Montgomery Memories
Montgomery Memories is a storytelling podcast that explores the history of Montgomery, Ohio, highlighting the lives and experiences of its first settlers to the present. The podcast is hosted by Tracy Henao, Assistant City Manager, and Kevin Chesar, Community Development Director.
Montgomery Memories
Montgomery's Origin Story
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Episode 1 introduces the Indigenous history of the Montgomery area and the early families who settled at the crossroads of two Native trails. It traces how their small frontier settlement grew into a community centered on faith, education, and local enterprise, laying the foundation for the Montgomery we know today.
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Welcome to Montgomery Memories, a show where we bring the city's past to life, one episode at a time. I'm Tracy and Al, assistant city manager.
Kevin:And I'm Kevin Chesar, community development director. In this podcast, we'll be talking about Montgomery's origin story from the land's First Peoples and early trails to taverns, churches, and preservation.
Tracy:Think of this as a friendly walk through time, part storytelling, part discovery, and all about celebrating the people and projects that still shape Montgomery today. Hopefully, we'll have a few laughs along the way, especially with Kevin sitting across from me. Before we get started, we have to thank all of the people who have worked so hard to preserve the city's history over the years. This city has been lucky to have dedicated citizens who have recorded history and worked to tell our story, like Harriet Swaim, Marion Kjellenberg, or Shelley, as he was known, Mary Lou Rose, Mary O'Driscoll, Juanita Conklin, Michael Dupriest, Tom and Dee Eberhard, Janet Korach, Gary Blomberg, Kaye Gaffney and many, many more. We are forever grateful for their efforts. We also have to thank our City Council and our Landmarks Commission for all they've done for historic preservation.
Kevin:Thanks, Tracy. In this episode of Many More to Come, we will talk about the Native American nations who stewarded this place for generations. It traces how a handful of families from Montgomery, New York, built the village that became the city that we know today. Tracy, why is Montgomery named Montgomery?
Tracy:That's a great question, Kevin. Montgomery, and just like every other Montgomery throughout the country, is named after General Montgomery, who fought in the American Revolution.
Kevin:I heard he was the first general to die in the American Revolution.
Tracy:That's very interesting. I hadn't heard that.
Kevin:Yeah. So he was very popular back then. That's why all the towns we have today are named after him.
Tracy:And we have a new painting that we were just given to us, that we're actually going to have that display at the Swain House. You know, southwest Ohio has been home to indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Archaeologists credit mound building cultures such as the Adena and Hopewell with shaping the landscape. Earthworks, burial mounds and ceremonial sites dot the Ohio River valley and ridges. Later, the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, Wyandot and other tribes lived, hunted and traded across what is now Hamilton County.
Kevin:Right, and the creeks and ridgelines around present day Montgomery sat along a lot of native trails that were pathways originally created by wildlife and then refined by people became they became the earliest highways through dense forests. They kept to the higher ground and connected hunting areas, villages and later trading posts.
Tracy:That's right. And at the intersection of two of those native trails, what is today what we call Main Street and Cooper Roads was the crossroads of two tribes. Long before there were storefronts or traffic lights, indigenous peoples of the Miami and the Shawnee tribes were living in the area.
Kevin:And then in the late 1700s, conflict intensified as the US pushed into the Northwest Territory. After years of fighting, the Treaty of Greenville was signed on August 3rd, 1795, which redrew the boundaries and opened up much of southern Ohio to American settlement. Uh, did you know that really that whole treaty dealt with all a significant portion of Ohio all the way up to present day Chicago, opened those lands up and then basically to Detroit. So it was a pretty vast area that was opened up. And that piece, however, between the Native Americans and the US, came with immense loss and forced migrations for many of the native nations. But that treaty also was the first to recognize tribes as sovereign states by the United States.
Tracy:That's right. Kevin. I think it's really important that we remember this history before we start talking about the settling of Montgomery and the pioneers that that made their way here from Montgomery, New York. We just really need to pay attention to the descendants that were here before us. And they are still celebrating a lot of those cultural traditions today.
Kevin:In the spring of 1795, six families left Montgomery, New York, in Orange County and headed west. Uh, they were the owners. The Snyders ruses and Twilighters were among those families.
Tracy:Some of those names you probably recognize, but we'll talk about that more in future episodes.
