Ohio History Journal

THE NAMING OF THE CITY OF CINCINNATI

By EDGAR ERSKINE HUME

Dr. William Holland Wilmer, the famous ophthalmologist

of Johns Hopkins and president of the New Jersey Society of

the Cincinnati, tells of a traveling salesman in a Pullman smoking

car, who interrupted another passenger reading his paper. "What's

that pale blue silk button you are wearing?" he asked. The other

told him that it was the rosette of the Society of the Cincinnati.

"Fine," replied he, "I'm from Cincinnati myself and belong to a

lot of societies there." The other said something about the Society

of the Cincinnati not having anything to do with the city of Cin-

cinnati, and the conversation ended.

Many residents of the Queen City of Ohio know no more

of the Society of the Cincinnati than did the man in Dr. Wilmer's

story, and probably comparatively few of them have ever even

wondered how their city got its Latin name. Here is how it

came about.

On April 19, 1783, General George Washington at his head-

quarters at Newburgh-on-the-Hudson, announced the cessation of

hostilities with Great Britain. American independence had been

achieved and it only remained for the Continental Army to dis-

band. Major-General Henry Knox, Washington's chief of

artillery, happily hit upon a plan to preserve the bonds of affection

which had joined the officers together during the eight long years

of the War of the Revolution. He proposed that they form a

society that would have branches in each state and at the meetings

of which the comrades in arms could renew their friendships, and,

if necessary, aid each other, including their families, in distress.

The Institution, the document drawn up and signed by the officers,

begins with these words:

It having pleased the Supreme Governor of the Universe, in the dis-

position of human affairs, to cause the separation of the colonies of North

America from domination of Great Britain, and, after a bloody conflict

(81)

82 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

of eight years, to establish them free, independent, and sovereign states,

connected, by alliances founded on reciprocal advantages, with some of the

greatest princes and powers of the earth;

To perpetuate, therefore, as well the remembrance of this vast event,

as the mutual friendships which have been formed under the pressure of

common danger, and, in many instances, cemented by the blood of the parties,

the officers of the American army do, hereby, in the most solemn manner,

associate, constitute, and combine themselves into one society of friends, to

endure as long as they shall endure, or any of their eldest male posterity,

and, in failure thereof, the collateral branches who may be judged worthy

of becoming its supporters and members.

The name of the Society was taken from that of the illus-

trious Roman general, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, who at the

call of country had left his farm and led the armies of Rome to

victory, and when that victory had been achieved, returned again

to his plough, refusing the honors proffered him by a grateful

Senate.

The following extract from the Institution clearly shows the

objects of the Cincinnati, and is read at every meeting:

The following principles shall be immutable, and form the basis of

the Society of the Cincinnati:--

An incessant attention to preserve inviolate those exalted rights and

liberties of human nature for which they have fought and bled, and without

which the high rank of a rational being is a curse instead of a blessing.

An unalterable determination to promote and cherish, between the re-

spective states, that union and national honor so essentially necessary to

their happiness and the future dignity of the American empire.

To render permanent the cordial affection subsisting among the of-

ficers: This spirit will dictate brotherly kindness in all things, and par-

ticularly extend to the most substantial acts of beneficence, according to the

ability of the society, towards those officers and their families who un-

fortunately may be under the necessity of receiving it.

The Society of the Cincinnati thus came into being without

reference to political questions, four years before the meeting of

the convention to frame the Constitution of the United States, and

before political parties existed. At the meeting on May 13 it

was unanimously resolved to ask Washington to become the

president general and a committee consisting of Generals William

Heath, Friedrich Wilhelm Steuben and Knox, was appointed

formally to notify Washington of his election. The commander

in chief, who in his own conduct had so strikingly resembled Cin-

cinnatus of old, immediately accepted the honor.

It was further voted to recognize as members, the officers of

the French Navy and Army who had served in America, giving

NAMING OF CINCINNATI 83

them the right to organize a branch of the society in France. All

officers were required, upon signing its rolls, to contribute one

month's pay to maintain the society and aid members in need. To

be eligible for membership, an American officer must have served

for three years in the Continental Army or to have been in service

to the end of the war. Later the officers of the Navy were also

admitted.

