Ohio History Journal

ROBERT M. MENNEL

"The Family System of Common

Farmers": The Origins of

Ohio's Reform Farm, 1840-1858

The early history of the Ohio Reform School for Boys,¹ which

opened in 1858, provides a unique opportunity to analyze the de-

velopment of attitudes and policies toward juvenile delinquency and

related problems such as dependency and neglect-all major

concerns of nineteenth century society. As the first American

institution to combine a decentralized family or cottage building

plan with an agricultural work routine, the school significantly

influenced reform school construction and administration in other

states. And because it was organized with reference to similar

work in western Europe, the Reform Farm can enlarge our under-

standing in a comparative sense. By highlighting the assumptions

and work of Americans, particularly their faith in the virtues

imparted by agrarian family life, the comparative approach allows

one to connect the institution's history to broader social, economic,

cultural, and political forces.

Prologue: The Cincinnati House of Refuge

Efforts to define and control delinquency in Ohio originated

in the late 1830s among a local elite in Cincinnati, by far the

Robert M. Mennel is Professor of History at the University of New

Hampshire. He wishes to thank the American Philosophical Society, the

Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, and the Central

University Research Fund of the University of New Hampshire for research

support in the preparation of this article.

1. In 1884, the institution was renamed the Boys' Industrial School;

its present name, The Fairfield School for Boys, dates from 1964. Through-

out the later nineteenth century and indeed well into the twentieth it was

commonly known as the State Farm or the Reform Farm.

126                                                 OHIO HISTORY

state's largest city.² This group may be usefully described as

white males in their forties, Protestant moralists, Yankee migrants,

Whigs (later Republicans), and businessmen or professionals (law,

journalism, or education, often pursued simultaneously). Notable

among them were Alphonso Taft, Samuel Lewis, and James

Handasyd Perkins.³ They opposed slavery and enthusiastically

supported a variety of good works, including popular education

and the systematic organization of poor relief and penal institu-

tions.⁴ It is fruitful to examine the Cincinnati House of Refuge,

the product of one of their benevolent campaigns, because its

claims for state aid and its development as an institution signifi-

cantly shaped the history of the State Farm.

2. In 1840, Cincinnati's population (46,000) comprised over half of the

population in the state residing in urban places (over 2,500 residents). By

1850, Cincinnati had grown to 115,000, nearly seven times the size of its

nearest rivals, Columbus and Cleveland (both c. 17,000).

3. Alphonso Taft, Secretary of War in the Grant administration and

father of the President, was born in Vermont. He received his law degree

from Yale (1833) and migrated from Connecticut in 1840 to become one of

Cincinnati's most successful lawyers. Samuel Lewis, in 1814 an impoverished

migrant from Massachusetts, gained affluence through marriage and as a

legal adviser to local businessmen. In 1838 he was appointed the first State

Superintendent of Common Schools. Militantly antislavery, he helped Salmon

P. Chase, another Yankee-born Cincinnati lawyer, organize the Liberty

Party. Later, Lewis was an unsuccessful Free Soil candidate for Congress

and the governorship. James Handasyd Perkins left a comfortable family

import business in Boston to become a lawyer-journalist in Cincinnati in

1832. He subsequently accepted a call from the First Congregational Society,

but the relationship was strained as Perkins goaded the pious membership

to get involved in practical work such as the Cincinnati Relief Union which

he helped to establish. See Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William

Howard Taft, I (New York, 1939), 7-19; W. G. W. Lewis, Biography of

Samuel Lewis (Cincinnati, 1857); William H. Channing, ed., Memoirs and

Writings of James Handasyd Perkins, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1851).

4. The following facts help to place this group within the state's and

the city's population. DeBow's 1850 Census divides the nativity of Ohio's

white population (1,955,050) into three parts: Ohio born (62 percent);

born in other states (27 percent); foreign born (11 percent). Natives of

the New England states totaled 65,000 or, approximately 3 percent of the

total population, 6 percent of the Ohio born population, 12 percent of the

population migrating from other states and 30 percent of the foreign-born

population. Half of the foreign-born population was from Germany. Even

within Cincinnati, New England migrants were a distinct minority. Charles

Cist's 1841 survey of the adult (over 20) white male population shows them

comprising 8 percent of the total and 15 percent of the native-born popula-

tion. J. D. B. DeBow, Statistical View of the United States . . . Being a

Compendium of the Seventh Census .... (Washington, D.C., 1854), 61, 63,

116-18; Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841: Its Early Annals and Future

Prospects (Cincinnati, 1841), 38-39.

Family System    of Common Farmers                           127

The Cincinnatians approached the problem of delinquency in

the paternalistic manner that they believed characterized their

colonial ancestors. James Perkins explicitly likened his colleagues

to New England "select men" whose duty it was "to go out into

the highways and hedges of society and compel all the vagrant

children to come in."⁵ Seeking contemporary examples of this

exercise of power, Perkins led a delegation that visited houses of

refuge and other homes for dependent and delinquent children in

eastern cities. These institutions had been founded in the 1820s

and 1830s by local elites who were concerned about the presence

of children in the jails and penitentiaries as well as the growing

numbers of orphaned or neglected young people who wandered

the streets at all hours.⁶

By 1840, the houses of refuge had evolved into juvenile models

of adult penitentiaries and confined principally children who had

been convicted of petit larceny or repeated vagrancy. The Cincin-

natians believed that their city could use a similar institution, but

they were also impressed by a visit they took to Thompson's Island

in Boston harbor where a group of reformers had established in

1833 a manual labor and farm school for boys between the ages

of seven and fourteen who were vagrant but had not been con-

victed of other offenses. The head of this school, E. M. P. Wells,

operated a system of control based upon moral suasion and peer

group pressure, requiring, for example, the boys to grade each

other's conduct. Days were divided into periods of farm and

mechanical labor interspersed with instruction in "elementary

knowledge."⁷

5. In southern states, Perkins contended, this authority was not re-

quired because "disease generally relieves the public of so many of this

class of children." Quoted in John P. Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati and

Its Vicinity (Cincinnati, 1851), 116-17.

6. On the origins of the houses of refuge see Robert M. Mennel,

Thorns and Thistles: Juvenile Delinquents in the United States, 1825-1940

(Hanover, New Hampshire, 1973); Robert S. Pickett, House of Refuge:

Origins of Juvenile Reform in New York State, 1815-1857 (Syracuse, 1969);

David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder

in the New Republic (Boston, 1971); Steven L. Schlossman, Love and the

American Delinquent: The Theory and Practice of Progressive Juvenile

Justice, 1825-1920 (Chicago, 1977).

7. Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati, 119-21. Founders of Thompson's

Island included the Pestalozzian educator and journalist William Channing

Woodbridge and the Unitarian clergyman Joseph Tuckerman whose minis-

try to the poor undoubtedly inspired James Perkins. E. M. P. Wells had

earlier been fired as Superintendent of the Boston House of Reformation

when he resisted the implementation of contract labor and refused to apply

128                                              OHIO HISTORY

Upon returning to Cincinnati, James Perkins submitted a

report to the City Council, calling for "schools of moral reform

for the vicious," such as Thompson's Island, and "houses of refuge

for the criminal." The refuge would contain not only youths con-

victed of serious offenses, but also children who failed to behave

at the moral reform school.⁸ Thus, the Cincinnati reformers

envisioned a double-tiered institutional response, increasingly

severe as individual behavior dictated.

In the early 1840s the Perkins report was discussed in City

Council and at public meetings. While there was little opposition

to the general goals of the proposed institutions, action was delayed

by the necessity of obtaining a state charter and by confusion

regarding financing and control. In 1844, the Council asked David

T. Disney, the local (Hamilton County) state senator, to introduce

a bill requesting state authority and financial aid to build two

juvenile institutions. A house of correction would confine males

over sixteen as well as females over fourteen who had been

sentenced to the county jail or committed for trial or were being

held as witnesses. A house of reformation would confine younger

youths of both sexes who had been sentenced to the local jail. At

the discretion of the sentencing magistrate, children destined for

the state penitentiary could also be sent to the house of reforma-

tion.⁹

The state legislature was lavish in its praise of the proposed

institutions but unwilling to provide financial assistance despite

Disney's effort to broaden the bill's appeal by adding houses of

reformation for Cleveland and Columbus and funding all institu-

tions with "surplus revenue derived from the State penitentiary."

In fact, the amendment was probably counterproductive because

it threatened a cherished source of legislative self-aggrandizement.

As finally passed, the bill allowed Cincinnati to build one institution,

a house of refuge, but only when one hundred citizens subscribed

"either fifty dollars for life membership, or five dollars yearly."10

corporal punishment liberally. See Mennel, Thorns and Thistles, 25-26

and Robert H. Bremner, ed., Children and Youth in America, I (Cambridge,

Massachusetts, 1970), 726-29.

8. Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati, 119-21.