Kevin:Right. So these families traveled through Fort Pitt, floated down the Ohio River, turned up the Little Miami, and followed Sycamore Creek. How long do you think it took them to get here from New York back then?
Tracy:Hmm. That's a very good question. Um. Two months. Really? Yeah.
Kevin:Okay.
Tracy:So how long did it, actually?
Kevin:6 to 8 weeks. So according to the internet at least, so they documented how long it would take, at least if you were going from Montgomery, New York, to Fort Pitt, it'd take about 20 to 30 days. Fort Pitt down the Ohio River would take approximately 14 to 21 days. Then up the Little Miami River would take 7 to 12 days. And then they probably couldn't make it up Sycamore Creek because it was too shallow, so it was probably over. Land took 1 to 3 days. So anywhere from 40 to 60 days. So.
Tracy:So I'm a genius.
Kevin:You are a genius. Or you just know what the internet says.
Tracy:I didn't look it up. Oh, as you can imagine, the first winter was rough. They spent it in really simple shelters that were near the Sycamore Creek, across the street from what today is Bethesda North Hospital. So if you're traveling on Montgomery Road and you're walking down Montgomery Road, you'll see the pedestrian bridge. And we do have a boulder that sits there and commemorates the settlers as they, uh, to show kind of the location of where they first settled. In 1796, they moved to higher ground, and they soon chose the intersection of those Native American trails that we talked about on Cooper and Main Street as the heart of their new community.
Kevin:Church and schools quickly followed in 1801, Reverend James Kemper, which I think everyone's probably familiar with that name, organized worshipers at as the Sycamore Creek congregation. Within a few years, that congregation, known as the Hopewell Presbyterian, relocated to a log building near what is now Hopewell Cemetery at Deerfield and Montgomery Road. I think that's that vacant section on the north west eastern portion of the cemetery, right on the corner there.
Tracy:Yeah, that's exactly right. There's still a patch there that's vacant. Um, but records have shown that they actually use that for an angel garden after the church had been demolished, but they obviously don't have markers there. So that's where they would have buried the infants in that area.
Kevin:And what's an angel garden.
Tracy:Yeah. Angel garden. Great question is, is where they bury infants who may have passed from stillbirth or very early on in their lives. They didn't give them markers. So, um, but we'll talk more about that a little bit later at a future episode with Connie Gaylor, who is our city staff member who helps manage the cemetery. Um, as that settlement grew, Nathaniel Terwilliger again, another very familiar name who we'll talk a little bit more about, but he filed the original plat in 1802, laying out Montgomery in honor of their New York home. The town took shape along State Road, which we know today as Montgomery Road. By the 1820s and 30s, Montgomery was known as a stopping point on the Three-c highway, or what the locals called the Pike, which carried freight and passengers up and down the state from Cincinnati to Columbus to Cleveland, hence the Three-c highway.
Kevin:You stole my question. I was going to ask why it was a 3-C highway. So okay.
Tracy:I'm one step ahead of you, as always. Okay.
Kevin:All right. Right. Great to know. Um, just as part of that, that threesome highway, the travelers part of them or the Teamsters, which made overnight stops here and taverns and inns were started to serve the travelers, such as the Montgomery Hotel, later known as the Sage Tavern. Blacksmiths, general stores and mills served travelers and farmers alike. Tracy. So let's just talk about I think you know this answer because I've heard you say it before. How many barrels of whiskey in a year were utilized at the Yost Tavern?
Tracy:I have said this before, and of course, now that I'm sitting in front of you.
Kevin:For all these travelers.
Tracy:And I forget, I want to say it's 7050.
Kevin:According to the historical history books. So next question is so that's 50 barrels of whiskey. They went through a year. How many shots does that equate to?
Tracy:I have no idea.
Kevin:That's anywhere from 210,000 to 250 shots at 1.5oz per year, that our travelers enjoyed themselves just at one tavern alone in town. So.
Tracy:So we've always been an entertainment area for folks to come and enjoy Montgomery.
Kevin:And they probably didn't mind sleeping on the dirt floors in the hotels. Correct.