At the meeting of May 13, the design for the society's in-

signia was approved, and on June 19 the meeting charged Major

Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the distinguished French engineer who

later planned the city of Washington near which he sleeps at

Arlington, with the duty of having them made in Paris. The

badge consists of a bald eagle, "a bird peculiar to the American

continent." Grasped in the eagle's talons are golden olive branches

and above its head an olive wreath by which it is suspended from

a ribbon of sky blue and white, "descriptive of the union of France

with America." On the breast of the eagle is a medallion with

"the figure of Cincinnatus being presented with a sword by three

Senators, and in the background his wife standing at the door

of their cottage, near it a plough and other instruments of hus-

bandry." Round the whole is the legend: Omnia Reliquit Servare

Rempublicam (He left all to serve the Republic). On the re-

verse "a sun rising; a city with open gates, and vessels entering

the port; Fame crowning Cincinnatus with a wreath inscribed

Virtutis Pramium, and below, hands joined, supporting a heart

with the motto: Esto Perpetua, and round the whole Societas Cin-

cinnatorum Instituta A. D. 1783."

Curious as it seems at this distance of a century and a

half, there was immediate opposition to the Society of the Cin-

cinnati, chiefly on the part of politicians who had not served in

the war and were therefore not eligible to membership. The chief

cause of complaint was the hereditary feature of the society. It

had been provided that upon the death of a member, his mem-

bership should pass to his eldest son, and so on following the

law of primogeniture.

The Adamses were particularly hostile. To Samuel Adams'

watchful and suspicious mind, the association was "a plan dis-

84 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

gustful to the American feeling." John Adams considered it

"the first step taken to deface the beauty of our Temple of

Liberty," "the deepest piece of cunning yet attempted; it is sowing

the seeds of all that European Courts wish to grow up among us,

viz. of vanity, ambition, corruption, discord and sedition." His

son, John Quincy Adams, gleefully wrote to his father that Samuel

Adams had "had sufficient influence to prevent General Benjamin

Lincoln being chosen even as a councilor, because he is a member

of the Society of the Cincinnati." John Adams even sought to

show that Cincinnatus himself had been somewhat overrated!

Doctor Benjamin Franklin indulged in some ridicule of the

Institution and condemned the members as "forming an order of

Hereditary Knights," and said that their eagle looked more like

a turkey--for which he was glad, for, though a bit vain, the turkey

is an honest bird, while the eagle is not. Franklin later changed

his opinion, however, and became an honorary member of the

Cincinnati. John Jay thought that the "Order will eventually

divide us into two mighty factions." Elbridge Gerry was likewise

opposed.

Thomas Jefferson, the most influential of the society's op-

ponents, felt that it was contrary to the "letter of some of our

Constitutions and to the spirit of all of them," and in opposition

to "the natural equality of man." He declared himself to be "an

enemy to the Institution from the first moment of its conception,"

considered "their meetings objectionable," and "the charitable part

of the Institution still more likely to do mischief," and advised

the members to "distribute their funds, renounce their existence,"

and "melt up their eagles."

The Massachusetts Legislature declared the Cincinnati "dan-

gerous to the peace, liberty and safety of the United States," while

Rhode Island threatened such of her citizens with disfranchise-

ment as were members of the Society.

Judge AEdanus Burke of South Carolina, an eccentric Irish-

man, was one of the most active critics. He saw visions of a

"race of hereditary patricians and nobility," and his pamphlet was

the basis of the Comte de Mirabeau's Considerations sur l' Ordre

NAMING OF CINCINNATI 85

de Cincinnatus (1784), perhaps the most violent of the writings

against the order.

So great was the storm of disapproval in certain quarters

that Washington himself began to think that it would be better

to eliminate the hereditary part of the Institution "if the Society

of the Cincinnati mean to live in peace with the rest of their

fellow citizens." The meeting of 1784, following Washington's

advice, did, in fact, vote to abolish hereditary succession to mem-

bership, but as the vote was not ratified by the several state so-

cieties, it did not become effective, so that the society has come

down to us unchanged, hereditary succession and all. The op-

position did, however, cause some of the state societies to become

dormant, and several of them were not revived until the end of

the nineteenth century.

