New Vienna, Once Buzzard's Glory Prospers Anew in Clinton County
A full page spread in the Cincinnati Times-Star, February 26, 1957 (p.15) by Mayo Mohs [Part 1 of 5]
Come ye mechanics from afar
And lend a helping hand.
From selling we will not debar;
Come settle fertile land.
Yea, Buzzard's Glory is the place
Where happiness doth reign.
Come, come mechanics don't delay!
We invite you again.
The invitation is to all
Ye Sons of Freedom, come!
If you pass this way, I hope you'll call
And make this place your home.
Where oil doth run so clean and bright,
And the steam engine plays
If you were once to see the sight,
Our noble works you'd praise.
It takes more than verses like these to make a poet, or for that matter, to build a town. But in 1830 the lines sounded as clear and as liquid as a wilderness brook, and the thought they conveyed was the ambitious vision of a new and growing nation.
In the sophisticated parlors of literary Massachusetts they may have been scorned and ridiculed, but in New Vienna, O., they knocked 'em dead.
For James Johnson and Ellis Nordyke, the young men of early New Vienna who wrote the verses, their frontier town was something of which they could really be proud, and in the exuberance of this wholesome pride, they set their thoughts on paper. Today, when we read them, we may only notice their archaic flavor, and forget the far more important thing – their spirit.
It was the spirit, after all, not the verse, that would in time build the town, and the nation.
From the start, when it was founded in 1827 by Thomas Hussey, New Vienna was a thriving community. At what time it changed its name from "Buzzard's Glory," the name it bears in the poem – or if, indeed, the latter title was only a casual nickname, the history books do not record. They do record that by the 1880's just a bit more than 40 years later, New Vienna boasted a population of more than 1,000 people of "industry, economy, and thrift." --to be continued....
The Clinton County Timeline lists the following about New Vienna:
1827 Village of New Vienna [not Buzzard's Glory] platted by Thomas Hussey
1946 Faris Implement Store opens in downtown New Vienna [many other stores must have opened in the previous 120 years but they didn't make the timeline.]
1961 Buckeye Molding moves to New Vienna
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This is the first of five posts from New Vienna, Once Buzzard's Glory Prospers Anew in Clinton County. Other posts can be found at these links:
Part 1 History
Part 2 New Vienna in 1957
Part 3 Southern Ohio Tool & Die
Part 4 Wells Mfg.
Part 5 Aerial Photo
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