Ohio History Journal

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The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

The OHIO       HISTORICAL         Quarterly

VOLUME 70 ?? NUMBER 2 ?? APRIL 1961

 

 

 

Samuel Watts Davies and

The Industrial Revolution in Cincinnati

 

By HARRY R. STEVENS*

 

 

 

IN AN AGE PREOCCUPIED with case studies it is refreshing

to discover a man as distinctive and individual as Samuel

Watts Davies. Although he seems on first acquaintance to be

merely a typical, aggressive, frontier business enterpriser, the

appearance of similarity is deceptive. The resemblance exists,

but not because Davies himself was typical. A forceful per-

sonality exemplified many times in later businessmen creates

the illusion of a type. Davies was an original.

Davies was elected mayor of Cincinnati five times in suc-

cession, serving from 1833 to 1843, and was remembered

sixty years later as having been "practically the political

dictator of the town."1 On his death the city council by reso-

lution praised "his integrity and impartiality and his just and

energetic administration of the laws." A memorial of the bar

association described his life as "abounding in energy and

good works, full of honor and usefulness." An obituary noted

that he was zealous in both religion and politics (he was a

Whig and an Episcopalian, although he joined the church only

two or three years before his death), a man "full of generous

 

* Harry R. Stevens is an associate professor of history at Ohio University. A

previous article of his, "Recent Writings on Midwestern Economic History," was

published in the January 1960 issue of the Quarterly.

1 Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and His Followers, 1785-1909 (Cincinnati, 1909)

131.