Seven Hills High School - Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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Daily Cincinnati Enquirer appeared with the Brough brothers as publishers. They had bought the Advertiser anal journal, then an evening daily, but in order to take advantage of the mailing schedules, they made it a morning paper. The first interesting paper was the Daily Commercial which had bright stories, fiction, and tales for children. Later, this paper was merged with the Gazette and called the Commercial-Gazette. Still later the Enquirer bought the Commercial-Gazette, in 1930, when it was under the name of Commercial- Tribune. The Cincinnati Star was founded in 1872 with much money put in for a plant said to be one of the best equipped in the nation. David Sin- ton, C. P. Taft, and H. P. Boyden, who had purchased the Times in 1879, bought the Star in June, 1880, and merged the two papers under the name of Cincinnati-Times-Star. It is now one of the leading Cincinnati papers. Its political sentiments are staunchly Republican. Starting in 1930, German papers began to appear, the Vollcsblatt was one of the most successful until it was absorbed in 1920 by the F reie Presse, another daily German paper which had started in 1868. In 1881 E. W. Scripps started the Penny Post, the second paper of what is now the largest chain of newspapers in the nation. The political senti- ments are non-partisan. By 1887 there were more than fifty-five thousand readers. People could now read the latest news on exciting happenings. More readers were added to the list when a Sunday supplement in color was put out by the Enquirer, on or about 1898. Nowadays the whole newspaper system is revolutionized by modern presses sending out papers at sixty thousand an hour. Soon after the news is gathered and the paper printed, the subscribers receive them. The three papers of Cincinnati distribute daily four-hundred, thirty thousand papers, or 125,590,000 newspapers a year. Altogether including the Sunday edi- tion of the Enquirer and the German Freie Presse there are more than 136,- 330,000 copies distributed annually. BARBARA GROAT, 1941 The Evolution of Navigation on the Ohio River When La Salle, the first white man to descend the Ohio River, set out with his party, canoes were the only kind of boats used. Since the country around there was mainly covered by forests, it was practically impossible to travel except by rivers. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, fur-trapping and trading were done on a large scale. The Ohio River, or 6'La Belle Rivierei' as the French called it, was one of the main routes of travel. Missionaries and explorers also used it. Some curious adventurers even tried to discover its source and length. After several expeditions, it was found that it was formed by the culmination of W. aim, 1939 l86l

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over the latest strapless evening dress. When supper time came, the men ate in a big room by themselves. The women, seated in chairs around the walls of another room, ate their supper from plates held on their laps. This ar- rangement was followed because Hthe men preferred it that way.'7 How dif- ferent from today when the women have things arranged the way they prefer! The cultural side of life was looked into also. There was an early musical society and also a literary society. Imagine the busy pioneer ladies writing their papers on the latest books, brought by coach on a long ride from the East! Were they so very different from the busy clubwomen of today in their efforts to keep abreast of the times? Are there not clubs today where the ladies meet and discuss interesting topics, not always confined to cultural subjects? There is a hint in the old records of clacking tongues and spicy gossip, which lends a familiar note that causes us to wonder if a hundred years or so makes much diliference after all. Social life has changed in many of its outward forms and we laugh at the crudities of early timesg nevertheless, there is much in human nature today which has changed very little from pioneer uSociety.w HARRIET Woons, 1939 Early Newspapers Cincinnatfs first newspaper was the Centinei of the Northwestern Territory published in 1793 for three years, before it was sold to Edmund Freeman. He renamed it and published it elsewhere. The news from Marietta was usually eight days old, from New York, fifty-six days, and from London five months. It was often copied from other newspapers. The Cqntinel had four pages the size of a manis handkerchief and was a light brown in color. Cin- cinnatiis second newspaper, Western Spy, was more important than the first. It started as a weekly on May 28, 1799, and was irregularly published until 1809, when it was sold to Carney and Morgan who renamed it The Whig. After being sold several times, it became part of the Cincinnati Gazette in 1815, an important Cincinnati paper of later years. After that a number of papers came, such as The Literary Cadet, Spirit of the West and others which soon disappeared. They seem very dull today but while they were published they were regarded as wonders. Finally real progress was made by the printing of the Commercial-Register Daily. It lasted only six months of 1826, but by that time merchants knew the value of daily advertising. Eleven years later, the publishers of the Gazette were persuaded by merchants of Cincinnati to make a daily issue. There were only about one hundred and fifty subscribers at the beginning and the paper was nineteen by twenty-six inches with only two men to put the paper out. On April 25, 1840 another paper came out weekly called Spirit of the Times and later Daily Times which was printed every day. April 10, 1841, the Whtfone, 193 Q T351

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the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers at what was then Ft. Duquesne, now Pittsburgh. It joins the Mississippi River at Cairo. After the English captured Ft. Duquesne and the Ohio Valley, they, unlike the French, wanted to settle. It was a diflicult task getting over the moun- tains, and when once over, the Ohio River was the only way to travel west. The families built llatboats and then floated down the river. Ethel C. Leahy describes them very well in the book HWho's Who on the Ohio River. They were built like both the Ark and the Barge. Their length was always more than eighteen feet, since a family and possessions had to be carried. On the top of a timber raft, a house was constructed of thick, heavy, square timber. There was a guarded entrance, and a trapdoor on the roof. The only guid- ance was given by long oars or sweeps, and the current did the rest. There the families wgere, on boats which might fall apart at any minute, floating down a strange river. They could never be sure of what lay ahead, falls, rapids, or ambushes of Indians. When their destination was finally reached, since there was no way of getting the flatboats back upstream, they were chopped to pieces, and the wood used to build houses. Thus the Hatboat served two purposes. Ethel Leahy also tells of the keel-boat. This boat had almost every means of operation except steam. It was pulled by the cordelle, 'fa line nearly a thousand feet long, fastened to the top of the mast, which rose from the cen- ter of the boat to a height of about thirty feet. Then from shore men pulled this. The task of pulling required from twenty to forty men on just ordinary parts of the river. Therefore, on difficult stretches it was almost impossible to travel, and often men had to be sent ahead on shore to clear the way. An- other dilliculty that might arise was a low channel. Before the keel-boat could resume its journey, it was necessary to deepen the channel. The pass- engers also had to help do this. Things couldn't go on as they had. Some- thing had to be invented to take the place of man-power. Finally, after much labor, Robert Fulton and Robert M. Livingston completed a steamboat, the 'LOrleans.7, It made its maiden voyage from Pittsburgh in 1811, the first steamboat on the Ohio River. A year later it went from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in fourteen days. Thus, navigation took a great step ahead in the use of steam. After routes had been chartered and boats improved, people began to take an interest in the rivers for pleasure, as well as for business and trade. This brought on the glorious days of the Packet boats. A party of people could have a fine time over the weekend on a boat. At first, since there were only a few rooms on a boat, they were named after the states. Later though, there were more rooms than the number of states, so since then the rooms on boats have been called staterooms. The Packet boats were, in these days, at the height of their glory,, but now there are few left. For many years, though routes had been charted, there were still diffi- culties to overcome. At certain times of the year, boats were unable to navi- gate because of low water. From 1895 until 1904 there were few times Winona, 193 Q l87l