First Families of Cincinnati, Ohio

The Hamilton County Genealogical Society encourages amateur genealogists to research their families and try to trace their history in Cincinnati.  Two years ago, I was able to get an award for documenting that our family was in Cincinnati before 1860.  The recognition everyone wants to get is one for "First Families" -- those who can prove their family was here before December 31, 1820.  During this past year, I was able to prove to the satisfaction of the reviewers that William Wainright, his wife Ruth Wright, and their son, Britton, were here in 1819.  They are even listed in the City Directory.  Britton was born here. 

Today I was honored at a luncheon held at the Hilton Netherland Plaza downtown.  It was really a nice honor.  I received the medal with the blue and white ribbon pictured above.  Two years ago I received the medal on the right.



On the left is a copy of the narrative in the program.
One of the reasons I'm so interested in submitting our family history to the Genealogical Society is that they will eventually digitize the entire record and donate it to the Historical Society.  This would mean that even if all of my records were lost, they would be available for our ancestors should one of our descendants want to research our family.

Not all of the recipients were present to be recognized.  One lived as far as California and another in Florida. Pictured above are the Settlers and Builders and First Families recipients who were able to attend.

Bill attended with me and photographed most of the pictures.  He was able to capture this one as they gave me a framed certificate and a medal. 

They've started a new recognition for families that were in Cincinnati more than a century ago.  This will enable me to submit the Ryans and Vonderheides in the next couple of years.  I hope I represented all the Joneses and Wainrights well.

Wainwrights in the United States

In earlier posts I mentioned that the Wainwrights in the United States originally spelled their last name with two "w's". One record says that it was William Wainright (father of Britton) who dropped the second "w". I also stated that William Wainright was the son of Vincent, our family's connection to the Revolutionary War.

When I first started researching our roots in the United States, there was more than one record online. I try to document any individual that I include in our family tree. This is one instance where I accepted someone else's documentation.

There are three sources of information for the family pedigree outlined above. The first is Genealogy of the Family Line of Thomas Wainwright published in 1957 by Edith Wainwright and Halstead Wainwright. The second, and most important source is correspondence I have had over the last year with Rodney Wainwright of New York. He took a copy of the above publication and compared it page by page with the documentation he had. The vast majority of information was supported. The third source was the website for the Wing Family in America, Inc. http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=mewingnut Jane Wing was the maternal grandmother of Vincent Wainwright. All of this documentation seems to agree when it comes to the basic facts. Rodney Wainwright provided me with the majority of the information listed in the pedigree, especially in the maternal lines.

It became apparent that there was a lot of documentation from the time of William Wainright back, but little existed coming forward. Even the Wing Family site only listed Britton and Eliza Ann as children of William Wainright and Ruth Wright. I have spent the last year trying to find additional children with a fair degree of success.

As near as I can tell, William Wainright and his wife Ruth Wright had seven children. There may have been more but these are the ones I have been able to document.


William (2-23-1809 to 4-23-1834) -Listed in the 1831 City Directory as William Jr., a blacksmith, in business with his brother, Vincent. The Cincinnati Daily Gazette states in a death notice that he died of small pox at the age of 25.

Ann Eliza (1-4-1813 in New York City, died 1-12 1890 in Broadwell, Ohio near Athens. Married Henry (Harry) Broadwell in 1834 and relocated to Athens, Ohio and had many children.

Vincent - (abt. 1-10-1810 to abt. 7-19-1849) Married Mahitable Morrow on May 2, 1843. They had a son, Britton in 1848. Both the father and the son died in July 1849 in the cholera epidemic. As mentioned above, Vincent was a blacksmith in business at one point with his older brother.

Britton (9-26-1819 to 7-9-1863) -- Our gg-grandfather -- plenty was written about him in earlier postings.

Rachel -- married James Lusk in 1843 in Cincinnati. James was a ship's carpenter according to one of the Census documents. Ruth Wainright was living with the Lusks in Newport, KY when she died.

John -- married Elizabeth Raney on 12-22-1836. He also died abt. July 1849 making me speculate that he, too, could have been a victim of the cholera epidemic. I have a copy of John's will written July 1, 1849 naming his wife Elizabeth and children William Henry, David R., John B., and Jane Elizabeth as beneficiaries.

Daniel -- married Prudence Grapevine on November 6, 1842 in Cincinnati. Daniel's occupation was listed as a "drayman" in several City Directories. His marriage license states that he was married by Wesley Rowe, a minister who was listed as the officiant for several of the Wainright weddings. I do not know when Daniel was born, but he may have been one of the older siblings since the City Directory for 1839-40 says that he was born in New York.


There are a couple of other candidates for Wainright siblings, but the documentation is not strong enough to include them in this list. I leave it for future researchers.


