TRAVELLING NOTES.

A Genuine Patriarch.-The gentleman who supplied me with the preceding notes upon the history of Clark county was a lawyer, then forty-three years of age-E. H. Cumming, Esq. On this tour I had the pleasure of again meeting him; a venerable octogenarian, the Rev. E. H. Cumming, of the Episcopal Church, and in his physique the very ideal of a patriarch. He is somewhat tall, wears a long surtout, walks with a cane, his headcovering a tall, soft, white hat, upper part cylindrical, beard and hair long, white, and flowing down his shoulders, eyes blue, with drooping lids, nose thin, aquiline, and prominent, and general expression grave and thoughtful. His portrait is here given as he

A PATRIARCH.

was in 1870, eighteen years ago, and without his knowledge. I hope it will prove a pleasing surprise to him if he be living when this is printed. This I do from a sentiment of gratitude to a gentleman, the only one I know of now living of the many who aided me on my original edition. He lives in the old Warder mansion under the hill, with a fine view of the distant spires of Springfield, and upon the margin of the valley of the Lagonda, which stream flows in quiet beauty through grassy meadows around the town.

Mr. Cumming was born in New Jersey in 1804.

He studied law at the famous school of Judge Gould, on Litchfield hill, when the Beechers were living there, and in their budding days; was admitted to the bar of Clark county in 1831, which he left for the ministry in 1849. There is not in practice a single member of the bar save one in the wide range of Darke, Preble, Montgomery, Miami, Shelby, Champaign, and Clark counties who was in practice when he was admitted.

Chat About Interesting People.-Mr. Cumming's acquaintance with interesting people has been unusual, and he abounds in anecdotes. Old gentlemen who lived in the time of Tom Corwin love to talk of him, and he is not an exception. Corwin's father (said Mr.

Cumming) came from Morris county, N. J.; his mother was a native of Long Island, and daughter of a sea-captain. Thomas was born in Bourbon county, Ky., was quite a lad when his father moved into Warren county, and settled on Turtle creek. It was a common thing for eastern emigrants to Kentucky, in moderate circumstances, through disgust of slavery to feel as though it was no place to raise a family, and so they moved to the north side of the Ohio. Such was the case with Mathias Corwin.

Anecdotes of Corwin.-Mr. Corwin was a farmer, and the services of his young son Thomas were at this time especially important. He told me that his older brother was clerk of court. and that he was extremely desirous of obtaining an education, and importuned his father to that end. He replied that in the condition of the family he could not spare his services; that he must remain with him and work on the farm. "A little while after this," continued Corwin, "I broke my leg. Competent surgical assistance was difficult to procure. Time passed very tediously and life irksome, when one day I got hold of a Latin grammar, and I became so deeply interested that I committed it entirely by heart. This awakened in me with renewed vigor the desire for an education. I again importuned my father and he again denied me, whereupon I again, and purposely, broke my leg to get the leisure for study. Upon this, my father seeing the folly of opposing me, gave in, and I pursued my education with my brother.

His brother, Mr. Cumming said, was a good English scholar, and had a fair knowledge of Latin. All the teaching Corwin had was through him; he never was a college man. Mr. Corwin acquired quickly and retained tenaciously. He was very proud of his Hungarian descent, and regarded whatever talent he possessed as of that lineage.

It was extremely interesting when Mr. Corwin returned from Congress to listen to his characteristic anecdotes of public men with whom he had associated. Being a Kentuckian by birth, he was very fond of the Society of Southern and Western men. He had a large circle of acquaintances; his social nature was pre-eminent. His extraordinary dramatic power, his keen sense of the ludierous, was shown on these occasions. The mobility of his countenance was wonderful, and all was helped on by the movement of hands, head, and eyes, and when he laughed he set everybody else in a roar. When in Cincinnati he was in the habit of stopping over night at the Burnet House, and from his social qualities was wont to gather a knot of listeners around him. It is related of him that on one of these occasions the group sat out the entire night, and were only dispersed by the light of morning breaking in upon them. They were, however, about half-dead from their social intoxication. Nobody could get tired listening, he was so brilliant and witty.

Gen. Samson Mason (said Mr. Cumming) was of marked ability. He served several

consecutive terms in Congress from this district. John Q. Adams in his "Diary" frequently in his writings speaks of him and in high regard. He had but a common-school education; was born in 1793 in New Jersey, and came here in 1818 a poor young man. He had tarried for a short time at Chillicothe, made friends, and some noble spirit there had become interested in the young man and given him a horse, and he journeyed on his back to Springfield. He became distinguished in all the relations of life, and in 1841 united with the Presbyterian Church, and was an active Christian, his heart all alive for doing good. In Fillmore's administration he was United States district-attorney for Ohio.

