Steven Levinson

Thanks, Barbara.  I'm (we're) working on setting up what lies ahead.  Lots of moving parts.  At the moment, the multilateral communication issues are the most frustrating.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

I'm very sad to read the "cancer stories" from our class. However, I think that it gives people strength to hear these shared stories.

Well, damn, it's group therapy, right?

Philip Spiess

Herewith is the second installment of my response to Mr. Lounds' request for some of Cincinnati's African-American history:

CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY:
Part II:  Cincinnati, the “Underground Railroad,” and the “Black Brigade”

Cincinnati as a Center of the Underground Railroad:  I have mentioned, several times on this Forum (see, for example, Posts #4385 and #4397), Cincinnati’s major role in the “Underground Railroad” (which is why Cincinnati now has the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center museum downtown).  There is little need to understand why this was so:  Cincinnati was (at the time) the major city on the Ohio River, and it was located in a free state, just across the river from a slave-holding state; the opportunities were there, though fraught, to be able to escape from slavery in the South into freedom in the North.  Indeed, the reason that John Roebling’s superb “Cincinnati-Covington Suspension Bridge,” the first – and for a long time the only bridge over the Ohio River between Pittsburgh and the Mississippi River – (which preceded by a good number of years his more famous “Brooklyn Bridge” – the first being Romanesque in style, the second Gothic), was begun in 1846 but not completed until 1867, was because the Ohio state legislature kept blocking its construction on the grounds that it would facilitate the escape of runaway slaves from the slave-holding states of the South to the freedom of the free states in the North [I was the keynote speaker at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ dedication of the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge as a National Historic Engineering Landmark in 1983, a celebration which took place during a banquet aboard the Mike Fink steamboat overlooking the lit-up bridge].

As I’m sure most of you know, the “Underground Railroad” was neither literally underground, nor was it an actual railroad; it was an underground resistance movement.  (The idea of a “railroad” was a modern and exciting one:  by the 1840s the fastest way to “get out of town” was by railroad.)  The Fugitive Slave Laws, passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850, which recognized the slaves as “property,” provided for the hunting of, capture of, and return of escaped slaves to their masters in the slave-holding states and territories.  The 1850 law forced officials in free states to give a legal hearing to slave owners without a jury.  The “Underground Railroad” was a series of rather unorganized networks of free or escaped black folk and some dedicated white folk, usually Abolitionists (although many Abolitionists, often Quakers, were opposed to helping slaves escape; they wanted to do things legally), who helped other escaping slaves to the free territories in the North, most often Canada, where the Fugitive Slave Laws did not apply (see my "Forum" Post #4385 for descriptions of the four major routes to freedom).  

A lot of myths have grown up around the “Underground Railroad,” many of them in the 20th century.  One gets the impression that it was everywhere active and freed many of the slaves prior to the Civil War.  Actually, it was far less active than that.  Very few slaves escaped from the Deep South, those states that abut the Gulf of Mexico, because they were farther from the free states and so the journey to freedom was a longer one to travel and far more difficult.  Most escapees “traveling on the Railroad” were from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee.

The “Underground Railroad” did not exist as an organization in the South.  Slaves rarely received any help until they reached a free Border or Northern state.  They had to reach freedom on their own, which they usually did on foot.  Further, to travel to free territory, they almost always had to cross a body of water (hence Negro spirituals’ constant references to the River Jordan).  If the escapees were crossing to the free states of Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, they had to cross the Ohio River.

There were no established routes for the “Underground Railroad.”  If there had been routes that were used regularly, the slave catchers would have learned about them and shut down their effectiveness.  So there were almost as many routes as there were escaping slaves.  The major “conductors” on the “UGRR” routes into Ohio were the Quaker Levi Coffin, popularly called “the President of the Underground Railroad,” and the Rev. John Rankin (of whom more below).

Cincinnati is, of course, where Harriet Beecher Stowe researched Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) when her father, the Rev. Lyman Beecher, was president of Lane Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian establishment and a hotbed of Abolitionist controversy, where the young Theodore Weld, who later founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, was a student.  Stowe was attacked in the press after the publication of her novel, opponents declaring that it was damnably false.  Stowe responded by publishing A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin:  Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded, Together with Corroborative Statements Testifying the Truth of the Work (Boston:  Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, 1853; it is still available in reprint).

One of the most famous episodes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin helps explain how the “Underground Railroad” operated.  The Rev. John Rankin was a Presbyterian minister who lived at Ripley, Ohio, across from Kentucky on a hill high above the Ohio River.  He was a serious Abolitionist, who influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe, her brother, the famous preacher Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and the Abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison.  Raised as a Calvinist, Rankin was deeply influenced by the “Second Great Awakening” and by several attempted slave rebellions, and he later credited his wife as an effective and industrious partner in his work.  While in Kentucky, he started a school for slaves, but within a year he was driven out by club-carrying mobs, and so, in 1822, he rowed his family across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, where he founded a Presbyterian academy for boys, attended for a time by the young Ulysses Grant.

