Lytle family
|
|
The Lytle family of Cincinnati are considered to be Cincinnati's first family. Subsequent Cincinnati families included the Longworths and the Tafts, who built an Ohio and national dynasty.
Family members included Surveyor General William Lytle, Congressman Robert Todd Lytle (a relative of the Todd-Lincoln family), Gen. William Haines Lytle (the poet), and members of the Livingood family. The Lytles migrated from Pennsylvania. William Lytle first settled at Louisville and Bardstown, and to his daughter for a wedding gift gave the land on which she and her husband Sen. Rowan built 'My Old Kentucky Home'. Lytle Park, where the Lytle mansion was located, is named for the family. General William Haines Lytle died leading a charge in the Civil War.
A branch of this family settled to the north in Butler County, where Judge Robert Lytle acquired a section of land from the U.S. and named Milford Township. Prominent descendants include Sen. Bone, Secretary of Agriculture Wickard, Gov. Andrew L. Harris, James McBride of Hamilton, and others.
The Lytles were active in the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War, and three Lytle relatives were named Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory, based in Cincinnati. William Lytle led a party down the Ohio river and is believed to have been the first to land on the site of Cincinnati. His son, William Lytle, amassed a fortune surveying the lands of Revolutionary War veterans granted land in Ohio, and was a good friend of Andrew Jackson. Considered the first landed millionaire in the West, Lytle lost most of his money during a financial panic when western landowners could not pay their debts.
William Haines Lytle's most famous poem was 'Antony and Cleopatra', beloved by both North and South in antebellum America.