The cumulative effects of a generation of misgovernment have made the task a difficult one for Cincinnati to retrieve itself and catch up to the progress of other cities. What has been accomplished toward this end in recent years is but a small though hopeful start in the right direction. It is essential that all who have the true welfare of Cincinnati at heart should take active part in fostering the excellent work under way in our schools, and just started in our park and health departments. Further, the more active and enlightened civic intelligence which is beginning to assert itself in this community should be encouraged, to the end that all will appreciate the necessity for good government before Cincinnati may take her proper place among the cities of the country.

CHAPTER III.

POTPOURRI.

A SERIES OF ARTICLES ENTERTAININGLY WRITTEN-WOMEN OF CINCINNATI-BENEFACTIONS OLD INNS AND WAYFARING TOUR OF THE CITY—PARKS FAMOUS HOMES THEATRES-CINCINNATI RED STOCKINGS-EMINENT DEAD IN SPRING GROVE CEMETERY.

WOMEN OF CINCINNATI-MARY MACMILLAN.

No, romance is not dead in the world-not while there are women. And even a modern American city may have its legendary romance or its romantic legend like Sparta and Troy and Rome of old. Cincinnati has a quaint story of her origin but then Cincinnati, of course, is essentially picturesque in her history and topography and everything else. Whether the tale is true or not nobody can prove but there is significance in the fact that it was believed by the early settlers themselves, among them Judge Burnet who tells it in a style of jocoseness and gallantry peculiar to his time. Of the three new settlements, Columbia, Losantiville, and North Bend, which were struggling for the breath of life, North Bend had the advantage of being the residence of the patentee, John Cleves Symmes. He demanded, begged and cajoled the government for military protection until a rather thin detail of troops was sent out. The young officer in command, Ensign Luce, true to military practice immediately fell in love. The Helen of the settlement was the wife of a small merchant who proceeded to move from North Bend to Losantiville in order to have his spouse away from the officer's enchanting presence. But the ensign forthwith followed and decided of course that where his inamorata dwelt was the proper location for an army post. With the fort came military protection and the supremacy of Losantiville over the other settlements. And so, if the story be true, Cincinnati owes her origin, her life, to the charms of a woman. Whatever sort of siren she was, however, who sang the young Ensign Luce up the river from North Bend, Cincinnati women have been pre-eminently mothers, nourishers. The name of the Indian tribe who lived in this land of old was Miami, which is said to mean mothers. Whether or not the element of it, the quality of motherhood and all that it denotes, existed in the forests and the soil and the virtue of it was taken in by the women who came here, who can say? The women of Cincinnati have always been of that quality, mothers, nourishers. The history of the city with, of course, the sporadic exceptions of the very unusual, is exactly the history of her womanhood. It has changed and developed in hopes and ambitions and qualifications as the women have changed. But through every change they have

kept and possess still most strongly of all the essential quality of womanhood, the mother, the nourisher.

Of the pioneers in Cincinnati there was a preponderance from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This meant an ancestry of English, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish. They were people of endurance, pluck, mettle. A great many of them were Revolutionary soldiers or the sons of Revolutionary soldiers come west after the impoverishing war to retrieve their fortunes in the rich primeval lands. The women were the wives, daughters, sisters, of such men. They, too, had passed through the war. These women had in them, moreover, the element of the pioneer-that element which we who dwell in walls and upon pavements see little of. They loved the open country, the free life. They loved the silence of the forest and its teeming animation. They were willing to endure privations, hardships, danger, for the sake of these and of the glory to come. They were women of bravery and decision. A story is told of one of them who fired a gun to signal the men to come from their work in the fields. The women were in the blockhouse and while the Indians were not especially hostile at that time, it was feared that they might come to steal horses and the women were to fire a gun in that event. The red thieves came, surely enough, and the woman who shot off her musket decided coolly that she might as well aim at an Indian. That she hit him was evidenced by the blood on the snow in the track of the Indians who fled when the white men came running from their work.