The officers of the Continental Army at the cantonments on

the Hudson River had not yet gone home after having instituted

the Society of the Cincinnati, when it became known that the

Northwest Territory had been ceded to the United States by

Virginia, its possession having been achieved by the victories of

General George Rogers Clark and his "Illinois Regiment" of

Virginia troops. This vast territory included the present States of

Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and a part of Minne-

sota.

Accordingly the officers at the cantonments at New Windsor

on the Hudson, to the number of 288, petitioned Congress on June

16, 1783, to grant them such lands. This Colonel Timothy Picker-

ing, continental quartermaster-general and an original member of

the Pennsylvania, and later of the Massachusetts Society of the

Cincinnati, "considered to be a new plan in contemplation no less

than the forming of a new State west of the Ohio."

The petition was successful and military lands were eventually

allotted them in the Northwest Territory. The Continental Con-

gress had not been fair with the officers. It had done them out

of their half pay for life by inducing them to accept a promise of

five years full pay, and, when their vote of acceptance was re-

ceived, declared that they were in the same condition as other

creditors of the Government and consequently only tendered them

86 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

certificates of indebtedness, which could be disposed of only at

ruinous depreciation, and which were not redeemed by the Gov-

ernment until 1800. The situation caused Washington, in com-

menting on the political opposition to the Society of the Cincin-

nati, to write to Samuel Vaughan on November 30, 1785:

...There is not, I conceive, an unbiassed mind that would refuse the

officers of the late army the right of associating for the purpose of estab-

lishing a fund for the support of the poor and distressed of their fra-

ternity, when many of them, it is well known, are reduced to their last shifts

by the ungenerous conduct of their country in not adopting more vigorous

measures to render their certificates productive. That charity is all that

remains of the original institution [ i. e. after the abolition of the hereditary

principle], none who will be at the trouble of reading it, can deny.

The petition to the Congress was signed by thirty-four

officers of the New Hampshire Continental Line, 132 officers of

the Massachusetts Continental Line, forty-six officers of the Con-

necticut Continental Line, thirty-six officers of the New Jersey

Continental Line, thirteen officers of the Maryland Continental

Line, and fourteen officers of the Continental Corps of Artillery.1

No other Continental State Lines were then in cantonments at

New Windsor. Nor were those troops at New Windsor after

July, 1783. The buildings there were sold at auction in Sep-

tember, 1783.

The Kentucky historian, Richard Collins, tells us that the

first white man to visit the site of Cincinnati was Captain Abraham

Hite, the writer's great-great-great-granduncle, who camped here

with a party of seventy-five men in May, 1774. They were de-

scending the Ohio River en route to Kentucky where in the follow-

ing month they established Harrodstown, Kentucky's oldest town.

Hite was later to become one of the original members of the

Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia.

With the formation of the Northwest Territory, and even

before, hardy pioneers began pushing into the little known west

country, and their numbers increased rapidly. Opposite the point

at which the Licking River flows into the Ohio, a settlement was

begun in 1789, on land purchased the previous year by Judge John

Cleves Symmes from the government. John Filson, the early

1 A complete list of petitioners may be found in Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Society Quarterly (Columbus, 1887-), I, 39-46.--Editor's note.

NAMING OF CINCINNATI 87

historian of Kentucky, who is responsible for that state's having

its name, called this town Losantiville, meaning "the town opposite

the mouth of the Licking." It required parts of words from

English, Greek, Latin and French to form the hybrid word.

In 1787, Major-General Arthur St. Clair, then president of

the State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania, was appointed

governor of the Northwest Territory. It was he who was to give

the Ohio metropolis her present name.

Here is a quotation from a letter written by Symmes on Jan-

uary 9, 1790:

Governor St. Clair arrived at Losantiville on the 2d instant. He

could be prevailed on to stay with us but three nights. He has organized

this purchase into a county. His Excellency complimented me with the

honor of naming the county. I called it Hamilton County after the Secre-

tary of the Treasury. General Harmar has named the garrison Fort Wash-

ington. The Governor has made Losantiville the county town by the name

of Cincinnata, so that Losantiville will become extinct.

