NORWOOD HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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Historical Dates for Norwood, Ohio.
1860s

  • 1860-66
    Sometime in this time period the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad As Reorganized, acquires and builds tracks from Loveland to the Millcreek, going through Sharpsburg. A newspaper article in April 1863 stated that Marietta & Cincinnati President Noah L. Wilson had just returned from a trip to Europe, where he secured the funds to continue the company's business. The next month, the newspaper wrote how the new capital would allow the railroad to complete expansions, including an extension from Loveland into Cincinnati. The paper requested that land owners along the path of the railroad sell the properties at reasonable prices without delay. (Indications are that the tracks from Loveland to the Millcreek were completed in February 1866. However, one source gives the date of completion as 1861; see [TRANSPORTATION] page.) Soon developers and landowners are platting subdivision near the tracks (Norwood Heights, 1869). Growth is slow, however, until years later (ca. 1881?), a second railroad, the Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern, builds a narrow gauge commuter line diagonally through Norwood.

  • 1862 (January 5)
    The County Commissioners pay $14 for 100 bushels of coal for the Sharpsburg Road toll-gate to John Matthers.

  • 1862 (October 5)
    Sharpsburg Road toll-collector, A. McDonald, presented his performance bond, signed by Richard Mathers and A. Handlin, to the County Commissioners Board, which approved and filed it.

  • 1863 (April 29)
    On this Wednesday, at 2 p.m., the property of the late Charles B. Ferguson was to be sold by Executor John W. Kennedy. The property included 5.92 acres in Sharpsburg, including a "good two-story frame dwelling, carriage-house, stable, good cisterns, well, a large number of fruit trees, shrubbery, &c., all inclosed." Also, to be sold was 2.17 acres of vacant land adjacent to Sharpsburg and about 3 miles from Cincinnati (possibly in what is now south Norwood or Evanston).

  • 1863 (September 23)
    The Hamilton County Commissioners paid S. Wright $33 for three months rent of a gate-house on Sharpsburg Road.

  • 1866 (February 18)
    The first passenger train travels from Loveland to Cincinnati using the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad's new line. Obviously, it did not stop in Sharpsburg–a station had not been opened there.

  • 1867 (March 19)
    Sharpsburg Post Office is established; an 1869 map shows the location east of the Montgomery Pike bridge, between Harris Avenue and the M.&C. railroad tracks—possibly in the same building used as the first train station in Sharpsburg.

  • 1867 (June 17)
    Maria Whetstone Hopkins (wife of L. C. Hopkins) acquires 19.03 acres on the east side of Montgomery Pike from Anthony Zanono and wife.

  • 1867 (August 1)
    L. C. Hopkins acquires 8.94 acres on the west side of Montgomery Pike from Hiram Smith and wife.

  • 1867
    Hopkins Avenue is dedicated in 1867 and thereafter is improved by the county. It appears that it originally ran through the (Columbus or Rezin?) Williams farm.

  • 1868 (January 1)
    L. C. Hopkins sells his downtown Cincinnati dry goods store to partner B. F. Turner and George R. Littster, giving them permission to continue business with the name L. C. Hopkins & Company. Hopkins directs his efforts to land development, some of which is in what will become Norwood.

  • 1868 (February)
    On February 18th, a call for a vote on the establishment of a separate Sharpsburg school district is issued and signed by Sharpsburg pioneers. Ten days later, in a special election, Jackson Slane, Columbus Williams, and John N. Siebern are chosen members of the first independent board of education of the new district. There are only 61 families in the district, with a population of 318.

  • 1868
    Although the area was known as Sharpsburg for a long time, it appears that a development with that name isn't laid out until 1868, just north of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad, on land previously owned by a Mr. Holt. The full name of the development is "Joseph G.Langdon Subdivision at Sharpsburg." Across Montgomery Pike, the Baker Addition to Sharpsburg is platted about the same time.

  • 1868
    L. C. Hopkins places his land holdings in Norwood, Cincinnati, Covington and other places under the control of George Maxwell and Isaac Jordan, Trustees of the Estate & Effects of Lewis C. Hopkins a Bankrupt & their Successors. (Some sources have placed the year he lost his Norwood lands as 1872! But, that was probably the year he re-acquired them.)

  • 1869 A newspaper column stated that "six new post-offices have been named "Norwood," since the publication of Henry Ward Beecher's story in the Ledger" newspaper. The Sharpsburg post office is renamed Norwood the following year–not for the newspaper serial or the subsequent book, but as a shortening of "north woods."

  • 1869
    Sylvester H. Parvin, Col. Philander P. Lane and Lemuel Bolles purchase the William Ferguson farm and develop an eighty-one acre subdivision to be known as Norwood Heights. The development is not successful, as only one house is built. However, it is influential enough that the name of Sharpsburg is more or less replaced with the name Norwood.

  • 1869 (May 3)
    L. C. Hopkins' Norwood properties on Montgomery Pike are sold at auction. A total of 15 lots totaling 43.436 acres are sold for $25,432.75 to seven individuals — W. M. Mills, Louis Cordes, Henry Cordes, William J. Armel, J. B. Mitchell, Charles Reakirt and C. Williams. The value of the land today may be estimated at 10 to 20 million dollars. (Some sources have placed the year he lost his Norwood lands as 1872! But, that was probably the year he re-acquired them.)

  • 1869 What may have been the first general map to show a location as "Norwood" is Titus' Atlas of Hamilton Co., Ohio, 1869. It is at a platted area of large lots. This is probably the Norwood Heights subdivision. Interestingly, another platted area at the crossroads of Montgomery Pike and Smith Road/Carthage Avenue and north of the M.&C. R.R. tracks is marked Sharpsburg. A detail of Sharpsburg is drawn on the map, indicating it is more significant than Norwood (Heights) at the time. Norwood Heights is a newly platted residential area, while Sharpsburg has a general store, post office, train station, etc. This may be J. G. Langdon's Subdivision at Sharpsburg.
    

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