On learning that his brother Thomas had purchased slaves in Virginia, Rankin wrote a series of anti-slavery letters to his brother that were later published (1826) as Letters on Slavery, which became standard reading for Abolitionists all over the United States.  He also began speaking from town to town throughout Ohio on behalf of the Anti-Slavery Society, though sometimes he had rotten eggs and stones thrown at him for his efforts.  Indeed, his “dangerous views” brought a bounty of $3,000 to be placed upon his head, and in 1841 he and his sons had to fight off attackers who came to Ripley to burn his house and barn in the middle of the night.

Having first settled in Ripley in a house near the river, the Rev. Rankin came to be viewed by slave catchers as a prime suspect in assisting escaped slaves to get to freedom.  Therefore, he moved his family of wife and thirteen children to a farm on the hill above Ripley, which has a fine view across the Ohio River to Mason County, Kentucky.  It is said by former slaves that, whenever an escaped slave was seeking to cross the river to freedom, associates in Kentucky would place a light in a cupola in a house near the river (that house still exists), and, if it was safe to cross, Rankin would raise a lantern on a pole at his house on the hill; he even constructed a series of stairs up the hill for slaves to climb to safety.  You can still visit the Rankin House today (it is a National and Ohio State Historic Landmark) and there you can see a secret closet in which slaves were hid, as well as look into the well, which has a much larger slave hiding place beneath it.  The Rev. Rankin is said to have secured the freedom of more than 2,000 slaves, often at great personal risk.

But perhaps the most significant story about the Rankin House and Ripley is this:  during a visit by the Rev. Rankin to Lane Seminary in Cincinnati to visit one of his sons, he told Professor Calvin Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the story of a woman the Rankins had hidden in 1838 after she had escaped by crossing the ice on a frozen Ohio River with her small child in her arms.  This became the famous story in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (chap. 5) of “Eliza crossing the ice,” which, after the Civil War, was turned into the central melodramatic scene in many a popular stage production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (such as “Jay Rial’s Real Minstrel Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – but see also the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” enactment -- in Siam! -- in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical The King and I).

Only a small minority of people in the North helped work on the “Underground Railroad.”  So-called “stations” or safehouses – barns, the area under church floors, caves, or hollowed-out riverbanks, among others – had to be constantly changed as slave catchers found out about them, or as home ownership changed.  And those familiar with the system only knew one or two others (as in a resistance, terrorist, or Communist cell), so as not to betray the system.

If it seems that Abolitionist white folks dominated the “Underground Railroad” movement, it is only because we know much more about them (they were the ones who published memoirs).  But the large percentage of persons helping other blacks escape slavery were often blacks themselves.  Prominent among these in Cincinnati were Peter Farley Fossett and Sarah Mayrant Fossett.  Peter Fossett was a former slave of President Thomas Jefferson, a pastor, an entrepreneur, and a member of Cincinnati’s “Black Brigade” [see below].  Peter Fossett and his wife Sarah were co-founders of the First Baptist Church of Cumminsville; they helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom by way of Cincinnati.  (The fact that the Fossetts were located in Cumminsville suggests that they may have been instrumental in the College Hill portion of the “Underground Railroad” which I discussed in Post #4397.)  Sarah Fossett may be considered one of the first “Freedom Riders”:  In 1860, she tried to get on a Cincinnati streetcar, but the conductor would not let her get on board.  After being dragged for more than a block, she sued the streetcar company – and won (an early Rosa Parks).  (Little did the conductor know that Fossett was hairdresser to the rich and famous in Cincinnati; the white women were unwilling to lose her as their hair stylist!)  This case made it possible for African-American women to ride streetcars in Cincinnati, but African-American men were still not allowed to ride because, as the “stronger sex,” they were “more capable of walking.”  [See Gina Ruffin Moore:  Cincinnati (Black America Series) (Mount Pleasant, S. C.:  Arcadia Publishing Co., 2007).]

The only case of a reparation for slavery in the United States occurred in Cincinnati – and I have reported on it in detail at Forum Post #4386.

Slaves, of course, did not know the term “Underground Railroad," which was likely coined about 1840, just twenty years before the Civil War.  What, exactly, was the number of slaves who escaped by the “Underground Railroad”?  We do not know for sure, but some believe that as many as 100,000 slaves escaped by its means between 1800 and 1865.  Although this number sounds large, it is only a tiny percentage of the slaves who were living in the South during slavery:  in 1860, for example, at the start of the Civil War, there were nearly four million slaves in the South.  And don’t forget that the majority of slaves who attempted to escape were caught and returned to their owners, and free blacks were sometimes kidnapped and sold into slavery as well [see various stories in installments below].

