lutheran pastor: Rese “has almost ruined the Lutheran church, the pastor [presumably of the German Lutheran and Reformed Church] which is spitting fire and flame against him.”41 The unity brought by the founding of the first Catholic congregation was short-lived, lasting little more than a decade. Following Bishop Fenwick’s death on September 27, 1832, Father Frederic Rese was chosen to administer the diocese. Rese, however, was soon named the first bishop of Detroit, Michigan; he was consecrated bishop of Detroit in Cincinnati on October 6, 1833. The ceremony, meant to highlight the universalism and catholicity of the church and the emerging place of Cincinnati among its regional neighbors, exposed the differences between Cincinnati’s Irish and German Catholics. Until this time, the two ethnicities had worshipped in the same building, but often at different times.42 According to a German chronicler, as the Germans attempted to enter the church for the consecration of Bishop Rese, “the Irish priest Mullen with a member of the church council of the English-speaking community…requested the numerous Germans who had assembled to go out, because laymen were not allowed at the beginning of the ceremonies.” While the Germans abided by the request and “waited patiently outside,” Father James Ignatius Mullen (1793– 1866) “placed himself with his council member there before the door, allowed his Irish and English parishioners in and refused every German.” The angered Germans, led by two “strong fellows,” including a then middle-aged Joseph Hechinger, forced the doors open, knocking Father Mullen to the floor.43 The incident indicates the waning of the American, republican ideal as Catholics became more representative of the Old World. The ethnic clash at Bishop Rees’s consecration helped spur the creation of a separate parish for German Catholics, as Holy Trinity (Heilige Dreifaltigkeit) Church was formed the next year. This was the first parish for German Catholics west of the Appalachian Mountains. By that time, the original Christ Church property held only a cemetery and the English-speaking Catholics worshipped together at the cathedral on Sycamore Street.44

Holy Trinity Church. Catholic Churches of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

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The 1830s saw the further fading of the frontier Catholic identity as new immigrants outnumbered earlier arrivals. The increase in German Catholics, in particular, fueled tensions. Annual increases in population through immigration grew from a thousand a year in 1830 to four thousand per year by decade’s end. Overall, the city’s demographics drastically shifted in the direction of young, often German- born residents, many of whom were Catholic. A study of residents in 1840 found that only 16 percent of the city had been residents more than a decade and fewer than 5 percent of the population was more than fifty years old. German Catholics soon eclipsed the English-speaking Catholics, so that by 1840 it was estimated that three-fourths of the city’s Catholics were German (nine thousand) compared to English speakers (three thousand). The newcomers completely overshadowed the first and second waves of Catholic migrants, who had arrived before 1820.45 Michael Scott, the most significant lay Catholic in this formative period, died of cholera in 1833 and is believed to have been buried in the cemetery located next to the original Christ Church in the “northern liberties.” TheCatholic Telegraph, Cincinnati’s Catholic weekly, lauded him as a “devout and zealous Christian,” “the kindest and best of fathers,” “a sincere and affectionate friend” who lived to see the mustard seed of faith in Cincinnati become a “stately tree.”46 In the 1840s, that stately tree would include the addition of numerous parishes. In addition to the cathedral, which moved to its current location at Eighth and Plum Streets in 1845, English speakers attended St. Francis Xavier Church on Sycamore Street at the former cathedral location, and All Saints Church, also called Christ Church, in Fulton, east of the city center. German ethnics founded nine additional parishes in and near the city in the 1840s, mainly in today’s West End and Over-the- Rhine, and two congregations in nearby towns in the county: St. Stephen (later Our Lady of Victory) in Delhi Township and St. James in White Oak / Green Township.47

St. Francis Xavier Church. St. James Church. Catholic Churches of Cincinnati Catholic Churches of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. and Hamilton County. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

16 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY DAVID J. ENDRES

The pioneer Catholics and their descendants, according to ethnicity and location, naturally joined these parishes as they were formed. Christian and Maria Theresia Dannheimmer became early members of Holy Trinity Church. By the time of Christian’s death in 1848, the family attended St. John the Baptist Church in Over-the-Rhine. Simon and Emerensia Oehler were founders of Holy Trinity. Their eldest daughters, Maria Anna and Martha, were married there, in 1835 and 1836. Judith Zoller was buried from Holy Trinity in 1839. The Oehlers and Johann Zoller became members of another German parish, St. Joseph Church (West End), after it was founded in 1846. Joseph Hechinger was among the first settlers of Mount Pleasant (later Mount Healthy) in Springfield Township, Hamilton County, where he is recorded as a founder of Assumption Church (1854), providing the land and seed money for the parish’s first church. Eliza Scott was a member of the cathedral and later St. Francis Xavier Church, when the cathedral was moved west to Eighth and Plum Streets. The Robert and Catherine Ward family also worshipped at the cathedral.48 While the early Catholics scattered and joined other parishes, Maria Dannheimmer’s will provides a link back to Christ Church. By the time of her death in 1867, a German Catholic congregation, St. Francis Seraph, Church of the Assumption. Catholic Churches had been formed at the location of the of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. original Christ Church. In her will, she CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER instructed that $100 be provided to the new congregation as a stipend for the annual celebration of a requiem Mass on her death anniversary. Eliza Scott also maintained a connection to Christ Church. She was buried from St. Francis Xavier Church, where Christ Church had been moved and where the cathedral that her husband had helped construct twenty years earlier was located.49 The remnants of frontier Catholicism can be encountered today at the site of the former Christ Church cemetery. After the frame church was moved, burials continued. In 1858, when the land including the cemetery was repurposed for the construction of St. Francis Seraph, the tombstones and remains were depos- ited in a crypt beneath the church. Though no cemetery records are extant and most of the headstones have not survived, the headstones used to line the crypt provide a partial record of the city’s pioneer Catholics. Of special note is the

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marker for Christ Church trustee Patrick O’Reilly. A partial headstone with only the characters “//rick O’Reilly // Cavan, Ireland” remains.50 Cincinnati’s pioneer Catholics were Irish and Germans of moderate means who came to the West from Maryland, Pennsylvania, or increasingly after 1815, directly from their European homelands. The pioneers were mostly artisan laborers, such as brewers, carpenters, a tailor, and a silversmith, and farmers or merchants attracted to affordable land and the city’s growing economy. Linked by business and social interests, these Catholics mixed with non-Catholics and even, at times, participated in rites in other Christian churches. Eventually, the meager Catholic presence banded together for the common cause of forming a congregation, casting aside other differences, at least for a short time, in the interest of faith. Like other Catholics in the West and elsewhere in the Early Republic, they val- ued lay leadership and held to republican ideals of flexibility, egalitarianism, activism, and optimism. Even though they were religious outsiders in an overwhelm- ingly Protestant town, they assisted in building the most “Republican” of cities in which “national partialities” had yet to become influential. But this ideal would not endure in the 1830s and 1840s. The city’s frontier Catholicism gave rise to its first congregation, but the triumph of a separate, recognizable ethnoreligious subculture would occur in subsequent decades. This turn to a more confident, organized, and recognizably “foreign” church resulted in a Cincinnati Catholicism more influenced by the immigrants of the mid-nineteenth century than by earlier frontier, republican ideals exhibited by the western frontier’s first Catholics.

I am grateful to Jeffrey Herbert, Mary Hennessey, and the 3 Significant studies that explore early Cincinnati anonymous reviewers of Ohio Valley History. Catholicism include Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati; Roger A. Fortin, Faith and Action: A History 1 John H. Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 1821–1996 (Columbus: 1821–1921 (New York: F. Pustet, 1921), 33. Ohio State University Press, 2002); V. F. O’Daniel, The Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick, O.P., Founder of 2 Though focusing on Cincinnati, this work builds upon the Dominicans in the United States, Pioneer Missionary other studies of Catholicism in the Early Republic: in Kentucky, Apostle of Ohio, First Bishop of Cincinnati Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism John R. Dichtl, (Washington, DC: Dominicana, 1920), 232–33. See also to the West in the Early Republic (Lexington: University the similar lists of Catholic pioneers in “First Catholic Fathers Press of Kentucky, 2008); Michael Pasquier, Church in Cincinnati,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 22, on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman 1904; “First Roman Catholics of Cincinnati,” Cincinnati Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789–1870 Enquirer, June 11, 1919. Research into the pioneers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Tangi of Cincinnati Catholicism is frustrated by the almost Villerbu, “Negotiating Religious and National Identities complete absence of sacramental records before the late in the Early Republic: Catholic Settlers and European 1830s. A record of thirty-three Cincinnati baptisms from Ohio Missionaries in Vincennes, Indiana, 1804–1834,” 1822—mostly presided over by Dominicans John A. Valley History 15 (Winter 2015), 22–40; Dale B. Light, Hill, John T. Hynes, and Bishop Edward Fenwick—was Rome and the New Republic: Conflict and Community in published as “Early Baptisms in Cincinnati,” Catholic Philadelphia Catholicism between the Revolution and the Telegraph (Cincinnati), Dec. 23, 1897, but the source is Civil War (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame not noted. The difficulty of researching early Cincinnati Press, 1996).

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Catholics is amplified by destruction of the city’s 10 For the biographies of the Wards, see “Col. Jonah R. two earliest Catholic cemeteries: Christ Church and Taylor,” in Portrait and Biographical Album of Sedgwick Catherine Street. To better understand the lives of early County, Kansas (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1888), Catholics, I have relied on census returns, court records, 429–30. Jonah Taylor married Elizabeth Ann, “Eliza,” a and newspaper sources, but much of the information daughter of Robert and Catherine Ward, at St. Peter in remains fragmentary. Chains Cathedral, Cincinnati, in 1842. For the reference to the early Mass in their home, see “Death of Mrs. M. 4 Thomas W. Spalding, “Frontier Catholicism,” Catholic Carpenter,” Kansas City Star, Mar. 29, 1906. Historical Review 77 (July 1991), 470–84, quotes at 475 and 477. See also Thomas T. McAvoy, “Americanism and 11 “Record of the Proceedings of the Trustees of the Township of Frontier Catholicism,” Review of Politics 5 (July 1943), Cincinnati, 1808,” quoted in Greve, Centennial History 275–301; Patrick W. Carey, “Republicanism within of Cincinnati, 448; Lamott, History of the Archdiocese American Catholicism, 1785–1860,” Journal of the Early of Cincinnati, 31–32. English-language sources record Republic 3 (Winter 1983), 413–37; Patrick W. Carey, the name as Fowble, but German sources indicate People, Priests, and Prelates: Ecclesiastical Democracy and the surname as Fabler. See Emil Klauprecht, German the Tensions of Trusteeism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Chronicle in the History of the Ohio Valley and Its Capital Notre Dame Press, 1987). City Cincinnati in Particular (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1992), 155; Cincinnati und sein Deutschthum: 5 Daniel Aaron, Cincinnati, Queen City of the West, 1819– eine Geschichte der Entwickelung Cincinnati’s und 1838 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992), seines Deutschthums, mit biographischen Skizzen und 20–47; Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Illustrationen (Cincinnati: Queen City Publishing, 1901), Western Cities, 1790–1830 (Urbana: University of Illinois 128 (translation provided by Martin Arlinghaus). Press, 1996), 53–59; Walter S. Glazer, Cincinnati in 1840: The Social and Functional Organization of an Urban 12 Evidence of the Waltman/Esling family’s faith practice Community during the Pre–Civil War Period (Columbus: in Philadelphia is in Minute Book of St. Mary’s Church, Ohio State University Press, 1999), 50. Philadelphia, 1782–1811 (Philadelphia: American Catholic Historical Society, 1893); “Department of 6 Glazer, Cincinnati in 1840, 54; R. Douglas Hurt, The Genealogies: Esling,” Records of the American Catholic Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830 Historical Society of Philadelphia 2 (1886–88), 333–66, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 253–54; esp. 346–49; Edmund Adams and Barbara Brady Harvey Hall, The Cincinnati Directory for 1825 (Cincinnati: O’Keefe, Catholic Trails West: The Founding Catholic Samuel J. Browne at the Emporium Office, 1825), 7. Families of Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988), 107, 321–23. The Waltman– Cincinnati, History of Cincinnati and 7 Aaron, 170–201; O’Reilly marriage record is found in “Marriage Registers Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati: S. B. Nelson, 1894), at St. Joseph’s Church, Philadelphia, PA, 1809–1825,” 195–214; John D. Buggeln, “A Marketplace for Religion: Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Cincinnati, 1788–1890” (PhD diss., Indiana University, Philadelphia 20 (1909), 140. 2002), 78–153. 13 The direct connection between Margaret Fowble’s death 8 William S. Wabnitz, ed., “The Bates Papers and Early and the calling of the meeting is the interpretation Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Cincinnati,” offered by Lamott,History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Society of Ohio 11 (Jan. 1953), 31–32, (Apr. 1953), 31–32; see also Western Spy, Oct. 12, 1811; Liberty Hall Daily National 113–16; Thomas Dugan death notice, (Cincinnati, OH), Oct. 16, 1811. Intelligencer (Washington, DC), Mar. 12, 1833. Dugan’s numerous land purchases between 1802 and 1816 can 14 “Catholic Meeting,” Liberty Hall, Dec. 11, 1825. The be seen in Ellen T. Berry and David A. Berry, Early Ohio location of the meeting seems to have been the Fowble Settlers: Purchasers of Land in Southwestern Ohio, 1800– home on the east side of Main Street below Pearl Street. 1840 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1986), 93. On his bookselling business, see Western Spy (Cincinnati), Oct. 15 “The Sunset of Life: Death of the Oldest Catholic in 23, 1805, quoted in Charles Theodore Greve,Centennial Cincinnati,” Records of the American Catholic Historical History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens, 2 vols. Society of Philadelphia 2 (1886–88), 349–51. (Chicago: Biographical Publishing, 1904), 1:490–91. 16 On religious fluidity in the Early Republic, see Dichtl, 9 John Gilmary Shea, A History of the Catholic Church Frontiers of Faith, esp. 115–20. within the Limits of the United States, 4 vols. (New York: John G. Shea, 1890), 3:334; Gilbert J. Garraghan, The 17 Klauprecht, German Chronicle in the History of the Ohio Jesuits of the Middle United States, 3 vols. (New York: Valley, 155; Joseph M. White, “Cincinnati’s German America Press, 1938), 3:157; Fortin, Faith and Action, 14. Catholic Life: A Heritage of Lay Participation,” U.S. Catholic Historian 12 (Summer 1994), 4; Records of

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the German Lutheran and Reformed Church / Third four other Irishmen not among the first committee that Protestant Memorial Church (Cincinnati, Ohio), attempted to organize the parish: Patrick (O’)Reilly, John 1814–1977, reel 1, vol. 1 (1814–40), University of Sherlock, Thomas Dugan, and Edward Lynch. Cincinnati, Archives and Rare Books Library, Cincinnati. The surname is also spelled Weyman, Weimann, and 22 Edward D. Fenwick to John Augustine Hill, June 1, Wiemann in records. 1820, in Edward Dominic Fenwick Papers, 1803–1832, ed. William L. Tancrell (New York: Dominican Province 18 Baptism entry for Maria Anna and Martha Oehler, of St. Joseph, 2005), 110; ship manifest, Xenophon, Dec. 21, 1817, Records of the German Lutheran and Aug. 16, 1817, in “Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Reformed Church / Third Protestant Memorial Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1800–1882,” NARA micro- reel 1, vol. 1. That the Oehlers’ oldest children had to film publication M425, roll 024, National Archives and be baptized Protestant was lamented in Simon Oehler’s Records Administration, Washington, DC. obituary in the German Catholic newspaper, Der Warheitsfreund (Cincinnati), Oct. 19, 1854. 23 Western Spy, Sept. 5, 1817, quoted in O’Daniel, Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick, 236. 19 Records and Minutes Books of the First New Jerusalem Society of Cincinnati and Other Organizations Related 24 Fortin, Faith and Action, 14–15. to the Swedenborgians, vol. 1, Public Library of Cincinnati in 1840 Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, available online 25 Glazer, , 57; Bruce Levine, at the Cincinnati Public Library website, http://digital. “Community Divided: German Immigrants, Social Class, cincinnatilibrary.org/digital/collection/p16998coll15/ and Political Conflict in Antebellum Cincinnati,” in Ethnic Diversity and Civic Identity: Patterns of Conflict and id/83673/rec/6; Jacob Hall Pleasants and Howard Sill, Cohesion in Cincinnati Since 1820 Maryland Silversmiths, 1715–1830 (Harrison, NY: , ed. Henry Shapiro R. A. Green, 1972), 276; Elizabeth D. Beckman, An and Jonathan Sarna (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, In-Depth Study of the Cincinnati Silversmiths, Jewelers, 1992), 51–54. Levine contrasts earlier liberal arrivals with Watch and Clockmakers (Cincinnati: B.B. & Co., 1975), the mainly Catholic Germans who came to Cincinnati 27–28; Marjorie Byrnside Burress, ed., A Collection in the 1840s and 1850s but also admits some Catholic of Pioneer Marriage Records, Hamilton County, Ohio, presence among the left-leaning earlier immigrants. 1789–1817, From the Papers of John D. Caldwell Found 26 Carey, People, Priests, and Prelates, 39–43. For an example at the Cincinnati Historical Society (Cincinnati: M. B. of lay trustees contending with priests in Vincennes, Burress, 1978); Ophia D. Smith, “Adam Hurdus and Indiana, see Villerbu, “Negotiating Religious and National the Swedenborgians in Early Cincinnati,” Ohio History Identities,” 32–35. Fenwick’s successor, Bishop John B. Journal 53 (Apr.–June 1944), 113–14; Committee to Purcell, permitted yet limited the trustees’ role, thereby Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore, Sept. 25, minimizing overt conflict between priests and laity. See 1820, in V. F. O’Daniel, “The Centenary of Ohio’s Oldest Joseph M. White, “Religion and Community: Cincinnati Catholic Church (1818–1918),” Catholic Historical Germans, 1814–1870” (PhD diss., University of Notre Review 4 (April 1918), 30–31. The court deemed Peter Dame, 1980), 211–16; Fortin, Faith and Action, 79. Cazelles insane, according to Hamilton County [OH] Probate Court Journal Entries, vol. 2, Aug. 31, 1825, 27 Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 33–34. 339, Hamilton County Probate Court, Cincinnati, available online at Hamilton County Probate Court 28 Ibid., 34–36; Fortin, Faith and Action, 15. website, https://www.probatect.org/court-records/ archive-categories/probate-court-journal-entries. 29 Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 36. Examples of non-Catholic support for Catholic church- 20 Daniel Drake, Natural and Statistical View; or, Picture of building efforts in the Early Republic abound; see Cincinnati and the Miami Country (Cincinnati: Looker Dichtl, Frontiers of Faith, 95–100. On the relationship & Wallace, 1815). For an assessment of the work and its of Findlay and Dugan, see Wabnitz, “Bates Papers and impact, see Writers’ Program, Work Projects Administration Early Cincinnati,” 115–16; The Trial of Charles Vattier: in the State of Ohio, Cincinnati: A Guide to the Queen City Convicted of the Crimes of Burglary and Larceny . . . and Its Neighbors (Cincinnati: Wiesen-Hart Press, 1943), (Cincinnati: David L. Carney, 1807), 67–69. That early 17–22; Wade, Urban Frontier, 155–57. On changing Catholics maintained relationships among themselves that demographics, see Glazer, Cincinnati in 1840, 46–49. went beyond religion is clear. Patrick O’Reilly was named executor of Thomas Dugan’s estate, and it seems O’Reilly 21 O’Daniel, Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick, 232; also maintained significant contacts with members of Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 33; Cincinnati’s business community, including Findlay. Fortin, Faith and Action, 15. Michael Scott, John M. Mahon, John White, and Patrick Walsh signed the appeal 30 Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 37–38; letter. In addition to Michael Scott, the trustees were Fortin, Faith and Action, 15–16.

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31 This description of early Catholic worship is contained in patrick-reilly-perrys-reilly-brewery-cincinnati/; advertise- Simon Oehler’s obituary in Der Warheitsfreund, Oct. 19, ment, National Republican and Daily Mercantile Advertiser 1854; Klauprecht, German Chronicle in the History of the (Cincinnati), Oct. 13, 1831. Ohio Valley, 160; Fenwick to Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore, Feb. 9, 1823, in Fenwick Papers, 122. 38 “St. John’s Orphan Asylum,” Catholic Herald (Philadelphia), Mar. 13, 1834; see also the entry for Thomas Dugan 32. Souvenir Album of American Cities: Catholic Churches in “St. Mary’s Graveyard, Fourth and Spruce Streets, of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati: Philadelphia, Records and Extracts from Inscriptions on United States Church Album Publishing, 1896), 12. Tombstones,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 3 (1888–91), 289. 33 Fenwick to Catholic Miscellany, Dec. 5, 1822, in Fenwick Papers, 121; Fortin, Faith and Action, 16–17, 40; 39 Catholic Telegraph, Mar. 30, 1848; The History of Brown O’Daniel, Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick, 247. County, Ohio (Chicago: W. H. Beers, 1883), 318; Mary Agnes McCann, Archbishop Purcell and the Archdiocese of 34 Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 52–53; Cincinnati (PhD diss., Catholic University of America, Alfred G. Stritch, “Trusteeism in the Old Northwest, 1918), 17, 53; O’Daniel, Right Rev. Edward Dominic 1800–1850,” Catholic Historical Review 30 (July Fenwick, 232. 1944), 157–58; Villerbu, “Negotiating Religious and National Identities,” 32–33. For a wider discussion of 40 Drake and Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826, 38; Steven the shift from lay leadership to clerical control in the J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics Early Republic, see Dale B. Light, “The Reformation of in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York: Philadelphia Catholicism, 1830–1860,” Pennsylvania Columbia University Press, 1985), 3–24. Magazine of History and Biography 112 (July 1988), 375–405; Light, Rome and the New Republic, 263–72. 41 Fenwick to P. Pallavicini, Mar. 29, 1825, in Fenwick Papers, 182–83; Fortin, Faith and Action, 20, 22. 35 Lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 52; Fortin, Faith and Action, 17–18; Shea, History of the 42 White, “Religion and Community,” 158–60. Carl Catholic Church, 340. Friedrich “Charles” Belser was claimed to be the first organist in Cincinnati, playing for the “German Catholic 36 Clifford Neal Smith, “Anton Donnersberger,” in Early congregation on Sycamore Street,” beginning in 1833. Nineteenth-Century German Settlers in Ohio (Mainly Though a German Catholic congregation was not formed Cincinnati and Environs), Kentucky, and Other States until 1834, when Holy Trinity Church was founded at (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2004), 7. See Maria Eva (Zoller) West Fifth and Mound Streets, there was already a sense Donnersberger’s death notice in the Volksfreund of two congregations sharing one single church building. (Cincinnati), Jan. 5, 1862, which states that she was See Smith, “Appendix 7: Das neue Pionierbild” (Der married “in the first frame Catholic church of Cincinnati Deutsche Pionier 7 [1875–76], 156), in Early Nineteenth- thirty-nine years ago.” Henry A. Ford and Kate B. Ford, Century German Settlers in Ohio, 59–60. History of Cincinnati, Ohio (Cleveland: L. A. Williams, 1881), 211, 316; B. Drake and E. B. Mansfield, 43 Cincinnati und sein Deutschthum, 129. See also the his- Cincinnati in 1826 (Cincinnati: Morgan, Lodge, & tory of the founding of Holy Trinity parish (including Fisher, 1827), 35–36; Fortin, Faith and Action, 23, 36. the altercation at Bishop Rees’s consecration) as related in “Die erste deutsche katholische Kirche des Westens,” Der 37 For the reference to the Irish repeal association modeled Deutsche Pionier 6 (Sept. 1874), 219–24. after New York City’s Friends of Ireland, see National Republican and Ohio Political Register (Cincinnati), Feb. 44 Fortin, Faith and Action, 78, 80; O’Daniel, Right Rev. 6, 1829. Such Irish nationalist organizations supported Edward Dominic Fenwick, 249. A letter from Bishop John the repeal of the act of parliamentary union between B. Purcell of Cincinnati to Bishop Frederic Rese noted Ireland and Great Britain. For O’Reilly’s invitation that the congregation owed $800 on the “now-filled to the religious sisters, see Judith Metz, “The Sisters graveyard.” Purcell to Rese, Jan. 15, 1835, Archdiocese of Charity in Cincinnati: 1829–1852,” Vincentian of Cincinnati Collection, University of Notre Dame Heritage Journal 17 (Fall 1996), 206–8; Mary Agnes Archives, Notre Dame, Indiana. McCann, The History of Mother Seton’s Daughters: The Cincinnati in 1840 Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1809–1917, 3 45 Glazer, , 50–62; Joseph A. Thie, ed., vols. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1917–23), 1:162; “German Catholic Activity in the United States Seventy “Obituary,” Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, Jan. Years Ago—German Catholic American Notes; Extracts 7, 1836; John Southwood, “06 Patrick Reilly / Perrys from the Cincinnati ‘Wahrheitsfreund,’ 1829–1841,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of & Reilly Brewery (1819–1844),” Cincinnati Brewing Philadelphia Faith and Action History, 2018, http://cincinnatibrewinghistory.com/ 20 (1909), 106; Fortin, , 86.

WINTER 2018 21 “WITHOUT GUIDE, CHURCH, OR PASTOR”

46 Catholic Telegraph, July 20, 1833; “Report of Deaths,” 50 For a list of cemetery inscriptions and partial inscrip- Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, Aug. 1, 1833. tions, see Mary Remler, “Christ Catholic Churchyard, Cincinnati, Ohio,” Tracer: Hamilton County (OH) 47 Fortin, Faith and Action, 86, 395. Genealogical Society Newsletter 30 (November 2009), 108–9. In addition to more than a dozen Irish head- Diamond Jubilee, Church of the Assumption, Mt. Healthy, 48 stones, there was at least one German and one French 1854–1929 (Mount Healthy, OH: N.p., 1929). burial. The tombstone of Anna Volk (†1833) includes religious sayings in German such as “Gab uns Gott ein” 49 I am grateful to William Hammann, a descendant of and “Frost Heil ist mein” (“God supplies us” and “Blessed Maria Theresia (Ramser) Dannheimmer, for the reference salvation is mine”). The French burial, for which only a to her will. Catholic Telegraph, Mar. 30, 1848; Cincinnati partial headstone survives, is for Aime LeBreton, born in Enquirer, Mar. 27, 1848. France in 1766 and died in Cincinnati of cholera at an unknown date. Only one surviving headstone records a non-foreign-born pioneer, Jane Hackett (†1831) from Harford County, Maryland.

