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The Soldiers, Sailors, and Pioneers Monument was planned and promoted by Butler County Civil War veterans and financed by a county levy in 1899. The monument, built of Indiana Limestone, is near the center of the site of Fort Hamilton, built in 1791 and named in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury in President George Washington’s cabinet. Featured, are two large, colorful windows that recognize the contributions of Butler County women during the Civil War. Featured speaker at the July 4, 1906, dedication was Governor Andrew L. Harris, a Butler County native and Civil War veteran. His name is one of the more than 4,300 carved into the interior marble walls.
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Civic organizations played pivotal roles in the development of the residential community of Hazelwood, founded as a subdivision of Blue Ash in 1888. The Hazelwood Civic Association, initially established as the Brothers Civic Society in 1941, addressed community needs by working for public improvements and promoting civic relations through social events and educational programs. Efforts by the HCA led to the construction of a new civic center and the introduction of the Boy and Girl Scouts and other programs that were previously unavailable to African-American children. Hazelwood’s deterioration and the threat of encroaching industrial development led to the formation of the Hazelwood Improvement Corporation in 1968. The HIC, acting as an agent of the city of Blue Ash, helped to upgrade housing, pave roads, build new homes to ensure a residential nature, install water and sewage systems, and erect streetlights. In 1997, the Hazelwood Community Association was organized to assist residents during Hazelwood’s transition to a racially integrated community.
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The Cincinnati Union Terminal opened in March 1933 and integrated rail travel in the city, which previously operated from five separate passenger terminals. Built when rail travel was already in decline, Union Terminal stopped operating as a passenger railroad station in 1972. Only during WWII was the terminal used to capacity with as many as 34,000 people travelling through the building daily in 1944. As part of preservation efforts, 14 mosaics depicting Cincinnati industry of the 1930s by Winold Reiss were saved from the concourse and moved to the Greater Cincinnati Airport. The restored Union Terminal became a Museum Center in November 1990 with the opening of the renovated Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and new Cincinnati History Museum. Cincinnati Union Terminal has been described as one of the most outstanding examples of Art Deco train stations in the nation and was listed on National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
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The Cincinnati Museum of Natural History is part of Cincinnati Museum Center. The Western Museum Society, organized by Dr. Daniel Drake in 1818, preceded it. The Western Museum Society’s collection was built around ornithology, fossil zoology, geology, and Native American artifacts. The Museum’s first taxidermist, John James Audubon was hired in the winter of 1819 to do taxidermy, build collections, and create exhibits. Audubon supplemented his income by drawing portraits, teaching art, and running his own drawing academy. During his brief stay in Cincinnati, Audubon created five paintings of local birds that were among the first contributions to his acclaimed Birds of North America. He left Cincinnati in 1820 to travel and finish his collection of drawings that would make him one of North America’s most revered and famous nineteenth century artists.
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Abraham Lincoln spoke from the rear of a Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad passenger train on Saturday, September 17, 1859, to about 1000 people at South Fourth and Ludlow streets (about 785 feet south of here). Lincoln, elected president of the United States a year later, made five Ohio speeches, considered an extension of his 1858 debates with Stephen A. Douglas while they competed for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. After Douglas defeated Lincoln, he toured Ohio supporting 1859 Democratic candidates. The Republican response was to ask Lincoln to do the same for his party. He spoke twice in Columbus on September 16, and in Dayton, Hamilton, and Cincinnati the next day. Later, Republicans swept the 1859 elections, selecting William Dennison Jr., an 1835 Miami University graduate, as governor and winning majorities in the legislature. When Lincoln became president, he appointed Dennison postmaster general in 1864. [Continued on other side]
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Waldschmidt Cemetery is located on land purchased from former New Jersey judge and Congressman John Cleves Symmes in 1795 by Christian Waldschmidt, one of the first settlers in the Little Miami River Valley. Waldschmidt, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was a veteran of the American Revolution, and he and his family are buried here. During the Civil War this area, named for Governor William Dennison, served as a training site and hospital for the Union effort. A portion of the cemetery was the temporary interment site for 349 Union soldiers and 31 Confederate prisoners of war, most of whom died at the camp hospital. On July 4, 1869, the Union soldiers were moved to Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. About the same time, the Confederate soldiers were reinterred in Chase Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.
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Virginia Hamilton was an author who was born in Yellow Springs in 1934, living and writing here for much of her life. She referred to her works as “Liberation Literature.” focusing on the struggles and journeys of African Americans. Hamilton published more than forty books in a variety of genres, including realistic novels, science fiction, picture books, folktales and mysteries. Some of her most beloved titles include The House of Dies Drear, M.C. Higgins the Great, Her Stories and The People Could Fly. Her books have had a profound influence on the study of race throughout American history, the achievements of African Americans, and the ramifications of racism. Hamilton received numerous awards for her writing before passing away in 2002. Her work is enshrined at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield Connecticut in 1811 and moved to Cincinnati in 1832 when her father, prominent Congregational minister Lyman Beecher became the pastor of the city’s Second Presbyterian Church and president of Lane Theological Seminary. Married to Calvin E. Stowe in 1836, she bore six of the couple’s seven children while living here. Life in the city provided Stowe with the firsthand accounts about the evils of slavery. Already a published writer, she drew upon these experiences and the death of her infant son Charley in 1849 to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Published in book form in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin almost single-handedly popularized the cause of anti-slavery, made Stowe famous, and remains an icon of the American anti-slavery movement. A prolific writer, she wrote a book a year for nearly thirty years of her life. After moving from Cincinnati in 1850, the Stowes lived in Brunswick, Maine, Andover, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, where she died in 1896.