Cincinnati’s Civil War “Black Brigade”:  The “Black Brigade” of Cincinnati was a military unit of African-American soldiers, organized in 1862 during the Civil War when the city was in likely danger of being attacked by Confederate forces.  Let it be known that these members of the “Black Brigade” were among the very first African-Americans to be employed in the military defense of the Union.  With the imminent threat of a Confederate attack, black Cincinnatians met to organize a home guard and offer their services in defense of the Union cause.  Unbelievable to us today, upon hearing that the blacks were meeting to provide war service, there were attempts to shut down the meeting and intimidate the attendees.  Their offer of service was refused by the city and they were told that they should not interfere in a “white man’s war” (who were fighting it – at least some of them – to end slavery).  But, as Richard Cooper of Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center has said, “If the African-Americans had not stood up at this time period, Cincinnati probably would have fallen to the Confederacy.”

Major-General Lew Wallace (later to win fame as the author of the novel Ben-Hur:  A Tale of the Christ [1880], made into a number of Hollywood movies from the era of the “silents” to our own era in 1959), commander of the Union forces in Cincinnati, differed with many of the white citizens:  he intended to enlist the help of Cincinnati’s black residents in the construction of defense fortifications.  When on August 30, 1862, Confederate forces defeated Union ones at the Battle of Richmond (Kentucky), about one hundred miles south of Cincinnati, General Wallace put Cincinnati under martial law and assumed command of the city.  But the Cincinnati police force, which Mayor George Hatch had ordered to act as provost guards, impressed male black residents at gunpoint into constructing fortifications and in general gave them rough treatment, gathering the men in a mule pen on Plum Street without explanation.  Needless to say, these black men were fearful of being transported to Kentucky and being left to become enslaved.  Some were taken at bayonet point to work as servants, camp cooks, and laundrymen for Union troops at Fort Wright; held for two days and worked continuously for 36 hours without sleep, they were given half rations of food.  Such treatment was denounced by the Cincinnati Daily Gazette; it was the only paper to condemn this treatment.  As Peter H. Clark stated in his Black Brigade of Cincinnati:  Being a Report of Its Labors and a Muster-Roll of Its Members, . . .  (Cincinnati:  Joseph B. Boyd, 1864):  “If the guard appointed to the duty of collecting the colored people had gone to their houses and notified them to report for duty on the fortifications, the order would have been cheerfully obeyed.”

Duly alarmed by these reports of police force mishandling, General Wallace put Colonel William M. Dickson in charge; the seized black men were released to return to their homes, and the next day a new call for black volunteers was announced; the police were relieved of their guard duties.  As a result, on September 5th, 706 black volunteers reported for duty and were put to work.  The officers of the brigade were white (no surprise here), with Dickson as commander.  The so-called “Black Brigade” received its own military unit flag and $13 a month (the same as a Union army private’s pay); its privileges included the right for members to visit their families.  Because the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge, the only bridge across the entire length of the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois, was not completed [see above], a pontoon bridge was constructed across the Ohio River to get the brigade across the river into the Kentucky hills.

Well in advance of the Union lines and without weapons, the “Black Brigade” began clearing hundreds of acres of trees, building miles of military roads, digging miles of rifle pits, and building forts and military magazines, as well as breastworks between Fort Thomas and Bromley, Kentucky.  The brigade continued work until September 20, 1862, when it was determined there was no longer a threat to Cincinnati.  (Confederate General Henry Heth, reconnoitering for two days from Louisville, Kentucky, learned of the 76,000 Union “Squirrel Hunters” who had assembled to defend Cincinnati, and he and his forces decamped – but that’s another story).

In all, around 1,000 African-American men had served in the defense of Cincinnati:  700 men built the fortifications; another 300 served in the military camps or on gun boats.  There was only one fatality, Joseph Johns, who was killed when a tree fell on him in an accident.  Brigade commander Dickson was presented with an engraved sword by members of the brigade; he responded by saying, “[Y]ou have labored cheerfully and effectively.  Go to your homes with the consciousness of having performed your duty . . . and bearing with you the gratitude and respect of all honorable men.”