9. Alphonso Taft, Address Delivered on the Occasion of the Opening

of the Cincinnati House of Refuge (Cincinnati, 1851), 24-25; Ohio. Senate

Journal (1844-45), 555-57. On Disney, see Charles Cist, Sketches and

Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 (Cincinnati, 1851), 289-91.

10. Ohio. Senate Journal (1844-45), 556-57, 575; Ohio. Laws, XLIII

Family System   of Common Farmers                            129

The Cincinnati reformers, however, had difficulty obtaining

subscriptions and had to rely largely upon municipal funds for

construction. Their dependence partially explains the legislature's

revision of the enabling act in 1847, allowing the City Council a

majority of the institution's Board of Managers. At the opening

ceremonies in 1850, Alphonso Taft pointedly reminded his audience

of "$600 of subscriptions now due and unpaid." Yet, Cincinnatians

did not draw fine distinctions between public and quasi-public in-

stitutions. They believed that the Refuge served the public and

were prepared to use their political influence to block any further

state anti-delinquency program which did not financially aid their

own institution. In 1856, the Refuge directors warned:

The pecuniary burthen of this work has ... fallen entirely and heavily

on the citizens of Cincinnati, and we believe their Institution is the only

one of the kind in the Union sustained without the aid of state contribu-

tion; but this state of things will not, we trust, be permitted to continue.

The General Assembly, recognizing as the children of the State all

within its borders, will, doubtless, find it consistent with the philan-

thropy of the people of the State to aid our Institution . . .11

Despite James Perkins' hope that Cincinnati would build a

replica of the Thompson's Island farm school, the completed

building-a large stone edifice surrounded by high walls-

physically resembled the older and more explicitly penal houses

of refuge. The internal routine was also similar. Common schooling

was provided, but the founders' initial determination to avoid con-

tract labor soon gave way to the stronger imperative that children

should earn part of their keep and that repetitive labor tasks

were excellent inculcators of sobriety and regular habits. As in

the eastern institutions, a small number of girls, most of whom

had been charged with morals offenses, were admitted. They

(1844-45), 393-95; Ohio. Report on the Debates and Proceedings of the

Convention for the Revision of the Constitution, 1850-51, I (Columbus,

1851), 539-49, II, 340-44. Throughout the nineteenth century the penitentiary

maintained an abusive and corrupt reputation by confining youths with

older criminals and by leasing convicts at low cost to politically influential

manufacturers. See John Phillips Resch, "The Ohio Adult Penal System,

1850-1900: A Case Study in the Failure of Institutional Reform," Ohio

History, LXXXI (Autumn, 1972). 236-62.

11. Ohio. Laws, XLV (1846-47), 112-13; Alphonso Taft, Address . . .

Cincinnati Refuge, 9; Cincinnati House of Refuge, Annual Report (AR)

(1856), 9. This attitude was probably fortified by their difficult experience

collecting from the state for damages suffered when the Miami Canal over-

flowed into the institution. See Cincinnati Refuge, AR (1852), 6-7.

130                                                 OHIO HISTORY

were assigned the institution's housework but were regarded as a

distraction to the principal task of reforming boys. By 1856, the

all-male board of directors was seeking funds for a female refuge

"separate and entirely disconnected" from the rest of the institu-

tion.12

The principal difference between the Cincinnati Refuge and

its east coast counterparts lay in the Ohioans' broader social defini-

tion of delinquency. Eastern and western reformers agreed that

parental indifference and permissiveness were the primary rea-

sons for the increase in juvenile delinquency, but Cincinnatians

defined "parental folly and disorder" as a pathology potentially

applicable to rich and poor families alike and, hence, viewed juve-

nile delinquency as a broader menace to secondary social institu-

tions, particularly the schools.1³ "Through the truants," James

Perkins warned, "evil knowledge and evil practices come into the

little kingdom of the schools." True, Perkins singled out teenage

"river-boys" living in the city's basin district as the most likely

candidates for the institution. But Alphonso Taft specifically

noted "the profligacy of the youthful expectants of patrimonial

estates . . . that numerous and well known race of "third genera-

tion' men," as a principal reason for building the refuge.¹⁴

Time would prove Perkins correct, but the important point

for the 1850s was the Cincinnatians' shared belief that they had

identified and begun to solve a critical social problem that other

parts of the state would soon face. Alphonso Taft warned:

12. Cincinnati Refuge, AR (1851), 15-16; Ibid. (1857), 7-8; Ibid.

(1858), 5; Ibid. (1852), 12-13; Ibid. (1856), 7-10. It is important to re-

member that Ohioans of the 1840s did not view the first houses of refuge

in the negative manner of subsequent generations. State legislators, for

example, praised houses of refuge as "well regulated christian [sic] com-

munities and families," thus suggesting that, in their minds, there was no

necessary opposition between the discipline of the institutions and the

characteristics of family life. See, Ohio. Senate Journal (1844-45), 556-57,

575.

13. On the propensity of eastern elites to see houses of refuge and

common schools as necessities for children other than their own, see Mennel,

Thorns and Thistles, chapter one; Carl Kaestle, The Evolution of an Urban

School System: New York City, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Massachusetts,

1973).

14. Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati, 119-20; Taft, Address, 12;

Cincinnati Refuge, AR (1851), 24. There is more than a tinge of worry in

a letter from Taft to his second wife, Louise Torrey, thanking her for

raising the two sons of his first marriage and teaching them "propriety

and manners." See Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 13.

Family System of Common Farmers                          131

Next to the reformation of the children of our own city, we are in-

terested in that of the delinquent youths of our neighbors.-Rogues, like

wild beasts of prey, are never stationary. Their home may be said to be

among strangers. From city to city they roam, and are ever most suc-

cessful where they are least known.¹⁵

Also, by describing juvenile delinquency as a problem common

to all social classes and as a threat to popular institutions, Cincin-

nati reformers illustrated a new rhetoric of social control that

catered to the egalitarianism of the age. How this philosophy was

disseminated throughout the state is of major importance.

Charles Reemelin and the Beginnings of a State Program

With the opening of the Cincinnati Refuge in 1850, debate

on the need for a state institution for juvenile delinquents temp-

orarily receded to the level of a perfunctory paragraph in the

Governor's annual message. In 1851 Seabury Ford (Whig) recom-

mended a state institution similar to the Massachusetts Reform

School at Westboro (1847) where the boys were "contented, happy

and ambitious." The following year Reuben Wood (Democrat)

proposed state aid to encourage municipalities to build houses of

refuge similar to the Cincinnati institution. In neither case did

the legislature take any action.¹⁶

Several factors, however, encouraged the possibility of state

action. First, the state was continuing to grow in population in

the 1850s, especially in its urban sector where delinquency was one

of the characteristics of growth. The state as a whole increased

by 400,000 in the decade, with cities and towns over 2,500 absorbing

most of the addition. Cleveland more than doubled its population,

rising from 17,000 to 43,000; Dayton increased from 10,000 to

20,000; Toledo from 4,000 to 13,000. Newark in Licking County

grew from 3,600 to 4,600 while the county population as a whole

declined. In 1850 there were eleven counties with populations of

less than 10,000; in 1860 there were three.¹⁷ Second, as evidenced

by the legislative debate over aid to the Cincinnati Refuge, there

was wide support for the idea of separate institutions for juvenile

15. Taft, Address, 24-25.

16. Ohio. Executive Documents (1851), 13-14; (1852), 16. For a sum-

mary of legislation affecting delinquent children in nineteenth century

Ohio see Nelson L. Bossing, "History of Educational Legislation, 1851 to

1925," Ohio Archeological and Historical Publications, XXXIX (1930),

291-300.

17. In subsequent work, I shall discuss further the relationship between

132                                                OHIO HISTORY

delinquents. In 1854 several state representatives, after visiting

some of the younger inmates at the state penitentiary, proposed

that the state build an institution similar to the New York House

of Refuge. Their effort, though unsuccessful, indicated that a

reform school program, by diverting the flow of youths to the

penitentiary and by offering services to the entire state, might

succeed. Finally, with the creation of the State Teachers Associ-

ation (1847), an educators' lobby began to promote a state reform

school. Local school boards such as Cleveland's augmented this

pressure with demands for refuges and industrial schools to con-

trol truants and school yard idlers.¹⁸

Salmon P. Chase was the catalyst. Beginning in 1830, he had

practiced law in Cincinnati. Though he shared the New England

origins of the founders of the Cincinnati Refuge, he was not active

in the campaign to build the institution, concentrating instead on

defense of runaway slaves. Ousted from the U.S. Senate in 1854,

he returned to Ohio to build an "anti-Nebraska" party as a spring-

board for his later campaigns for the Presidency. In 1855 Chase

stitched together an unstable coalition of independent Democrats

(many of whom were Germans), Free-Soilers, abolitionists, Know-

Nothings, and "conscience" Whigs to win the Governorship by

15,000 votes.¹⁹ In his inaugural address Chase asked the legisla-

delinquency and urbanization. I refer here not to the rate of criminal or

disruptive behavior by youths of any particular place but rather to the

likelihood that such behavior would lead to the reform school. In 1860

half of the new inmates at the Farm came from the five largest counties

(Hamilton, Cuyahoga, Franklin, Montgomery, and Muskingum) which to-

gether accounted for less than 19 percent of the state's population. Because

the Cincinnati Refuge absorbed many of Hamilton County's delinquents,

this jurisdiction, containing 10 percent of the state's population, contributed

only 3 percent of the new inmates. Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), with

only 3 percent of the state's population, contributed 31 percent of the

admittees.

