I.

There are many things that link the capital city of financial and

commercial America, to the State of Ohio, that New England enterprise,

and New York encouragement, and Virginian patriotism, did so much to

build beyond the Alleghenies. It is not merely in the associations and

connections of to-day that New York and Ohio are bound together. A

pregnant era of the early past, was disposed toward good results forever,

by the patriotic generosity of the Empire State, at a time when Ohio was

but a name in the far off wilderness; a promise that many things must

nurture, before it could be realized.

Historians will recall, when this much has been said, the events that

were pressed close upon each other, before the soil upon which Ohio

now stands, was declared the property of the nation, disentangled from

the conflicting claims of jealous States, and how New York by her

self-renunciation, led the way to harmony. For a century had Virginia and

Connecticut made their claims to the vast westward territory; vaster than

the imagination of any living man then conceived. When the French were

driven from the lands west of the bounds of Pennsylvania, the contention

commenced, and claims were urged from time to time, until both voices of

dispute were temporarily silenced by the war in which the rivals fought

side by side for the freedom of both. When that conflict was ended, the

question again arose; not, this time, with the English Crown as the

greater power, but with the loose jointed Confederation, under which

America endeavored to work out a national salvation. Virginia, made her

demand under the grant of James, in 1609, which gave her: “All those

lands, countries and territories, situated, lying, and being in that part

of America called Virginia, from the point of the eastern land called

Cape or Point Comfort, all that space and circuit of land lying, from the

seacoast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land, throughout, from

sea to sea, west and northwest, and also all the islands lying within one

hundred miles along the coast of the both seas of the precinct aforesaid.”

This generous King, who was giving away so much that did not belong to

him, was really giving more than he dreamed of; for the writer of the

grant evidently believed that the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, was but

little westward of the Atlantic, and never dreamed that he was extending

his line so as to take in the magnificent Western and Northwestern empire

of to-day.

Connecticut made her claim under Charles the II, who in 1662, gave to the

colony “All that part of our dominion in New England, in America, bounded

on the east by the Narragansett River, commonly called Narragansett Bay,

where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line

of the Massachusetts plantation, and on the south by the sea, and in

longitude as the line of the Massachusetts colony, running from east to

west; that is to say, from the said Narragansett Bay, on the east to the

South Sea on the west part, with the islands thereto adjoining.”

It was under this very vague, but very extensive grant, that Connecticut

laid claim to, and maintained that claim, for that part of Ohio known the

world over, as the “Connecticut Western Reserve.”

While Virginia, Connecticut and Pennsylvania were warring in the courts,

in the legislatures, and before the people over their various claims,

there were many others who virtually assumed that the whole unoccupied

and unorganized land to the west, belonged to the nation at large, and

that no state had a right to exclusive jurisdiction. This discussion

threatened all sorts of difficulties, at a time when peace and prosperity

could only come through a mutual helpfulness and internal harmony, and

the wisest and most patriotic declared themselves willing to waive all

personal claims, and allow the national government to administer the

general estate for the general good. Congress so viewed it, and appealed

to the States to yield their claims. The first response came from New

York, which conceded all her possible ownership to western territory,

to the general government, and the other States followed in her wake.

Virginia followed New York; and Massachusetts Virginia; and eventually

Connecticut came into line.

In the appeal of Congress to the States there was no ambiguity as to

the purpose to which these lands were to be devoted. The act of October

10, 1780, resolved that “the unappropriated lands that may be ceded or

relinquished to the United States by any particular State,” should be

disposed of “for the common benefit of the United States, and shall be

settled and formed into distinct republican States, which shall become

members of the Federal Union, and have the same right of sovereignty,

freedom and independence as the other States; that each which shall be

so formed shall contain a suitable extent of territory not less than one

hundred nor more than one hundred and fifty miles square, or as near

thereto as circumstances will admit, that the necessary and reasonable

expense which any particular State shall have incurred since the

commencement of the present war, in subduing any part of the territory

that may be ceded or relinquished to the United States, shall be

reimbursed.” It was further agreed that said lands should be “granted or

settled at such times and under such regulations” as should be thereafter

agreed upon by the United States, or any nine or more of them.