22 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY “The MostAppalling Forms of Degradation” Dorothea Dix Speaks Out for the Insane in Ohio Poorhouses Ann Clymer Bigelow

n August 18, 1844, the day before Dorothea Dix arrived at her first Ohio poorhouse, she stopped at the one in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Her follow-up letter to county judge Nathaniel Ewing Ostruck all the notes she would subsequently voice on her Ohio visits. There was the adamant insistence that “immediate changes are imperatively necessary” in the care of the insane. There was horror at the spectacle of the women: two of them “coiled up in a bunch of straw” in a packing box “suddenly threw aside the straw and stepped out upon the floor entirely naked.” There was the instruction that the directors provide privacy for the women, whose “gross exposure” was “so demoralizing and so shocking.” And finally came her refrain, the demand for “decency and propriety.”1 Dix (1802–1887) is best known for her efforts to persuade state legislatures from Massachusetts to Mississippi to build insane asylums. But in Ohio, whose Lunatic Asylum had been open for six years by the time she made her first visit, she focused instead on improving the care of the insane in its county poorhouses. As had happened to her elsewhere when visiting poorhouses, in Ohio she ran headlong into the problem that was beginning to bedevil caretakers around the country: what was to be done with the ever-swelling numbers of incurable indigent insane? In her early 1843 Massachusetts memorial she had written: “Alms-Houses are not founded as receptacles for the Insane.” After tour- Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ing New York’s poorhouses later in 1843, she had concluded that mentally ill paupers should be wards of the state. And again in Ohio, she declared that even “the best ordered Alms house furnishes no suitable accommodations or efficient care for the insane.” Incurables who are returned

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from the asylum to county poorhouses are “forlorn,” she wrote; “they relapse into the most pitiable condition.” But Dix made her Ohio remarks in the context of praising the state’s farsightedness in adding wings to its asylum, to which the poorhouse residents could ultimately be brought. For the time being, she recognized, poorhouses would inevitably be home to many mentally ill citizens.2 Dix biographer Thomas Brown writes, apropos of her visits to New York poorhouses, that Dix’s “main target was the idea of the almshouse rather than deplor- able conditions at particular institutions.” But by the time she got to Ohio, she was indeed focusing on the conditions in the individual facilities. She fought for the humane care of the insane inmates not for the sake of the poorhouse as an institution, though, but for the sake of the human beings who happened to live there. She tended to the inmates in spite of the fact they were in poorhouses. She recognized that poorhouses were a necessary holdover until all the insane inmates could be accommodated in asylums, and she believed these places should be as humane as possible. These facilities were worth caring aboutbecause they domiciled the insane. It is telling that two weeks after her 1844 Ohio tour ended, she wrote a friend defi- antly, “If I do not succeed in getting a State Hospital [in Pennsylvania, where she had been seeking one], I shall feel amply rewarded by what I am able to effect in prisons and almshouses.” She would look out for the insane wherever they were.3 The first Ohio poorhouse Dix visited was in Muskingum County. As in other states, she followed a pattern, first voicing horror at what she saw, then switching into action, either writing a usually scathing report or else directly intervening. On August 18 she came west by stagecoach on the National Road to Wheeling, on the Ohio border, arriving at 9:00 p.m., and the next morning at six headed to Zanesville, which she reached at 10:00 p.m. Early the next day, she visited the poorhouse and jail (“the former horrible,” she told a friend). She immediately drafted an article for the county paper, took it to the printer with the ink still wet, then boarded the stagecoach for Columbus, which she reached at midnight. Such was her pace during that year.4

Dorothea Lynde Dix’s letter, “To the citizens of Muskingum County,” August 18, 1844. Dorothea Lynde Dix Papers. HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

24 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW

No copy of that issue of the Zanesville newspaper appears to have survived, but her handwritten memorandum “To the Citizens of Muskingum County” is extant. What’s more, we can trace the decades-long case histories of three insane inmates—two women and one man—whom Dix probably encountered there: year after year, while they were in the commissioners’ custody, the Muskingum County commissioners’ journal had tracked the sorry course of the lives of Sally White, Mary Ann Cockrell, and Peter Bruner.5 Sally White’s story illustrates the complications that county commissioners sometimes faced when trying to stabilize the life of a deranged person. By all evidence, they made little effort to help her recover; they seem to have cared only about keeping her confined. While in her twenties, in January 1821, White was jailed on a charge of insanity and a doctor was summoned for his opinion. In March 1822 she was discharged into the care of Samuel Patterson, for one year, and then another. However, in August 1823 a relative of Sally’s, William White of Morgan County, complained to the commissioners about Patterson’s egregious lapses. He had neglected to keep her in confinement, “but on the contrary hath suffered [her] to run at large…thereby neglecting to furnish the said Sarah White with sufficient meat, drink, washing, lodging & clothing.” The commissioners resolved to find secure lodging for White, “who is at this time running at large to the damage of the citizens where she goes as also the disgrace of society.” She was entrusted to William White for the next year, at a rate of $75 ($1,730 in today’s currency).6

Sarah White entry in the Muskingum County Commissioner’s Journal, June 6, 1825. OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION

So-called outdoor relief relegated paupers like Sally to the lowest bidder, with no consideration of humane care. In her New York memorial, Dix referred to it as a “barbarous usage.” In this way, in August 1824 custody of Sally White passed to a fifty-one-year-old farmer named Archibald Galbraith. Archibald and Mary Galbraith were Irish immigrants who had five children between the ages of two and eighteen. They kept her throughout the 1830s, at $75 per year, doubtlessly motivated by the need for extra income. After seventeen years, on July 15, 1841,

WINTER 2018 25 “THE MOST APPALLING FORMS OF DEGRADATION”

the commissioners investigated a complaint that Sally “is & has been kept in a most shameful & inhuman manner” by Galbraith. They went to the Galbraith home and found her “in a miserable & uncomfortable situation,” so much so that they decided to move her out. Next, she was sent to the home of a William McConaughy, another Irish immigrant farmer, whom they paid $100 per year to keep her securely. They resolved to pay him more if necessary and reserved the right to inspect her circumstances at any time. Two years later, on June 6, 1843, she was transferred into the Muskingum County poorhouse, specifically into the new structure that had just been built for “the more intractable” insane.7 If Sarah White typified outdoor relief, so did Mary Ann Cockrell. A justice of the peace had committed Cockrell to the county jail in June 1835, a jury of seven men having adjudged her insane and too much of a risk to allow to go free. The commissioners decided against bringing in a physician—one is left to wonder why—but they ordered the sheriff and auditor to find someone to keep her on the cheapest terms possible. For eight years, she was shunted from one low bidder to another, eventually ending at the home of William McConaughy along with Sarah White, until they were taken to the poorhouse together on the same day.8 Insane men were bound out or jailed in the same way as women. In 1826, Peter Bruner, a young man of twenty-six from rural Muskingum County, was pronounced insane but not dangerous to himself or others. But by January 1827 he was in the county jail—“maliciously inclined,” according to the commissioners. They summoned Dr. Robert Mitchell, a successful and respected forty-nine- year-old member of the Zanesville community. Mitchell attended Peter for a month, then told the commissioners it would be unsafe to release him, although he was “evidently better and restored in some degree to his right mind.” At the February session, the commissioners rehired the doctor for a second month— a conscientious act unique in reams of Ohio county records. On March 5, he again advised against release; however, on that same day Peter’s mother, Elizabeth Bruner, appeared and requested to keep her son. She was head of the household and thus eligible for the task. The commissioners granted her custody and agreed to pay her 75 cents (roughly $18 today) per week. Peter’s stay with his mother was meant to last until June 1827, but after two months the commissioners aborted it. They had originally “thought most advisable to send Peter into the country to try the effect it might produce on his mind…but instead of its having any beneficial tendency, it appeared he grew worse, insomuch that it was not considered safe for her the said Elizabeth to keep him any longer, he being considered dangerous.” They returned him to jail.9 County commissioners faced unexpected situations in dealing with the insane. In a twist in Peter’s case, Zanesville physician Isaac Spangler suddenly intervened. Mitchell’s former student and sometime partner and later mayor of the town, Spangler was known for treating the poor free of charge, even bringing

26 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW them suitable food. He promised to cure Peter within a month or else claim no payment except for any medication he might need. Unfortunately, it appears that he failed, for Peter was still in jail in July. Before the year was out he was placed at the home of Joseph Bird, then removed to jail, then placed with John S. Bainter. He was in Bainter’s care until 1831, after which his mother kept him for most of the next decade. He was eventually removed to the poorhouse, probably when his mother was no longer able to care for him; he was there in 1848 and likely when Dorothea Dix made her visit.10 Dix was so outraged by the condition she found these inmates in that she wrote the county’s citizens her sharply worded plea for immediate action. She found the buildings’ location well chosen and the superintendent well qualified. So she felt it “mortifying and painful…to say that anything is not as it should be,” but the condition of the insane required that she do so. She was referring to “two of the females, who, together with one man, occupy the small wooden building on the premises nigh the main buildings.” She described “the crazy house” as being fifteen feet by twelve, divided into four cells with a corridor through the middle where a stove stood. “A portion of each cell opening on the passage is lat- ticed,” she wrote, “and a small lattice admits air at the end of each cell.” They “all are white-washed, but not often enough.” 11 Here she became adamant. “Notwithstanding care by the person who has charge here, it is quite apparent that decency and a sense of duty to the unfortunate insane require of you a prompt attention to their situation.” She was horrified that the women were not shielded from observation. One woman, she said—very likely Sally White—“refused to be clothed both summer and winter [and] is in a state of complete nudity.” The other, Mary Ann Cockrell, was “idiotic from continual fits” and was “equally incapable of preserving any forms of decency.” Dix said they both were completely exposed to public view. Of the male inmate, probably Peter Bruner, she said, “Crazy though he is, [he] is no suitable inmate at any time: yet his cell is there, and one must believe that no lower form of misery or exposure exists than is found here.” A fundamental rule of poorhouses—that women and men be kept in separate quarters—was broken here. Dix blamed the situation on the directors and not the keeper.12 She made concrete suggestions on care of the inmates, pointing out that “an additional building at small cost differently constructed would afford…decent protection of these insane women which their condition claims imperatively and immediately.” She closed, with her characteristic urgency, that “this so terrible evil needs speedy remedy” and added that she need make no apology for her remarks “where humanity and good morals urge a claim so absolute.” The Muskingum County commissioners followed up on her recommendation—four years later. In June 1848 they allocated the necessary $272 ($8,500 today) “to pay expenses of repairs to building for lunatics.” The result was a modest two-story

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wooden building, probably just for the women, inasmuch as the commissioners bound Peter Bruner out that month for the next year. This structure burned down on May 10, 1855.13 Very likely also under the effect of Dix’s visit, the officials had already taken a much more significant step. In May 1853 a high-caliber delegation—two commissioners, two of the infirmary directors, and then-superintendent Samuel Wiles— made an unprecedented trip to Columbus, to the Ohio Lunatic Asylum and the Franklin County Infirmary, to consult on the design of a building for their insane patients. Some credit for this undertaking appears to go to a second woman, Juliette Rathbone Downer, a wealthy Zanesville widow whose firstborn son, George, was chronically insane. He had been admitted to the Lunatic Asylum in Columbus in Juliette Rathbone Downer October 1845 at the age of twenty-nine, COURTESY OF THE ROBBINS HUNTER MUSEUM, GRANVILLE, OHIO the onset of his illness having come four years earlier, the cited cause being masturbation. Her other two sons, John and Edward, suffered from mood disorders that caused her additional anxiety.14 Even Dix might not have foreseen what Muskingum County was capable of. On June 30, 1853, Downer promised to donate $1,000 ($30,000 today) to the building of this insane hospital on the infirmary grounds, provided certain conditions were met. Workmen were hired and construction began. What resulted was “a large and elegant” building (at left below), as a local paper characterized it, 136 feet by 36 feet, with a 10-foot by 50-foot projection along the front to contain “stairs and passages.” Three stories high, it was crenellated along the top and had a “substantial” tin roof. There were thirty-six separate rooms for the patients, “large and well-ventilated halls,” and “dining apartments conveniently arranged,” offering an intimacy for meals that one large dining hall would not.15

Artist’s rendering of the Muskingum County Infirmary. Zanesville Times Recorder, March 11, 1973.

28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW

Notice of completion of the new infirmary. Zanesville Times Recorder, September 8, 1855.

On September 8, 1855, the infirmary directors announced in the City Times that the hospital was in operation and would welcome the public to visit on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Many meanings were embodied in this very popular (but to us, intrusive) nineteenth-century custom of touring asylums and prisons. According to historian Janet Miron, such a visit would legitimize the hospital’s existence. It would offer reassurance that social problems were being dealt with and foster community feeling and local pride. Visiting would “galvanize popular support” and enhance “the middle class’s sense of civic responsibility.” Within a year, the physician there, Dr. James Helmick, was reporting that “a number of our neighboring counties have taken steps to erect similar buildings for the insane. This speaks well for the benevolence of the age.”16 The new hospital was the gem of the infirmary. The premises were being kept as “neat and clean as a lady’s parlor.” And with the single rooms, Helmick could give the patients individualized care, the result being that even “turbulent and dangerous” ones were becoming “peaceable and valuable field hands.” He encouraged them, saying, for instance, “This is your own home, and you are daily receiving the fruits of your labor. When our potatoes and corn grow, we shall have plenty; if we do not work we will have nothing to eat.” On December 7, 1855 the commissioners asked the auditor to let Downer know of their “compliance with the stipulations upon which she agreed to pay” the promised sum. So Dorothea Dix was not the only woman who fought to obtain decent care for Muskingum County’s insane, though no doubt her chastening remained stamped on everyone’s memory.17 The sad fact is, though, that this superb facility managed to serve its insane residents optimally for only four years. On May 19, 1859 the main infirmary building burned down, and roughly a hundred of its inmates streamed into the hospital to take refuge. By the time of the 1860 census, 128 paupers were living there, 36 of them insane and 14 “idiotic.”18

WINTER 2018 29 “THE MOST APPALLING FORMS OF DEGRADATION”

Dix’s visit to Columbus underscored her demand for decent care of the insane. When she arrived, on August 20, 1844, she made the acquaintance of Dr. William M. Awl, superintendent of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum; they had known of each other by reputation. He invited her to lodge at the asylum with his family, and they began a productive friendship. The next morning, she visited the Ohio State Penitentiary and then the insane asylum. The following day, the twenty-second, Awl took her to the poorhouse and the asylums for the blind and for the deaf and dumb, after which, as was her customary practice, she wrote up her visits for the local papers, again addressing her remarks to the county’s citizens. Both the Whig newspaper, the Weekly Ohio State Journal, and the Democratic paper, the Weekly Ohio Statesman, published her communique. “I regret I cannot say that the Alms- House at Columbus compares well with many others,” she wrote.19 Dix’s sharpest words about this poorhouse were aimed at the keeper, Edward Hedden, although she didn’t address him by name. He had been appointed in October 1837, at the age of twenty-four. She criticized by lecturing the directors on the need to appoint “persons of kind dispositions, industrious, neat, and tem- perate habits, and of tact and capacity to exercise control with firmness, yet without severity, and to maintain a watchful care which shall never admit abuses or neglects.” She made clear that their practice of preannouncing visits did not effectively monitor him. Hedden, it turns out, also served as deputy sheriff of Franklin County, a demanding job in its own right. By Ohio law the deputy sheriff was authorized to perform all of the sheriff’s duties; this included keeping the peace, pursuing criminals, attending court sessions, tending prisoners, and cleaning the jail. Obviously, then, he paid minimal attention to the poorhouse, and at least in Dix’s account, was unkind, unkempt, and a drinker, to boot.20 As for the cells, she noted that they were not neatly kept, but she found them better built and larger than was typical for insane patients. She described them as six feet by nine, each containing a bed, with a large, heavily grated window and a barred door. But she found the location of those rooms “most unfortunately chosen, opening as they do upon an apartment where large fires are kept for carrying forward the household work,” with the result that the poor occupants had to constantly endure excessive heat. She was pleased that the cells seemed freshly whitewashed, but “the air was impure from want of that special daily care requi- site for patients rendered helpless from the double infirmity of bodily disease and mental disability.” In sum, it was a discouraging scene. The only reason for optimism, Dix believed, was that because of the new asylum wings, the “cells for the insane, it is hoped, will be needed but a short time longer.”21 Dix extolled the Columbus asylum for adding these wings and thereby “extending its benefits by providing for the large class of incurables.” And lest anybody dispute the need for the wings, she wrote, “they ought to be informed… that the most appalling forms of suffering and degradation at this hour exist in

30 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW this state, calling for speediest remedy and relief. Men and women in states of complete nudity, subject to the lowest forms of degrading exposure, irritated and aggravated by extremes of neglect, these all are found even now in Ohio.” Clearly she was still reeling from her visit to the Zanesville poorhouse. In conclusion, she said indignantly that if Ohio’s poorhouse superintendents failed to send their insane residents to the newly enlarged asylum when it was finished, then it would be time to disclose the names of the guilty persons. It was obvious she was referring, among others, to Hedden and Franklin County’s three poorhouse directors. In a letter to her friend George Emerson shortly after this visit, Dix admitted, “It is a difficult and delicate task to work out reformsindirectly ; to announce abuses in such a way as to preserve the self-esteem of those in fault and error from being changed into wrath and bitterness. So I ponder and devise.”22 On the fundamental issue of whether to focus universally on asylums’ curative potential or, instead, to settle for a merely custodial role for some of them, Dix more than once came down on the side of custodianship, driving a wedge between herself and the leading asylum superintendents. Two months after her visit to Columbus, Awl and twelve other superintendents founded the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, which for the next five years officially ignored Dix’s sweeping efforts, partly over this very issue. Optimists in these early years, the doctors strived to cure their patients, whereas she had proposed in her January 1844 memorial in New York “that four or six asylums in convenient sections of the state [be] established upon a cheaper plan which…will not need the many extra provisions absolutely essential to a curative institution.”23 In Homes for the Mad, historian Ellen Dwyer describes the ultimately bleak provision of care for the indigent insane in New York. When Dix arrived in 1843, New York had just opened its first asylum, at Utica, to cure the acutely mentally ill. She toured many of the county poorhouses, which the state was relying on to care for chronically insane paupers, and she concluded that these facilities were inappropriate for such a purpose. She cited their lack of a professional medical staff or treatment program, failure to segregate the female and male patients, and unsanitary conditions. She scorned their lack of “discipline, order, and method.” Indeed, Dwyer calls her “perhaps the most vehe- ment opponent” of confining chronic cases in poorhouses. When Dix arrived, she began a campaign for a second New York state hospital to accommodate the mentally ill in the poorhouses, and in 1869, when it finally opened, the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane proved, not surprisingly, to be the epitome of the custodial asylum, virtually all of whose residents were discharged only upon their deaths.24 Dwyer describes how single-mindedly New York reformers discredited the good care that some county poorhouses provided to the insane poor, despite their lack of resident physicians. She says only Wisconsin ever studied the option of

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arranging county-level management of the insane under state supervision. New York’s asylum officials and county poorhouse superintendents never conversed about their common challenges—treating violent patients kindly, keeping inmates clean and occupied, and so on. Instead, from the 1840s to the 1890s it and other states plowed forward to provide exclusively state-level custodial care, against the undertow of decent county poorhouse managers’ wishes. In Ohio, as of June 1, 1903, no insane person could be received or kept at any county infirmary.25 Although the superintendents’ association spurned Dix for a period, individual superintendents, including Awl, did maintain contact with her. Her influence on Awl could not have been more palpable than in his 1844 annual report, which he submitted on November 15. He, like the other superintendents, was beginning to face the discouraging reality that a certain percentage of incurable patients would have to be discharged from his asylum to make way for new and, likely, more curable cases. Those who were “absolutely passive and subject to easy control” could be accommodated in county poorhouses, he said, but many counties had none, or else had a building “so small and ill arranged” as to be unfit for the insane. Although some facilities were “blessings and crowns of glory to the land,” he said, philan- thropists were needed who would fund “suitable apartments for the incurable and helpless insane” in every county. For counties that already had a poorhouse he suggested adding a two-story wing where the deranged could occupy the second floor and avoid the taunts of “unthinking men and mischievous boys.”26 In his earliest surviving letter to Dix, from the spring of 1845, Awl praised her work enthusiastically, congratulating her on her recent victory in New Jersey (“one good loud Clap! And a Huzza for the triumph.…Success to Christian philan- thropy—Glory to science and Honor to my good friend Miss Dix”). He cautioned her, however, about the dim prospects in his native Pennsylvania, with its debt and financial depression. “A big unfinished house would look bad without affording any relief and it would be better not to begin unless they can go through.” In Indiana, he said, she “could now plant and reap without fail. They only want a memorial to set them agoing.” He implicitly supported her efforts in Zanesville, mentioning that he had her poorhouse memorandum in hand and planned to reinforce her influence in that town by sending some of her memorials to their athenaeum.27 Unlike Zanesville, Columbus responded promptly to Dorothea Dix’s August 1844 lambasting. That very autumn, the poorhouse directors replaced Hedden with Dr. C. F. Schenck, who became both keeper and physician of the institution. Schenck, thirty-six, had arrived from Germany some ten years earlier and was an ambitious man with social reform on his mind, having been appointed a member of the Whig State Central Committee in January. He was also an overseer of the poor. In 1849, when a so-called city hospital was erected on the county poorhouse grounds for transient victims of contagious diseases, Schenck was charged with the responsibility for it as well.28

32 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW

The best measure of Schenck’s accomplishments at the Franklin County poorhouse is a testimonial that twenty of Columbus’s most prominent citizens, from the mayor and county commissioners to judges and sheriffs, wrote on his behalf in November 1850 when he was seeking another job. “Upon taking charge of the county institution,” they wrote, “the Doctor found it, what unfortunately most of our county poorhouses are,—a poor-house in every sense of that expression—poor in its accommodations—poor in its management—poor in its comforts for the sick & infirm.” What Schenck accomplished, they said, was to create “a model institution— affording the necessaries & comforts of life to its poor inmates,—including medical treatment and attendance to the sick & insane.” They added that he had served during two epidemics, of cholera and smallpox, and that he had cared for the inmates in a way that inspired everyone with confidence that he had done everything possible to relieve the suffering patients. It is very likely he would not have obtained his post in the first place had Dorothea Dix not come to visit and uttered her critical remarks.29 William T. Martin, a longtime director of the poorhouse who wrote a history of Franklin County in 1858, commented that Schenck’s administration “was rather of a showy character, and generally well received by the public, but much complained of by the inmates.” It is likely that he followed the widespread practice of regularly inviting the public to visit the institution.30 Dix believed that a weakness of poorhouses was that their directors were at the mercy of politicians. So it was in the autumn of 1849, when Schenck faced ouster as the Democrats came to power. “We learn,” the Democratic Statesman claimed, “that an investigation into the affairs of the Poor House has shown an expenditure of THOUSANDS” with no corresponding improvement in the care of the poor. The Whigs insisted Schenck was “a gentleman at once…zealous and…well qualified for the place,” a person of “skill and assiduity.” Schenck settled things by commenting that the job was “an office of neither honor nor emoluments, but full of toil and dis- gusting labor among diseases of all kinds.” Dix visited his poorhouse again on April 10, 1850, a month and a half before he stepped down, and wrote a glowing letter on his behalf when he applied to become the first superintendent of the new Hamilton County poorhouse in Cincinnati. In a letter to a member of the search committee who supported his candidacy, Schenck referred to Dix as a “big gun.” Yet even with her letter and the Columbus officials’ testimonial, he did not get the job.31 Thomas Brown says that after the first year of her travels, 1843–44, Dix wrote little in her letters about poorhouses. However, she paid several more visits to the Columbus one between 1844 and the start of the Civil War, at which time her focus turned away from the insane to supervising Federal nurses. She spent the months of September and October 1846 at the Ohio Lunatic Asylum under Awl’s care when she fell ill while on a stop to visit Columbus’s institutions. And her other known visits were on August 23, 1858, and July 21, 1860. There may well have been more, given her constant travel and her abiding interest in that facility.32

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On her 1858 visit, Dix was very displeased by all that she witnessed, the Gazette reported on August 27. The superintendent and physician was forty-eight-year- old Dr. Lewis J. Moeller, who had been hired in March 1857. “She found the old and dilapidated buildings crowded to their utmost capacity. Lunatics in all the various grades of insanity huddled together in the narrow and confined halls.” At this time there were eighty-five inmates, thirty of whom were mentally ill. Two of the women were confined in an outbuilding, kept by male attendants, a situation she insisted be changed immediately. During her 1860 visit, she referred again to this 1858 spectacle: “I found two women insane and irresponsible in the old building in a state of complete nudity, their cells containing a heap of straw only.”33 In 1858, the county commissioners had decided against building a new poorhouse in favor of adding on to the existing one. Dix weighed in, not agreeing with the decision and recommending that the current facility and its farm be sold off, likely yielding some $20,000 ($560,000 today), enough to build an institution that the county could be proud of. Her opinion counted for naught, though, for the commissioners went ahead with “the cheapest plan,” a two-story brick addition, intending, they claimed, to raze the old building in a few years.34 By far the most dramatic of Dorothea Dix’s visits to the Franklin County infirmary (as poorhouses were called beginning in 1850) came in July 1860. On August 3 the Gazette published a disturbing letter from her, reporting on what she had found. “Candidly,” she wrote, “I have no faith in the moral and humane care of the patients,…Mr. Moeller is an intemperate man, and long known to be so; his attendant…is also intemperate. These persons share the care of the women according to the declarations of both to me.…The Chief Superintendent seems to me very illy qualified by temper and habits to direct the institution.”35 As always, Dix was most concerned about the care of the insane women. The matron, an inexperienced woman only five weeks on the job, told her she was the only woman attendant, and not on duty at night. Moeller told Dix “that violent patients could not be managed by a woman, [and] that he or some other managed the excited women.” Yet, to the contrary, he had claimed that no man was now taking care of them. He also insolently told Dix that they could not afford to employ enough women, “but if I would foot the bills I could have what I wanted.” She went on to describe the difficulty she had had gaining access to the quarters in which the insane were housed, access she insisted she had a right to, given the dreadful condition in which she had found the insane women each year she had come. She reminded Moeller of the promises he and others had made, that “if I would not make known to the public the abuses existing in that place they should be remedied altogether.” Moeller, his sword drawn, wasted no time getting off a defense to appear in the opposition Statesman. He called “Miss Dix this traveling philanthropist or lunatic—and surely soon to become a permanent one.” He relegated her “to the