It will be noted that Symmes called the city Cincinnata rather

than Cincinnati. This was deliberate. In another letter dated

June 10, 1791, he wrote to Captain Jonathan Dayton, of the So-

ciety of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey:

Having mentioned Cincinnata, I beg you, sir, you will inquire of the

literati in Jersey whether Cincinnata or Cincinnati be most proper. The de-

sign I had in giving that name to the place was in honor of the Order, and

to denote the chief place of their residence; and so far as my little acquaint-

ance with cases and genders extends, I think the name of a town should

terminate in the feminine gender where it is not perfectly neuter. Cincinnati

is the title of the order of knighthood, and can not, I think, be the place

where the knights of the order dwell. I have frequent combats in this country

on the subject, because most men spell it with ti, when I always do with ta.

But "the i's had it" and the city bears, without change, the

name of the Order, though sometimes the name is pronounced as

though Symmes had had his way.

The good Judge spoke truly when he said that the city of

Cincinnati was the place where the members of the order dwelt.

Indeed, giving birth to the city, so to speak, almost took the life

of its mother, the Society of the Cincinnati, for so many members

of the order went west after the Revolution that some of the

original thirteen state societies of that order almost went out of

existence for want of a quorum at meetings. And how many of

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88 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the local place names have a direct connection with the Society

of the Cincinnati! Not only does the city itself bear the order's

name, but Fort Washington, erected there for the protection of

its early residents from the Indians, was named by a member,

General Josiah Harmar, for the first president general of the

society. The county in which it is situated, Hamilton County,

was named for Major-General Alexander Hamilton, second presi-

dent general of the society. The commander of Fort Washing-

ton, Major John Doughty, was a member of the Cincinnati, as was

also General Elias Dayton, for whom the city of Dayton is named.

St. Clair's connection with the city and the society need not be

mentioned again. Many of the original members of the society

gave their lives in protecting the new town from the Indians. In-

cluded among these were General Richard Butler and John Hardin

and Major Alexander Trueman. Among distinguished early visi-

tors were Generals Anthony Wayne and Charles Scott, and Colonel

James Monroe, fifth President of the United States--all original

members of the Society of the Cincinnati. Wayne, who, in 1789,

had been elected second president of the Georgia Society of the

Cincinnati, replaced St. Clair as commander of the army engaged

against the Indians, in 1792, the year following "St. Clair's De-

feat." With his regulars, reenforced by the Kentucky militia

under Scott, he defeated the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Tim-

bers on August 20, 1794, thus ending the Indian war.

So great was the number of members of the Society of the

Cincinnati who went to what was then called the "West" that

they thought of establishing branches of the society in Kentucky

and in Ohio. The movement to establish a branch in Kentucky

was started in 1801 and might well have been successful since

the members there did not ask that they be given back the month's

military pay that each had contributed to the society's fund, and

also because the society in Virginia had already decided to go out

of existence with the deaths of the original members. (See Ken-

tucky State Historical Society Register (Louisville, Kentucky,

1903-), XXXII (1934), 199-203.) The fund of the Virginia So-

ciety amounting to about $25,000 was presented to Washington

College, now Washington and Lee University. (See Virginia

NAMING OF CINCINNATI 89

Magazine of History and Biography (Richmond, Virginia, 1893-),

XLII (1934), 103-115, 198-210, 304-316; XLIII (1935), 47-57.)

The attempt to establish the society in Ohio was doomed to

failure because the members there sought to have their share of

the fund of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati trans-

ferred to them. The records of the Massachusetts Cincinnati

show that in 1788 and in the following year, a number of members

removed to the Northwest Territory, where, under the leadership

of Generals Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper, they founded

Marietta. Among these pioneers, members of the Massachusetts

Cincinnati, were Lieutenant-Colonels Ebeneser Sprout and Wil-

liam Stacy, Major Robert Oliver, Captains Nathaniel Cushing,

Nathan Goodale, Zebulon King, Robert Bradford, Jonathan Stone,

Heffield White, and Jonathan Haskell.

At the meeting of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincin-

nati on July 4, 1808,

the Standing Committee to whom was referred the petition of General

Rufus Putnam and our other brethren resident in the State of Ohio,--

praying that a certain proportion of this State Society's funds, equal to

what they, the petitioners, originally subscribed and paid in, may be re-

funded, and transmitted them for the purpose of forming a fund for a

Society of the Cincinnati, which they have thought proper to create in that

State,-- after having maturely considered the subject of said petition, and

given it all that deliberate and candid attention justly due to their distant

and respected brothers, unanimously report adversely to the said petition,

for the following reasons:

1. By the Constitution of the Society it was clearly intended to form

one family of brethren, to consist of thirteen cantons, and no more, for

ever. Nor is there any provision, either expressed or implied, given either

to the General Meeting or to either of the State Societies, to create any ad-

ditional society, or to transfer any part of the original funds for that pur-

pose.

