Moody vs. Cummins — Continuedby JOSEPHINE E. PHILLIPS

From the earliest days of the founding of our fair city a controversyhas been carried on as to the name of the first while child born withinthe limits of the then infant settlement (1790).

In the Bulletin, Vol. U, No. 1, pp. 15-16, we noted thatMiss Florence Poor, a retired school teacher, had presented theSociety with a Certificate of Membership in the Cincinnati PioneerAssociation for William Moody, her great grandfather, indicatingthat to qualify he must have been a resident here in Hamilton Countybefore 1812. The following year, in Vol. 5, No. 3, p. 2k of the Bulle-tin, we noted that the Cincinnati D.A.R. had placed on the wall ofthe Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company Building at Fourth and MainStreets a bronze plaque commemorating the birth of William Moodyas the first white child born March 17, 1790, in a log cabin at thesouthwest corner of Fourth and Main Streets.

In the July issue of the Bulletin, 1957, George P. Stimson, anEditor of the Cincinnati Times-Star, caused us to print a resumeof the evidence of the claim of David Cummins, his ancestor, toprove him to have been the first white child born here, the date beingabout three months later than the March 17 date given for WilliamMoody.

Over the years local historians have leaned toward the Moody sidebut apparently without documentary evidence sustaining Moody'sclaim. Charles T. Greve in his Centennial History of Cincinnati,Vol. 1, Chap. 22, page 352, Cincinnati, 190k, repeats the Moodystory much in the same words as told by others, but Mr. Greve doesnot make any claim as to its authenticity.

Mrs. Phillips in her well-documented account of the Moodyfamily from the Marietta end of the story brings us strong evidencethat William Moody may have been born in Marietta after all. Atleast she traces the family there until about February 20, 1790, sothere was little time left for the family to move to Losantiville (Cin-cinnati) before the March 17 date. David Cummins may yet beuniversally acclaimed as the first white child born in Cincinnati.

It might be well to ask when the first Moody claim was publicizedand by whom. Surely, Mrs. Nathaniel Moody knew where she waswhen her son, William, was born.

Editor

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If William Moody, "son of a baker from Marietta" and ac-credited with being the first white child born in Cincinnati,1 wasactually born there on March 17, 1790, his parents — or at leasthis mother — must have made the move from Marietta to thelittle cabin at the southwest corner of Fourth and Main Streetsunder some peculiarly trying circumstances. Not only that, butWilliam's family must soon have returned to Marietta for theywere again, if not still, resident there in the fall of 1791. Suchdefection would not, of course, disqualify William from beingCincinnati's "first citizen," but it definitely weakens any claim tohis being a lifelong Cincinnatian.

For our facts we turn to the journal and papers of ThomasWallcut, who was also for a brief period resident in Marietta, toother manuscripts in the Massachusetts Historical Society, andto various records in Marietta. These throw some light on thedisputed subject and may furnish the evidence that is needed,after all these years, to shift the honor from William Moody'sshoulders to those of some other claimant, presumably DavidCummins, whom Dr. Daniel Drake propounded so eloquently andwho we know was born on June 5, 1790.

Nathaniel Moody was a baker from Boston.2 He and his familyarrived in Marietta in the autumn of 1788, according toGen. Rufus Putnam's list of first-year emigrants.3 In the followingyear, several other young men from Boston, "who had becomeenamored with the country from the glowing descriptions of itsfertility and beauty, came out to the city of Marietta. They builta long, low log-cabin, in which they kept bachelors' hall, on thecorner where the Bank of Marietta now4 stands, and commencedclearing some land."5 This structure was called for some years,"Boston House."6 And one of the young men who was enamoredof the country was Thomas Wallcut.

^timson, George P., "Moody vs. Cummins," Bulletin of the Historical andPhilosophical Society of Ohio, Vol. 15, pp. 238-243, July 1957.2MS Memoirs of Ichabod Nye, "A Biographical Sketch of the Origen & De-scent of Gen'l Benjamin Tupper," p. 83 of a typescript copy in the files of Cam-pus Martius Museum, Marietta, Ohio. Whereabouts of the original manuscriptare not known.