34 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW level of one who can only rank with an inmate of a b[rothe]l—who, with all the impudence and impertinence of such a one, calls and demands admittance at an unreasonable hour as a privileged character, which, considering the notorious visitor, was not refused,” even though it was during bathing hours. It is worth pondering that Dix may well have become more peremptory as the years went on, for just months later, at the start of the Civil War, associates called her “arbi- trary and impudent” and a biographer noted her “belligerent attitude” and “con- frontational style.” The diarist George Templeton Strong, who worked with her on the Sanitary Commission, jocularly diagnosed “a mild case of monomania” and said “no one can cooperate with her, for she belongs to the class of comets.”36 Moeller continued indignantly in the Statesman that it was “awful in her sight that male attendants should be called to confine female lunatics or put them under subjection. On she would press to see men in their nakedness and women turned loose in their halls to have their rooms renovated.” He mocked her: “‘La me, do you keep men and poor creatures here in nakedness?’—No, madam; they keep themselves so. We can clothe them three times a day and they will unclothe themselves as often. I advised her that it was not a place for a lady of modesty and virtue to enter, but having no favorable opinion of her as such, she could take the consequences of my warnings.”37 Moeller kept it up in a letter to the Gazette: “The so-called lady speaks of my habits, and hopes to crush me,” but she had no need to, he said, because he was already planning to retire. “The conduct of Madam Dix was not that of a lady at either of her visits to the Infirmary.…I did at first attribute her manner to her eccentric character, but under her stab at my reputation and willful misstate- ments of facts,…I am constrained to attribute them to other causes.”38 Side by side with the Dix versus Moeller story, the editor of the Gazette, John Greiner, ran an exposé of massive fraud being committed by the superintendent and two of the poorhouse directors. Moeller charged enough liquor on the infirmary account “to stock a common grocery.” He and three family members had drawn $1,650 ($42,850 today) in salaries the previous year, with free fuel, rent, and food provided to them. Director James Legg, a grocer, bartered $1,200 worth of his soap and candles for fuel for the building and pocketed the money. As Greiner wrote, it was “enough soap to cleanse the institution, enough candles to light us into the mysteries of why men are so anxious to become ‘caretakers of the poor.’” He blamed Legg and William Aston, the other culpable director, for ignoring that Moeller “spends a great part of the day and night in the lowest drinking dens in the city” and “is often so fuddled with drink that he is incapable of taking care of himself properly,” not to mention the inmates. The men knew Dix was correct; Moeller let male attendants care for the mentally ill women. Yet still they let him keep the job.39 Once again the Franklin County commissioners heeded Dix’s criticism, especially when paired with the financial exposé. A month and a half after her visit,

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Moeller was out and Samuel McElvain and Dr. Starling Loving were in his place. At their meeting on October 24, the directors appointed a Miss White as matron, with a wage of $3 per week (worth $86 today) and set the wage of an assistant matron at $2 a week. They inspected the building and found it neglected, the furnace out of order and the inmates ill-clad. All was conscientiously remedied by November 7.40 However, the impact of Dix’s visit and exposé did not endure. In March 1869, the editors of the Ohio State Journal reported that they found the infirmary in “as bad a state of affairs as existed three years ago.” This time, there were “sixty insane inmates in the south wing—men on the first floor and women on the second— and but one stairway by which these can reach the open air.” They said that “six men, raving maniacs” were confined “in cells that resembled wooden cages. These men were howling or roaring, and reveling amidst such filth as would disgrace a hog pen.…With every sense offended we left the place to learn that this was the usual state of affairs, wash and bathe and scrub as much as would the attendants.” The editors urged the readers to vote the next month to build a new infirmary.41 A third Ohio poorhouse Dix visited was in Greene County. The county opened it in March 1829, with William Ellis, “a benevolent Quaker,” as resident superintendent. On April 7 Harriet Whitney, aged twenty-three and insane, was sent to live there, and a month later Ellis, finding her ungovernable or prone to wander away, decided to buy a chain to restrain her. Later that year thirty-five-year- old Jane Hare was also placed there, and a few months later Ellis bought a chain for her, too. Yet, the man was so tenderhearted that he bought a yard of gauze to keep the flies off Frederick Humbert, a sixty-eight-year-old resident who was near death. A Greene County history said of Ellis that his management was consider- ate and the inmates were well cared for. But when it came to the deranged residents of the home, all he knew to offer was oppressive confinement.42 Three decades later, Dorothea Dix stopped for a visit. TheXenia Torchlight reported that she “desired us to state to the directors of that institution and to the public” what she thought of the infirmary. She said that the main hall struck her as cleaner and more comfortable than most in Ohio, but “she regret- ted to be compelled to say that the rooms—or more properly stalls—in which the insane are confined are a disgrace to any civilized community.” Not only were they “disgraceful to those having charge of the pauper funds, but [they] reflect a stigma on the charitable character of the whole community of the county, who will permit the poor unfortunate insane to be confined in such places.” Once again, she believed the poorhouse belonged to the community at large, and it was to the community she directed her remarks. She apologized for her strong language, but “the truth compelled her to use” it. Two months later, the commissioners issued a blithe report praising the superintendent’s treatment and stating that the whole building “has the air of an orderly family

36 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW residence.” They crowed that Dix had complimented the place highly. But there was nary a word about the insane.43 When she stopped through Dayton in August 1858, Dix also visited the Montgomery County infirmary, along with the Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum and the county jail. The RepublicanWeekly Dayton Journal, which would have published any remarks she had written, instead was left to lament, “It would have been gratifying to many of our people had she prolonged her stay in our city, and so have afforded them an opportunity of testifying their respect for her, and their admiration of the ‘labor of love’ in which she is engaged.”44 In The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution, David Wagner notes that directors of poorhouses hewed to a policy of housing the insane in segregated quarters. In Greene County, for instance, one of the house rules said that no visiting was permitted “in the crazy department.” (It appears that the rule was sometimes broken: poorhouse records show that Mary Whitney was born there on July 31, 1833, and Hiram Whitney, on November 16, 1837; presumably Harriet Whitney was their mother.) In another example, when Miami County replaced its primitive 1840 facility in 1854, it had no funds available to put up an addition for the insane, so the commissioners housed them in four rooms in the attic. In 1856, the year after Delaware County opened its infirmary, it built “a small, pen-like place” in the rear to house the insane, with heavy iron bars on the windows and iron gratings on the doors. A tidy explanation for the segregation policy came from Dr. John Butler, superintendent of Connecticut’s Hartford Retreat and a friend of Dix’s: a lunatic housed in a poorhouse becomes “the sport, the victim, or the drudge of the other paupers,” and women suffer sexual assault.45 Perhaps predictably, the assessment of the merits of poorhouses depended on the vantage point. Wagner says that poorhouse officials opposed discharging the insane to state asylums because they would be far away from their relatives, maybe never to see them again. David Rothman makes the contrary point—that asylum superintendents were loath to discharge a violent inmate to a poorhouse or jail. “There,” they knew, “he would be chained or handcuffed or locked in a dungeon-like cell.” The fact is, the poorhouses that dotted Ohio were untouched by the profound social reform of the 1830s and ’40s that gave rise to enlightened insane asylums. They were the domain of county-level officials who lacked ready exposure to new ideas and had limited funds. Any compassionate individual outside the asylums who looked out for the welfare of the mentally ill—such as a Dorothea Dix—was a singular human being.46 On the basis of the evidence from Ohio, then, it appears that from 1844 to 1860 Dorothea Dix accepted poorhouses as permanent homes for the chronically insane, and she strived to see to it that the inmates were provided with humane living conditions. Only once did she indicate otherwise: in 1844 when she was under the impression that the new wings of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum would

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soon accommodate the Franklin County poorhouse insane. But her repeat visits to Columbus destroyed that hope, and she never suggested it again. In 1867 Ohio followed the lead of many other states and formed a Board of State Charities, a five-man panel under the governor’s aegis. As the first agency to oversee not only the state asylums but also the county infirmaries and jails, the board gained a broadened perspective on the numbers and whereabouts of the chronic insane. In 1870 it learned that, with only seventy of the eighty-eight counties reporting, 931 insane paupers were being kept in infirmaries, the greatest numbers in Cuyahoga (82), Muskingum (61), and Franklin (50) Counties. A total of 245 insane inmates were confined in the jails (83 in Hamilton County alone). While the board concluded that these inmates would be better and more economi- cally cared for in asylums, the superintendents insisted that incurables should not be isolated in separate, custodial facilities. Inevitably, then, the existing state asylums would have to grow. In 1866 the superintendents’ association had—albeit reluc- tantly and after many members had left for home—moved to raise the ideal maxi- mum size of institutions from 250 to 600. And when the Ohio General Assembly voted in April 1870 to allow chronically insane persons to be retained at the state asylums on the same terms as curable cases, this law marked Ohio’s turn toward the mammoth insane asylum. The new hospital in Athens, designed for 572 patients when it opened in 1874, held an average of 646 by 1876. When it opened in 1877 after an 1868 fire, the Columbus Hospital for the Insane received 815 patients; by 1900 the number was 1,350. And Toledo opened an asylum in 1888, with 734 patients its first year, 1,766 patients by 1905, and 3,075 by 1955.47 In her last years, Dix knew full well the dismal depths to which Ohio’s care of insane paupers had sunk. Once-beneficial asylums were now behemoths flooded with patients, and infirmaries never did offer rehabilitation; their sole aims were to confine the inmates and sustain them cheaply. Despite her well-intentioned efforts in Muskingum, Franklin, and Greene Counties and possibly others that went unrecorded, the mass of Ohio’s indigent insane remained hopelessly marooned. In her day, however, Dix minced no words in urging that poorhouses provide humane care for Ohio’s insane, a contribution that bears acknowledg- ment in the historical record.

38 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW

1 Dorothea Dix to N. Ewing, Aug. 18, 1844, Dorothea 7 Dix, “Memorial to…New York,” 51; Muskingum County Lynde Dix Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard Commissioners’ Journal, July 15, 1841; “Report of the University, Cambridge, MA [hereafter HLHU]. The Directors of the Poor House, to the Commissioners of merciless description followed by the call for remedy was Muskingum County,” Zanesville Ohio Republican, July 8, a genre that originated in Britain and was continued in 1843; Robert Weller, “William Galbraith,” Find a Grave, this country by Louis Dwight, Horace Mann and Samuel Nov. 11, 2004, https://www.findagrave.com/memo- Gridley Howe (David Gollaher, Voice for the Mad: The rial/9793552/william-galbraith; Muskingum County Life of Dorothea Dix [New York: Free Press, 1995], Commissioners’ Journal, Aug. 26, 1824, and annually 134–39). thereafter until Mar. 2, 1841.

2 Dorothea Dix, “Memorial to the Legislature of 8 Muskingum County Commissioners’ Journal, June 16, Massachusetts,” and Dorothea Dix, “Memorial to the 1835, and annually thereafter until Mar. 2, 1841. Honorable the Legislature of the State of New York,” in On Behalf of the Insane Poor: Selected Reports (Honolulu: 9 Muskingum County Commissioners’ Journal, Jan. 8, University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 4, 3; Dorothea Feb. 8, May 2, 1827, Dec. 6, 1826, Mar. 5, 1827; Alan Dix, “A Visit to the Public Institutions,” Weekly Ohio Eliasen, Historical Currency Conversions, https://futureboy. State Journal (Columbus, OH), Aug. 27, 1844; Weekly us/fsp/dollar.fsp, accessed October 29, 2018. Ohio Statesman (Columbus, OH), Aug. 28, 1844. The Zanesville two most up-to-date biographies of Dorothea Dix are 10 E.H.C., “The Early History of Zanesville,” Courier Thomas J. Brown, Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer , Nov. 17, 1877; Muskingum County (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) and Commissioners’ Journal, May 2, July 5, 1827, Jan. 1, Gollaher’s Voice for the Mad. Dix’s memorials and other 1828; Seventh U.S. Census, 1850, Population Schedule documents to the legislatures of Massachusetts, New (Muskingum County, OH), National Archives and York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Records Administration, Washington, D.C. North Carolina, Mississippi, and Maryland and to the 11 Dix, “To the Citizens of Muskingum County.” U.S. Congress are reproduced in On Behalf of the Insane Poor. David L. Lightner, Asylum, Prison, and Poorhouse: 12 Ibid. The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999) 13 Ibid.; Muskingum County Commissioners’ Journal, contains eight newspaper articles by Dix about the June 27, June 5, 1848; City Times (Zanesville, OH), state’s poorhouses and jails. Ellen Dwyer, Homes for the May 12, 1855. Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987) is the 14 “The Infirmary,” Zanesville Gazette, June 1, 1853; best source about the relationship among curative and Columbus State Hospital Admission Book, Nov. 1838– custodial asylums and poorhouses. Three volumes that Aug. 1847, 207, and J. R. Downer, Personal Journal, pertain to poorhouses, if only marginally to the insane, VOL 253, both in OHC. are Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (1986; rep., New 15 City Times, Nov. 3, 1855; Muskingum County York: Basic Books, 1996); David Wagner, The Poorhouse: Commissioners’ Journal, June 30, 1853. The projection America’s Forgotten Institution (Lanham, MD: Rowman along the front resembles that at the U.S. Hospital for & Littlefield, 2005), and David WagnerThe Almshouse Insane, Lodge for Colored Patients as pictured in Carla Experience: Collected Reports (New York: Arno, 1971). Yanni’s The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 3 Brown, Dorothea Dix, 105–6; Dorothea Dix to George B. Press, 2007), 70. Emerson, Sept. 2, 1844, Dorothea L. Dix MSS, Boston Public Library [hereafter BPL]. 16 Janet Miron, Prisons, Asylums, and the Public: Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University 4 Ibid. of Toronto Press, 2011), 37, 130, 34, 66, 78, 57; City Times, Dec. 13, 1856, Sept. 8, 1855. 5 Dorothea Dix, “To the Citizens of Muskingum County,” Aug. 18, 1844, Dix Papers, HLHU. 17 “County Asylum for the Insane,” City Times, Mar. 24, 1855; James Helmick, “Annual Report to the Board 6 Muskingum County Commissioners’ Journal, of Directors of the Muskingum County Infirmary,” Aug. 26, 1823, Jan. 27, 1821, Mar. 4, 1822, Mar. City Times, Dec. 12, 1857; Muskingum County 25, 1823, GR 3603, Ohio History Connection, Commissioners’ Journal, Dec. 4, 1855. Columbus [hereafter OHC].

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18 Seventh U.S. Census (Muskingum Co., OH); City Times, 24 Dwyer, Homes for the Mad, 39, 38, 42, 39–40, 154–55. May 28, 1859. 25 Ibid., 189, 49, 50; Clement Bates, “Insane or Epileptic 19 Dix, “Visit to the Public Institutions,” Weekly Ohio State Excluded from Infirmaries,” The Annotated Revised Journal, Aug. 27, 1844; Weekly Ohio Statesman, Aug. Statutes of the State of Ohio (Cincinnati: W. H. Anderson 28, 1844. According to Lightner, Asylum, Prison, and & Co., 1900), section 971-1, p. 518. Poorhouse, Dix submitted her eight articles about the state’s jails and poorhouses to both the Whig and the 26 Sixth Annual Report of the Directors and Superintendent Democratic newspapers in Illinois, but only the Whig of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum to the Forty-Third General paper published them. He says Dix had “little impact” on Assembly (Columbus: Samuel Medary, 1844), 31–32. the condition of poorhouses in Illinois except in Morgan County, which erected a building for the insane after her 27 William M. Awl to Dorothea Dix, Apr. 4, 1845, Dix visit (67, 105). Papers, HLHU. History of Franklin County 20 Dix, “Visit to the Public Institutions”; Alfred E. Lee, 28 William T. Martin, History of the City of Columbus, Capital of Ohio, 2 vols. (Columbus: Follett, Foster & Co., 1858), 92; Seventh History of (New York: Munsell & Co., 1892), 1:183; “An act defin- U.S. Census (Franklin County, OH); Lee, the City of Columbus, Columbus Business ing the duties of sheriffs and coroners, in certain cases,” 1:279, 2:397; Acts of the State of Ohio, First Session of the Third General Directory for 1843–4 (Columbus: J. E. Armstrong, 1843), History of Franklin County, Assembly (Chillicothe: N. Willis, 1805), 156–57; “An act 67; Martin, 93. for the appointment of certain officers therein named,” 29 “From A. F. Perry and others recommending Dr. Acts of a General Nature Enacted…at 22nd General Schenck as a suitable person to be appointed Supt Poor Assembly of the State of Ohio (Columbus: P. H. Olmsted, House Nov. 19, 1851,” box 47, A38.5.1, Heinrich 1824), 22:48. A. Rattermann Collection of German-American 21 Dix, “Visit to the Public Institutions.” A November Manuscripts, Illinois History and Lincoln Collection, 1845 report to the Franklin County Court of Common University of Illinois Library, Urbana, IL [hereafter IHC]. Pleas by the county grand jury stated, “There is at pres- 30 Martin, History of Franklin County, 92. ent no provision whatever for insane persons. There are, it is true, several damp cells in the wash house,” the 31 Daily Ohio Statesman, Apr. 10, 1850; Ohio State Journal, poorhouse’s laundry outbuilding, “which were originally Apr. 8, 12, 1850; C. F. Schenck to Henry Roedter, Jan. intended for, and formally appropriated to this purpose.” 23, 1851, box 47, A38.1.3, Rattermann Collection, IHC; But a year after Dix’s visit, they were no longer in use. Dwyer, Homes for the Mad, 39. The report says, “A more miserable contrivance could hardly, in the opinion of the Jury, be conceived. The cell 32 Brown, Dorothea Dix, 127, 141; Columbus Gazette, Aug. doors front towards the fires and steaming kettles of the 27, 1858, Aug. 3, 1860. In October 1845, Dix visited wash house.” This is as Dix had found it (“The County the insane department of Cincinnati’s Commercial Poor House,” Weekly Ohio State Journal, Nov. 19, 1845). Hospital and Lunatic Asylum. The editor of the TriWeekly Cincinnati Gazette wrote on November 11, 1845: “What 22 Dix, “Visit to the Public Institutions”; Dorothea Dix to she saw there—or what she will say about what she saw— George B. Emerson, Oct. 16, 1844, Dorothea L. Dix we know not. But this we are sure of, that her observing MSS, BPL. eye detected much to condemn.” She also visited the jail and “supplied the prisoners with books and slates through 23 Dix, “Memorial to…New York,” 56; Constance M. the generous aid of one of our citizens, and they blessed McGovern, Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the her for it.” American Psychiatric Profession (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1985), 1, 10. Dix took the same 33 Columbus Gazette, Aug. 27, 1858, Aug. 3, 1860; Seventh approach in Connecticut, according to Lawrence B. U.S. Census (Franklin County, OH); Martin, History of Goodheart, “From Cure to Custodianship of the Insane Franklin County, 92. Poor in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65 (Jan. 2010), 34 Columbus Gazette, Sept. 10, Aug. 27, 1858. 107, 108, 110, 121. The Hartford Retreat had been treating paying patients since 1824, but indigent cases 35 Columbus Gazette, Aug. 3, 1860. were flooding the state. In this situation Dix endorsed the building of the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, 36 Ohio Statesman, Aug. 7, 1860; Brown, Dorothea Dix, in Middletown; by 1874, 90 percent of its patients were 293, 294, 295. deemed incurable. 37 Ohio Statesman, Aug. 7, 1860.

40 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANN CLYMER BIGELOW

38 Columbus Gazette, Aug. 10, 1860. 46 David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. ed. (New 39 Columbus Gazette, Aug. 3, Aug. 10, 1860. Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 150–51; Wagner, Poorhouse, 53. 40 Records of the Business of the Board of Directors of the Franklin County Infirmary, 1860–72, Oct. 24, 31, Nov. 47 “An act in relation to state charitable and correctional 7, 1860: BV16,438, OHC. institutions,” and “An act to provide for extending the protection and benefits of the lunatic asylums of the Ohio State Journal 41 , Mar. 13, 1869. state to the chronic insane,” in General and Local Laws and Joint Resolutions Passed by the Fifty-seventh General 42 R. S. Dills, History of Greene County (Dayton: Odell & Assembly of Ohio (Columbus: L. D. Myers & Bro., Mayer, 1881), 305; Greene County Poor House Day 1867), 64:257–58, General and Local Laws and Joint Book, 1829, GR 7941, OHC. Resolutions Passed by the Fifty-seventh General Assembly 43 “Miss Dix,” Xenia Torchlight, Aug. 18, 1858; “The of Ohio (Columbus: L. D. Myers & Bro., 1879), 67:47; County Infirmary,”Xenia Torchlight, Oct. 13, 1858. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of State Charities to the Governor of the State of Ohio for the Year 1870 (Columbus: 44 Weekly Dayton Journal, Aug. 17, 1858. Nevins & Myers, 1871), 109–14; “Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Association of Medical Superintendents 45 Rules of the Infirmary of Greene County, Greene County of American Asylums for the Insane,” American Journal of Poor House, GR 7941, OHC; History of Delaware Insanity 23 (July 1866), 248–50; Katherine Ziff,Asylum County and Ohio (Chicago: O. L. Baskin & Co., 1880), on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape (Athens: Ohio 218; Lawrence B. Goodheart, Mad Yankees: The Hartford University Press, 2012), 28; George W. Paulson and Retreat for the Insane and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry Marion E. Sherman, Hilltop: A Hospital and a Sanctuary (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), for Healing, Its Past and Its Future (Fremont, OH: 128; Wagner, Poorhouse, 53; Births, Greene County Poor Lesher Printers, 2008), 66; “The Toledo State Hospital,” House, GR 7941, OHC; History of Miami County, Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, (Chicago: W. H. Beers & Co., 1880), 267. Local History Collections, LH-422.

WINTER 2018 41 Planning the Postwar City Wilson W. Wyatt and the Louisville Area Development Association 1943–1950

Carl E. Kramer

orld War II had a powerful transformative impact on American cities. Between 1939 and 1945, thousands of manufacturers retooled to aid the war effort. The federal government built new andW expanded existing military bases and erected defense plants to manufacture weapons and other war matériel. Billions of dollars in capital moved from the industrial Northeast and Midwest to Sunbelt cities of the Pacific, Gulf, and South Atlantic coasts. Millions of Americans relocated to cities across the country in search of new jobs, and urban communities grappled with housing shortages, inadequate infrastructure, racial conflict, and many other issues.1 Despite such problems, many urban leaders saw the changes brought on by the war as an opportunity to reshape their cities for the better after the conflict. While some cities turned to the power of municipal government to effect change, other postwar urban planning strategies relied heavily on the contribution of business interests. In New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, and several other large cities, municipal governments instigated and controlled planning, and municipal planning commissions churned out long lists of public works projects designed to create jobs for return- ing veterans and revitalize older parts of the city. In other cities, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cleveland, influential business interests played a leadership role, usually in cooperation with local government officials and with the support of citizen advisory committees designed to mobilize broad community support. The most outstanding example of this model was Pittsburgh, where Republican Richard King Mellon, the powerful banker, industrialist, and donor, enlisted the support of other members of the city’s economic elite and united with Mayor David O. Lawrence, the dynamic Democratic Party boss, to create the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. Organized in 1943, the group spearheaded the campaign to revive the Steel City’s industrial economy, rebuild its urban core, and clean up its filthy air.2 Regardless of the model, the desire to rebuild infrastructure, improve housing stock, and strengthen central business districts characterized most postwar plans. Such was the case in Louisville, Kentucky. During the war, Louisville developed as a center for manufacture of ammunition, aircraft, military vehicles, synthetic rubber, naval vessels, and weapons while also experiencing massive population growth and social dislocation. What set Louisville’s experience apart from those

42 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER of other cities was a unique approach to the opportunities and issues the war generated. While other large urban areas tended to favor either the power of municipal government or business interests, Louisville’s postwar planning was more balanced and inclusive. The guiding force behind this successful merger of public and private initiative was Wilson W. Wyatt, a visionary mayor who won national acclaim for his efforts to restructure city government, improve finances, and develop an innovative planning process that united the government and business sectors and was therefore able to address long-standing problems Wilson W. Wyatt (1905-1996). while simultaneously building on the city’s FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY wartime economic development. Wyatt’s mechanism was the Louisville Area Development Association (LADA), which under his leadership would initiate more than a score of studies that reshaped the urban landscape between the mid-1940s and 1975, and ignited development patterns still apparent today. World War II set the stage and created the major opportunities and challenges that inspired Wyatt’s organization of LADA. However, the physical and psycho- logical consequences of two powerful events in 1937 heightened his motivation. In January, the city suffered its worst flood in history, causing millions of dollars in property damage, severely weakening much of the infrastructure, inflict- ing long-term emotional trauma, and highlighting a need to resolve long-standing drainage and flood-protection issues. The damage was still apparent in September when Harper’s Monthly Magazine published an article by George R. Leighton that described Louisville as “a museum piece among American cities…[an] old red brick jumble…the city of let-well-enough-alone.” Leighton’s characterization stung deeply, and it drew strong rejoinders from prominent citizens. But he identified real problems, notably the passage of much locally-owned business to outside ownership and a lack of downtown commercial construction. His observations gave up- and-coming civic leaders like Wyatt food for thought.3 Because of the Great Depression’s lingering effects, little could be done immediately to address the challenges highlighted by the flood and Leighton’s article. Everything changed in 1939, when the federal government and private industry launched defense measures in response to rising tensions in Europe and Asia. Several factors made Louisville an attractive defense production center. It was more than one thousand miles from a potential enemy invasion. The Ohio River

