Jewett Drive is named after the family that for almost sixty years owned and lived
on the property that was divided into the lots that line the street. Four generations of Joseph Franklin
Jewetts lived in Wyoming, along with their wives, brothers, sisters, and
cousins.
Joseph Franklin
Jewett (1835-1922), the family patriarch, was born in Granby, Connecticut.
He moved to Cleveland, where in 1858 he got into the sack manufacturing
business as a partner in the Jewett & Adams Company. Just a few years later
the company opened a branch in Cincinnati, and Joseph moved to the city to
manage it, brining his wife, Cecelia
Child (1842-1914), and family to the Queen City with him.
Source: The Railway Agent and Station Agent, vol. 17, 1897. |
In the nineteenth century, grain, coffee, sugar, and many
other goods were put in cloth sacks and, later, paper sacks, as part of the
bulk shipping process. Manufacturing sacks in Cincinnati made a lot of
sense—Cincinnati was a busy port on the Ohio River. Farmers brought their goods
to the city and needed to bag them before they were loaded onto riverboats or railroad cars and
shipped to distant markets. In the
mid-1880s Adams, Jewett & Co.'s place of business, which included manufacturing of the bags,
was located on the southwest corner of Water and Vine streets, right on
Cincinnati’s waterfront. Back in the nineteenth century railroad sidings also were located on Water Street. This land is now part of Smale Riverfront Park--the Digging Cincinnati History blog includes a great post about the area.
Source: Cincinnati Illustrated Business Directory, 1883. |
In August 1865, Joseph and Cecelia Jewett purchased slightly more than eight acres of land fronting on the west side of Springfield Pike, in the area that was to become Wyoming (it was Lot 1 of the Isaac B. Riddle Subdivision, which I hope to blog about in the future).
Joseph and Cecelia had eight children, six girls and two boys. The oldest daughter, Laura (1861-1938) did not marry and lived in Wyoming and nearby Hartwell for most of her life. Second daughter Jennie (1862-1865) died just after her third birthday. Three of the Jewett girls married and moved away from the Cincinnati area. Helen (1865-1935) married Frank B. DeCamp and moved with him to St. Louis, Missouri; Carrie (1866-1955) married Albert Pfau and moved to Terra Haute, Indiana; and Grace (1870-1956) married Brandon Millikin and moved to Hamilton, Ohio. Youngest daughter, Cecelia (1874-1967) lived at home until she was in her 40s when she married Agustus T. Welsh and moved to Burns Ave. in Hartwell, returning to Wyoming to live on Stout Ave. near the end of her life.
Joseph and Cecelia had eight children, six girls and two boys. The oldest daughter, Laura (1861-1938) did not marry and lived in Wyoming and nearby Hartwell for most of her life. Second daughter Jennie (1862-1865) died just after her third birthday. Three of the Jewett girls married and moved away from the Cincinnati area. Helen (1865-1935) married Frank B. DeCamp and moved with him to St. Louis, Missouri; Carrie (1866-1955) married Albert Pfau and moved to Terra Haute, Indiana; and Grace (1870-1956) married Brandon Millikin and moved to Hamilton, Ohio. Youngest daughter, Cecelia (1874-1967) lived at home until she was in her 40s when she married Agustus T. Welsh and moved to Burns Ave. in Hartwell, returning to Wyoming to live on Stout Ave. near the end of her life.
Joseph F. Jewett, Sr. was involved in the Wyoming community. He served as a founding representative on the Wyoming Board of Education in the early 1880s. He was also one of the investors that owned the Wyoming Land and Building Company Subdivision (Burns Farm).
The Jewett sons stayed close to home and became involved with family businesses. Both Jewett sons began their careers with the bag company. In the 1890s, Joseph Jewett, Sr. started a new venture—the Cincinnati Carriage Goods Company. Many “carriage” companies at the turn of the century were straddling the change from horse-drawn to horse-less carriages. I don’t know the full details of what the Cincinnati Carriage Goods Company sold, but I did find documentation that they were dealers of rubber tires. Additionally, Joseph Jewett was also reported to be a “cotton dealer” in some publications in the 1910s.
The Jewett sons stayed close to home and became involved with family businesses. Both Jewett sons began their careers with the bag company. In the 1890s, Joseph Jewett, Sr. started a new venture—the Cincinnati Carriage Goods Company. Many “carriage” companies at the turn of the century were straddling the change from horse-drawn to horse-less carriages. I don’t know the full details of what the Cincinnati Carriage Goods Company sold, but I did find documentation that they were dealers of rubber tires. Additionally, Joseph Jewett was also reported to be a “cotton dealer” in some publications in the 1910s.
