NCH, the city formerly known as Clovernook (Part 2/2)

Part Two of my two-part series on North College Hill OH history. In Part One we learned about the earliest history of NCH. Today we continue through the 19th century...

1832 Cary Cottage

Cary Cottage was built in 1832 by the Robert Cary family mentioned earlier. The Cary's were Universalists and held many liberal and reformist religious and political views. I imagine that hundreds of people drive or walk by every day with no real notion of its significance.
Two of the daughters who lived in Cary Cottage, Alice and Phoebe Cary, were well-known poets of their day.
Edgar Allan Poe was a fan of the Cary sisters poetry and called Alice Cary's 1855 'Pictures of Memory', "one of the most musically perfect lyrics in the English language".

In 1903, Florence and Georgia Trader opened the first home in OH for blind women here which became The Clovernook Center For The Blind which still operates on this same property behind the cottage that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. I also placed my own geocache here. The Laboiteaux-Cary Cemetery mentioned earlier sits across the street which has many graves from the Cary family. 

Cary Cottage Historical Marker

In 1861 the Isaac Mayer Wise Home and 40-acre farm was built and remained until 1968. Dr. Wise was one of the founders of Reform Judaism in America and the Hebrew Union College. He emigrated here from Austria where Jewish people were not allowed to own land. There is a now a bank and a tiny park with a plaque about the site and Dr. Wise. This also seemed like a good place for a geocache so I placed one here as well.

Issac M. Wise plaque

the former site of the Wise home

It should be noted that the stretch of Galbraith Road that runs through NCH was known for many years as Van Zandt Road, named for the prominent local family of which the Rev. John Van Zandt was the most notable. The good reverend was a local 19th-century abolitionist who served as the inspiration for John Van Trompe in Uncle Tom's Cabin. In 1847 he helped a slave escape and was arrested and tried for the owner's property loss. This case was used to test the constitutionality of slavery in the US. Van Zandt's case, which he unfortunately lost, was defended by Salmon P. Chase, who would later be the Secretary of Treasury for Abe Lincoln and then later served as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The road changed names as it went across Cincinnati and was eventually renamed to Galbraith Road in the mid 20th century to honor Frederic W. Galbraith, a WWI veteran who was a Colonel in the Ohio National Guard and one of the founders of the American Legion. I’m not sure why this was done other than to perhaps unify the name to make it less confusing for people. I think they should have just called the whole thing Van Zandt myself!

These two blog posts were not meant to be an all-encompassing history of NCH, just some highlights of the early events. For more information about the city of North College Hill OH and its history, please visit the city website which includes links to the NCH Historical Society newsletters.

NCH, the city formerly known as Clovernook (Part 1 of 2)

Part One of my two-part series on North College Hill OH history...

I don’t actually live in Cincinnati. I live in an older one square mile suburb directly to the north of Cincinnati called North College Hill or NCH for short.

There is a bit of 18^th and early 19^th Century history in NCH that seems unlikely at first glance...and most of it very well hidden and mostly only mentioned in old obscure books or an out of the way sign.

NCH wasn't even incorporated as a city until 1916, no significant body of water, creek or river runs through it which was a preferable amenity to have in those days before there were roads or plumbing. So what existed in this area that made a community grow up around it? If you go back to the beginning, it was a centuries-old buffalo trail that was later used by the local pre-Columbian Indians. It was easier to use these well worn traveled paths rather than clear new ones. So, in the 18th century, the US Army followed that tradition and used this same trail as a military road up from Cincinnati's Fort Washington through present day NCH to Fort Hamilton and up past Greenville OH to carry supplies, soldiers, build forts and supporting posts as the US expanded into hostile territory. Most people now know this old road as Hamilton Avenue or Route 127. 

Keen’s Station, 1791 was located in present-day NCH and was one the 40 or so fortified settlements that peppered the Cincinnati area in that time period. It has no sign or marker and no one knows specifically where it was located but a lot can be deduced from various sources and records.

I first learned about Keen's Station in a book called "Stockades in the Wilderness" by Richard Scamyhorn which only stated that this station was located in NCH with no further info given. These stations were not meant to be permanent and were typically torn down and the wood re-used when the area was deemed safe for the settlers. Since there is hardly a mention of this station anywhere in any other historical documents it is assumed that it was never attacked and was only here for a very brief time. Even so, it's very existence makes it noteworthy since this is the first record of any European-American living here.