Curiously, to us today, the “Black Brigade” was never intended to serve as armed soldiers, for racial segregation in the city would not allow black men to join the all-white volunteer militia.  Some, however, later joined the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment (led by Robert Gould Shaw – see their monument on Boston Commons, opposite the Statehouse), the Union Army’s Corps d’Afrique, and the 75th Regiment Infantry U. S. Colored Troops in the Mississippi Valley.  However, on the 150th anniversary of the defense of Cincinnati in 2012, a resolution was passed by the U. S. Senate recognizing the members of the Cincinnati “Black Brigade” as U. S. army veterans (a little late?), and, at the same time, a memorial to the “Black Brigade,” sculpted by John Hebenstreit and Carolyn Manto, was erected and dedicated in the John G. and Phyllis W. Smale Riverfront Park in Cincinnati.  It features three life-size bronze figures, relief panels of soldiers, and the names of all 700 soldiers of the “Black Brigade.”

Part III:  “Two African-American Artists of Cincinnati” will be posted soon.
[to be continued]

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Thanks so much, Phil. This is fascinating stuff. And while most people consider Minnesota a very progressive state, we have a lot of anti-semitism in our history (including parts of the city where Jews were not permitted to live) and I was astounded to see photos of NAACP demonstrators in downtown St. Paul picketing Woolworth's segregated lunch counter in 1960!

http://crdl.usg.edu/export/html/mnhs/mncr/crdl_mnhs_mncr_56485.html?Welcome

Dale Gieringer

Many thanks Phil for the enlightening history lesson.   As a follow-up, I'd be interested to hear about the history of racial segregation in Ohio.  Growing up, it was always my impression that public facilities were integrated in Cincinnati - private clubs, golf courses, etc.  being another matter (as I recall, some of them excluded Jews at least into the 70s).  Only recently thanks to this website was I made aware otherwise by the creepy stories told by Tom Lounds and fellow classmates.  In particular, I never realized that Frisch's had a whites-only policy for indoor seating.  Being from the lily-white West side of town, it's something I might not have noticed.  But I'm wondering when that policy came to an end - did it continue all the way into the 1960s, or did integration become the rule in Cincinnati before then?

Philip Spiess

Dale:  As I study the history of African-Americans in Cincinnati (and Ohio) -- which I'm trying to present in some sort of loose chronological order --, the long record of racial segregation (and suppression) keeps rearing its head in a variety of settings, and for now I'll continue trying to report on it as it occurs in those settings (I often put mention of it in bold type in my text).  But I'll keep as a possible future topic the broad story of segregation in Ohio.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Phil, There is such a wealth of information here I have saved it.  Amazing collection of information and I thank you for all the research you've done.  I want to read it slowly and try to remember what I'm reading. 

David R. Schneider

aSteve:

Sorry to hear about your battle with prostate cancer and your personal losses. Cancer is a personal battle but it also includes support by your friends . Eighteen years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I had to tell Diane once she came home from a retirement party for one of the local judges. My diagnosis came nine months 

after my dad died from prostate cancer. I made the decision after talking to my doctor in Chicago to have the radical prostatectomy. I saw my doctor in Chicago for the next ten years and was always worried about a recurrence, even though my PSA has been .0001 for years. May you live to be 100. Hang in there!

P.S.  Nancy, your story about you and your cats is heartwarming. We have had two cats cremated, and when we moved to Florida last year, each son received his own cat.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

I think we have become pretty heavy, although I truly love the outpouring of support for Steve.

So I offer a bit of black -or is it only grey? - humor.....

For those not aware, Israelis who had returned from China, Korea, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and a few other countries, have been advised to self-quarantine at home due to the coronavirus crisis. My daughter-in-law is one of about 50,000 Israelis who are stuck at home for up to two weeks, and the number is growing due to contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus..... I don't know what is going on in the States.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Judy, I can tell you that at Costco today they wipe your shopping cart handles with wipes when you walk in. In the food court they are disinfecting tables and they are no longer handing out samples of foods.  

There is now one confirmed case of a worker in the hospital where one of my sons works. It's getting closer to home.  

Steven Levinson

Thanks David.  "Wide" prostatectomy down; hormone/endocrine therapy and radiation to go.  PSA, post-op, presently 2.92.  I ain't dead yet and expect it to remain that way for a nice while!  

Jerry Ochs

Wash your hands as you sing Happy Birthday twice or recite a bit of Macbeth?

