It is amusing to witness the current infatuation for punch in Cincinnati’s trendier watering holes because hardly any of today’s imbibers know that the Queen City has a formidable 200-year connection to a very specific punch bowl.

Of the thousands of visitors who pass through the Cincinnati History Museum at Union Terminal, not many stop to ponder the large stoneware object known as the Yeatman Punch Bowl. This is the historic object, thankfully preserved, at the center of many important events in the creation of our fair city. It might be said that Cincinnati itself was born from this large and unusual specimen of Colonial crockery.

Within five years of the first settlers pulling their flatboats out of the Ohio River, Griffin Yeatman arrived from Virginia to open a tavern at the northeast corner of Front and Sycamore. (You will find this location today on the third-base side of home plate in Great American Ball Park.) Yeatman’s Tavern was a wooden structure, 100 feet wide, two and a half stories tall, with a ballroom, barroom and dining room on the ground floor. Upstairs were rooms Yeatman let out to single men. The barroom served punch, and the punch was served from the magnificent bowl displayed today at the Museum Center.

Although it was not the first tavern in the city, Yeatman’s was prominently placed in a good section of town. It soon became “the favorite … gathering place for all town meetings and social functions,” according to Charles Goss’s 1888 history of Cincinnati. As in many frontier towns, inns provided perhaps the only gathering space available to the public other than churches. Yeatman’s would have been the location for real estate sales, auctions, and civic meetings. Yeatman was among the city’s first Fremasons and it is no accident that his inn was identified by “the sign of the square and compass” of the Masons.

“Early Cincinnatians used Yeatman’s as an information center, an agency of contact with the outside world. Inside the inn, travelers could arrange transportation over a common dinner. The ‘tap-room’ buzzed with shared news, gossip, and mail long before the building of a post office or publication of a local newspaper. As early as 1801, a prophetic meeting convened at Yeatman’s at which local leaders considered the practicality of the new invention for propelling boats by steam, a development which in three decades would insure the rising fortunes of the river city. It was indeed a dynamic environment.” [Blanche M.G. Linden in “Inns to Hotels in Cincinnati”]

References to meetings at Yeatman’s abound, and one wonders at the inspiration found in the ponderous punchbowl. The punchbowl makes an appearance in Cincinnati: The Queen City, a massive tome compiled by the Rev. Charles Frederic Goss in 1888. It is described thus:

“The Yeatman punch bowl was the first of its kind to he brought across the mountains to Cincinnati. It was the possession of Griffin Yeatman, who carne to Cincinnati in 1793 and kept the tavern bearing his name which was the most celebrated hostlery of its time. It is a splendid howl, an English ware, with dark blue background, gay Chinese figures, and capacious enough to hold eight or ten gallons. Being the only great bowl in the little town it was frequently borrowed and graced many festive occasions. Tradition says that Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Lafayette, George Rogers Clark, and many other celebrated personages have brewed punch in it.”

The Yeatman Punch Bowl was in private hands for many years and came up for bids in 1910 by the Cincinnati auctioneers, Ezekiel & Bernheim. It had passed through many hands until it came into the possession of Charles Selves, proprietor of the St. Charles Restaurant on Fourth Street. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer:

“One of the Yeatman family recovered this ancient relic at the auction sale and treasures it now beyond measure.”

When Cincinnati celebrated the Centennial of incorporation in 1919, the Yeatman Punch Bowl was prominently displayed at a recreated Yeatman’s Tavern on the grounds of the Cincinnati Zoo. According to the Enquirer:

“Mrs. Henry Englander and Bert Thompson have devoted considerable time and study to furnishing the interior of the tavern according to the best accounts of the equipment obtainable. Old time hospitality is to be dispensed from the punch bowl by maidens costumed after the fashion of 1819.”

If any of Griffin Yeatman’s “hospitality” recipes survive, I am unaware of it. Just to give a flavor of antebellum imbibery, here is the recipe for the famous Chatham Artillery Punch as presented by Stephen Z. Starr in the Fall 1978 Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin:

CHATHAM ARTILLERY PUNCH

(Serves 40)

1 Pound Green Tea in 2 Gallons cold water; allowed to steep overnight, then strained

3 Gallons Pink Catawba Wine

1 Gallon Rum

1 Gallon Brandy

1 Gallon Rye Whiskey

5 Pound Brown Sugar

2 Quarts Cherries

3 Dozen Lemons (Juice)

1 Gallon Gin

12 Quarts Champagne

Let stock (all the above, except the champagne) sit for a week or two, preferably in glass bottles. Pour over block of ice in a large punch bowl, add the 12 quarts of champagne and serve. (By my count, this requires a punch bowl in the 13 to 15 gallon range.)

The Chatham Artillery of Savannah, Georgia, was a pre-war (pre-War Between the States, of course) highly select militia organization, chiefly famous not for its martial accomplishments, but for its “Chatham Artillery Punch.” Starr claims that this is the authentic recipe, not to be confused with numerous counterfeits.

The Yeatman Punch Bowl was eventually donated to the Cincinnati Historical Society by the estate of Mrs. Robert S. Alter.