The Richard Fosdick Papers

Cincinnati has inspired a number of nicknames: some devotional “The Queen City,” some that appeal to a younger demographic “the ‘Nati,” and some that defy expectation such as “Porkopolis;” unless, of course, you are familiar with the city’s history as one of the nation’s leading pork-processing locations during much of the nineteenth century when pigs were herded through city streets on their way to slaughter. For residents of the Cincinnati neighborhood of Corryville, Fosdick Street (sandwiched between Eden and Highland Avenues) is a neighborhood address, but exactly who were the Fosdicks and what did they have to do with the city’s porcine moniker? Cincinnati Museum Center houses the Richard Fosdick Papers, a collection containing more than four hundred letters, dozens of personal invoices, and a business letter-book. Recently processed, this collection documents the familial and business relationships of Richard, his siblings, and many of their descendants and extended family members over a ninety-nine year period from the late eighteenth into the late nineteenth century.

The Fosdick family’s ancestors immigrated to the American colonies from England in the late 1600s, many of them settling in Connecticut and later, on New York’s Long Island. Richard’s father Thomas, a physician, practiced in New London, Connecticut where he and his wife, the former Anna Havens, had ten children, only five of whom survived into adulthood. Reflecting a typical American family of the Atlantic coast, the Fosdick sons were involved in shipping, whaling, cabinetry, and furniture making. In the collection, Richard and his brothers and sisters, their spouses, and children, contributed to a body of correspondence that peeks into the dynamics of eighteenth and nineteenth century familial relationships that often bled over into business relationships. As importantly, it also provides clues into the thoughts of average American citizens on the matters of the day: national politics, international commerce, the Haitian Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as well as the impact of epidemic illnesses and financial hardships.

Richard was born New London on November 28, 1765. From the collection’s earliest correspondence (a letter from brother Nicoll Fosdick, fifteen years Richard’s senior) Richard cast about as a young man, searching for his life’s direction. At various points, he took up furniture making, running a mercantile establishment, captaining a whaling ship (gaps in correspondence may be attributable to extended sea voyages) and then around 1810, moved his family to the “Westward,” settling in Cincinnati. He came with his wife, the former Phebe L’Hommedieu of Sag Harbor, New York and their six children: Thomas Richard, Sylvester, Samuel, Anna, Betsy and baby Henry Nicoll (the seventh, son Charles Updike, was born in Cincinnati in 1815). Richard is credited with inventing a new process of curing pork and beef with rock salt, and opened Cincinnati’s first slaughterhouse on what is now Eggleston Avenue.¹

Anna Fosdick to brother Richard Fosdick (Feb. 24, 1789) “Is it fashionable to go barefoot?”

CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

He also brought with him a Declaration of Independence broadside printed by John Holt of White Plains, New York. Donated separately, The Holt Broadside, one of only four known copies of the document to exist, is now temporarily on display in the museum’s “Treasures of Our Military Past” exhibition.

Nicoll Fosdick to Thomas R. Fosdick (November 18, 1810) “Glad to hear you have arrived safely in Cincinnati.”

CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

Henry P. Dering to Richard Fosdick (February 28, 1813).

CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

Much of the collection’s early correspondence is directed to Richard from his brothers Nicoll and Thomas Updike and his youngest sister Anna and her husband. Nicoll Fosdick was born in 1750 in New London, Connecticut. He and wife Abigail Eldredge had eight, or nine, children (sources vary). In the first several years of his correspondence with Richard, Nicoll wrote quite often from Aux Cayes, Haiti (now known as Les Cayes) where he had interests in a coffee or sugar plantation. Nicoll...