18. American Journal of Education, VI (1859), 532-54; Ohio. Docs.,

II (1891), 1023; Cleveland Board of Education, AR (1854-55), 19-23; Ibid.

(1855-56), 16-17. Early industrial schools did not teach trades but rather

employed children in menial tasks (rag picking, etc.), fed them, and pro-

vided some elementary education. Most operated during the day only.

19. Albert Bushnell Hart, Salmon Portland Chase (Boston, 1899), 132-

33, 150-58. See also Jacob W. Schukers, The Life and Public Services of

Salmon Portland Chase (New York, 1874); Robert B. Warden, An Account

of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (Cin-

cinnati, 1874); Dictionary of American Biography, IV (1930), 27-34. The

difficulty of maintaining friendly relations between these factions cannot

be understated. Chase simultaneously enjoyed the confidence of Quakers,

Family System    of Common Farmers                             133

ture to extend the "benefits" of benevolent institutions "to all,

without distinction, who need their care." The legislature, though

opposed to opening state institutions to the miniscule free black

population, was willing to consider the extension of institutions,

such as reform schools, to whites.²⁰

The backbone of Chase's legislative support lay in the Western

Reserve among fellow New England migrants who admired his

long-standing opposition to fugitive slave laws. One of the leaders

of this group was James Monroe, a young Oberlin professor of

rhetoric and belles lettres who was elected state representative

in 1856. Monroe introduced a bill to establish "the Ohio House of

Refuge" to be located "at a distance of not less than two miles

from the city of Columbus." He chose Columbus to conform to

precedent: the penitentiary, deaf and dumb asylum, and the blind

asylum were already located there. Because various legislators

from other localities objected, the final bill left the selection of

site and architect to three Commissioners "appointed by the

Governor by and with the advice of the Senate."²1

The first reform school bill was distinguished by tones of

parsimony and calculated vagueness. The Commissioners were

provided with an appropriation of $1,000 plus travel and living

expenses when engaged in their duties. With this sum, they were

to hire "a competent architect" and visit three other reform

schools in the United States. They were to furnish the legislature

with "full and exact" information regarding building costs and

German-Americans and, even though they had their own candidate in 1855,

some Know-Nothings. "My sin is my Americanism," wrote one man. A

Quaker warned him that friendship with Know-Nothings would subvert the

antislavery principles upon which the Republican Party was forming. See

L. D. Campbell to Chase, February 9, 1856, and Alexander S. Latty to

Chase, December 18, 1855, Box 28, The Papers of Salmon P. Chase, Liberty

of Congress (LC). See also, Roeliff Brinkerhoff, Recollections of a Life-

time (Cincinnati, 1900); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men:

The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York,

1970), 244-45.

20. Salmon P. Chase, Inaugural Address (Columbus ,1856), 4. On

the exclusion of blacks from state services, see David A. Gerber, Black

Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915 (Urbana, Illinois, 1976), 4-6.

21. W. H. Phillips, Oberlin Colony: The Story of a Century (Oberlin,

1933), 203-17; Robert S. Fletcher, A History of Oberlin, I (Oberlin, 1943),

390-414; Ohio. House Journal (1856), 414, 487, 567; Ohio. Laws, LIII

(1856), 66-67; James Monroe, Oberlin Thursday Lectures, Addresses and

Essays (Oberlin, 1897), 121-25. Monroe's own scheme for an institution

specified that the boys "might have firecrackers on the 4th of July, a turkey

for Thanksgiving, a plum pudding at Christmas, and nuts and apples on

New Year's."

134                                               OHIO HISTORY

admonished to "make no contract in anticipation of appropriations"

unless they wished to be "held responsible in their private capa-

cities." The vagueness stemmed from the need to pacify Hamilton

County (Cincinnati) representatives. Thus, the possibility of a

state subsidy for the Cincinnati Refuge remained and, by opening

the institution to "persons not exceeding twenty years of age,"

(i.e., not specifying the sex of inmates) the bill enticed Cincin-

natians with the prospect of ridding their institution of female

delinquents.²²

The bill was widely supported, passing the house 75-10 and

the senate 26-3. The thirteen senators and representatives voting

against the reform school included six farmers, two physicians, two

lawyers, two skilled workers, and one merchant. Only two came

from rapidly growing counties (Stark and Lawrence); the balance

came from areas that had yet to grow substantially or else were

actually losing population. Unlike the legislators and citizens who

advocated institutions, ten of the thirteen politicians had lived in

Ohio all their lives.²³ The point here is that opposition to the

reform school was insubstantial and unorganized although the

institution symbolized a significant shift toward a more active

welfare state in Ohio. Adopted after perfunctory debate, the

Reform Farm demonstrates that the casually agreed-upon law can

epitomize social and political change of a fundamental and un-

anticipated nature.

Salmon Chase moved quickly to appoint the Commissioners in

order to forestall self-promoters and lobbyists for other indivi-

duals and to take advantage of an opportunity to increase the

slender powers of the Governorship.²⁴ His appointments reflected

the coalition that elected him. James D. Ladd, a Quaker pacifist

from Steubenville, was active in the underground railroad in

eastern Ohio.²⁵ John A. Foot, son of Connecticut Governor and

U. S. Senator Samuel A. Foot, graduated from Yale law school

and migrated to Cleveland in 1833 at the age of thirty. He vigor-

ously promoted railroads and public education and helped to

22. Ohio. Laws, LIII (1856), 66-67; Ohio. Senate Journal (1856),

375, 382. See also Monroe, Thursday Lectures, 123.

23. Ohio, House Journal (1856), 414-15 and, appendix, 104-09; Senate

Journal (1856), 382-83.

24. Box 2, Folder 6, The Papers of Salmon P. Chase, Ohio Historical

Society; Hart, Chase, 150-58.

25. Edward S. Ebbert comp., Lancaster and Fairfield County (Lan-

caster, Ohio, 1901), 63-72; Henry M. Wynkoop, comp., Picturesque Lan-

caster (Lancaster, Ohio, 1897), 22-23.

Family System of Common Farmers                              135

establish the Cuyahoga Anti-Slavery Society.²⁶ The dominant

figure in the early history of the reform school was Charles

Reemelin, whose early life and career deserve particular attention.

Reemelin was born Carl Gustav Rumelin in the free city of

Heilbronn (Wurttemberg, Germany) in 1814. His father was a

prosperous wholesale grocer; his mother came from a well-to-do

family. Family life was encompassing and satisfying to the young

boy. Later he remembered:

It was the outer world, the outside eventualities that marred our general

home happiness; for on our visits to relations, we found there only evi-

dences of ... the inherent superiority of our kind of social life. And this

confirmed in us that thing called: family pride. We attributed the good

we enjoyed to our parents and to their ancestors on both sides; for we

knew of no evil they had ever caused either to ourselves or any body else.

This harmony was shattered in the 1820s as the child witnessed

his parents fighting and as they both began to withdraw from his

life-his father to the world of business, his mother to a sani-

tarium where she died in 1823.27

Reemelin's unhappiness deepened when his father remarried

in 1826. Soon thereafter his father forced him to enter the family

business and he ran away. Upon being apprehended, he was

apprenticed as a cadet at Denkendorf (literally Thinking Village),

an experimental beet sugar factory established by the King of

Prussia. Here he developed what would be a lifelong interest in

horticulture and learned the arts of evaporation and fermentation.

Paradoxically, he also became disenchanted with life in Germany

because of what he regarded as the excessive interference of the

state in economic matters. As a clerk in a Wimpfen (Hesse-

Darmstadt) grocery, he spent most of his time arranging smug-

gling deals to evade the complicated tariff barriers of the various

German states and duchies. Inspired by Gottfried Duden's letters

26. Elroy M. Avery, A History of Cleveland and Its Environs: The

Heart of New Connecticut, I (Chicago, 1918), 151, 208, 217, 345; W. Scott

Robinson, ed., History of the City of Cleveland (Cleveland, 1887), ap-

pendix, x; James Harrison Kennedy, A History of the City of Cleveland

(Cleveland, 1896), 251-52. See also Nathaniel Goodwin, The Foote Family

(Hartford, 1849), 245-46, 649, 651. John A. Foot was distantly related to

the Cincinnati journalist-reformers John P. Foote and Samuel E. Foote.

See above, In, 2n.

27. Charles Reemelin, Life of Charles Reemelin (Cincinnati, 1892),

1-7.