Charles Anthony, or General Anthony, as he was called (continued Mr. Cumming), was a prominent member of the bar here from 1824 to 1862. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, of Richmond, Va. In the Harrison campaign of 1840 he acquired great reputation as a stump speaker. He was United States Attorney for Ohio in the Harrison-Tyler administration. He died in 1862 and was buried with Masonic honors. Hon. Samuel Shellabarger studied law here under Samson Mason and represented this district for several terms in Congress during the war His reputation for legal capacity and integrity is national. He has resided for many years in Washington. He is one of those characters that when spoken of the word "honest is often coupled with the

era.

name.

The Frankensteins.-A very talented family in the way of art is the Frankenstein family. The parents emigrated from Germany in 1831, bringing with them four sons and two daughters. They lived in Cincinnati for many years, and since 1849 made their home in Springfield or rather what is left of them through the changes of time.

Godfrey N., the second son, born in 1820, died in 1873, was the most noted of the family. The great work of his life was his panorama of Niagara. He spent the greater part of the time between 1844 and 1866, twenty-two years, in depicting the scenery of the falls on canvas in all seasons of the year, in the coldest wintry weather, and alike in summer, by day and night, and from every conceivable point.

In 1867 he visited Europe, sojourning a while in England, painting some English scenes, and spent a season in company with his younger brother, Gustavus Frankenstein, among the Alps. On their return to London it was acknowledged that Mont Blanc and Chamouni valley had never before been painted with such power and beauty.

After an absence of two years he returned to America, in April, 1869, and in the following autumn he went to one of his cherished streams, Little Miami river, near Foster's Crossings, twenty-two miles from Cincinnati, and painted Governor Morrow's old mill, two views of it, one looking up the stream, the other down the stream.

The loveliness of these two scenes is inde

scribable. The following season, 1870, finds him again in the same vicinity, fairly throwing the sunshine on the canvas. In the month of January, 1871, the artist met with a severe loss in the death of his mother, from the effects of which he never fully recovered.

In the autumn of the same year he went to the White Mountains, accompanied by his sister Eliza, where they both painted from nature. In November, 1872, he painted his last scene from nature, Mad River, Fern Cliffs, three miles from Springfield, Ohio. He contracted a cold, which culminated in a very brief, severe illness in the following February, lasting ten days, and on the morning of February 24, 1873, he breathed his last. His industry was wonderful, and he possessed one of the largest collections of landscape paintings in the world, never having parted with but one of his original pictures.

near

The Frankenstein homestead is a picturesque spot, the house old and brown. It is half enveloped in shrubbery, and when, after making a sketch, I approached the place I found the yard filled with lilacs about ready to spring into bloom. His sister answered my knock with pallet and brush in hand, an earnest, busy little woman. It was dusk, and she seemed almost too much absorbed in her painting even to talk. I tried to get a smile on her face, but there was no laugh in her. This was Eliza, the youngest of the family, who had always accompanied Godfrey on his sketching tours, and he often said the most peaceful, happiest moments of his life were those when he and she together went to paint from nature. There was a calm enthusiasm in her talk about her brother that was extremely pleasing. The love of a sister for a brother is better than houses and gold, and this one said that her brother was not only the greatest landscape painter that America ever had, but the greatest the world ever knew. Perhaps he was. Who knows? It took a Ruskin to show mankind the greatness of Turner. One thing is certain, a more devout student of nature than he could not be. His pictures are very beautiful and original. They are generally small and as painstaking as anything of Messonier, and no artist ever had more enthusiastic admirers than some of those who possess his works. They say they are a continual feast, always lift them into the realms of the beautiful.

Godfrey Frankenstein was simple-hearted, guileless as a child, and modesty itself. In his dying moments he was heard to utter a few low words in German. It was a prayer to the God of love to receive his spirit. I knew Godfrey Frankenstein. Once in a call at my fireside among other things he told me this anecdote of a child. "Tommy Watkins," said he (the name is hypothetical),

is a very comical five-year-old boy in our neighborhood. In their front yard was a noble peony in bloom, and, missing it, his mother inquired if he knew what had become of it. 'Mother,' he replied, looking up honestly in her face, I picked it; I can't tell a lie. Now, ain't I like Georgie Washington?' His mother, in a spirit of pride, mentioned it to one of the neighbors, whereupon the latter burst into a laugh, saying: It is no such thing; I saw Jimmy Williams pick it as he was coming home from school.'