Paul Simons

Thanks Jerry! Wouldn’t it be something if people took other lethal threats as seriously as they seem to be taking this one. We’ve got about a dozen deaths this year from Covid-19 and about 250 so far this year from gunfire. One fact is clear and it’s way beyond politics - a home with a gun in it is more likely to be the scene of death by gunfire than one without one. Why aren’t there pictures and charts and diagrams and billboards about that? A big part of the breakdown is that there are about twice as many suicides by gun as there are homicides by gun and people generally shoot themselves at home. And that’s where little Tommy shoots little Annie while playing with daddy’s gun that he thoughtfully left on the table, loaded. But hey folks, wash your hands real good.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Paul: My nephew has lived in Kuwait for nearly fifteen years. He has told me that the corona virus is being taken very seriously there.  It bagan several weeks ago when a luxury hotel there was put on quarantine after several Irani visitors became very ill. He cancelled plans to go to Thailand to have some "tourist dental work". 
However, I posted this to respond to your example of "Little Annie" being shot with daddy's gun by Tommy. Even though my nephew's name is Buddy, I keep his handgun while he's overseas. I assure you it is locked and stored properly. On the other hand, I have very close contact with patients who come to the hospital where I have volunteered for the last seventeen years. Although Ohio has not yet had any identified COVID19 positive people (and since Mark Twain has been attributed with the remark that when it's the end of the world, he wanted to be in Cincinnati because it won't happen there for twenty years), I am still concerned. Three years ago all staff and volunteers were given the identical chart that Jerry posted on properly washing hands, had to sign a form attesting we will follow the procedure before and after any patient contact. I'm very glad this has become a habit, even at home. At the hospital, my volunteer duties include wiping down chairs, pillows and frequently touched surfaces. I carried that habit home too. I feel quite confident I won't be shot by the gun in my home or contract the virus, at least until the hospital announces that only essential personnel need to report. 
Steve: I'm wishing you the best. Although my husband had mantle cell lymphoma (a very aggressive form) and diagnosed at an advanced stage, he defied the odds of his prognosis more than doubling what was expected. He always called his journey and adventure. After six years of spending time in the infusion center with him, I asked, and was given the privilege of becoming a volunteer there. He's still in my heart and I'll be at that center until they kick me out. I'm continuing the adventure. 

Steven Levinson

Ann, I wish I'd had the pleasure of knowing your husband.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Thanks Steve. This is our last picture together about six weeks before he died, taken at the infusion center. He was a sweetie! 

 

Steven Levinson

Then he was made for you, Ann.

Bonnie Altman (Templeton)

Ann, that is a great picture of you and your husband😊

Paul Simons

Thanks for your reply Ann. I think the point I wanted to make and it’s on me that it wasn’t clear is that there is ongoing research towards a solution in the case of things that cost large numbers of lives - disease, automobile accidents, chemical contaminants for example - but in the case of gunfire research had been prohibited since data indicated that possession of firearms in a home made it far more dangerous than it would have been with no armaments present. This is as I said beyond politics. It’s epidemiology. This article from The NY Times contains the history and details - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/health/gun-violence-research-cdc.amp.html?0p19G=2870 - if there are any readers who find that publication to be fraudulent they certainly don’t have to access the link.

Dale Gieringer

WHAT'S WRONG* WITH THIS PICTURE?  (telephoto taken from outside our house)

*(Other than the lousy contrast and image quality. Unlike some of us, I'm not a professional photographer) 

Answer:  This ship is infested with corona virus! (the Grand Princess, docked in the port of Oakland)
Ship of flus
On a cruel sea
Ship of flus
Sail away from me!

May all the passengers be safely evacuated and quarantined.

I don't know about the rest of you, but we're locked down here on the Left Coast.  Meetings, schools, travel plans all cancelled.  Kind of relaxing to sit back at home and avoid the crowds.
 

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Here in Israel, the number of Coronavirus cases increases daily, sometimes hourly. Israel is up to 58 confirmed cases, while the Palestinian Authority has 29. Before you ask, with Gaza, who knows? The epidemic is wreaking havoc with our economy, which is closely aligned with the tourist industry. All Israelis coming into the country from abroad, no matter from where, must go immediately into home quarantine for 14 days. Trickier, all non-Israelis, as of Thursday, will be forced to leave immediately, no passing Go, no collecting $200, unless they can prove that they have somewhere to immediately quarantine themselves for 14 days. Harsh times. But then, there is Italy......which now has a terrifying 5% mortality for Coronavirus.

Stay well, everyone. Wash hands a la Jerry. 

Philip Spiess

Dale, make sure you wash your telephoto lens with soap and water.

Philip Spiess

And another installment in CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY:  Part III:  “Two African-American Artists of Cincinnati”:

Robert S. Duncanson:  So far, because of slavery and race riots and such, I have evoked a rather grim picture of the life and role of African-Americans in Cincinnati in the 19^th century.  So let us turn to the arts for a more upbeat portrayal.  Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821-1872), born in Seneca County, New York, was the son of John Dean Duncanson, a free black tradesman; his father, Charles Duncanson, was a former slave from Virginia who was freed by his owner.  Because Charles received special privileges, such as learning a skilled trade (in his case, carpentry and house painting) and eventually his emancipation, it is likely that he was the illegitimate son of his owner.  As opposition grew toward freed black men in the upper South at the end of the 18^th century, Charles, his son James, and his son’s wife, Lucy Nickles, moved north.  They settled in Fayette, New York, where Robert was born. The skills of the grandfather were passed down to the father, and eventually to the son, and in 1828, after the death of Charles, the family moved to Monroe, Michigan, then a “boomtown.”