136                                             OHIO HISTORY

from America and finally freed by his father, Carl Rumelin sailed

for Philadelphia in the summer of 1832.28

In America he epitomized the vital and eclectic spirit of the

age. He worked briefly in an Irish Grocery store in Philadelphia,

and also became a Jacksonian because of the Democratic leader's

advocacy of free trade and hard money. In 1833 he moved to

Cincinnati and began to prosper as a grocer and as founder and

editor of the Volksblatt. Reemelin married in 1837 and later

moved his growing family to a farm in suburban Dent where he

planted an orchard and a vineyard, becoming particularly expert

in methods of wine culture. In the 1840s he visited Europe twice,

once serving as a correspondent for William Cullen Bryant's New

York Evening Post. He referred to himself as "a practical vint-

ner" or as a farmer, but by 1855 he was President of the Cincin-

nati and Dayton Short Line Rail Road and deeply immersed in

the problems of raising capital.²⁹

Charles Reemelin's political career began in 1844 with election

to the state house of representatives. Two years later he was

elected to the state senate and, in 1850, he became a delegate to

the State Constitutional Convention. In all these posts he demon-

strated a prickly independence that ultimately circumscribed his

career within the state Democratic party. At the Constitutional

Convention, he triumphed in his campaign to outlaw the legislative

gerrymander but was decisively and derisively defeated in his

efforts to strengthen the governorship and to allow penitentiary

inmates to keep their earnings.³⁰

Reemelin idealized the German bureaucracy. For him, a

virtuous state was a function of a powerful, expert, and independent

civil service which would infuse government with efficiency as well

as moral and social purpose. Reemelin saw no contradiction be-

tween this belief and his faith in Jacksonian democracy because,

in German metaphysical fashion, he believed that popular will

reflected perfect or Absolute will. The mark of an able civil

28. Reemelin, Life, 8-19; Henry A. Ford and Kate B. Ford, comps.,

History of Cincinnati, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches

(Cincinnati, 1881), 130-32; Gottfried Duden, Bericht uber eine Reise nach

den westlichen Staaten Nordamerikas . . . (Elberfeld, 1829).

29. Ford and Ford, Cincinnati, 130-31; Saxton's Rural Handbooks:

Third Series (New York, 1856), 7, 103. "May God bless the vintner's skill and

toil!" concluded Reemelin. See also, Ohio. State Board of Agriculture, AR

(1870), 542-55; Charles Reemelin, The Vine-dresser's Manual (New York,

1857).

30. Ford and Ford, Cincinnati, 131; Ohio. Proceedings of the [Con-

stitutional] Convention (1851), II, 340-44; Ibid., I, 697-704.

138                                               OHIO HISTORY

The Reform School Commissioners met for the first time on

April 18, 1856. Foot was elected Chairman and Ladd, Secretary.

Reemelin, however, assumed the dominant role. Since he was

about to visit Europe to settle his father's estate and to find

bankers willing to market Dayton Short Line bonds, he volunteered

to visit European reform schools and report his findings. Prior

to his departure, the Commissioners toured reform schools,

refuges, and industrial schools in the eastern states. Their journal

of this period is perfunctory: Westboro was "a model institution";

the New York House of Refuge was "prominent." Reemelin was

not impressed: "None of these institutions suited me fully. I

wanted one, that was in no way a prison, except for temporary

punishment."³²

The Commissioners undertook their mission nearly devoid

of knowledge of existing reformatory programs in either Europe

or America. They referred to Charles Loring Brace's newsboys'

lodging house in New York as "Mr. Braus' School for Vagrant

Boys" and seemed unaware of the bitter dispute between Brace,

who advocated immediate placing out, and the New York in-

stitution managers who favored lengthy incarceration. Nor did

they seem informed of the extensive literature on foreign reform

schools. Beginning in the first American Journal of Education

(1826), articles describing these institutions appeared regularly

in pedagogical publications. Calvin Stowe's Report on Ele-

mentary Public Instruction in Europe, containing a perceptive

discussion of Johann H. Wichern's Rauhe Haus (Hamburg), was

originally a report made to the Ohio legislature in 1837. And

an early issue of Henry Barnard's American Journal of Educa-

tion (1855) promoted European cottage reform schools as pre-

ferable to the American houses of refuge.³³

32. Ohio. Docs., I (1856), 626-27; Reemelin, Life, 131-34. Another

purpose of Reemelin's journey was to persuade the famous German ex-

plorer Alexander von Humboldt to endorse the Republican Presidential

nominee John Fremont. Humboldt refused. The Commission's journal also

records that the trip would be "without expense to the State." Reemelin

believed that Chase had promised him reimbursement.

33. Calvin E. Stowe, Report on Elementary Public Instruction in

Europe (Boston, 1838); American Annals of Education, I (1830), 341-54;

Ibid. (1838), 112; Common School Journal, III (1841), 154-58; American

Journal of Education, I (1855), 611-39. See also Alexander Dallas Bache,

Education in Europe (Philadelphia, 1839); Horace Mann, Report of an

Educational Tour in Germany, and Parts of Great Britain and Ireland

(London, 1846); Henry Barnard, National Education in Europe (Hart-

ford, 1854).

Family System of Common Farmers                           139

Of all this Reemelin was ignorant when he left for Europe

in July, 1856. His first stop was Red Hill, an agricultural reform

school located in Surrey, England, and operated by the Royal

Philanthropic Society (London). Again he was disappointed-

"much ceremonious praying and stiff piety.... Personal clean-

liness and good manners were neglected, and so were habits of

economy and propriety, the proper handling of tools and nice

behavior in the rooms and on the playgrounds." Though the

rural setting gave "the appearance of kindliness and freedom,"

Reemelin believed that instruction through the "comforts and

enjoyments" of life was ignored. Citing Plato, he said, "True

education means improvement of the body through gymnastics,

as of the soul through music."³⁴

Sydney Turner, the Angelican cleric who was Red Hill's

superintendent, had moved the institution from St. George's field

in London to the country after observing Mettray, a French

agricultural colony established in 1839 by Frederic Auguste De-

Metz, a penal reformer and lawyer at the French Royal Court.

Mettray was organized on the cottage plan, with boys living forty

to a dormitory under the supervision of "elder brothers," young

men specially chosen by DeMetz and trained at the institution's

Ecole Preparatoire. The boys spent several hours each day in

the classroom, but most of the time they worked; some were

employed in trades or in the orchards and vineyards but the

majority performed hard agricultural labor-digging and crushing

stones for roads, draining low lands, and subsoiling grain fields.³⁵

DeMetz's work attracted favorable notice in England from

the outset, but following passage of the first Youthful Offenders

Act (1854), which greatly stimulated the building of reform and

industrial schools, he became the vogue of the British philan-

thropic world. In May 1856, he addressed the National Reforma-

34. Reemelin, Life, 135. On the reform school movement in England

see Lionel W. Fox, The English Prison and Borstal Systems (London,

1952); Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society,

vol. I (London, 1969); Julius Carlebach, Caring for Children in Trouble

(London, 1970); Margaret May, "Innocence and Experience: The Evolution

of the Concept of Juvenile Delinquency in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,"

Victorian Studies, XVII (September, 1973), 7-30.

35. Sydney Turner and Thomas Paynter, Report on the System and

Arrangements of "La Colonie Agricole" At Mettray (London, 1846);

"Mettray: Its Rise and Progress," Irish Quarterly Review, VI (December

1856), 915-82; Notice sur L'Ecole Preparatoire annexee a la Colonie de

Mettray (Paris, 1860).

140                                              OHIO HISTORY

tory Union and was elected an honorary member. Mettray was

hailed as "the Mecca of the Reformatory School."³⁶

Reemelin agreed. After a short visit, he pronounced Mettray

"the best Reform School in the world . . . the model for us in the

United States, to follow."³⁷ Reemelin was fascinated by the

supervisory advantages provided by cottages and the relationship

between institutional development and the farm economy. The

cottage system offered the superintendent "the opportunity to com-

pare the movements of his under officers . .. negligence or relaxa-

tion from discipline is easier detected and remedied." But the

removal or isolation of inept sub-officers was only a negative

advantage. The true value of organizing an institution around

small groups was that, through the use of competitive devices,

groups could be made to control each other as well as the behavior

of individual members. Reemelin explained:

Each week the flag of honor waves over that family which has had the

least amount of punishment-been the most useful and orderly. The con-

tention for this mark of distinction soon becomes so great, as often to

make it a matter of extreme difficulty to decide to which the flag be-

longs; and who can doubt its most beneficial effect upon officers and

inmates ?38

A tablet of honor recognizing individual deportment supplemented

group competition and there was even a Society of Honor, con-

sisting of exemplary former "colons" who were to offer encourage-

ment to other released inmates. Upon leaving Mettray, every boy,

whether or not he was returning to his family, was assigned a

particular employment in a particular place and also received a

patron, often a judge or local notable, whose job it was to super-

vise the colon's behavior. Thus, the institution's supervisory web

was extended into the child's later years.

