The Children's Home of Cincinnati history

52, eight-year-old boy admitted 19 September 1865; given to mother 6 December 1865.

Shinkle is perhaps remembered best as President of the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company that built this area’s premier symbol—the Suspension Bridge (1867)—which Shinkle himself financed in part.

In 1873 a German widower who spoke little English placed his two-year-old daughter in the asylum.

Admission entries in 1877 for a large family suggest the ways that the ability of both parents to fulfill their roles were interdependent preconditions for emotional closeness to develop.

The Covington Protestant Children’s Home (CPCH), which opened in 1882, was the result of his vision and of his generosity.

In the early 1890's, the General Assembly passed a law forbidding just what Shelby County was doing: housing children in an Infirmary.

On June 6, 1893 the Board rendered its verdict to the county commissioners: Shelby County needed a children's home- and its construction should be a top priority.

Preparations were made for the opening of bids on December 7, 1894.

County officials assembled on the top of the beautiful and wind swept hill that was to be the site of the home for the laying of the cornerstone on May 31, 1895.

In 1917, a 41-acre campus in Madisonville was purchased in response to a growing need for a less urban, safer and healthier environment for the children.

In May 1925, the Home conducted a massive 10-day fundraising campaign that raised over $225,000 for a new building.

In 1935 a new Junior Board, composed of civic-minded women, was established to assist with fundraising.

In that same year, the Junior Board began its successful Charity Ball, which has been held annually ever since, with the exception of 1937— the year of the devastating Ohio River flood.

26 The importance of fathers� ability to find work and of having two living parents is confirmed in David J. Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), 261-62.

For discussion of methodological issues raised by use of ledgers, see Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence (New York, 1989), 12-20.

In 1990, the Covington Protestant Children’s Home changed its name to Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky and began constructing its first residential cottages.

14 James Marten, �Fatherhood in the Confederacy: Southern Soldiers and Their Children,� Journal of Southern History 63 (May, 1997), 269�71.

5 Stephen M. Frank, Life with Father: Parenthood and Masculinity in the Nineteenth-Century North (Baltimore, 1998), 4-5.