WINTER 2018 43 PLANNING THE POSTWAR CITY

provided an unlimited supply of water and served as a strategic channel for moving raw materials and other bulk products. The river and the city’s rail, air, and highway connections made it a vital transportation hub. The distilleries produced huge quantities of alcohol. Louisville Glass and Electric (LG&E) and Tennessee Valley Authority power plants, fueled mainly with coal, generated cheap electricity. Midwest grain fields and southern cotton fields provided raw materials for alcohol, clothing, food, and ammunition. The region also boasted inexpensive building sites and a large labor supply.4 The buildup started at existing military centers. Fort Knox, which included parts of adjoining Hardin, Bullitt, and Meade Counties, underwent a major expansion. The Army Air Corps took control of the city’s Bowman Field airport and built additional runways and buildings. Across the river in Indiana, employment at the Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot rose from six hundred in mid- 1939 to fifty-six hundred a few months later. Local industry joined the fight. Ford Motor Company built jeeps. Crescent Panel, Mengel Company, and Baldwin Piano supplied wood products for planes and gliders; Tube Turns and Henry Vogt Machine Company made cylinders for army tanks, air corps bombers, and navy cruisers. Reynolds Metals supplied aluminum for aircraft, and Hillerich & Bradsby turned gun stocks instead of Louisville Slugger baseball bats.5 The war’s most important economic consequence for the city was the creation of the synthetic rubber industry. A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, Japan consolidated control of Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, which produced 95 percent of the world’s natural rubber. More than a year before Pearl Harbor, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and B. F. Goodrich Company began building rubber plants and National Carbide Company constructed an acetylene plant on the southwestern edge of the city near the river. Creation of the synthetic rubber industry entered a new phase in 1942, when the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) bought the rubber and acetylene plants and contracted with du Pont and Goodrich to operate them. The DPC then built another rubber factory and a butadiene plant and engaged the National Synthetic Rubber Corporation and the Carbide and Carbon Chemical Corporation to operate them. “Rubbertown” represented an investment of nearly $92 million, produced a wartime peak of 150,000 tons of rubber annually, and employed about four thousand workers. When the war ended, Manufacturing electricity for Louisville’s Rubbertown. Louisville was the world’s largest Louisville Courier-Journal, October 29, 1944. 6 producer of synthetic rubber. COURTESY OF THE LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL/COURIER JOURNAL.COM

44 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

Southern Louisville attracted three other large war plants in addition to Rubbertown. In the late 1930s, the Louisville and Jefferson County Air Board began evaluating sites for a new commercial airport. A large tract that included a farm once owned by Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) president E. D. Standiford was ultimately selected. Construction of Standiford Field began in 1941, when the Army Corps of Engineers built a four thousand–foot runway. The War Department erected an aircraft plant near the airport and contracted with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation to build cargo planes. The Corps of Engineers built a second runway in 1943 and lengthened the first one to five thousand feet. Meanwhile, Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft opened an aircraft modification plant on the east side of the field. Situated a few miles east of Standiford Field was the Naval Ordnance Station; opened in October 1941 and operated by the Westinghouse Corporation, the plant eventually employed nearly four thousand in the manufacture of naval guns and torpedo tubes.7 Defense production was not limited to the south side of the river. Thousands of residents crossed the Ohio for jobs at the Indiana Ordnance Plant, located along the river between Jeffersonville and Charlestown, and at the Jeffersonville Boat & Machine Company (Jeffboat), located along the city’s riverfront. The ordnance plant consisted of a smokeless powder factory operated by du Pont and a bag-loading plant operated by a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Construction began in 1940, and by mid-1941 production was underway. By 1944, the Indiana Ordnance Plant employed nearly thirteen thousand workers. Jeffboat mushroomed from a small repair facility into a giant ship- yard that built submarine chasers, petroleum towboats, and LSTs (Landing Ship- Tanks) for the navy. At the height of production in 1944 Jeffboat employed about thirteen thousand workers.8 The economic impact of defense production on the Louisville region was profound. Because of these and other defense-related industries, by the war’s end Louisville was the nation’s eighteenth-largest defense supplier, a rank dispropor- tional to its ranking—twenty-fifth—in population in 1940. Likewise, 40 percent of local workers were engaged in war production by mid-1943.9 The city’s burgeoning economic development inevitably generated severe demands on the municipal government’s powers and resources to address the social dislocation it created. Initial responsibility for city government’s role in the defense buildup rested with the administration of Mayor Joseph D. Scholtz, a stalwart member of the city’s Democratic machine. A new era opened on December 1, 1941, when Wilson Watkins Wyatt Sr., a liberal thirty-six-year- old attorney, was sworn in as mayor. Six days later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, plunging the United States directly into the war. Born on November 21, 1905, Wyatt grew up in modest circumstances yet he made the most of opportunities afforded him. He graduated from Louisville Male High School, the city’s elite

WINTER 2018 45 PLANNING THE POSTWAR CITY

public secondary school, where he ranked first in his class. He attended the University of Louisville for a year, but economic circumstances forced him to drop out and take a position with the L&N Railroad. An aspir- ing lawyer, he enrolled at the Jefferson School of Law, a night school conducted by some of the city’s leading attorneys. He graduated in 1926, again as valedictorian, and was admitted to the bar in 1927. He left the L&N and joined the firm of Garnett & Van Winkle. In 1930 he was appointed secretary of the Kentucky Bar Association, and he served until 1934.10 Upon leaving the bar association, Wyatt accepted a partnership with one of Louisville’s leading law firms, which became Peter, Heyburn, Marshall, & Wyatt. In that capacity, he served as counsel for the influentialCourier-Journal, Louisville Joseph D. Scholtz (1890-1972). Times, and WHAS Radio, which were owned by FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY former mayor Robert Worth Bingham, the father of G. Barry Bingham, Wyatt’s best friend since his youth. During the next few years, Wyatt’s intellect and legal acumen earned him positions on several corporate boards, including the Bingham newspapers and one of the city’s largest banks.11 Meanwhile, Wyatt entered Democratic politics. The city’s Democratic organization was headed by a small group of skilled bosses, including Michael “Mickey” Brennan, Lennie Lee “Miss Lennie” McLaughlin, and John W. “Johnny” Crimmins, who built strong precinct organizations and worked with the Mose Green, East End, All Wool and Yard Wide, and other neighborhood party clubs to get out the vote. But they also recognized that “good government was good politics” and did not hesitate to support reformers, especially for mayor, when it served party interests. In 1933 the organization supported Neville Miller, dean of the University of Louisville School of Law, for mayor, and his victory ended more than fifteen years of Republican reign. Wyatt was a leader in Miller’s campaign and subsequently handled trial work for his administration. As Miller’s term neared its end in 1937, party leaders urged Wyatt to run for mayor. He was flattered, but with a young family, his legal business growing, and lacking significant savings, he believed he could not risk closing his practice for a $5,000 mayoral salary. So, he declined the offer. However, his skillful navigation of Louisville’s political shoals and his legal connections with the city’s Republican-dominated corporate sector would prove vital when he began to construct the Louisville Area Development Association.12

46 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

Mrs. Lennie McLaughlin surrounded by Louisville’s Democratic Mayors, from left, Wilson Wyatt, Joseph D. Scholtz, Neville Miller and Andrew Broaddus. Louisville Courier-Journal, April 16, 1963. COURTESY OF THE LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL/COURIER JOURNAL.COM

Wyatt’s professional and financial position improved substantially during the next four years. When war erupted, he became “increasingly troubled…remaining in private life while the world was in such turmoil.” Convinced that “democracy begins at home,” he announced he would run for mayor in 1941. During the months before the November election, Wyatt immersed himself in research published by the American Municipal Association (AMA) and the Public Administration Service in Chicago. In the process, he became familiar with policy initiatives in other cities. He consulted Governor Keen Johnson, a fellow Democrat, to line up support for measures requiring action by the Kentucky General Assembly. In October, Wyatt and his advisors hammered out a twelve-point program that emphasized reorgani- zation of city government, preparation for the local role in national defense, and postwar conversion planning. On election day, he won a landslide victory and became the city’s youngest mayor in the twentieth century.13 Once inaugurated, Wyatt moved quickly to implement his program. He appointed a new police chief, who had been carefully chosen from the department’s civil service ranks—a distinct departure from the tradition of appoint- ing a political loyalist. After the Pearl Harbor attack, he organized and chaired the Louisville Metropolitan Defense Council, whose members included officials from Jeffersonville and New Albany, Indiana. When the General Assembly con- vened in January 1942, Wyatt worked with Governor Johnson, local legislators, and the Kentucky Municipal League to pass several bills to improve street construction and repair, strengthen municipal finances, merge city and county health departments, and authorize use of voting machines. Two planning measures were particularly noteworthy. One addressed uncontrolled development on the

WINTER 2018 47 PLANNING THE POSTWAR CITY

urban fringe by empowering the Louisville Board of Aldermen and the Jefferson County Fiscal Court to create the Louisville and Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Commission, one of the nation’s first joint planning agencies. The other was the Urban Rehabilitation Act, which laid the foundation for the city’s redevelopment program, long before passage of the federal Housing Act of 1949. After the assembly adjourned, Wyatt moved to increase black representation on the police department, library board, and rationing boards and negotiated a no- strike agreement between local leaders of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.14 Wyatt’s visionary program and legislative successes attracted favorable attention in the national press and from other urban leaders. During 1942 and 1943, his program was featured in major newspapers as well as Life, Time, and Reader’s Digest, among other publications. In 1943 he was elected president of the American Society of Planning Officials (ASPO). Wyatt’s broader program for the city earned him the AMA presidency and the chairmanship of the Post- War Planning Committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In these roles, he became familiar with the postwar planning initiatives of other large cities.15 By mid-1943, it was apparent that the United States and its allies eventually would defeat the Axis powers, prompting American business and political leaders to focus greater attention on planning for a peacetime economy and upgrading facilities and services that had suffered from inadequate investment during fifteen years of depression and war. As incoming AMA president, Wyatt was “extremely anxious for Louisville’s approach to the problems and opportunities of the postwar period to be so effective that it might not only serve our own area well, but become an example that could be emulated and applied elsewhere.” He wanted his plan to embody four key attributes. First, it must produce action, rather than become “just another plan to gather dust in the archives.” Second, it should extend beyond Louisville’s municipal boundary and embrace the entire metropolitan region. Third, it should be nonpartisan and based outside the halls of government. Thus, most of the financing should come from private sources and the organization should involve a “wide cross-section of our interested citizens.” Finally, it should be “a unique fusion of the private and the public.” Wyatt’s considerations in select- ing the organization’s name and organizing its structure were hardly unique to Louisville. Through his involvement in organizations such as ASPO and AMA, he understood that leaders in other cities had similar concerns. The key was to erect an organization that reflected Louisville’s own economic and political culture.16 Wyatt’s brainchild was a not-for-profit corporation called the Louisville Area Development Association, the name crafted to embody the mayor’s four-point vision. Wyatt used “area” to emphasize that activity was not limited to the city. Like the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, he selected “development” to connote action, not simply planning. To assure nonpartisanship, he

48 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER reached out to Republican leaders, who were closely tied to the business sector, and leveraged his corporate connections to line up organizational and financial support from business and civic leaders. With the aid of George Buechel, a prominent merchant who chaired the Louisville and Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Commission, he raised $100,000 to finance LADA operations for the first two years. City and county governments contributed $25,000, channeled through the planning commission. An additional $65,000 came from several corpora- tions, including Citizens Union National Bank and Fidelity & Columbia Trust Company, the Bingham communications empire, LG&E, and the Louisville Water Company. Labor was a core part of Louisville’s Democratic coalition, and Wyatt secured $10,000 from the Louisville Central Labor Union. “Labor was pleased to be asked to be an integral part of the work (then unprecedented) and was convinced that it would be a direct beneficiary as well,” Wyatt recalled.17 Meanwhile, Wyatt used his connections to recruit a blue-ribbon group of business, labor, and political leaders to serve as incorporators and as a temporary board of directors. Politically, they included Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Serving along with Wyatt and Buechel were Jefferson County judge Mark Beauchamp; Menefee Wirgman, president of the Citizens Union National Bank and Fidelity & Columbia Trust Company; Mark Ethridge, publisher of the Bingham newspapers; T. Bert Wilson, president of LG&E; Edward H. Weyler, secretary of the Kentucky State Federation of Labor; Nathan Lord, general manager of WAVE Radio; Dr. Warwick Anderson, a partner in the Doe-Anderson advertising agency; and John G. Heyburn, Wyatt’s former law partner. Temporary officers were Wyatt, president; Buechel and Wilson, vice presidents; Wirgman, treasurer; and Dr. Kenneth P. Vinsel, secretary and executive director. The organization was incorporated in Frankfort on October 26, 1943.18 The selection of Vinsel as executive director would prove a key to LADA’s effectiveness. An Iowa native, Vinsel had graduated from Grinnell College in 1921 and received a master’s degree in political science at the University of Mississippi in 1927. In Mississippi, he had also taught political science and economics and served on the Oxford city commission. He continued to teach after graduating and was dean of the School of Commerce during 1928–29. In 1930 he moved to the University of Iowa, where he completed a doctorate in political science and economics in 1931. He then joined the University of 19 Louisville as assistant professor of political science. Kenneth P. Vinsel (1897-1978). Vinsel taught at Louisville for three years, concentrating Louisville Courier-Journal, March 22, 1961. in public administration and municipal government courses. COURTESY OF THE LOUISVILLE COURIER As the Depression deepened and Franklin D. Roosevelt JOURNAL/COURIER JOURNAL.COM

WINTER 2018 49 PLANNING THE POSTWAR CITY

succeeded President Herbert Hoover, in 1933 Mayor Neville Miller tapped Vinsel to direct the Municipal Relief Bureau. During the next two years, Vinsel won respect for efficient and sensitive administration of the city’s New Deal relief funds. He rejoined the university in 1935 and chaired the Department of History and Political Science until 1943. Meanwhile, he returned to the city in 1937 to oversee emergency housing and feeding for the Municipal Bureau of Social Services during the flood and recession. In 1942, after the United States entered the war, Vinsel left again for a post with the War Production Board in Washington, DC. He later headed the War Information Service Section of the Office of Civilian Defense and served as a consultant to the National Resources Planning Board. He was still in Washington in the fall of 1943 when Wyatt asked him to serve as LADA executive director. The call came “just in time,” Wyatt remembered. Vinsel “was all set to go on a long-term overseas governmental assignment. We practically pulled him off the plane. When we explained what we had in mind, he never did get back on the plane. He took a train to Louisville.”20 Wyatt unveiled LADA on October 26, 1943, at a Pendennis Club dinner for some three hundred carefully recruited civic leaders. In his address, the mayor asked for his listeners to assist in shaping the community’s long-term development. Describing them as “representative as any I have ever seen” and “a real cross-section of the community’s leaders,” he appealed to their sense of civic duty and patriotism: “You are here to share in this organization which is not just one of these bodies to get out fancy reports that will look nice in pubic print.… It is up to us on the home front to develop a community that will be a credit to the 25,000 who have left here for the battle fronts.… We are looking forward to their return.”21 Having appealed to values of duty and patriotism, Wyatt revealed his plan for a “practical, aggressive, affirmative reply” to the opportunities created by the wartime transformation. After outlining LADA’s organizational structure, he emphasized its action orientation and explained that its work would be implemented by committees that would address a broad range of local needs and issues. Sensitive to the business sector’s desire to avoid duplication and overlapping of effort, he promised that some committees would work through existing organizations. For example, the Louisville Board of Trade’s Committee for Economic Development, which had “already made enormous strides toward holding industries here and maintaining as full employment…as possible after the war, will be designated to handle this work.” Finally, he said LADA would provide funds to employ leading national consultants to address many of its functions.22 After the Pendennis Club meeting, Vinsel and a five-member staff moved deliberately to translate Wyatt’s vision for LADA into an effective instrument to address the challenges the region would face after the war. In November, reflecting Wyatt’s desire to keep LADA at arm’s length from city hall, the organization occupied offices on the second floor of a nearby building on South Fifth Street.

50 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

Vinsel’s immediate task was to staff citizens committees to implement the association’s work. A small group of civic leaders met regularly with Vinsel to sug- gest nominees for committee and subcommittee chairs. After they had agreed to serve, Vinsel sent the nominees’ names to the board of directors for approval. Meanwhile, the staff assembled a file of some twelve hundred potential committee members. Once the chairs were in place, they and Vinsel combed the file for the most suitable members for each committee. Vinsel explained later that members were “chosen principally for their judgment and ability to ‘get things done’” and, in some cases, for their professional expertise. To assure coordination and prevent duplication of LADA and local government activities, each committee included at least one ex-officio member from a local government agency whose work paralleled the committee’s. Carl Berg, the planning commission’s chief planning engineer, served on seven committees whose activities dealt with the built environment. Each committee also included a member of the Louisville Board of Aldermen who represented a similar aldermanic committee and assured that the city’s legislative branch was intimately involved in LADA’s planning process.23 By the fall of 1944, eleven working committees, involving more than three hundred citizens, had been organized, including Economic Development, Streets and Highways, Survey and Research, Finance and Taxation, Welfare, Sewers and Drainage, Public Buildings, Parks and Recreation, Transportation, Housing, and Health. By early 1945, committees had been formed for education, fine arts, smoke abatement, and the state fair. Meanwhile, the temporary board of directors became a permanent, fifteen-member body, with the addition of Carl Bode, National Carbide Corporation; J. J. Egan, Wood-Mosaic Company; William G. Frederick, Stewart Dry Goods Company; and H. H. Neel, Ewing-Von Allmen Dairy Company. At the same time, George W. Norton Jr., president of WAVE, Incorporated, replaced station general manager Nathan Lord on the board.24 As Wyatt wrote in his memoirs, LADA committees involved a broad cross- section of community leadership. While white business and professional men were in the majority, the committees were inclusive for the time. Jewish businessman and civic activist Lewis W. Cole chaired the Sewers and Drainage Committee and other Jews served on the Economic Development, Fine Arts, Housing, Public Buildings, Smoke Abatement, State Fair, Streets and Highways, and Transportation committees. Mrs. Eli Brown III chaired the Fine Arts Committee, and numerous other women served on the Education, Health, Parks and Recreation, and Welfare committees, which addressed issues of concern for women and children. Based on names alone, it is difficult to identify African American committee members, but the number was tiny and did not include any civil rights activists. Nevertheless, that blacks served on committees testi- fied to Wyatt’s desire to stimulate grassroots engagement in LADA on the part of residents throughout the city. Moreover, unlike many citizens advisory councils

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that reviewed and promoted proposals advanced by comparable organizations in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cleveland, LADA’s working committees played central roles in formulating the organization’s initiatives and overseeing the work of consultants. During the second half of the decade, LADA initiatives touched nearly every facet of community life.25 As the end of the war approached and the effects of demobilization and the termination of rationing and price controls loomed, it was becoming increasingly apparent that urgent action was necessary to address public needs. A May 1945 LADA report vividly summarized the situation: “Streets designed for the speed and volume of Model T traffic had become strangled bottlenecks. Public buildings, that had been planned seventy years ago…were jammed to the point of impeding the transaction of business. Too often absenteeism in vital war plants traced its origin to unsatisfactory living quarters and overcrowded hospitals. Many public schools were inadequate. Public services and facilities were overstrained.”26 Fortunately, the previous months of organization enabled LADA to act quickly as the war approached its end. Even before LADA achieved its final structure, committees began churning out research data, preliminary studies, and action recommendations. Funds appropriated by the Louisville Board of Aldermen and the Jefferson County Fiscal Court and channeled to the planning commission facilitated many activities. This assured a separation of public and private monies and enabled a planning agency overwhelmed with zoning matters to add staff and to provide demographic, economic, and geographic information to LADA committees.27 LADA plans reflected the community’s sense of urgency. With memories of the devastation caused by the 1937 flood still fresh, protection against future floods was an immediate priority. The federal Flood Control Act of 1937 had authorized money for local flood protection projects. In November 1940, voters approved a $2.5 million bond issue to acquire rights-of-way and cover other costs for an eleven-mile complex of concrete walls and earthen levees. But in the face of the war emergency, the sale was canceled a month later and any thought of quick construction was postponed. The need was not forgotten, however. Within weeks of its formation, LADA placed the floodwall first on its project list. Even before the war ceased, the Sewers and Drainage Committee submitted recommendations, and in early 1945 the city administration authorized the sale of $1.5 million in floodwall bonds. On March 20, 1947, after two years of studies by the Department of Public Works and the Corps of Engineers, federal and local officials broke ground near Thirty-ninth Street and Rudd Avenue, which ten years earlier had been sub- merged under twenty feet of flood water. Nine years and $26.5 million later, an eighteen-mile system of levees, concrete walls, pumping stations, and sewer mains had been completed along the river between Brownsboro Road in the East End and Greenwood Road in southwest Jefferson County.28

52 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

The floodwall was the centerpiece of a larger Sewers and Drainage Committee program to address drainage issues that had plagued Louisville since its founding. Many low-lying areas were subject to flooding when rain water drained into local creeks and streams. Disintegrating sewers that were sixty to eighty years old serviced much of the city; nearly one-fourth of dwellings still lacked any sewer service; and wastewater was dumped into the Ohio River without treatment. To address these issues, LADA proposed a $60 million construction program to upgrade and expand the sewers and to build a treatment plant. To manage the system, including the floodwall, the committee recommended creation of a metropolitan sewerage or sanitary district. In 1946, local governments replaced the city’s Commissioners of Sewerage with the new Metropolitan Sewer District of Louisville and Jefferson County. However, the sewer district lacked sufficient bonding authority, which delayed the start of construction until 1956. The new treatment plant opened in 1959, but the sewer district struggled to keep up with suburban expansion, and drainage and sewerage issues persist even today.29

Mayor E. Leland Taylor turns the first spade of earth for the Louisville floodwall. Louisville Courier-Journal, February 17, 1948. COURTESY OF THE LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL/COURIER JOURNAL.COM

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Improved health care and hospital facilities were another LADA focus. The immediate goal was to upgrade the aging Louisville General Hospital, located east of the central business district. In early 1945 the Health Committee and the board of health commissioned Dr. A. C. Bachmeyer of the University of Chicago to conduct a preliminary study of the structure’s condition. What he found were “dirty and dingy” buildings and equipment that was “faulty, obsolete, or entirely lacking.” Bachmeyer proposed short- and long-range improvements, with costs estimated at more than $6.3 million. The Louisville Board of Health authorized nearly $100,000 to cover the hospital’s immediate needs and reengaged Bachmeyer to make more detailed recommendations for long-term improvements.30

Louisville General Hospital, c. 1945 FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Desiring to curtail overlapping health care services, however, LADA moved beyond this hospital’s condition to address the entire region’s existing and future hospital needs. For that purpose, LADA employed James A. Hamilton and Associates, a Minneapolis-based hospital consulting firm, to develop a program to meet projected needs over the next two decades. After evaluating the condition, expansion plans, and potential of every acute-care facility in the county, the firm revealed its initial findings in 1948 and presented an improvement plan in September 1949. Hamilton’s main recommendation was to develop a medical center in a nine-block area surrounding General Hospital. The plan envisioned the center to provide more cost-effective care through the centralization and shared use of supportive functions, such as laundry and linen services, power plant, maintenance, purchasing and storage, and some expensive diagnostic and treatment equipment.31

54 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

Hamilton also recommended that the University of Kentucky control the center, as it would absorb the University of Louisville Medical and Dental Schools. That proposal fell flat with the University of Louisville and its constituents. But the medical center concept won broad support, and in 1950 the University of Louisville School of Medicine, General Hospital, and Children’s Hospital formed Louisville Medical Center Incorporated. During the next thirty years, most new hospitals located in the medical center, including Jewish Hospital in 1955, Methodist Evangelical Hospital in 1960, Norton Memorial Infirmary in 1969, and University of Louisville Health Sciences Center, beginning in 1970. The medical center expanded steadily into the twenty-first century, attracting numerous specialty and ancillary institutions, and despite rapid changes in the national health care system, it remains a powerful economic force.32 Arguably, LADA’s most profound impact on the landscape came from changes in local transportation systems. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Louisville business leaders and political officials believed the prosperity of an urban community depended on the efficient movement of goods and people. To meet postwar needs, LADA proposed initiatives to improve virtually every mode of transportation. LADA’s most serious concern was surface transportation, and its reasoning was well founded. In 1930 about 64,000 motor vehicles were registered in the county. A decade later, the figure exceeded 89,000, and by 1944 it had passed 101,000. Auto sales skyrocketed after the war, and by the end of 1950 registra- tions approached 150,000.33 Harland Bartholomew & Associates, a prominent national planning firm based in St. Louis, had prepared a regional highway plan in 1929, but the Depression and war prevented its implementation. When the city was ready to act, the plan was obsolete. In 1944, facing the prospect of “stagnating congestion,” LADA’s Streets and Highways Committee joined with local, state, and federal officials to employ H. W. Lochner & Company, a Chicago engineering firm, to prepare a traffic analysis and highway plan. Issued in mid-1945, Lochner’s report proposed two expressways, one for a north-south route from the Municipal Bridge to Standiford Field Airport and an Inner Belt Highway to connect U.S. 42 and U.S. 60 in eastern Jefferson County with the Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Bridge to Indiana in west Louisville. The goal was to strengthen the central business district in the face of suburban growth. As Lochner explained, “The biggest returns will be to the downtown area and will help stabilize downtown business volume.” Simply put, expressways would give suburbanites faster downtown access and provide quicker egress and reduce traffic snarls for those leaving the central business district. By reducing congestion, the expressways would retard decentralization and channel more auto traffic into the heart of the city.34 Lochner’s analysis did not win unanimous applause from decision makers, nor was it implemented quickly and fully. But it ignited multiple street and highway improvements between the late 1940s and the 1970s. Construction of

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the Inner Belt, which followed the route Harland Bartholomew had suggested in 1929, began in 1949, and the road eventually became the Henry Watterson Expressway. Ground was broken for the North-South Expressway in 1955, and in 1975 it was incorporated into I-65. Meanwhile, the Lochner study and other LADA reports triggered many street and highway improvements, including creation of two-way street pairs to serve the central business district, expansion of downtown parking, and reconstruction of major radial streets.35 LADA’s transportation initiatives were not limited to streets and highways. Even before the war ended, major airlines were promoting coast-to-coast routes. American and Trans-World airlines designated Louisville as an intermediate stop, and Delta proposed service to Asheville, North Carolina. In 1944, following a recommendation by LADA’s Air Transportation subcommittee, the Louisville-Jefferson County Air Board voted to transfer commercial services from Bowman Field to Standiford Field after the war. The move began in late 1947 when Eastern Airlines relocated there; other lines followed in early 1948, and the new Lee Terminal opened in 1950.36

Standiford Field, c. 1945-1950. FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

