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20-31 Cincinnati & Whitewater Canal Tunnel / William Henry Harrison and The Cincinnati & Whitewater Canal
In 1837, Cincinnati merchants projected a branch canal to join the Whitewater Canal at West Harrison, Indiana, with the goal of tapping commerce from Indiana’s Whitewater Valley. The major obstacle on this route was the ridge between North Bend and Cleves, just northeast of this site. Engineer Darius Lapham designed a 1,782-foot tunnel though this […]
19-31 Cincinnati Riots of 1884 / Sheriff Morton Lytle Hawkins
In March 1884, public confidence of Cincinnati law enforcement was extremely low. The public believed that murderers and other serious offenders were not brought to justice promptly or received little punishment. Civil unrest was brought to a boil when a seventeen-year-old was sentenced to only twenty years for manslaughter after brutally murdering his employer. On […]
18-31 The Sultana
In 1862, less than a mile upriver from this marker, the John Lithoberry Shipyard in Cincinnati constructed the Sultana, a 260-foot, wooden steam transport. At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. Government contracted the Sultana to transport recently freed Federal prisoners north from Confederate stockades. During the night of April 27, 1865, while […]
17-31 White Water Shaker Village
The United Society of Believers (or “Shakers,” as they are commonly known) established White Water, the last of four Ohio Shaker villages, in 1824. White Water flourished throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At its peak during the 1850s, 150 Believers living in three semi-autonomous Shaker “families” farmed 1,300 acres of land in Crosby […]
16-31 Newell School
A school has stood on this site almost continuously since the late 1840s. The first school here was the Newell School, a white-frame, one-room school in use from approximately 1847 to 1939. The building was a part of the Newell Rural School District, which extended from the north border of Greenhills to present-day Interstate 275. […]
15-31 Greenhills
Considered a bold experiment in community planning, Greenhills was intended to relieve an acute housing shortage and to provide jobs during the Great Depression. In 1935, the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the construction of three greenbelt communities: Greendale, Wisconsin; Greenbelt, Maryland; and Greenhills, Ohio. The construction of Greenhills began on December 16, 1935. […]
14-31 The Irish in Cincinnati
In memory of the Irish people who left a country where only their rivers run free. The Irish came to Cincinnati where they contributed to housing, education, employment, religious freedom, medical care and recreation, and embraced all aspects of life in the city. The descendants of Irish immigrants hope that our hands will ever be […]
13-31 Maple Knoll Village
A group of concerned Cincinnati women organized, in 1855, The Protestant Home for the Friendless and Female Guardian Society as a private, not-for-profit maternity home for destitute women and children. These public minded social leaders were aware that Cincinnati had grown beyond the time when the poor or unfortunate were cared for by their neighbors. […]
12-31 1749 French Claims to Ohio River Valley
In 1749, the French in North America perceived a threat by British expansion west of the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River Valley and beyond. The French commander, Pierre Joseph Celeron, sieur de Blainville, with 250 men, left Montreal, New France, to establish French claims. They buried inscribed lead plates at the mouths of six […]
11-31 Anti-German Hysteria
The United States’ declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 resulted in a tragic display of hysteria directed against everything and anything German. In Cincinnati, German teachers were dismissed from public schools, German professors were censored, German collections and publications were removed from circulation at the Public Library, businesses with German names had their […]