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ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio For the Year Ending December 3, 1917 CINCINNATI THE ABINGDON PRESS OFFICERS FOR 1917-18. JOSEPH WILBY, - PRESIDENT. FRANK J. JONES, - VICE-PRESIDENT. HOWARD C. HOLLISTER, VICE-PRESIDENT. CHARLES T. GREVE, - CORRESPONDING SECRETARY. FREDERICK W. HINKLE, RECORDING SECRETARY. LARZ W. ANDERSON, TREASURER. MISS L. BELLE HAMLIN, LIBRARIAN. ALBERT H. CHATFIELD, DAVIS L. JAMES, MERRICK WHITCOMB, - }• CURATORS. ELLIOTT H. PENDLETON, JAMES W. BULLOCK, - The meetings of the Society are held in its rooms in the Van Wormer Library Building, Burn^t Woods, at three in the afternoon of the first Satur- day of each month from October to May. The Library is a free public Library, open to visitors daily, except Sun- day, from nine A. M. to five P. M. ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio for 1917 LIBRARIAN'S REPORT DECEMBER 3D, 1917. To the President and Members of the Society: I have the honor to submit this report for the corporate year ending to-day. The donations to the library have been 115 volumes; 1650 pamphlets; several bound volumes of Cincinnati newspapers of comparatively early dates and unbound volumes of the New York Times for 1916 and part of 1917; also, a quantity of manu- scripts, several portraits, and other gifts of a miscellaneous na- ture, of which further mention will be made below. We have purchased 51 volumes, crediting the Elizabeth Haven Appleton fund with 19; the Margaret Rives King fund with 28; the Society of Colonial Dames fund with 4; and 59 vol- umes have been added by the binding of pamphlets and exchange. These with the volumes donated aggregate 225, increasing the total number in our collection to 27,222. Several maps have been credited to the Appleton fund. Over a year ago the Hon. Joseph Benson Foraker gave to us an extensive collection of manuscript letters which were written largely by men of prominence in the political arena. The gift was held in his office for additions and particularly for copies of his own answers to these letters, having agreed to supply them after it had been shown how much they would enhance the value of the collection. Illness, however, retarded this labor until finally Death came in May last ending all of his life-work. This collection was forwarded to the library last summer by Mrs. Foraker with the welcome information that the work was being continued and later we would receive the additions. These 155 letters were written by two hundred or more correspondents— too many to be mentioned singly at the present time. When completed and properly arranged, the collection will be known as the "Joseph Benson Foraker Manuscripts." The Hon. James E. Campbell presented the Society with an original document that he thought ought to be in our files as it related to this city. It is "An Act to remove the seat of Govern- ment and fix the same at Cincinnati in the county of Hamilton" and reads as follows: "Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Legislative Council and House of "Representatives in General Assembly and it is hereby enacted "by the authority of the same That the seat of Government of "the Territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio "shall be and the same is hereby fixed and established at the "Town of Cincinnati in the county of Hamilton and that the "sessions of the Legislature shall in future be held in the said "Town of Cincinnati until otherwise determined by law." Then follows Section 2, and the certification of John Reily, Clerk of the House of Representatives that "this bill passed on Monday, the "21st of December, 1801." Mr. Isaac Anderson Loeb, of Anderson, Indiana, forwarded an interesting broadside, consisting of a Proclamation by Thomas J. Stephens, Mayor of Cincinnati, dated March 30, 1884, direct- ing persons to desist from lawlessness and calling upon all good citizens to rally for the preservation of the public peace, etc. This is a memento of the Cincinnati riot of that time. A gift of choice manuscript letters has been received by the Society from Miss Annie L. Roelker. It consists of 387 letters of a social nature, addressed to the Hon. William Greene, and appear to have been written by close personal friends. One third of these were written by Frederick Grimke, Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio and an author, who died in Chillicothe in 1863. About 50 of the collection were written by Thomas Corwin; 16 by Ephraim Peabody, for several years minister of the Unitarian church of Cincinnati; 10 by Salmon P. Chase; 21 by W. and A. Lovering; 7 by Henry Clay; 8 by John Pierpont; and there