56 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

Other LADA committees issued recommendations that had less dramatic immediate impacts but had long-term implications. Following studies by the Education and Parks and Recreation Committees, the school systems identified new building sites and took steps to enlarge playgrounds. The Louisville Board of Education acquired two parks and new sites for Manual and Central High Schools; the Department of Parks and Recreation developed four new parks; and the county Fiscal Court acquired 1,350 acres in southwest Jefferson County for the Jefferson Memorial Forest. State Fair Committee studies spurred the State Fair Board to buy property near Standiford Field for the new Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center. It opened in 1956. Committee on Finance and Taxation research paved the way for the Occupational License Tax, which provided a new revenue stream for local government. The Housing Committee, in cooperation with the National Housing Agency, conducted feasibility studies that triggered urban renewal and issued recommendations to improve building codes. Finally, reports by the Committees on Welfare and Public Buildings led to the realignment, replacement, and rehabilitation of numerous local government buildings and functions.37 As Wyatt envisioned, LADA’s economic development initiatives were instru- mental in securing many wartime industrial gains and helped further diversify the economic base. The transfer of commercial air service to Standiford Field prompted International Harvester to buy the Curtiss-Wright Aircraft plant in 1947 and convert it to farm tractors production. Bremner Biscuit Company bought the Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft plant and began making cookies. The government- owned synthetic rubber plants in Rubbertown were purchased by their opera- tors, and the complex attracted plastics manufacturers such as the Stauffer and Rohm & Haas chemical companies. Reynolds Metals substantially expanded its Louisville operations. General Electric located its huge Appliance Park in south- central Louisville in 1953, and it quickly became the city’s largest employer. Ford Motor Company opened its new Louisville Assembly Plant on Grade Lane in 1955 and followed twelve years later with construction of the Kentucky Truck Plant.38 Although LADA initiatives profoundly shaped Louisville’s development, not all proposals came to fruition. New York City transportation consultants Vincent M. Boody and Nat Cherniack recommended a union truck terminal to replace small, independent terminals. They argued that a central terminal would relieve congestion, minimize small hauls, consolidate sorting and loading operations, reduce handling costs, and facilitate other economies of scale. But truckers were reluctant to allow persons other than themselves or their employees to handle goods for which they alone were responsible.39 Rejected as well was a recommendation by J. B. Sullivan, a Knoxville railroad consultant, that passenger services be unified at a Union Passenger Station near the L&N South Louisville Yards. It would replace the downtown Union Station and Central Station. Sullivan admitted that the $6.5 million price tag was hefty,

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but he argued that Louisville needed facilities commensurate with its importance and it should modernize operations to compete with other transportation modes. After further study, the plan was dropped—a prudent decision considering the nationwide decline in passenger rail service. Finally, and fortunately, local officials declined to pursue development of a proposed civic center, which would have replaced the historic Louisville City Hall and Jefferson County Courthouse, which survive today as treasured landmarks.40 Despite the rejection of some proposals, as 1950 approached, the effects of LADA initiatives were increasingly apparent in numerous aspects of the community’s life and landscape. But some plans remained to be implemented. Meanwhile, as Wyatt hoped, not only did LADA’s endeavors draw favorable national attention, but he also could take pride that the “organization was widely copied, in full or in part, in many other cities.” Prohibited from seeking reelection when his ten- ure ended in December 1945, he accepted President Harry Truman’s appointment as housing expediter in the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion and administrator of the National Housing Agency. His task was to reduce barriers to the development of affordable housing for veterans. Three months after leaving for Washington, he resigned as LADA president and was succeeded by board member and WAVE Radio owner George W. Norton Jr.41 LADA remained committed to Wyatt’s vision, however, and the association continued to garner national attention. Vinsel often addressed professional organizations, such as the American Political Science Association, the International City Manager’s Association, and the American Planning and Civic Association. LADA also won notice in diverse journals such as American City, Journal of Politics, Typographical Journal, and Billboard as well as publications like Fortune, Life, Reader’s Digest, and the New York Times. Louisville was shedding its image as an “American museum piece.”42 By 1948, Wyatt, Vinsel, and many other leaders believed LADA had largely fulfilled its mission, and that a new, permanent organization was required to implement LADA’s large-scale plans and guide the community’s long-term development. As Vinsel explained years later, “LADA was a planning group, and by the late ’40s it had essentially completed that job. It had formulated broad guidelines for the future, [and] identified the projects that needed doing.… What was needed next was a vehicle…by which the business community could pool its strength to push for making the blueprint come alive, to promote Louisville, to work for industrial expansion and increase employment.” In late 1949, after months of discussion, the vehicle took shape when LADA merged with the Louisville Board of Trade, the Retail Merchants Association, and the Louisville Convention and Publicity League to form the Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce. The new organization was unveiled at a gala reception at the Brown Hotel on January 2, 1950, with Vice President Alben W. Barkley, a resident of Paducah, Kentucky, as the featured speaker.43

58 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

To assure continuity with LADA’s goals, the chamber appointed Vinsel as its executive vice president. In that capacity, he directed the professional staff’s work and reported to the board of directors, who represented the business community and made policy. However, the transition from LADA to the chamber came at the cost of LADA’s more inclusive, grassroots character. Few women and minori- ties served terms on the chamber board of directors, and those who did represented the business community. Totally missing was organized labor, which had played a vital role in LADA. Labor thus became an independent force, placing its considerable electoral weight behind public projects that created jobs for union members and exercising its influence with mayors and county executives, most of them Democrats, who appointed labor leaders to key boards and commissions that sponsored such projects. Nevertheless, during the next twenty-five years, the chamber and a suc- cession of predominately Democratic city and county administrations collaborated to implement numerous LADA plans. By 1975, these efforts had produced interstate highways, two bridges between Louisville and the Indiana cities of Jeffersonville and New Albany, improved radial highways, additional public housing, extensive urban renewal and downtown redevelopment projects, new parks and schools, expanded air service, a vibrant medical center, a new police headquarters, and other public improvements. The chamber also was instru- mental in securing General Electric Appliance Park and persuading Ford Motor Company to build its new Grade Lane and Kentucky Truck assembly plants. Despite the positive outcomes of LADA planning, Louisville experienced many of the same urban problems as other large cities. Expressway construction and radial highway improvements, coupled with a high birth rate, extension of water and sewer lines by the Louisville Water Company and the Metropolitan Sewer District, low- density residential zoning and subdivision policies, and federal lending and taxation policies that favored single-family housing in racially homogeneous neighborhoods triggered residential and commercial decentralization. Reflecting a “culture of clearance” that pervaded urban development and transportation agencies across the nation and at all levels, highway construction and urban renewal destroyed thousands of sound buildings in the central business district and surrounding neighborhoods, including Old Walnut Street, a vibrant African American commercial and cultural district on the district’s western fringe. Urban renewal also demolished most of the city’s worst slum housing, much of it occupied by black families who moved into segregated public housing. Meanwhile, African Americans with higher economic means relocated to single-family housing formerly owned by whites. The result was an increasingly rigid pattern of residential segregation. Finally, although LADA advo- cated city-county consolidation, rapid suburbanization undermined this goal by fos- tering municipal fragmentation, manifested by the proliferation of small cities. By the late 1970s, Jefferson County had eighty-three incorporated municipalities.44

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So, why did a planning effort that was so thoughtful, embraced a broad array of community leaders, and won popular and critical praise for its achievements fall short in some areas? The answer is perhaps best expressed, at least partially, by George H. Yater, the author of the city’s bicentennial history. “Planners,…like the rest of humankind, are to a large extent prisoners of their own time,” he wrote. “Despite LADA’s forward thinking—its anticipation of population growth, increased vehicular traffic, the need for additional schools, parks, and other ame- nities—its planning was based largely on implied assumptions.” Yater identified two key assumptions. First, the city would continue to expand geographically, absorbing adjacent areas through annexation as they needed full urban services. Second, the central business district would remain the retail-shopping heart of the growing urban region. Yater’s analysis was on target, but he could have added two more implicit assumptions. First, that large-scale manufacturing would remain the foundation of the American economy and that Louisville would capture its share of industrial growth. Second, reflecting Louisville’s history of “polite racism,” LADA’s moderate white leadership believed that gradualism had produced real progress in local race relations and that slow, incremental measures should continue, even though they kept “Afro-Americans on the periphery of society.”45 Those assumptions were understandable but flawed. The expectation that the city would continue to grow geographically was accurate, for a time, and annexa- tions during the 1950s significantly expanded the city’s boundaries. But as development gained momentum, suburban residents preferred to remain outside the city, either by forming new municipalities or by remaining unincorporated and receiving services from the county or private providers. With the city limits fro- zen, county government grew more powerful, and urban decision-making became increasingly fragmented. Similarly, retailers followed the population, and the central business district gradually lost most of its retail business to suburban shopping centers. In effect, suburban shoppers used the new expressways and highways advanced by LADA and the Chamber to avoid downtown rather than shop there. During the mid-1980s, the forces of industrial consolidation, globalization, and technological change had placed the city’s industrial economy on a downward spiral that continued into the twenty-first century. As the new century opened, employment at General Electric Appliance Park was a fraction of its 1960 workforce. International Harvester, Belknap Hardware, Ralston Purina, Henry Vogt Machine, the breweries, tobacco firms, meatpacking plants, and many other industrial firms were gone. Thousands of high-wage, middle-class jobs had evaporated. The gap was filled by -ser vice industries rooted in information technology, such as Humana and United Parcel Service. Finally, LADA’s small African American representation—a pattern that continued with the chamber of commerce and the city’s urban renewal, public housing, and transportation agencies—limited the ability of black residents to participate meaningfully in decisions that affected their lives and shaped their neighborhoods.

60 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

Meanwhile, a new generation of leaders had begun to learn from the difficulties of the postwar years. Black representation on the board of aldermen increased, planning became more participatory, and vigorous historic preservation and neighborhood development programs stabilized many declining residential neighborhoods and revitalized numerous downtown commercial blocks. In November 2000, the voters finally approved LADA’s vision of a city-county merger, which took effect in January 2003. The new metro government still struggles with the inevitable challenges created by changing forces and patterns of development. Moving forward, the opportunities and challenges facing the Louisville area will be even more complex than those that confronted Wilson W. Wyatt and LADA in 1945, and addressing them will require a more sophisticated and inclusive planning process. Nevertheless, civic leaders and municipal officials seeking a successful model for broad-based community-development planning might justifiably revisit the Louisville Area Development Association for inspiration.

1 Carl Abbott, Urban America in the Modern Age: 1920 Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University to the Present (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, of Chicago Press, 2004), 124–60; Robert Fugate, “The 1987), 57–62; Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. BancoKentucky Story,” Filson Club History Quarterly 50 Smith, The Evolution of American Urban Society (1975; (Jan. 1976), 44. 4th ed., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994), 255–59; Jon C. Teaford, The Twentieth-Century American 4 Carl E. Kramer, “Urban Development in Central and City: Problem, Promise, and Reality (Baltimore: Johns Southern Louisville,” Louisville Survey: Central and South Hopkins University Press, 1986). Other works that offer Report (Louisville: Historic Landmarks and Preservation useful insights into the urban impact of World War II Districts Commission, 1978), 154. include Philip J. Funigiello, The Challenge to Urban Liberalism: Federal-City Relations during World War II 5 Ibid., 153; Carl E. Kramer, This Place We Call Home: A History of Clark County, Indiana (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978); Roger (Bloomington: Indiana Lotchin, ed., The Martial Metropolis: U.S. Cities in War University Press, 2007), 357; Carl E. Kramer, “Fortunes Louisville, and Peace (New York: Praeger, 1984); Jon C. Teaford, The of War,” Jan. 1978, 52, 86–90. Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America 6 Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), Apr. 25, 1943, Jan. 11, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); Robert O. 1948, June 26, 1953; Louisville Times, Mar. 31, 1965, Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Nov. 17, 1973. Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: 7 Leland R. Johnson, The Falls City Engineers: A History of Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: the Louisville District, Corps of Engineers, United States Princeton University Press, 2005); David R. Goldfield, Army (Louisville: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1974), Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region 213; Courier-Journal, Sept. 10, Dec. 13, 1942, May 9, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982). Aug. 4, 1943; Ricky Davis et al., “Land Use Planning and Standiford Field” (MS project, Institute of Community 2 Teaford, Metropolitan Revolution, 40–46; Jon C. Teaford, Development, University of Louisville, 1976), 8–9; The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization Courier-Journal, Sept. 29, Oct. 28, 1944; Al Allen, in America, 1940–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins “Gunsmith to the U. S. Navy,” Courier-Journal Magazine, University Press, 1990), 36–48. July 11, 1976, 7. 3 Gustave A. Breaux, “1937 Flood at Louisville and the 8 Kramer, This Place We Call Home, 361–63; Carl E. French Named the Ohio ‘La Belle Riviere,’” Filson Kramer, Rivers of Time: A History of American Commercial Club History Quarterly 11 (Apr. 1937), 112; George R. Lines, 1915–2015 (Louisville: American Commercial Leighton, “Louisville, Kentucky: An American Museum Lines and KYM Marketing, 2015), 43–75. Piece,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Sept. 1937, 400–402; Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the

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9 Robert R. Bernier, “World War II,” in The Encyclopedia of 27 Ibid., 2, 17–20; Vinsel, “Louisville Plans Its Future,” 244. Louisville, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 954. 28 Johnson, Falls City Engineers, 208, 256; LADA, Action to Date, 39; LADA, Louisville: Five Years of Development, 10 Terry L. Birdwhistell, “Wyatt, Wilson Watkins, Sr.” in 1943–1948 (Louisville: LADA, 1948), 9; Courier- Kleber, Encyclopedia of Louisville, 957; Wilson W. Wyatt Journal, Jan. 17, Mar. 4, 11, 1945, Mar. 21, 1947, Jan. Sr., Whistle Stops: Adventures in Public Life (Lexington: 15, 1956. University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 4–5. 29 LADA, Action to Date, 8; Martin E. Biemer, 11 Wyatt, Whistle Stops, 9. “Metropolitan Sewer District of Louisville and Jefferson County,” in Kleber, Louisville Encyclopedia, 616. 12 Ibid., 5–7; New York Times, June 13, 1996; John E. Pearce, Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics, 1930–1963 30 LADA, Action to Date, 5. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 30; “Miller, Neville,” and Philip Ardery, “McLaughlin, 31 LADA, Louisville, 12–13; James A. Hamilton & Lennie Lee (Walls),” in Kleber, Louisville Encyclopedia, Associates, A Hospital Plan for the Louisville Area, 621–22, 601. Louisville, Kentucky (Minneapolis: James A. Hamilton & Associates, 1949), SR 1–15; Dwayne Cox, “Louisville 13 Wyatt, Whistle Stops, 7–9. Medical Center,” in Kleber, Louisville Encyclopedia, 559.

14 Ibid., 10–18, 21–23. 32 Hamilton & Associates, Hospital Plan for Louisville, SR 9–13; Anne Calvert and Helen Leopold, “A Most 15 Ibid., 18–20, 28. Successful Transplant,” Louisville, Nov. 1974, 53; Cox, “Louisville Medical Center,” 559–61. 16 Ibid., 28–29; Kenneth P. Vinsel, “Louisville Plans Its Future,” Public Administration Review 4 (Autumn 1944), 33 Teaford, Rough Road to Renaissance, 30, 41–42, 93–97; 341. Mark H. Rose and Raymond A. Mohl, Interstate: Highway Politics and Policy since 1939 (1979; 3rd Whistle 17 Vinsel, “Louisville Plans Its Future,” 341; Wyatt, ed., Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), Stops, 29. 5–40; Isenberg, Downtown America, 170–78; “Traffic Improvement—$50 million,” Louisville, Dec.20, 1959. 18 Richard Renneisen, “Agency Set Up to Plan Development 45; “Louisville Business Trends, 1950–1960,” Louisville, of Area,” Courier-Journal, Oct. 27, 1943. Feb. 20, 1960, 9; Louisville and Jefferson County 19 Kenneth Paul Vinsel, Resume and Biographical Sketch, Planning and Zoning Commission, Progress through Kenneth P. Vinsel Papers 1934–1975, box 1, File Sketches Planning, condensed version (Louisville: Louisville and of K. P. Vinsel, University of Louisville Archives and Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Commission, Records Center, Louisville, Kentucky [hereafter ULARC]. 1959), 15.

20 Vinsel, Resume and Biographical Sketch, Vinsel Papers, 34 Harland Bartholomew and Associates, Comprehensive City ULARC; “The Planner: Wilson W. Wyatt, Sr.,” Louisville, Plan, Louisville Kentucky (draft), Louisville City Planning Jan. 1975, 56. and Zoning Commission, 1931, 34–36, Louisville Metro Planning Commission Library; LADA, Action to Date, 7; 21 Louisville Times, Oct. 27, 1943. LADA, Louisville, 6; Courier-Journal, Aug. 25, 1945.

22 Courier-Journal, Oct. 27, 1943. 35 “Traffic Improvement—$50 million,” Louisville, Dec. 20, 1959, 45–47; LADA, Louisville, 6–8; Parking Survey 23 Ibid.; Vinsel, “Louisville Plans Its Future,” 342–44; of the Central Business District (Louisville: Louisville Area Louisville Area Development Association [hereafter Development and the Louisville Area Development LADA], Action to Date: Highlights from Reports of Association, 1949), 8;“Shopping Centers Beckon; Committees (Louisville: LADA, 1945), 17–21. Downtown Replies,” Louisville, Dec. 20, 1959, 73–74; George H. Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of 24 Vinsel, “Louisville Plans Its Future,” 343; LADA, Action the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County to Date, i. (Louisville: Heritage Corp., 1979), 215–16.

25 LADA, Action to Date, 17–21; Wyatt, Whistle Stops, 36 Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 30–31; see also Teaford, Rough Road to Renaissance, 215; LADA, Action to Date, 12; LADA, Louisville, 8; 50–54. Kramer, “Urban Development in Central and Southern Louisville,” 173–74; Davis et al., “Land Use Planning 26 LADA, Action to Date, 3. and Standiford Field,” 9–10.

62 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY CARL E. KRAMER

37 LADA, Louisville, 13–17; Donald R. Smith, “Kentucky copied LADA either whole or in part appears in Whistle Fair and Exposition Center,” and “Farnsley, Charles Stops, but he does not mention specific communities, so this Rowland Peaslee,” in Kleber, Louisville Encyclopedia, 472, observation warrants further study. 282; Wyatt, Whistle Stops, 31; LADA, Action to Date, 10. 42 Wyatt, Whistle Stops, 31; New York Times, Apr. 29, 1947; 38 Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 214–15; M. H. Satterfield, “Intergovernmental Cooperation in Mark Reilly, “General Electric Appliance Park,” and the Tennessee Valley,” Journal of Politics 9 (Feb. 1947), “Ford Motor Company Assembly Plants,” in Kleber, 42–43; Billboard, Apr. 12, 1947. Louisville Encyclopedia, 333–34, 309. 43 “The Implementer: Kenneth P. Vinsel,” Louisville, Jan. 39 Vincent M. Boody and Nat Cherniak Transportation 1975, 57. Consultants, A Report to the Louisville Area Development Association on a Proposed Union Truck Terminal in the 44 Kramer, “Urban Development in Central and Southern City of Louisville (New York: Vincent M. Boody & Nat Louisville,” 161, 191; Francesca Russello Ammon, Cherniak Transportation Consultants, 1945), 1–5; Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Kramer, “Urban Development in Central and Southern Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), Louisville,” 158. 1–18; Merv Aubespin, Kenneth Clay and J. Blaine Hudson, Two Centuries of Black Louisville: A Photographic 40 J. B. Sullivan Civil Engineering & Railroad Consultants, History (Louisville: Butler Books, 2011), 193–97; Luther A Report on Railroad Terminal Facilities (Knoxville: J. Adams, Way up North in Louisville: African American B. Sullivan Civil Engineering & Railroad Consultants, Migration in the Urban South, 1930–1970 (Chapel 1945) referenced in Kramer, “Urban Development in Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 39–40, Central and Southern Louisville,” 159. 46–48.

41 Wyatt, Whistle Stops, 31, 58–59; Birdwhistell, “Wyatt,” 45 Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 213–14. 958; Roger Biles, The Fate of Cities: Urban American and On Louisville’s polite racism, see George C. Wright, Life the Federal Government, 1945–2000 (Lawrence: University behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865–1930 Press of Kansas, 2011), 19–23; Louisville Area Development (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), Association, Board Minutes, box 37, Louisville Chamber of 4–5, 285; Adams, Way up North in Louisville, 153–55. Commerce Records, ULARC. Wyatt’s claim that other cities

WINTER 2018 63 Collection Essay Camp Zachary Taylor in the Filson’s Collections

Construction of Camp Zachary Taylor, 1917. SUBJECT PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

amp Zachary Taylor was a World War I cantonment, or training camp, built in 1917 and in operation until 1920, outside of the city of Louisville, Kentucky. Named for America’s twelfth president, who Cwas raised and is buried in Louisville, it was the largest of sixteen such camps constructed to prepare U.S. men for participation in the Great War. The U.S. government selected Louisville as one of the building sites in June 1917, and the camp was built in only ninety days, containing more than 2,000 buildings, and training over 125,000 troops. The first recruits arrived in September 1917 from Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. In 1918, the influenza pandemic that struck the world hospitalized a sixth of the camp’s occupants, killing hundreds. After the war’s end in November 1918, the camp was used as a demobilization point and hospital. Despite lobbying by Louisville politicians and business- men to keep the camp as a permanent army fixture, the U.S. War Department closed it in 1920. The camp’s land, buildings, and equipment were mostly auctioned off during June 1921, and the area became the Camp Taylor neighborhood, incorporated into the city of Louisville in 1950.

64 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JENNIFER COLE

Y.M.C.A. Building. COHEN POSTCARD COLLECTION

Materials in the Filson’s library, photograph, manuscript, and museum collections all document the history of Camp Zachary Taylor by illuminating the lives of its soldiers and the interactions of local civilians with the military cantonment. The Filson’s library collection contains published sources that provide overviews of the camp and detail certain military organizations housed there. Its pamphlet collection includes two short booklets, heavily illustrated, intended to keep the families and loved ones of soldiers training at the camp informed on its surroundings and conditions. The Souvenir Guide to Louisville and Camp Zachary Taylor, and Camp Zachary Taylor Souvenir, Louisville, Ky., were as much promotional pamphlets for the city of Louisville as explanatory guides. Another pamphlet, The Red Triangle at Camp Zachary Taylor, details the Young Men’s Christian Association’s work in the camp’s fifteen YMCA huts, buildings that offered the troops wholesome entertainment along with safe and chaperoned spaces to meet with female relations and friends.1 Throughout its operation, Camp Zachary Taylor included special training. From June 1918 through February 1919, its Field Artillery Central Officers Training School was the central location for all artillery field officers training in the United States. A full-length book, The Story of the Field Artillery Central Officers Training School, which provides information about the school and training, almost a souvenir for those who attended, is considered the standard history on the program. Capt. Harry R. Groat and Lt. George T. Holmes published another memory book on the camp in 1919. In and Out of Camp Taylor: Life at Camp in Prose and Verse humorously portrays life at the camp with pen-and-ink sketches contributed by cartoonist Wyncie King.2

WINTER 2018 65 CAMP ZACHARY TAYLOR IN THE FILSON’S COLLECTIONS

Army Nursing Staff, Base Hospital, December 18, 1918. SUBJECT PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

Other published sources include newspapers. The history of construction, activities, and decommissioning of Camp Zachary Taylor is regularly covered in the pages of the Louisville Courier-Journal. In addition, the Filson holds three newspapers published by or for the camp: Trench and Camp, the Probable Era (also called Probable Error), and Over the Top. Trench and Camp was at once a national and local paper; while a central editorial office generated some content at the national level, local Louisville reporters wrote the rest and the paper was printed locally. It was to inform and entertain soldiers and civilians and be a channel of communication to the troops from the U.S. government. Camp soldiers wrote and edited the other two relevant newspapers . The Probable Era was published weekly in 1918 for the Field Artillery Central Officers Training School, and Over the Top was published at the camp hospital from January through June 1919 for the patients and hospital staff.3 While newspapers provided soldiers and families at home with local, national, and international information, maps gave a literal view of Louisville’s army camp. A 1918 U.S. Geological Survey map shows the location of the camp within the context of the surrounding area and highlights its different segments. The Filson’s map collection also includes two 1921 maps published by the Louisville Real Estate and Development Company, one showing the Remount Unit area of Camp Taylor, and the Herman Meier Residence, 1917. other a portion of the planned subdivision. The CAMP ZACHARY TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM Filson’s manuscript collection also holds maps of the subsequent neighborhood.4 The Filson’s Special Collections, including its photographs, manuscripts, and museum, also contain materials complimentary to the published works. The Filson’s photograph collection includes hundreds of stunning images illustrating the various phases of Camp Zachary Taylor, from planning and construction to active service. The Camp Zachary Taylor Photograph Album consists of images local photographer Henry Hesse made in 1917 for the Fidelity and Columbia

66 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JENNIFER COLE

Trust Company, which coordinated leases and purchases of land for constructing the camp. These show homes, outbuildings, and farms, most belonging to or rented by immigrant truck famers, some of which were demolished to make way for the camp. The majority of the nearly two hundred pictures in the World War I Subject Photograph Collection depict the construction of and life in the camp. The faces of the mostly unnamed men and women in these images bring a personal touch to the documentation. The Hulda Schoening Photograph Collection adds to the visual knowledge of the camp from a civilian neighbor’s point of view. Hulda Schoening was born and lived almost her entire life on the small farm that bordered Camp Zachary Taylor. Schoening’s half-sister, Meta Heintz, used the family’s first camera James William Banks, 1918. JOHNSON-PAYNE-COFFMAN FAMILY to capture life around the camp, including PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION barracks, new recruits, a military funeral, the Liberty Theatre, and general views. Photographs from these three collections can be viewed using the Filson’s Online Photograph Database.5 Other individual items in the photograph collection that contribute to an understanding of Camp Zachary Taylor include panoramic photographs— mostly of specific army units, officers, and enlisted men who trained at, or passed through Camp Taylor—and mass-produced postcards of the camp. Two images of specific note include a beautifully colored picture of Mrs. Elizabeth Roberts Summers Middleton, the chair of the Camp Service, American Red Cross, and the Filson’s sole image of one of the thousands of African American troops trained at Camp Taylor, James William Banks. Banks worked as a chauffeur for the W. H. Coffman family of Georgetown, Kentucky, before entering the army on June 19, 1918, as a private in Company D of the 801st Pioneer Infantry Regiment. Banks included a photograph of himself in uniform in a short letter to his former employer, sharing his satisfaction with the camp.6 Along with these visual depictions come the words of the soldiers, found in various family and personal collections held at the Filson. In letters to Dallas Sisk in Napoleon, Ohio, Hiram Schumacher describes aspects of camp life such as housing, meals, drills, recreation, and disease. Another Filson collection includes the letters of John Neblett, one of the white officers of the 801st Pioneer Infantry;