To Reemelin, the crowning virtue of Mettray was that it

linked the cottage plan to agricultural life and thus resembled

"life as it is, and not as life should not be." The physical growth

36. "Intelligence: Colonie Agricole de Mettray," Christian Teacher,

IV (N.S.) (1842), 208-19; "The Child and the Criminal," Douglas Jerrold's

Shilling Magazine, II (1845-48), 228-39; Irish Quarterly, IV (September,

1854), 691-792; VI (1856), 785; Robert Hall, Mettray, A Lecture Read

Before the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (London, 1854). See

also Mary Carpenter, Reformatory Schools (London, 1851) and Matthew

Davenport Hill, Suggestions for the Repression of Crime (London, 1857).

37. Reemelin, Life, 137, 140.

38. Ohio. Docs., I (1856), 620.

Family System of Common Farmers                          141

of the institution occurred "gradually," in consonance with crop

development; in contrast, the house of refuge ("the big house

cell system") was "generally too large at the commencement, and

soon after too small for all coming time." And, since "society in

general" lived life within a "good farmer's family of easy, but not

rich circumstances," the superiority of an institution similarly

organized became "self-evident." "Habituate [the delinquent] to

the life and labor of a farm," said Reemelin, "and he will, in

nearly every case, continue so to live and labor when restored to

society." Once the public became aware that the boys had been

taught "to live as industrious people generally live, only with

greater regularity and under more steady habits," families would

eagerly adopt them and the vexing problem of placement would

be solved.³⁹

Reemelin recognized that Mettray's reputation rested not only

upon thorough supervision, but upon the emotional aura of daily

life. The colony derived its style from a combination of music,

physical activity, and military exercises. In his report to the Ohio

legislature, Reemelin recommended, "Instead of bells and gongs

use horns, with a few hearty blasts to some simple piece of music,"

to regulate the day, and, "if possible . . . bathing and swimming

... in open air, and in a running stream should not be omitted."

Reemelin lauded DeMetz's employment of subaltern army officers

as elder brothers because they produced "a punctuality of conduct

that sets an excellent example." A case in point, the famous

hammock drill, which Reemelin likely observed, was described by

a British visitor:

When the little fellows marched upstairs, they ranged themselves around

the room, keeping up the military tramp. At the command, "a genoux,"

each was in one instant on his knees, and from a corner of the room came

a weak, tiny voice beginning, Notre Pere, que es aux cieux, the response

of the fifty was spoken as if one voice, "ainsi." After prayer the order

was given to arrange hammocks, which was done in three movements

each at the same second; they now put off their clothes, as commanded,

and hung them on the hook beside their hammock, and at the last order,

all were in bed.

Parades and public assemblies were held often, giving individuals

and groups the opportunity to display their badges and flags of

honor. Inmates were marched everywhere, singing as they went.

This spirit, said DeMetz, "promotes good order, prevents conver-

39. Ibid., 618-20.

142                                                OHIO HISTORY

sation ..., fixes good thoughts and good words in their memory,

and attaches them to the institution where they have first felt

these happy influences."⁴⁰

The animating force of "these happy influences" was the

superintendent and his staff.    Reemelin wrote eloquently but

vaguely on this subject. The elder brother "who will not... mingle

with the boys, eat, sleep, play and work with them, should not be

employed," he said. With DeMetz in mind, Reemelin wrote, "the

first officer . . . should not be a hireling, but a man of sound

native sense, with a sound, practical education, an honest, kind

and large heart, deeply religious and strictly conscientious, but

not a bigot ... in short, a man who . . . undertakes the position

from a deep conviction of duty, and not for the mere pay, and the

great purpose of his life !" Reemelin feared that he would not find

such a person in the United States; he was especially impressed

by the remarks of a German Catholic Bishop who accompanied him

to Mettray:

. . . you will not have the requisite persons for the right economical ad-

ministration or the right religious education.... Don't mistake me! I do

not say this as a Priest opposed to Protestantism. I express it to you,

because I want to caution you against the too high expectations, which I

see you have. In the U.S. they have not yet learned the value of especially

capable public administration, by servants in the best sense; to wit: that

of well disciplined persons, animated by a stern public spirit, that has its

best reward in accomplishing high moral good.⁴1

But why was there no "stern public spirit" in the United

States, or few officials acting "from a deep conviction of duty?"

What did "sound native sense" mean, besides skill in the techniques

of institution management? What set Europe apart on these

questions? It must be emphasized that DeMetz was a pioneer

penologist. At Mettray, he developed a system of affective dis-

cipline substantially different from the existing penal orthodoxy

which stressed rewards for industry and silent obedience and

40. Ibid., 622; Reemelin, Life, 138; Irish Quarterly, Quarterly Record,

VIII (1858), vii-viii; Ibid, VI (1856), 937-38, 975-77. Hammocks were neces-

sary because the space was needed as a workshop during the day. They had

the added advantage of discouraging homosexuality although an avid boy

of a later generation turned the barrier to an advantage by draping

blankets over the side and congressing on the floor. See Jean Genet, The

Flower and the Rose (Paris, 1951), 118-19.

41. Reemelin, Life, 140; Ohio. Docs., I (1856), 620-21.

144                                            OHIO HISTORY

was the exercise of state authority by established classes who were

pleased to govern as representatives of God or the metaphysical

state but who feared the will of the people and rejected sovereignty

based upon it.

The connection between the philanthropy of Mettray and

French privileged classes embarrassed Reemelin to the point of

unaccustomed silence. DeMetz was a member of the upper middle

class, but the institution owed its existence to pious members of

the nobility who donated land and endowed buildings. These men

were critical of both Louis Phillipe's bourgeois monarchy and the

materialist philosophies of Comte and St. Simon. They maintained

guarded ties to the regime through educational reformers such as

Victor Cousin, but their real affinity was for Catholic social action,

epitomized by the work of Frederic Ozanam, founder of the St.

Vincent de Paul Society (1833). The Revolution of 1848 posed a

dilema to this group, but not for long. Ozanam welcomed the fall

of the monarchy, but when Republican and radical workers in

Paris mounted the barricades he aided Cavaignac and the National

Guards in brutally suppressing the uprising. The colons joined

military units in large numbers; the Eighth Regiment of Hussars

was called "Little Mettray." The institution specially cited former

colons who participated in the Guards' destruction of the barri-

cades on Faubourg St. Antoine, and a picture depicting the death

of Monsignor Affre, Archbishop of Paris, on the same battleground

was a prominent icon at Mettray.⁴³

Reemelin ignored another connection between Mettray and

French political conservatism by not commenting upon the system

of Correction Paternelle which DeMetz had inaugurated in 1854.

The term described two sections of the French Civil Code allowing

parents to surrender unruly children to the court for short periods

of imprisonment. Because of jail conditions, parents, particularly

wealthy parents, seldom took this action. Mettray itself, according

to DeMetz, was "unsuited" for middle and upper class boys since

"they would . . . be liable to form intimacies among their com-

panions which would be most injurious in after life." At the

behest of affluent parents, DeMetz established a building of separ-

ate and silent confinement modeled after Pennsylvania's Eastern

43. Fondation d'une Colonie Agricole pour Les Jeunes Detenus a

Mettray (Paris, 1839), 21-24; Thomas E. Auge, Frederic Ozanam and His

World (Milwaukee, 1966), 20-55; 113-19; Irish Quarterly, VI (1856), 954,

975-76. See also Jean Baptist Duroselle, Les Debuts du Catholocisme Social

en France, 1822-70 (Paris, 1951), 154-98.

Family System of Common Farmers                            145

State Penitentiary which he had studied during his American visit

in 1837. Set apart from the main institution, these youths sup-

posedly spent their incarceration reflecting upon past misdeeds;

they saw only DeMetz and their private teacher and confessor, who

was usually a seminary student. DeMetz did not fully organize

La Maison Paternelle until 1858 but it was functioning when

Reemelin visited.44

DeMetz vocally supported established political and religious

authority because he believed in class-based society and its central

tenet-the foreordination of a person's life. By contrast, Reemelin,

who was not a reticent man, studiously ignored plain evidences of

DeMetz's proudest beliefs. Indeed, Reemelin encouraged quite

different goals for affective discipline by insisting that the Ohio

Reform Farm would open the future for its inmates. It would

provide "passports to the favors of the world" by teaching them

"polite manners, clean habits, and a capability to adapt them-

selves easily to each new family." An elder brother at the Farm,

summarizing the philosophy of affective discipline, commented on

its expected impact on individual inmates:

I have no faith in negative goodness; and, in my opinion, it is not enough

that a boy goes on from month to month with a studied reticence and

persistent reserve, even though his conduct be unexceptionable. Because

he does no evil, is not sufficient reason that he is prepared to do any

good. [He may be perfect in the book of Reports, without being well-

disposed in his heart.] ... Indeed, I feel that in our zealous and unyield-

ing warfare against the evil in our boys, we ought to bear in mind that

if a spirit of manly self-respect, a love for good books, for study, and for

all things right and proper, can be excited in the heart of the boy, it will

soon grow into a power that will do the weeding out for us, even as the

weeds of the field are smothered by the shadow of the vigorous, tower-

ing plant.⁴⁵

For American reformers, knowledge of common subjects, an

adaptable personality, "polite manners", and "manly self-respect"

increasingly defined the meaning of human character. These be-

came ends in themselves, more important than individual or group

allegiance to established religious or political authority. In his

44. Irish Quarterly, Quarterly Record, VIII (1858), liv-lxx; Frederic

Auguste DeMetz and Abel Blouet, Rapports a M. le Comte de Montalivit

. . . sur les Penitenciers des Etats-Unis (Paris, 1837); Frederic Auguste

DeMetz, Resume sur le Systeme Penitentiare (Paris, 1847); Notice sur La

Maison Paternelle (Paris, 1860).

