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The Queen City of the West 39
Par ton, a later commentator summarized,2 the city "imported or made nearly all that the people of three or four States could afford to buy, and received from them nearly all they could spare in return and made a profit on both transactions. This business, upon the whole, was done honestly and well."
As to the ancestral homes of Cincinnati's pioneer population, Dr. Daniel Drake chronicled in 1815:3 "To England, Ireland, Germany, Scotland, France and Holland, we are most indebted." By 1840 the Germans comprised the largest single element;* and the roster of States4 from which Cincinnatians hailed was headed by Pennsylvania for the Middle Atlantic States, Massachusetts for New England, and Virginia and Kentucky for the South.
The manners of the early conglomerate population did not please the English novelist Mrs. Frances Trollope, who resided in Cincinnati in -1828:5 "I never saw any people who lived so much without amusements as the Cincinnatians. . . . They have no public balls, excepting, I think, six during the Christmas holidays. They have no concerts. They have no dinner parties."
Such social deficiencies were soon met. By 1831 Timothy Walker, arriving from Cam-
* "The German population must now number more than 10,000 within the city."—'The Atlas, September 4, 1848. "Roman Catholics form . . . the fourth part of the population."—Gazette, January 11,1848. There were about 3,000 Jews, according to The Atlas, September 23, 1848. |
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