In less than six months after the issuing of this broad invitation, New

York set an example of generosity to her young sister States, which had

so much yet to learn in the way of mutual concessions for the general

good. And she made no conditions in her surrender. She simply said that

she would draw a line across the western end of Lake Ontario, north and

south, and that while all east of it should be hers, all west would be

forever quit-claimed to the nation. It took Virginia three years to

make up her mind, and when she waived her claim in March, 1784, she yet

reserved nearly four million acres to the south and east of the Ohio.

The year following, Massachusetts came in with no conditions, while

Connecticut followed, in the fall of 1786, conditioning that she should

retain the magnificent Western Reserve, upon which a New Connecticut

was eventually built in the wilderness—that Reserve that has played

so important a part in the history, and the moral development of the

republic. South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, at last straggled,

one by one, into the path of manifest destiny; although the century

had turned the point of time by two notches, before the last hand was

lessened, and the Nation became in law what she had already been in

fact—the architect and master of the splendid empire that stretched from

the western edge of the civilization of that day, to where the Spaniard

and the Frenchman still held a nominal right to the westward of the

Mississippi.

With these cessions, the territorial system of our government came into

existence. That which Georgia gave, became the Mississippi Territory;

that from the Carolinas, the Southwest Territory; and all that north of

the Ohio River, the Northwest Territory; and this brings us to a point

where New York again had a part in creating the State of Ohio, and in

dedicating the soil upon which she was reared, forever to the cause of

human liberty.

It was within the limits of her chief city that the very foundation

stones, not only of the one State but of many, were laid with a

far-seeing wisdom and prophetic foresight that mark the men of that early

Congress as among the sages of legislative wisdom. In the old hall,

that stood at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, where the restless

oceans of a financial world roll in a flood that never rests, and to

which the lines of monetary interest center from all the far-off corners

of the land, upon the spot now hallowed to the memory of Washington by

a colossal statue of bronze, there was enacted, in the midsummer of

1787, an ordinance that has well been called[10] “The most important

legislative act in American History”—there came into existence a law that

gave Ohio and Indiana, and that galaxy of northwestern states to the

Union; those free states, without which that Union never could have been

saved in the day of its imminent peril.

Many States have been created, many important acts have been passed by

the various Congresses that have sat in New York, in Philadelphia, and in

Washington, but there was in this measure something that saved the nation

from being sometime all slave; that reserved for freedom an empire that

by mere stress of moral example if in nothing else, was a menace forever

before the slaveholder. In that ordinance was one little clause that made

Ohio and Wisconsin and Illinois what they afterwards became.

“There shall be,” it recited, “neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude

in said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes.” Simple

enough these words sound now, when human bondage upon American soil is

but the echo of a dead past, but for the day in which they were uttered,

they were the clarion call of a new era—the death knell of a monster

wrong; and the voice was none the less that of God speaking in human

legislation, because many of the men who had become His instrument, had

no dream of the great things to which they had put their hands, and to

which they had given their votes.

So, in one sense, Ohio may be said to have had her beginning in New

York. From the days of her earliest childhood, she has been a willing

neighbor, willing to give and take of friendly offices with her elder

sister to the East. Two of her chief magistrates were the sons of the

Empire State; she has borrowed not a little of her legislation from the

experience of the older State; she patterned her canals after those

which DeWitt Clinton had so largely aided to bring into being; she has

developed many of her native resources by New York’s financial aid; she

has sought to build her railways so that they should lead direct to the

metropolis; she has in a thousand ways acknowledged the commercial and

financial supremacy of the greater city and State; and last, but not the

least, she has sent scores of her sons to the East, to prove that the

Buckeye is capable of gaining and holding his own among the best, in

any lines of human labor or human thought—and it is with this subject

largely, that we have at present to deal.