Joseph and Cecelia’s son, Maxwell Jewett (1872-1960) worked with the Cincinanti Carriage Goods
Company, and then in the 1920s managed The Jewett Company, which bought and sold cotton
goods. Max lived with his parents until he married Jennie Kane (1882-1951); they had one daughter, Jane E. Jewett (1908-2002). After Max and Jennie's marriage, Joseph Sr. and Cecelia sold or gave them a 100 foot by 590 foot lot cut out of the southeast corner of the Jewett homestead property. In 1919 they deeded this land back to Joseph, Sr. and moved into Cincinnati.
Census records show Max and Jennie were living in San Diego, California in 1940,
but city directories place them back in Cincinnati by 1951.
After initially working in the family sack business,
sometime before 1905 Joseph F. Jewett,
Jr. (1868-1947) established a pulley manufacturing company, The Standard
Pulley Company. In 1893 he married Elizabeth “Betty” Haven (1868-1939). For a
time they lived in Covington, Kentucky, where son Joseph F. Jewett, III (1893-1976) was born. But they were back in
Wyoming, Ohio for the birth of daughter Eleanor
“Haven” Jewett (1898-1928). At the time of the 1900 Census they were living
on Walnut Ave. in Wyoming, and in 1907 they purchased and moved their family
to the house at 507 Springfield Pike, where they lived until 1924. They stayed
in Wyoming the rest of their lives; the 1930 Census records them living on Wentworth Ave., along with son Joseph, III.
Joseph F. Jewett, III studied engineering at the University
of Cincinnati and then served in WWI, from 1917 to 1919. He began service as a
Second Lieutenant and by the end of the war had been promoted to Captain. For
part of his enlistment he was stationed in Maine, but then spent most of 1918
in France. Upon returning to the United States, he married Helen Gardner in
Portland, Maine in 1919. They came to Wyoming, and in the 1920 Census are
listed as living at 701 Springfield Pike--on the Jewett homestead property, possibly in a home on the southeast portion of the lot, recently vacated by his uncle Max. Joseph III and Helen had two children, Dorothy Jewett (b.
1921) and Joseph F. Jewett, IV (1924-2011). However, the couple divorced and Helen
moved to Los Angeles with the children. Joseph IV was a military pilot in both WWII and the Korean War.
In 1919 Haven Jewett, daughter of Joseph Jr. and
Betty, married Stanley Duttenohfer, of the family that owned Cincinnati’s Duttenhofer
shoes, and they had one son, Stanley, Jr. Unfortunately Haven died in
1928 of tuberculosis.
In the 1920s, the Jewett homestead land was sold to Marion and C. Dean Poage. Joseph, Sr. sold the bulk of the land to them in 1921. The lot at the southeast corner was sold to the Poages by Joseph, Sr.'s children in 1924; they had inherited it at his death in 1922. C. Dean Poage was a builder-developer-real estate agent who built many Cincinnati area subdivisions. He sold the first lot from the Jewett land in April, 1928 - the home at the northwest corner of Jewett Drive and Springfield Pike, the current 701 Springfield Pike.
701 Springfield Pike, first home sold from subdivision of Jewett homestead. |
The 1928 deed for this property reveals one of the ugly realities of the early twentieth century housing market - racism. Covenants on the deed for this and the other lots Poage sold on Jewett Drive limited development to single family homes, prohibited fences in the front yards, prescribed minimum house setbacks from the street, but also specified that:
"(5) Said premises or any part thereof or any buildings hereinafter constructed thereon shall not be sold, rented, leased, occupied or used by any person or persons other than of the white or Caucasian Race, except for servants living with families occupying said premises."
Racial covenants like these were commonly used in communities across the United States from the 1920s into the 1940s, but they were deemed judicially unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, as violating the Fourteenth Amendment, and were subsequently removed from deeds as homes were resold. As communities adopted zoning ordinances (which Wyoming did in 1925), specifications about yard setbacks and permitted uses were also removed from most deeds.
In the 1940s Joseph Jewett III remarried, and he and his
wife Emma moved to the house at 40 Jewett Drive. Joseph III lived out the rest of his life on part of the land where his
grandfather had established his home in Wyoming a hundred years earlier.