Tracy:I mean, not if you've had that many shots. Right. Right. So what is what is another interesting thing is kind of a tie in to to today with this whole, you know, we're a natural stopping point. And there's a, there's this connection all the way through the state. Um, actually, the developers for the Hotel Rambler decided to name it that because of the fact that Montgomery is known as a stopping point. And they were thinking about the rambling man who would have been traveling through Montgomery. So that's where it got its name. Um, and where the city was really booming in the 50s and 60s, which was also the time when sales of actual car ramblers were booming. Um, and there was a Rambler car dealer on the car dealership site so that we know Montgomery today. So it's all kind of tying back to our history dating all the way back to to the early 1800s, right? Yeah, it's pretty cool. Education was also important, um, in the village. And the first log school appeared as early as 1812. By 1832, a brick school building was built.
Kevin:So this is what I wondered, just because of my experience at Miami University. You ever heard of William McGuffey? No. Okay. And McGuffey readers, I've heard there's readers. So he and his brother wrote the McGuffey readers one through six. And I'm just curious if they taught those at the school because he was a professor at Miami University in 1826, I think in 1835 or 36, they wrote the McGuffey readers. But then he became a professor at Cincinnati College in 1836. So it would be interesting to see, just from a local perspective, I think they sold over 120 million McGuffey readers from 1836 to 1960, so it would be interesting if maybe that's what the children learned. Right. It would have been close proximity. So they may have some of the first copies.
Tracy:That's interesting.
Kevin:Um, moving along, just faith communities also diversified. In 1837, the Universalist Church was constructed at Montgomery, and Remington members molded bricks on site and even had coins to the bells. Added coins? Excuse me to the bells metal for a clear ring. The bell doubled as a fire alarm and the sound became a part of daily life. So here's one other thing I looked up at least because this whole coin thing interested me why they just put them on a string and added them, I guess.
Tracy:I think they melted them into the bell.
Kevin:They did.
Tracy:I think so.
Kevin:Well, it said added coins.
Tracy:That's what I would think. They added them in there so.
Kevin:They just weren't clanging around with the bell as well because.
Tracy:That's how I envisioned.
Kevin:Well, these coins could have been melted hard times tokens. Did you know.
Tracy:That? Yeah. That's a that's very true.
Kevin:A little bit back to this, uh, Northwest Territory expansion. Um, have you ever heard of the panic of 1837?
Tracy:No. My mind went immediately to panic! At the disco.
Kevin:It's it's a little similar to what's happened periodically later on in the US. It was the worst financial crisis of the 19th century. So what happened was Northwest Territory opens up. Now, this is just from my brief reading of history Northwest Territory.
Tracy:Or was it from your conversation with ChatGPT? No, I didn't use ChatGPT.
Kevin:In this time. Um, all this land was available. All the banks on the eastern coast were willing to lend all kinds of of, uh, money to people wanting to purchase properties here, and it was a big bust. So basically prices kept elevating, elevating, elevating, elevating. The market fell out.
Tracy:Everything became.
Kevin:A bust. Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson then I can't remember the name of the policy. They were hard money policies or something like that. Called them, basically said, can't use paper money anymore. You have to use gold or silver coins for payment for land. This then resulted in a financial panic, which then everybody's trying to get gold and silver coins instead of paper money, which then led to a shortage of them because everybody was hoarding the coins or trying to use them in daily life, which means then people just going to the store didn't have smaller coins or whatever to use to buy just general supplies. So then they basically counterfeited hard times tokens. And a lot of these tokens would make fun of the president, but they would pass as legal tender. People just started using them because they couldn't get their hands on real coins.
Tracy:So that's really interesting.
Kevin:I would like to read more about that. But yeah, it was just a little brief insight that I found out when this whole coin thing, I didn't think they were melted, I just thought they were in there jingling around and they could be wrong. They could have been hard times. Coins.
Tracy:You know, they just made them. I don't know. Yes. I don't know. The other interesting thing about Universalists, which I know we're going to go into in depth on Universalists in a future episode, but, um, I know lots of kids and adults alike in our community like to find the keys that are are put into the bricks. Uh, Universalist church. There's over a there's 100 of them throughout the building. Only one of them that does not match, um, which is on the back of the building. So it's always fun to bring the kids down there and let them try to find it. Um.
Kevin:So you think they melted the coins and make keys? No. Because if they melted the coins to make a bell ring, who knows? Okay. Um. Well.