There hangs in certain cheerful rooms at No. 236 Fifth avenue, a modestly

framed document that is more significant in that which it suggests,

than in what it declares. It is a call for a meeting, and a pledge of

certain gentlemen whose names are attached, that they will do what lies

within their power to create in this great metropolis, a hearthstone

around which those who claimed Ohio for a mother or a foster-mother,

might congregate now and then, for such mutual help or association as

would keep the memory of the old home alive in the new. The beginning was

modest and quiet, and yet out of it has grown an organization that is

in many ways a model of its kind, and that certainly has fulfilled the

intentions of its originators.

“We the undersigned,” to quote from the language of the call, “hereby

agree to unite with each to form an association to be known as The

Ohio Association in New York, and to that end will meet at any place

designated, for the purpose of completing such organization upon notice

given to us whenever twelve persons shall have signed this agreement.

There is to be no expense incurred until the organization is completed,

and assented to by each member.”

“New York, October 7th, 1885.”

Attached to this document were names that would have carried weight

in many of the walks of the business and professional life of the

metropolis. General Thomas Ewing, an honored member of the New York Bar,

Samuel Thomas and Calvin S. Brice, of the more active fields of Wall

Street and the railway world, C. W. Moulton, Col. W. L. Strong, one of

the leading merchants of the city, Hugh J. Jewett, Wallace C. Andrews,

Homer Lee, J. W. Harman, Warren Higley, Milton Sayler, Anson G. McCook,

Col. Fogg, Mahlon Chance, J. Q. Howard, General Henry L. Burnett, and

others who had acquired reputation at home, before making New York the

scene of later operations and more recent successes. There was more than

mere formal agreement in this compact; it was understood by all that such

a society should come into being, and all were in one mind that then was

the time for beginning.

Other attempts looking in the same direction had been made in times past,

but had come to naught. Early in the days of the great war, many of the

sons and daughters of Ohio, residing in this city, met at the Murray Hill

Hotel, and took steps to give active aid to the soldiers in the field;

but these weekly gatherings ended with the noble purpose that called them

into being. In the first annual report of the Ohio Society, its first

secretary, Homer Lee, gives a brief sketch of this effort, and of the

things that followed in its wake. “The object,” says Mr. Lee, “was to

send supplies, clothing, medicines, etc., to the soldiers at the front.

A handsome silk and satin banner was made at a cost of some $500, upon

which was a beautifully embroidered Coat of Arms of the State of Ohio, to

be presented to the bravest Ohio regiment. As might have been expected

there was much rivalry for the possession of this prize, as glowing

descriptions of the beautiful souvenir were given by the newspapers at

that time. The commanding officers were appealed to, but could not be

prevailed upon to decide the question, because, as one officer put it

‘It could not easily be decided which was the bravest, where all the

regiments by their valor and heroism had covered themselves with glory.’

At the close of the war the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, of Cleveland,

secured the prize.”

Another organization, somewhat similar in character and purpose, was

called into being about the same time. It was the Ohio Soldier’s Aid

Society, and Theron R. Butler, was its president, and Mr. John R. Cecil

the treasurer. Its members made it their duty to call upon the Ohio

soldiers in the New York hospitals, and to minister to their wants.

In various forms of help, this society expended over fifteen thousand

dollars, and performed many eminent services for the wounded and the

sick, and like its companion organization above described, its days ended

with the close of the war.

In 1877, the subject of an association of Ohio men was again discussed,

when a number of gentlemen had been called together by the death of

Chief Justice Chase, but it came to naught. Again, in 1874, some of the

younger sons of the Buckeye State in this city, held various meetings and

talked organization, but nothing came of the movement beyond talk. It was

reserved for the call above quoted to produce enduring results, and to

bring into being the flourishing society that has bound the Ohioans of

New York together with bonds of enduring union.

