page_title: Cincinnati
section_title: Society
hierarchical_section_title: Cincinnati / Society
caption_attribution_description: English: I took this photo of the Tyler Davidson Fountain in Fountain Square, Cincinnati on Friday, June 8, 2007 with a Pentax K100D Digital SLR camera.
context_page_description: Cincinnati is a major city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the government seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky. The city is the economic and cultural hub of the Cincinnati metropolitan area, the fastest growing economic power in the Midwestern United States based on increase of economic output, which had a population of 2,190,209 as of the 2018 census estimates. This makes it Ohio's largest metropolitan area and the nation's 29th-largest. With a city population estimated at 303,940, Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and 64th in the United States. Cincinnati is within a day's drive of 49.70% of the United States populace, ranking it as fourth in the list of metro areas with the largest population base within one day's drive time.
  In the 19th century, Cincinnati was an American boomtown in the middle of the country.
context_section_description: Like all major cities in the United States, Cincinnati was proliferated by Americans, but also Ulster Scots known as the Scots Irish, frontiersmen, and keelboaters. Most of Cincinnati's longtime residents have kinships rooted throughout the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana tristate and deeper.  The first Methodist class came about in 1798, city residents for years already inspired by the Methodist circuit preachers; among Methodist institutes were The Christ Hospital as well as projects of the German Methodist Church.
  Cincinnati, being on the heartland plain, depended on trade with the slave states south of the Ohio River at a time when thousands of black people were settling in the free state of Ohio. Most of them came after the Civil War, and were from Kentucky and Virginia with many of them fugitives who had sought freedom and work in the North.  In the antebellum years, the majority of native-born whites in the city came from northern states, primarily Pennsylvania. Though 57 percent of whites migrated from free states, 26 percent were from southern states and they retained their cultural support for slavery. This quickly led to tensions between pro-slavery residents and those in favor of abolitionism and lifting restrictions on free people of color, as codified in the "Black Code" of 1804.
  Germans were among the earliest newcomers, migrating from Pennsylvania and the backcountry of Virginia and Tennessee.  General David Ziegler succeeded General St. Clair in command at Fort Washington.  After the conclusion of the Northwest Indian War and removal of Native Americans to the west, he was elected as Cincinnati's first town president (equivalent to a mayor) in 1802. Cincinnati was influenced by Irishmen, and Prussians and Saxons (northern Germans), seeking to emigrate away from crowding and strife.  In 1830 residents with German roots made up 5% of the population, as many had migrated from Pennsylvania; ten years later this had increased to 30%. Thousands of Germans entered the city after the Prussian revolution of 1848, and by 1900, more than 60 percent of its population was of Prussian background. The menial-jobbed, aggravated Irish often organized mobs and the Germans, far away from their Pennsylvania Dutch connections, did the same. Thus, leaders of the city had to use fortifying measures against the arrivals' clashes.
  Volatile social conditions saw riots in 1829, when many blacks lost their homes and property.  As the Irish entered the city in the late 1840s, they competed with blacks at the lower levels of the economy. White-led riots against blacks occurred in 1836, when an abolitionist press was twice destroyed; and in 1842. More than 1,000 blacks abandoned the city after the 1829 riots. Blacks in Philadelphia and other major cities raised money to help the refugees recover from the destruction. By 1842 blacks had become better established in the city; they defended themselves and their property in the riot, and worked politically as well.
  The emigres, while having been widely discussed, never overtook settlers in population. Nearby Waynesville hosts the yearly Ohio Sauerkraut Festival, and Cincinnati hosts several big yearly events which commemorate connections to the Old World. Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, Bockfest, and the Taste of Cincinnati feature local restaurateurs.
  Cincinnati's Jewish community was developed by those from England and Germany. A large segment of the community, led by Isaac M. Wise, developed Reform Judaism in response to the influences of the Enlightenment and making their new lives in the United States. Rabbi Wise, known as a founding father of the Reform movement, and his contemporaries, bore a great influence on the Jewish faith in Cincinnati, the United States, and worldwide. 
  The NRHP-listed Potter Stewart United States Courthouse is a federal court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, one of thirteen United States courts of appeals. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Cincinnati Branch is located across the street from the East Fourth Street Historic District.
caption: The Genius of Water, a symbol of Cincinnati, was dedicated in 1871.
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