This station was built by an early pioneer named Captain Peter Keen born in 1761. The Keen family had arrived from New Jersey in the late 1770's. According to a College Hill Historical Society publication, this station was located somewhere near the intersection of  Hamilton and Galbraith Avenues.
Peter Keen and his wife Jemima Gard were married in 1781 by none other than Judge John Cleves Symmes himself, had a daughter Angeline, who is reported to have been the first recorded white child born between the Miami Rivers.
After Keen moved on to Illinois, this section of land was passed around many times until Ephriam Brown acquired it and sold half in 1804 to Peter LaBoiteaux. This land would have been in the vicinity of the present NCH High School at Hamilton and Galbraith, close to the old cemetery that bears Laboiteaux's name. 

Peter Laboiteaux (1737-1813)

Laboiteaux-Cary Cemetery, est. 1805, sits at the corner of Galbraith and Hamilton Avenues and was originally a burial plot for the Laboiteaux family. Peter LaBoiteaux, a Revolutionary War Veteran is buried here. He laid out the town of Mt. Healthy, OH in 1804 one mile north of this location.
In 1813, William Cary purchased most of what is now College Hill to the south. Later that year his nephew Robert Cary laid-out a community called Clovernook, which became North College Hill.
There are many members of these pioneer families buried here including many Carys, Laboiteaux's and at least two other Revolutionary War veterans, Henry Deats and James Kenniston. Also resting here are John and Jemina Runyan, who lived in the nearby Dunlap Station during it's significant and well-documented attack by the Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket and "white renegade" Simon Girty in 1791. I'll have a nice write-up on that important event soon! Jemina was the daughter of Peter Laboiteaux. The last burial in this cemetery was in 1860 and was a bit larger back in those days. When Hamilton Ave was widened in the 20th century, some of the graves were moved to Spring Grove Cemetery. Recently, a nice stone facade was added to the concrete retaining wall that faces the intersection which makes this well-kept pioneer cemetery appear even nicer.

Continue to Part Two...

Going Underground on Hamilton Avenue

 Dr. John Witherspoon Scott

Underground Railroad sign

On what appears to be just another struggling storefront in Midwest America at the corner of Compton & Hamilton Ave in Mt. Healthy, is a small wooden sign announcing "a stop on the Underground Railroad in 1840". I decided to check up on that assertion as I really enjoy uncovering more info on forgotten and obscure local history.


It turns out there was an entire Underground Railroad system up and down Hamilton Avenue in the early 19th Century.

The home was built in 1840 in what was then Mount Pleasant by Dr. John Witherspoon Scott (1800-1892), an abolitionist, Presbyterian minister, math Professor, and the first Professor of Science at Miami University in Oxford, OH from 1828-1845. He was fired by Miami U over the issue of slavery in 1845 when folks were choosing sides on this hot topic of the day. It seems that Miami U President George Junkin, also a Presbyterian minister, was supporting slavery on Biblical grounds. After his dismissal, Scott began teaching at a prep school called Farmers College in what would become the Cincinnati neighborhood of College Hill, a couple of miles south of this house. It should be noted that since there was another Mt. Pleasant in Ohio, in 1850 this town was renamed to Mt. Healthy after a cholera epidemic in the area somehow left its citizens unscathed that same year.

Dr. Scott's former home in Mt Healthy
c.late 1800s (left side)

Dr. Scott's former home in Mt Healthy c.2012

Dr. Scott also has a connection to Ohio's US Presidential legacy. Scott was future 23rd President Benjamin Harrison's mentor at Farmers College from 1848-1850. Benjamin, born in North Bend OH and grandson of 9th US President William Henry Harrison became friendly with Scott's daughter Caroline during his many visits to the Scott home and they eventually married in 1853 with the Reverend father-in-law officiating. Dr. Scott later lived with the Harrison's in the White House until he died there in 1892.


So, back to the sign. Was this a stop on the Underground Railroad? Probably. Sometimes these claims are difficult to prove since their actions were illegal in Ohio* and left few records but based on who lived there, the amount of activity of this type in the area and the fact that there are traces of tunnels and hidden rooms inside the home, it seems very likely.

On a related note, Happy 162nd Anniversary to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. It first appeared in an abolitionist periodical on June 5th, 1851 as a series which led to it being published as a book the next year.

*Coincidentally on this same date, June 5th, 1804, one year after Ohio Statehood, the Ohio General Assembly enacted the so-called Black Laws that required African-Americans to prove they were free and anyone harboring an escaped slave could be fined.

Many thanks to the excellent local history book available to read online, A Little Piece of Paradise...College Hill, Ohio by Betty Ann Smiddy as well as the Mount Healthy Historical Society website for information in researching this article.