City of Springdale History On-Line

Nothing challenges the historical imagination more than trying to recapture the landscape of the past. To imagine Springdale without the sounds of the automobile, the smells of gasoline and rubber, the hardness of the cement, the glare of streetlights and the bright signs of the shopping malls seem almost impossible. Yet there was a time when the modern urban community that is today’s Springdale was little more than a lush forest full of abundant natural resources undisturbed by human settlement. Along with the low rush of the wind, common sounds would have been the chirping of quail, parakeet and the passenger pigeon, the honk of wild geese and turkey, and the grunt of boars rooting the earth for acorns underneath the sturdy stands of oak. The odor of the virgin soil and the mushiness of vegetation slowly decaying in the perpetual forest gloom naturally complimented the contours of the gentle and rolling land, broken occasionally by natural ravines and small creeks.

Over time humans, first Native Americans and then Europeans altered the terrain. Yet essentially the contour remains as it was when the Miami Indian felt the lilt of the land beneath his feet as he made his way across it in search of game. He trod a well-beaten path or trace. From time immemorial, long before the first white explorer intruded, Springdale’s destiny was shaped by its location on a key transportation route.

The end of the American Revolution signaled a period of discovery and prolonged movement and settlement of the wilderness that is now the United States. Vast frontiers of new territory boasting of thick forests, fertile lands and seemingly unlimited natural resources beckoned adventurers who dared to dream of owning their own farm or even founding a city.

The creation of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 heralded America’s newest frontier between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River. The presence of unsettled land along the western edge of "civilization" excited many Americans with a hope of economic betterment and a chance for adventure. The next two decades saw continuous movement of settlers from crowded eastern states into the Miami Country of Southwest Ohio, between the Great and Little Miami Rivers to the east and west, and the Ohio River to the south.

On August 23, 1806 John Baldwin platted the village which would grow to become Springdale astride a major transportation route called the Miami Trace. By that time the wilderness had been disturbed by Native American groups who hunted the land, and by white men who hunted and later moved with their families to settle the land. As more families traveled by flatboat down the Ohio River and began clearing the land for farming, tensions with Native American groups escalated. Responding to demands from settlers for more protection from the Indians, the federal government constructed Fort Washington in Cincinnati and sent more troops to defend the area. By the 1790s, block houses and stations, like the Pleasant Valley station near Woodlawn, dotted the landscape. General "Mad Anthony" Wayne and his army marched north over the Miami Trace in the fall of 1793 on their way to confront Little Turtle, a Miami chief and leader of a confederation of Indian forces.

Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794 ended the Indian menace, freeing settlers to clear the forests seized from native Americans without fear of reprisal. One year later, Springfield Township was created. By the time Baldwin, an enterprising blacksmith, scythe maker and hotel keeper, decided to add real estate investment to his list of accomplishments, a number of families had already established substantial farms in the area. After 1801, a Presbyterian meeting house stood at the southern edge of the proposed village. Until then, the church, established in 1792, had met in a stockade at Pleasant Valley Station.

While Baldwin had evident entrepreneurial abilities, he sadly lacked imagination, at least when it came to place-names. If the township was named Springfield and the church was the Springfield Presbyterian Church, then the village would also be Springfield. Thanks to proprietor Baldwin’s logic, village residents sometimes waited as long as six months for letters that had been delivered mistakenly to the Springfield, Ohio post office near Dayton. Finally, in the early 1850s, the Postal Department, tired of the confusion, forced a name change on Springfield. Villagers who had been referring to their home as Springdale in their diaries and letters for several years, required little adjustment to the new designation.

Place-name not withstanding, Baldwin chose his village site well. Local farmers used the Miami trace, which was now called the Great Road, to transport produce to the markets in Cincinnati. Mule trains carried military supplies over it from Cincinnati to Fort Hamilton. By 1805, a stage coach operated over the Great Road. Eventually it would be improved and turned into the Hamilton, Springfield, and Carthage Turnpike, reportedly the most successful turnpike in the state.