Tracy:So anyway, around 1829, the Hopewell Montgomery Presbyterian Church built a brick sanctuary on Shelly Lane. We'll talk a little bit more about where Shelly Lane got its name, but I think you might notice that I alluded to Marian Schellenberg being called Shelly, so it's pretty much a dead giveaway. They named the Shelly Lane after him. We can talk more about Marian later. The congregation helped start other churches across the area and remain central to community life. And as you know, it's the same congregation, um, that is now located over at Zig Zag and Zag. For a long time it was called Montgomery Presbyterian, and they've changed their name to the Evergreen Church, I believe.
Kevin:Is that okay?
Tracy:Yeah.
Kevin:It's good to.
Tracy:Stay one way from way back when.
Kevin:So let's go back to the latter half of the 19th century. Montgomery stayed small with only about 500 residents on the outside world, though was never far away. The Civil War touched families here, with many men enlisted in the Union regiments, and news traveled about the war along the pike.
Tracy:In industry and innovation reached the village. Over time, Montgomery Pike changed from a dirt road to concrete to asphalt. There were service stations at key intersections. In fact, at one point there were actually three gas stations at the intersection of Montgomery and Cooper Road. All of them, except for the one where Village Tavern is today, had a gas station on it. Um, but then other businesses obviously bloomed along Montgomery Road, and by 1910, Montgomery was formally incorporated as a village. It wasn't until after World War Two that Montgomery really started to transform. Farmland gave way to subdivisions as families sought homes beyond Cincinnati, schools expanded and parks were created and the business district was modernized.
Kevin:Okay, so I don't know how it was in 1910, but what's the minimum population? Let's use your city planning knowledge to become an incorporated village.
Tracy:Incorporated village or city?
Kevin:Not a city just to be incorporated 5000. That's city.
Tracy:But see, I don't know. Village.
Kevin:According to current regulations, it's 1600 people just to become incorporated. Now, I don't know if that was the case in 1910, but it's kind of an interesting fact. So with that rapid change over the years came a desire to protect the city's character, and historic preservation became an important value in the community. We'll talk about that as well, more in a future episode. However, it's important to note, I think by 1976, Montgomery established the Landmarks Commission to identify and safeguard safeguard culturally significant places. So a lot of those initial landmarks that we still see now are around and were established beginning in 76.
Tracy:That's right. We have dozens of landmarks now, 32 to be exact, that have been protected, both buildings and sites. But we've preserved their architecture and help keep the city's stories alive.
Kevin:And I think, as everyone recognizes, whether just throughout the Cincinnati region, Montgomery does a really good job of blending the old and new historic storefronts, churches. It's a very walkable community, especially downtown, with brick lined sidewalks, neighborhood parks, and just a vibrant, beautiful heritage district.
Tracy:Yeah. And what's really cool, I think, is that a lot of the names of our founding fathers and, and ones that you'll see on the landmarks also pop up in, in street signs and cemetery markers and community buildings like Weller, Snyder, Roosa and Terwilliger. The network of regional roads that we, you know, used even back in the early 1800s to connect folks from Cincinnati all the way up to Cleveland, are still the same ones we use today. Montgomery Road is still 22 and three. That runs all the way through. Uh, so it really is a it's so cool to be able to walk down the street and see the connections all the way back to the early 1800s.
Kevin:And I think part of our job here at the city is to keep looking forward, but also recognizing that preservation and progress can, can continue hand in hand. And we've seen that by some recent developments down in Montgomery Quarter. And I think it's just good to to realize that whether you're enjoying an ice cream on a summer evening or even attending, uh, maybe a concert down at MQ Park. Um, that you're you're all part of the long history that Montgomery has.
Tracy:Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's really fun if you if some of our listeners probably have been part of Montgomery Citizens Leadership Academy, where we do the walking tour, um, and that's always one of my favorite ones. I might be a little bit biased because I lead it, but along with Kevin. But, uh, it's always fun to hear their reactions because people have walked or driven past all of these buildings for, you know, years, all the time they've lived here and really don't understand the connections that they have all the way back to the to our founding in 1795. So hopefully we can impart some of that knowledge through the podcast as well. So we want to thank you for joining us for Montgomery Memories. Uh, if you do have stories or any questions, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at Memories at Montgomery, Ohio, or connect on social media. So until next time, keep exploring.