3Putnam Papers, Marietta College Library, Marietta, Ohio. The list isprinted in History of Washington County, Ohio, published by H. Z. Williams andBrother, 1881, page 57.

4Front and Greene Streets.BHildreth, S.P., Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the Early Pioneer

Settlers of Ohio, 1852, page 330.6Hildreth, S.P., Pioneer History, 1848, page 264.

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It should be noted that already, by 1789, the settlement ofMarietta had resolved itself into, and begun to revolve about,three separate centers. The west side of the Muskingum attractedthose who had dealings with the soldiers and officers of FortHarmar. Campus Martius Stockade, a mile up the Muskingumand on the east bank, was chiefly occupied by the elite of the OhioCompany purchasers, who could here bide their time comfortablyuntil their out-lots were cleared and danger of Indian depredationshad subsided. Finally, the "Picketed Point," opposite FortHarmar, was the appropriate place for transients, for thecommercially-minded and possibly more venturesome of the set-tlers. Here, they had the advantage of the brisk Kentucky-boattrade of the Ohio river thoroughfare. Here, the Boston house waserected. And here, Nathaniel Moody established his bakery.

Thomas Wallcut had in his charge a certain James Minot whohad accompanied him from Boston and who gave him some con-cern. It was probably with relief that he noted in his journal on31st October, 1789: "Mr. Moody, baker, is to help provide for hisneeds and employ him to pay part of his expences."7 From this, itwould seem that Mr. Moody had no immediate plans for removalto Losantiville, about to be renamed Cincinnati.

Hardly more than two months later, in January, 1790, thePicketed Point became the scene of distress and consternation.A passing boat put ashore a sick man and his family. He wasplaced in the care of James and Mary Owen, a nurse,8 at that timeliving in one of the apartments of the Boston House. The man'sillness proved to be the dread smallpox. A hut was erected forhim and he was removed to it. He lived only a few days.Mrs. Owen herself contracted the disease.

At the moment, Marietta was without her shepherding leader.General Rufus Putnam was in the East9 on matters pertaining tothe Ohio Company and its step-child — or foster-parent, depend-ing on one's viewpoint — the Scioto Company. General Harmarhad left the Muskingum on Christmas Eve and was now revelingin his new headquarters which he was naming Fort Washington,"one of the most solid, substantial wooden fortresses, when

7Thomas Wallcut "Journal," Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings,XVII, 174-203.

8Hildreth, Pioneer History, loc. cit.9Cutler, W.P. and Cutler, Julia P., Life, Journals and Correspondence of

Rev. Manasseh Cutler, 188, Vol. I, pages 449-451.

210 The Bulletin

finished, of any in the Western Territory."10 The governor ofthe Territory, General St. Clair, had recently deposited his sonand three daughters at Campus Martius to get some schoolingand then set sail for Kaskaskia,11 stopping on the way at Losanti-ville where with the help of the Territorial Secretary, WinthropSargent, he did the renaming job, mentioned above, and set upcivil government for the newly-organized Hamilton County.12

Thus bereft of leadership, the inhabitants nevertheless calleda meeting and decided on a general inoculation. Dr. Jabez True13

offered his services and the only other physician in the area,Dr. Thomas Farley,14 was summoned from Waterford. Small pest-houses to receive the patients were erected on the higher groundback of the Point, although some were inoculated and cared for intheir own homes. More than a hundred inhabitants were in-oculated ; of these, only two are said to have died and, the historianadds cheerfully, "they were quite old women."15 Mrs. Owen re-covered, but six of those who took the disease in the natural way,died.