Here John Dean Duncanson found considerable success as a house painter and carpenter, and, in due course, his son Robert and Robert’s four brothers were apprenticed to the trades of house painting and carpentry, Robert emerging as the most talented of his siblings.  And so, in 1838, Robert established a painting business with a partner, John Gamblin, but in 1839 he suspended the business in order to pursue his ambition as a portrait painter.  Therefore, in 1840, Robert Duncanson left Michigan and moved to Mount Healthy, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, to begin a career in the fine arts.

The community of Mount Healthy, like Cincinnati at the time, which had a black population of around 3,000 (who often referred to Cincinnati as the “emporium of the West” because it had greater opportunities for economic advancement for African-Americans than elsewhere), had a substantial population of free blacks, often former slaves, who were attracted to the Cincinnati area as being a “southern town” on free soil.  However, Duncanson also was attracted to the city because of its strong arts community (after the Civil War, Cincinnati was often referred to as “the Athens of the West” and “the Paris of America”).  In the 19^th century, Cincinnati was a mecca for prominent landscape artists, among them Godfrey Frankenstein, William Louis Sonntag, Worthington Whittredge – and eventually Robert Duncanson himself – all of them still recognized by art historians as important American artists of the 19^th century.

Although Robert Duncanson had no formal art training, he taught himself by copying engravings of European works and by sketching from nature; he also worked on painting portraits.  Traveling between Cincinnati, Detroit, and Monroe, Michigan, he worked as an itinerant portrait painter (as did, let us note, many another African-American artist). His first datable work, 1841, is “Portrait of a Mother and Daughter.”  By 1842, Duncanson had three more portraits:  “Miser,” “Fancy Portrait,” and “Infant Savior (a copy),” which were accepted for the second exhibition of the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts.  Historical speculation suggests that, because of his race, Duncanson was not allowed to take classes at the Academy, although he was allowed to exhibit his work in the show; indeed, his mother, who was not permitted to attend the exhibition because of race, supposedly said about the paintings, “I know what they look like . . . .  I know that they are there!  That’s the important thing.”  [N.B.:  The Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts was established in 1828 – and promptly went pfftt!:  it couldn’t even pay for candles and the doorman at its first – and only – exhibition.  Resurrected in 1838, this was the group under which Duncanson exhibited. It finally got a new foothold in 1868 as the Art Academy of Cincinnati, moved to its quarters next to the Cincinnati Art Museum in Eden Park (ca. 1884-1887), and separated from the Cincinnati Museum Association in 1998 to move to new quarters on Jackson Street in the “Over-the-Rhine” district in 2005.]

Around this time (1844), Duncanson began working with a photographer named Coates, with whom he produced a series of “Chemical Paintings. . . comprising four splendid views after the singular style of Daguerre” [see also his work with Ball, below].  However, work was sparse, so in the period 1845-1846, Duncanson was working primarily in Detroit, painting portraits.  But he also took up genre painting through his connection with the Cincinnati painter James H. Beard.

In 1846, Duncanson returned to Cincinnati and turned his full-time interest to landscape painting.  He received a commission (1848) from Methodist minister Charles Avery, an Abolitionist, for whom he painted “Cliff Mine, Lake Superior,” which helped solidify his career as a landscape painter and which established him among Abolitionist patrons, ones who would support him throughout his career.  They provided him with commissions, purchased his paintings, and financed some of his travels to other locations, both in this country and abroad, as well as introducing him to other prominent people in the art community, all of this proving that African-Americans had the ability to viably participate in mainstream culture.  On top of this, abolitionists would also commission artistic works with racial themes in order to advance the antislavery cause.  In short, Cincinnati, with a substantial black population and a strong abolitionist presence, was an obvious place for an African-American to seek out a living in the fine arts.

Duncanson was intrigued by landscape painting, studying prints in published travel accounts, especially those in Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan (an examination of Mayan ruins by John Lloyd Stephens; illustrations by Frederick Catherwood; 1843).  The artistic community in Cincinnati at this time was excited by and inspired by the so-called “Hudson River School” of artists, headed by Thomas Cole (not an actual school, but a style) [I’ll write another time about Cole’s famous larger set of four paintings, known as “The Voyage of Life” (he also did a smaller set, which is in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York), which hung in the art gallery of George K. Schoenberger’s “Scarlet Oaks” mansion in Clifton until they were sold, through Francis Dale, publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer and a supporter of Richard Nixon, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., in the early 1970s].  Thus the local artists at that time took sketching trips of landscapes around the country; by the early 1850s, Duncanson was focusing his work on the Ohio River valley, infusing his Romantic landscapes with literary allusions.  One such work, from 1851, was “Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Miami River.”  In 1853, Duncanson took the “required” “Grand Tour” of Europe and its art galleries, which provided inspiration for his future landscape works.  In 1861, Duncanson painted what many consider his greatest work:  “Land of the Lotus Eaters,” based on the well-known poem, “The Lotos-Eaters” (with its “Choric Song”; 1833; altered, 1842), by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  Duncanson took the painting to Tennyson’s home on the Isle of Wight, England (“Farringford,” now a hotel, which I have visited), in order to show it to him. Tennyson’s delighted response was “Your landscape is a land in which one loves to wander and linger.”  (The painting is currently in the Swedish Royal Collection, Stockholm.)