Worthington Whittridge, artist, was born in Springfield in 1820. Francis C. Sessions, in his paper on Art and Artists in Ohio, says of him:

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As soon as he was of age he went to Cincinnati to go into business. He failed in almost everything he engaged in, and finally determined to become an artist. Putting himself under instructions, he soon began to paint portraits. At that time there were a number of artists residing there, and there were a number of citizens who were interested in art and artists. Among them were Mr. Nicholas Longworth, Mr. John Foote, Mr. Charles Stetson, Hon. Judge Burnet and Griffin Taylor. To these gentlemen much credit is due for so many artists springing up in Cincinnati and for the lead Cincinnati has taken as an art centre in the West. Whittridge soon left Ohio and went to Europe, studying in the galleries of Düsseldorf, Belgium, Holland, Rome, London and Paris, and finally settled in New York in 1859. We remember to have seen in the Paris Exposition, in 1878, two of his paintings, A Trout Brook' and 'The Platte River, which attracted much attention and were among the best in the American exhibit. He is a great lover of nature.

His most successful pictures have been 'Rocky Mountains from the Plains,' 1870, owned by the Century Club; 'Trout Brook in the Catskills,' in the Corcoran gallery; Old House by the Sea,' and Lake in the Catskills.'

Mr. Whittridge retains a warm interest in Ohio. He says that the general judgment of artists is that Quincy Ward's Washington,' on the sub treasury steps, is a noble and imposing work.

"He thinks that Ward a half century after his death will be classed with Canova and Thorwaldsen. Whittridge is a gray-bearded, dignified-looking artist, who seems scholarly and broadly cultured. He ranks in the first class of landscape painters, but there is nothing sensational about him. His social standing is high.'

A Veteran of the Black Watch."-Now living in Springfield in the person of a retired army officer is a gentleman who had in his youth the singular honor of being a soldier in the very first regiment of regular troops that ever trod upon the soil of Ohio. This gentleman is Col. Robert L. Kilpatrick, and he looks, as he is, every inch a soldier, tall, strongly made, erect, dark complexion, with one of the strongest of Scotch faces. He was born in April, 1825, in Paisley, Scotland. At the age of sixteen he enlisted in the Forty-second Highlanders, the famous "Black Watch" regiment, the most famous in the British army. The regiment is most honorably identified with American annals. In the attack on Fort Ticonderoga, July 8, 1758, the Forty-second lost 600 out of 1,000 men. It was on Boquet's expedition and comprised nearly all the fighting force at the battle of Bushy Run in what is now Westmoreland county, Pa., in August, 1763. The Indians attacked them in ambush, but by excellent generalship the Highlanders successfully charged them with the bayonet, giving the savages the severest defeat they had ever experienced. The next year, 1764, Boquet crossed over the river with this regiment into what is now known as Coshocton county, which thus became the first regiment of regular troops that ever trod the soil of Ohio.

For ten years Col. Kilpatrick was on foreign service at Malta and the Bermudas, half the time as a non-commissioned officer.

The Famous Fifth Ohio.-In 1858, being then a resident of Cincinnati, he organized the Highland Guards, a company of Scotchmen, who adopted the Highland costume. This formed the nucleus for the famous Fifth Ohio, which he commanded in several engagements. He lost his arm at Chancellorsville. In 1870 he was retired from the regular army with the full rank of colonel. His regiment was in six pitched battles and twenty-eight hard-fought engagements. There is a story told of an incident which occurred at the first battle of Winchester. The standard-bearer of this regiment was shot down, but before the stars and stripes trailed in the dust a soldier sprang forward and caught them, bearing them aloft again. He, too, was shot down, but a third hand grasped the flag and waved it in front of the battle. Once more the fatal bullet pierced the faithful heart of the color-bearer, and as he fell he cried to those who sprang to his assistance: Boys, keep the colors up!" and these words ever after remained the motto of the regiment.

An Early Acquaintance.-On a near and preceding page is an engraving of the birthplace of Tecumseh and the battle-field in the valley of Mad river, where General George Rogers Clark fought and defeated the Shawnees: it is from a drawing I made in the year 1846. It was in the winter, the ground covered with snow and with benumbed fingers I took a hasty sketch. A bright, intelligent boy ten years old stood by my side who had been sent by his