Travelers along the trace were served by John Brownson’s hotel on Lot 18 of the Baldwin subdivision. When Brownson died intestate in the 1830s, George Wilmuth purchased the property, which remained in the Wilmuth family for many years. In time the columned two-story hotel acquired an imposing brick facade which helped to give Springfield an appearance of respectability.

During much of its early history the village was a rough, primitive place. At Turner’s Tavern, loud, swearing, tobacco-chewing, whiskey-drinking mule-train drivers mingled in with foul-smelling hog drovers who stopped on their way to market. Numerous other travelers passed through to unknown destinations making for a sometimes volatile mix.

As the years passed and the village grew and prospered, respectability spread through every part of village life. Pious church elders condemned the drinking and gambling that so often ended in violence. At the same time, hard-working farmers denounced the taverns that lured young farmhands from the fields making them unfit for the next day’s work.

While prosperity tended to soften rough edges, it took time. Legend has it that Squire William Woolley, who owned a tavern across the Butler County line, was the first man in Springfield to wear boots. Until that time, men and women wore a type of handmade moccasin. For many early residents, boots and shoes were an expensive luxury. Still, by 1816, Springfield was one of the wealthiest villages in Hamilton County. William Chamberlain and Ichabod Crane platted additions. The village even incorporated on March 16, 1839 although no evidence has been uncovered that an actual village government existed. None of the letters and diaries of the period mentions it although participation in church and township activities is noted frequently. Indeed, the amount of control exercised by Springfield Township in the 1840s makes the existence of village government unlikely. The township collected taxes from Springfield, maintained the roads, raised the militia, operated the district schools, administered poor relief, held elections and kept law and order. Village government, if it did exist, would have been superfluous.

As early as 1791, when General Arthur St. Clair appointed Henry Weaver a territorial justice of the peace, Springfield residents filled many township offices. In 1839, George Breaden was township supervisor and James McLean was constable. In 1840, the trustees elected Breaden constable, Samuel Ledman one of three judges, and John McGilliard, by then Springfield postmaster, the treasurer. George Wilmuth, the innkeeper, lost an election in 1849 for justice of the peace held in the Springfield "schoolroom." The trustees appointed John Cain their constable for that year. The minutes of the township trustees show that these and many other Springfield residents took an active role in township government.

By 1850, residents referred affectionately to the village as "old Springfield." Rows of stately trees lined the portion of the Great Road, or Springfield Pike, which ran through Springfield and was called Main Street, illustrating the village’s growing stability. Most of the houses had little or no front yards and were built close to the street with a single step up to the front door. Despite an abundance of open space surrounding the village, the houses sat on small lots, harkening back to a time of Indian troubles and a feeling that physical closeness ensured security. A few houses had been built on Hickory and Walnut streets and along what came to be known as Springdale Road. Most of the vacant lots were owned by people who lived on the Pike and used them for garden plots or for their stables. Community life clearly centered around traffic generated by the turnpike.

Perhaps because of the noise and dirt from Springfield Pike, many of the homes had porches running alongside rather than in front of the house. Shutters on the windows facing the street offered a bit of privacy. The trees along the Pike provided something of a buffer from the busy road. The haphazard placement of flagstones offered the pedestrian little protection from the dirt and mud but an attractive white picket fence gave the street cohesion. Rambling roses, dahlias and sunflowers added an occasional splash of color. Sometimes a particular flower acquired great sentimental value. The Peterson family carefully tended a large sunflower in their side yard. In 1803, Martha Little carried a peony root across the Alleghenies into the wilderness as a reminder of her former life back east.