The present writer has not established whether the medicalprofession had any qualms about inoculating a patient who was inan advanced stage of pregnancy, the condition in whichMrs. Nathaniel Moody would have been at this time if she wereto present Cincinnati with its first citizen on March 17, 1790.Anyhow, Thomas Wallcut reports in his journal for Monday,February 1, 1790, "Mrs. Moody is inoculated today."16

10Smith, William Henry, The St. Clair Papers, 1882, Vol. II, page 129.nHildreth, Pioneer History, page 262.12Smith, Vol. II, pages 130-131. Bond, Beverley W., Jr., The Correspondence

of John Cleves Symmes, 1926, page 123.13Dr. Jabez True, born in Hampstead, N. H., 1760; came to Marietta in thefirst year of the settlement and was the only one of the early physicians who didnot soon return home; died in Marietta during the terrible epidemic of 1823.His biography is in Hildreth, Memoirs, pages 329-337, and in Brush, EdmundCone, "The Pioneer Physicians of the Muskingum Valley," Publications of theOhio Archaeological and Historical Society, 1891, pages 233-236.

14Dr. Thomas Farley, from Ipswich, Massachusetts, said to have come toMarietta in June, 1788, as the personal physician of Judge James M. Varnumwho was already in frail health and lived only a few months. Mary Owen wasJudge Varnum's nurse. Dr. Farley returned to the east soon after the outbreakof Indian Hostilities in 1791. Williams & Brother, Pub., History of WashingtonCounty, Ohio, p. 406. Cone, "Pioneer Physicians," p. 232. Col. Joseph BarkerMS Notes, Marietta College Library.

15Providence Gazette, May 22, 1790, however, reports: Died. At Marietta,of the smallpox by inoculation, on the 3rd of March, Mrs. Sarah Winsor, wife ofMr. Christopher Winsor, and on the Day following their only daughter, in the20th year of her age.

16Wallcut, "Journal."

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It may be mentioned in passing that on the preceding dayMr. Wallcut recorded that he had foregone his usual attendance atLord's Day religious services but in the afternoon had been presentat the funeral of Mrs. Sargent. He tells us, "The obsequies wereperformed with decency and respect." These were, indeed, darkdays for the settlement. The marriage of Rowena Tupper17 andWinthrop Sargent, the first to be solemnized in the territory, hadtaken place under the brightest of auspices just a year before, onFebruary 6,1789. Now, Rowena was dead, "of childbed sickness."Her husband, as has been noted, was off downriver on officialbusiness. Her father, too, was absent, though it chanced that hearrived home a few hours after her death to be confronted with thesad news of it. The exploring committee of which he was a memberand which had been away for a month reconnoitering suitablesites for further Ohio Company out-settlements, returned soonerthan intended, "as the ice was coming down." Ice, too, had pre-vented their ascending the Great Hocking.18

Severe weather up the Ohio, followed by a succession of thawswith the melting of ice and snows, brought new havoc to Mariettaand particularly to the Picketed Point. Dudley Woodbridge,19

merchant, sandwiched in between the credits and debits columnsof his blotter, a special notation: "Feb. 20, 1790 This Mor£ theWaters have risen One & half Feet higher than they Were lastSpring they Rose to the Mark or Gash cut on the ButtonwoodTree before my House — and the Gash Cut on the North Postof my Barn."

17Rowena Tupper Sargent, daughter of Gen. Benjamin Tupper. Accordingto MS Memoirs of Ichabod Nye (Note 2, supra), page 89: "General Tupper'sSituation was rendered farther verrey unpleasant after Serjant married hisdaughter, he Serjant, put on his True Charature he became verrey imperious &haughty & treated the General oute of Characture left comming into his howse &Broke off all civill & Social Intercourse with the fameley, which was a mostmortifying & trying to the Gen'l's feeling, he doted much on his daughter. . . ."

18Hulbert, Archer B., Ed., The Records of the Original Proceedings of the OhioCompany, Marietta, Ohio, 1917, Vol. 1, pages 121-122; Vol. 2, pages 8-11.

"Dudley Woodbridge, native of Norwich, Connecticut, and holder of anumber of civil appointments in Marietta. He was an enterprising frontiermerchant in the early days of the settlement. He kept meticulous accounts of alltransactions and trained his son, Dudley, Jr., to do the same. In 1799, hearranged the establishment of the partnership, "D. Woodbridge, Jr. & Co.,"in which Harman Blennerhassett served as the "& Co." and which was thenucleus for some half-dozen branch stores in various parts of WashingtonCounty. A study of this experiment in chain-store operation is being preparedfor a future issue of the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society ofOhio. Many of the store books of Dudley Woodbridge, Sr., and his successorsare in the Woodbridge-Gallaher Collection of the Ohio Historical Society, Colum-bus, Ohio. About one hundred and fifty volumes, down to the year 1858, arein the hands of the present writer.

