Tuesday, March 15, 2011

See What Digging Can Find?

Here is an example of what I have found on a property in just a few days. This property is in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, north of Liberty.
This property originally had two buildings on it. One was a single family home which, unfortunately, was demolished. The other was a tenement building, dating from 1870, which was common housing for the working people of Over-the-Rhine. (For more information on OTR, check out this website - http://www.otrfoundation.org/OTR_History.htm)

The following research mainly focuses on the single family home.

From 1856 until his death in 1878, George Lang lived at this property. He was portrait, scenery and historical painter, born in Bavaria, Germany in 1816. He was well know at the time for his religious paintings in some of the churches in the area. George Lang, Artist

While George was still alive his daughter, Josephine, married Otto Saur. The whole family, George, Josephine, Otto, and George's sons, Charles and George, Jr., are all living at the same address in 1877. Otto and Josephine Saur continue to live here until 1896, when they moved to Norwood, Ohio.

While in Over-the-Rhine, Otto Saur was the proprietor of The Lion Lager Beer Bottling Company until approximately 1879. This was about the same time when the local breweries took over bottling beer themselves. Before this time, the breweries often contracted out the bottling. More information here - http://www.sudhauspress.com/modernized.html

After leaving the bottling operations, Otto Saur continued working in the brewery industry with the The John Kauffman Brewing Company and also Gambrinus Stock Company.

In 1897, John Kimmich, who was a tailor, began living there with his family until 1904. Records for 1905-1907 were hard to find in the large city directories. In 1908, Mary Siermann, who was a widow, lived there with her daughter along with a roomer, Joseph Kruse, a cigar maker. My research stopped on this project in 1910 with Charles Mueller living here, working as a machinist.

I also found along the way how often street names changed. A small side street, now called Frintz Street, first started off as Poplar Street, then Oak Street, then Cambria Street and finally Frintz Street in 1890. It was named Frintz Street after a former City of Cincinnati Council member who grew up in the area and also had served in the American Civil War, Lewis (Louis) C. Frintz.

See what a few days of research can find? This city has an amazing history!

If you have a building or another local history item you would like to know more about, leave a comment!

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