Just north of the Springfield Inn, still operated by the Wilmuths, lived the widow Malinda Perlee with her three daughters, all under ten years old, and one boarder, George Bergen, the young Presbyterian minister from Kentucky. Peter Perlee, Malinda’s late husband, had been an elder of the Presbyterian church and in his will left each daughter one thousand dollars when each turned eighteen and "property to my wife Malinda to raise them." The fact that George Bergen boarded with the Perlees clearly meant that the "property" was not enough for the family to make ends meet. Taking in boarders was not unusual for respectable women like Malinda, for whom few other occupational choices existed.

On the other side of the Inn, Anthony Hilts, Jr. lived in an imposing shuttered, brick house. Next door stood a wagon and blacksmith shop, and the hotel was only a few hundred feet away. Building a large expensive house on a small lot in a crowded neighborhood was perfectly appropriate in 1850, with businesses and residences mixing freely. The families in Springfield usually lived over, behind or next door to some type of workshop. In this artisan village the workshop served multiple purposes. In addition to being a workplace, it also often became the center of family and social life. Work life and family life were completely integrated. Living next to a shop did nothing to diminish the high status of the Hilts family.

The Hilts family was restless and ambitious, and engaged in numerous enterprises. The first Springfield Hilts, Anthony, Sr., arrived in Hamilton County from New Jersey in 1807. Hilts farmed but at various times he also operated a store, manufactured bricks and ran a pork packing business. In the 1850 census he listed himself as a merchant. His son, Anthony, Jr., farmer, merchant, mechanic, blacksmith, shoemaker, inventor and future reaper manufacturer, built the handsome Hilts house. His wife and daughters entertained neighbors and visitors in the spacious parlor oblivious to the noise of manufacturing next door.

Just north of the Hilts, Sr., house on the right side of Springfield Pike was "Cobblers’ Row." Arthur Striker, a thirty-three year old shoemaker, had his workshop to the rear of his house on the corner of Plum and the Pike. His optimistic streak was most evident when he named his infant daughter "Wealthy." Although Striker had yet to acquire the worldly goods needed for his daughter to live up to her name, he had made some progress. He had enough work to require some assistance. A young man named Sylvester Bugatt, undoubtedly an apprentice, lived with the family. Neither William More and Edward Edwards, two other cobblers who lived on this block, sold enough shoes to create a need for any helpers.

The northwest corner of Plum and Main shoemaking gave way to saddle making. William Van Dyke plied his trade with the help of both an apprentice, and a journeyman saddler, who had served an apprenticeship but had not as yet acquired the resources necessary to establish his own shop as a master. Like so many other Springfield residents, the Van Dyke family had migrated west from Somerset County, New Jersey about 1795. William’s father, Dominicus, a Springfield cabinetmaker, died in 1814 when William was only five years old. He was apprenticed as a harness-maker and saddler in Cincinnati, walking there from Springfield to learn his trade. Van Dyke established his own shop in 1834. Van Dyke made an excellent saddle, and all the work, of course, was done by hand, the leather lovingly softened and shaped, the stitches strong and precise. Springfield fathers often bequeathed their sons a Van Dyke saddle or harness.

The saddler’s shop must have been large because when William’s children were older he made it available in the evenings so the young people could have a "frolic." The rolls of leather and the workbenches would be pushed aside, extra lamps brought in and lit, and then the music for dancing began. Many a Springfield courtship began in that unlikely setting.

According to most sources, younger brother Dominicus Van Dyke was a merchant tailor in Mt. Healthy, but the U.S. census shows that in 1849-50 he lived in Springfield with his wife and five children next door to William. In 1850, Dominicus practiced the tailor’s craft in the little shed next to his home. An apprentice tailor lived in the household, and Dominicus employed another young man who lived in another house on the Van Dyke property.

In April 1849 Dominicus purchased from his brother "two Sorrel Horses, one Waggon [sic], one Wood Bed and two Red Cows, one Carriage, one set of Harness [and] One Saddle," for the sum of one hundred dollars. The price seems artificially low even for the time yet perhaps this was part of an even larger transaction, probably William’s purchase of Lot 25 and Dominicus’ departure from Springfield. The bill of sale offers still another bit of information to use in reconstructing Springfield around 1850. J. L. Larew, who served as Springfield township clerk recorded the transaction, was the same James Larew listed in the census as one of the Van Dyke’s neighbors.

