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Chittenden: A second-generation success story
Nov 05, 2009
Henry Trent Chittenden was not like many in his generation. That group of people was the second generation following the pioneer settlers of Columbus and Franklin County. The original settlers of central Ohio in the years after the American Revolution encountered a starkly beautiful land of dense forests, clear rivers and vast open prairies. But this land of rich soil and new beginnings could be a dangerous place as well, with animals, people and plagues of formidable ferocity.
The settlers of the new land were a special breed. They had left comfort and stability behind to cross the mountains to seek a new start in a new place. They approached the settlement of Ohio with energy and determination in the face of extraordinary challenges.
It should be no surprise to learn that many of their sons and daughters, raised in a world more settled and safe than the frontier of their parents, often did not seek as much or accomplish a much as their parents. Nor did they wish to.
But Henry Chittenden did.
He was born in 1834 -- the year Columbus became a city -- in a comfortable house at 68 E. Broad St. near Statehouse Square. The arrival of the National Road and the Ohio Canal had led enough people to Columbus that a village of 1,700 people in 1832 had become a municipality of 5,000 people three years later.
He was the son of Ashel Chittenden, a pioneer settler of Franklin County. The elder Chittenden had ably developed his small savings into a comfortable living, based on farming and trade, by the time Henry was born.
Henry Chittenden grew up in a city that was trying to lose its rough edges and work its way to the elegance and sophistication of its neighbors in the East. And in many ways, Columbus succeeded in doing just that. By the 1850s, Columbus had as many newspapers, schools, colleges and cultural organizations as most eastern towns. And Columbus had handled the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German immigrants with much less difficulty than had been the case in the East.
Encouraged to seek higher education, Chittenden followed his work in the public schools with attendance at the city's first high school. He was in the first class to graduate from the new school in 1851. He went to college and graduated from Yale University in 1855. After studying law for a time, he left home to seek his fortune in the West. After working for a time in Texas, he returned to Ohio and by 1861, was back in Columbus at the outbreak of the American Civil War.
As the war dragged on, Chittenden served from time to time with the Ohio Militia -- first as one of the "squirrel hunters" defending Ohio from Morgan's Raiders in 1863 and later as a captain of militia at the Camp Chase Confederate prison camp.
At the end of the war, Chittenden became an promoter of the city and involved himself in a number of commercial activities. His entry into retail business was eased by his marriage to the daughter of E. T. Mithoff, one of the pioneer retail merchants of Columbus.
The enterprise he became most closely identified with was his grand hotel at the northwest corner of Spring and High streets. Flanked by two new theaters and a number of nearby restaurants and shops, the Chittenden Hotel in the early 1890s was one of the finest hotels in America.
And then, in a rather spectacular fire, it burned to the ground in 1893, taking most of two city blocks with it. Chittenden sustained a loss of more than $300,000 with the destruction of the hotel. This was an immense sum at the time and many people were unsure whether Chittenden would be able to recover.
To Chittenden, there was never any doubt. Mortgaging virtually every piece of property he owned and borrowing even more from friends and local banks, Chittenden promptly rebuilt his hotel. The new hotel was successful and would last into the early 1970s.
In his later years, Chittenden became fascinated with electricity and its possibilities. An admirer of Thomas Edison, Chittenden came to believe that much of the future would be electrical. He was one of the founders of the first electric company in Columbus and was an early funder of experiments with electrified streetcars. In fact, the first electric car in Columbus was operated along Chittenden Avenue from Ohio State University to the fairgrounds.
The merger of many of the city's streetcar lines and the consolidation of streetcar companies with the electric company led to the formation of the Columbus Railway Power and Light Co. -- the forerunner of both COTA and the central Ohio operations of American Electric Power.
After the death of his first wife, Chittenden, the father of three children, married again. His son, Campbell Chittenden, was well known in his own right as something of an innovator. Discounting the attraction of electric cars, Campbell Chittenden was the proud owner of the first gasoline-powered automobile to appear on the streets of Columbus. His 1901 Winton left a number of puzzled people and terrified horses in its wake as it cruised down High Street at the unheard of speed of seven miles per hour.
Born in the years when stagecoaches and canals were the primary means of travel, Chittenden lived through the age of steam railroads and saw the dawn of the motor car and powered flight by aircraft. But by 1904, he was beginning to slow down. Afflicted with a number of physical ailments, Chittenden was in poor health for the next several years until his death in 1909.
Chittenden disproved the old adage that the second generation often simply lives on what the first generation has acquired. Chittenden in some ways surpassed his forebears. Acquiring a fortune, he lost it all and in a very few years, made it all back again.
People like that deserve to have streets named for them.
Ed Lentz writes a history column for ThisWeek.
Ed
Lentz
Copyright 2009
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