Several Wainrights and Darbys fought in the Civil War. At some point I may post what I know about our family's participation in the Civil War. The participation was not limited to men. Some other time . . .

Clermont County Roots

For over a year I have had a copy of the deed to property William Wainright had in Clermont Co., Ohio. He purchased it in December 1819. I had always wanted to know where the land was located and what was on the land now. What a history lesson I got investigating this!

The first thing I learned was that all of Clermont County and 22 other Ohio counties were once part of the Virginia Military District. This was land set aside by the Commonwealth of Virginia to reward her Revolutionary War soldiers. Land was awarded on the basis of rank and length of service with bounties ranging from 100 to 15,000 acres. The veteran would be issued a certificate noting the amount of land to which he was entitled. The book Property Transfers for Clermont County, 1791-1830, the process of redemption is described in this way:

"Next, the soldier made an entry (a general description of the tract on which he was locating the warrant). This entry was numbered, dated, and recorded in a book in the Principal Surveyor's Office. He then had the tract dated, and recorded in a book in the Principal Surveyor's Office. He then had the tract surveyed by an authorized deputy surveyor. Following the acceptance of the survey by the Principal Surveyor, he sent the warrant and survey to the Federal government for a patent."

Alma Aicholtz Smith published a book in 1985. In many cases the veteran who qualified for the land as a reward for his service had no interest in relocating from Virginia to a wilderness area that still occasionally had to subdue the native Indians to stake their claim. They often sought to sell their claim.

It was necessary to acquire the services of a Deputy Surveyor. The surveyor in turn was responsible for hiring and maintaining his surveying crew, "consisting of two chain carriers, a marker man, a pack horse, a spy, and a hunter to supply food. Until the Indian Wars were concluded in 1795, stealth was necessary, and every man was armed with rifle, tomahawk, and scalping knife."

A surveyor by the name of John O'Bannon ran the first survey in what is now Clermont County in the year 1787. (He was also the surveyor for the land later purchased by William Wainright). In my posting for "William the Wanderer," I included a copy of the deed for the property. The deed included this description of the property: ". . . said half part of said original tract containing three hundred and sixty-nine acres of thirty-two perches be the same more or less, and was conveyed to said Kemp by Samuel McChesley of Lexington and conveyed to him by John Mc Dowell of the same place . . ." With this information I was able to track down the survey number pictured below.

After finding the information shown in the image above, I wanted to know where, in Clermont County, William Wainright's property was located. I knew from Alma's book that the Recorder's Office in Batavia had a book called the Clermont County Virginia Military Survey Book. Since I already had the survey number, it should have been easy to go to the Recorder's Office and get a copy of the original survey. It was not easy.

Initially they acted as if I didn't have sufficient information and referred me to the Tax Map Office in the same building. There I met Randy Jefferson and supplied him with all of the information I had. I had a map of Stonelick Township that cited the survey number and property for the property surveyed for McDowell.

Randy worked with their tax maps and tried to match up features of my map with those he had in his data base. I am grateful to him for the amount of time he was willing to give to me as the books he had only dated back to 1870. This land was purchased in 1819.
I returned to the Doris Wood Library in Batavia and tried to bring back additional clues. With this information, Randy located the approximate area of the plot. Most of the land is in a subdivision off of Route 131. He supplied me with both an outline map and a map of the surface features of the land as it exists now. 

I had so much information that I returned to the Recorder's side of the office. At this point, I was very specific about what I needed. Two of the employees again were very helpful. They located a very fragile copy of the Clermont County Virginia Military Survey Book and carefully made copies of the original survey. I know if you're not "into" this stuff, it's hard to understand how satisfied I was at the end of the day.


Before I complete this posting, I can't leave out what I know about William Lytle. William is known as the "Father of Clermont County."

William was one of the original surveyors of Clermont County. Deputy Surveyors typically made their living by accepting a portion of the lands surveyed as compensation. Surveyors typically charged between 1/4 and 1/2 of the land surveyed. Because of his extensive work as a surveyor, William Lytle owned thousands of acres of land and at one point owned the second-largest amount of land in the state. While surveying he was struck by the beauty and possibilities of land located in present-day Williamsburg. He started a town there originally called Lytle's Town. The town was about 30 miles east of Cincinnati and he helped establish a road linking Cincinnati, Williamsburg and Chillicothe.

In 1809 William Lytle built his home in Cincinnati near what is now Lytle Park. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery. One of the pieces of property purchased by William Wainright was originally surveyed by William Lytle.

I still have Clermont County questions, such as where the property purchased by William's brother, Daniel was located. Many of the Wainrights from Clermont County are children and grandchildren of Daniel and his wife, Nancy Hall. I'm amazed at how uncovering the origin of a piece of property could teach me so much about the county to the east.