WINTER 2018 67 CAMP ZACHARY TAYLOR IN THE FILSON’S COLLECTIONS

before he was sent to France, Neblett wrote a few letters to his family in Bardstown, Kentucky, from Camp Taylor. Frank R. Lane’s papers reflect his training as a cook, duties in one of the camp kitchens, and pride in the excellent record his kitchen established and also describe the social life at the camp and in Louisville.7 Several of the Filson’s World War I–era collections contain letters from local women to loved ones away at war, mentioning visits paid to Camp Zachary Taylor on Sundays. A woman named Lillian wrote to her boyfriend, Richard Eberenz, on September 30, 1917, describing her visit, “In the afternoon we went out to the camp, it was quite interesting.…Camp Taylor is just like a little country town, as large as New Albany and Jeffersonville together. They have their own clothing stores, post office, YMCA and Knights

of Columbus buildings.” Clara Discher, whose John Alexander Neblett, circa 1917-1918. family had a truck farm outside of Louisville, NEBLETT FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION wrote to her brother on April 16, 1918, “In the afternoon we went out to camp…things are beginning to look nice.” Lillian, Clara, and other members of the Discher family commented on Camp Taylor and its soldiers throughout their correspondence.8 “Have you picked from the new bunch of fellows at Camp Taylor the one you like real well yet? How does it feel in Louisville with all the old fellows of Camp Taylor away…? I would give anything if it were so that I could get back to Camp Taylor…all the other fellows are in the same condition.” Corporal Richard B. Harris who was training in a machine gun unit, wrote to Clara Gibson on June 8, 1918 after being transferred to Camp Sherman in central Ohio. The Clara Gibson Papers contain correspondence from thirteen different soldiers, most of whom she knew through visiting and attending dances at Camp Zachary Taylor. Clara lived in west Louisville and was a student at Girls’ High School dur-

ing this time; she may also have been a Red Cross Clara Gibson and A. C. “Cliff” Carbery, 1918. 9 volunteer at the camp. CLARA GIBSON PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

68 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JENNIFER COLE

Work at Camp Zachary Taylor did not end with the cessation of hostilities on November 11, 1918. Along with demobilizing troops, Camp Taylor’s hospital provided care for demobilized men who had suffered severe physical and psycho- logical trauma. The Ethel Braswell Papers contain records pertaining to Braswell’s service as a reconstruction aid in occupational therapy at the camp following the war’s end. Diary entries provide descriptive information on the two months she was employed at Camp Taylor, April–July 1919. Her collection documents her work at Camp Taylor as a literacy instructor to wounded soldiers, as well as her leisure activities in the vicinity.10 Along with preserving the words of soldiers, staff, and civilians about the work accomplished at Camp Zachary Taylor, the Filson’s manuscript collection contains records regarding its closure and sale. The Camp Zachary Taylor Papers relate to the auction of nineteen hundred buildings, thirteen hundred acres of land, and all equipment comprising the camp by the U.S. War Department in 1921. Included in the collection is a Louisville Herald newspaper advertisement on the auction; three maps of land to be auctioned; three auction brochures issued by the sales agent, the Louisville Real Estate and Development Company; and a program of the formal ceremony closing the camp on May 13, 1921.11

Louisville Real Estate and Development Company Auction Brochure, 1921. CAMP ZACHARY TAYLOR RECORDS

WINTER 2018 69 CAMP ZACHARY TAYLOR IN THE FILSON’S COLLECTIONS

Complementing all of this documentation, the Filson’s museum collection includes items used by individuals at the camp. Notable examples include the Mrs. Eliza Robinson Coleman Red Cross volunteer uniform and camp access pass and a U.S. Army–issue knife and fork from the camp from the collection of Clara Gibson. Recent acquisitions include a blue felt saddle blanket with appliqued eagles and Camp Taylor insignia and a unit pennant for the 334th Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division. An ongoing inventory of the Filson’s museum collection will doubtless uncover even more items, helping to bring the camp to life through these preserved objects.12 While the official Camp Zachary Taylor records are held in military personnel files of World War I veterans and in

U.S. Army archives, much can be gleaned about life Elizabeth Roberts Summers Middleton, circa 1918. and activity in this World War I cantonment from JEFFERSON POST #15, AMERICAN LEGION nonofficial records held at the Filson and in other PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION collections throughout the Louisville area. The stories of the soldiers and visitors in their own words, published in souvenir form and handwritten into letters or captured in still images and artifacts, engage the viewer with descriptions of camp life. One hundred years later, items that were part of daily life at Camp Zachary Taylor continue to remind visitors of its time and place in history.13 Jennifer Cole Manager of Collections Access

Pigeon Coop with Percy Craig, caretaker. HULDA SCHOENING PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

70 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JENNIFER COLE

1 Souvenir Guide to Louisville and Camp Zachary Taylor 7 Hiram Schumacher Letters (Mss. C S); Neblett Family (Louisville: Breckel Press, 1918); Maurice Dunn, Camp Papers (Mss. C N); Frank Raymond Lane Letters (Mss. A Zachary Taylor Souvenir, Louisville, Ky. (Louisville: L265), FHS. Lambertson Service Bureau, 1918); The Red Triangle at Camp Zachary Taylor (N.p., n.p. [circa 1918]). 8 Lillian to Richard Eberenz, Sept. 30, 1917, Richard Andrew Eberenz Papers (Mss. A E16); Clara Discher to 2 Field Artillery Central Officers Training School Louis Discher, April 16, 1918, Discher Family Papers Association (Camp Zachary Taylor, KY), The Story of (Mss. C D), FHS. the Field Artillery Central Officers Training School (New York: Knickerbocker, 1919); Harry Groat and George T. 9 Richard B. Harris to Clara Gibson, June 8, 1918, Clara Holmes, In and Out of Camp Taylor: Life at Camp in Prose Gibson Papers (Mss. A G448/2), FHS. and Verse (Louisville: Liberty Press, 1919). 10 Ethel O. Braswell Papers (Mss. A B823), FHS. 3 Residents of Jefferson and Oldham Counties in Kentucky can access a searchable database of the Louisville Courier- 11 Camp Zachary Taylor Papers (Mss. C C), FHS. Journal (1830–2000) through the Louisville Free Public 12 Red Cross Uniform and Camp Pass of Mrs. Eliza Library at http://lfpl.org. Robinson Coleman, 1978.30.79, 1978.30.83; United 4 George Otis Smith, Kentucky: Camp Taylor and Vicinity States Army Knife and Fork, 2013.40.1, 2013.40.2; (N.p.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1918); H. B. Cassin, Camp Zachary Taylor United States National Army Subdivision of Camp Zachary Taylor (Louisville: Louisville saddle blanket, 2016.27, 334th Infantry Regiment pen- Real Estate & Development Co., 1921); W. B. R. Bards, nant, 2018.2.2, FHS Museum Collection. Camp Zachary Taylor Remount Unit (Louisville: Louisville 13 The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Real Estate & Development Co., 1921); Louisville Missouri, holds military personnel files of twentieth- Transit Company Survey Plats (Mss. BN L888b 11-15) century military service records. Unfortunately a 1973 and Camp Zachary Taylor Miscellaneous Records (Mss. fire there destroyed between 16 and18 million official C C), both in Filson Historical Society [hereafter FHS]. files, including approximately 80 percent of U.S. Army 5 Camp Zachary Taylor Photograph Album (AL-008), personnel discharged between November 1, 1912 and World War I Subject Photograph Collection; Hulda January 1, 1960. While this article covers collections held Schoening Photograph Collection [987PC24], FHS. by the Filson, the interested researcher should also delve The Filson’s online photograph catalog can be found at into collections at the University of Louisville, notably the Filson Historical Society’s Image Database, 2017, the Oral History Center’s collection of oral histories on https://filson.pastperfectonline.com. Camp Taylor and material in the University of Louisville’s Photo Archives. The Camp Zachary Taylor Historical 6 Mrs. Elizabeth Roberts Summers Middleton, Jefferson Society also boasts an impressive collection of images, Post #15, American Legion Photograph Collection documents, and ephemera on the camp, held privately (989PC3.74), James William Banks, 1918, Johnson-Payne- by collector Ken Maguire. See its website, Camp Zachary Coffman Family Photograph Collection (990PC1X.9), Taylor Historical Society: Preserving our Military Heritage, James Banks to Anne Payne Coffman, July 22, 1918, in http://camptaylorhistorical.org/. Johnson Family Papers (Mss. A J67a), FHS.

WINTER 2018 71 Collection Essay The Queen City Welcomes Charles Lindbergh The Famed Aviator’s Visit Documented in Black and White

harles A. Lindbergh, an obscure twenty-five-year-old airmail pilot, gained international celebrity as the first aviator to cross the Atlantic Ocean nonstop from New York to Paris. He made the successful cross- Cing on May 20–21, 1927, flying solo in a single-engine Ryan monoplane nick- named the Spirit of St. Louis in a little over thirty-three hours. When Lindbergh landed in Paris, his life had changed forever. Crowds mobbed his plane even before it had come to a stop. People rushed forward to get a glimpse of the daring American aviator and his plane. Lindbergh was virtually pulled out of his plane and carried around by the cheering crowd. After a few brief flights in Europe in theSpirit , Lindbergh returned to the United States, where he received a medal from President Calvin Coolidge in Washington, DC, followed by a ticker-tape parade in New York City. The adula- tion of Lindbergh and the desire to see him in person and to hear him speak was just getting started.

The Spirit of St. Louis at Lunken Field, August 6, 1927. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

72 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY SCOTT GAMPFER

Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis at Lunken Field, August 6, 1927. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

Lindbergh was not comfortable with the limelight, but he was interested in promoting aviation and realized he had an opportunity to do that by using his newfound fame. Lindbergh and Harry Guggenheim, the millionaire philanthropist whom he had met before his successful New York to Paris flight, conceived of a national air tour in the Spirit of St. Louis. With the financial backing of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, Lindbergh agreed to visit at least one city in each of the forty-eight states. Starting on July 20, 1927, and continuing through October 23, 1927, Lindbergh and the Spirit visited 82 cities and covered some 22,000 air miles in over 260 hours of flying. Lindbergh, never comfortable in front of a crowd, gave 147 speeches during the tour and rode approximately 1,290 miles in parades.1 The tour itinerary included stops at three cities in Ohio: Cleveland, Dayton, and Cincinnati. Once a Cincinnati stop was set, the Chamber of Commerce formed a Committee of Arrangements, which began working out the local details. There was much excitement in the Queen City at the prospect of a visit by the renowned aviator and his equally famous aircraft. The Committee of Arrangements made preparations for Lindbergh to land at Lunken Field and be conveyed by motorcade to a public reception at Redland Field. The committee arranged for a section of the grandstands to be reserved specifically for children, because “the children of today will be the aeronaut of the future.”2 Col. C. O. Sherrill, Cincinnati city manager, assigned four hundred special policemen and about two hundred uniformed firemen to handle the expected large crowd at the ballpark and to prevent spectators from rushing the air hero upon his arrival. The Committee of Arrangements delegated the Boy Scouts of Cincinnati to act as Lindbergh’s personal guard.3

WINTER 2018 73 THE QUEEN CITY WELCOMES CHARLES LINDBERGH

The chamber’s civic secretary, Howard M. Wilson, conferred with Lindbergh and his tour manager on Friday, August 5, in Dayton, Ohio, to iron out the final details of his arrival in Cincinnati the next day. Lindbergh was particularly pleased when Wilson informed him that ten thousand school children were expected to greet him at Redland Field. It was agreed that there would be no ceremony at Lunken Field other than a handshake and greeting from Vice Mayor Stanley Matthews as the aviator climbed out of his plane. Lindbergh would be transferred at once to a waiting automobile for the procession to the ballpark. He insisted to Wilson that for safety reasons no other airplanes be flying in the vicinity of Lunken Field when he arrived. Wilson assured him that no planes would be in the air after noon that day until he landed safely.4

The Spirit of St. Louis at Lunken Field, August 6, 1927. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

(L-R) Howard M. Wilson, Charles A. Hinsch, and Lindbergh after his arrival at Lunken Field, August 6, 1927. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

74 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY SCOTT GAMPFER

Windshield sign for motorcade vehicles. Lindbergh (second from right) leaving Lunken Field in motorcade, CMC EPHEMERA COLLECTION August 6, 1927. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

During the air tour, Lindbergh was accompanied by another aircraft, provided by the Guggenheim Fund and the U.S. Department of Commerce, carrying Donald E. Keyhoe, the tour manager, and Phil R. Love, a close friend of Lindbergh and a former airmail pilot. The “large red monoplane,” piloted by T. H. Sorensen, would arrive at each location about a half-hour prior to the arrival of Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis.5 Lindbergh had flown from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Dayton on August 5, and he departed Dayton the next day for Cincinnati. His route took him over Franklin, Middletown, and Hamilton. Because the number of planned stops on the air tour was limited, many cities and towns were disappointed at being left out and requested that Lindbergh at least fly over their town en route from one stop to another. When possible, he flew over and often circled towns along the way.6 The local newspapers reported that August 6 was a great day for the city, and everyone was abuzz with excitement even before Lindbergh arrived over Lunken Field. When he did arrive from Dayton, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “Lindy flashed over Lunken Field in a vertical bank over the heads of the crowd assembled there, soon after circling over downtown Cincinnati and the hills of Northern Kentucky.” At 2:00 p.m., “the Spirit of St. Louis swooped onto Lunken Field and taxied to its stopping point, amid the noise of automobile horns and the plaudits of the many thousand men, women, and children who waited there to greet him.” Apparently, the enthusiastic crowd surged past police lines and almost ran in front of Lindbergh’s plane before order could be restored.7 As he climbed from his plane, Lindbergh, wearing a leather flying coat and flying helmet, was greeted by the vice mayor and other officials. He was quickly directed to an open car that occupied the front rank of a motorcade of official vehicles led by a motorcycle escort and conveyed to Redland Field along a ten- mile route through Hyde Park, Walnut Hills, and downtown. Crowds lined the route, hoping to get a glimpse of the famous flyer.

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Once at the ballpark, Lindbergh was taken to a temporary platform that had been erected for his use in addressing the assembled crowds in the grandstands. The platform, equipped with amplifiers to magnify his voice, was decorated with American flags, red, white, and blue bunting, and even a large framed portrait of Lindbergh. As Lindbergh and his group made their way to the speakers’ platform, their progress was accompanied by continuous waves of cheering from the crowd. When the party members reached their places, the cheering stopped while the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” but resumed immediately as the anthem concluded. The band then played “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, before remarks began.8

Lindbergh (third from right on platform) at Redland Field, August 6, 1927. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

During a brief halt before his introduction, three local boy scouts presented Lindbergh with a ceremonial Native American feathered headdress of the Ku-Ni-Eh tribe of honor. He posed briefly wearing the headdress while photogra- phers and motion picture cameramen captured the scene. After opening remarks by Vice Mayor Matthews, Lindbergh gave his speech, likely the same one he gave at each stop, or a version of it. Lindbergh spoke directly into the microphones so that all could hear as he talked about the recent accomplishments in commercial aviation and predicted great progress with commercial passenger service. He urged Cincinnati to get behind an air program that would keep the city “on the air map” of the country. His remarks lasted only about five minutes and the entire program around fifteen minutes.9

76 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY SCOTT GAMPFER

Following the ceremonies at Redland Field, Lindbergh was taken downtown to the Hotel Sinton, where time was set aside for local members of the press to interview him and he could then rest. Arrangements had been made for him to spend the night at the Sinton’s presidential suite. That evening a testimonial dinner was held at the roof garden of the Hotel Gibson. Local Campfire Girls had been enlisted to make penguin table decorations for the banquet. Seated among the many guests at the speakers’ table were Matthews, Sherrill, Keyhoe, postmaster A. L. Behymer, and Powel Crosley. The crowd of fourteen hundred rose to its feet and applauded when Matthews told Lindbergh “that his modesty and exem- plary character…made him the ideal of all American youth.”10 Lindbergh and his manager inserted periodic rest days into the Guggenheim tour, so the flyer could get a break from the crowds and attend to personal business. Sunday, August 7 was such a day, which he spent in Cincinnati. He was not scheduled to depart for his next stop, in Louisville, Kentucky, until Monday, although the exact time of his departure was kept from the public, so as to avoid attracting a large crowd.11 Lindbergh spent Sunday morning conferring with his tour manager regarding the details of his upcoming flight, and he also spent some time going through his mail. The Cincinnati Times-Star reported that after lunch “the ‘Flying Colonel’ took an automobile ride through the western parts of Cincinnati and expressed himself as delighted with the beautiful homes and picturesque scenery.” In addition to Lindbergh, passengers on the automobile excursion included his tour party of Keyhoe, Sorensen, and Love, with local car dealer H. F. Fulton behind the wheel. At some point, Fulton relinquished the driver’s seat briefly to Lindbergh. The party later drove to Lunken Field so Lindbergh could check on the Spirit. When the people that were gathered to view the plane recognized the famous flyer, they cheered and Lindbergh obligingly bowed.12 Early on Monday morning, August 8, Lindbergh arrived at Lunken Field to begin preparing the Spirit for its flight to Louisville. Lindbergh was scheduled to depart Lunken at 1:00 p.m. and arrive at Louisville’s Bowman Field around 2:00. He wanted to allow plenty of time to refuel his ship, replenish the engine oil, and conduct a thorough preflight examination of the craft, as was his custom. The Spirit of St. Louis had remained at Lunken Field since its arrival on Saturday. Following Lindbergh’s departure for Redland Field and during the day on Sunday, the plane had been out for public view surrounded by a temporary barrier decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. This measure kept the public at a safe distance from the famous monoplane but still allowed people to view and photograph it. Soldiers posted inside the barrier guarded the aircraft throughout the display. While performing a detailed examination of his plane, Lindbergh discovered that particularly bold souvenir hunters had somehow sneaked past inattentive guards and cut an approximately one square foot section of fabric from one of

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the wings, leaving a large hole. The plane was towed to a hangar, where experts patched the wing with materials brought down by plane from the army’s Wilbur Wright Field in Dayton. While waiting for the machine to be serviced and repaired, Lindbergh treated two of his hosts to an unexpected thrill. Charles A. Hinsch, chairman of the Lindbergh entertainment committee, and Howard Wilson of the chamber of commerce, had come with him to Lunken that morning. Borrowing a plane from Cincinnati’s Embry-Riddle Flying Service, Lindbergh took them for a thrilling flight over the city, which included a few aerobatic stunts thrown in for good measure.

Howard Wilson, Charles Hinsch, and Lindbergh in Embry-Riddle Company Lindbergh pulling the propeller airplane at Lunken Field on Monday, August 8, 1927. through to clear the lower cylinders CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION before engine start. CMC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

By approximately 1:00 p.m., both Lindbergh and his plane were ready to depart for Louisville. The red monoplane carrying tour manager Keyhoe had departed Lunken around 12:30 so it would get to Louisville ahead of him. With the roar of its Wright Whirlwind motor, the silvery Spirit of St. Louis, with Charles Lindbergh at the controls, climbed into the air and set course for Louisville. At exactly 2:02 p.m., Lindbergh glided in for a landing on the turf at Bowman Field after circling the city, and, again, a huge, enthusiastic crowd greeted him.13 For Lindbergh the tour continued, but for Cincinnati the excitement was over. Thousands of Queen City citizens who had been to Lunken Field, the ballpark, the banquet, and all along the route that the famous aviator took through the city got an experience they never forgot. Large numbers of locals who went to Lunken Field to see the aviator or simply view his plane brought cameras. Many of the photographs that captured Lindbergh’s visit have found their way into the

78 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY SCOTT GAMPFER

Cincinnati History Library and Archives collections since 1927. Howard Wilson’s daughter Sonja donated a number of interesting things from her father’s time with Lindbergh, including an “Official Car” sign from the Lindbergh motorcade. The collections also contain some examples of the many Lindbergh souve- nirs marketed all over the country following the New York to Paris flight. People clamored to own anything bearing Lindbergh’s image or that of his famous Ryan monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh wrapped up the Guggenheim air tour of the country on October 23, 1927, when he touched down at Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York. This was the same field where it had all started, on July 20. He made an air tour of Latin America from December 1927 to February 1928, after which he donated the Spirit of St. Louis to the Smithsonian Institution for a well-earned rest.

Scott Gampfer Associate Vice President for Collections and Preservation Cincinnati Museum Center

1 Mary Ann Johnson, McCook Field, 1917–1927: The Force behind America’s Golden Age of Flight (Dayton: Landfall Press, 2002), 306–11.

2 “Lindbergh Will Visit Cincinnati on Aug. 6th,” Cincinnatian, Aug. 1927, 15.

3 “Stunts to Be Lindbergh Way of Showing Appreciation of Cincinnati Welcome,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 6, 1927.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 See Lindbergh’s itinerary at Spirit of St. Louis 2 Project, “Guggenheim Tour—48 States, Visited 92 Cities,” Charles Lindbergh: American Aviator, 2014, www.charleslindbergh.com/history/gugtour.asp.

7 Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 7, 1927; Stephen Johnson and Cheryl Bauer, Images of Aviation: Lunken Airfield (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2012), 50.

8 Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 7, 1927.

9 Johnson and Bauer, Images of Aviation, 51.

10 Cincinnati Times-Star, Aug. 8, 1927.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 “Lindbergh Greeted by 100,000 Here,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), Aug. 9, 1927.

WINTER 2018 79 Review Essay Borderlands and the Ohio Valley

ndrew Frank and A. Glenn Crothers’s Borderland Narratives and Rob Harper’s Unsettling the West provide Ohio Valley History readers with new takes on the region’s history as a borderland. With significant emphasisA on the Ohio River valley and adjacent watersheds, these two books provide fresh looks at the cultural conflict from the early sixteenth century through the antebellum period and put the history of the Ohio Valley into a comparative context with other borderlands. Borderland Narratives is a collection of essays that highlights the intersections of Anglo and Indian worlds in the region of the various borderlands. Rather than focusing on the borderlands of the Southwest as defined by originators of the sub- field, Herbert Bolton, David Weber, and others, this volume builds upon historiographical trends that extend the geographic and theoretical definitions of the term to encompass locations like the Ohio River valley, including Kentucky and St. Louis, Florida, the Gulf Coast of Texas, and the Missouri Valley. Borderland Narratives is part of a larger movement toward collections that illus- trate the complexity and common themes of interactions in borderland areas. Editors Andrew Frank and A. Glenn Crothers describe these new takes on the theories of borderlands as having direct relevance for American society deeply concerned with “the modern political debate over immigration policy” especially those tied to “the status and movement of residents who live or once lived in an area commonly studied as the southwest borderlands” (1). Rob Harper’s essay, “The Politics of Coalition Building in the Ohio Valley, 1795–1774,” gives an account of complex Ohio Valley encounters leading into the American Revolution, which provides an alternative to seeing the violence that plagued the revolutionary era as “Hobbsian chaos” driven by racial and cultural hatred. Instead, he argues that the hatred itself failed to produce Andrew K. Frank and A. Glenn Crothers, the outbreaks of mass violence because such outbreaks eds. Borderland Narratives: Negotiation required the financial support of the state. Without fund- and Accommodation in North America’s Contested Spaces, 1500–1850. Gainesville: ing by Britain, its colonies, the Continental Congress, or University Press of Florida, 2017. 224 pp. individual states, colonists or Native Americans lacked ISBN: 9780813054957 (cloth), $74.95.

80 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NATALIE INMAN the means to carry out large-scale attacks, no matter how much they might have wanted to do so. Harper’s descriptions of the characters in this essay, including John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, highlight just how conflicted and complicated these individuals were as they sought a fairly simple goal: securing land. Andrew Frank follows with “Red, Black, and Seminole: Community Convergence on the Florida Borderlands,” in which he reviews historians’ treatment of the relationships between Africans or African Americans and Seminole communities in Florida. Rather than agreeing with either those historians who claimed complete distinctions between the communities or those who saw the communities as intimately intertwined, Frank argues that both are correct. The two ethnic groups had cultural, linguistic, and political differences that divided them and caused them to form distinct towns separate from one another and maintain distinct identities. The towns also cultivated interdependence that served them well when the fluidity of the borderland was further complicated by the Seminole Wars. Tyler Boulware’s “‘Skilful Jockies’ & ‘Good Sadlers’: Native Americans and Horses in the Southeast Borderlands” applies borderland theory to the southeast rather than the southwest. He argues that the role of horses in the political economy of the southeast has been ignored and reduced to a stereotype of the horse culture Indians of the Plains versus the horseless Indian people of the woodland area east of the Mississippi River. Using treaties, accounts of wars, travel narratives, and other primary sources, Boulware demonstrates the importance of horses to the economies, cultures, and political relationships of Indians throughout the American southeast. The use of horses in this region illustrates the ways intercultural exchange was part of the process that created borderlands. “Los Desaparecidos in the Gulf Coast and Early Texas Borderlands” by Carla Gerona forces the reader to jump back three hundred years and to travel south from the Ohio River valley through the horse filled borderland of the southeast to the Gulf of Mexico . Her narrative follows the actions of Spanish conquistadors to shed light on the problem of those who disappeared from their homes and communities through being kidnapped, dying in battle, or being wrenched from the world by disease. Gerona asks her audience to put themselves in the place of those who lost loved ones in large numbers during the upheaval of the 1500s and 1600s. The demographic changes, along with the deeply violent encounters between clashing cultures, meant that nearly everyone lost many family members in horrific ways. Rebekah M. K. Mergenthal contributes “‘Odious’ Abolitionists and ‘Insolent’ Runaways: Natives, Slaves, and Settlers in the Missouri Valley Borderlands.” She illustrates the fascinating way that the pro- and anti-abolition debate played out in federally administered Indian country. By focusing on ministers who sought to influence the Indian trade schools and other civilization strategies, Mergenthal teases out the extension of the debates over slavery as they existed in the Indian country west of Missouri. From Indian slaveowners to abolitionist-leaning

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federal administrators, the question of whether slavery was “civilized” shaped struggles for power even within the “Indian Service” itself. French Catholic priests in the backcountry Protestant mission fields of Kentucky found the experience lonely, harrowing, and challenging to their faith. Michael Pasquier’s chapter, “French Missionary Priests and Borderlands Catholicism in the Diocese of Bardstown during the early Nineteenth Century,” sees the sparsely popu- lated region between Baltimore and the Falls of the Ohio as a borderland not simply between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans, but also between Catholic and Protestant cultures. The legacy of theJesuit Relations of centuries past created a roman- ticized view of martyred Jesuit priests converting the “savages” that was passed down through generations of French missionary priests. Rather than taking up the syncretic style of the Jesuits to create cultural commonalities, these priests made a point of maintaining rigidity as a way of protecting the differences between themselves and the Protestants, as well as to retain their sense of spiritual sanctity. Protestant ministers faced similar frustrations, but the feelings of despair and hopelessness described by the French Catholic priests showed they felt deeply the burden of their commission. Philip N. Mulder continues the theme of the religious borderlands in his chapter, “Borderlands Redemption: Protestants Negotiate the Ohio River Valley.” The ministers in his study likewise became frustrated with cultural differences and the difficulty of converting, maintaining, and competing for church members. He contrasts the life of Joseph Badger, a Presbyterian minister who reveled in the adventures of his calling while taking a syncretic and multicultural view toward ministering and conversion, against that of the more rigid John Taylor, a Baptist minister who frequently moved between churches to more closely associate with others who had similar doctrinal views. These two men represented differing approaches to the spread of religion in a cultural borderland during the height of the Second Great Awakening. Julie Winch rounds out the collection with her essay, “‘The Mark Unmistakably Fixed upon Their Brows’: A Free Family of Color on America’s Borderlands.” She explores a family that flouted the social norms of the emerging community of St. Louis as it transitioned back and forth from Spanish to American control. The members of this family used the ambiguities of a borderland region to make bold choices. For example, the family’s patriarch, Jacques Clamorgan, simultaneously had relationships with several of his slaves that he kept as “wives.” Throughout his lifetime, he exploited imperial laws on slavery to grow his fortunes, control his wives, and determine the future of his children. His “senior wife,” Ester, likewise sought to use the system to shape her own fortunes, including buying her freedom and that of her daughter and challenging Clamorgan in court. The family saga in this essay ends with Cyprian Clamorgan taking his knowledge of the family secrets to the press to expose many families in St. Louis who had African heritage but had been “passing.” The essay highlights the ways the borders of race intersected with imperial borders and legal traditions.

