Andrew Young - Unwanted: A Murder Mystery of the Gilded Age

ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1896, THE SKY OVER CINCINNATI, Ohio, was dense with clouds. The air was thick with the smoke of thousands of fires from coal stoves and fireplaces. It was damp, but not cold enough to snow, nor warm enough to go out without a coat or cloak. Rain began to fall, and the streets were soon slick with mud and manure. Despite the conditions, the city was alive with the ring of hammers on iron, the whirl of industrial machinery, the hiss of steam engines. The alien sputter of a motorcar could occasionally be heard. Bare tree branches rattled in the parks and along parkways. The sound and smell of horses was everywhere, as was the clatter of wagons and carriages on cobblestones.

There was nothing remarkable about this day. The forty-hour workweek had not yet been established so weekends did not exist for most people. The fact that it was Friday wasnteven noted with mild significance. That night people would go to the theater, host parties, and visit saloonsto the consternation of temperance advocatesbut many of them would still go to work the next day. Almost no one knew that something terrible and shocking would happen that evening. It isnt even clear that the principal parties involved knew that anything remarkable was about to occur, that a young girl would lose her life and that the story would become a national sensation, giving birth to books, songs, and legends.

The cities of Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport huddle along the banks of the Ohio River, a metropolis known as Greater Cincinnati. The largest and most prominent of the three is Cincinnati, which sits on the Ohio side of the river; Covington and Newport rest on the Kentucky side. In 1896, Cincinnati was the ninth largest city in the United States, the largest in Ohio, and second only to Chicago in the Midwest. The area had formed, millennia before, as a shallow lake. Ice ages came and went and at their whim carved basins, hills, and several rivers. The largest of these would eventually be called the Oh-he-yo, meaning Great River in the Seneca language. The first humans to leave their mark on the land were a nameless people often referred to as the Moundbuilders. Their constructions, large earthworks, are best seen today at places like Fort Ancient and Serpent Mound in south-central Ohio. The last of these people vanished from the area at the dawn of the seventeenth century, around the time Jamestown, Virginia, was founded. Soon the region was populated by displaced Indians from the East, who were fleeing the expansion of European colonists. The colonists, now calling themselves Americans, were not long behind them.

In 1788 some settlers founded a town called Losantiville (a name cobbled from bits of four different languages) within a basin that was bordered on the south by the Ohio Riverand surrounded by steep hills in all other directions. It was part of the Old Northwest Territory, and in 1790 Governor Arthur St. Clair changed the name of the town to Cincinnati, after a Revolutionary War veterans group of which he was a member, itself named after the Roman figure Cincinnatus. In 1792 Kentucky became a state, followed by Ohio in 1803. Newport, Kentucky, was founded in 1795, while Covington, seemingly the last to seek official status, was incorporated in 1815.

Alongside this burst of sanctioned recognition, a new type of craft could be seen plying the waters of the Ohio, Licking, and Great Miami rivers: the steamboat. Water travel had always been preferred to shipping by wagon, which was slow, dangerous, and costly. A trip downriver, though posing its own unique risks, was relatively cheap, but for the same boat to go upriver required much more manpower to fight the current and was almost always not worth the effort. With the coming of the steamboat, all of this changed. Now goods flowed to and from the Greater Cincinnati area with relative ease. With progress and the money that accompanied it, the city grew.

In the 1820 U.S. census all of the big cities were in the East, save New Orleans, and all provided easy access to the Atlantic. In 1830, Cincinnati made its appearance as the eighth largest community in the country with a population of 24,831. In 1840, it was the sixth largest city, with a larger population than Brooklyn, St. Louis, and Chicago. The people of Cincinnati, including many immigrants from Germany and Ireland, old families and new, felt that something important was happening in their town.

Charles Dickens wrote in 1842 while traveling through the United States, The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city as one of the most interesting in America, and with good reason: for beautiful and thriving as it is now, andcontaining, as it does, a population of fifty thousand souls, but two-and-fifty years have passed away since the ground on which it stands (bought at that time for a few dollars) was a wild wood, and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scattered log huts upon the rivers shore.

Some people called Cincinnati the first truly American city, since it was founded and populated after the Revolutionary War. With parks, a zoo, and a great music hall, it became known to some as the Paris of the Midwest, but to most it would always be the Queen CityQueen of the Ohio River, Queen of the West. Covington and Newport, try as they might to rise from under Cincinnatis shadow, were considered by the wider world as parts of the Queen City, if not in name.

By 1896, however, Cincinnati was on a slow decline. With the advent of the railroads and the subsequent vanishing of the steamboats, Chicago had long ago surpassed it in size and importance. In the 1890 census, Cincinnati had a population just short of 300,000, while Chicago had more than a million residents. The 1893 Chicago Worlds Columbian Exposition received an estimated 25 million visitors, while Cincinnati would never host anything of that magnitude. Other cities in Ohio were growing at a rapid pace; the chief of these was Cleveland, where industry and rail lines provided more incentive for business than steamboats ever could.

Yet Cincinnati and its sister cities had much to recommend them in 1896. The population was still large, despite the citys loss of status, and there was ready work in the tan yards, breweries, and factories. The iconic Procter and Gamble company, long associated with the city, was still making its popular soap in Ivorydale. There were opera houses, theaters, galleries, and all the temptations of a city at the end of the nineteenth century: gambling, prostitutes, and plenty to drink. There was boxing, horse racing, and whenthe weather was nice, one could catch a game of Americas first professional baseball team, the Reds.

Across the river, beyond the city of Newport, lay Fort Thomas. The fort, named in honor of the Virginian-born Union general George Henry Thomas, known as the Rock of Chickamauga, was built on a hill, often called the Highlands. It had been commissioned when it was decided that the barracks in Newport were too costly to maintain, due to continual flooding. In 1887, General Philip Sheridan, another former Union officer, ordered that 111 acres be set aside for this misleadingly nicknamed West Point of the West. It was ready for occupation by 1890. The storied 6th Infantry Regiment currently called the fort home. The nations eyes had recently turned toward the island of Cuba, and with a hint of war between the United States and Spain in the air, the regiment waited for orders to deploy. Ruins of rich plantations mark the track of Cuban patriots, the