45. Ohio. Docs., I (1856), 621; Ibid., II (1867), 145.

146                                                OHIO HISTORY

report, Reemelin blurred the distinction between religious and

moral instruction, emphasizing that together these would form

the "citadel" of character education at the Reform Farm. His

assurance, however, sounded less convincing than his enthusiasm

for teaching "proper rules in eating, drinking and sleeping." With-

out these "outposts", he wrote, "human character, however deep

its religious foundations, cannot be safely trusted to bear up

amidst the vicissitudes of life." Religion could not be trusted to

control behavior, and politics existed only to be scorned. "Is it not

enough," asked the Ohio Commissioners, "that the greater part

of ... our ... governments, are tainted by ... heated partizanship;

must the nurseries of youth be also drawn into the vortex?46 Of

course, the Commissioners were themselves "heated partizans."

But they had the good fortune to live in a society where resources

were expanding and hierarchies were fluid. Their luck permitted

them to believe that politics and socialization were mutually exclu-

sive and that the American delinquent, with his newly-formed

character, could be allowed to pursue wealth and social standing.

After Reemelin left Mettray, he became enmeshed in railroad

problems and spent little additional time studying European reform

schools.⁴⁷ He failed to examine his own country's most famous

family reform school, Johann Hinrich Wichern's Rauhe Haus in

Hamburg (Horn). He apparently knew little about it, referring

in his Ohio report to the Rauhe Haus located "at Wichern in

Germany." He did visit Gustav Werner's schools for vagrant

children in Wurttemberg and some small Swiss reform schools.

He admired Werner's self-denying zeal and his ability to persuade

wealthy citizens to donate large sums. Yet, Reemelin had to

intervene with these patrons in order to relieve Werner of em-

barrassing debts and he knew from the experience of the Cincinnati

Refuge that a reform school could never be funded through volun-

tary contributions.⁴⁸  Thus, as he returned to Ohio in October,

46. Ibid., I (1856), 621, 623.

47. Reemelin knew little or nothing of DeMetz's extensive penological

studies and their relationship to the founding of Mettray. According to

DeMetz's own account, Mettray sought to combine "l'ordre interieur et la

severite de la regle" of American and English penitentiaries and "le

princepe du gouvernment paternel l'organisation par families" of the Rauhe

Haus and, "enfin, a ces divers etablissements, la nature des travaux et le

mode d'enseignement." See Fondation d'un Colonie Agricole, 15.

48. Werner's schools continued to falter because the apprenticed in-

mates "accustomed to punctuality, to cleanliness, and to regularity in tak-

ing their simple meals, find it often more difficult to get on well in less

regulated households." American Journal of Education, XX (1870), 676.

Family System of Common Farmers                           147

Mettray remained his primary enthusiasm. It had given him a

technique.

Organizing the Farm

The Commissioners met several times in late 1856 to face

the tasks of negotiating with the Cincinnati House of Refuge and

of adapting Mettray to local circumstances. They found Cincinnati

authorities open to discussion and struck a quick bargain which,

though it ultimately fell through, had the advantage of purchasing

the support of Hamilton County politicians as the State Farm

was being funded and built. The Commissioners exempted the

Refuge from legislation seeking to encourage voluntarily supported

reform schools; to reciprocate, the refuge agreed to allow the

Commissioners to visit and advise on a regular basis. This conces-

sion cleared the path for the Commissioners to recommend an

annual state subsidy of $10,000 in return for which the Cincinnati

institution would accept up to 100 boys "hereafter sent by the

courts in this state." Eighty percent of these boys were to come

from outside Hamilton County; as a group, they were characterized

as "of greater age and more depraved, sent ... by judicial decision

only, and ... employed under rigid restraint, chiefly in mechanical

and manufacturing labor."⁴⁹

The Commissioners further enticed the male managers of the

Cincinnati Refuge by proposing a plan to rid the institution of

female delinquents. Since the girls' conviction of morals offenses

had allegedly produced an "unhealthy state of things," they were

to be separately confined in a temporary institution. At the same

time, the state offered $5,000 to any city or county establishing a

permanent institution. There were no takers, even though the

subsidy was later increased. Eventually (1870), the state built a

girls' reform school (the present Scioto Village near Delaware).

In the interim, the alluring possibility further stifled Cincinnati

opposition to a state reform school for boys.⁵⁰

The Commissioners' report of December, 1856 changed or

omitted several features of Mettray. In deference to James Ladd's

Quaker pacifism, all mention of military organization was deleted.

See also Johann H. Wichern, "The German Reform School," American

Journal of Education, XXII (1871), 589-648.

49. Ohio. Does., I (1856), 617-18, 625; Ohio. Laws, LIV (1857), 171-77.

50. Ohio. Laws, LIV (1857), 171-77. See also Ohio. Laws, LV (1858),

33; Ebbert, Lancaster and Fairfield County, 63-72.

148                                               OHIO HISTORY

The agricultural and horticultural labor of the farm was to be

supervised by employees of the State Board of Agriculture rather

than by elder brothers trained at the institution. The Commis-

sioners believed that this practice would not only provide expert

instruction but also eliminate corruption in farm purchasing and

product sales. They hoped to induce the Board to feed and clothe

the inmates in return for eight hours of work, "because we think

Franklin was right in limiting labor to that length of time."

Organized agriculture had another role.     County agricultural

societies were "to act as auxiliaries in watching and guarding and

providing places for . . . dismissed juveniles." Thus, state and

local agricultural organizations were to be given greater super-

visory and parental powers than were ever accorded to labor con-

tractors at prisons and refuges.51

The State Board of Agriculture rejected this proposal almost

as soon as Reemelin made it at the annual convention of county

agricultural societies. The Board cited as reasons the novelty of

the institution and the prospect that "the industrial direction of

the time of the inmates might seriously interfere with the dis-

ciplinary government of the institution." Beyond these, however,

was the desire to protect the status of farming; the Board's princi-

pal enthusiasm, a land grant system to support agricultural edu-

cation, was eventually realized with the passage of the Morrill Act

(1862). Farm organizations wished to portray their occupations

in the best light, and this desire implied the exclusion of deviants.

In 1872, for example, the Ohio State Grange had the following

creed: "To develop a better and higher manhood and womanhood

among ourselves ... to maintain inviolate our laws, and to emulate

each other in labor to hasten the good time coming." Thus, it was

no wonder that the Reform School Commissioners could get little

more than empty wishes of good will from future meetings of the

State Board of Agriculture.⁵²

Despite this early rebuff, the new reform school bill (1857)

reflected the legislature's approval of the Commissioners' year of

work. In addition to aiding the Cincinnati Refuge, the law appropri-

51. Ohio. Does., I (1856), 623-24. There was an American precedent

for this plan. The farm labor at the State Reform School, Westboro,

Massachusetts (1847) was supervised by the Massachusetts State Board

of Agriculture. See Document C, attached to above report.

52. Ohio State Board of Agriculture, AR (1857), 84-86; Ibid., (1859),

122; Ibid. (1862), 3-4; Ibid. (1863), 16; The Farmer's Centennial History

of Ohio (Springfield, 1903).

Family System of Common Farmers                           149

ated $15,000 to purchase one thousand acres for a site and $10,000

for the first cottage, supplies and salaries of all employees except

the "Acting Commissioner" or superintendent whose annual salary

($1,500) was separately appropriated. The dominant themes of

the institution were to be simplicity and self-sufficiency. From

the beginning, the Commissioners had contended that no architect

was needed to construct farmhouses and buildings. The law re-

quired that all structures were to be of "plain character" and that

no cottage cost more than $2,000. Further, the Farm was to be

managed with the aim of making it a "self-sustaining" institution.

The law proclaimed: "The state shall incur only the expense of

the original purchase money, the erection of permanent improve-

ments, and the outfit for the first year."53

Following passage of the law, Chase appointed Reemelin Act-

ing Commissioner with the understanding that he was to devote

all of his time to the job. Foot and Ladd were reappointed Ad-

visory Commissioners. As the author of "the beautiful plan,"

Reemelin was the first among equals. In the spring of 1857, he

began to search for land.⁵⁴

There were good economic and demographic reasons for

Reemelin to favor Fairfield County. It was near the geographical

and population center of the state. Lancaster, the county seat,

was connected by railroad and canal with all parts of the Old

Northwest territory and the population was overwhelmingly rural

and remained so throughout the nineteenth century.⁵⁵

Fairfield County was not devoid of economic problems. Popula-

tion had declined by 1,000 during the 1840s and did not regain its

1840 level (31,858) until the late 1870s; six of the county's thirteen

townships had not reached their 1840 levels by the 1880 census.