82 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NATALIE INMAN

Overall, Borderland Narratives is a wonderful addition to the historiography of borderlands and frontier history, and its messages are poignant at this time of global tensions over issues of immigration. The lack of a conclusion at the end of the collection is somewhat disappointing. However, the essays build nicely upon one another and the introduction expertly frames them. Meanwhile, Rob Harper’s Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley expands his analysis of borderlands coalition-building and the ways it influenced the seemingly chaotic events from the French and Indian War through the aftermath of the American Revolution. In this larger work, Harper addresses the new historical work on borderlands and cultures of violence, using sophisticated analysis of individual motivations and specific historical circumstances to reframe the arguments entirely. In essence, Harper refutes the arguments that borderland violence emerged from a deep racial and cultural hatred following the accumulation of many years of atrocities paired with governments’ inabili- ties to control the people on the peripheries of their empires or the young men of their tribe. Harper proves these assumptions are built on surface information rather than the reality that, while isolated incidents of violence came from racial and cultural tensions, violence on a mass level was possible only with state support. Therefore, state-building Rob Harper. Unsettling the West: Violence and correlated directly with the perpetration of State Building in the Ohio Valley. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 272 pp. acts of massive violence, even when the state 7 illus. ISBN: 9780812249644 (cloth), $45.00. itself denounced such incidents as immoral or counter to their purposes. Like Richard White’s The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Unsettling the West has the potential to reshape the subfields of trans-Appalachian, borderlands, and culture of violence histories. Like the “Middle Ground thesis,” Harper’s argument is rooted in a particular time and place and should not be indiscriminately exported to other historical contexts. Harper shows numerous occasions when one spark might have lit up the entire region in warfare but cautious leaders worked hard to maintain the uneasy peace between colonists and Indians. His careful analysis details the differences between native groups, including the Shawnees, Delawares, Haudenosaunees,

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and Wyandots, paying particular attention to how the distinctions between their motivations at times converged and at other times conflicted with one another. Similarly, Harper carefully describes Virginia and Pennsylvania’s dispute over their western borders that eventually came to military blows as representatives from each colony raised armies and alternately occupied Fort Pitt. He illustrates the divisions, and the ability of individuals and groups to switch sides quickly to best pursue their ultimate aims, usually securing land. The characters in this historical narrative are complex and cunning, and they defy stereotypes. By using of the term “colonists” to refer to Anglo-Americans both before and immediately after the American Revolution, Harper intentionally sets the narrative within the larger historical debates in which America becomes one of the imperial colonizers of the nineteenth century alongside Britain, France, and Spain. Within the comparative history of colonialism, his argument about state-building unequiv- ocally places the United States as a colonizer. While he makes clear that native peo- ples disputed these land grabs through various strategies to push back or contain the encroachment, Harper does seem to reserve “state” to mean Britain or America, and to a lesser degree, France. State influence is equated with financial means to supply arms. Indirectly, this argument seems to reinforce assertions that native peo- ples (globally) are pawns in the economic and military strategies of European or Euro-American states. Harper does an excellent job illustrating the agency of native town and regional politics to make decisions about whether to make peace or go to war. However, those decisions seem to be effective only when backed by the war- making capacity of the European or American states. The last two decades have seen an explosion of histories that expand borderland theories on interactions to include processes and cultural intersection. Borderland Narratives and Unsettling the West pay tribute in their footnotes, historiographical positioning, and even their titles to major architects of the field, notably Richard White, Andrew Cayton, Claudio Saunt, David Weber, and Kathleen DuVal. The essays invoke the most central literature of the 1990s and bring it into dialogue with the most recent trends in the histories of borderlands, violence, comparative colonialism, racial identities, and others. Unsettling the West engages this literature and uses creative historical analysis, as well as deep and detailed research, to make claims that could permanently change the way historians view violence and political negotiation in the Ohio Valley. Together these books are extremely valuable additions to the study of borderlands. Natalie Inman Cumberland University

84 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Review Essay No Simple Answers Sectionalism and Political Division on the Eve of the Civil War

ecent debates over the meaning and future of Lost Cause era monuments, installed in public places during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have reinvigorated public discussion over the causes of the Civil RWar and the intentions of those who fought it. The 1860 presidential election and the secession crisis are essential topics in understanding the culmination of events and forces that led the nation to split and inaugurate a long and bloody war. Certain groups have long contended that the cause of the Civil War was states’ rights, a lack of compromise, tariffs, or a combination of various reasons, none of which include the institution of slavery. But the problem is that slavery was the central issue of the conflict, although it manifested itself in complex ideas, events, and actions that led the nation toward disunion. The expansion and protection of slavery was also intertwined with many other issues. The authors of the two works discussed here, Michael D. Robinson and Michael Holt, reveal very complicated and intricate factors that prevented further compromise and resulted in the secession of some, but not all, slave states. In truth, these historians show that the concept of a single cause or explanation paves over the hundreds of decisions and reactions that in the end created the opposing forces and compelled citizens to choose sides. A large part of the misconceptions over the war’s beginnings are due to a false dichotomy that pits North versus South in a contest of free states versus slave states. In A Union Indivisible: Secession and the Politics of Slavery in the Border South, Michael D. Robinson focuses on those caught in the middle: residents of the slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Appropriately enough, the study begins with the legacy of the Great Compromiser himself, Henry Clay, and the effort of some white borderites to occupy the political middle ground during the widening political division of the 1850s. Robinson conveys the prevailing feeling among many white border citizens as positioned between two extremes, abolition and secession. The common thread of slavery, and its defense within the structure of the existing government, tied together border unionists in the face of building support for secession. Robinson describes the debate among politicians in each state, noting that most of the political differences revolved around the best way to protect slavery. While the majority of white borderites defended the institution of slavery, those who supported secession as a way to protect slavery were relatively few compared to states further south. However, Robinson gives a good

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accounting of the more influential Fire-Eaters, including Claiborne Fox Jackson in Missouri and Blanton Duncan in Kentucky. Robinson also notes the central events that affected border politics the most, including John Brown’s Raid and the Baltimore Riot. Secession, then, was relevant in the border states and unionism was never a for- gone conclusion. One commonality among all four of the border states considered here was the prevailing urge to prevent war, evidenced by the significant support for the Crittenden Compromise. Well after the divisive 1860 election, and as Lower South states were seceding, white residents of the border clung to the hope for last-minute cooperation. John J. Crittenden’s tireless efforts to work for compromise are less noted in national studies of the crisis, but Robinson deftly puts Crittenden within the context of conservative unionists, who saw the avoid- Michael D. Robinson. A Union Indivisible: Seces- sion and the Politics of Slavery in the Border ance of war as the most desirable outcome because South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina war would turn their states into battlegrounds. Press, 2017. 312 pp. ISBN: 9781469633787 (cloth), $34.95. Additionally, the Border State Convention held in Frankfort, Kentucky, in March 1861 held more significance to border residents as people to the north and south prepared for war. Robinson indicates that only after Fort Sumter did many of these border politicians abandon compromise in favor of neutrality. Although Kentucky was the only border state to declare neutrality, Maryland’s governor pursued the option until the struggle against secessionists in the state legislature made adher- ence to the Union cause necessary. Missouri’s secessionist governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, would not consider neutrality and instead moved to oppose Lincoln’s call for troops. Robinson uses these three examples to show that the balance between secession and unionism was tenuous along the border, and in each case, the struggle between those forces rested on the efforts of borderites to pursue the path they believed would best represent their interests. Robinson’s book enters into an ongoing debate on the nature of the border region and its very definition. The term “Border South” is consistent with earlier works, including William Freehling’s The Road to Disunion:volume 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Stanley Harrold’s Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Robinson occupies familiar ground in using this phrase, but the concept of a Border South flanked by the Lower North is problematic

86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN ROCKENBACH in that it does not take into account the connections between the border free and slave states. For example, Robinson notes the popularity of both the Constitutional Union Party and the Crittenden Compromise in the “Border South,” but these peace-seeking measures were also very popular in southern Indiana. Christopher Phillips’s The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) expands on the concept of the Middle Border, composed of both free and slave western states, and provides a more complex model for understanding the region. The war transformed the region, solidifying the southern identity in Kentucky and other border slave states. Many of Robinson’s observations are consistent with those of Phillips and other historians of the western border region, but instead of considering the transformative nature of regional identity, Robinson focuses on slave states bordering free states. However, the exclusion of West Virginia, or at least what would become West Virginia, proves problematic. Taken alone, however, Robinson’s study offers a very detailed look into the political machinations of the border slave states and will be especially useful to those interested in the political dynamics of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. Michael Holt’s The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequence” provides a look at the buildup of the war within the larger context of national politics. While previous studies of the election have centered on Abraham Lincoln and the Republican efforts to halt the extension of slavery, Holt argues that the Republican victory had more to do with the political climate of the Buchanan administration and the creation of four oppositional party platforms. He begins with an account of the Republican Party’s rise to prominence, which was aided by the initial opposition to the Kansas- Nebraska Act and Preston Brooks’s violent attack on Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress (dubbed “Bleeding Kansas” and “Bleeding Sumner”) and then bolstered by opposition to the Buchanan administration. Holt argues that reports of corruption, including bribes and vote- buying, bolstered Republican opposition to the Democratic Party in the years lead- Michael Holt. The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences.” ing up to the election. The extension of Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017. slavery was an ever-present issue, but Holt 272 pp. ISBN: 9780700624874 (cloth), $29.95.

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asserts that Republican assaults on Buchanan and his associates influenced the platforms and nominations of each party. In the face of increasing Republican support among Know-Nothings, Whigs, and even a few Democrats, Democrats struggled to find a candidate that could distance them from the previous administration and provide a suitable position on the expansion and protection of slavery. Slavery became the central position of the southern wing of the Democratic Party, but only as a result of the animosity between supporters of Stephen A. Douglas and the pro-Buchanan camp, which placed its faith in John C. Breckinridge. Holt gives a sophisticated analysis of the Democratic conventions in Charleston and Baltimore, including noting Breckinridge’s resistance to being nominated, fearing that a split in the party would lead to a Republican victory. Holt treats the events leading up to the 1860 election in an evenhanded way, giving each party and candidate equal consideration. The Constitutional Union Party, dismissed by some historians, receives due attention here. Among other observations, Holt points out that the Constitutional Unionists were older, on average, than supporters of the other parties. The Republicans had the advantage of the youthful and visually impressive Wide Awakes, who marched through cities while wearing kepis and capes and carrying torches. Attempts to garner such popular enthusiasm by the other parties—including the Constitutional Unionists, who created the annoyingly cacophonous “Bell Ringers”—fell woefully short. Once the parties and candidates were set, the debate over slavery’s extension continued to grow, largely fueled by southern Democrats’ irrational fears of a “Black Republican” abolitionist plot. Holt argues that the Republican nomination of Abraham Lincoln occurred not only due to Lincoln’s successful debates against Douglas but because Lincoln’s reputation as “Honest Abe” supported the claim that only the Republicans could counter the corruption of the Democratic Party. In Holt’s assessment, the Republican victory was a result of the divisions within the Democratic Party and the ineffectual nature of the Constitutional Unionists’ avoidance of the slavery issue, as well as the building opposition to the extension of slavery and the perceived threat of a Slave Power conspiracy. Holt makes the bold assertion that opposition to political corruption fueled the Republican drive toward the White House, while Democratic infighting sty- mied any attempt to stop them. This deviates from the traditional interpretation that sectional conflict over the extension of slavery culminated in political schism and a four-way electoral contest. However, Holt is not contending that sectionalism and the debate over slavery’s future were not salient issues. He instead uses the addition of anti-Buchanan fervor in both the Republican and Democratic parties to explain how the opposing positions coalesced into a perfect storm of political division, allowing the Republican Party to seize victory without significant gains in any slave state. It seems likely that critics will challenge Holt’s sources and interpretation, but his nuanced argument needs to be taken seriously.

88 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN ROCKENBACH

At the very least, Holt urges us to push beyond simple and familiar answers in favor of understanding events through the eyes of those who lived them. Taken together, these two books provide very different narratives on the same period, which is a testament to how varied and complex this subject is. For example, Robinson correctly identifies a faith in compromise that prevailed in the border slave states before the war. But a legacy of compromise had led the nation directly into sectional crisis, and regardless of the hopes of border residents, no further compromise was possible. Conversely, Holt sees division within parties and political rivalries as key, with the desire for compromise playing a much smaller role in national politics. From the perspective of white border residents, the nation was being torn apart by two extreme positions, abolition and secession. Yet Holt reveals an atmosphere rife with opposition and fervent partisanship firmly rooted in party leadership, rather than being contained to the political fringe. Both authors see the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Lecompton Constitution, and the Dred Scott decision as central to the escalation of partisanship and political turmoil. Holt further posits that differing opinions about the Lecompton Constitution and the question of whether to recognize the pro-slavery territorial government contributed to the split of the Democratic Party and the strengthening of the Republican platform. By requiring us to view this time period from a variety of perspectives, accepting the fluidity of historic events and the fragile nature of human behavior, Holt and Robinson greatly expand our understanding of the crucial moment when the nation stood at the threshold of a destructive war. Stephen Rockenbach Virginia State University

WINTER 2018 89 Book Reviews Tariff Wars and the Politics of Jacksonian America William K. Bolt

illiam K. Bolt’s Tariff Wars and the Politics questions, including the public lands, govern- Wof Jacksonian America deserves to be ment regulatory powers, republican identity, regarded as one of the boldest works of political and the moral economy of the American people. history in recent years. Not “bold” in the sense For better or worse, Bolt errs on the side of redefining historiographical knowledge, crack- of complexity and nuance rather than simplic- ing open old paradigms, or making provocative ity and elegance. He devotes voluminous pages new claims; rather, the boldness comes from the to the debates that transpired on the floors of author’s sheer focus. In defiance of the inevitable Congress and almost as many pages to the back- eyerolls and exasperated sighs—for what would channel intrigues that shaped the course of poli- seem more excruciating than two hundred pages tics in the Early Republic. Politics, here, has more on tariff politics?—Bolt has stayed true to his pur- vitality than the stagnant nouns we often use to pose, insisting quietly, yet convincingly, that we categorize political ideologies; we see allegiances cannot understand political development in the United States without grasping the significance of this deceptively mundane issue. The resulting work, the first in Vanderbilt University Press’s new series on Jacksonian America, is something of a small miracle. For many historians of early republican politics, the sheer persistence of tariff disputes feels like an obstruction to the flow of the narrative. We are impatient to see the narrative enriched with the human dramas of westward expansion and the “impending crisis”—yet in spite of our best storytelling instincts, tariff debates seem to reappear again and again like a bad penny throughout the antebellum years. Small wonder that historians tend to diagnose tariff battles as symptoms of the more profound sectional schism between slaveholding and “free” states. Slavery does play a crucial role in Bolt’s narrative, of course, but it is not the sole driving force William K. Bolt. Tariff Wars and the Politics of Jack- sonian America. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University of American history. For the tariff question, as Press, 2017. 320 pp. 46 illus. ISBN: 0826521363 Bolt shows, ultimately involved a litany of other (cloth), $69.95.

90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS shifted, opinions flipped, compromises hashed the hapless Henry Clay, whose unequivocal posi- out. Few books so perfectly recapture the feeling tion on tariffs became yet another political liability. of uncertainty in the face of the unpredictable— Bolt’s connection between tariff wars and and unintended consequences, as Bolt’s work democracy is both unexpected and compelling, reminds us, are the iron law of political history. insofar as he contents himself with demonstrat- Bolt perceives a direct correlation between tar- ing that politicians in Washington were react- iff disputes and democratization. He argues that it ing to conflagrations that emerged at the local was the American public, at the grassroots level, that level. (Indeed, there are times when one almost repeatedly forced the tariff question back into pol- wishes Bolt had committed to this vision and itics. Beginning with a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, written a history from below in the manner of convention of manufacturers and mechanics, pop- Alfred Young or Gary Nash.) But Bolt also wants ular protests made it difficult for politicians to dis- to argue that these debates were catalysts for lodge tariff reform from the congressional agenda. democracy in the United States. Although popu- Even in South Carolina, that least democratic of lar protests seem to have driven these debates at all states, anti-tariff petitions and public meetings many key junctures, one wonders if the tariff was became the order of the day in 1828. Bolt goes unique in this regard. Protests and petitions had so far as to claim that Andrew Jackson’s “biggest become fixtures of American political life even mistake” as president “was his failure to perceive in the Revolutionary era; in the Jacksonian era, that nullification began as a grassroots movement” public protests also accompanied disputes over (118). Popular protests were not confined to the bank policy, Indian removal, even the appoint- South, and they did not cease after the nullifica- ment of federal officials. Seen in this light, public tion crisis; as late as 1842, Pennsylvanians would protests over the tariff seem to be the results of protest against reduced tariffs. American democratization more than its cause. The people’s representatives in Washington, But this is an extraordinarily minor critique of the usual stars of the story, come across as men an extraordinarily useful book, which will proba- reacting to this groundswell from below. Bolt is at bly remain the authoritative work on this subject his best when depicting the maneuvers of men like for decades to come. Bolt’s scholarship provides John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, both an antidote to easy generalizations about the role of whom sought shelter in euphemisms when dis- of tariff disputes in American politics, pinpoint- cussing the 1824 Tariff. While some politicians ing the exact moments when disputes over tariffs demonstrate moments of decisiveness in this nar- became battles over the Constitution and slav- rative, one is more often struck by their oppor- ery. (The author’s discussion of Calhoun’s evolv- tunism and calculation. We see Jackson taking his ing views is almost worth the price of purchase famously firm stand on the constitutionality of tar- by itself.) Through his attention to details that iffs in 1832, and then we see both parties searching many scholars would dismiss as minutiae, Bolt has for moderate positions on the tariff avoid alienat- crafted a narrative that is thoroughly readable and ing constituents throughout the 1830s. Although sometimes even exciting. This book will be of inter- tariff reform would gradually become a party est to historians of American politics, economics, litmus test after the Panic of 1837, we still find and slavery. For historians of the Jacksonian poli- James Polk giving duplicitous promises to secure tics and the second party system, it is a must-read. Pennsylvania’s support in 1844—at the expense of Max Matherne, University of Tennessee

WINTER 2018 91 BOOK REVIEWS Midnight in America Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War Jonathan W. White

onathan White’s Midnight in America: Darkness, JSleep, and Dreams during the Civil War is refreshing precisely because it uses the familiar— sleep and dreams—to explain the experiences of Civil War era Americans. Standing guard at midnight, sentinels must have been frightened that no amount of self-discipline could keep them awake. If the morality tales of the almost-executed soldier hit their marks, soldiers likely repeated a simple but sobering equation: falling asleep made one risk being at the wrong end of a firing squad. Yet even with the knowledge that sleeping could be lethal, soldiers dozed off. The U.S. Army sentenced ninety soldiers to death for napping on the job Jonathan W. White. Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War. Chapel Hill: and thereby endangering the lives of their fellow University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 296 pp. soldiers, though Lincoln commuted all of these ISBN: 781469632049 (cloth), $34.95. punishments (5). Sleep was a powerful biological force that could only be delayed for a short time. Civil War (187). White also does not seek to Midnight in America uncovers an important and interpret symbols in dreams. He explains, “I do understudied topic in the Civil War era. not attribute any meaning to symbols for the Although White opens with the power of simple reason I do not believe that our dreams darkness and sleep, the third category in his have universal (or even cultural) symbols” subtitle—dreams—carries the sustained ana- (186). The result is a measured analysis of the lytical focus of Midnight in America. The best dreams Americans remembered, recorded, and social and cultural histories contextualize the sometimes fabricated in trying to make mean- past and humanize historical participants, and ing out of the Civil War. this book accomplishes both with a remark- While White does not search for universal able depth and range of sources. White is care- symbols, he believes dreams can answer big ques- ful not to overanalyze dreams, and he takes a tions about Civil War experience. For example, conservative approach to collecting and explain- he argues, “the sleepiness of soldiers may have ing the dreams of hundreds of soldiers, white pointed forward to modern warfare, but their civilians, and African Americans. For exam- dreams did not” (xxiv). Civil War soldiers, White ple, he does not claim that the four hundred finds, had fewer battlefield nightmares that earlier dreams in his source base are representative of historians have assumed. Typical soldier dreams an estimated 230 billion experienced during the involved home and family, though these dreams

92 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS also displayed anxieties about infidelity and interpretation of dreams, popular culture, and abandonment. Prisoners of war dreamed more gender in the nineteenth century. White’s coup frequently about food and hunger than other sol- de grace is notable for its lack of graciousness. diers, some even going through the motions of He writes, “A twenty-first century scholar who eating in their sleep. White concludes that some seems disappointed that the few ‘controver- soldiers had nightmares, but dreams were more sial…female reformers’ were not more widely often a temporary escape from reality. “On the depicted in popular lithography either does not whole,” White writes, “thoughts and dreams of understand basic market forces (these prints home helped sustain soldiers in their cause, giv- were produced by commercial firms, after all) ing them visual reminders of what—and who— or nineteenth-century sentimentality and fam- they were fighting for” (51). In contrast, south- ily life” (133). Chastising a scholar in another ern white women were more likely to have night- discipline for not writing better history comes mares than soldiers or northern white women. across as mean-spirited and distracting. Faced with a close-up view of wartime ruin, few Similar distractions are found in chapter 7. Confederate women could avoid the destructive White inserts parenthetically “(what irony!)” side of the Civil War—even in their sleep. when he writes that Andrew Burstein “appro- As they did southern white women, night- priated” a fictitious Lincoln dream in his book mares also followed African Americans. Enslaved title (162). Only in the footnote does White people “looked to their dreams for guidance when admit that Burstein was also skeptical about the planning an escape,” but even successful fugi- dream’s provenance (222n38). In the same chap- tive slaves had “realistic and menacing dreams of ter, White strongly implies that Charles Royster recapture” (88–89). White writes how, long after plagiarized Stephen Oates, Stephen Oates mis- slavery, “nightmares reveal how some escaped represented Benjamin Thomas, and Benjamin slaves may have never fully escaped from the Thomas intentionally fabricated a Lincoln experiences of bondage” (90). African American dream (167). While White concludes this final dreams may also hold the key to understand- chapter by discussing fabricated Lincoln dreams ing how Americans (especially southern whites) in the context of historical memory, the distrac- understood their dreams. For more than a cen- tions obscure the point. tury, white and black southerners shared similar White’s Midnight in America is a remark- religious views and beliefs about the symbolism able accomplishment, and it is sure to receive of dreams, even if, in the decades that preceded positive acclaim from academics and the gen- the Civil War, white Christians became less will- eral Civil War readership. The book opens a ing to discuss dreams in places of worship. new conversation and expands the historical While Midnight in America is a remarkable imagination of the Civil War era. Some night- achievement, the book contains distractions mares may have reflected trauma, but dreams that draw this reader’s attention away from its also helped participants survive the anxieties merits. White is a careful historian and a skilled of war and make meaning out of personal and writer, but at times the book seems to relish in national trauma. Few books are as original or the shortcomings of previous literature. In chap- inspiring. ter 6, White spends four paragraphs correct- Evan A. Kutzler ing a theater studies scholar’s “anachronistic” Georgia Southwestern State University

WINTER 2018 93 BOOK REVIEWS Lincoln and the Democrats The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War Mark E. Neely Jr.