When the twelve, and more, had signed the call and thus made it

operative, a meeting was held in the office of General Ewing, No. 155

Broadway, on November 13, 1885. There was then no question of success,

and the gentlemen present went to work in a mood to make that success

of the most pronounced character. General Ewing was elected president

pro tem., and Mr. David F. Harbaugh secretary pro tem. A committee of

ten upon permanent organization were appointed, and consisted of the

following gentlemen: C. W. Moulton, William Perry Fogg, Cyrus Butler,

J. Q. Howard, Mahlon Chance, M. I. Southard, David F. Harbaugh, Warren

Higley, Calvin S. Brice, and Joseph Pool. When an adjourned meeting

was held, on the 20th of the same month, additions were made to this

foundation committee, in the persons of Messrs. Carson Lake, John W.

Harman, and Homer Lee.

The committee were already prepared with a report. They had drafted a

provisional constitution, and prepared by-laws, and proposed that these

should be printed and sent to the Ohio men in New York, to discover how

many would favor the movement, and agree to support it. Such action was

ordered, the new fundamental law of a society not yet organized was sent

broadcast, and responses invited. One hundred subscribing names were made

the requisite; they were furnished, and twenty-five in addition. Thus

encouraged, there was a call from the President, and on the evening

of January 13, 1886, over one hundred of the sons of Ohio were found

together in the parlors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

The meeting was prolific of results. The Ohio Society of New York, was

called into being. Officers were elected; arrangements made for the

preparation of a constitution that would be in exact accord with the

purposes there declared. The first officers there chosen constituted a

corps which was of itself a guarantee of successful results. General

Thomas Ewing was elected president; Whitelaw Reid, General Wager Swayne,

Col. William L. Strong, Hon. Hugh J. Jewett, and Algernon S. Sullivan

were chosen vice-presidents. Homer Lee was made recording secretary and

Carson Lake, corresponding secretary; while Col. William Perry Fogg was

assigned to the responsible position of treasurer. A governing committee

consisting of Henry L. Burnett, chairman, Calvin S. Brice, Andrew J.

C. Foye, A. D. Juilliard, George Follett, Stephen B. Elkins, Jerome D.

Gillett, C. W. Moulton, Joseph Pool, were selected. The president and

vice-president were directed to prepare the constitution; the invitations

of certain hotels managed by Ohio men to use their parlors for gatherings

until permanent quarters could be secured, were accepted; and the

president-elect delivered a striking address upon assuming office, that

throws so strong a light upon the purpose and spirit of the gathering,

that the writer is tempted to quote somewhat freely therefrom.

“We have met to-night” said General Ewing, “as sons and foster sons

of Ohio resident in New York City to complete the foundation of a new

society in our National Metropolis. Full as this city is of organizations

of men, she has, I think, none such as this. The ties of religion,

charity, politics, science, art, literature and common occupation draw

and hold people together in numberless associations which have filled

Manhattan Island with splendid edifices. So, too, the sympathies of

a common race and history have founded Societies of St. Patrick, St.

Andrew, St. George and many others, at whose annual reunion, the wit,

song and sentiment of the fatherlands warm the hearts of their sons in

this land beyond the sea. And here, also, is an American society which

has at several crises in the last fifty years exerted a considerable

influence on public opinion, and the annual reunions of which are watched

with eagerness everywhere throughout our land where the sons of New

England, from their distant homes, look proudly and fondly back on their

grand old mother.