The relatively poor fertility of much of the land plus rapid defore-

station and careless farming largely explains the outmigration.

Reemelin probably had Fairfield County in mind when he lectured

the Ohio Board of Agriculture in 1862:

53. Ohio. Laws, LIV (1857), 171-77. See also, Ohio. Docs., I (1856),

619.

54. Chase to Reemelin, April 21, 1857, Container 116, Chase MS, LC.

Reemelin, as usual, had a different conception of the job; he never intended

to live on the farm. See Reemelin, Life, 142.

55. Even in 1970, after a century of industrial growth and the spread

of metropolitan Columbus into the county, Fairfield's population was

characterized as 44 percent urban while the state level was 75 percent. See

U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of

the Population; Ohio, Volume I, part 37, section 1 (Washington, D.C., 1973),

25.

150                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Is Ohio, is our county, intrinsically worth as much today as it was

seventy years ago? Is . . . population-sustaining capacity as great?

Every year fewer phosphates, fewer alkalies, fewer salts, fewer minerals

. . . we export life and import luxuries.⁵⁶

Nevertheless, Reemelin selected as the site for the Reform

School a 1,170 acre parcel located six miles south of Lancaster in

the beautiful Hocking Hills. It was offered to the Commissioners

by a syndicate headed by Henry Miers, a local politician and land

speculator. Priced at $13.67/acre, it was one of the highest of the

thirteen bids received both in per acre and in total cost. Six of

the other parcels had lower per acre costs and only one parcel had

a higher total cost. Also, as Reemelin himself noted, the other

lands were more richly soiled and Miers' parcel was unsuitable for

"corn raising and other heavy farming." Tobacco and flax farming

had been unsuccessfully tried on a portion of the land. What then

made the land attractive? Reemelin emphasized the "unsurpassed

salubrity" of the climate and, that unlike some of the other parcels,

the land was well-drained, non-malarial and suitable "to the raising

of all kinds of fruit." Mettray's horticulture plus Reemelin's own

farming experiences obviously influenced his choice. Horticulture,

he believed, was not as demanding physically as corn or wheat

farming and thus it was appropriate for boys' labor. Further,

horticulture encouraged instruction in conservation methods and

taught skills which Reemelin thought were in short supply or soon

would be if Americans acquired a taste for wine. The Miers land

would be an excellent laboratory and gave at least the promise of

self-sufficiency. It had an adequate supply of timber and was

proximate to the Hocking Valley coal fields. Clear running water

crossed the property and two saw mills were already in place.⁵⁷

56. Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, I (Columbus, 1889),

587; J. H. Klippart, "Condition of Agricuture in Ohio in 1876" in Ohio

State Board of Agriculture, AR (1877), 535; Ibid. (1882), 347-54.

57. Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 606-07, 623-24; A. A. Graham, comp.,

History of Fairfield County (Chicago, 1883), 221. The average per acre

value of farm real estate in Fairfield County was $22.00 in 1850 and

$36.00 in 1860. However, the figures for Hocking County are more germane

since the institution was located near the (north) Hocking County line and

the reform school land shared Hocking's beautiful but infertile qualities

except in one respect: It contained no coal deposits. In Hocking County,

the average per acre value of farm real estate was $9.00 in 1850 and $15.00

in 1860. The Hocking figures approximate the per acre price paid by the

Commissioners but it must be remembered that the bulk of the Reform

School land was not farm real estate. Rather, it was undeveloped, hilly

Family System    of Common Farmers                            151

Reemelin's published justification of the site purchase ends at

this point, but there are other factors to note. Just as Reemelin

obscured some of the ideological premises of European reform

schools, he omitted a vital reason for favoring the Miers bid.

Lancaster was a center of German settlement in Ohio; it was

heavily populated with Wurttembergers, some of whom had known

Reemelin or his family in Germany. One of these burghers, Lippen

Lobenthal, was a member of Miers' syndicate and a close friend of

Reemelin. Whenever Reemelin visited Lancaster, he stayed at

Lobenthal's house. In short, the Acting Commissioner's professed

desire to keep politics out of the institution did not extend to the

land upon which it was to be built.⁵⁸

Miers, Lobenthal and Reemelin could not have carried the

day by themselves. To broaden support, Miers included in the

syndicate John D. Martin, a Republican banker and prominent

member of the local English Lutheran church. Also, Miers hired

John T. Brazee as the group's attorney. In 1855, Brazee had

broken the Democratic hold on Fairfield's state senate seat and, in

Columbus, he became a confidant of Salmon Chase. Chase himself

had run well in Fairfield County in his first gubernatorial cam-

paign and hoped to repeat his success in 1857. Thus, he had every

political reason to consider favorably the Miers proposal. Upon

visiting the site, Chase exclaimed, "Why, gentlemen! The air is so

pure here that I think we might hear the angels sing."⁵⁹

and infertile land with negligible market value. Even in 1885, unimproved

land in the vicinity was selling at between $10.00 and $15.00 per acre. See

Thomas J. Pressly and William H. Scofield, eds., Farm Real Estate Values

in the United States by Counties, 1850-59 (Seattle, 1965), 26-27; Henry

Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, I (Columbus, 1889), 600.

58. Willard D. Allbeck, A Century of Lutherans in Ohio (Yellow

Springs, Ohio, 1966), 18-21; Reemelin, Life, 215-16.

59. Ohio. Laws, LV (1858), 29; John T. Brasee [sic] to Chase, August

28, 1857, Chase MS, LC; Reemelin, Life, 142-43. If the purpose of locating

the Reform Farm in Fairfield County was to sustain Chase's strength

there, it failed. He lost Fairfield by only 140 votes in 1855; in 1857 he

lost the county by 1,636 votes. But Chase did win the election of 1857, de-

feating Democrat Henry B. Payne by the slender statewide margin of 1,391

votes. And Fairfield remained crucial to this victory since it was the home

of Philadelph Van Trump, a lawyer and, later, Congressman (1867-73),

who ran on a third party ticket of Know-Nothings and Whigs unreconciled

to Chase's policies. Brazee's letter, cited above, gives the impression that

Chase partisans and perhaps Chase himself encouraged this splinter move-

ment. Van Trump's 10,000 votes probably saved Chase from defeat. See

George H. Porter, Ohio Politics During the Civil War Period, XL, No. 2

(1911), Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public

Law, 16-17; Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (Washing-

152                                                OHIO HISTORY

Following selection of the site, Reemelin and the other Com-

missioners immersed themselves in the task of organizing the in-

stitution. Confronted by several administrative problems, their

responses shaped the character of the State Farm. The first task,

clearing land titles, provides an example. As noted, the Miers land,

though beautiful, was less fertile and accessible to markets than

other land in the county. Large parts of it had been taken up late

-after 1835 and, in three instances, not until 1849. In some cases,

titles had not been picked up from the public land office in Chillico-

the or had been left there after original owners abandoned their

claims. Miers could not have paid much for this land. He also paid

no more than $2.00/acre for some sections which he bought directly

from the federal government. In any case, some time and effort

were required to find and prove all of the relevant titles. The Com-

missioners commended Miers' "indefatigable . . . assistance" in

completing the job, although it must be remarked that anyone

selling $2.00/acre land at $13.00/acre is likely to be helpful.⁶⁰

The selection of subordinate officers also proved beneficial to

all concerned. Reemelin chose the steward while James Monroe,

with the probable support of John Foot, selected two Oberlin

graduates as elder brothers. Unlike Mettray, no officer training

program was contemplated; work and education presumably pro-

vided the necessary qualifications. The steward, William H. Jaeger

of Columbus, had been schooled in Europe and America and raised

on a farm by a father who was a "rigid disciplinarian." He spoke

both German and English and had served as an army officer in the

Mexican War. At the time of his appointment, he was an engineer

on the Marietta Railroad. His wife was also engaged to manage the

domestic chores of the farm house.⁶¹

As the Commissioners spent their appropriation, they forgot

both legislative injunctions and their own earlier vows to build

simply and spend frugally. For example, they now believed it was

necessary to contract with an architect to design a model cottage

for the first "family" of forty boys. But no builder offered to

ton, D. C., 1975), 29; Hervey Scott, A Complete History of Fairfield County

(Columbus, 1877), 154-56.

60. Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 606-07. I am indebted to Charles R. Goslin,

historian of Lancaster and Fairfield County, for relevant township section

maps and for information regarding land titles of the Reform School. See

also Charles R. Goslin, Crossroads and Fence Corners: Historical Lore of

Fairfield County (Lancaster, 1976), 150-53, 176-80.

61. Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 608-09. Reemelin disliked the Oberlin grad-

uates and disparaged their abilities. His attitude contributed to his in-

creasingly cool relationship with John Foot. See Reemelin, Life, 146.

Family System of Common Farmers                            153

fulfill the plan within the legislatively-established maximum of

$2,000.  Following this disappointment, the Commissioners re-

treated to a "hewed double log cabin" design which was built by

hired day laborers without architectural supervision. The log cabin

-that graphic symbol of the autonomous and uncomplicated life-

had become a necessity of the moment rather than a guide for

present and future conduct.⁶²

Despite their indifference toward such a powerful embodiment

of self-sufficiency, the Commissioners continued to congratulate

themselves upon parsimonious management. Their second annual

report, written in December, 1857, was speckled with claims of

economical administration of funds and of the self-sacrificing

qualities of institution officers. The farm was no longer presented

as an absolute economy, but rather as less expensive than the "Big

House System" which, the Commissioners contended, would re-

quire at least double the expenditures. The Commissioners also

informed the legislature that its expectations of institutional self-

sufficiency were unrealistic. The farm would require an annual

operations budget of $15,000 plus a capital budget of $56,000 to

provide accommodations for 200 inmates, and it would be years

before income from fruit and farm produce significantly reduced

institutional expenses.⁶³

As another way of securing the future of their institution, the

Commissioners developed an argument for expanding the parental

powers of the state. This point was complex because the Commis-

sioners, as evidenced in the following statement, did not make

broad claims for their own institution:

The State should let its youth feel, at every step, that personal liberty is

the great basis of our laws, and that a sacred reverence for it is the first

rule of our Republic; that it is a positive right, born with every human

being, which can only be suspended, never abrogated, and only suspended

for the clearest and most unequivocal State policy, that of punishment

for crime, and then no longer than absolutely necessary to protect so-

ciety! Judicial authority, exercised in the presence of a jury, should

alone be allowed to send a youth, either to a reform prison, or to the

State Reform Farm. The right of parents and guardians, or of over-

seers of the poor or similar authorities, to do so, should never be

admitted.

This view reflected the traditional democratic faith in individual

freedom as well as the larger tensions of Ohio politics where

62. Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 607.

63. Ibid., 611-13.

154                                               OHIO HISTORY

several fugitive slave cases had evoked bitter debate.⁶⁴ However,

perhaps because they feared that their new institution would be

overrun with orphans and other dependent children, the Commis-

sioners also asked local authorities, "especially those entrusted with

the general education of youth," to "aid the State in its reforma-

tory efforts and thus render our educational system complete by

embracing all the youth in the State." They suggested that

counties should establish homes for orphans and abandoned chil-

dren modeled after "Randal's Island Nursurey" [sic] in New

York City.65 John Foot believed that the finest part of the Reform

School law was that it encouraged voluntary groups to establish

industrial schools for poor children who had been excluded from

public schools by "the filth and rags of poverty."⁶⁶ Thus, while

the Commissioners wanted to restrict the authority of their own

institutions, they hoped to encourage the expansion of state

parental power over all children.

Within their own legal sphere, the Reform School Commis-

sioners wanted considerable power. Influenced by practices in

England and France, they asked the legislature to pass a law re-

quiring courts to order parents of inmates to pay the institution

"a proper weekly charge." The legislature rejected this request,

allowing instead for voluntary payments. But the third reform

school bill (1858) did permit reform school and refuge officials to

transfer refractory inmates from one reformatory institution to

another or to the state penitentiary, and made optional the notifi-

cation of parents of such action. To summarize, the Reform School

Commissioners envisioned a disciplinary system encompassing all

white children within the state and increasingly harsh upon the

child who disobeyed adult commands. This child would be passed

from the common schools to children's homes or industrial schools,

64. Ohio. Does., I (1856), 622; Hart, Chase, 165-71. At a later date,

but before the Civil War, Chase visited the Farm and proclaimed, "This is

a good model for reforming slavery." See Reemelin, Life, 146.

65. Ohio. Docs., I (1856), 622. The Commissioners' own figures showed

that the average annual mortality rate of children in the Randall's Island

institution was 12 percent. See Document C, attached to above report.

66. Ohio. Does., I (1857), 613. The Commissioners urged that those

interested in establishing industrial schools or houses of refuge should

enumerate their inmates in order to claim a share of the school money dis-

tributed annually by the state. At the Commissioners' request, the Reform

Farm was declared a special school district. See Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 628-

30; Ohio. Laws, LV (1858), 34.

Family System of Common Farmers                             155

and thence to the state reform school or houses of refuge and, as a

last resort, to the penitentiary.⁶⁷

This institutional chain was built not only upon the parental

powers accorded its links, but also upon ceremony and publicity for

misbehavior. At the Reform Farm, expulsions were to be "pro-

nounced and executed in public, as a warning to all other inmates."

The other children of Ohio were cautioned in pedagogical publica-

tions such as the Ohio Journal of Education. In one issue, Editor

Anson Smyth wrote about the penitentiary: "Children, did you

ever see a zebra? If you have, you know how the prisoners

look.... " Of one thirteen year old convict, Smyth remarked:

I do not know about this boy's history, but I dare say that when he went

to school, he was a very bad pupil, inattentive to his books, saucy, dis-

obedient and troublesome to his teachers . . . that he used often to be

tardy . . . that he whispered whenever he got a chance,-that he was

selfish and unkind, and, in many other respects, a naughty boy."⁶⁸

The Reform Farm, in the eyes of its advocates, occupied a

strategic middle position in the emerging state system of schooling

and discipline. To succeed, the institution would have to develop

a routine tougher than the common schools but less demanding

than the workshops and cells of the Cincinnati Refuge or the state

penitentiary. School children could be taught the spiritual and

economic value of hard labor through the didactic lessons of the

McGuffey's readers. Reform school children would learn more

directly as the Commissioners made clear:

We feel bound to insist that... a strict account should be kept between

the state and the inmates. The "costs" for each inmate, before entrance

and afterward, for food, clothing, etc., should be carefully entered, and

the inmate be duly credited for all his labor. This account should, if at

all possible, be duplicated by each inmate himself, and pains be taken to

instruct him in it. And if the inmate should be unable to liquidate all

that may be set down against him, before discharge, let it go with him

into life, as a debt of honor. An opportunity should also be given to each

inmate to earn small extra wages.⁶⁹

67. Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 613; Ohio. Laws, LV (1858), 29-31. The

reform school law also allowed the governor to transfer boys from the

penitentiary to juvenile institutions. It did not outlaw their initial in-

carceration in the state prison.

68. Ohio. Docs., I (1857), 622; Ohio Journal of Education, V (Sep-

tember, 1856), 277. See also John C. Crandall, "Patriotism and Humani-

tarian Reform in Children's Literature, 1825-1860," American Quarterly,

XXI (1969), 6-9.

69. Ohio. Docs., I (1856), 621-22.

156                                           OHIO HISTORY

By the end of January, 1858, local German farmers had

finished the first cottage and the institution was ready to reform

children by teaching them to live and work as country people. But

the Reform Farm was not an island to itself. Even before it opened,

the institution reflected the ideas of European philanthropists and

the dynamism of Ohio's political economy. The cottages and the

horticulture of DeMetz's Mettray provided organizing principles;

however, the animating characteristics of the early administration

-claims of extravagant benefits to befall future inmates and of

disinterested sacrifice for the common good coupled with episodes

of political and economic self-aggrandizement-were thoroughly

American.

The Ohio Reform Farm was particularly the product of a

minority-male migrants from New England or Germany who in

the course of their lives had come to realize considerable economic

and political power. But it cannot be said that they imposed their

will upon a reluctant majority, for the laws creating the institution

were passed with overwhelming majorities. The Reform Farm

articulated the common need of adult Ohioans to reinforce the

value of work, particularly the dignity of manual labor, among

those young people who, because of parental neglect or their own

obstinacy, had seemingly repudiated it.

The subsequent history of the Reform Farm indicates that

until 1870 these expectations were fulfilled. Under the leadership

of George Howe, who replaced Reemelin as Acting Commissioner in

1859, the institution enjoyed increased state appropriations as well

as the favorable and unsolicited testimony of inmates. Howe was

also responsible for the Farm's national reputation in philanthropic

circles. This was based upon the institution's agrarian setting, its

cottage organization, and its broad curriculum that included both

classical and vocational instruction.

Pervading the pedagogy and daily life of the Farm was Howe's

philosophy-which linked him to DeMetz and Reemelin-that

proper behavior had to be elicited rather than coerced in the

manner of the houses of refuge. This approach entailed recogniz-

ing the boys as individual personalities and stimulating their

allegiance to the values of adult society through a system of honors

and rewards. The particulars of Howe's work, as well as the story

of the Farm's decline in the later nineteenth century, will be the

subject of a future article. In the 1850s, however, it was generally

agreed that the state had developed the means to socialize those

boys who were nearing the point of no return.