“We reached Cincinnati on the 10th of February [1828],” noted the Englishwomen, Frances Trollope. “It is finely situation on the south side of a hill…yet it is by no means a city of striking appearance…” (Domestic Manners). Offended by Cincinnati’s want of “domes, towers, and steeples,” Mrs. Trollope’s English sensibilities were further outraged by the “republican equality” of the city’s inhabitants. “…[T]he theory of equality may be very daintily discussed by English gentlemen in a London dining-room,” the fastidious lady observed, “but it will be found less palatable when it presents itself in the shape of a hard greasy paw, and is claimed in accents that breathe less of freedom than of onions and whiskey.” (Domestic Manners)
Having come to Cincinnati to recoup her family’s declining fortunes by opening a grand emporium, which she styled the Bazaar, Mrs. Trollope took up residence in Mohawk. From there she observed the city and its inhabitants, making generally unfavorable comparisons to English men and women of similar circumstance. Mechanics, “if good workmen,” she found earned better wages in Cincinnati than in England but the English peasant “…would, in coming to the United States, change for the worse.” (Domestic Manners)
Mrs. Trollope’s Bazaar was not a success. At the beginning of March, 1830, two years after her arrival, Frances Trollope packed up her family and returned to England’s green and pleasant land, regretting “…that we had ever entered [Cincinnati]…; for we had wasted health, time, and money there. (Domestic Manners)
The city from which Mrs. Trollop departed had grown from a frontier trading post with a population of 750 at the opening of the century to a bustling commercial hub with a population of 24,831 in 1830. Most of this early population growth was the result of internal migration from the older, established areas of the United States. Attracted by Cincinnati’s growing prosperity many of these internal migrants were descendants of the older, chiefly English stock that had first settled the New England, Eastern Seaboard, and Southern states. Direct immigration to Cincinnati from England was and remained limited. The 1825 Hall Cincinnati Directory put the number of English immigrants to Cincinnati at 192. By contrast 394 persons in the city’s population of 12,000 had come to settle in Cincinnati from the State of Pennsylvania alone while other States had contributed a fair number of newcomers as well.
Twenty-five years later slightly more than 4% of Cincinnati’s population of 115,438 persons was English-born (Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati…1851). Lieberson (Ethnic Patterns, p.82) estimates that by 1870 the percentage of Cincinnati’s immigrants from both England and Wales was 4.6% of the city’s population. Quinn (Population Characteristics…1930 and 1935 p.54) found 1,266 English-born persons living in Cincinnati of which 605 were male and 661 female. At the time of the city’s bicentennial, 1,059 Cincinnatians had claimed single English ancestry (2,843 in Hamilton County) in the 1980 decennial census while 31,477 had claimed English ancestry in combination with another ethnic group (97,273 in Hamilton County).
Most of the English-born who came to Cincinnati during the nineteenth century were skilled mechanics or were seeking to become proficient in a trade. A few like Ann A. Gooch and Ann Boswell ran boarding schools for Cincinnati’s young ladies. Others found employment as merchants, grocers, mattress makers, cabinetmakers, shoemakers, watchmakers, and butchers, while still others entered such trades as the livery business, bookbinding, tailoring, dyeing, brewing, carpentry, and riverboat piloting. The first professional gardeners in Cincinnati were English-born and English-trained.
Religious affiliation among the English-born included several Protestant denominations, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism. Adam Hurdus, an organ builder, was also a minister in the Church of the New Jerusalem. John Haughton was a Methodist minister. John A. Hill was a Roman Catholic priest. Cincinnati’s first Jewish resident, Joseph Jonas, was an English immigrant.
