Find Ancestors and Your Family History with Biographies
  

PROPRIETOR of the Cincinnati Evening Times, died very suddenly, November 15, 1870, at six o'clock, at his residence on Eighth Street, west of Linn. On the night before he was at the office, on Third Street, until ten o'clock, superintending. the making up of the weekly, which was issued on Thursday. morning.  He prepared the election tables, corrected some editorial articles, and left at the hour mentioned, in good spirits, and seemingly in his usual. health. At four, o'clock he awakened his wife, complaining of a feeling of suffocation, but was relieved by a glass of water, and went to sleep again. At six he awoke again with a similar complaint. Dr. A. J. Howe was called, but arrived just as he was breathing his last. His ailment was pronounced disease of the heart.

He was born April 20, 1821, on Vine Street, near Front, Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents were in moderate circumstances, and he received through their instrumentality a good common school education. About the year 1836. he commenced learning the printer's trade, in the office of the Whig, a weekly newspaper, published on Main Street, below Third, by Mr. Conover; and finished it at the office of E. S. Thomas, publisher of the Cincinnati Evening Post. With the money saved by rigid economy, in 1839, the young printer entered into partnership with Messrs. Wilmerton and Brown in the publication of the Evening Times, which was started as a two-cent daily, and printed in an office at the corner. of Third and Sycamore. This building was afterward used by the Daily Commercial.  From this corner the Times migrated to Main, below Pearl; thence to the corner of Pearl and Walnut, where it found a temporary lodgement in the Assembly Building, and finally permanently located on the north side of Third Street, where it remained until recently.

The partnership with which the paper started was shortly dissolved, and after that time Mr. Starbuck entirely owned and controlled his paper. About two years after the debut of the Times, its proprietor issued a morning edition, called the People's Friend, which proved unprofitable, and was soon abandoned. In 1847, a weekly issue was attempted, which also. proved temporarily unsuccessful, and was dropped to be revived again, however, in 1849, under more favorable auspices.

The deceased was married on the first day of January, 1845, to Miss. Nancy J. Webster, at the residence of her parents on Vine Street, near where he was born. The fruits of this marriage are several children; most of whom are living.

Mr. Starbuck never spent money needlessly, but his generosity to worthy persons and worthy objects was remarkable. The Relief Union was the recipient of his favors to a large extent, he having been known to give upon one occasion four hundred dollars at a moment when its funds were exhausted and its needs most pressing, which amount was afterwards largely increased by a noble subscription, followed up by personal effort, which brought to that organization, within six months, the large sum of over twenty-four thousand dollars ($24,181).  Since that time, he gave that worthy cause five hundred dollars annually.  In the words of one who always took an active interest in the work : "The Relief Union has not lacked for funds. since Mr. Starbuck took hold of it. During the war his charitable deeds were numerous, and his kindness of heart was universally 'recognized all through his life, since he has had the appliances of. generosity at his command, he has sympathized with the afflicted, and his purse has been always open to the needy.. He died intestate, leaving an estate of near one-half million dollars. His age was forty-nine years, six months, and fifteen days.

The following is from the pen of one who knew him intimately :

"Mr. C. W. Starbuck, the proprietor, and, if we mistake not, the founder of the Cincinnati Times, fell dead in his tracks yesterday. He was stricken down of that sudden, mysterious heart disease which has carried off so many good and noble men. He was stricken down with the harness on his back. There was not in all the world a purer man or a more generous nature. He was a philanthropist without fanaticism. He was a Christian without cant. He was a gentleman without ostentation. There was mingled in his composition a tenderness and a firmness, an impulse and a moderation that were always just, that were always kindly. He had rare business discernment. He was; one of the best newspaper managers in the country ; a journalist who abounded in peculiarities and eccentricities, but whose peculiarities and eccentricities were methodical and marvelously well chosen. He knew perfectly well what he had to do, how he had to do, and where it was going to take him. Without any of those literary and political capabilities which are understood to bear so directly upon successful journalism, he knew perfectly the mission and the orbit of the Times. He neither deceived himself or the public ; nor was he deceived by any vagaries or specious suggestions. He could have made the Times a worse or a better paper. He made it precisely what was wanted by its especial audience. For many years he devoted himself to the circulation of its weekly edition. He never had an equal in this line of journalism. He knew, perhaps, better than any journalist in America the hidden springs and mysteries which move the rural districts. He had always something new, something striking to advance. His method of business in this respect was original and novel. What was more, it was immensely successful. He ran the Weekly Times up from a circulation of nothing to a circulation of seventy-five thousand. He began his career as an almost penniless boy; he ended it as the richest journalist in America, James Gordon Bennett alone excepted.

"He was a true man ; he was an ardent man; he was a wise man. He loved his country ; he loved his family, and he loved his friends. He had not one single vice ; he was a modern edition of Benjamin Franklin, a facsimile of a Puritan. The great roaring, world of Christendom—the world that falls at the feet of heroes and conquerors, at the feet of orators and statesmen, at the feet of poets and artists—will know him not, nor will mark his going out. But there is a silent world—a world of widows and orphans, a world of paupers and poor devils, a world of misery—which will look with blank amazement at the announcement that he is dead ; for he was the friend of the wretched--a friend in need and a friend in deed. In the hurry and press of business of a great enterprise and a great estate, he never forgot the duty which he had assigned himself to the poor and the afflicted. He carried this ruling passion into his business in the most comical way. He made people laugh and cry at his charitable oddities. His life was one long ebullition of humanity. He was the Cheeryble Brothers personified and reduced to a single personage.

"It is to be doubted whether he had an enemy on earth—and yet he was a positive man, an obstinate man, a man not given to yielding of any sort. He had his own way always. He was so sincere, he was so just, he was so whimsically humane, that he bore down all rivalry and all ill-nature. In him the press of Cincinnati loses, not a great impulse like Halstead's, not a great vitality like Richard Smith's, but a spirit before which its best genius must give back and bare its head—a spirit so childlike, so Godlike that all the judgments of men and all the professional standards stand back appalled. It is impossible to do. justice to the work of a life which was all truth, all soberness, all faith. The great public which. reads these lines knows nothing of the man of whom they speak. To the vast majority of readers the name is only a name, and the words are only panegyric. But every one of them is written down with serious intent, and there is no one of them that can do more  than scanty homage to the memory of a hero, who was a peer of the grandest and the noblest of the heroes of the olden time."

Another said, with a just appreciation of the man:

"He was a kind-hearted, generous, charitable man, wholly without ostentation or pretense of any sort, doing good in secret and putting forward no claim to public or private approbation. During the rebellion he carried a musket in the hundred days' service; did efficient service in the Covington trenches in 1862 when Cincinnati was threatened, and aided to support all the men in his office who enlisted in the cause of his country. He will be widely missed in Cincinnati, especially by the poor, to whose behoof he devoted many of the last years of his unassuming and useful life."