By the 1830s, William Stephenson had become involved in many early Cincinnati enterprises. He was on the Board of Directors of the Cincinnati Savings Institution, founded in 1831; served as treasurer for the Medical College of Ohio; and was treasurer of the St. Georges Benevolent Society and the Fire Warden Company, No. 1. He is reported to have been involved in "alleviating the distress occasioned by the cholera and flood of 1832" and as supporting the temperance movement of the 1840s. He served on City Council and as City Recorder. In the 1840s his son Henry joined his tinware firm, and in 1855 William retired from that business, leaving it to Henry to manage.
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William and his family lived in what we now think of as downtown Cincinnati. For a long period he had a home on 4th Street between Plum St. and Western Row (now Central Ave.). However, in 1865 he moved to suburban Wyoming. When the Census was taken in 1870, William, 76 years old, and his wife Lucy, were living with their daughter, Amelia Stephenson Stearns – wife of George S. Stearns, of Stearns and Foster.
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| Fourth Street Looking West from Vine, 1835, by John Caspar Wild. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
One other thing we can track through the Censuses is the growth of Stephenson’s estate. The Census reports the value of the real estate he owned, which in 1850 was $51,000; 1860 was $100,000; and in 1870 was $240,000 (by comparison George Stearns only owned $50,000 in real estate in 1870). By some calculations that is the equivalent of over $4.25 million in today’s dollars.
When William Stephenson died in May of 1873, he left a long, detailed will, explaining how his estate should be invested and dispersed until the death of his wife, and then how it should be distributed to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. His numerous real estate holdings provided rents that he directed be used to grow the estate and that his executors should continue to invest in more land purchases. This ultimately included buying the lots in Wyoming on Burns Avenue.
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| Published will of William Stephenson Source: Wyoming Historical Society |
The land on which 123 Burns Avenue stands was part of a farm once owned by Archibald Burns. After his death, his heirs arranged for J.T. Wilson to divide the farm into lots and sell them, sharing the proceeds. However, J.T. Wilson died in 1870 having only sold a few of the lots. The heirs continued to sell lots from the subdivision after Wilson’s death. Grant H. Burrows purchased Lots 47-49 from the Burns estate in the early 1870s.
In July of 1874, the estate of William Stephenson purchased these same lands from Burrows. The Hamilton County Auditor's website provides an approximate construction date for the home at 123 Burns Ave. as 1875, just after this purchase. In 1877, three years after the estate’s executors purchased
this land, they granted a 99-year lease to William Stephenson’s grandson,
William DeForest for the southernmost portion of Lot 49, fronting 112 feet on
Burns Avenue, and including a house built on the lot.
In 1888, four years after the
death of William Stephenson’s wife, his estate was finally disbursed to his
heirs, including William DeForest, and as part of his share he was given the
land and home at 123 Burns Avenue, as well as the next lot to the north that is now 131 Burns Avenue. This redistribution altered the lot lines, turning the original three lots into five lots, each with approximately 112 feet in street frontage. William's sister, Caroline DeForest, was given the lot next north, now 141 Burns, his cousin Arthur Stephenson received what is now 149 Burns, and the lot that is now 159 Burns went to his cousin Blanche R. Stephenson. In addition to the two lots on Burns Ave., William received at least 13 other lots--in Avondale, and in Cincinnati's West End, Over-the-Rhine, and Downtown neighborhoods, with annual rents ranging $100-230 per parcel.
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| 123 Burns Avenue |
William DeForest (1836-1900) was the son of William
Stephenson’s eldest daughter, Mary Stephenson (1814-1856) and DeLauzun DeForest (1808-1892),
who married in 1832 in Cincinnati--before William Stephenson had developed his real estate empire. DeLauzun DeForest, like William Stephenson, also
came west to Cincinnati from Hartford, Connecticut, around 1830. He was a
bookbinder, though for a time in the 1840s he worked for his father-in law’s tin
business and did a stint owning a grocery, but returned to bookbinding in the
1850s.
William DeForest's parents had at least seven children, but only three survived to adulthood. His mother, Mary Stephenson DeForest died in 1856 when she was just 42, and William was 20. His older brother George died in 1860 at age 27. His younger sister, Caroline was just 4 when her mother died (she inherited the lot that is now 141 Burns Ave. from her grandfather). By 1860 William's father DeLauzun DeForest had remarried, and Caroline had been sent to live with her Stephenson grandparents.
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| Source: Cincinnati Directory, Robinson & Fairbanks, 1831 |
William DeForest combined the occupations of his grandfather
(metal work) and father (bookbinding) and became a manufacturer of printing type. City directories listed his occupation variously as "type maker"; "typecaster"; "type founder"; and "machinist." William did not have his own business, but likely worked for
one of two type manufacturers located in Cincinnati in the early 1800s, the
Cincinnati Type Foundry or the Franklin Type and Stereotype Foundry (or possibly for his Stephenson relatives' tinware manufacturing business). The two type companies were both located on Vine Street and both produced printing presses
and all the parts from type to ink necessary for printing.
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| Source: Williams' Cincinnati Directory, 1865. |
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| Source: Williams' Cincinnati Directory, 1865. |
In 1857 William DeForest married Eliza Jane Higdon (1838-1923)
in Clermont County, Ohio, where her father, Josiah Higdon owned a farm (he also ran a
stable/livery in Cincinnati with his sons). For much of the 1860s William and Eliza lived in
Cincinnati on Richmond Street, near today’s location of the Lloyd Library. Then in the early 1870s they lived for a brief time on Budd
Street, near the riverfront, west of downtown, just east of the mouth of Mill Creek. William and Eliza lost at least three children within their first year of birth. Their oldest son, William S. DeForest (1858 – 1901), suffered from some form of
In 1877 William and Eliza DeForest moved to the home at 123 Burns
Avenue in Wyoming, when William, Jr. would have been 19, and daughter Grace was about 11 years old. Grace DeForest, who spent her teenage years living at 123
Burns Avenue, married Harry Hall in 1893. In 1900 the Census lists their
household immediately before that of her mother and brother, so they may have been
living right next door, on the lot to the north that William DeForest had also inherited, 131 Burns Avenue. Eliza DeForest and her son William remained at 123 Burns for a time after William, Sr.’s death in 1900; William, Jr. passed away in 1901. By 1903 Eliza Higdon DeForest had joined the Hall
family’s household and moved out of Wyoming, first living in North Avondale, and
by the time of the 1910 Census they had relocated to Myrtle Avenue in East
Walnut Hills, Cincinnati. Eliza lived with them there until her death in 1923.
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| 131 Burns Avenue |
Harry and Grace DeForest Hall had nine children; the two eldest were
girls, the rest boys. Harry was bookkeeper, cashier, and treasurer for various
firms over the years. In 1921 Grace DeForest Hall, who had inherited the
properties at 123 and 131 Burns Avenue from her father, sold the two homes
after having rented them to a number of families over the preceding two
decades. During that time it is difficult to know for certain who occupied the
homes. However, the 1910 and 1920 Censuses identify at least two families that
lived in 123 Burns. Stay tuned for a post about those families...
