INTRODUCTION TO THE CENTENNIAL EDITION

 

  A ONCE aged friend of mine, now no longer aged, was wont to refine a very beautiful life with golden scraps of philosophy that seemed to fit in with the varying incidents of seeming good or Ill that he or his friends met on their pathway One of his expressions was "We don't know what is before us " When, in 1847, I had written the preface on the preceding pages I could littler imagine that forty years later I should make a second tour over Ohio and put forth a second edition Not a human being in any land that I know of has done a like thing It is in view of what I have been enabled to do for a great people I regard myself as having been one of the most fortunate of men. A spot is now reached which even in my dreams could not have been visioned, and I here back on resolve that in the year 1889 now Just half a century, I turned my back  on Wall Street, with its golden allurements, where I had passed more than a year, to follow an occupation that was congenial with my loves and would widely benefit my fellow-men, "He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent," but he that labors to spread knowledge in the form of good books that will reach the humblest cabin in the wilderness will feed his own soul, and earth and sky be a delight in his eyes all his days through When, In 1846, my snow-white companion, Old Pomp, carried me his walling the sun burden on his back entirely over Ohio It was a new land opening to the Its habitations were largely of logs, many of them standing in the margins of deep forests, amid the girdled monsters that reared their sombre skeleton forms over a soil for the first time brought under the benign Influence of human cultivation.

 

So young was the land that in that year the very lawmakers, 84 out of 107, were born strangers The list of the nativities of the members of the legislature, which I have saved from that day, is as follows Pennsylvania, 24, Ohio 23, Virginia, 18, New York, 10, all the New England states, 18, of whom 6 were   from, Connecticut,   Maryland, 7, Europe, 6, Kentucky 1, and North Carolina, 1.  Only four years before had the State grown its first governor in the person of Wilson Shannon, born In a log-cabin, down in Belmont county, in 1802, and to be soon thereafter a fatherless infant, for George Shannon, whose son he was in the following winter, while out hunting, got lost in the woods in a snowstorm, and, going around in a circle, at last grew sleepy, fell and froze to death.  The present governor, J. B. Foraker, that very year of my tour, was born in a cabin in Highland county, July 5th, the day after the American flag had been thrown out joyously to the breeze whole booming cannon announced the seventieth anniversary of that great day when the old bell proclaimed liberty and independence throughout the land The very State Capitol, as is shown on 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 legislators 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.  In September, 1847, I published my book in Cincinnati with 177 engravings, mainly from my drawings.  Seven years of my young life had been given to the travel-every much of it pedestrian—over four States of the Union, and making book upon them New York and New Jersey in connection with Mr. J. W. Barber and Virginia and Ohio alone.  For thirty years Cincinnati was my home.  There my children were born and there I devoted myself to the writing and publishing of books, a very secluded citizen, mingling not in affairs of church, nor State, still paying my pew-rent and always voting on election days a clean ticket.  In my life a third of a million of my books have gone out among the people and done good-gone out exclusively in the hands of canvassers numbering in the aggregate thousands and penetrating every State in the Union.

 

In ,1878, I returned to my native city, New Haven, and the proud, stately elms appeared to welcome me, there In that charming spot where even the very bricks of old Yale seem-to ooze knowledge.  In September, 1885, I resolved to again make the tour of Ohio for a new edition The romance of the project an its difficulties were as inspirations Since 1846 Ohio had more than  doubled in   population, while its advance in intelligence and resources no arithmetic could measure.

 

No publisher or capitalist, even if I had desired, which I did not, had the Courage to unite with me.  The enterprise was too risky, involving years of time and many thousands of expense, its success depending upon the uncertain tenure of the life of a man entering his seventieth year.  Furthermore, any publisher would have looked upon my enterprise simply from the money-making point of view.  I should have been hampered for the means to make the work every way worthy.  I could brook no restrictions and would not give the people of this great State any other than the best and most complete results of my efforts.  The book must be brought down to the wonderfully advanced point of the Ohio of to-day.  I could not in the years of labor required supply the capital to do this, but my health was and is perfect, and I have   a light body to move I   formed my plan.  First I went among my fellow-townsmen of means for a subscription loan to fairly launch me upon the soil.  They responded nobly, more   than glad to aid me, looking upon me as the instrument for a public good.  Some of them had been school-boys with me.  Together we hall conjugated in the old Hopkins Grammar School: "Amo amas, amat," "I love, thou lovest, he loves,'' and this was a second conjugation.

 

In the meantime Judge Taft Gov. Hoadley and ex-president Hayes a written me encouraging words I hall known the three from their early lives The latter Invited me to his home and was my first subscriber in the State.  My plan for getting over Ohio was by obtaining advance-paying subscribers.  And so good was the memory of the old book and so strong the love of the State with its leading men upon whom I called that it worked to a charm.  My tour had something of the character of an ovation I was continually greeted with expressions of gratitude from men of mark for the good my book had done them in their young lives in feeding the fires of patriotism and In giving them an   accurate knowledge of their noble State.  It had been the greatest factor extant to that end and as Mr. H. B. Hayes, who has bad no less than ten copses in the Course of his life, once writer has been of an inestimable benefit to the people.