John Dent owned the property at Cherry and Main just north of the Van Dyke’s although it is questionable how much time he spent there. Dent traveled the region as a singing teacher. His circuit during the summer months extended as far west as Arkansas. His wife, Agnes, kept busy as the housekeeper for the large and active Hunt household.

Another Hunt, Dr. John Hunt, rode a different kind of circuit as one of Springfield’s two physicians. Though he practiced throughout Springfield Township and was often away from home, anyone who opened the gate in the white picket fence surrounding the house and walked up to the office/residence was greeted by one of Dr. Hunt’s several apprentices, grinding up some concoction in the apothecary or his wife, Amanda, or one of their seven children.

No visit to Springfield would have been complete without a visit to the tavern owned by Marcus Thompson and located next door to the Hunts on the corner of the Pike and what is now Kemper Road. Raucous and sometimes violent behavior characterized the patrons of this tavern, testimony to the failure of church and temperance movements in quelling the unquenchable thirst of a certain segment of Springfield society. In 1865, these problems still existed as evidenced by Mrs. Hunt, who witnessed a barroom brawl just a stone’s throw from her home and said "It is sad to think of the horrible tendencies of intemperance."

Across the street, on the west corner, stood another "public house of entertainment," in the "mansion house" once occupied by the family of Nathaniel S. Schooley. First leased by Samuel Watson, who had operated a "public house of entertainment" there during 1848, John Hunt leased the estate from the Schooley executors and on February 26, 1849, sublet the house, stables and storehouse to John E. Sullivan, Innkeeper. Though Hunt agreed that there would be "no sale of spirituous liquors in the premises either by his agent or assignees," Sullivan ignored the agreement and almost immediately began serving spirits.

Sullivan’s actions were hardly surprising considering that Springfield, after all, serviced all aspects of the stagecoach business. Travelers expected to quench their thirst and nothing washed the dust of travel from the throat better than a shot of whiskey. The temperance advocates had enough supporters to enable them to build a temperance hall in Springfield on the boundary line of Lots 8 and 9, but they simply could not put the taverns out of business.

The sounds of the forge rang out all over Springfield. Blacksmiths found Springfield’s mix of stage and farm traffic very profitable. The noise from the smithy on Lot 13 near the school may have distracted the children from their lessons. The school, a charming white brick building with a cupola situated far back from the street, had been the Springfield Academy, a Presbyterian school for boys. According to Nelson’s 1888 History of Hamilton County, the trustees left the school building unfinished. The neighborhood boys raised funds, hired a carpenter and finished the building themselves. This intense concern of the village boys for a school strikes the reader as suspect but Nelson was certainly correct in describing the Springfield Academy as being "for years a local institution of importance." Eventually the academy’s trustees began fighting among themselves and the ownership of the school became the subject of litigation. The court sold the property at public auction, at which time it was purchased by the trustees of School District No. 4. Springfield students took their lessons in that little brick building until the present Springfield School was built.

In 1850, many villagers attended the Presbyterian church at the corner of Church and Walnut streets. The church, originally located in the cemetery, had chosen this location for its new building in 1833. The congregation took the old church bell, which in the early days of settlement had warned of Indian raids, and placed it in the new steeple. The bell still warned Springfield residents of danger and, more frequently, summoned them to important events including funerals and village socials. Membership in the church had rebounded to some degree in 1850, after it had been ravaged for three years by controversy over church discipline and slavery.

In fact, Springfield had an abolitionist church in 1850 in which Reverend Adrian Aten and his abolitionist friends delivered fiery sermons denouncing the evils of slavery. A few rocks had been thrown, a few windows broken, but essentially most of Springfield agreed with Aten’s message, even if some disapproved of his means.