Another of Duncanson’s significant works, commissioned by the outspoken Abolitionist minister and newspaper editor, Rev. James Francis Conover, is “Uncle Tom and Little Eva” (1853; now in the Detroit Institute of Arts), based upon a scene in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin [see previous installment, Part II, on the “Underground Railroad”].  Uncle Tom, the novel’s eponymous protagonist, a black slave, and Little Eva, the white daughter of a slave owner, are looking upward to heaven on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain (Louisiana); the scene relates to salvation from slavery through spiritual love and sacrifice.

But perhaps the currently best-known work of Robert Duncanson in Cincinnati is his series of murals painted for Nicholas Longworth, then Cincinnati’s richest businessman, in his Lytle Park mansion “Belmont” (now known as the Taft Museum of Art), as Longworth considered Duncanson “one of our most promising painters.”  Circa 1851, Duncanson created eight murals for the entryway of Longworth’s house, depicting landscapes of what was then the American “West.” For many years these murals, which were later covered by wallpaper, were hidden and unknown, until being rediscovered during the restoration of the house in 1931 (converting it into the Taft Museum); they were restored in 1931-1932.

In 1854, Robert Duncanson began working in the photographic studio of James Pressley Ball [see below], retouching portraits and coloring photographs.  The next year (1855), Ball and Duncanson created a huge anti-slavery panoramic painting [described below], for which Duncanson did the landscape sections.

When the Civil War broke out, Duncanson emigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal in 1863.  Inspired by the natural landscapes of Canada, and accepted into the Montreal art community, he, in turn, influenced Canadian painting of this period.  But in the winter of 1866-1867, the Civil War over, Duncanson returned to Cincinnati, at this time painting many scenes of Scottish landscapes, which he had toured during his Canadian years.  One such was his painting “Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine” (1871), a painting inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s long narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake (1810).

Unfortunately, in the final years of his life, Duncanson developed dementia – quite possibly from lead poisoning in his paints (this still occasionally occurs today; I’ve had friends in the museum profession who have died from the chemicals involved in conservation work); his often erratic behavior began to disturb his patrons. He began to believe in spiritualism and thought that he was possessed by a master painter.  Finally, in 1872, he suffered a seizure while setting up an exhibition in Detroit and died there on December 21; he is buried in Monroe, Michigan.  He is credited with developing an “Ohio Valley School” version of the “Hudson River School” of landscape painting.  In 1972, the Cincinnati Art Museum held a major exhibition, "Robert S. Duncanson:  A Centennial Exhibition," and in 1986, the Taft Museum established an artist-in-residence program for contemporary African-American artists in honor of Robert Duncanson.

[Laura Reid Pease may be able to add to this portrait of Duncanson, but also see Joseph D. Ketner:  The Emergence of the African-American Artist:  Robert S. Duncanson, 1821-1872 (Columbia, Mo.:  University of Missouri Press, 1993).]

James Pressley [or Presley] Ball:  But landscape painting was not the only art for which Cincinnati was known in the 19^th century.  Despite the fact that some artists ridiculed the new technique of photographics as a “foe-to-graphics,” Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre’s invention of 1839, the “daguerreotype” photograph, caught on in the “Queen City” and it became a center of this rising art and trade.  One of the first persons to open a daguerreotype studio in Cincinnati was James Pressley Ball (1825-1904), born in Frederick County, Virginia, to William and Susan Ball.  At an early age he learned daguerreotype photography from John B. Bailey of Boston, who, like Ball, was “a freeman of color.”  At the age of 20, Ball opened a one-room daguerreotype studio in Cincinnati, but at this early stage of the art it did not prosper, so Ball went on the road as an itinerant daguerreotypist, moving briefly to Pittsburgh, then to Richmond, Virginia, in 1846.  But in 1847, traveling still as an itinerant daguerreotypist, Ball headed back to Ohio.