2. The stock of the Massachusetts Cincinnati was expressly subscribed

and paid into the treasury for the exclusive use of the members of that

State Society, so long as they should continue members, and no longer.

Could a few individuals detach themselves and erect another State society,

others might withdraw themselves and funds, and erect branches in the same

State; and thus the strength and respectability of the original institution

would be weakened, and one of its important objects defeated.

3. Should the request of the memorialists be acceeded to, we should

set a precedent which might render us obnoxious to the censure of other

State societies, and our authority so to act disputed and denied by the Gen-

eral Society, and thus a spirit of discord be introduced to the infinite detri-

ment of that union upon which the common good of our institution is so

dependent.

90 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Whilst bound to state this our dissent to a novel, and what we must

consider an irregular proposal, we wish our worthy brethren of Ohio, our

faithful comrades in honor and in toil, to be assured of our unabated friend-

ship; that we hold their subscriptions as a sacred deposit for their benefit,

in common with the other members; and that if misfortune at any time

should compel an application for pecuniary aid, we will most cheerfully

and promptly give to it all the weight which the individual would be en-

titled to were he an inhabitant of any part of this Commonwealth.

When the Marquis de La Fayette visited Cincinnati in 1825

during his triumphal visit to the twenty-four states of the Union

as the Nation's Guest, he saw many of his fellow members of

the Society of the Cincinnati. The son of his former aide-de-

camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Prestley Nevelle, a member of the so-

ciety in Virginia, was one of the reception committee in the city

of Cincinnati. Another aide-de-camp, Colonel Richard Clough

Anderson, likewise a member, received him in Louisville. Many

of Anderson's descendants have lived in Cincinnati. In Cincin-

nati he was addressed by the son-in-law of Symmes, Major-Gen-

eral William Henry Harrison, "Old Tippecanoe," later to become

the ninth President of the United States and brother of Colonel

Benjamin Harrison, Jr., an original member of the Virginia So-

ciety of the Cincinnati. He had seen in Kentucky and was again

to see in Ohio Lieutenant-Colonel Zachary Taylor, later to win

fame in Mexico as "Old Rough and Ready," and to become

twelfth President of the United States, and who was likewise

later to become a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, to which

he had an hereditary right as his father, Colonel Richard Taylor,

had been one of the original members of the Cincinnati in Virginia.

In 1931 in honor of the sesquicentennial of the victory at

Yorktown which made American independence possible, the

Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia caused a com-

memorative medal to be struck. Copies were presented to dis-

tinguished visitors, including members of the Cincinnati. The

medal was also presented to those Virginia institutions of higher

learning which date back to the period of the foundation of the

Society of the Cincinnati, namely the College of William and

Mary, Washington and Lee University, Hampden-Sydney Col-

lege and Transylvania University, the last being in what is now

NAMING OF CINCINNATI 91

Kentucky. Realizing that the city of Cincinnati is in what was

once Virginia territory and wishing to honor the great university

which bears its name, the president of the society on March 17,

1933, presented one of these medals to the distinguished president

of the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Raymond Walters, at a

ceremony held for that purpose at the university.

This, then, is the story of how one of the most important

cities in our country received the name of the country's oldest

military society. And yet, in glancing over the most recent Roster

of the Society of the Cincinnati, one is struck by the fact that

only three of its members live today in that great city,²and but

thirteen in the whole State of Ohio, though the total membership

is about fourteen hundred. What a pity, for undoubtedly there

are not a few gentlemen there residing who are the male heirs of

officers of the Revolution whose services entitle such descendants

to hold membership in the Society of the Cincinnati. It is not

so much a right, as a duty, for the founders of the Society wrote

among its mottoes: Esto Perpetua--Let it be Perpetuated.

2 Judge Wade Cushing of the Massachusetts Society, Mr. Griffith Prichard Griffith

of the New York Society, and Mr. Tucker Carrington of the Virginia Society.