Source:
1789 - 1881
History of Cincinnati, Ohio
with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches
Compiled by Henry A. Ford, A. M., and Mrs. Kate B. Ford
 L. A. Williams & Co., Publishers
1881

CHAPTER XVIII.
Literature

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     The Queen City has done worthy deeds in the field of letters, as well as in more material realms.  Her men of intellect and scholarship have not only won their way in the professions and at mercantile and manufacturing employments, but have left enduring memorials illustrating many and important walks of literature.  The books by Cincinnati authors would fill a large library.  The story of the rise, development, and present state of literature in Cincinnati would itself easily fill a volume.  We shall in this chapter merely attempt an outline of its beginnings, with some notices of the authors and works of the various periods of the city’s history, particularly those less familiar to readers and inquirers of the present generation.

THE DRAKES.

EDWARD D. MANSFIELD, LL. D.,

J. G. STOWE.

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JUDGE BURNET

MR. FLINT

THE CISTS.

OTHER HISTORIANS.

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LOCAL BIOGRAPHY,

by local authors, has been by no means neglected.  Lives of Dr. Daniel Drake, by his brother-in-law,  Mr. E. D. Mansfield; of Dr. John  Locke, by Dr. M. B. Wright; of the Hon. Larz Anderson, by the Rev. I. N. Stanger; James H. Perkins, the well known editor and annalist, by Rev. B. F. Barrett; Judge Thomas Morris, an eminent resident in Columbia and in Clermont county for many years, by his son; Samuel Lewis, the first State superintendent of public schools in Ohio, also by a son; Rev. Truman Bishop, by John Haughton; Rev. Philip Gatch, another of the early Methodist ministers in the Miami county, by the Hon. John McLean, justice of the supreme court of the United States; Mrs. Charlotte Chambers Ludlow, one of the pioneer ladies here, in a privately printed memoir by her grandson, Mr. Lewis H. Garrard; the Rev. Adam Hurdus, first minister of the Swedenborgian faith west of the Alleghanies, by Judge A. G. W. Carter; Judge Jacob Burnet, by Mr. D. K. Este, and again by the Rev. Samuel W. Fisher; the Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the reputed President of the Underground Railway; the Life, Public Services, and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes, by J. Q. Howard; the Memorial of William Spooner, 1837, and of his Descendants to the Third Generation, and of his Great grandson, Elnathan Spooner, and of his Descendants to 1871, by Thomas Spooner; and of Samuel E. Foote, by his brother John P. Foote, have been prepared in the shape of book, address, or sermon, and published in Cincinnati. The Personal Memories of the Hon. E. D. Mansfield, 1879; the Autobiography of Rev. J. B. Finley, 1857; and the Narrative of Indian Captivity, by Oliver M. Spencer, which has been published in three editions, belong mainly to this category.  The lives of leading Cincinnatians were written up briefly and published, with photographic portraits accompanying, in Cincinnati Past and Present, or its Industrial History, as exhibited in the Life Labors of its Leading Men, 1872, of which a German edition was also published.  Many other local biographical sketches appear in the Biographical Encyclopaedia of Ohio, of the nineteenth century, published in Cincinnati and Philadelphia in 1876, and the Biographical Cyclopaedia and Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Men, a great work issued in Cincinnati by Messrs. John C. Yorston & Company. Lives of General Harrison were prepared here in 1840, by Charles S. Todd and Benjamin Drake; in 1836, by Judge James Hall; and in 1824, by Moses Dawson, the well-known editor of the Cincinnati Advertiser.  It is a little remarkable, however, that out of eighty-three printed funeral orations, sermons, and other eulogies pronounced upon the death of General Harrison, only one belongs to Cincinnati—a sermon preached by the Rev. Joshua L. Wilson, pastor of the First Presbyterian church.  Only one of the nine Harrison campaign song-books mentioned in Thomson’s Bibliography was of Cincinnati compilation—the Tippecanoe Song-book, a little affair of sixty-four pages.  Judge Joseph Cox’s address before the Cincinnati Literary Club, Feb. 4, 1871, on General W. H. Harrison at North Bend, should be honorably mentioned in this connection.  A Eulogy on the Death of General Thomas L. Harmar was pronounced by David L. Disney, esq., of this city, and published in 1847.  A Life of Black Hawk, 1838, is included among the writings of Benjamin Drake; also a Life of Tecumseh, and of his brother the Prophet.  It is said that the late Peyton Short Symmes, for some time before his death, was engaged upon a life of his distinguished uncle, Judge Symmes; but if so, the manuscript has never been discovered, and an invaluable work is lost to the world.  Mr. Symmes was a highly useful man in his day; but his performance was never quite equal to his promise.  Mr. William T. Coggeshall, in his book on “Poets and Poetry of the West,” published in 1860, says of this gentleman:

     His recollections of men and places, of writers, of periodicals, and of books, extend over the entire history of literary enterprises of Ohio.  He deserves to be remembered, not only for what he has written, but for what he has done to encourage others to write.  For fifty years at least he has been the ready referee on questions of art and literature for nearly all the journalists and authors of Cincinnati, and a kindly critic for the inexperienced who, before rushing into print, were wise enough to seek good advice.

THE ANTIQUITIES OF CINCINNATI

have been described and discussed in the pamphlet by have been described and discussed in the pamphlet by Mr. Robert Clarke, already mentioned; in papers by General M. F. Force on Pre-historic Man and The Mound Builders, bound up in the same volume with an essay on Darwinism and Deity; another by the same writer, To what Race did the Mound Builders Belong?  in the same book with a paper by Judge Force on Some
Early Notices of the Indians of Ohio; and in A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, by General W. H. Harrison, 1839, a production which is warmly esteemed.  A valuable pamphlet on The Pre-historic Monuments of the Little Miami Valley, with chart of localities, has been issued by Dr. Charles L. Metz, of Madisonville; and three or four parts of Archaeological Explorations by the Literary and Scientific Society of Madi

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sonville, by Mr. Charles F. Low, secretary of the society.  In 1839 a remarkably handsome quarto, for the time, was published here by N. G. Burgess & Company, entitled An Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America, by John Delafield, which attracted the marked attention of the North American Review and other learned authorities.  In 1879 Messrs. Clarke & Company published a neat duodecimo by a Butler county author, Mr. J. P. MacLean, on The Mound Builders.

OTHER SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS,

ART PUBLICATIONS.

MEDICAL WORKS.

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LAW BOOKS.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS.

THE JEWISH LITERATURE

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MISCELLANEOUS.

SOME EARLIER WRITERS.

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ALICE CARY

PHOEBE CARY

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     The Cary Sisters

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OTHER LITERATI.

     Edward A. McLaughlin

     James W. Ward

     James Birney Marshall

     Cornelius A. Logan

     Mrs. Sophia H. Oliver

     Mrs. Margaret L. Bailey

     William Dana Emerson

     Edwin R. Campbell

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     Mrs. Rebecca . (Reed) Nichols

     Mrs. Catharine A. (Ware) Warfield

     Mrs. Susan W. Jewett

     Mrs. Luella J. B. Case

     Miss Mary A. Foster

     Mrs. Mary E. Fee Shannon

     Mrs. Celia M. Burr

     Austin T. Earle

     Horace S. Minor

     Benjamin St. James Fry

     William W. Fosdick

     Peter Fishe Reed

     William Penn Brannan

     Benjamin T. Cushing

     Mr. Obed J. Wilson

     Alfred Burnett

     Mrs. Helen Truesdell

     Mrs. Anna S. (Richey) Roberts

     Mrs. Frances (Sprengle) Locke

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     William D. Howells

     General William H Lytle

     James Pummil

     John T. Swartz

     Mr. John James Piatt

     Miss Eloria Parker

     Mrs. Cornelia E. Laws

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