A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

1863, it is located at 319 N. Third Street.Gilbert LaBoiteaux lived in Mt. Healthy and was a farmer, poet and writer. As a young man (age 10) in1830 was a mail carrier. 25 “When I presented my petition to be a mail carrier to William Burke, who wasthen a postmaster at Cincinnati, he read off the names with a voice that frightened me. Mr. Burke was apreacher as well as a postmaster...After carefully reading the petition, Mr. Burke took me to the office ofSalmon P. Chase, then a young attorney, located on Third street, just east of Main, where I was sworn in...I had no trouble in getting off my horse, but to get on again was a different matter. PostmasterBurke, however, was generally on hand to give me a boost. Mt. Healthy...started with a weekly mail. Iwill never forget my first ride. As there was but one saddle in the village I had to ride bareback. Mycompensation, or rather my father’s, for carrying the mail was $40 a year. I got a fi’ penny-bit for eachtrip, which is now equivalent to 6 1/4 cents. It was the lowest rate on letter postage. It would pay thepostage on a letter just so many miles and no further. The next rate was 11 cents. The next rate was 18 3/4cents, and 25 cents would carry a letter to any point in the United States where there was a post-office. Inthose days the receiver of the letter footed the bill. The receipts of the office didn’t pay the $40 forcarrying the mail, so my father always had a little coming to him at the end of the year.If I could command all the strenuous words in the English language I would fail to adequatelydescribe the road between Mt. Healthy and Cincinnati, especially in early winter and spring. There wasonly one short stretch of the road, between Mt. Pleasant and ‘Hell town,’ now called Northside, that I hadany respect for and that commenced just where the College Hill water-works stands, running along theridge now covered by private dwellings. It was along that ridge that Gen. St. Clair, September 17, 1791,passed with his army of 2,000 men to exterminate the Indians and got badly licked.”Gilbert lived a long life at the family home at 7345 Hamilton Avenue. One his poems that he wrotefor the Springfield Township Pioneer Association 26 describes how he felt about farmers:When the battle rages, when cannons crash and bellow,The man behind the gun is a very useful fellow;His valor, we admire, as he rushes on the foe,But he gets his brawn and courage fromthe man behind the hoe.The soldier and the statesman we glorify in verse,And their great achievements, always ready to rehearse,We chisel them in marble, we crown them with a wreath,We place them on a pedestal with name in bold relief;We love this hero worship, but I would like to knowWhy we never honor the man behind the hoe.Leonard ‘Len’ Lanius founded American jiu-jitsu based on the idea that a smaller man can overcome alarger man using scientific principles. He also held a world lightweight wrestling championship. Hemarried Minnie Duebel.Jesse D. Locker: The Rev. Laban S. and Elizabeth Morgan Locker were living on Perry Street in Mt.Healthy when Jesse was born in the home of his grandmother, Winnie Cowan. Rev. Locker had thedistinction of being the first African American in Ohio to be ordained as a minister in the ChristianChurch. The church paid very little. When the Reverend died in 1900 he left a legacy of a lapsedinsurance policy and pocket change for his family. Rev. Locker’s church, the Christian Church of College25 Times Star, March 16, 1910, Carried the Mail Eighty Years Ago.26 One Square Mile, Mt. Healthy Historical Society.185