 

 

Sometimes the expressions of those upon whom I called were too strong for my humility.  One old gentleman said, “What you are not the Henry Howe who wrote our Ohio History? “  "Yes" With that he sprang for me, grasped me around the waist, hugged me, lifted me off my feet and danced around the floor.  Short of stature but strong as a bear, there was no resisting his hug.  Speaking of it afterward, he said he never did such a thing before—embracing a man!  But when I told him who I was a crowd of memories of forty years me came upon him and he was enthused beyond control.  In other cases old gentlemen brought in their children to introduce to me.  In many places visited I did not short offer my subscription list.  Time would not allow; only when funds were short did I pause for the means to move.  Beside, it is not honorable to draw upon the resources of generous spirits beyond absolute necessity.

 

 Everywhere I made arrangements with local photographers and took them to the standpoints I selected for views to be taken.  These were for new engravings to make a pictorial contrast of the Ohio of 1846 with that of 1886.  About one hundred were seen.

 

My tour finished, in March 1887, I returned my family to Ohio,—to Columbus—for a permanent home where in connection with my son, I am now publishing the work, and will endeavor to give every family in Ohio an opportunity to obtain it through township canvassers.  In no other possible way can the people be reached and a fair remuneration given for the extraordinary labor and expense.

 

 No other State has in its completeness such a work as thus, and none under the same extraordinary circumstances of authorship.  The introductory articles are written by the best capacity in the State upon the subjects treated sketches of those contributor are given with their articles, as I wish the living public and the unborn to know about the gentlemen who have thus aided are.

 

And as for my own part, no one living has had an equal and like experience, and my self-appointed tack has absorbed the best of which I am capable.  To call it a history tells but a part of the truth.  So broad its scope that, to speak figuratively, it is the State itself printed and bound, ready to go into every family in the State to show the people of every part concerning the whole collectively, and each part in succession, and in all the varied aspects that go to form the great Commonwealth of Ohio, and the history that went to make the sons of Ohio the strong men they are, ever appearing in the front in every department of activity and acquisition.

 

Wherever I have introduced living characters my rule has been to a met only   such as the public at large should know of, and never to the knowledge of those introduced if at could be avoided.  None have been allowed to pay their way into this book and, where portraits have been engraved for it, it has been at my on expense.  Sketches of living men with their portraits are herein, which they will never learn from me personally.  I have adopted this course to make the work clean throughout, feeling that the people will sustain me in perfect uprightness.

 

Throughout are occasionally introduced Travelling Notes, so that it should combine the four attractions of History, Geography, Biography, and Travels.  The observations of one travelling over the same ground after a lapse of forty years would naturally be interesting.  This feature enables me to make it more useful and instructive to the young, and to give some of the philosophy that has come from experience, and which has helped to brighten and make glad my own


 

way so well that, though the rolling years have at last whitened my locks, within I still feel young, move with agility, and love the world the better the longer I live in it.  "I love the world," wrote old Isaac Walton, "it is my Maker's creature,” but how much stronger world not that old fisherman love it were he here now.  Human life never had such a full cup as in these our days of expanding knowledge and humanities.

 

When I began this work I did not anticipate bestowing upon it so much time and for, but as I progressed my ambition enlarged, and so I enlarged the plan     Throughout, my great struggle has been financial, but in the darkest hour when beside this burden I was brain-weary from incessant work and diversities requiring thought and the turning aside for investigation, I had full faith I should triumph.  Providence would not allow such a work for such a people to perish.  From the citizens of the State I have received, with a single exception no direct pecuniary aid other than by advance payments of subscriptions.  Title exception was Mr. Henry C. Noble, of Columbus, who, in the last dark, trying moment, most generously came to my rescue, and then the fog lifted that had gathered around the very summit of final success.

 

Of my old townsmen in New Haven who, In 1885,  first aided me for a start, I am more especially indebted to Profs. Henry W. Farnam and Salisbury, of Yale; Henry T. Blake, attorney-at-law, Dr. E. H.  Bishop, Charles L. English, ex-banker, and Dr Levi Ives.  Of  the twenty-seven on the list five have since finished their life-work and passed away, viz, Henry C. Kingsley, Treasurer of Yale, Major Lyman Bissell, U. S. A., Robert Peck, Thomas Trowbridge,  shipping merchant, and John Beach, attorney-at-law Prof S. E. Baldwin, of the Yale Law school, was the first subscriber anywhere to this work.

 

One effect of my work will be to increase the fraternal sentiment that is so marked a characteristic of Ohio men wherever their lot is cast and that leads them to social sympathy and mutual help.  And if we look at the sources of this state love we will find it arises from the fact that, Ohio being the oldest and strongest of the new States of the Northwest, by its organic law and its history has so thoroughly illustrated the beneficence and power of that great idea, embodied Americanism.

 

But I must here close with the observation that I have passed the allotted age of human life, and, although in sound health, cannot expect for many more years to witness its mysterious, ever-varying changes.  But it will be adjust satisfaction to me if, in my declining days, I can see that this work is proving of the same widespread benefit to the present people of Ohio as did that of my young life to those of forty years ago.

  

Henry Howe 

41 Third Avenue, Columbus, O, January 1, 1889             

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