Writer travels to Columbus in 1840s, eager to tell story
One hundred and seventy-five years ago, Columbus was a different place than it is today. But then, in some ways the people we are today are partly the result of those who came before us.
In 1846, a man came to Columbus who saw that better than most. At that time, Columbus was a bustling and thriving village of about 10,000 people that served as a commercial and trade hub as well as being a center of local and state government. And with a federal district courthouse, there was even a modest federal presence in the city from time to time.
Created by the Ohio General Assembly in 1812 to be the new capital city, Columbus had previously been a Native American site with a 40-foot-tall mound where Mound and High streets cross today. The small frontier village of a few hundred people had grown slowly until the National Road and Ohio and Erie Canal arrived in the early 1830s. By 1834, Columbus was a city of 5,000 people.
What we could call a “Depression” and people at the time called a “Panic”
swept across America in 1837. Trade and commerce slowed to a crawl and work became hard to find. By 1840, the economy had improved and the recently formed Whig Party elected President William Henry Harrison.
In the 1840s, Columbus again had a growth spurt with the arrival of large numbers of German and Irish immigrants. Complementing the newcomers were large numbers of rural refugees, black and white, seeking new life in a new town.
Yet there were rough edges. Most of the streets still were dirt trails and a walk in the woods was only a few blocks away. There were open ponds and a couple of fast-moving creeks in the middle of town, and recurring floods regularly put the west side and the village of Franklinton under water.
It was into this midwestern capital that a young man rode on a white horse named Old Pomp in the fall of 1846. His name was Henry Howe and he was slowly learning the story of Ohio so he could retell it to what he hoped would be a waiting world.
Howe was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1816, the year the Proprietors who had founded Columbus released it to become a borough with a council, a mayor and a watchman. Howe was the son of a printer and publisher who also owned and ran one of the best bookstores in America.
Howe learned the printing trade and wrote a bit for the local newspapers. He then went to work at a bank owned by an uncle in New York. Having little interest in banking, In 1838, Howe came across a book by John Warner Barber called “Historical Collections of Connecticut.”
He later said, “Although born in an atmosphere of books, this impressed me more than any book I had ever seen, and I felt that I would like of all things to dedicate my life to traveling and making such books.”
In January 1846, with a sketch pad and a notebook, Howe arrived in Marietta intending to walk across the state. After 100 miles of Ohio in January, he relented, bought an old white horse named Old Pomp and set out again. A man of cheerful disposition and gentle manner, Howe was easy to like and easy to know. He was fortunate in his timing.
Ohio had been a state for fewer than 50 years, and many of the children of the pioneers – and a few of the pioneers themselves – still were around with stories to tell. And they told them to Howe, who was careful to report the sources of his stories and occasionally included his own perception of the people of Ohio.
Many years later he recalled, “The very state capital, as is shown in these pages, in which the legislature assembled, was a crude structure that scarce any Ohio village of this day would rear for a school-house. But the legislature made wise laws, and on the night of their adjournment in that year, after having been absent from their families for months, were hilarious as so many school boys, and to my astonished eyes from their seats some of the more frolicsome were pelting each other with paper wads.”
Howe published “Historical Collections of Ohio” in 1847. Its initial run sold 18,000 copies and for many years sold quite well, surpassing even the memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War. Howe married and moved to Cincinnati, where he published more books over a 30-year career.
After a brief return to New Haven, he moved to Columbus in 1885. His intention was to redo the 1847 book with an 1880s update, and the revised books were published in 1887.
Howe died at his West Third Avenue home in 1893. He is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery.
Local historian and author Ed Lentz writes the As It Were column for Thisweek Community News and The Dispatch.