Ball settled once again in Cincinnati in 1849 and opened a photographic studio with his brother, Thomas Ball, who became a photographic operative for his brother. The gallery / studio, known as “Ball’s Daguerrean Gallery of the West” or “Ball’s Great Daguerrean Gallery of the West,” began as a small gallery (as they all were in those days), but quickly grew to be one of the great galleries – if not the greatest daguerreotype gallery – of the Midwest.  In May, 1854, Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion published a handsome woodcut of Ball’s main gallery and described it as displaying 187 photographs by Ball and six paintings by Robert Duncanson [see above], who worked in Ball’s studio (starting in 1854 until about 1858) retouching portraits and coloring photographic prints.  Gleason’s further stated that the gallery was “replete with elegance and beauty,” with walls “bordered with gold leaf and flowers,” “master-piece” furniture, a piano, and large mirrors.  [I first came across the Gleason’s woodcut of Ball’s Cincinnati gallery in one of my books on Victoriana when I was still a student at Walnut Hills High School, and have seen it reproduced numerous times since in other books on the Victorian period and on photography, but it was only recently that I learned that James Ball was an African-American – for the simple reason that none of the books ever mentioned it (if they ever knew it)!]

Ball also opened the separate Ball and Thomas Gallery with his brother-in-law, Alexander Thomas.  In 1855, James Ball produced one of his most dramatic works:  a 600-yard-long panoramic painting (it was the age of panoramas and cycloramas; one of this length was, I suspect, mounted on rollers, as many were, being called "moving panoramas," and last used as backgrounds in early motion pictures) entitled “Ball’s Splendid Mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States, Comprising Views of the African Slave Trade, of Northern and Southern Cities; of Cotton and Sugar Plantations; of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Susquehanna Rivers, Niagara Falls, &c.”  Duncanson probably participated in the production of the painting, which was produced to accompany an Abolitionist pamphlet published by Ball (same title; Cincinnati:  Achilles Pugh, 1855).  Also during 1855, Ball’s daguerreotypes were shown at the Ohio State Fair and at the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute’s annual fair [for information on this latter fair, see my Master’s thesis, 1970, on “The Cincinnati Industrial Expositions”], and in 1856 Ball traveled to Europe.  But, alas!  In May of 1860, a tornado destroyed the Ball and Thomas Gallery, although it was later rebuilt with assistance from the community.

It is unclear what happened (if anything; possibly Reconstruction in the South) at this juncture, but by the 1870s Ball had ended his partnership with Thomas, and had moved subsequently first to Greenville, Mississippi, then to Vidalia, Louisiana, then to St. Louis, and then to Minneapolis, where he opened a new studio.  By 1887, the studio was known as “J. P. Ball & Son, Artistic Photographers” (Ball’s son was James Pressley Ball, Jr.).  In September of this year, Ball was appointed the official photographer of the 25^th anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Nevertheless, in October of 1887 Ball moved again, to Helena, Montana, establishing another photographic studio there.  By 1894, Ball had become active in Helena politics, although he declined the position of county coroner, for which he had been nominated (a case, no doubt, of “Not over anybody’s dead body!”).  One of the series of photographs Ball took at this time was of William Biggerstaff, an African-American, portraying him before, during, and after he was hanged in 1896 for committing murder!  (Well, okay, maybe over at least one dead body).  Then, in 1900, the Ball family moved to Seattle, where Ball opened the Globe Photo Studio; he may have moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1901.  The Ball family moved to Honolulu in 1902, where Ball died in 1904.

Among the celebrities of the Victorian period who were photographed by James P. Ball, mostly as daguerreotypes but also as albumen prints (i.e., cartes de visite) were these: Charles Dickens; P. T. Barnum; Jenny Lind; Frederick Douglass; Ulysses Grant and family; Henry Garnet; and Queen Victoria herself.  As a marker of the significance of Ball’s work, in 1992 the Swann Galleries sold an 1851 daguerreotype by Ball of three storefronts in Cincinnati for $63,800, thus setting a world record for the highest price paid at auction for a daguerreotype photograph!  And in 2010, the Cincinnati Historical Society mounted an exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center, “An American Journey:  The Life and Photography of James Presley Ball,” the first extensive display of Ball’s photographic work (the Cincinnati Historical Society holds the nation’s largest collection of images, over 400, by Ball and his partners).

[For further information on Ball, see Deborah Willis:  J. P. Ball, Daguerrean and Studio Photographer (New York:  Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993).]

Part IV:  “Allen Temple:  Its Pastors and Its Influence” will be posted soon.

[to be continued]

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Phil, Thank you so much for the history  CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY: 

I missed PT 1 and don't know how to find it.  Sorry to bother you but I'd love to find that first installment. 

Philip Spiess

Barbara:  The first part was at Post #4528 (February 19, 2020). And thanks for your kind comments.