Samuel W. Davies, a banker and owner of Cincinnati’s early water supply (made from the discarded engine and boiler of the steamboat Vesta coupled with a series of connecting pipes) was the city’s mayor from 1833 to 1843 (Cist, Sketches…1851 p.104). But it was the son of an English immigrant, George Barnsdale Cox, whose impact on Cincinnati is best remembered. Rising through a series of menial jobs to become a successful saloon owner and an elected member of city council, by 1890 “Boss” Cox had welded together the powerful Republican machine which ran Cincinnati until 1910.
Other prominent Cincinnatians from England include Dr. Charles Sidney Muscroft (1825), a leading surgeon of the time; Thomas Lawson (1825), first to supply gaslight to Cincinnati; William Teasdale (1832) whose dyeshop became an eponymous drycleaning concern; William Powell (1836), founder of a valve company; William Procter, from whose partnership in 1837 with the Irish-born James Gamble the modern corporate giant was born; art carver, Benn Pitman (1853); and Charles Taylor (1864) whose firebrick company became Didier Taylor Refractories Company.
The English-born did not follow a distinctive settlement pattern in Cincinnati. Their homes and businesses were located among the homes and businesses of fellow city dwellers of similar social standing and occupational status. By the time the city had outgrown its original boundaries and begun its hillside ascent the English had long ceased to be regarded, if ever they had been, as foreign. While much has been written about some individuals, their companies, and their pursuits, very little has been written about Cincinnati’s English-born as a distinctive ethnic group within the city.
Cincinnati. Christ Church. The Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival. Cincinnati: n.p., 1954. 4 pages PL
A pamphlet relating to the annual English Yule festival celebration at Christ Church (Episcopal).
Conteur. “Some Prominent Families of English Descent in Early Cincinnati Recalled,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 15, 1924. CHS; UC; PL
Also: Henderson, Edwin. Historical Sketches of Early Cincinnati…CHS
Zavon, Faith. “The British Club,” Cincinnati Post, August 7, 1973, p.29. CHS; PL
Use the Cincinnati Historical Society’s Index to Local History Resources to find references to the English in Cincinnati as an ethnic group as well as to specific individuals.
Boss Cox
Miller, Zane L. Boss Cox’s Cincinnati; Urban Politics in the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. 301 pages CHS; UC; PL
Reprinted several times. See library catalogs for holdings.
_____________. Boss Cox and the Municipal Reformers: Cincinnati Progressivism, 1880-1914. Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Chicago, 1966. UC
A biographical essay about Boss Cox is in:
American National Biography Connect
Find additional articles about Boss Cox by using:
America: History and Life Connect
APS: American Periodicals Series Online Connect
JSTOR Connect
Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
New York Times (Historical) Connect
Reader’s Guide Retrospective Connect
Trollope, Frances Milton. Domestic Manners of the Americans. London and New York: Whittaker, Treacher & Co., reprinted for the Booksellers, 1832. 325 pages CHS; UC; PL
______________________. Domestic Manners of the Americans. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London: Printed for Whittaker, Treacher & Co., 1832. Connect to resource online
Reprinted many times; consult library catalogs for holdings of alternative editions.
The body of literature about the sharp-tongued Mrs. Trollope is substantial. These works discuss her association with Cincinnati:
Griffin, Russell A. “Mrs. Trollope and the Queen City,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 37, no. 2 (September 1950), 289-302 Connect to Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Online)
Hildreath, William H. “Mrs. Trollope in Porkopolis,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 58, no. 1 (January 1949), 35-51. CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
An interesting account of Mrs. Trollope’s Bazaar may be found in:
The Cincinnati Directory…1829…Cincinnati: Robinson and Fairbank, 1829. 202 pages followed by The Cincinnati Annual Advertiser unpaged CHS; UC; PL
See pages 175-177.
