2 C I N C I N N AT I , E A R N S H AW , A N D A C E N T U R Y O F G R O W T H Cincinnati in the early 1840s offered vast opportunity. The city was growing at an unprecedented rate. In a letter to his daughter, Lyman Beecher, head of the Lane Theological Seminary, dubbed Cincinnati the Queen of the West, and compared it to London. 1Two years later, Charles Dickens visited Cincinnati, calling it a beautiful city: cheerful, thriving, and animated, continuing to state that he had not often seen a place that commends itself so favorably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does: with its clean houses of red and white, its well paved roads, and footways of bright tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. 2Dickens wasnt exaggerating: Cincinnati in the 1840s experienced tremendous growth in population, industry, and commerce. In 1841, Cincinnati was the largest city in the west, with a population of 46,381, and increased to 50,000 the following year. 3Cincinnatis population by 1850 totaled 115,438, roughly 5,000 behind New Orleans, the largest western city before the Civil War. 4Charles Cist, author and founder of the Western Weekly Advisor, who lived in Cincinnati, states in his book, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851, It will be found on comparing the population progress of Cincinnati with that of other places, for the last ten years, as exhibited by a view of the census of 1840 and 1850, that there is no place of equal or greater magnitude in the United States, whose ration of increase has been as large.5Much of Cincinnatis population increase can be attributed to the large influx of immigrants migrating to the United States during this time period. The surging population led to growth in other areas in the city, institutionally, economically, and culturally. Between 1840 and 1850, commercial, financial, religious, civic, and public and private educational institutions flourished. Construction grew exponentially, from 6,781 private and public structures in 1840 to 16,286 in 1850. Fifty-one new churches and synagogues, five new hospital and charitable institutions, and an increase of almost 500 miles of completed canals, railways, and roads transformed the Queen Citys landscape. With rampant building and another 1,500 miles of roads in progress, 6Cincinnati in the mid-19th century presented great opportunity for surveyors and civil engineers, like those in the Earnshaw family. The city was growing and the opportunities it offered could be what lured the newly immigrated Earnshaws to Cincinnati in 1843. 12