As a New Year dawned on 1 January 1919, Cincinnati had much to celebrate. The Great War in Europe was over and America’s “doughboys” were gradually returning home. The worst of the Spanish Flu had passed, although more than 2,000 Cincinnatians would ultimately die from influenza or pneumonia. So, 1919 offered a chance to get back to normal. The war years had disrupted Cincinnati life in all sorts of ways.



Names, for instance. Anti-German sentiment ran so hot that hundreds of Cincinnati residents changed their names to something that sounded less Teutonic. In the year 1918 alone, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer [1 January 1919]:

“As an outgrowth of the feeling against Germany and Austria, the Probate Court did an unusually large business in changing the names of persons who desired to drop foreign appellations, there being 252 cases of this sort, in which the right to change surnames was granted.”

Cincinnati street maps showed a similar change. With America’s entry into the European conflict, Cincinnati City Council set out to erase any street names “that stand for German militarism or are regarded as German propaganda in any way.” As a consequence, Bremen was now Republic Street, Berlin was now Woodrow Street, Hanover was now Yukon Street, Hapsburg became Merrimac Street, and so on.

It’s not likely that many Cincinnatians noticed any such changes on the morning of New Year’s Day. They were probably too hung over. The Enquirer explained:

“Never was there such a New Year’s Eve in Cincinnati. This was generally, almost universally, admitted. A few said it was because of the spreading pall of prohibition and the probabilities that it would go down in history as the last of its kind that Cincinnati celebrated as never before.”

As it turned out, Cincinnati had one more “wet” New Year’s Eve to go before the Eighteenth Amendment kicked in on 17 January 1920. Champagne in Cincinnati cost anywhere from $6 for the domestic brands to $14 for an imported bottle. In all, Queen City hoteliers estimated revelers expended $150,000 while seeing the old year out.

Looking forward, Cincinnati hoped to see more Valentines than the previous year produced. During 1918, only 3,830 Cincinnati couples took out marriage licenses, compared to 4,496 in 1917 and 4,173 in 1916. The drop was explained by so many potential husbands spending the year away in military service. Among the last of those 1918 marriage licenses issued was one to 28-year-old Thomas Shehan, a soldier at Camp Sherman, near Chillicothe, and 19-year-old waitress Mary Liggett.

Romance must have blossomed somewhere in Cincinnati back then. A correspondent to the Cincinnati Post [2 January 1919] observed that Oakley’s Andrew Avenue, a short street of two dozen households, began the new year with 11 children under the age of three.

Cincinnati looked forward to a big construction project in 1919. Here is the outlook, as published in that year’s city directory:

“Among the many improvements planned for early completion and which the war situation deferred, is the Rapid Transit Loop, which is destined to revolutionize, more particularly, the housing of the city’s large population. The improvement, to cost probably $12,000,000, is completely planned and, during early 1919 steps are being taken to begin construction. Conservative opinion Is that the Rapid Transit Loop will be one of the greatest of influences in promoting the prosperity, health and wealth of the city, known in its history.”

You don’t recognize the “Rapid transit Loop”? That was the name back then for Cincinnati’s infamous subway. Despite the optimistic 1919 projection, the project was never finished.

World War I was instrumental in helping women achieve economic and political equality. Throughout 1919, efforts to adopt the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution slowly gained ground and women were finally able to vote in the 1920 presidential election. Throughout the war, women took over male occupations to free men for combat and the big question in 1919 was whether they should give those jobs back to men. The Cincinnati Post [1 January 1919] was skeptical:

“Women who have tasted the sweets of economic independence will not give them up without a struggle. Such is the declaration of one of the spokesmen for woman workers at a labor conference the other day. The woman question threatens to project itself prominently in industrial affairs in this country and abroad.”

The first baby born in Cincinnati in 1919, arriving at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, was Marjorie Louise Hammond, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hammond of 2628 Euclid Avenue. Marjorie would grow up to marry and have six babies of her own, and she would live to the ripe old age of 85.

In the curious manner in which fate rolls the dice in Cincinnati, it should be noted that Marjorie married a man named Howard H. Oester and that one of her children was named Ron. Strange but true, the first baby born in Cincinnati in 1919 grew up to become the mother of Cincinnati Reds star second baseman, Ron Oester, who played his entire major league career with the hometown team. Oester ended the last of his 12 major league seasons after 1990, in which the Reds won the World Series against the Oakland Athletics.

Of course, the Reds won the 1919 World Series as well, downing the Chicago White Sox in a scandal-tainted championship that has become known as the Black Sox Series. But that is a story for another day.