A more recent examination of the Bazaar is:
Newstedt, J. Roger. “Mrs. Frances Trollope in Cincinnati: The ‘Infernal Regions’ and the Bizarre Bazaar, 1828-1830,” Queen City Heritage, 57, no.4 (1999), 37-45. Connect to resource online
A biographical essay about Mrs. Trollope may be read in:
American National Biography Connect
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Connect
For additional articles about Mrs. Trollope in Cincinnati use:
Academic Search Complete Connect
America: History and Life Connect
APS: American Periodicals Series Online Connect
Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
JSTOR Connect
MLA International Bibliography Connect
Nineteenth Century Masterfile Connect
Periodicals Archive Online Connect
Project Muse Connect
For other accounts of the United States published by British travelers, use:
Clark, Thomas D. Travels in the Old South, A Bibliography. 3 vols. (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956) UC
Volume 2 includes the Ohio Valley.
Other Individuals of Note
Carter, A. G. W. Address on the Life, Services, and Character of the Rev. Adam Hurdus, Delivered in the New Jerusalem Temple of Cincinnati by Request. New York: First New Jerusalem Society of Cincinnati, 1865. 36 pages Not widely held—See WorldCat
Smith, Ophia D. “Adam Hurdus and the Swedenborgians in Early Cincinnati,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 53 (1944), 106-134. CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Also see Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
A glimpse of Hurdus in his secular occupation may be had in:
Hart, Kenneth Wayne. “Cincinnati Organ Builders of the Nineteenth Century,” Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, 31, no. 2 (1973), 79-98 CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Benn Pitman
Braunlin-Jones, Heather. “Bedstead Benn Pitman,” School Arts, 103, no.4 (December 2003), 31-35. UC
Concentrates on Pitman’s mahagany bedstead and his contributions to the decorative arts.
Ellis, Anita J. “Cincinnati Art Furniture: Woman as Beautifier,” Queen City Heritage, 42, no.4 (1984),19-26 CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Looks at Pitman’s efforts to engage women in art carving to beautify their homes.
_____________. “Cincinnati Art Furniture,” Antiques, 121, no.4 (April 1982), 930-941. PL
Also discusses the association with Benn Pitman in Cincinnati’s aesthetics movement of his fellow English immigrants Henry Fry and his son, William Henry Fry.
Prosnitz, Fern P. “Art Pottery…and Beyond,” Style 1900, 21, no. 1 (Spring 2008), 76-81. See WorldCat for holdings
Includes Pitman and Frey art carved furniture.
Trapp, Kenneth R. “To Beautify the Useful: Benn Pitman and the Women’s Wood-Carving Movement in Cincinnati in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Nineteenth Century, 8, no.3/4 (1982),173-192 XAV
This article discusses Pitman’s efforts to teach art carving to the women of Cincinnati.
A biographical sketch of Benn Pitman may be read in:
American National Biography Connect
Articles about Benn Pitman may be located in:
APS: American Periodicals Series Online Connect
Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
New York Times (Historical) Connect
Stevens, Harry R. “Samuel Watt Davies and the Industrial Revolution in Cincinnati,” Ohio Historical Quarterly, 70, no.2 (April 1961), 95-127. CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Includes information on Davies’s banking efforts and the Second Bank of the United States.
A biographical sketch of Samuel Watt Davies appears in:
Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820-1980: Big City Mayors. Edited by Melvin G. Holli and Peter d’A. Jones. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1981. 451 pages UC
Also see Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
Conteur. “Recollections of Business Activities of a Family of Early Cincinnati,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 6, 1924. CHS; UC; PL
Also: Henderson, Edwin. Historical Sketches of Early Cincinnati…CHS
An account of William Teasdale, a native of Darlington, England, who came to Cincinnati in 1832 and whose dye shop business evolved into a dry cleaning concern.
Also see Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
Quenzel, Carrel H. “Life was Rugged a Century Ago: Experiences of an English Immigrant,” Ohio Historical Quarterly, 65, no.3 (July 1956), 297-301. CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Edited letters of George H. Cadman, an English immigrant to Cincinnati in 1857 and a member of the 39th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.
Sally Moffitt
Office hours by appointment: Sally.Moffitt@uc.edu
401M Langsam Library
June 2008