n 1991, while serving as the director of the ILincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Mark E. Neely Jr. produced the most important book on the sixteenth president and his relationship to civil rights in wartime: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press). The book, which won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, became just the first in a career of monographs examining politics and constitutionalism in the Civil War era, each of which stemmed from unanswered or poorly examined questions about that important conflict. Neely’s last book, his 2017 Lincoln and the Democrats, serves as a capstone to this decades-long career of challenging, rethinking, and reshaping the histo- Mark E. Neely Jr. Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War. New York: riography of Civil War era politics. Cambridge University Press, 2017. 218 pp. 7 b/w illus. As in his other work, Neely’s Lincoln and ISBN: 9781107637634 (paper), $24.99. the Democrats begins with a series of questions whose answers he has found elusive or otherwise The ensuing five chapters deal with such var- insufficiently explained in the historiography of ied subjects as how the Union was able to levy the Civil War era. At the heart of each of these taxes, handle public debt, and engage in mili- questions is interest in how the two-party sys- tary recruitment despite conflicts within the tem operated during wartime, the ways politics political system; the relationship between the constrained or aided the war effort, and how fac- Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and tionalism, constitutional problems, and political the off-year congressional elections in 1862; the behavior all influenced the conduct and outcome role of race prejudice in Democratic Party think- of the war. For Neely, answering these questions ing; and the ways the Democrats and Lincoln relies heavily on gleaning a better understanding himself used and understood the Constitution of the opposition party in wartime, in this case in wartime. Throughout, Neely characteristi- the Democrats. As he explains, “we simply do not cally references how frequently he has learned understand the Democrats, study them enough, from other historians—paying heed to the or make much of an attempt to see the Civil War great work of Melinda Lawson and J. Matthew through their eyes” (85). It also requires grappling Gallman in the first chapter on the nonparti- with constitutional history, which, he argues was, sanship of bond drives, bounties, and the U.S. much like journalism, “still a branch of political Sanitary Commission, for instance, and to criti- history” in the Civil War period (136). cal scholarship by Brian Dirck and William Blair

94 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS in his final chapter, which examines Lincoln’s He first takes on the issue of Democrats’ war- constitutional embrace of humanitarianism— time commitment to white supremacy. As even as he respectfully disagrees with others, he explains, the term “white supremacy” was ultimately pushing all of their conclusions in coined by a distinctly unpopular newspaper new directions. The result is a series of thought- editor by the name of John H. Van Evrie. Van ful answers to complicated questions that make Evrie, who actually began his career as a Whig, for fascinating individual essays, even as they do had a troubled relationship with the Democratic not quite work together as a monograph. Party and was mostly rejected by other members Neely’s most provocative conclusions come of the loyal opposition. Neely similarly com- in the middle of the book, where he reexam- plicates the “miscegenation hoax” of the 1864 ines the problems of northern Democrats’ flirta- election, in which two employees of the New tion with peace and their attitudes toward race, York World formulated a pamphlet promoting particularly in the 1864 election. By explor- “genetic mixing of the races” (thereby coining ing Democrats’ behavior in the context of two- the term miscegenation), which they promoted party competition rather than as a standalone as a Republican-backed document designed to issue, Neely is able to complicate standard nar- turn out Democratic support (108). This hoax ratives about the wartime opposition. Here he has been a hallmark of recent explanations of argues that historians such as Jennifer Weber wartime Democratic racism, even as Neely (Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s shows the pamphlet and term “appeared too Opponents in the North [New York: Oxford early in the electoral season” to have an impact University Press, 2006]) have exaggerated the and, at seventy-four pages, “was too cumber- influence of the party’s Peace Democrat wing. some to explain” (109). Throughout this chap- Rather, by looking more closely at the guber- ter, Neely shows that the relationship between natorial elections of 1863 (supposedly the peak the Democrats and race was not as straightfor- of peace wing success) and their impact on the ward as we previously understood it to be, even peace-leaning 1864 Democratic platform, Neely if his claim that “the Democratic party dur- shows how Republicans were often the ones ing the Civil War was not the party of white who labeled Democrats peace agitators, con- supremacy” does not fully ring true (107). trary to the candidates’ stated or actual records. Neely’s final two chapters, which first con- As a result, “many Democrats in other parts sider the Democrats’ (lack of) constitutionalism of the country assumed the peace wing of the and then Lincoln’s expansive definition of human party was larger than it really was.” Democrats rights in wartime, are among his most insightful, were wrong about their size and impact, and even if they feel somewhat disconnected to the “historians have been fooled as well” (95–96). rest of the book. In the penultimate chapter, he In addition to misunderstanding the role describes a Democratic party that abandoned of the peace wing, Neely argues that histori- its longstanding commitment to the constitu- ans have exaggerated the role of race and race- tional principles of Thomas Jefferson and James baiting in Democrats’ wartime behavior. This, Madison, which they had invoked repeatedly again, is a hallmark of Neely’s work: taking a in antebellum party platforms. Instead, by pro- nuanced approach to a Civil War political prob- moting poor constitutional arguments about the lem by tracing its origins and popular impact. unconstitutionality of conscription and the need

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for a convention of the states, Neely argues, meticulous research, that political historians of they showed “there was nothing particularly the Civil War era will miss most now that Mark conservative about the Democrats’ constitu- Neely has published his final book. tionalism in the Civil War” (170). It is shrewd Rachel Shelden observations like this, grounded in thoughtful, University of Oklahoma

Beyond Freedom Disrupting the History of Emancipation David W. Blight and Jim Downs, eds.

hen, in January 1865, a delegation of black Wclergymen met with William Tecumseh Sherman in the wake of his March to the Sea, Federal officials bombarded them with questions. They wanted to know what, precisely, those once held in bondage understood freedom to mean— and whether their definition could be in any way reconciled to that proffered by the U.S. government. For the last four decades, scholars of the Civil War and Reconstruction have wrestled with much the same question. Emanating from a conference held at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (and collec- tively honoring the groundbreaking Freedmen David W. Blight and Jim Downs, eds. Beyond Free- and Southern Society Project), the eleven essays in dom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation Athens: Beyond Freedom seek to move in just such a direc- University of Georgia Press, 2017. 190 pp. ISBN: tion. Rather than positing an absolute contradic- 9780820351490 (paper), $24.95. tion between freedom and unfreedom, they exam- ine their ebb and flow in the postwar United States The volume’s opening salvos give these pro- and the ways shifting power dynamics shaped the cesses antebellum roots, in which the nascent formerly enslaved’s ability to enjoy their concep- political ideologies of the enslaved and the tions of freedom. In doing so, the writers reiterate broader intellectual and political ferment of the degree to which both emancipation and the the era collided. As Susan Eva O’Donovan sug- ensuing struggle for freedom, equality, inclusion, gests, markets for slave-produced goods created and political power were the result of ongoing, a current that circulated ideas and enslaved peo- contingent processes in which African Americans ple throughout the antebellum South; demo- continually struggled with (and sometimes pre- cratic capitalism’s designated drones thus pol- vailed over) communities, governments, and ideas. linated slave communities with conceptions

96 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS of liberty that profoundly shaped their ideolo- Rather than simply dwelling on the myriad gies and demands amid the postwar settlement. meanings Americans black and white imparted One idea they imbibed was that the Republican on freedom, the collection’s essays prod scholars Party was a mortal enemy of the peculiar institu- in fresh directions—particularly in the ways they tion. As James Oakes argues, they could hardly approach the archive. O’Donovan, for example, help but do so. To a degree that most histori- urges a close examination of the antebellum expe- ans have overlooked, southerners, the enslaved, riences of the enslaved in order to understand their and abolitionists alike knew all too well that the postbellum politics; Justin Behrend insists that party sought the demise of slavery via all con- only a profoundly local lens effectively clarifies stitutional means at its disposal. Paranoid Fire- the violence with which Reconstruction was rife. Eaters, it turns out, did indeed have enemies. Jim Downs’s contribution, meanwhile, provides The enslaved projected this hostility onto the invaluable context for scholars looking to deploy instruments of the state they encountered dur- the vast records of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He ing the Civil War, which encouraged them to argues that their responsible use requires a deeper forge new relationships with the federal govern- understanding of the questions and issues moti- ment as they fled to occupying armies—a pro- vating the bureau (particularly its preoccupation cess Chandra Manning interprets as a form of with the transition of the South’s labor regime), subaltern state-building. They did so, however, of the silences of the archive, and of the ways the amid a climate sown with hostility; as Richard bureau’s concerns diverged from those of the for- Newman points out, even as an antislavery merly enslaved people they nominally served. vocabulary permeated the American political Carole Emberton’s, Hannah Rosen’s, and lexicon, it had to contend with parallel assump- Thavolia Glymph’s pieces will be especially tions that global experiments in emancipation thought-provoking for historians (and readers) had failed and that African Americans were fun- who, through long familiarity with and expo- damentally unsuited for freedom. sure to it, have become inured to the unrelent- Despite this, African Americans seized any ing violence of the Civil War and Reconstruction. and all opportunities to perform their freedom. Emberton urges historians to create space to grieve As Brenda Stevenson chronicles, they particu- alongside the audience for whom they write— larly did so through marriage ceremonies that and to accord the wartime sufferings of the staked claims not only on legal sanction but enslaved the same status white grief has attained on class and gender statuses long denied them. in monuments and monographs. Rosen, mean- African Americans pressed the government while, engages with Saidiya Hartman’s warning in nearly every way: from the unprecedented against “endless recitations of the ghastly and the demands formerly enslaved women and chil- terrible” (145). She argues that Reconstruction’s dren made on the government to marriage cer- sexual violence must be deployed as an analyti- emonies to (in the 1870s) efforts to navigate the cal lens rather than a shock tactic and understood separation of legal and social equality through as a profoundly political act from which layers of inclusion at West Point (as Kate Masur nar- meaning can be derived. Finally, Glymph medi- rates). In so doing, they actively drove forward tates on a prayer a freedman uttered upon the loss the processes of emancipation—often despite of his children and from it urges historians to con- imposing opposition. tinually acknowledge and weigh the human costs

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(and particularly those borne by black women and reminiscent of a conference paper. This tactic children) involved in the emergence of freedom. invites the reader into an ongoing conversation There is much to laud in this pithy vol- alongside the authors. On the whole, Beyond ume. The component segments are remark- Freedom encourages historians to move past a ably trim—the longest a mere twenty pages, Manichaean understanding of Reconstruction’s most considerably shorter. Their brevity, how- triumphs and shortcomings and, thanks to the ever, lends weight to the authors’ contributions. valuable work encased therein, provides them The editors, moreover, are to be applauded for with a number of paths to follow in so doing. frequently eschewing the standard academic Robert Colby essay in favor of (in many cases) a style more University of North Carolina

Remembering Reconstruction Struggles over the Meaning of America’s Most Turbulent Era Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker, eds.

or several decades, historians have devoted Fsignificant attention to the memory of the U.S. Civil War. Books such as David Blight’s Race and Reunion and Caroline Janney’s Remembering the Civil War, among others, have analyzed the contours of postwar memory and the key groups and actors. However, despite consistent interest in Civil War memory, scholars have spent significantly less time considering Reconstruction memory. The ten essays in Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of America’s Most Turbulent Era seek to address this gap in the schol- arly literature by exploring how people remembered a turbulent era. Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker group the essays into four sections. The first addresses white supremacist memories of Reconstruction. According to K. Stephen Prince, the work of establishing Jim Crow took place “in the audi- toriums and print culture of the North” as Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker, eds. Remem- bering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of well as “the streets and convention halls of America’s Most Turbulent Era. Baton Rouge: Louisiana the South” (17). Jim Crow propagandists cast State University Press, 2017. 304 pp. ISBN: 9780807166024 (cloth), $45.00. Reconstruction as an unnatural and wicked

98 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS experiment. The white supremacist memory of However, Emberton is correct in pushing histori- Reconstruction, Prince concludes, was more an ans to be more attentive to vernacular memories. attempt to shape the future than a reflection of The third section, featuring essays by the past. While Prince studies the formation of a Mark Elliott, Natalie J. Ring, and Samuel L. white supremacist memory, Jason Morgan Ward Schaffer, discusses Reconstruction and U.S. explores, through analysis of the anti–poll tax empire. Elliott analyzes two conferences held campaign, the limits of this memory. Although in New York on the “Negro Question,” in southern white supremacists “viewed the racial 1890 and 1891. Northern conference orga- skirmishes of the Roosevelt era as a continuation nizers forged common ground with south- of struggle rather than as echoes of a bygone ern conference attendees. Consequently, the past,” cracks appeared (38). Carpetbagger analo- conferences “downplayed the importance of gies, for instance, “failed to unite white south- black political rights, lamented the mistakes of erners around a neo-Redeemer agenda” (50). Reconstruction, and accommodated proslavery The second section considers African ideology” (160). Elliott suggests links between American memories of Reconstruction. Shawn Reconstruction and overseas empire. His essay Leigh Alexander and Justin Behrend consider demonstrates how the white supremacists how T. Thomas Fortune and John R. Lynch chal- Prince discusses had significant northern help lenged the white supremacist memory Prince fashioning their memories of Reconstruction. and Ward outlined. Fortune created a counter- Natalie Ring’s essay, however, offers a very dif- memory designed to help African Americans ferent discussion of empire. Northern philan- understand and resist Jim Crow. This mem- thropists, southern liberals, and the federal gov- ory, Alexander concludes, was one of “survival, ernment linked the South and U.S. territorial resiliency, and perseverance amidst a life of ter- possessions. Efforts to uplift the southern popu- ror” (78). In The Facts of Reconstruction, John R. lation, especially poor white people, became a Lynch employed his own experiences to attack “domestic civilizing mission” sometimes called the white supremacist memory. Lynch’s book the “New Reconstruction” or “readjustment” did not alter the white supremacist memory, but, (174). The South and overseas territories pre- according to Behrend, it “did quench the thirst sented similar questions about the incorpora- of many African Americans looking for a firm tion of regions perceived as backward. Ring’s rebuke to the prevailing white supremacist ver- fascinating essay might have been a bit stron- sions of southern history” (101). In the final essay ger had she included a discussion of how white in the section, Carole Emberton analyzes Hannah southerners responded to being equated to Irwin’s account of a Ku Klux Klan raid. Although overseas territories. the account contained inaccuracies, Emberton Schaffer’s essay contends that the Civil War cautions readers against dismissing Irwin’s mem- and Reconstruction shaped Woodrow Wilson’s ories. Black vernacular memories, Emberton approach to the aftermath of World War I. argues, reflected a less celebratory understand- Wilson considered Reconstruction an unmiti- ing of Reconstruction than the “‘official’ counter- gated disaster because “harsh terms were foisted memories” of black intellectuals (111). This may upon a loser” and “the right political and social be true, but it should be noted that T. Thomas order was turned upside down” (207). Wilson’s Fortune’s understanding was hardly celebratory. flawed memory overstated the harshness of the

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victors’ terms. Although Schaffer argues that Bruce E. Baker concludes the volume by analyz- Wilson “held true to his belief that a puni- ing the 1970 South Carolina tricentennial. In the tive peace was detrimental to a lasting peace,” 1970s, South Carolina took steps toward creating Wilson nevertheless acquiesced on reparations a culture of racial inclusiveness: “The absence of and the war guilt clause (211). Schaffer explains the white supremacist narrative of Reconstruction this by stating that Wilson “was willing to make from most of the state indicates the readiness of these concessions for the sake of the League many—most—to accept that” (273). of Nations” (213). However, if Wilson was so Baker and Emberton are correct that schol- influenced by his (inaccurate) view of the con- ars have too long avoided substantive discus- sequences of a harsh peace, his failure to fight sions of the creation, maintenance, and ramifi- harder against reparations and the war guilt cations of Reconstruction memory. This collec- clause is baffling. The suggestion that Wilson’s tion makes an important contribution to fram- faith in the League of Nations was related to his ing and thinking through important questions. understanding of Reconstruction seems tenuous. At times, the essays might have spoken more The volume’s final section explores manifesta- directly to each other. In addition, a conclusion tions of Reconstruction memory in the post–civil and some illustrations would have strengthened rights era. Elaine Parsons analyzes depictions of the volume. However, these are small quib- the Ku Klux Klan in textbooks. She argues that bles and there is much to like about this book. “many generic elements of the Ku Klux Klan nar- Remembering Reconstruction will work well in rative in high school history textbooks are remark- graduate seminars and spark enduring conver- ably consistent” (226). Furthermore, troubling sations about Reconstruction memory. narrative elements, such as making the Klan cen- Evan C. Rothera tral to the story of Reconstruction and deempha- The Pennsylvania State University sizing black agency, persist in recent textbooks.

Scalawag A White Southerner’s Journey through Segregation to Human Rights Activism Edward H. Peeples, with Nancy MacLean

his book is one of the best memoirs ever teenage years, he had started rebelling against Twritten about the South. The author, the customs and practice of racism, and in adult Edward H. Peeples, is a white man from life, he became a civil rights activist and a well- Richmond, Virginia. He grew up in the rig- known specialist in the field of public health. idly segregated society of the 1930s and 1940s, “Scalawag” is a nineteenth-century term that but he began to question the racial orthodox- was used to ridicule white southerners who ies he learned from his family, the church, and defied the status quo, and as such, it is a fitting society at large. He tells a story of early private title for this volume. Peeples tells a riveting story doubts, followed by increasing defiance. By his of transformation.

100 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS

The origins of his rebellion can be found in his family. His father dominated the household without being able to provide for his wife and children, and he terrified everyone with his violent temper. Yet he believed in white supremacy and male supremacy. How was it, young Ed asked himself, that these twin supremacies did not translate into economic security or happi- ness for the family? His mother, Lula Peeples, managed to support her offspring with her meager income as a hairdresser. She was devoted to her children, even if she did not agree with Ed’s evolving political views. His grandmother, his father’s mother, lived in Lowcountry South Carolina and believed deeply in the Lost Cause culture, which he describes as filled with “indignation and melancholy” (6). The family somehow concealed the presence of William Brisbane, the prominent slaveholder-turned- Edward H. Peeples, with Nancy MacLean. Scalawag: abolitionist, in its genealogy, something that A White Southerner’s Journey through Segregation to Peeples discovered well into adulthood. Human Rights Activism. Charlottesville: University of The author gives a blunt account of the Virginia Press, 2014. 248 pp. ISBN: 9780813935393 (cloth), $30.00. class prejudices that working-class whites of his generation had to face. In the world of his youth, these children were not encouraged to city’s restaurants. He went on to a long career attend college or hope for anything beyond in activism. Along the way, he met a number of trade school. Many of his high school teach- famous progressives, including Eleanor Holmes ers deflated the aspirations of students from the Norton, Doug Wilder, Eleanor Roosevelt, and “wrong” neighborhoods, and the local Protestant Martin Luther King. He became involved in churches did not preach an egalitarian vision; the years-long effort to desegregate the pub- instead, they shored up the existing hierarchies lic school system in Prince Edward County, of class, race, and gender. But with his mother’s Virginia, and he assisted in disaster relief in the encouragement, Peeples enrolled in college at Gulf South. For many years, he played an active the Richmond Professional Institute, now part part in city politics in Richmond. of Virginia Commonwealth University. There, In addition to these accomplishments, Peeples a door opened. A gifted teacher named Alice had a long career in academia, as a scholar and Davis, a sociologist, encouraged her students teacher. He received a doctorate at the University to think for themselves and challenge wrong- of Kentucky in Lexington, an experience he thor- doing, which affected Peeples profoundly. His oughly enjoyed, but he continued to speak out increasing awareness of injustice led him to against bigotry. When he met basketball coach participate in the campaign to desegregate the Adolph Rupp by chance at a gas station, Peeples

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asked when the team would start recruiting black political scene, even as the Republican Party in athletes; Rupp scowled and gave a noncommittal the 1960s and 1970s embraced the racism he reply. Peeples served for several decades on the had grown up with a generation earlier. By the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, time of Richard Nixon, the party of Lincoln had where he taught medicine and sociology until turned into one that used code words to oppose 1995. He had a talent for friendship, and he racial equality. The reader wonders if national forged lasting alliances with progressive academ- events affected Peeples in some way, if only to ics, civil rights activists, and later, with feminists deepen his commitment to civil rights. But this and gay rights activists. Nonetheless, through- is not to take anything away from this remark- out his life he had to fend off verbal abuse and able book. Peeples keeps the focus on his princi- physical attacks from white reactionaries. Some pal theme of race and all that racism has done to of his own relatives shunned him, and for that harm black southerners and cripple white south- reason he found it especially comforting to learn erners. The narrative is exceptionally honest, and that his family tree included William Brisbane. it is written in clear, compelling prose. Scalawag His life reminds us, among other things, of the is an invaluable primary source for historians fierce resistance to desegregation; the role that that is also ideal for course adoption in classes on local people, white and black, played in bringing southern history, the history of the family, urban it to an end; and the high price that some of them history, the history of the civil rights movement, paid for their activism. and the history of human rights. Peeples is not very interested in two-party Joan E. Cashin politics, and he says little about the national Ohio State University

102 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Announcements

Connecting the Dots eirlooms are an important part of a family’s story. What is saved and why? HWhat clues do objects such as photos, scrapbooks, bibles, quilts and other keepsakes uncover about a family’s history? The Filson Historical Society’s exhibit Connecting the Dots features objects saved by families that settled in the Ohio River Valley. These keepsakes have been handed down from one family member to the next before being donated to the Filson Historical Society. We’ve paired these objects with documents from our library and archives such as vital sta- tistic records, census records, city directories, and manuscripts. In doing so we have discovered exciting new stories about these families. We hope this exhibit will inspire both new and experienced genealogist to look for clues to their own family histories in unexpected places. This exhibit is open through February 28, 2019, M-F 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Walk-ins welcome.

Louisville to Celebrate History of Life on the Ohio River; Filson Opening Exhibit on Shantyboat Life n 2019, the consortia project “Afloat: An Ohio River Way of Life” will take place Iin Louisville. Focusing on aspects of Ohio River history and life, “Afloat” is a partnership among area institutions and organizations to present programs and exhibits regarding this subject. As one of the partners, the Filson will open Shantyboat Life on the Ohio running January 4 through May 10, 2019, in the Bingham Gallery. Shantyboat Life on the Ohio will focus on the largely extinct shantyboat culture, as researched by former Filson director Mark Wetherington during his Senior Research Fellowship in 2016. Drawing from the Filson’s manuscript, photograph, print, and museum collections, the exhibit will present images, artifacts, and information documenting that history and culture. Life on the Ohio River is as old as the earliest residents of the Ohio Valley. The earliest documented “shantyboaters” were pioneers floating down the Ohio. They lived on the boats until reaching their destination in Louisville or elsewhere. The term “Kentucky boat” was commonly applied to these craft because they were heading for this new Eden. The boats were usually sold or dismantled to reuse their lumber, but a few families likely put to shore and lived on their craft for extended periods. As the nineteenth century passed into the twentieth these boat-based communities tended to cluster near or on the waterfronts of cities such as Louisville and Cincinnati. Their residents made their living on both the water and shore, fishing and working in factories and other businesses. Changing times changed the permanence (as migratory and somewhat transitory as they might be) of these communities and today they essentially are a thing of the past. Please visit www.filsonhistorical.org/exhibits for more information.

WINTER 2018 103 ANNOUNCEMENTS

Public Landing reopens in the Cincinnati History Museum tep back in time and onto the Public Landing. Walk the cobblestone streets Sof a bustling riverwalk and get a sense for a city built on pork, beer, inno- vation and determination. New, dynamic soundscapes fill a reimagined Public Landing, simulating raucous political debate, the clank and slosh of a German beer garden and the cobble-to-gangplank clatter of a wharf. Guests can wander into six new historic shops – a dressmaker, a printer, an open-air market, an expanded Ball and Thomas photography studio and more —and peek into the life of a tradesperson on the Western frontier. On the gangplank, meet the Queen City’s newest arrivals—perhaps your great-great grand- parents—and see how somebody moving their entire lives into the west would have packed their bags. Learn more at cincymuseum.org/historymuseum/public-landing.

Blog offers inside look at collections and preservation Off the Shelf ith millions of collection pieces at their fingertips, Cincinnati Museum WCenter’s curators have more stories to tell than can fit on the museum floor. Off the Shelf is a tour inside the stacks of Cincinnati Museum Center, a closer look at the tools and techniques of preservation and research. Cincinnati Museum Center’s collections include Archaeology, Archives and Manuscripts, Ethnology, History Objects and Fine Art, Invertebrate Paleontology, Minerology, Moving Images and Sound Recordings, Photographs and Prints, Printed Works, Vertebrate Paleontology and Zoology. Join the curators as they pull items off the shelf and reveal the stories behind them. Catch up with Off the Shelf atwww.cincymuseum.org/blog .

Temporary Library Closure he Cincinnati History Library & Archives at Cincinnati Museum Center Tis temporarily closed to the public to facilitate the restoration of historic Union Terminal. As a result, guests will be unable to visit the Cincinnati History Library but may still access the library’s online catalog, digital journals and other local history resources at library.cincymuseum.org. Limited service via telephone and email are available, but the library will remain closed to the public throughout the duration of the restoration project. We regret any inconvenience this may cause but hope that you will explore our online resources to support your research needs. We look forward to seeing you in the library again when the restoration project is completed. Please visit the library website at library.cincymuseum.org for updates and additional information.

104 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Submission Information for Contributors to

One digital copy of the manuscript, saved in Microsoft Word, *Regarding general form and style, please follow the should be sent by email to: 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. For specific style guidelines, please visit The Filson’s web- Matthew Norman, Editor or LeeAnn Whites, Editor site at: http://www.filsonhistorical.org/programs- Ohio Valley History Ohio Valley History and-publications/publications/ohio-valley-history/ Asst. Professor of History Director of Research submissions/submissions-guidelines.aspx. University of Cincinnati Filson Historical Society Blue Ash College 1310 South 3rd Street The refereeing process for manuscripts is blind. Referees 9555 Plainfield Road Louisville, KY 40208 are members of our editorial board or other specialists in Blue Ash, OH 45236 [email protected] the academy most appropriate to each manuscript. We have [email protected] no quotas of any kind with regard to authorship, topic, chronological period, or methodology—the practitioners *Preferred manuscript length is 20 to 25 pages via their submissions determine what we publish. Authors (6,000 to 7,500 words), exclusive of endnotes. must guarantee in writing that the work is original, that it *Please use Times New Roman, 12-point font. has not been previously published, and that it is not under *Double-space text and notes, with notes placed at consideration for publication elsewhere in any form. the end of the manuscript text. Accepted manuscripts undergo a reasonable yet rigorous *Include author’s name, institutional affiliation, editing process. We will read the manuscript closely as to and contact information (postal address, phone style, grammar, and argument. The edited manuscript will be number, and email address) on separate cover submitted to the author for consideration before publication. page. Only the article title should appear on the The Filson Historical Society (FHS), Cincinnati first page of the article. Museum Center (CMC), and the University of Cincinnati *Illustrations, tables, and maps that significantly (UC) hold jointly the copyright for all material published enhance the article are welcome. in Ohio Valley History. After a work is published in the *Authors who submit images should also provide journal, FHS/CMC/UC will grant the author, upon writ- citations, captions, credits, and suggestions for ten request, permission to republish the work, without fee, placement of images. subject to the author giving proper credit of prior publication to Ohio Valley History. Each author will receive five free copies of the journal in which the published article appears.

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