Another story showing the mettle of the women, is that of Mrs. Pryor of White's Station where Carthage now lies. Indians were besieging the block-house and Mrs. Pyor was alone with her children, cut off from the other inhabitants of the Station by the creek. Her first intimation of danger was the crack of a rifle and an Indian had shot her wee four-year-old girl in the yard. Mrs. Pryor ran out and carried in the little body. She had no time for grief or thought, for in a moment an Indian was approaching the house and she realized that if she stayed there she and the other two children would be killed. She was not strong enough to carry them both and so, praying that the Indians might spare the baby because it was so very little, she caught up the two-year-old boy and ran, plunging waist deep into the cold waters of the creek. She made her escape to the block-house, but when the siege was raised and a return made for the baby, the Indians had dashed out its brains against a stump near the cabin. This was in October 1793 before Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers which was the first and only thing to secure safety to the pioneers from the Indians.

The early history of Cincinnati buds, like Aaron's rod, with romantic tales which could be woven into novels. Still another is that of Louisa St. Clair, the governor's daughter, who was a dashing, rollicking, fascinating girl. When her father was appointed governor he was also commissioned to make terms with the Indians but failed to win over one chief, Captain Brant. Louisa, dressed in Indian fashion, mounted a pony and rode with a communication supposed to be from her father, to the camp of young Brant, who had been to college and was a man of some education and refinement, and had met her before. The girl failed in her mission but the young chief fell in love with her, followed her back home, was introduced to her father and proposed for her hand several times.

Unfortunately there is little of what is considered actual record, which is in reality the very questionable record, of ink, of the women of the early days of Cincinnati. After General Wayne's victory over the Indians at Fallen Timbers. in 1794 and his subsequent treaty of peace with them, there were no more massacres nor even small dangers from the savages. The great Mad Anthony had cut their claws, poor, pathetic, untamable creatures that they were. And the women of Cincinnati were left to their necessary duties of a new settlement. There was spinning and sewing and the ordinary occupations of household and garden, and the care of the poor and the sick.

The woman who seems to be the example and at the same time the acme of early Cincinnati womanhood, was Charlotte Chambers Ludlow. Her husband, Israel Ludlow, was one of the three original proprietors of the place. When the lots were parcelled out, he preferred to take his share in a farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres seven miles from town rather than in town lots. This farm was where Cumminsville now stands.

Charlotte Chambers was of Scotch descent, being the grand-daughter of Benjamin Chambers who was the founder of Chambersburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father was James Chambers, a general in the Colonial army in the Revolution and afterwards a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. Her mother was a daughter of Captain Robert Patterson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Charlotte is described as more than ordinarily beautiful in her personal and mental endowments. She was above medium height, with pleasing contour and graceful, with fair complexion, rich brown hair, hazel eyes, aquiline nose, and lovely mouth. To these charms add characteristics which were particularly admired and desired in her time or in any time, for that matter-wit, amiability, cheerfulness. Very evidently she possessed social tact and it is related of her that she was given to harmless "raillery"-a beautiful word so completely lost sight of nowadaysand could tell anecdotes with delightful vivacity. She seems to have been a joyous girl with much sense and good judgment and a rare poetic appreciation. Her philosophy and descriptions even in her earliest letters, are picked out in words that give them verve and grace.

To

She portrays with quaintness and artlessness a levee or drawing-room at President Washington's mansion in Philadelphia. She writes her mother that she wore a white brocade silk, with white high-heeled shoes embroidered with silver, a light blue sash with silver cord and tassel tied at her left side. Her watch was suspended at her right side and her hair was in natural curls, surmounting all was a white hat with white ostrich feather and brilliant band and buckle. Mrs. Washington's courtesy Charlotte returned a courtesy, "calculating my declension to her own with critical exactness." She seems to have made a hit with the president and his lady and small wonder-the sweet young girl in all her fair white finery and was entertained at their home and table intimately afterwards. In 1796 Charlotte Chambers married Israel Ludlow and started for the west on horseback through the vast forests and over the Alleghenies. They made several visits by the way and came down the Ohio in a boat from Pittsburgh. When she arrived at her new home Major Ziegler told her that the ladies of Cincinnati were not gay but extremely affectionate one to another. The wife of John Cleves Symmes, Miss Livingston of New York, and his daughter who was the