“But the New England Society is composed of the sons of six States. This

is a society of the natives or former residents of a single State—Ohio,

the State first born of the American Republic. I do not say she was the

first received into the Union, for Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee all

preceded her. Vermont was admitted in 1791, Kentucky in ’92, Tennessee

in ’96 and Ohio not until the 29th day of November, 1802. But these

three older States begun life as Colonies of Colonies, each exclusively

owned by and settled from its parent colony—Vermont from New York,

Kentucky from Virginia, and Tennessee from North Carolina. ‘The territory

northwest of the Ohio river’ was the first land ever owned by the United

States. It was a vast and pathless wilderness—an Empire in embryo—when,

in 1784, Virginia, with magnificent generosity, presented it to the

Union. It was not until ten years later, when the savages, who had been

allies of Great Britain throughout the War of the Revolution, were routed

and subdued by Mad Anthony Wayne, that agricultural settlements, except

under the shadow of block-houses, first became possible. Then the veteran

soldiers of the Revolution, broken in fortune, but aflame with the love

of liberty and triumphant from the long struggle for independence,

flocked there from every one of the glorious thirteen; hewed out homes in

the primeval forest, paid for lands in the long-dishonored certificates

of indebtedness given for their service in the Revolutionary War, and

thus founded the first State which sprung from the womb of the Republic.

“We are proud of Ohio,” continued the General, “for her heroic birth,

her honorable achievements, and her glorious destiny. She ‘sits in the

centre,’ belongs to no section, and is a bond of all. Her sons who

meet here to-night are at home in New York. We do not come together

as strangers in a strange land to seek relief from the depression of

inhospitable influence. No; New York is not inhospitable. She is merely

too big and too busy to note who comes or goes. Her gates landward and

seaward, are thrown open to the world. She is a focus of all the great

forces of American life. Much that is best and worst in it is developed

here; and the struggle of a new comer for a footing is always severe, and

generally unsuccessful. But New York is more truly cosmopolitan than any

other city in the United States, or, perhaps, in the world; and there

is little of race or sectional prejudice to bar the path of merit from

whatever quarter it may come.

“We found this Society because we love Ohio, and would cherish her

history, her traditions, her recollections of home and camp and forum.

How often do we look back to the days and scenes of our life there to

revive the sweetest influence and the dearest memories of existence.

“But we have aims for our Society beyond the culture of the memories and

affections of other days. We hope to make it felt in this great field of

thought and action as a generator of wholesome intellectual and moral

forces. When this meeting was called for permanent organization there

were one hundred and fifteen signers of our Constitution. Under the

direction of a judicious Governing Committee, the number will doubtless

be increased to several hundred. Our membership of non-residents will

perhaps be equally large. We should make something more of such good and

abundant material than a mere social club. I am far from insensible to

the pleasures of convivial reunions, and hope our society may have many

of them, and that I may long be of the number present. But we can have

some good work out of it as well as plenty of recreation. For instance,

with the aid of our western and southwestern brethern, who, like

ourselves, have drifted into this fence corner of the Republic, we might

help it to throw off its colonial subserviency to English politics and

manners, and gradually Americanize it. We can thus repay in kind the debt

of gratitude we owe the East for its missionary efforts a generation ago,

when it was the seat of power in the Union, and the now imperial West was

but a half subdued wilderness.

“Ere long we can command means, I hope, to fit up and maintain an

accessible, commodious and permanent club house, the halls of which

will be a pleasant rendezvous for members and their friends, where the

ideas and policies of East and West may meet in intelligent and friendly

encounter, and where sectional prejudice may be worn off in the attrition

of social intercourse; where we may see files of the Ohio newspapers, and

note the current of life at our old homes; where our brethern who come

East may meet, or learn where to find their friends, and get information

and help in their business; where Ohio men and women who are eminent or

rising in any worthy field of effort may have cordial recognition and a

helping hand, if needed; and where those who have unfortunately fallen in

the struggle for a foothold here will not be forgotten. In conclusion,

gentlemen, I venture to express the hope that our Society may be from the

outset, and continue to the end, so aristocratic that wealth can not buy

a membership for vice, and so democratic that none will be excluded by

needless cost of membership from an association which their virtues and

talents would adorn.”

The foundation was thus laid; the story of the superstructure will be

deferred for the present.