are from 1 to 3 letters from others, John Quincy Adams; Wendell Phillips, Julia Ward Howe, Hiram Powers, Daniel Drake, Orville I56 Dewey, A. A. Livermore, Daniel Webster, Joseph Tillinghast, Timothy Walker, David B. Lawler, Frances Wright (d'Arus- mont), and from Rufus King, Sen., Edward King, Rufus King, Jr., Mrs. Sarah Peters, et al. Besides these letters are a number of essays or compositions which may have been read at the old Semi-colon Society of this city, of which Mr. Greene was one of the originators and the reader of the papers prepared by the members. With the manuscripts is a scrap-book of clippings (from newspapers) of articles from the pen of the Hon. William Greene the original owner of this manuscript collection. He was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, January 1, 1797, the son of Ray Greene, U. S. Senator, grandson of Colonial Governor William Greene, 1731-1809, and great grandson of William Greene, an earlier Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island. After his graduation from Brown University he attended the Law School at Litchfield, Connecticut, from which he was graduated in 1817, and at the instigation of a classmate, son of Governor Ethan Allen Brown, he came west and became the Governor's secretary, living in Columbus. Two years later, 1819, he came to Cincinnati where he practiced law but was far more interested in politics and in matters of civic interest, although he never held office in Ohio. He was a strong abolitionist and was active in the William Henry Harrison campaign; was for many years a Trustee of the School Board with Nathan Guilford and Alexander McGuffey; and, he was one of the founders of the Unitarian church of this city. In 1821 he was married to Abigail Brackett Lyman, of North- ampton, Massachusetts, and upon her death in 1862 he returned to Rhode Island, living on the ancestral farm. In 1866 he served one term as Lieut. Governor for that State. The year following he married Mrs. Caroline Burge Matthewson, who survived him. His death occurred in March, 1883. He had two children by his first wife, Anne Jean who died in 1831, and Catherine Ray, born in Cincinnati Nov. 20, 1824, who married Feb. 1, 1853, Frederick Roelker, M. D., of Cincinnati, and it is to his daughter, Annie L. Roelker, that we are indebted for this valuable and useful gift. Mr. Aaron A. Ferris presented to us two broadsides that are of interest to residents of the city: Soldiers Memorial of the Span- ish War of 1898, contains a Roll of members of Company M, 10th Regiment, O. V. Infantry; and a Charter of the Delta Chap- 157 ter of the Phi Beta Kappa in the State of Ohio, in connection with the University of Cincinnati; also, 12 scrap-books of news- paper clippings, and 2 volumes of the Cincinnati Tribune, 1893, besides other volumes and numerous pamphlets. A most attractive portrait of our Cincinnati artist, Charles T. Webber, painted during the latter part of his life by Miss Alary Spencer, has been given by her to the Society. It is a welcome addition to our collection of portraits of eminent men of the city, and the value of the gift is enhanced by the fact that it is the work of another well-known Cincinnati artist. Mr. Webber came to this city in 1858 and died here April 5, 1911, at the age of 85. Of his many paintings the best known is the "Underground Rail- way." A list of the subscribers to the fund for the purchase of this painting of Webber's, accompanied the gift. Miss Spencer presented also a pen and ink copy, of 15 pages, of a rare old manuscript in Mexican hieroglyphics, accompanied by explanatory notes in English. It is a curious and interesting paper. From Mrs. W. R. Thrall we have received a fine engraving, size 36 x 45, engraved by John Sartain, from the painting "Men of Progress—American Inventors" painted by C. Schussele in 1861 at Philadelphia. It represents nineteen of the best-known inventors, of that date, evidently in attendance at a scientific gathering. The central figure being Morse exhibiting a small model of his electric telegraph, and surrounding him are Dr. Morton, Bogardus, Colt, McCormick, Baxter, Peter Cooper, Goodyear, Mott, Prof. Henry, Dr. Nott, Ericsson, Burden, Hoe, Bigelow, Jennings, Blanchard, and Howe. Mrs. Theodore Stanwood sent to the library a large sized pho- tograph of one of our eminent physicians, Dr. John Alexander Murphy, who died in this city February 28, 1900. Miss Jane C. Neave has given an old account book of Charles Neave covering dates 1829 to 1852, and another one containing accounts of Halsted Neave, 1868-1872; a silhouette cut in a cu- rious manner; a currency bill of 1781 and a Wheeling, Va., Ga- zette of early date.