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The community of Mt. Healthy
is located about 15 miles north of Cincinnati.
It was originally
named
Mt. Pleasant. It was founded in the 1810s.
It was
on land originally owned by John Cleves
Symmes.
In 1804, John LaBoiteaux came from NJ and settled on land west of the
Great Road (now Hamilton Ave.). The town began with a tavern
built by John LaBoiteaux about 1815 along the Hamilton Pike.
The town was laid out by John LaBoiteaux
and Samuel Hill and
began to be settled
in 1817. The town's
first settlers were English, German, and French immigrants,
Over the next
several years, a number of homes and businesses grew up alongside the
tavern, so that by the 1830s Mt. Pleasant had a population of more than
two hundred people.
The town prospered economically in the following decades, including not
only retail establishments but also some light manufacturing. Businesses
included a number of taverns, a furniture factory, several garment
factories, wagon makers, and potteries.
The area also attracted a number of Roman
Catholics and African Americans.
In the years prior to the
Civil War, the community was also known for its meetings of the Liberty
Party.
The community began to be known as Mt. Healthy because
because of the number of its citizens surviving
the Cholera epidemics of nearby Cincinnati, and in 1893 was officially
renamed. Actually, the local post office had referred to the town as Mt.
Healthy since 1884, trying to avoid confusion with another Ohio town also
called Mt. Pleasant.
Mt. Healthy began to create stronger ties with the city of Cincinnati in
1898, when an electric trolley line extended to its area for the first
time. In the twentieth century, as automobile use became more widespread,
Mt. Healthy became an official suburb of Cincinnati.
**To be continued** |