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The gashes on buttonwood tree and barn post are no longeravailable for checking, but we may turn to other accounts of thishigh-water disaster, bearing in mind that the newly-inoculatedMrs. Moody is viewing the watery scene from the Boston House atthe Point or from a pest-house on the Plain. One letter, writtenon the twenty-third of February, says:

. . . The weather has been very moderate, neither the Ohionor Muskingum have been frozen, but for about six weeks pastall intercourse up & down River has been interrupted by thefloating ice, and within these few days we have had a greaterfresh than ever was known by any of the Settlers in.thisCountry. <

Our Point which has been so celebrated for its beauty andso coveted by many that a single City Lot of about % of anAcre has been sold for 90 Dollars, was wholly under water andfor several days no communication with them could be hadbut in canoes.20

Judge Gilman adds, with something of pride, that they havebeen luckier at Harmar: "The water must have rose 8 feet per-pendicular to have come to our house, which is }i mile from thePoint (Harmar) and two streets back from the Muskingum."

It is, of course, possible that in spite of smallpox and highwater Mr. Moody could have moved his family to Cincinnati intime for the young William to make his appearance by St. Patrick'sday, as reputed. That he had returned to Marietta at least bythe following year is evidenced by the frequency with which hisname appears as a customer of the Woodbridge store at PicketedPoint.21

There is extant, besides, at least one letter from NathanielMoody, himself.22 It is addressed to his friend Thomas Wallcut,who had by this time, September 24, 1791, returned to the saferpastures of New England. It is a chatty letter written fromMarietta giving bits of news and gossip and revealing somethingof the writer: It is sickly there, "being cooped up in so narrow a

20J. Gilman to Nicholas Gilman, in A. Gilman Papers, MassachusettsHistorical Society. Judge Joseph Gilman, 1736-1806; his wife, Rebecca; his son,Benjamin Ives Gilman, and his daughter-in-law, Hannah Robbins Gilman,are the subjects of biographies in Hildreth, Memoirs, pages 302-320.

21Woodbridge Waste Book No. 7, Aug. 29,1791 to Feb. 9,1792, in the presentwriter's collection.

22Thomas Wallcut Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

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camp."23 Two persons have died, Mrs. Bullard24 and a son ofMajor Putnam.25 They have demolished the garrison at Harmar.Arrows pointed with tin have been found in cows shot by Indians.They had killed one Indian, cut off the head and brought it intriumphantly upon a pole. "I went upon the scout myself," headds with pride, even satisfaction.26

In this letter there is no mention of ever having been in Cin-cinnati or of any immediate intention of going.

23Paul Fearing describes the situation more vividly in his letter of Septem-ber 11, 1791, to Wallcut: "Sickly at the stockade this summer, but no one canwonder, when you see how thick they live & how little the police of the garrisonis attended to."

24Mrs. Bullard, not identified further. Asa and Eleazer Bullard were eyewitnesses of the Indian massacre at Big Bottom, January 2d, 1791, made theirescape and gave warning to the settlers at Wolf Creek Mills and Waterford.Hildreth, Pioneer History, pages 430-437.

26David, son of Major Ezra Putnam. Two other sons, Ezra, Jr., and Johnhad been victims of the massacre at Big Bottom. A fourth son, Nehemiah, cameon a visit the following year, contracted a fever and died, December, 1792.

26Although Dr. Hildreth avoids mention of this barbaric act, there is suf-ficient proof that it took place; e.g. Horace Nye, MS Memoirs, typescript copyin Campus Martius Museum, Marietta, Ohio, pages 10—11. Charles Sullivan'soriginal painting, "The Moundbuilders' Earthworks," depicts the triumphantprocession on its way to Campus Martius where a big celebration was held; inlater copies of the painting, the procession is deleted.