The picture of William Lytle and information about Williamsburg came from a book called Olde Williamsburgh, 200 Years of History, a book put together to commemorate 200 years of history from 1796-1996. It can be found in the Doris Wood Branch of the Batavia Library.

P.S. I just spoke to Alma Aicholtz Smith to include the quotes, illustrations and pictures from her book. It was a delightful conversation. When I get back in town, we've agreed to get together so I can show her what a blog is. Permission granted.

William the Wanderer

When you begin to research the Wainwright family, it becomes doubly difficult because they, like so many families of their time, named their children in honor of beloved brothers and sisters. Thus, certain family names are often repeated from generation to generation. As mentioned earlier, I found the information of Steve Wainwright of California and Rodney Wainwright of New York to be invaluable. Without their help, I could never had as much success as I did.

In speaking with Steve, he refers to "our" line as the "Daniel/Vincent Line" because those names are found in almost every generation. Thomas and William are also used quite frequently. The challenge then becomes that when you've found records for William Wain(w)right that you do everything you can to insure that it is the "correct" William Wain(w)right -- not the brother, father, or nephew.

In an earlier posting, I discussed the evidence for William in Cincinnati -- but he didn't seem to stay put. William was the son of Vincent Wainwright and Elizabeth Williams of Monmouth Co., New Jersey. We are fortunate that we are connected to the Wing Family through marriage and they have documented a lot of the Wainwright earlier history. Go to this link:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=mewingnut&id=I2021919

William did not stay put. He was born in Shrewsbury, Monmouth, New Jersey on February 26, 1780. He was the 8th of nine children born to Vincent Wainwright and Elizabeth Williams. His father died in 1783 of small pox leaving his widow with nine children with two of the boys ages three and under.

William married Ruth Wright and eventually relocated to New York, New York. One of his daughters, Ann Eliza, was born in New York in 1810. About 1819 the family relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio where Britton was born. He worked as a blacksmith. That same year William bought property in Clermont County, Ohio. Here is a copy of the deed. He did not move immediately as he is still listed in the Cincinnati City Directory as a blacksmith living on Broadway near 2nd Street in the year 1831. Two of his sons, William Jr. and Vincent are also listed as blacksmiths living on E. Front St.




William is also listed in the index for property transfers in Clermont County along with other Wainwrights. According to the Genealogy of the Family Line of Thomas Wainwright cited earlier, William's brother Daniel brought his large family to Clermont County in 1828. Many of the records in Clermont County are from Daniel's family. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the exact locations of these properties before too long.

Property Transfers in Clermont County, 1791-1830
Note that Daniel, Vincent and William all bought property in Clermont County between 1819 and 1826. William bought property first followed by Daniel and Vincent. I do not know if Daniel and Vincent are the sons of William or his brothers. Daniel bought property in 1825.



Somewhere around 1839, William moved his family back to Cincinnati where he again worked as a blacksmith. He is listed in the Shaffer's Advertising Directory for 1839-40:

Wainwright, Wm (N J) Blacksmith, res, E Front n Corp line

The Cist Cincinnati Directory for 1843 has the following listings:

Wainright J. & B. wagon makers and blacksmiths, cor Front and
Washington
Wainright John, (J. & B. W.) Front bet Washington & Collord
Wainright Britton, (J. & B. W.) boards Wm Wainright
Wainright William, blacksmith. Front bet Washington & Collord

I believe that "J. & B." stands for John and Britton, two of William's sons. I know that Britton got married in Cincinnati and was still here in 1850 as he appears with his family in the Census.

Before Britton got married, however, it appears as if the wanderlust had struck him, too. He purchased 40 acres of land in Gallatin Co., IL. Shortly before he married Mary Elizabeth Darby in Cincinnati, he sold the 40 acres of property to his father -- a recent finding.

This land purchase took place in 1846. William was listed as living in Gallatin Co. in the 1850 Census. It says in the Census that he was married, yet Ruth is not listed in the Census with him. I found Ruth living in Cincinnati with her daughter Rachel Lusk in 1850. Her last name is misspelled and listed as "Wenright" in ancestry.com. Rachel's husband James' occupation is listed as a "ships carpenter".

This was not to be his last move, however, because as cited earlier, William died in Athens Co., Ohio and is buried in the family plot of his daughter, Ann Eliza Broadwell. At some point after 1850 the Lusks and Ruth (William's widow) moved to Newport, KY. Ruth was living in northern Kentucky when she died and was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery.

I do not know what motivated William to move so often, but I've been able to track him in the following locations: Born in New Jersey, one child (at least) born in New York, son born in Cincinnati in 1819, lived in Clermont Co. from at least 1820 - 1839, back to Cincinnati in 1839, bought property in Gallatin Co., IL in 1846 and was there for the 1850 Census, and died in Athens Co., Ohio. I'm glad for the information I have but wish I understood more about his willingness to move so often.