Wolfe
Introduction
the persistent image from an old photograph keeps intruding, like the echo of a song that was playing when the car radio clicked of hours ago. A little house stood on this spot across from the state capitol, a house planted there when the land where the Statehouse sits was an unkempt field of wild grasses and weeds. The house perched there when Third Street was a residential road in a small, isolated town, a town that was still a landlocked outpost in a mostly empty western state. The house may even have been there when tree stumps remained in the middle of High Street.
It once stood in the midst of other houses, some of which were never captured in a photograph that preserved their memory. It became a haven for retreat after
a hard day’s labor, a home where children were conceived and fed, laughed and cried, slept and played. It was a place to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner and entertain Christmas visitors, a spot to sit on the porch and watch this small slice of the world pass by.
One day in the 1890s, it found itself next door to a Columbus YMCA building that frowned down upon it with an imperious scowl. Then that building came down in the 1920s to make way for a new home for the Columbus Dispatch, another mammoth neighbor that dwarfed the little house, whose friends were all but gone.
In 1927, almost one hundred years of memories were obliterated in a matter of days, and the eight-story University Club building took its place. No one mourned the little house’s passing. Andrews had been dead for thirty-three years. The new building, which gradually became an old building, fit the landscape now; Columbus was a city, not a town, and the idea of people living on Third Street seemed quaint.
And then in 1992 that building also came down, clearing the way for a forty-two-story Capitol Tower that was never built, and a parking lot for Dispatch employees filled the space. Asphalt covers ground that once served as Andrews’s yard, and the lot is more open now. Even when crowded with cars it looks almost empty, but because of that photograph, it rarely feels that way to those who know its past.
Maybe some old energy still lives there, holding onto this place when all of the visible traces of past lives have vanished. Maybe something is calling, beckoning, pleading with us to look just a little closer, to take a few seconds to sense, feel, and see, hoping we will take the time to remember. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just an imaginary feeling. Maybe the spot is empty. Maybe the mind is playing tricks.
Parking lots are the curse of preservationists, but they do make it easier to imagine, to sketch a mental image of long-ago dwellings and the people who lived there, to once more see the way it was. After so many years, we can again easily envision that little house, imagine Andrews on his porch while a congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln is giving a speech at the top of the east steps of the Statehouse across the street.
Now, anyone can stand where Andrews stood and look over there where Lincoln spoke and think about what the lawyer might have felt at that particular moment on that particular day. Or they can just hurry past that spot like the thousands of pedestrians who think Third Street has always been a row of tall buildings, churches, and parking lots, or worse still don’t think about it at all, their minds mulling only which sandwich they’re going to order for lunch at Subway.
This book is for those who want to think about it. This book is for those who believe that what used to be is important, even if they’re not always sure why.
Not everyone can see the past, but it is a cherished gift for those who do. We hope this book will make that a little easier.
1 Franklinton
A search for the city’s most famous tree figured to be futile. If old age hadn’t buried the tall, burly tree that came to be known as the “Harrison elm,” progress, landscapers, or Dutch elm disease probably had.
Still, if ever a tree merited a search party, this stubborn old giant surely did. Forgotten is a word that should never have been used to describe it. Even if it were gone, a respectful eulogy is the least that a modern historian could do.
Beneath this tree, General William Henry Harrison made a speech to a large assembly of Indian chiefs in 1813, a speech that may have meant victory over England in the War of 1812. In a city listed on the resumes of five US presidents, one that toasted Abraham Lincoln as president-elect and mourned him as his body lay at the Statehouse, one that gave James Thurber and William Dean Howells to the world of literature and George Bellows and Elijah Pierce to the world of art, this may have been the most important moment in the city’s history.
To Columbus’s early settlers, the Harrison elm was a landmark. The war with England had been going poorly, and those living on the Ohio frontier were scared. There were reports that Indians who hadn’t threatened Ohioans since signing the Treaty of Greenville seventeen years before were preparing to join the British cause, and settlers were abruptly reminded of what it had been like to have Indians surprise a sleeping family in their cabin in the middle of the night, ambush farmers in their fields, or kidnap their children.
It was against this backdrop that Harrison, whose military headquarters were in a house on what is now West Broad Street in Franklinton, summoned the region’s Indian chiefs to a council near village founder Lucas Sullivant’s home.
On June 21, 1813, a council of about fifty chiefs and prominent braves of the Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, and Seneca tribes gathered on Sullivant’s land to hear Harrison speak from beneath the large elm tree. For those living in an isolated area in the middle of the Ohio frontier, it was a spectacle they would never forget.
Harrison was surrounded by his officers, all dressed in full military regalia. A detachment of soldiers stood behind them, all at attention. The Indians sat opposite them, many of them smoking pipes and paying little attention to Harrison, who started his speech in calm and measured tones, urging the natives to either move deeper into the nation’s interior or join the American cause against the British. Settlers had descended on the tiny settlement from miles away to hear the general’s words and observe the Indians’ response. They knew that their lives might depend on what happened here; the possibility of a renewal of Indian hostilities put fear into many hearts.
A tortured silence followed the close of Harrison’s remarks. Finally, Tarhe, the Crane, the venerable, seventy-two-year-old chief of the Wyandots and the one who had assumed leadership of the Indian contingent, arose slowly, said a few words, and then gave his hand to the general in a token of friendship. The tense settlers recognized this as agreement with Harrison’s plea for either peace or help. As the other Indians moved forward to shake hands with the general, cheers of relief filled the air. Women wept, children laughed, and a scene of joyous pandemonium followed.
The Indian tribes kept their promise, reaffirming the pledges made at the Treaty of Greenville and at last creating a permanent peace between the Ohio tribes and the white settlers. Though these tribes were never called on to fight with the Americans, several of the chiefs, including Tarhe (who had been severely wounded fighting against the Americans at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794), accompanied