America, 19th century. A wonderful group of early Cincinnati, Ohio letters, documents, and receipts from the 1880s and 1890s.

Includes General Electric Company, Becker Brewing, Blaney & Bramble, and letters from the Nicholas Longworth Estate.

Nicholas Longworth accepted plots of land in exchange for payment in the early 1800s and as the city grew, as did the value of his land. By 1818 he switched from law to real estate due his success and began growing grapes in Mt. Adams due to his belief in Cincinnati’s fair climate for growing. By the 1850s, a journalist from the London Illustrated News noted his preference for Longworth’s Catawba and how it "transcends the Champagnes of France.” Eventually he was named “The Father of American Grape Culture.” Longworth can be noted as an abolitionist and aided runway enslaved individuals, being the possible inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” He was also extremely invested in the arts, making contact with every artist in Cincinnati between 1829 and 1858. The aficionado also helped artists grow with financial aids, introductions, and commissions. As the first resident of what now stands as Taft Museum of Art, Longworth hired Robert S. Duncanson to paint eight large landscape murals within the villa, which launched his career. The Longworth family lives on as a prominent Cincinnati name, including Maria Longworth Storer of Rookwood Pottery and her father Joseph Longworth, first president of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

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